I sigh and open my bag. “It’s horses. In the hills at sunset.”
“Fiery stallions?” she says hopefully as I claw through receipts and wrappers. “Oh, and Jayme is looking for you,” she adds. “PR needs help.”
“She promised I didn’t have to work tonight.”
At home is the F. Scott Fitzgerald biography I’ve been reading. And a glass of dry white wine. And the remains of a cherry pie I baked from scratch. It’s a dull life these days, and not the one I thought I’d be signing up for when I first pored over maps of Los Angeles with Greg, tracing the vast quilt of neighborhoods with my finger, imagining our hikes in the Palisades, concerts at the Pantages, breakfasts at Los Feliz cafés, and me making my way writing for magazines. But it’s an unpretentious life, and it’s mine.
Yegina holds out her hand for my phone, a beat-up old flip that makes it difficult to text. I can’t look as I offer it to her. Greg’s number is still the first on my list of contacts, above my parents.
Just as Yegina presses dial, there’s a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she says, putting the phone to her ear.
“Could we talk?” says a hearty, patronizing voice that could only belong to our dear director, Bas Terrant, an East Coast silver-spoon scion layered under a sheen of Hollywood. Bas’s suit and hair always seem to enter a room before him, and they are immaculate, his fabrics so pastel they melt in your mouth, his blond locks tapered to fall boyishly across his forehead. He is at the age where he should be showing wrinkles and gray hair, yet some aggressively shiny blend of treatments keeps both at bay. Tonight, however, sweat has darkened his temples and his eyes look crimped, as if someone tried unsuccessfully to button them shut. “Pressing problem with sponsor recognition,” he says. “Among other things.”
“Of course. Speak with me.” Yegina’s face morphs into a pleasant mask. She hangs up the phone and holds it out. It slides cool and solid into my palm. Call to Greg disconnected. He’ll see that I tried to call him. Two months of rigid self-control for nothing.
Bas gives me a strained smile. “And do check in with Jayme. All hands on deck tonight,” he says, and shuts the door.
2
I do not go straight to Jayme. I go back up to my office and stare at the Cy Twombly drawing on my wall, willing my nerves to settle before I allow myself to be dragged into this train wreck of an evening.
In every office at the Rocque hangs a real artwork from the museum’s permanent collection. I wouldn’t have picked Twombly, but his sketch has grown on me over time. Gray marks cover the paper, a storm of lines. I try to follow one with my eyes; it breaks. I follow another. It breaks, too. If you had asked me at twenty-seven about my life, I would have predicted marriage soon, children after that, a logical and contented unfolding of decades not unlike my parents’. But at twenty-eight, I can’t see how anything connects.
I met Greg Shaw Ferguson almost six years ago, when we were both on a program teaching English in Thailand. A month’s orientation in Bangkok threw us together with about twenty others to learn Thai. The program attracted a core group of the usual na?ve, adventurous college grads; one constantly bickering married couple; one guy who wore his bike helmet at all times; and me, who was trying very hard to belong with the college kids. And then there was Greg. He was the same age as most of us, but his mother had just survived her first bout of ovarian cancer, and he had spent the two months prior meditating in a monastery. His head was shaved to a dark fuzz and his silences could pulse like strobes. Most people regarded him with a glum awe. I decided to woo him to our flock.
I should make it clear: I had no romantic stake in this. It was purely sympathy, fueled by my journalistic training in social fearlessness. Fifteen pounds too skinny and without his shaggy hair, Greg had a surly, reptilian look. He didn’t grin or joke like he does now. I coerced him out with our merry crew to ride the canals, to watch a Thai movie with no discernible plot but shrieking and hitting. I gave him my castoff Kundera novels to read. Yet I had no idea that I sparked any feelings in him until he wrote me after orientation, from his campus in southeastern Thailand, and invited me to visit. By then, his hair had grown, and obligatory drinking bouts with his Thai colleagues had forced him to abandon his hard-core Buddhist habits. The man who picked me up from the Chanthaburi bus station was a wry, warm, intelligent dreamboat, and strangest of all, he seemed to adore me.
That adoration is gone now, revoked by a toxic mix of grief and ambition. I know why Greg left me and whom he wants to become, and in the abstract I accept it. I even wish him well. He never once lied to me. But whenever I see him in person, it’s like being in a room with an impostor: some creature who slunk out of L.A.’s giant billboards and gated studios and false hopes and took over my boyfriend’s body. He goes by “Shaw” now: a slicker, smarter version of the old Greg. It’s the name of his gallery, too: SHAW.
A shadow crosses my glass door, and Jayme West whips it open with one hand while talking on her cell with the other. Jayme spends most of her day attached to the device, and they both possess the same sleekness and utility—everything on my boss’s gorgeous half-Norwegian, half-Eritrean body is exactly where it belongs, from her high, narrow hips to her low, smooth voice and the bright scent of tangerines that follows her everywhere. With her looks and poise, Jayme could make ten times her Rocque salary in Hollywood or politics, but she hates being on camera and always makes Bas take center stage. He adores her. We all do, because Jayme’s hard work and behind-the-scenes orchestrating have helped the Rocque maintain its cultural reputation despite declining revenues. Saved by Jayme is a mantra, which is why her behavior around the Kim Lord exhibition has been especially puzzling to me.
“Yes, that’s ‘Rocque’ as in ‘lock.’ Still Lives as in ‘wives.’” Jayme hangs up the phone, rolling her eyes.
“Or crock,” I say. “And hives.”
Jayme doesn’t smile. She is not a smiler by nature. It would interfere with the sixteen hundred other things she’s doing at any given moment. “Got anything else to wear?”
Before I have a chance to answer, Jayme is marching me to her bigger, tidier office and pulling dresses from a closet, holding them under my chin. “You’re the same size as I am, just shorter,” she mutters. Her phone rings. She looks at the name and cringes, but her delivery is flawless. “Mr. Gillespie, we’re going to need to move the interview again. The artist wants more time with you especially.”
She waves the dress she is currently holding. When I take it from her, I’m surprised to see her arm is goose-bumped and shaking. I try to catch her eye, but she deliberately turns away and steadies herself on her desk. I carry the dress obediently down the hall to a bathroom stall, mesmerized by the shimmery green fabric, its leathery weight. I tend to choose demure grays and blues, the wardrobe of a Catholic schoolgirl. This dress feels otherworldly, like it was fished from some alien sea. I fear it will look terrible on me. To say Jayme and I are the same size is like comparing a Jaguar to a Yugo. Clothes don’t fall on Jayme’s lean torso. They float. She could attend the Gala tonight wearing a couple of crusty washcloths, and the fashion writers would fawn over the hot new trend.