The One In My Heart

Bennett glanced at me. “Absolutely.”


I shook my head. “He’s with me only for my patents. Look at him: The man was born for gold-digging.”

After the laughter, Darren inquired into those patents. The conversation was briefly about my work before I asked them to tell me more about themselves. Rob was an architect and Darren an accountant—Moira McAllister’s accountant, no less.

“And that’s how we met Bennett,” explained Rob. “One day she had a potluck party. We showed up, and there was Bennett—he’d just moved into her garage apartment. Where did you guys meet, in Spain?”

Bennett nodded. “Yeah, Spain. I was a high school exchange student and Moira knew my host parents. I looked her up when I got to Berkeley.”

Talk about lying by omission.

He was watching me again. I forced myself to not fiddle with my champagne glass. “So what was it like, living with a famous artist?”

“Well, her house was old and stuff was constantly breaking, so I was usually fixing something or other.”

“And he built her editing room, too,” Rob told me with avuncular pride. “Darren and I were so impressed we had him come and build a deck for us.”

I glanced at Bennett. “Are we talking about Mr. Fashionista here?”

“I worked construction for a couple of years to save money for college,” said my fake boyfriend.

“I thought you worked as a stripper to put yourself through college. I thought you were a real American success story. You know, Magic Bennett.”

Rob hooted. One corner of Bennett’s lips quirked, his eyes full of a glossy mischief, all sex and glamour.

I poured the rest of the champagne in my glass down my throat, as if that could quench the unrest inside. Fortunately our appetizers arrived. After we dug in, the conversation turned to other topics—old friends in California, Bennett’s new life in the Big Apple, Rob and Darren’s plan to bike the coastline from San Diego to Portland.

I was every bit the arch but secretly doting girlfriend. Rob and Darren were clearly pleased for Bennett. And from time to time Bennett looked at me with something akin to wonder, as if he couldn’t quite believe how well he’d chosen.

Moira’s name came up only one more time, when Darren mentioned that the Museum of Modern Art would be unveiling a retrospective of her body of work very soon.

Holy shit, Bennett’s naked pictures were going to be in MoMA?

“You plan to go see it?” Rob asked Bennett.

“At some point,” said Bennett. “Want to come with, Professor?”

I shot him a look. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

At the end of the evening we said our good nights with many hugs and smiles. But my smile dissipated the moment Bennett and I went our own way, the implications of everything I’d learned at dinner whirling about in my head like a storm of crows.

My silence failed to register on me until we were in the suite—I’d been standing before the mantel, turning a small box of complimentary chocolate around and around. And I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been at it.

“Nobody knew even after you came of age?” I hoped my tone conveyed curiosity and not…anything else.

“My dad threatened a scandal that would end Moira’s career if our relationship ever became public.”

I fiddled with the lid of the chocolate box. “Could he have done that?”

Bennett braced a hand on the far end of the mantel. “Destroy her career? I’m not sure. Make things extremely unpleasant for her? Absolutely. And she was at a fragile point. The photographs that had made her name had been taken decades earlier. Her new works weren’t resonating as well—or bringing in as much income. She was about to turn her hand to filmmaking, a much more expensive medium—and a scandal was the last thing she needed.”

“Let me guess: This became a bone of contention between you two. You wanted to shout your love from the rooftops, but she was afraid of the repercussions.”

He looked up at the canvas above the mantel, a nostalgic photograph of the Amalfi Coast in the sixties. “It was the other way around: She didn’t want to keep things quiet anymore, and I was hesitant to test my dad.”

“This wasn’t the reason you guys broke up, was it?” I thought of his multiple attempts to take over the family firm. Now his actions made more sense—he was angry at the restriction the old man had put on how he could live his life.

He shook his head. “That particular disagreement was at most the creaky stairs in a house slowly sliding off its foundation. But it got more notice because it was right underfoot.”