It was almost exactly a year earlier that Arthur and I had our big fight. A night just like this: late walk home, pizza, warm air. Part of me was itching for a redo. To shout until my throat was raw. To scream even if no one was listening. But there was a difference, a big one. Last year, I hadn’t been able to hear what Arthur was saying. I was so focused on the idea of what came next. On the idea of packing up the last of my boxes and putting them in the U-Haul with Julia’s and arriving later that week at our apartment in New York, beginning the next chapter of our life together. That’s all that had mattered, the continuation of the present into the future, the uninterruption of that dream.
“Do you see what I mean?” Arthur said. Arthur knew the whole truth of what had happened by then, but this was the first time he’d voiced the other side. That I’d screwed up. That as much as Julia had betrayed me, I had betrayed her, too.
“I’m just saying,” he continued. “Don’t act like it’s nothing. But don’t be so hard on yourself. And don’t be so hard on her. I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to give her a call. I can tell you’re still thinking about her.”
“How?” I said. Was it that obvious? In the previous few weeks, she’d come back into my mind, memories growing stronger and stronger. That was the real reason I couldn’t leave. I needed to know whether the Julia I had known and loved was the real Julia; whether that Julia would ever come back. I had no idea how long I’d have to wait.
He shrugged. “I’m your friend, Evan. I just can.”
Chapter 16
Julia
The loft was in an old building in Tribeca. There was a freight elevator, which he used sometimes for moving his oversize canvases, but we took the narrow metal staircase. He had the whole second floor—half for his living space, half for his studio.
I started to knock on the unmarked metal door, but Elizabeth said, “Don’t bother. No one can hear you.” She pulled a jangling ring of keys from her purse.
Saturday night, the night of the big party. She’d shown me pictures of Donald Gates, and he looked exactly the same in real life: unkempt gray hair, paint-stained cargo shorts and plastic Crocs, a belly that strained against his T-shirt. But his voice was deep and booming, and even from a distance, I could see the brightness in his eyes. He had a pipe clamped between his teeth. He looked like the king of his small kingdom.
“Donald,” she said. “This is my sister, Julia.”
“Julia. Lovely. Elizabeth talks about you all the time.”
“Did the frames arrive this afternoon?” she asked.
He sighed. “They got the order wrong. We have to send them back.”
The apartment was one big undivided space, vast and pleasantly chaotic. A kitchen in one corner, with a metal sink as big as a bathtub. A long wooden table in the middle of the room covered in dripping, flickering candles. A massive living area with mismatched couches and armchairs grouped around rugs and coffee tables. A thick slab of a sliding wooden door, standing partially ajar, opened into the studio.
“I’ll show you the studio later,” Elizabeth said, pouring us each a glass of wine at the island in the kitchen. “It’s pretty spectacular.”
“So this is where you work?”
“Most days. He’s getting ready to mount a new show at a gallery in Chelsea, so we’re over there sometimes, prepping the space. Here. You should meet the others.”
Donald Gates had several assistants working for him. Some, like Elizabeth, were on summer break from college. Others were closer to my age, young artists pursuing their own careers in their spare time. They were sitting at the long wooden table watching a skinny Asian boy roll a joint. “Hey, guys, this is my sister, Julia. She’s visiting for a while,” Elizabeth said as we slid next to them on the bench. The others looked up and said hello in unison.
I’d been skeptical about tagging along. It made me feel so old, the idea of following my younger sister to this downtown loft. Elizabeth is cooler than me, I’d always known that, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to have it rubbed in. She already seemed to know the city better than I ever had. But I was skeptical for another reason, too. Those orbiting the great Donald Gates would surely resort to insufferable pretension when they got together. The thought made me cringe: lofty theories and showy name-dropping, a posture of sophistication, conjuring—for me, at least—the ugly ghost of previous seductions.