“Somebody? Yes.” He smiled.
“Okay, I’ll figure it out. But yes, you should come. It’s a fun bunch. Bring him.” She turned to me before looking back toward my “somebody.” “Make her bring you.”
*
We had a late reservation at Market on Avenue Matignon. There were ten of us, and they gave us the large table in the back room. It was secluded, sleek, warmly lit. And following a dalliance and a shower at the hotel, I was happy Hayes had joined us. I feared he might be slightly out of his element. But surely all that fine breeding and three years as a world-class celebrity had to amount to something.
When we were still dressing at the George V, I received an amusing text from Amara: Just googled your boy toy. WTF? How’d you swing that??? If you don’t want to come out with us old artsy-fartsy types, I will totes understand. I probably wouldn’t either. But I’m going to need details later. Many. Xoxo But at the restaurant, she maintained her discretion. It was a lively group: Amara; Lulit; Christophe Servan-Schreiber, who owned galleries in Paris and London; the painter Serge Cassel, one of Christophe’s artists; Laura and Bruno Piagetti, collectors from Milan; Jean-René Lavigne, who was with Gagosian’s Paris outpost; Mary Goodmark, an art consultant from London; and us.
There was more wine than I could keep track of, and we were loud. The Italians especially. Hayes and I sat on the banquette side of the table, our backs to the window, flanked by Christophe, Lulit, and Serge. He managed to hold my hand the entire night. And I did not stop him.
“So how do you know Solène?” Christophe asked my date. We’d been there for the better part of an hour and were working our way through the shared appetizers: scallop tartare with black truffles and black-truffle-and-fontina pizza. Half of the table was discussing the sale of an Anish Kapoor the previous day for an alleged two million dollars. The others were trading war stories of art fairs past, Mary and Jean-René filling us in on what we’d missed at Frieze London. Which left Hayes fielding questions from the revered art dealer.
He grinned, turning toward me. “Solène”—his voice was deep, raspy, full of innuendo—“how do I know you?”
His fingers slipped between my knees then, and I could feel myself getting wet. It took so little with him.
He smiled and turned back toward Christophe. “We’re very good friends.”
“Are you a student?”
“No,” he laughed.
“An artist?”
Hayes shook his head. “A budding collector.”
“Have you seen anything special yet at the fair?”
“Hmm.” Hayes contemplated for a bit, and I feared he’d retained nothing from this afternoon. “The Basquiats were particularly compelling,” he said finally. “Angry, deranged. But he always seems to be that way, doesn’t he? His demons evident in his work.
“There were a couple pieces in Solène’s booth by Nira Ramaswami that I was quite keen on. Very poetic. Melancholy. And the Olafur Eliasson installations. You could lose yourself in those. Truly…”
If I could have buried myself in his lap and sucked his dick right then and there, I would have. Who was this person, and what had he done with my art neophyte? At best, I had expected him to regurgitate some of my interpretations, but these were all his own thoughts.
“Sì, mi piace molto. I love this, the Basquiat,” Laura spoke up from across the table. “How you can feel … il dolore. Come si dice?” She turned to Bruno beside her, her black bob swinging. Laura had alabaster skin and generous lips. She wore a gorgeous tomato-red dress, its deep neckline showcasing her swan-like throat.
“Pain,” Bruno said. He was older than Laura, more salt than pepper, with a distinct jaw and a villa on Lake Como.
“Sì. You feel the pain. I love.”
“I don’t need to feel the pain,” Lulit contributed. “I appreciate that most artists are a little crazy—no offense, Serge—but I don’t always need to feel that in the work. Sometimes I just want to look at it and be happy.”
“Like Murakami,” I said, “in certain doses.”
“Like Murakami, yes.” She smiled. “There’s so much negativity in the world, sometimes I need art to just lift me.”
Hayes was swishing his Cabernet Sauvignon around in his glass, in a manner that was slow, hypnotic. “Maybe there is pain in Murakami’s work, but we just don’t feel it because it’s his minions who carry out his genius.”
We all turned to look at him then, intrigued.
“What is it you do?” Christophe asked. He had one of those accents you could not quite put your finger on. A French father, British mother, Swiss boarding schools. An international soup, quite common in the art world.
“I’m a singer-songwriter. I’m in a band.”
“What kind of music?”
“Pop, mostly.”
Serge, Jean-René, and Lulit had continued on the negativity thread and begun discussing the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism in France over the past year and the large number of Jewish people who were migrating as a result.
“C’est horrible,” Jean-René said, leaning in from his far end of the table. “C’est vachement triste, et ?a va continuer à se dégrader, c’est s?r. Si personne ne fait rien, ne dit rien … On va attendre jusqu’à quand? Comme la fois précédente? Non, pas question!”
“Pop music, that’s nice,” Christophe continued, ignoring the weight of the conversation at hand. “And do you have gigs?”
“I do. We do.” Hayes nodded.
“And do you play … what … like clubs?”
Amara spoke up from across the table. “Oh, Christophe, he’s humoring you. Hayes is in that pop group August Moon. They’ve sold a gazillion albums and have quite a following. Of teenage girls mostly.”
“That is you! I thought it was you!” Mary nearly spit out her wine. “I saw you boys on Graham Norton the other day. You were so charming. You made all the girls so happy. My nieces are going to flip.”
“Really?” Christophe was amused. “Are you famous? Is he famous, Solène?” He leaned across to me.
“In certain circles,” I said, squeezing my date’s hand.
“But clearly not this one,” Hayes laughed.
“Boy bands are like the Murakami of the music world.” Amara grinned, pleased with her observation. “No one focuses on the pain behind the genius. We can just look at you and be happy…”
Hayes contorted his face for a moment. “In certain doses?”
“In all doses.” She smiled.
“Thank you for that. That was awfully kind. I think…”
She nodded, sipping from her Vittel. “There’s a lot of good in what you do. You wouldn’t have that following otherwise. I mean teen girls and all their angst and craziness, that is the most difficult age to make happy…”
“Besides middle-aged women,” Mary added.
“Besides middle-aged women,” Amara laughed, “and you’ve clearly cornered the market.”
“No pressure,” he chuckled.
I squeezed his hand again. It was good for him to hear that his art was appreciated, especially in this judgmental crowd. Although, in truth, it probably should have come from me.