*
That afternoon the Grand Palais felt slightly more cavernous than usual, and I could sense it in the air: the end of a beautiful thing. We had two pieces remaining unsold, and Lulit and I were already talking about Miami in December. The installation, the parties … It wasn’t quite half past three when I looked up to find Hayes striding into our booth.
“Do you know what today is?” he began the conversation. No greeting, no kiss.
Lulit and I exchanged looks.
“Sunday? October twenty-sixth? The last day of the fair?”
“It’s the last day of your thirties,” he said.
“Shhh,” Lulit laughed. “No one says that stuff out loud.”
“Sorry. It’s true…” He paused while a French couple who’d been admiring one of the Kenji Horiyama sculptures exited the booth. “So…” he continued, making his way over to me, “I’m taking her.”
“You’re what?” Lulit said.
“I’m taking her,” Hayes repeated, his hand encircling my wrist. “May I take her? I’m taking her.”
“Hayes, I’m working.”
“She’s working.”
“It’s your birthday, it’s Paris.” His angelic face broke my heart just a little.
“I know and I appreciate that, but we have all day tomorrow. We have tonight.”
“If I buy something, will that make a difference?” His eyes were scanning the walls.
“I don’t want you to do that.”
“What if I want to do that?”
“I don’t want you to do that,” I repeated.
Lulit caught my eye then, and the expression I read on her face left me cold. She was entertaining his offer. Knowing full well that he would go to extremes to close the deal. Her eyes said it all: Go. Sell. Art. To rich white men.
“No.” I shook my head.
“What’s still available?” He turned to Lulit. “She said there were still two left. Which ones are they?”
“There’s a Ramaswami. And one of Kenji’s sculptures.”
“Which Ramaswami?” he asked, and Lulit gestured accordingly.
Nira Ramaswami’s work, typically oil on canvas, detailed the plight of women in her native India. Forlorn figures in fields, young girls at the side of a road, trusting brides on their wedding day. Stirring, passionate, dark eyes and solemn faces. They had always been compelling, but the Delhi gang rape in December 2012 brought about a surge of interest in the subject matter and she was suddenly in high demand.
“This one?” Hayes’s eyes lit up. “I like this one.”
Sabina in the Mango Tree.
“It’s not cheap.”
“How not cheap is it?”
“Sixty,” Lulit said assertively.
“Thousand?”
“Thousand. Euro.”
“Fuck.” Hayes paused. His eyes going from Lulit to the painting. Of all Nira’s pieces in the fair, it was the most uplifting, hopeful.
His hand was still encircling my wrist. “If I buy it, will you let me take her?”
“No. Hayes, do not. I’ll be done at eight.”
“Will you let me take her?” he repeated to Lulit.
She inclined her head, ever so subtly.
“Good. Done.”
“Hayes, you’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to let you do this.”
“Solène. It’s already done.”
I stood there, stunned. “This feels a little like slavery. White slavery.”
“Except I’m buying your freedom, I’m not buying your services. Don’t overthink it.”
*
We made our way through the throngs on the first floor and out onto the street, Hayes leading me by the hand the entire time. It felt so open and obvious, and all I could think was how the European art world would be talking about the fact that I’d abandoned my partner to engage in a patently inappropriate affair.
There were girls when we stepped out next to the Champs-élysées. Many. It was Sunday afternoon, after all. And when Hayes took a moment to don his sunglasses and a gray knitted cap, I stepped away from him and crossed my arms.
“Are you just going to pretend we’re not together?” he asked as we made our way to the taxi queue.
I laughed, uneasy. I did not want a TMZ repeat.
“Whatever.”
There was a family in line ahead of us with two young daughters and a son. They recognized Hayes immediately and after much squealing and cooing in Japanese, they wrangled a photo out of him. As usual, he was amiable.
I stayed just off to the side, with the teenage son, bundled against the wind.
In the cab, Hayes rattled off some address in the Marais to the driver, and we rode in silence down the Champs-élysées, through the Place de la Concorde, and along the Quai des Tuileries, continuing east.
At some point, I reached for his hand on the seat and he pulled it away. “You’re angry? With me? After what you just did, you’re angry with me?”
He was staring out the window at the Seine, the Musée d’Orsay, and points south. The light was beautiful at this time of day. Even through the gray, everything was tinged gold and russet with the changing leaves. It dawned on me that I had not seen the late-afternoon sky in almost a week.
For a while, Hayes did not speak. And when he finally did, his voice was soft. “I’m angry at myself. I just wanted to spend the day with you.”
“I know. And I appreciate that. But you can’t just blow in making these grand gestures, like you’re in a Hugh Grant movie. You can’t … buy me … or my time.”
He turned to me then, gnawing at his bottom lip. “I’m sorry.”
“And I told you I had to work, and you didn’t respect that. Which is completely selfish and rude. And entitled.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“You can’t always get what you want, Hayes.”
He held my gaze for a minute, not saying anything. We were whizzing past the Louvre on the left.
“Do you even want that painting?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is beautiful. But that’s beside the point. Purchasing art shouldn’t be something rash, or manipulative. It should be this pure thing.”
He smiled faintly. “You’re a bit of an idealist, you know.”
“Maybe.”
He was quiet again, but he reached out and hooked his pinky finger around mine on the car seat, and that tiny motion was enough.
“Why don’t you want to be seen with me?” His question took me by surprise. “Why? Why are you so uncomfortable? What are you ashamed of? What do you think will happen when people find out? We’re together, are we not?”
“It’s complicated, Hayes—”
“It’s not. I like you. You like me. What does it matter what anyone else thinks? Why do you care?”
“How do you not?”
“I’m in a boy band. If I cared what people thought of me, then I’ve clearly entered the wrong line of work.
“Seriously, Solène, why do you care? I mean I want to protect your privacy because I don’t think Isabelle should find out this way. But if there’s another reason you feel uncomfortable being seen with me, then I need to know what that is.”
I was quiet as the taxi snaked past the H?tel de Ville and into the Marais. Parisians out on the streets in droves.
I so wished I could not care, about the million and one things that were holding me back from completely falling for him. “I don’t know where to start,” I said.