“Okay,” I say. “Let me think. Garrison’s friends pulled out their phones and said they only needed ten minutes to make me famous. ‘What’s the gallery’s name again?’ they asked. ‘What’s your Instagram handle?’ As they worked their magic, Garrison said he wanted to photograph us. He wanted to do it right there. He traded places with me so that I was on the sofa and he asked George—”
“—did we ever figure out who exactly George was? Like a young, hip butler? Are there even butlers anymore? Maybe a personal assistant?”
“I thought George lived there. Like he was one of the owners. He was so hospitable.”
“Oh, crazy. Maybe he was.”
“Anyway. He asked George to hand me a bottle of whiskey. I told him thanks, but I was driving. He said, ‘I’m just asking that you hold it.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how I feel about having a portrait taken of me holding a bottle of whiskey that I’m not even going to drink.’ He said, ‘It isn’t in the frame.’ And he had you look through his camera and you told me it was true. I guess it was supposed to make me feel something.”
“Did it?”
“I don’t know. Okay, yeah. Maybe it made me feel reckless.”
“Do you think it came through in the picture?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I’ve hardly looked at it.”
“Why not?”
I shake my head. I can’t find a reason.
“We can pick it up another time,” he says. “Let’s keep going.”
Make it up to me. Make it up to me.
“What is it?” Mark asks. “You just stopped walking.”
I guess I did.
“Violet,” I say. “I don’t know how I’ll ever recover from this. She bought all my paintings. People were probably asking her questions about them and me, and I left her there to guess.”
“So call her,” Mark says.
But I can’t. I couldn’t stand to hear the disappointment in her voice.
“Text her, at least.”
“What do I say?”
“Ask her where she is. Go wherever she says.”
“But I look like shit.”
“You look beautiful. Go. Sweep her off her feet.”
Violet, I text. I’m so sorry. Where are you?
The dots appear immediately. Then they stop. Then they’re back.
Just got home.
“She’s home,” I say. “I don’t know where that is.”
“Ask her for the address.”
I do.
I hold my breath.
She gives it me.
“It’s in Hayes.”
“That’s close,” Mark says. “Let’s go.”
I wish I could buy her a gift, but all the shops are closed, so when we show up at her house ten minutes later I’m empty-handed.
“Do you want me to wait for you?” Mark asks.
“Are you kidding?” I say. “You’re coming with me.”
“Ummm,” he says, shaking his head. “That is not very romantic. Don’t worry. I won’t leave you until you tell me to go.”
I nod, and enter the gate alone. I follow the instructions she sent in her text and round the house to the back, where there’s a small studio, lit up in the night. I knock on the door.
She opens it.
It breaks my heart to see her. She’s still dressed for the party in herringbone pants and high heels, a skinny black tie around her slender neck. If I saw her on the street I would stop still in lust and wonder.
But seeing her now, as she steps back to let me into her room, is too much for me to take. I look at her walls instead. They’re mostly bare save for some black-and-white photographs pinned to one of them. I step closer. They’re all of the circus.
“Did your mom take these?” I ask her.
She nods.
Her laptop is open on her bed, a YouTube video paused on the image of a trapeze artist in silver against a black backdrop, dangling from the bar by one leg.
I came to apologize, to confess. I did worse than desert her. I didn’t even show up.
But instead I ask, “Do you miss it? The circus?”
She’s quiet. I finally look at her for the first time since walking into her room.
“I thought I wanted to stay in one place,” she finally says. “Make a life for myself here. But I can’t even bring myself to unpack.”
She gestures to her suitcase and her boxes and I see what she means. There is no dresser or desk or chair. Only a bed and a kitchenette without pots or pans or other signs of living.
“I’m not used to staying anywhere very long. I came here because I thought something might be waiting for me.” She looks on the verge of tears, but she blinks them away. “Let’s go out. I need some air.”
“Okay,” I say. “I should tell you that Mark’s out front, though. In case you wanted to talk. I can tell him we need some time.…”
“To be honest,” she says. “I don’t feel much like talking.”
I follow her outside, my throat tight, my eyes burning.
“Hey, Mark,” she says. “I’m in a shitty mood. I think we should all get ice cream.”
“I like ice cream,” Mark says, and we walk, Violet leading us toward the heart of the neighborhood where ultracool adults laugh on street corners and sip from pint glasses in a beer garden. We are the only teenagers in sight.
I see the ice-cream store in the distance, but before we get there Violet stops short in front of a woman, sitting on a blanket on the ground.
“New plan,” she says to us. And then to the woman, “I’m buying my friends readings.”
I step closer and see that a sign on the blanket says Tarot.