Voices reach us as more people fill into the museum. I decide to be bold while I can. “Did you want me to introduce you to more people?”
He seems to understand the other part to this question. “To be perfectly honest, I’m having a good time with you.”
Pleasure fills me and it wars with the vestiges of guilt about Ellis. “Okay.”
“Do you have other people to tend to?”
I glance at my watch. “I think I’m good for a bit.”
“Brilliant,” he says. We walk through the galleries—passing by an incredible chrome sculpture by Man Ray, a painting by Joan Mitchell that stops me in my tracks, and a walk-in installation that meticulously replicates a nostalgic garage from the 1950s. We leavethe installation with goose bumps—the empty museum adding to the time-trapped feeling. Daniel knows so much about art that I stop reading the placards. And he’s not lecturing me tediously—he’s sharing a genuine passion of his and it’s refreshing to be in someone’s area of expertise.
“Did you always want to do landscape architecture? Seems like you have a real interest in fine art,” I say.
He peers closely at a piece by Ellsworth Kelly before answering me. “Hm, yes and no? There’s this thing about being adopted. Sometimes, you kind of feel like you have to be the gold standard of children?”
I look at him, feeling sad. “Oh, but—”
“I know, I know. I’ve years to process this in therapy,” he says with a self-deprecating laugh. “And really, I shouldn’t speak for all adopted children so maybe it was just amething. Regardless, it was there for a long time. My parents encouraged me to do whatever I wanted, but they were right proper, pragmatic people. My father was an accountant and my mum was a sales rep for a food supplier. I voluntarily squashed all love of fine art and directed my love of design into landscape architecture.”
“Do you like your job, then?”
“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “It’s really interesting, but also feels purposeful. You’re creating work that endures beyond your own lifetime. And I love the outdoors.”
“But?”
He smiles. “There’s no ‘but.’ ”
“Okay,” I say easily. I’m noting a few things—this man is purposeful. Goal-oriented. I think about the way his life has unfolded; he’s created all this for himself. I admire him for it. I wonder if this is why Daniel and I are fated, and why we might be drawn to each other life after life. I appreciate his steadiness, his clear-eyed view ofwhat he wants. We’re similar, and maybe that’s the trick to making relationships work: an ease, a lack of friction in desires. I remember Ellis—going where the wind takes him.
We go downstairs to the first floor and walk out into a long corridor that is dark and cool and lit by a wall of fluorescent tubes by Robert Irwin. We’re the only ones in here.
“Do you have a ‘but’ with your line of work?” he asks, his voice quieter in the quiet space.
The lights range from cool blue to a fiery neon orange. The glow makes everything in the room warmer, more intimate. “Not really, I love my job,” I say simply. “It’sliterallyhope in action.”
“That’s a very poetic way to look at it.” Something about the way he says it, I wonder if despite his love of art, he’s pragmatic at heart.
“I get to believe in love as my job.”
The word “love” feels outsized and overwhelming in this space. He asks, “So, you’re planning on it for yourself? A match?” I feel his eyes on me, his unconscious sway closer.
“I am,” I say. “I know I’m forty so, like, what’s taking so long when it’s my specialty?”
“Is it a case of the cobbler’s family not having any shoes?” he teases.
“No, nothing like that,” I say. And when I look at him, his expression is completely absorbed, so fixed on mine that I feel breathless for a second. “I just know exactly who I’m looking for, too.”
When we leave the room, everything shifts into bright white, illuminating everything. We don’t say anything else as we step out into the L.A. night.
23
The office is a little quiet on the Monday after our event. This is normal—everyone needs to decompress after big events. The young people have partied hard and are unusually taciturn as they drink their giant beverages.
I’m exhausted, too. The Park women barged over last night and demanded all the Daniel deets.
“May I help you?” I asked when they stampeded inside.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know why we’re here,” Sunny said with atsk. “Give us the dirt.”
