The promise of a successful evening, and three ibuprofen, go someway to alleviating my headache, but given the bids onA Lettered Manhave now reached one point five million and the last journalist count totalled three, all bets on the pain not staging a swift return are off.
Jeanette appears through a gap in the crowd dressed in butterfly wings covered in hand-painted flowers, and an ornate kimono. She is as much a work of art as the items up for auction.
She beams when she sees me. "Isn't this wonderful, Ed?"
I can't do anything but agree. Right now, it does indeed appear wonderful.
As she turns to sidle up next to me, one of her wings clips a hand holding a drink just as the drinker is about to take a sip. It sloshes up and over his nose and leaves the man blinking in surprise while prosecco drips from his chin onto the floor.
Her wings then fwap me in the face as she turns towards him with a gasp. "Oh my goodness. Sorry my love. Let me get you a serviette."
I grasp Jeanette's shoulders. "No. Stay where you are. You're too much of a liability. I'll get the serviette."
The man waves me off with a "No harm done" and pulls out a handkerchief to mop himself down.
I say, "Please don't go anywhere near the art up for auction, Jeanette. Not without taking your wings off first," but she's not listening. She's gazing across the heads of people, the broad smile back on her face. "You know, I never doubted her. Bess is afraid of nothing."
"No. Though perhaps she should be."
"Lovely Ed." She lays a hand on my forearm. "I understand your fear, but you know what they say. 'The higher the risk, the higher the reward'."
"Yes, and they also say 'The higher the risk, the harder the ground is when it comes rushing up to meet you'."
Jeanette laughs her tinkly laugh. "They do not." Her smile falters. "Do they?"
I sigh. "I don't know. All I know is that I'm bricking it right now and I just wish this whole thing was over."
"Well I don't. I'm making the most of being mindful in this moment, and enjoying it as it happens. I mean, look at it." She sweeps a hand across the crowd. "We did this. We brought dozens and dozens of friends and strangers together through our collective love of art. Isn't there something magical in that?"
Right now I do want to be that person who feels the magic in the air, but the pressure in my lower intestines and the fabric sticking to my spine won't let me. I'm what people of my generation have been known to call A Hot Mess.
"We don't know what the future will bring, so why waste time worrying about it?" With a squeeze of my arm, Jeanette moves away to brutalise other people with her lack of lateral awareness and leaves me to contemplate how on earth she can just turn off the worry switch.
If I had a super power, it wouldn't be anything remotely sexy like 'fly without wings', or 'super-human strength', it would be something mind-numbingly ordinary and much more practical, like 'not imagining worst-case scenarios'.
My attention is pulled to the biggest draw-card of the evening. People congregate aroundA Lettered Man, reading the letters, peering through the small holes in his frame to his dark insides.
Bess stands nearby, obliging people with selfies and autographs on the prints of her paintings, and keeping an eye on her soldier, making sure nobody touches the original letters, which sit nestled in his heart cavity.
She is wearing a pale blue, short-sleeved dress that clings to her curves and hot pink, high-heeled ankle boots.
She looks heart-arrestingly beautiful.
I am wearing a cream, open-necked, collarless shirt I haven't worn since my cousin, Parminder's, wedding. It's slim fit and I feel slightly self-conscious about the very little give between it and my skin.
I've never had a reason to dress up in Bess' presence before. She was in such a flurry of activity before people started arriving that she hadn't noticed. Not that I expect her to have any interest in what I'm wearing.
But she seems to notice now.
Her eyes sweep over me. Down and back up again.
Uneasy under her scrutiny, I swallow, and her eyes seem to catch on my Adam's apple. They stay there for longer than they really should and her bottom lip drops away from her top one ever so slightly.
And...
I feel like I'm in one of my dreams where Bess is available and looking. In that dream I know exactly how to interpret an expression like that.
It's desire. Because Dream Bess is a universe away from Real Bess and has the capacity and willingness to desire me.
