“Please don’t touch me,” I said, though I could still feel the heat of his hand through my clothes. Could still remember the fever of being with him, of stumbling into the apartment, champagne drunk, grabbing at each other, Matthew’s hands up my skirt, reaching for my bra clasp, in my hair.
“All right, just trying to help …” He watched me, my eyes watering from coughing.
“What’s the job? Clean the apartment? Wash your sheets? I have some new skills you should know about. I’ve learned a lot about skincare. In fact, you are looking a little dry. You should exfoliate, then use a moisturizer with argan oil in it. A mask once a week.”
“I’d like you to represent me.”
I hadn’t expected that. “Why?” Philip Louis was the top, a superstar. It would be career suicide to leave.
“You were always so hungry, Lil. Philip Louis is getting a little complacent. He’s met a new boyfriend, this young Spanish photographer; all he wants to do is go back to the Mediterranean and drink rosé on someone’s boat.”
“He sure seemed to pull out all the stops for your last show.”
The bartender picked up my empty glass, brought it to the soda hose for a refill.Fuck it, I thought. “Make that a vodka soda, please?” I looked back to the spa. Empty, the lights turned out: Emily must have left to take the deposit up. I felt less watched already and soothed, knowing that a drink was on the way.
“You’re the woman for the job. It would be a great opportunity for you. Think about it: your own gallery. You would already have two clients—two clients who, if I may be as bold as to say it, have already stirred up quite a lot of attention.”
Did he mean Ramona? “You want me to represent her, too?”
“Well, I figured you’d want to. You were the one who discovered her. But we can talk about that later. The point is, you’d be in charge. You’d run things, and you could hire some Lily 2.0, some smart young thing to help you with the day-to-day stuff. Someone to do the accounting, social media, so on and so forth.”
“Matthew, is this some kind of joke?”
“Why would it be a joke?”
“Well I don’t know if you realized, but that’s what you took from me. You and Ramona. You took away my ability to look at anything and feel like it is real. Not only that, but I’ve been having anxiety attacks again. Nightmares. I don’t think you understand the degree to which you’ve royally fucked me up.”
“Lil,” he said, his hand moving toward my arm, but I moved it away.
“And where am I getting the money to start this gallery, anyway?”
“I would give it to you.”
“You’d be an investor.”
“No, it would be yours. A single check, and then I’d step away. It wouldn’t be Philip Louis kind of money. You’d probably have to set up shop in Gowanus or Bushwick, at least to start. But it would be your place. Your artists.”
“Oh, come on. What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Just an offer I hope you’ll accept.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Lily! Be reasonable! Why the hell wouldn’t you?”
I thrust my hand into my purse, pulled out my wallet, smoothed the paint-splattered two-dollar bill on the bar. “Because of this. Because you made my real life small. Into material. Something for you to shape. Like I’m not even real to you.”
Matthew studied the bill, swallowed another sip of his drink. “I’m trying to make that up to you, Lily. I don’t want to see you waste away down here. You deserve better than that.”
What he was offering had been the dream I’d organized my life around. Even Brett had remembered that from high school. The Lily Louten Gallery. The space that would be sleek and clean, but also warm. Inviting. I would have the power to pluck artists from obscurity, to make careers, to bring beautiful pieces to the attention of the world. But not like this.
“Let’s talk about what I deserve, Matthew. If I deserve better than this, then why did you do what you did in New York? How could you let her convince you that it would begoodfor me, that I would come to appreciate the aesthetics of it, or whatever the fuck you said? I mean, did you ever even love me? Or was I always going to be a pawn to you?”
“Did you love me?” Matthew said.
“So typical. Twist this around and make it about you.”
“Did you? Look, Lily, even if you did, I wasn’t the guy you were going to marry. I wasn’t your forever thing. I know that. You had this whole emotional past, this emotional capacity, that I just don’t have. I knew that one day you would see that. That one day, you would leave.”
