“What do you mean, an emotional past? And even if what you are saying is true”—and of course, as he’d said it, I knew in my bones that it was, we were never going to be a forever kind of thing—“that means you get to punish me for it? To publicly humiliate me?”
“Why do you think I always wanted to hear your stories from when you were a kid? I had—have—no idea what it is like to belong to a family like that. When I say I live in a world of ideas, I mean Ionlyhave ideas. How could I live up to you, emotionally, in a relationship? I know things got messed up when your dad died, with your mom and all. But still, I never would have been able to give you that kind of depth. I wouldn’t be able to belong to a family like that and not screw it up one way or another. I wish I could but I can’t.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Maybesome part of me doing that show was about wanting you to see that. Maybe, deep down, I thought you would leave eventually, no matter what I did. I wasn’t trying to punish you, but maybe I was trying to save face, and somehow it ended up that way. But you’re right. You didn’t deserve it.”
What had I been doing with Matthew, anyway? I thought of the other night, with Clara, the closest I had come to saying that I was with him because I couldn’t have with him the same kind of relationship my parents had with each other. Matthew was sex and money and fun and glamour. He was arguments in the back seats of black cars and making up in his private elevator, gourmet coffee that cost $30 a pound, getting champagne drunk on Tuesday afternoons at someone’s SoHo loft. He was moody and self-centered. He was a distraction. He was a way out of thinking about my father, about the family I had once and didn’t have anymore.
We sat in silence for a moment, watched the bartender shake a drink, pour it into a tall glass, and shove a wedge of pineapple onto the rim. “Something’s been bothering me. Can I ask what the deal is—with you and Ramona? Why you are pretending that you’re still together? I mean, Matthew, she doesn’t even like you.”
He stared at me. I looked away but still felt his eyes on my lips. “You’ve gotten a little mean, Lily. It’s kind of fun.”
“I wouldn’t say mean. I’d say frank. We don’t really have to tiptoe around each other anymore.”
Matthew sighed and studied his fingers for a moment. “Ramona and I—we wanted to keep it up until all the pieces sold—I had a few things that didn’t fit into the show, and people were buying anything and everything. We didn’t want to rock the boat. I could have taken the fender off of my bike and called it sculpture, and a Chinese millionaire would have dropped a cool two hundred K on it.”
“How cynical.”
“She’s actually a complete psycho, Ramona. Decent painter. Impossible person.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Aren’t you supposed to be convincing me to work with her? And I’m not sure that she’s crazy. She’s intense. She knows what she wants and she’s ruthless about getting it. I wish I could be more like her.”
“All the more reason for you to take the money. You deserve it. You have a goal, something you’ve been waiting to do with your life. And not just because of all that bullshit with the show.”
“I’m staying here.”
“Here?What the hell will you do here?”
“I’m working on something. A project I really care about, actually.”
“What kind of project?”
“Portraits.”
“That’s great, but why does that mean you need to stay here? Lily, you think these people are interested in art? I’ve been here for twenty-four hours and let me tell you, all they care about is getting their rewards points on their stupid players’ cards. They wouldn’t know a Kandinsky from a Klimt.”
“I think they will be interested. In the right subject, presented the right way. They need art here more than anywhere. They’re losing their jobs. The casinos are failing. They’re still dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane, still waiting for money from the state to rebuild their houses. Their kids are dying of heroin overdoses. You tell me they don’t need art?
“During World War II Londoners lined up outside of the National Gallery for hours, in the rain, to see one painting. One goddamned painting a month, for just a few seconds at a time. They need something more than to be written off by people like you. Art won’t pay for their kids’ braces or new shoes or the rent on their houses. It won’t stop people from shooting up. It won’t bring jobs back. But I still think it’s important. I think it will matter.”
“I don’t know, Lily. These people …”
“Stop saying it like that,these people. You mean people you think are smaller, or less than you, because you can wield a blowtorch and sell a hunk of metal for a bunch of cash. They’re not smaller than you, Matthew. I’mfromhere. If you think that because you call yourself anideas personyou don’t have to be held accountable for the damage that you do, then you’ve got another thing coming. Pain isn’t collateral damage for art, Matthew. And I’m sorry, but humiliating women and calling it aperformance? Come on. Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones. It’s not art. It’s the most banal thing in the world.” I thought about Clara, how much she must have suffered. How it lacked any beauty, any sense of purpose. “You owe me more and you know it.”
“I think you’re cutting off the nose to spite the face, if you ask me. You’ll wither. The longer you’re out of the game the harder it will be to get back.” I could tell it was taking effort for him to keep his composure and was pleased to see the tips of his ears go red.
“Maybe. But I’m going to try this. And it will actually be mine. The Louten Gallery? Let’s be honest. It would always have an asterisk next to it. Brought to you by Matthew Whitehall. It would always be yours, underneath it all. Now, you can either keep pouting or you can wish me luck.”
He raised his glass, tilted it one way and then another so that the liquor picked up the light. “Good luck, Lily.”
“Thank you.” I looked down into my drink, swirled it, and finished it in three big swigs. I knew, probably before he did, that he would slide his hand up my thigh.
“Lil, Lil, Lil. How the fuck did we get here?” He swung his head, brought his face to my ear. “We had fun, though, didn’t we? We had a good thing for a while. You want to come see the mirrors for yourself? For old times’ sake?”
“Definitely not.” Although I felt the possibility bubble up. This whole city buzzed with the promise of empty, easy, cheap sex. And yet I hadn’t slept with anyone since, well, Matthew. Or maybe there was something erotic in talking about art again, feeling returned to myself a little bit.
“You’re a terrible liar, Lily Louten. I think you do.” He pressed the pads of his fingers into my leg, and I knew it would be the easier thing to do, to give in. But if I slept with Matthew, it would be my worst fall yet. I didn’t need to seek out ways to make Clara’s prophecy come true, the way I had with Luke and Rob. Opportunities to debase myself—to make my personality, my desires, subordinate to someone else’s—were all too easy to come by. What I needed to do was protect myself. To remember who I was at my core.
“It doesn’t matter whether I want to. It matters that I won’t.”
“Have it your way. I think that waitress over there likes me anyway.”
