“I’m so sorry to interrupt your meal, but we’re here visiting from Chicago, and my girls would love to take a picture with you.”
I don’t remember saying yes, although somehow it happened. I do remember the expression on Lulit’s face: bewildered, admonishing, torn. Cecilia looked on confused.
“You’re even prettier in person,” the girls said. “Tell Hayes we love him.”
When they’d parted, I attempted to return to the conversation as if nothing had happened, just as I’d seen Hayes do a million times. But Cecilia was not having it.
“What was that all about? Are ten-year-olds suddenly collecting art in Chicago?”
“Her boyfriend’s a musician,” Lulit interjected before I could say anything. “He has a following.”
Musician.It was rather diplomatic of her.
It was not the first time that week it had happened. No fewer than half a dozen teenage girls had stopped me on the streets. Random visitors kept popping into our booth pretending to look at the art. I felt it, eyes, everywhere. I did my best to ignore it and hoped it would not affect my work. I was trying to do that now.
We returned to the topic of French contemporary cinema, and my boyfriend did not come up again. But I had seen the expression on Cecilia’s face, that very Parisian look of disdain. And I knew that moment had changed everything.
Early Sunday morning, the day I was to fly out, Amara met me at Balthazar for breakfast. The French bistro was a block from my hotel and just loud enough that I did not have to worry about people eavesdropping on our conversation. Because that had become something I was concerned with—privacy.
We’d been talking about her. She’d met someone, on Tinder. They’d been dating for three months and she was cautiously optimistic.
“He’s young,” she said, smiling.
“How young?”
“Thirty-five…”
I laughed at that. “That’s practically over the hill where I come from.”
“… and he doesn’t want kids.” She sipped from her latte. “Lucky me, right?”
“Lucky you.”
“Does Hayes want kids?”
It was a completely benign question, and yet the absurdity of it struck me. I placed down my utensils and began to laugh. “What the fuck am I doing? I can’t believe you asked me that. And it wasn’t a joke. He’s twenty-one years old. He doesn’t know what he wants. I mean, yes, he says he wants kids, but… Oh God, what am I doing?”
Amara was quiet for a moment, watching me, and I had to wonder what she was seeing: a woman on the verge of losing her mind.
“What are you thinking?” she said after a minute.
“I spent ten days with him on tour in South America, just following him around. We go from city to city. From the hotel to the stadium and back to the hotel. There are walls of screaming girls everywhere and we are constantly surrounded by security. They pace our floor. We can’t go anywhere by ourselves. We can’t sightsee. We can’t have a casual dinner at a restaurant. We can’t go for a walk. We can’t do anything without an entourage and bodyguards, and this is his life for months out of the year.Months.I can’t do that.”
She nodded. “Do you love him?”
Crap. I was going to cry. Here. In Balthazar. Under the gold lights and the oversized French mirrors. My avocado and poached eggs on toast were getting cold. “I love him.”
“Okay, then.”
“But I don’t know that that’s enough. I think Isabelle is miserable. She’s not herself. His fans are stalking me. They defaced ourgallery; they send death threats, dildos to my house. Not to mention the harassment on social media. I don’t know that I can do this…”
“What are you most afraid of?”
“Everything.” I smiled, but it felt forced. “Isabelle having a nervous breakdown. And it being my fault. Getting older. Getting old. My boobs, my upper arms, my ass. All of it. Eventually he’s going to take a good look at me and be like, ‘Bollocks! You’re forty!’”
Amara laughed. “That’s a good accent you do.”
“Thank you.” My thoughts got drowned out in the hum of the restaurant. Laughter, the clinking of silverware, the scraping of bistro chairs on tile. “But even if everything were perfect… even if the harassment stopped, and Isabelle grew to accept it… how would it happen? What, we move in together, we cohabitate, we have a kid, we get married? He goes on tour, I run a gallery? How crazy is that?”
