I laughed at that. Hayes Campbell, twenty, and making me sweat. “As little as possible.”
He smiled his half smile. “I’m listening…”
“So you are.” I took a sip from my glass. “Where to start… I live in L.A.”
“Are you from there?”
“No. The East Coast. Boston. But I’ve been there for a while now, so… it’s home, I guess. I own an art gallery, with my girlfriend Lulit.”
“Girlfriend?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Not that kind of girlfriend.”
He smiled, shrugging. “Not that I was judging…”
“Just that you were fantasizing?”
He laughed, loud. “Did we just meet?”
“Do you want to know more or not?”
“I want to know everything.”
“We own an art gallery. In Culver City. We sell contemporary art.”
He let that sit there for a second, and then: “Is that different from modern art?”
“‘Modern art’ is a broad term that covers about a hundred years and encompasses many different movements. Contemporary art is current.”
“So your artists are all still alive, I gather?”
I smiled. “On most days, yes. So…” I was going to need more champagne. “What is ityoudo when you’re not attending August Moon concerts?”
He laughed at that, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not sure that I remember. This has kind of consumed the last few years of my life. Touring, writing, recording, publicity…”
“You write your own music?”
“Most of it.”
“That’s impressive. You play piano?”
He nodded. “And guitar. Bass. A little saxophone.”
I smiled at that. Clearly I’d been underestimating boybanders. “Do you ever just go home and do nothing?”
“Not often. Do you?”
“Not as much as I’d like.”
He nodded slowly, sipped from his water, and then: “What does it look like? Your home?”
“It’s modern. Clean lines. Lots of midcentury furniture. It’s on the Westside, up in the hills, overlooking the ocean. There are walls of glass, and the light is always shifting. The rooms change, at dawn, at dusk. It’s like living in a watercolor. I love that.” I stopped then.
He was standing there, staring at me in a way that he probably should not have been. He was so ridiculously young. And I was someone’s mother. And in no world could this lead to anything good.
“Wow,” he said, soft. “That sounds like a pretty perfect life.”
“Yeah. But for—”
