“Yesterday, then… Were you just testing me?”
“I wasenjoyingyou.”
It hit me intensely, the memory of it. The feel of him.
There was laughter in the corridor. Familiar. It might have been Matt.
He leaned into me then and whispered in my ear. “Can I just bend you over this desk, please? For like a second?”
It was not like him to ask.
I looked at him as if he were crazy. And then I heard myself say: “You have two minutes.”
“I can be done in two minutes.” He smiled.
“Donotget anything on my dress.”
“Won’t. Promise.”
Six minutes later we were back out in the gallery and no one was the wiser. At least I wanted to believe that.
“Will you do me a huge favor?” I asked him as we made our way into the crowd. “There’s a photographer here from Getty. I would love to get a shot of you with Joanna. But if you feel uncomfortable doing that, I completely understand.”
I hated asking him. I hated everything it insinuated. I did not want him to think for one second that I was taking advantage of our relationship and his celebrity to sell art.
“Solène.” He grabbed my wrist then, pulling me into him. “Why wouldn’t I do that for you?”
I turned to look at him, aware that he was touching me in this very public space. The boy who I had just let fuck me in the office.
“I came here for you, right?”
“You came here for me. You didn’t come here for Marchand Raphel.”
“I came here foryou,” he repeated. “And last I checked, that was a huge part of you.”
We shot him along with Joanna and her husband beforeLow Tide at No. 24. Hayes insisted on there being a third person in the photograph because Joanna was “far too beautiful” for him to be pictured alone with her.
“They’ll assume I’m sleeping with her,” he had said when I questioned his reasoning.
“What? Who are ‘they’?”
“The press. The fans. The world.”
“She’s like twice your age, Hayes.”
“Yes, well, clearly that doesn’t stop me, right?” He smiled, salacious, chewing his gum. “Do you want to sell art, or do you want a scandal?”
Evidently, Hayes knew what he was doing.
Joanna’s husband was a chiseled Jamaican-Chinese model who had apparently spent some time at the gym and whose dimples rivaled those of Hayes. It only sweetened the photo op.
The photographer, Stephanie, posted a dozen photos of them on Getty Images the evening of the opening. By Sunday, they’d been picked up by numerous sources, includingHollywood Lifeand theDaily Mail, and by the following week they’d run inUs Weekly,People,Star,OK!, andHello!. By then, ourSea Changeshow had long sold out. And the demand for Joanna’s work had far exceeded any of our expectations.
paris
In October, there was Paris.
Lulit and I went each year for the FIAC art fair, which typically overlapped with my birthday. When Hayes proposed to join us, I did not decline. That he was so intent on making it memorable awed me. The way he scheduled his TAG Heuer photo shoot to coincide. The way he booked the penthouse at the Four Seasons Hotel George V and insisted I stay with him instead of at the apartment in the 17th that we typically rented. The way he upgraded my and Lulit’s tickets from business class to first without either of us being the wiser—a lovely surprise greeting us at the Air Francecheck-in. “I wanted you to be well rested when you arrived,” he cooed later, over Dom Pérignon in our hotel room. It was the most indulgent working holiday that I could recall, filled with wine and art and turning leaves. And like all time spent with Hayes, it passed too quickly.
