Page 62 of Don't Tell

I can't imagine it — me, in the gallery space on the second-floor balcony of this hotel, in a dress, being introduced to a man as an artist instead of as the woman who scrubs the toilets on the eighth floor. This is so large that I can't look at it directly.

"Okay."

"Yes?"

"Okay. I'll have to be there anyway. Roger will definitely have me working."

“Do you want me to speak to him?”

“No. I can handle it.”

He watches me for the length of three breaths. "Are you okay?"

"Yes."

I am, mostly. I stand and turn toward the door, but he catches my wrist as I turn and pulls me back.

He kisses me — not gently, not carefully. I make a sound against his mouth I didn't plan. My hands reach his shirt before my mind catches up.

"I missed you," he says against my mouth.

"Me too."

His hand is at the back of my neck, then down my spine. My hands are on his shirt, then under it. The dining room is gone. The corridor is gone. The lobby, Roger, and Lila are all gone, and we are slowly walking backward toward the bedroom.

I push him through the doorway and onto the bed.

He sits.

I look down at him.

Then I see them on the nightstand beside the lamp, small and steel — the cuffs.

I don't know if he kept them on purpose, if a maid put them in a drawer and he put them back. If they were always in the drawer, or if he left them out for me. It does not matter.

I pick them up and look at him.

His eyes are on the cuffs, then on me, and his mouth opens and closes once. He lets me.

I cuff one wrist to the iron frame of the bed, I climb on top of him, and I take my time.

He is at my mercy, and he knows it.

The light moves across the room.

He says my name. He says it more than once.Suzanne… Suzanne… Suzanne…He says other things between my name.I want you. I need you. Stay.He says them low, into my hair, just below my ear at the base of my jaw, and I don't stop him from saying them.

I whisper the only thing I’ll tell him today against his lips.

"I know."

16.Cade

The ballroom at 7:00 p.m. is full of the people I have spent countless years not enjoying.

A few guests from the collector circuit, seven from the art press. Davies is in a corner with one of his sons, still striking the same old-money pose he’s used since 2014. There are eight paintings on temporary walls. The light is good for once. The catering is predictable. Nothing about the room feels new. I’ve been to a dozen such events in a dozen hotels, and I’ve never enjoyed a single one.

I see Suzanne before I have taken three steps into it.