“What happened with you two, Hayes?”
“You know everything, Solène. There’s nothing more to tell.”
“Not Penelope. Oliver.”
His eyes opened and strained to look at me. “Nothing.”
“I’m not going to judge.”
He was quiet for a long time and then he repeated it. “Nothing.”
I wished I could have believed him. “Okay.” I nodded. “Okay.”
“You once asked me about my biggest secret,” he said, soft. “I told you what it was. Any others… are not mine to tell.”
In the morning, we flew to Rio. Hayes’s face an inspiring palette of purple and blue. And while the rest of the guys snuck out to see a couple of the sights, we stayed behind at the hotel, icing.
On Tuesday, the band played to a crowd of forty thousand at the Parque dos Atletas. Petra was able to cover the green under Hayes’s eyes, and the show went off without a hitch. His fans and his bandmates—Oliver included—were happy to have him back. In that last beat before heading toward the stage, they did their customary huddle, and I witnessed Oliver pat his back and whisper something into his ear. Hayes smiled and squeezed Ol’s shoulder, and to the outside world they seemed okay. And for now, maybethat was enough. This facade. And maybe I would never know what happened. Maybe part of me didn’t want to.
On Wednesday, I flew to New York, and the guys scattered to the corners of the globe. They had five whole days to themselves before reporting to Australia for the next leg of the tour.
japan
I thought there would be a joy in getting off the plane unencumbered. I thought I’d have a newfound respect for the ability to come and go as I pleased, unrecognized, the anonymity that I’d taken for granted. I thought there would be an exhilarating sense of freedom. But there was not. And perhaps it was coming down from the tour high, but everything to me felt bleak, dichromatic, insurmountable… like a Wyeth landscape.
It might have been all the travel or the lack of sleep, but New York to me seemed sad. I arrived at the Armory Show Thursday morning, after a ten-hour flight and a quick shower at the CrosbyStreet Hotel. And nothing was quite right. Matt and Josephine had flown in early in the week to assist Anders with the setup of our booth at Pier 94. Lulit had arrived the day before. We were featuring five of our artists. Already our sales had exceeded expectation, but I could not manage to focus. I could not help but feel as if I were walking around in a fog, with some essential part of me missing. And I kept getting lost in thoughts of him.
I’d woken the day before in Rio with Hayes’s arms wrapped so tightly around me, I could not breathe. And I knew he sensed, even in his dreams, that it was ending, and he did not want to let me go. And I think he feared that me leaving Brazil was me leaving for good. I think we both feared it.
I’d untangled myself and kissed him and stroked the side of his bruised face and whispered a thousand times over that I loved him. And that I would join him in Japan. I promised. I promised.
And to have been uprooted from that and transplanted to Manhattan selling art on a Thursday felt off-kilter. Inside, I feared something was dying.
That evening I went back to the hotel, the site of our first tryst, and I got into my bed and everything came flooding back. How he was still such a stranger to me then. How nervous I’d been. How he’d touched me and unfolded me and gifted me his watch. “Thanks for giving me the pleasure,” he’d said. As if he were the only one benefitting. As if I’d done him a favor.
On Friday, we received news that Anya Pashkov had been offered a solo exhibition at the Whitney. I celebrated with the rest of our team, going out for cocktails at the end of the day, but I was there in body only.
It was on the cab ride back to Soho when we crossed through Times Square that my heart stopped. There, several stories high, was a billboard with the new TAG Heuer campaign. Hayes in blackand white. Soulful eyes, generous mouth, stunning. They had captured him so beautifully, I began to cry.
The campaign debuted in a variety of publications that first week of March:Esquire,GQ,Vogue, andVanity Fair. There were three different ads that ran, each photo more breathtaking than the next. And just like that, Hayes Campbell had successfully separated himself from the rest of his boy band. He’d redefined.
“They’re perfect,” I said to him that night on the phone.
“You’re just saying that because you’re my girlfriend.”
“I bet I could find twenty-two million people who would agree with me on Twitter.”
He laughed at that, his voice muffled. He’d been treated by a renowned plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills earlier that day. It was an outpatient procedure, and Raj was in charge of post-op duties while Hayes convalesced at the Hotel Bel-Air. I hated knowing that he was in L.A. without me.
“I love you,” I said. “I wish you were here.”
“I am,” he said. “In your heart.”
On Saturday, Lulit and I had dinner with Cecilia Chen, our potential client whom we’d had to reschedule the day the gallery was vandalized. She was in New York for the show, and so we met up at Boulud Sud near Lincoln Center. I liked her. A lot. She’d lived in Paris long enough that all the good things had rubbed off on her. Her accessories, her insouciance, the way she flicked her wrist. We were just winding up with cappuccinos, and discussing the work of Tunisian-French director Abdellatif Kechiche, when a portly middle-aged man approached our table. At first, I assumed he must have known Cecilia, or perhaps even Lulit, but when he shifted his weight, I noticed beyond his shoulder two tween daughters holding cell phones and I knew.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Solène Marchand?”
I nodded, albeit reluctantly.
