“Baby steps…”
We began walking again, east, toward where the road dead-ended.
“So, a client, huh?” he said, after a minute. “I’m afraid to see what you do for your friends.”
“What was it you said? ‘I have a lot of friends. Most of them I’m not fucking.’”
“Did I say that?”
“You said that.”
“Hmm.” He smirked.
“Yeah, well… I’m not fucking any of my friends.”
“Just me?” He squeezed my hand.
“Just you.”
We had dinner at the house. The D’Amatos’ chef—they had two: one they’d taken with them to Ibiza, and a second they were kind enough to leave with us for the weekend—prepared a paella feast that we downed on the back patio beneath a lilac sky. The conversation flowed, lubricated by endless pitchers of sangria. Oliver and Hayes held court, regaling us with stories from their travels and school and growing up in London. They’d shared such a long, entangled history, and they seemed to speak in code, like something out of Hogwarts:
“We were playing football on Green, and it was Fifth Form.”
“No, we were Lower Shell that year, because Simon was Upper.”
“Right. And our headmaster said never in the history of the school had he seen such hooliganry. He was quite cross. Not even during the Greaze.”
“We won the hooliganry award. Unofficially.”
This, I was able to detect, was regarding an incident that had happened at school and not with the band, but it was difficult to keep it all sorted. And each time the others got the joke and I didn’t, I felt decidedly American.
Desmond had a raunchy sense of humor and peppered the discussion with sordid tales from the road, mainly the antics of Rory, which were easy enough to follow. Fergus had an infectious laugh, but spoke little. And Charlotte sat, taking it all in, a sweetsmile on her delicate face. She clung to Oliver’s hand. And every once in a while she would look over to me, shake her head in feigned annoyance, and toss off something wry, like: “You’d think they’d tire of talking about themselves?”
When the sky was finally dark, around nine o’clock, and Desmond and Fergus had retired to watch a movie in the subterranean theater, the four of us relocated to the sofas and sat gazing at the stars, enjoying the breeze blowing in from the ocean mere blocks away. Oliver lit up a cigarette. The figure he cut, reclining—legs crossed in white trousers, linen shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, golden hair pushed back off his brow—brought to mind another era. Like something out of a Fitzgerald world, if not Gatsby himself.
“I plan to lie by the pool and do nothing all weekend. And not sign one fucking autograph or write one tweet. Is that okay with everyone?”
“It’s a real tough life you lead, HK,” Hayes said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. He occasionally called Oliver by the initials of his last name, Hoyt-Knight. And there was something about that that I found old-boy-ish and sexy.
“Yes, well, someone has to do it. And I brought three books, and I intend to crack at least one. Which I am sure is a hell of a lot more than those blokes are doing in South Beach.”
Hayes glanced at his watch. “I’m guessing they’re about three mojitos in, apiece. And they’ve got ten models with them.”
“Where are they staying? Soho House?”
“Yeah. Watch.” He pulled his iPhone from the pocket of his shorts and began texting. “How. Many. Models. Do. You. Have. With. You. Right. Now.”
“We have to do something absolutely mad so we can prove we had more fun.” Oliver flicked his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Charlotte tossed me one of her exasperated looks.
“Iamhaving more fun,” Hayes laughed.
“Really?” I turned to him. “You wouldn’t rather be with ten models in South Beach?”
He looked at me for a moment, not speaking, one eyebrow raised. And then finally: “Do you not know me?”
“I do. I was just… teasing.”
He leaned into me so that the others could not hear. “I wouldn’t rather be anyplace else. Than here. With you.”
