“Anyway, I said ‘may have been.’ I don’t know for a fact. A lot happened on that trip. A lot.”
He nuzzles into me closer then, his body pressing against mine. How quickly he could change tack. “I only remember you telling me the good parts.”
“Of course you do.”
He chuckles, his hand stealing beneath my T-shirt, moving up to my breasts. “I thought that’s why you shared them with me,non?”
“So you’d remember?”
“So one of us would. Especially if a stranger crashed into the other one’s car and gave her a concussion.”
“Especiallythen.”
His hand slips down to the waistband of my pants. Moves inside. This is how it happens now. Sex. Fifteen years in. There’s no romance. Little foreplay. Even when he goes down on me, my mind is elsewhere. And I find myself imagining scenarios to make the clock move faster. To help me get to where I’m trying to go. The next-door neighbor’s college-aged son that one summer in Majorca. The dad in the third row at Julien’s first piano recital. The art student on the Métro who allowed his thigh to rub up against mine all the way from Michel-Ange–Molitor to Sèvres–Babylone, and then thanked me for the pleasure before hurrying off. In a pinch, any of them would do.
It was not always like this. In the beginning, François was lovely. Young and energetic and eager to please. Spontaneous, flirtatious, insatiable. And I could not get enough of him. In the beginning, we were beautiful. Besotted and trusting and kind. But time changes things. Betrayal changes things.
When it’s over, he envelops me and strokes my hair and whispers my name and does all the things I once told him I loved. And then when his breathing settles, I untangle myself and slip out to the bathroom. Semen dripping down my thigh. The smell of Rogaine on the palm of my hand. Marriage.
He is wearing the shirt I bought him in London. Black, silk, expensive. Black wool trousers. His hair is neatly coiffed, full, thick, dark. No stubble on his chin. Just cheekbones for days, and that sharp jaw, and the twin moles on his cheek, and I remember why I fell for him.
A smile eases across his face, starting at the left side of his mouth, widening, slowly. Strategic, effective. He crosses the hotel room, makes his way to me, against the far wall.
“Mais, qu’est-ce que tu fais là?”
It’s a peculiar question. Why wouldn’t I be there? Our standing date. The third Tuesday of the month. Five o’clock, wasn’t it? The boutique hotel near Saint-Sulpice.
“Ma belle.” His hand is at my throat, angling my face up to his. This close his eyes are blue, even in the waning light of the room. A deep, murky, Prussian blue. Indoors, they typically read brown. In the sun, they’re lapis. I have spent years photographing them. Calculating the right f-stop.
His hand drops to the top of my blouse. He unbuttons one button, then the next, slips his fingers inside the cup of my bra. His mouth inches from mine. There’s wine on his breath. He leans into me, presses himself up against me. His teeth tug on my bottom lip. There is something distant in his eyes, somethingoff. He spins me around then, facing the wall. His hands are at my thighs, working up the hem of my pencil skirt. Black wool crepe, a hair below the knee. His breath at my ear as he eases off my underwear, wrestles with his zipper, bends me over. I extend my arms against the wall for support, and that is when I see it. The wrists, the hands, the fingers are all foreign. Fair. Young. This isn’t my body. This isn’t my skin. I hear myself scream. And the sound sends me reeling to the other side of the room. Where I can see him then, clearly. Doing whatever it was he was doing to me… to her.
I have awakened him. He is propped up beside me, stroking my hair, and repeating, “J’suis là, j’suis là.” As if I might find his presence soothing.My T-shirt is drenched, and my breath comes furiously, and the last thing I want is him touching me. My head is throbbing, and I’m not sure if it’s the effects of the dream or the concussion. I pull away to the far side of the bed, and curl into a ball. And cry.
“Cile,” he whispers into the dark.
“I’m okay.”
It has been fifteen months and three days since I found out about the affair.
I am not okay.
V.PLUS ÇA CHANGE.
NEW YORK.
MARCH. 2015.
I had deliberately avoided New York for eighteen years.
There’d been a handful of trips: a wedding here, a new baby there, a high school reunion. But always it was fleeting, a passing through en route to somewhere else. I had little desire to bump up against my past. To be reminded of who—or more specificallywhat—led me to flee to France in the first place.
Nor was I inclined to subject myself to my family’s scrutiny for an extended period. My parents had retired to Florida shortly after our exodus—mine, and my brother Andrew’s, who’d shipped off to London for an advanced law degree and never moved back. And with my father’s sisters becoming snowbirds, dividing their time between Westchester and Broward counties, our holiday gatherings were now mostly in Florida. And mostly brief, which suited me fine. My family and their expectation of exceptionalism was better in small doses.
But that March, my French gallery had landed a booth at the New York Armory Show and was exhibiting, among other pieces, works from one of my recent series. And so New York it was. That my parents happened to be in town for an old friend’s funeral was a convenient coincidence. One brief home-cooked Jamaican meal courtesy of my Aunt Lolo, with all of us en masse, was certainly doable. Furthermore,my life at the moment, at least on the surface, looked good. The Chens could be a welcome distraction.
I’d planned the New York jaunt months in advance as part of a longer business trip. Check out some new artists, show my face at the Khalil Mansour booth, and meet with a few dealers before heading to Paris for a week to shoot actress Victoire de Fleury for FrenchVogue. Their editor had requested something different, “not typical portraiture; something unexpected, revealing,” and Victoire had not only starred in but been nominated for a César forSalut, Bordeaux!So I was the inspired choice. And as hard as I’d worked to escape fashion photography, I’d be remiss to decline this opportunity.
Thus, that first Friday in March, after a late breakfast with the two owners of Cherry and Martin, an LA-based art gallery that I was considering for representation, I found myself strolling through Pier 94, imbibing art and culture on a scale that I had not been able to in Los Angeles. Not with things so spread out. And it was there that I encounteredAprès. There, wedged into the back of Khalil’s booth, past the colorful Japanese-kite installation and the collection of glass tableaus, was a series of black and whites I’d taken in the weeks following François’s reveal.
