Page 112 of All That We Are Together
I tried to ignore the pain. It hurt me no less than her to know that she was feeling these things and there was nothing I could do to help her, especially because I was such a poor example to follow.
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“I don’t want to need you the way I did years ago, Axel. I don’t want to drag you into my chaos. I don’t want to let that influence me. But you’re here because of me, and that’s not just some trifle I can overlook when I need to make a decision.”
“Whatever you decide is fine with me.”
“That’s the problem,” she replied, careworn.
I tried not to groan and kissed her to keep her from talking, because I had the feeling it didn’t matter what I said. We were at a dead end and we weren’t going to fix anything that night. All I’d even intended to do was take her for a walk so she could clear her head and stop thinking about work.
“Come on, let’s play tourist.”
I walked toward the tower and waited for her to catch up to me on the promenade. I took out my phone and tried to take a photo of us. We were laughing as I finally picked Leah up off her feet a bit so she’d fit in the shot with the tower in the background. Then we walked along the Seine’s Left Bank. Leah climbed up on the stone wall next to the sidewalk, and I stood between her legs and kissed her until I got tired.
“Where should we go?” she asked.
“Anywhere. Or nowhere. You know what the wordflaneurmeans? It’s a person who just strolls aimlessly along the streets of Paris. That’s an art. Tonight, we should be two flaneurs,” I said in my horrible pronunciation.
“I love how that sounds.”
And that’s what we did until dawn overtook us. We walked across nameless streets and past corners we might never see again until we reached home and ended up in bed. I turned her on her stomach and pushed inside her, kissing the freckles on her back as I rammed into her. She clutched the sheets and moaned and pressed back into me. Then we embraced each other in silence in the shadows until we were too tired to look at each other any longer.
102
Leah
Scarlett took a dress from her closet and handed it to me.
“This’ll do for you. It would have been easier to just go shopping, though. You’re too headstrong,têtueas they say in French. Now you’ll know what it means when people call you that. Do you have shoes?”
I nodded while Scarlett sighed impatiently. She’d invited us to a party the next week at the hotel where she was staying. I’d wanted to reject the offer at first, not just because I knew Axel would hate it but also because I didn’t have anything to wear. But when she asked me why I didn’t want to go, I omitted the first reason. She insisted we go shopping together, but I refused. Getting out of her lending me something was impossible, though. Scarlett was so persuasive when she put her mind to it that I couldn’t imagine how her husband managed to carve out the least bit of independence.
I looked around at the huge suite we were standing in, with its own living room, two bathrooms, and a walk-in closet. More thana hotel room, it was like a snug apartment. Scarlett motioned for me to sit on the sofa.
“I’ll order coffee,” she said before dialing room service. She looked at me piercingly when she sat down. “Have you thought about my offer?”
“I’m still turning it over,” I responded.
“If you’re worried about that agent of yours, Axel, just remember that he’s just a middleman. Actually, your contract is with Hans and not with him. Often people get their roles confused, but all that matters is the job you do foryourgallery, and Hans has more than one.”
“Axel isn’t the problem.”
I didn’t like her bringing him into this. I didn’t want anything pertaining to that decision to affect him.
Scarlett got up to open the door when room service brought up our cups of coffee. When the servers left, she returned to our conversation.
“Don’t think I let every girl who’s made a little splash come up to my room. If you’re here, it’s because I see something different in you, something big. But before you go down that road, there are some rules you need to follow.”
“What am I supposed to do, exactly?”
“Wait here.” She went to her desk and pulled out a dark, thick file folder she laid on the table. Calm and cool as ever, she took a sip of coffee before opening it. “This is what the market is asking for right now.”
Inside were photos of paintings. Almost all of them were full of thick lines, without much contrast or detail. They reminded meof what Scarlett had shown me with such pride when I met her at the opening. I hadn’t told her what I really thought that day: that the painting lacked soul and feeling. I tried to push that memory aside when I realized that I had done pieces like that before, when I was blowing off steam without really paying attention to the colors. It couldn’t be too hard to repeat something I’d already done, I thought.
“I could…maybe I could do it.”
“Nomaybes. I’m sure you can. If I thought otherwise, Leah… let’s just say I have a lot of other artists waiting in the wings for an opportunity like this. But I want it to be you.”