“No. It happened a few nights later.”
“Jesus fucking—” He let loose a string of epithets.
“It was an accident.”
His blue eyes snapped. The lights seemed way too bright now, and his grip on my chin was starting to hurt.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Chere? You’re telling me he accidentally hit you in the face?”
“You hit my face all the time.”
Now his fingers were around my neck, not my chin. He gave me a sharp little shake. “Do not compare me to him. You have a bruise on your face. I’ve never bruised your face. I’m not even bruising your neck right now.”
I pushed away from him and he let me go. We retreated to opposite sides of the room—I slunk over by the TV, into the shadows, while he stood looking out the window at the dark.
“You’re an idiot,” he muttered, not looking at me.
“It was an accident,” I repeated. “He was raging around and I got in his way.”
“Did he apologize?”
“I don’t remember. And it’s really none of your business.”
I could see his eyes close from across the room. He stood like that for a while, with his eyes closed. Then he opened them and turned to me. “You’re right. It’s none of my business if you want to live with someone who—”
Who hurts you. He couldn’t say it. He would have been the world’s biggest hypocrite to say it, because he hurt me all the time. He got off on hurting me; he intentionally hurt me, which was way worse than Simon, because Simon never meant to hurt me. Simon hurt me for reasons outside his control.
“Do you need money to move out?” he asked. “Is that the issue? Do you need help finding another place to live?”
“I don’t need you to rescue me. It’s my life. My problem. I’m working on it.”
“So what’s your plan?”
I could tell from his hard expression that he wasn’t going to let this go. I sighed and shrugged.
“He has a show next week. The plan is…” As I started telling W about it, I realized what a hopeless, flimsy plan it was. “Well, the plan is that he’ll sell some work, and build up a little momentum so he can take time off to go into rehab. It’s all about momentum in the art world. He’s trying to get to a place where…” My voice trailed off.
“A place where he can stay high all the time?” W suggested.
“Where he can get better. Speaking of which, I can’t see you next weekend. One of the week days would be fine, but we’re having a big reception on Saturday at the gallery. I’ll have to be there Sunday too. This show is consuming him and he…he needs me. He needs this to be a success. I’m sorry. It’s just the one weekend.”
W’s lips tightened. He looked at me with such anger, such irritation that I added, “If you even want to see me again…”
“I want to see you again,” he snapped. “Preferably without a bruised face.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I snapped back.
The nerve of him. He’d choked me until I passed out—more than once!—and he had the gall to judge Simon for accidentally hitting me. I drifted away from the corner to sit on the bed. He leaned over the table and started writing on the Four Seasons stationary. As soon as he started, he stopped and put down the pen.
“You know what, Chere? I’m not in the mood for poetry.”
“You promised me poetry.”
He gave me a dark look. “I’ll give you a poem next time I see you. In the meantime…” He wrote out something quick, ripped it off the pad, folded it over a couple times and brought it to me. He pressed it into my palm and touched my bruised cheek. Then he brushed a kiss across my lips and left without looking back at me.
When the door closed, I unfolded the paper and smoothed it in my lap, and read the two words, dark and bold, in W’s handwriting.
Love lies.
In Between
Simon might be a fuck-up, but he’d built a lot of relationships in the art world, and everyone came out to support his comeback attempt on opening night. His parents and his sister were there, his family’s friends, even former college professors, and art teachers who’d developed him as a rebellious child. There were people who had touted him when he was first appearing on the art scene, and people who had torn him down when his star shone too bright.
There were critics and buyers, gawkers and socialites and glitterati, and the magic of Simon was that he didn’t care. He stared through them until he could escape their attention, and then hung out with his current circle of friends, the drug users and losers. When people tried to engage him about the art, he acted disinterested and precious. It worked for him before, and maybe it would work again, but it irritated me.