He laughs. “Will Roberts.”
I take the hand he holds out. His fingers are callused and rough, and for a moment I imagine how they’d sound against something silk, like a scarf. His touch would rasp on something soft. It would whisper.
“Elisabeth Amblin.”
His fingers curl around mine. For one bizarre second, I’m sure he’s going to kiss the back of my hand. I tense, waiting for the brush of his mouth against my skin, the wet slide of his tongue on my flesh, and that’s ridiculous because of course he wouldn’t do such a thing. People don’t do that to strangers. Even lovers would hardly do so.
My imagination is wild, I know it, yet when he lets my hand drop I’m still a little disappointed. His touch lingers, the way his fingers scraped at mine. I’m not soft as silk, no matter how many expensive creams I rub into my skin. And yet, I’d been right. His touch whispered.
“You’re Naveen’s friend.”
“Yeah. You could say that. We have sort of a love-hate thing going on.” I pause, judging his reaction. “He loves that I work for next to nothing, and I hate that he doesn’t pay me more.”
Will laughs. It ripples in streams of blue and green that wink into sparkling gold. His eyes squint shut. He has straight white teeth in a thin-lipped mouth. He shouldn’t be attractive in his laughter, the way it changes his face, but there’s something infectious about him. I laugh, too.
There’s music in the gallery, a string quartet in the corner painfully strumming their way through Pachelbel’s Canon and Für Elise. They must be students, because Naveen would never have paid for professional musicians. I wonder which one of them he used to fuck, because like that painting in the back room and other things here in the gallery, including me, Naveen hangs on to things for sentimental reasons. There’s food in the gallery, too, a little lackluster. And there’s wine. But there isn’t much laughter, and we draw attention.
Will tips his head back for a few more chuckles, then looks at me. “I’m supposed to go mingle.”
I want him to linger. I want to keep him from something he should be doing but chooses not to because of me. And I could make him stay, I think suddenly, watching his gaze skip and slide over my body, my damp clothes, my bare legs. He’s already touched my skin. He knows how I feel. I want him to want to know more.
“Sure, go.” I tip my chin toward the rest of the room. “I have some things I need to do, too.”
I am a good liar.
“It was nice meeting you, Elisabeth.” Will holds out his hand again.
This time I entertain no fantasies of his lips on the back of it. That’s just silly. We shake formally. Firmly. I turn away from him at the end of it, feigning interest again in his piece-of-shit-that-isn’t-art, so I don’t have to watch him walking away.
Naveen finds me in front of a few pieces of pottery on their narrow pedestals. I don’t like them. Technically, they’re lovely. They are commercial. They will sell. What’s good for the gallery is good for me. Still, they reek of manure. Maybe it’s the mud they’re made from. Maybe it’s just the twisted signals in my brain that layer and mingle my senses. Whatever it is, I’m staring with a frown when my friend puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close.
“I already have several more commissioned from this artist. Lacey Johnsbury.” Naveen’s grin is very white. He smells of a subtle blend of expensive cologne and the pomade he uses in his jet-black hair. Those are actual scents; anyone could smell them.
When Naveen speaks, I taste cotton candy, soft and sweet, subtle. There are times when listening to my friend talk makes my teeth ache. But I like the taste of cotton candy, just as I like listening to Naveen, because we’ve been friends for a long, long time. He might be one of the only people who know me as well as I know myself. Sometimes maybe better. I run my tongue along my teeth for a second before I answer him.
“I don’t like them.”
“You don’t have to like them, darling, they are not for you.”
I shrug. “It’s your gallery.”
“Yes.” Those white teeth, that grin. “And they’ll sell. I like things that sell, Elisabeth. You know that.”
“Like that?” I nod toward Will’s atrocity.
“You don’t like that, either?”
I shrug again. “It’s a piece of shit, Naveen. Even the artist thinks so.”
He laughs, and I’m in front of a Ferris wheel under a summer sky, my hair in pigtails and my fists full of spun sugar. Not really, of course, but that’s how it feels. “You met Will.”
“Yes. I met him.” I look for Will in the crowd and see him in one of the alcoves, flirting with a woman whose hair is not flat and limp, her lipstick unsmeared. She looks as if she hasn’t eaten in years. She leans in close to him. He laughs.
I hate her.
I look away before Naveen can see me watching, but it’s too late. He shakes his head and squeezes my shoulder gently. He doesn’t say anything. I guess he doesn’t have to. Someone calls his name, and he’s off to schmooze. He’s better at it than I am, so I leave him to it.
It’s late and getting later, and I should leave. Naveen offered to let me stay at his place. I’ve done it before. I like his wife, Puja, but their kids are still small. When I stay there I’m treated to lots of sticky hugs and kisses, am woken at the crack of dawn and feel as if I have to give Puja a hand with things like diapers and feeding times. My daughters are long beyond needing that sort of care, and I don’t miss it.
“You’re still here.”
I turn, the sound of his voice tiptoeing up my spine to tickle the back of my neck. “I am.”
Will tilts his head a little to look at me. “Do you like anything in this show?”
“Of course I do.” It would be disloyal to say otherwise, wouldn’t it?
“Show me.”
I’m caught. At a loss. I search the room for something I do like. I point. “There. That piece. I like that one.”
White canvas, black stripes. A red circle. It looks like something any elementary schoolkid could do, but somehow it’s art because of the way it’s framed and hangs on the wall. When I look at it, I see the hovering shapes of butterflies, just for a minute. Nobody else would; they’d just see the white, the black, the red. But it’s the butterflies that make me choose it. I don’t love it, but out of everything here tonight, I like it the best.
“That?” Will looks at it, then at me again. “It’s pretty good. It’s not what I thought you’d pick, though.”
“What did you think I’d pick?”
Will points with his chin. “Want me to show you?”
I hesitate; I don’t know why. Of course I want him to show me. I’m curious about what he thinks I’d like. How he could think he knows enough about me to guess at anything I’d like.
Will takes me by the elbow and leads me through the crowd, still thick considering the hour, but then I guess most of these people live here in the city, or at least are staying close by. There’s another alcove toward the back, this one hung with gauze and twinkling fairy lights. The inside of it’s curved, which makes it hard to hang square portraits there, and why I didn’t look at it tonight. I couldn’t face another of those stinky vases.
“There.” Will stops but doesn’t let go of my elbow. If anything, he moves closer to me. “That’s what you like.”
The piece is simple. Carved, polished wood. There’s no real form or figure, though the piece is evocative of a woman’s body. The smooth curve of hip and thigh and belly and breasts, the curl and twist of hair.