The Idea of You

by Robinne Lee

  “Fuck!!”

  “Holy shit!!!” Rory jumped on the other side of the room.

  “Fuck! Fuck!! Fuck!!!”

  “Raj!!!!!!” Liam yelled. A bit like a girl, I thought.

  “Holy shit!”

  “What the fuck?” Simon pushed Oliver in the chest, and he stumbled back onto the floor. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  And Hayes, in the middle of it all, both hands to his nose, eyes wide and unbelieving, and the blood dripping down his forearms and his chin, onto his Saint Laurent shirt. And his boots, his favorite boots.

  “You fucking hit me? You little bitch.”

  I jumped up and grabbed a towel from the stack over by Petra’s table and went to him. “Tip your head back.”

  “This fucking hurts.”

  “I know, honey. I’m sorry. Come, sit. Liam, go find Raj or Andrew and tell them we need a medic. Rory, get us some ice. Now!”

  Simon helped us over to the couch along the near wall, rolling a towel to support Hayes’s head. When he was done, he stepped back, watching me, a wry smile on his chiseled face.

  “What?”

  “You’re like the hot mum I never had.”

  “Really? Not the ‘disappointed mum’?”

  “Campbell.” He leaned over Hayes and gave him two thumbs up. “It’s like the MILF fantasy and the nurse fantasy rolled into one.”

  “Simon…”

  “Also, high-five on Penelope.”

  “Simon, go away. And change your shirt. There’s blood on your shirt.”

  “Change it for what? It’s not like we can go on without him.” He spun around to nail Oliver on the other side of the room. “You are in so much fucking trouble, HK.”

  Andrew appeared then at the door with Liam and three security detail. “What the bloody hell happened?”

  For a second no one spoke. Oliver stood with his arms crossed looking contrite. Simon shook his head. Hayes’s eyes were closed.

  “Apparently, Hayes shagged his sister,” Liam said. And that was all he said.

  Andrew’s look was incredulous. “Today?”

  “Fuck,” Hayes said.

  “I think a long time ago,” Simon volunteered.

  “And they chose to fight over it today? There are sixty-five thousand girls out there who have paid good money and are screaming your names and waiting for you to go on in fifteen minutes, and this happens now? Are you mad?”

  “No,” Hayes said, his voice muffled by the towel. “No more so than usual.”

  * * *

  August Moon went on without Hayes. Oliver had managed to fracture a bone in his nose, which swelled quickly, efficiently rendering Hayes’s voice useless for the next several hours. The show started almost forty minutes late, the guys scrambling with their vocal coach to see who would take which solos and which, if any, harmonies could possibly be rearranged in such little time. They pulled it off. Between the fans singing along loudly to everything, and screaming in the moments when they weren’t singing, Hayes’s absence was not a total deal breaker.

  “Maybe we’re just better as four,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly. They need you. They’re not the same without you. This is your brainchild, remember?”

  It was later that evening and we were back at the hotel, rehashing the night’s events: the hours in the hospital, the agreed-upon story that he’d tripped and fallen during a rehearsal, the decision to hold off on realigning anything until he saw a specialist back in the States.

  “Isn’t that a little excessive?” I’d asked him in the examining room, when we had a moment to ourselves, Raj stepping out for yet another call, Desmond and two other security guards directly outside the door.

  “They’re taking it very seriously,” he’d said.

  “Who? Management?”

  “Management and…” He’d paused for a second. “Lloyd’s of London. It’s insured, my face.”

  I could not help but laugh. “Of course it is, Hayes Campbell. Of course.”

  * * *

  But back in the hotel with his face swollen and changing colors, he’d become melancholy.

  “Fucking Oliver…” he muttered for the thousandth time.

  “You did sleep with his sister, Hayes. What did you expect was going to happen?”

  He grunted in response. We were lying in bed, his head propped on a pile of pillows, a latex glove filled with ice straddling the bridge of his nose. He looked ridiculous and yet still darling to me.

  “Why would she tell him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Maybe she thought it had been so long that he wouldn’t care. Or maybe she was mad at me and it was her way of getting back … I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He squeezed my hand.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was still going on?”

  “It’s not still going on.”

  “You slept with her last year.”

  “It was before you. Does it matter?”

  “You’d made it sound like it hadn’t happened in years…”

  He sighed, deep. “It was once last year, Solène. Once. Over the Christmas holiday. It was before I even met you. And evidently, ‘it was no big deal.’ I don’t hold anything you did before me against you, do I? All the dicks you sucked in the nineties…”

  “There weren’t many dicks…”

  “Whatever. It was before me. I don’t care. Likewise, you shouldn’t care about Penelope.” He shut his eyes then, and for a moment neither of us spoke.

  I lay there listening to the whir of the air conditioner. A siren rang in the distance, the pitch unfamiliar—a reminder that I was in a foreign city, far from home.

  “What happened with you two, Hayes?”

  “You know everything, Solène. There’s nothing more to tell.”

  “Not Penelope. Oliver.”

  His eyes opened and strained to look at me. “Nothing.”

  “I’m not going to judge.”

  He was quiet for a long time and then he repeated it. “Nothing.”

  I wished I could have believed him. “Okay.” I nodded. “Okay.”

  “You once asked me about my biggest secret,” he said, soft. “I told you what it was. Any others … are not mine to tell.”

  * * *

  In the morning, we flew to Rio. Hayes’s face an inspiring palette of purple and blue. And while the rest of the guys snuck out to see a couple of the sights, we stayed behind at the hotel, icing.

  On Tuesday, the band played to a crowd of forty thousand at the Parque dos Atletas. Petra was able to cover the green under Hayes’s eyes, and the show went off without a hitch. His fans and his bandmates—Oliver included—were happy to have him back. In that last beat before heading toward the stage, they did their customary huddle, and I witnessed Oliver pat his back and whisper something into his ear. Hayes smiled and squeezed Ol’s shoulder, and to the outside world they seemed okay. And for now, maybe that was enough. This facade. And maybe I would never know what happened. Maybe part of me didn’t want to.

  On Wednesday, I flew to New York, and the guys scattered to the corners of the globe. They had five whole days to themselves before reporting to Australia for the next leg of the tour.

  japan

  I thought there would be a joy in getting off the plane unencumbered. I thought I’d have a newfound respect for the ability to come and go as I pleased, unrecognized, the anonymity that I’d taken for granted. I thought there would be an exhilarating sense of freedom. But there was not. And perhaps it was coming down from the tour high, but everything to me felt bleak, dichromatic, insurmountable … like a Wyeth landscape.

  It might have been all the travel or the lack of sleep, but New York to me seemed sad. I arrived at the Armory Show Thursday morning, after a ten-hour flight and a quick shower at the Crosby Street Hotel. And nothing was quite right. Matt and Josephine had flown in early in the week to assist Anders with the setup of our booth at Pier 94. L
ulit had arrived the day before. We were featuring five of our artists. Already our sales had exceeded expectation, but I could not manage to focus. I could not help but feel as if I were walking around in a fog, with some essential part of me missing. And I kept getting lost in thoughts of him.

  I’d woken the day before in Rio with Hayes’s arms wrapped so tightly around me, I could not breathe. And I knew he sensed, even in his dreams, that it was ending, and he did not want to let me go. And I think he feared that me leaving Brazil was me leaving for good. I think we both feared it.

  I’d untangled myself and kissed him and stroked the side of his bruised face and whispered a thousand times over that I loved him. And that I would join him in Japan. I promised. I promised.

  And to have been uprooted from that and transplanted to Manhattan selling art on a Thursday felt off-kilter. Inside, I feared something was dying.

  * * *

  That evening I went back to the hotel, the site of our first tryst, and I got into my bed and everything came flooding back. How he was still such a stranger to me then. How nervous I’d been. How he’d touched me and unfolded me and gifted me his watch. “Thanks for giving me the pleasure,” he’d said. As if he were the only one benefitting. As if I’d done him a favor.

  * * *

  On Friday, we received news that Anya Pashkov had been offered a solo exhibition at the Whitney. I celebrated with the rest of our team, going out for cocktails at the end of the day, but I was there in body only.

  It was on the cab ride back to Soho when we crossed through Times Square that my heart stopped. There, several stories high, was a billboard with the new TAG Heuer campaign. Hayes in black and white. Soulful eyes, generous mouth, stunning. They had captured him so beautifully, I began to cry.

  The campaign debuted in a variety of publications that first week of March: Esquire, GQ, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. There were three different ads that ran, each photo more breathtaking than the next. And just like that, Hayes Campbell had successfully separated himself from the rest of his boy band. He’d redefined.

  “They’re perfect,” I said to him that night on the phone.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re my girlfriend.”

  “I bet I could find twenty-two million people who would agree with me on Twitter.”

  He laughed at that, his voice muffled. He’d been treated by a renowned plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills earlier that day. It was an outpatient procedure, and Raj was in charge of post-op duties while Hayes convalesced at the Hotel Bel-Air. I hated knowing that he was in L.A. without me.

  “I love you,” I said. “I wish you were here.”

  “I am,” he said. “In your heart.”

  * * *

  On Saturday, Lulit and I had dinner with Cecilia Chen, our potential client whom we’d had to reschedule the day the gallery was vandalized. She was in New York for the show, and so we met up at Boulud Sud near Lincoln Center. I liked her. A lot. She’d lived in Paris long enough that all the good things had rubbed off on her. Her accessories, her insouciance, the way she flicked her wrist. We were just winding up with cappuccinos, and discussing the work of Tunisian-French director Abdellatif Kechiche, when a portly middle-aged man approached our table. At first, I assumed he must have known Cecilia, or perhaps even Lulit, but when he shifted his weight, I noticed beyond his shoulder two tween daughters holding cell phones and I knew.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Solène Marchand?”

  I nodded, albeit reluctantly.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt your meal, but we’re here visiting from Chicago, and my girls would love to take a picture with you.”

  I don’t remember saying yes, although somehow it happened. I do remember the expression on Lulit’s face: bewildered, admonishing, torn. Cecilia looked on confused.

  “You’re even prettier in person,” the girls said. “Tell Hayes we love him.”

  When they’d parted, I attempted to return to the conversation as if nothing had happened, just as I’d seen Hayes do a million times. But Cecilia was not having it.

  “What was that all about? Are ten-year-olds suddenly collecting art in Chicago?”

  “Her boyfriend’s a musician,” Lulit interjected before I could say anything. “He has a following.”

  Musician. It was rather diplomatic of her.

  It was not the first time that week it had happened. No fewer than half a dozen teenage girls had stopped me on the streets. Random visitors kept popping into our booth pretending to look at the art. I felt it, eyes, everywhere. I did my best to ignore it and hoped it would not affect my work. I was trying to do that now.

  We returned to the topic of French contemporary cinema, and my boyfriend did not come up again. But I had seen the expression on Cecilia’s face, that very Parisian look of disdain. And I knew that moment had changed everything.

  * * *

  Early Sunday morning, the day I was to fly out, Amara met me at Balthazar for breakfast. The French bistro was a block from my hotel and just loud enough that I did not have to worry about people eavesdropping on our conversation. Because that had become something I was concerned with—privacy.

  We’d been talking about her. She’d met someone, on Tinder. They’d been dating for three months and she was cautiously optimistic.

  “He’s young,” she said, smiling.

  “How young?”

  “Thirty-five…”

  I laughed at that. “That’s practically over the hill where I come from.”

  “… and he doesn’t want kids.” She sipped from her latte. “Lucky me, right?”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Does Hayes want kids?”

  It was a completely benign question, and yet the absurdity of it struck me. I placed down my utensils and began to laugh. “What the fuck am I doing? I can’t believe you asked me that. And it wasn’t a joke. He’s twenty-one years old. He doesn’t know what he wants. I mean, yes, he says he wants kids, but … Oh God, what am I doing?”

  Amara was quiet for a moment, watching me, and I had to wonder what she was seeing: a woman on the verge of losing her mind.

  “What are you thinking?” she said after a minute.

  “I spent ten days with him on tour in South America, just following him around. We go from city to city. From the hotel to the stadium and back to the hotel. There are walls of screaming girls everywhere and we are constantly surrounded by security. They pace our floor. We can’t go anywhere by ourselves. We can’t sightsee. We can’t have a casual dinner at a restaurant. We can’t go for a walk. We can’t do anything without an entourage and bodyguards, and this is his life for months out of the year. Months. I can’t do that.”

  She nodded. “Do you love him?”

  Crap. I was going to cry. Here. In Balthazar. Under the gold lights and the oversized French mirrors. My avocado and poached eggs on toast were getting cold. “I love him.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “But I don’t know that that’s enough. I think Isabelle is miserable. She’s not herself. His fans are stalking me. They defaced our gallery; they send death threats, dildos to my house. Not to mention the harassment on social media. I don’t know that I can do this…”

  “What are you most afraid of?”

  “Everything.” I smiled, but it felt forced. “Isabelle having a nervous breakdown. And it being my fault. Getting older. Getting old. My boobs, my upper arms, my ass. All of it. Eventually he’s going to take a good look at me and be like, ‘Bollocks! You’re forty!’”

  Amara laughed. “That’s a good accent you do.”

  “Thank you.” My thoughts got drowned out in the hum of the restaurant. Laughter, the clinking of silverware, the scraping of bistro chairs on tile. “But even if everything were perfect … even if the harassment stopped, and Isabelle grew to accept it … how would it happen? What, we move in together, we cohabitate, we have a kid, we get married? He goes on tour, I run a gallery? How crazy is that?”

 
; Amara shrugged. “I don’t think there are any real answers. I think you just do it.”

  I sighed, pushing away my plate. I’d had all of seven bites and my appetite was gone. “You know what I’m most afraid of? I look at Daniel and Eva having a baby, and I think, I can’t give him that. I’m already old. By the time he’s ready to have kids I will be too old. What am I saying? He’s twenty-one. He’s in a boy band. I can’t have a child with a guy in a boy band. How insane would that be?”

  “It’s not just ‘a guy in a boy band,’” Amara said. “It’s Hayes. It’s Hayes. And you love him.”

  My heart caught in my throat. I could feel the tears welling.

  “And he adores you…”

  “I know … But that’s bound to end, right? One day he’s going to wake up and realize I’m twice his age. And he’s going to freak the fuck out and leave me.”

  Amara reached out to squeeze my hand on the table. She was quiet for a long time, and then: “He might not.”

  “He might not,” I conceded. “But he might.”

  * * *

  I arrived in Los Angeles that evening. Only hours after Hayes had departed for Australia. And yet it was probably for the best, because I wanted nothing more than to curl up with my daughter and hear about her life. She was not her usual excitable self, but she filled me in on school and fencing and the musical she’d been cast in and her crush on Avi, the soccer-playing senior. (“Do you think he’ll notice me now since I don’t have my braces anymore?” “How could he not?”) She seemed to be functioning, normal. Eighth grade.

  And so I tried not to let the other things bother me. The pile of mail I’d received without return addresses or addresses I did not recognize—letters and cards and packages—I placed unopened in a box, on the instruction of the detective who was assigned my case after the vandalizing of the gallery. They were monitoring my mail to see whether a pattern of threats had been sufficiently established to be legally considered stalking. Apparently one dildo was not enough.

  * * *

  On the following Tuesday after I’d gotten back, we received the news from Paris: Cecilia Chen had decided to go with someone else. She claimed that Cherry and Martin, another reputable midsized gallery, was a better match. “They’re slightly less flashy,” she said, “and that appeals to me.”