Flying (30 page)

“Hart’s beautiful use of language and discerning eye toward human experience elevate the book to a poignant reflection on the deepest yearnings of the human heart and the seductive temptation of passion in its many forms.”
—Kirkus Reviews on
Tear You Apart

If you loved
Flying
, look for these other great reads by
New York Times
bestselling author Megan Hart, available now in ebook format:

Stranger
Tear You Apart
Naked
Broken
Dirty
The Space Between Us

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Tangled Up
(May 2014), also by Megan Hart!

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Chapter One

I came in on the train and then took a cab, but that
didn’t stop the late March drizzle from destroying everything I’d carefully put
together at home earlier this afternoon. My hair hangs sodden against my
forehead and cheeks. My clothes cling, damp and heavy and chilled. I stripped
off my dark, soaked stockings in the gallery bathroom and wrapped them in paper
towels to tuck inside my purse, and my legs feel glaringly pale. Instead of the
glass of white wine in my hand, I’m desperate for a cup of coffee, or better
yet, a mug of hot chocolate. With whipped cream.

I’m desperate for the taste of something sweet.

There should be desserts here, but all I can find are blocks of
cut cheese, sweating on the tray among the slaughtered remains of fancy
crackers. The bowl of what looks like honey mustard is probably all right, but
the companion bowl of ranch dressing looks like a playground for
gastrointestinal distress. Courtesy of the rain, I’m more chilled than the
cheese, the dips or the wine.

I haven’t seen Naveen yet. He’s flirting his way through the
entire crowd, and I can’t begrudge him that. It’s exciting, this new gallery.
New York is different than Philly. He needs to make an impression with this
opening. He’ll get to me eventually. He always does.

Now I hold the glass of wine in one hand, the other tucked just
below my breasts to prop my elbow as I study the photograph in front of me. The
artist has blown it up to massive size. Twenty by forty, I estimate, though I’ve
always been shit with measurements. The subject matter is fitting for the
weather outside. A wet street, puddles glistening with gasoline rainbows. A
child in red rubber boots standing in one, peering down at his reflection—or is
it a her? I can’t tell. Longish hair, a shapeless raincoat, bland and
gender-neutral features. It could be a boy or girl.

I don’t care.

I don’t care one fucking thing about that portrait, the size of
it just big enough to guarantee that somebody will shell out the cool grand
listed on the price tag. I shake my head a little, wondering what Naveen had
thought, hanging this in the show. Maybe he owed someone a favor...or a blow
job. The BJ would’ve been a better investment.

There’s a crinkle, tickle, tease on the back of my neck. The
weight of a gaze. I turn around, and someone’s there.

“You’d need a house the size of a castle to hang that piece of
shit.”

The voice is soft. Husky. Nearly as gender-neutral as the face
of the child in the picture. I pause for just a moment before I look into his
eyes, but the second I do, my brain fits him into a neat slot. Male. Man. He’s a
man, all right, despite the soft voice.

He’s not looking at me, but at the picture, so I can stare at
him for a few seconds longer than what’s socially acceptable. Hair the color of
wet sand spikes forward over his forehead and feathers against his cheeks in
front of his ears. It’s short and wispy in the back, exposing the nape of his
neck. He’s got a scruffy face, not just like a guy who’s forgone shaving for a
few days, but one who keeps an uneasy truce with his razor at best. He wears a
dark suit, white shirt, narrow dark tie. Retro. Black Converse on his feet.

“And who’d pay a grand for it? C’mon.” His gaze slides toward
me just for a second or two. Catching me staring. He gestures at the photo.

“It’s not so bad.” I’m not sure why I’m compelled to say
anything nice about the picture. I agree, it’s an overpriced piece of shit. It’s
a mockery of good art, actually. I should be angry about this, that I’m wasting
my time on it as if the consumption of beauty is something with an allotment.
Hell, maybe it is.

Maybe I actually have wasted today’s consumption of beauty on
this piece of crap. I study it again. Technically, it’s flawless. The lighting,
the focus, the exposure. But it’s not art.

Even so, someone will buy it simply because they will look at
it the same way I did. They’ll note the perfectly framed shot, the
pseudowhimsical subject matter, the blandly colorful mat inside a sort of
interesting frame. They will convince themselves it’s just unique enough to
impress their friends, but it won’t force them to actually feel anything except
perhaps smugness that they got a bargain.

“It looks like art,” I say. “But it really isn’t. And that’s
why someone will pay a thousand bucks for it and hang it in the formal living
room they use only at Christmas. Because it looks like art but it really
isn’t.”

He strokes his chin. “You think so?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it. Naveen wouldn’t have priced it if he
didn’t think he could sell it.” I slant the man a sideways look, wishing I could
be bold enough to stare at him when he’s facing me, the way I was when he was
looking at something else.

“Good. I need to pay my rent. A coupla hundred bucks would be
sweet.”

Of
course
he’s an artist. Men who
look like that, in a place like this—they’re always artists. Usually starving.
He looks lean enough to have missed a few meals. Standing this close I get a
whiff of cigarettes and corduroy, which should make no sense, since he’s not
wearing any, but it does because that’s how I work. Tastes and smells and sounds
link up for me in ways they don’t for everyone else. I see colors where there
shouldn’t be any. The scent of corduroy is par for the course.

“You took that picture?”

“I did.” He nods, not without pride, despite what he’d been
saying about it earlier.

If he’d been talking shit about another artist’s piece I’d have
liked him less, even if he was telling the truth. I can like him better now.
“It’s really not so bad.”

He frowns. Shakes his head. “You’re a bad liar.”

On the contrary, I think I’m an excellent liar.

He looks again at the picture and shrugs. “Someone will buy it
because it looks like art but doesn’t ask too much of them. That’s what you’re
saying?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the expert.” He shrugs again and crosses one arm over
his chest to rest his elbow on as he stares at the photo. I don’t miss the
stance—it’s a mirror of my own. He bites at his thumb. It must be an old habit,
because the nail is ragged. “The only reason I did this thing was for Naveen,
you know? He said he wanted something more commercial. Not, like, doll heads
with pencil stubs sticking out of the eye holes and stuff like that.”

I’m a good liar, but not a good poker player. I can’t keep a
stone face. I know the piece he’s talking about. It’s been in the back room of
Naveen’s Philadelphia gallery for months, if not years. Of course I assumed he
couldn’t sell it, which didn’t explain why he kept it hung back there for so
long. I joked with him that he kept it for some sentimental reasons; maybe this
was true.

“That was yours?”

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.