The Museum of Modern Love(21)

Did Abramovi? leave MoMA each afternoon for a five-star hotel where she was cossetted by room service, masseurs and shiatsu therapists? Or did she go home to her Greenwich loft with her own pillow? What were her dreams? Healayas wondered if, when Abramovi? closed her eyes at night, she saw the faces of all these strangers looking into her, wanting to catch her soul amid the shadows, wanting to draw a little piece of courage from her, wanting to scratch a length of skin from her cheek and eat it like a wafer from the altar of truth.

Healayas heard one of the people in the queue enthusing about the David Altmejd giant at the New Museum. She had loved it too. He was one of the sexiest men she had ever seen, all fibreglass and steel, a bird on his shoulder. Someone behind her was saying how inconvenient it was that the National Library reading room was closed while a performance took place each afternoon. And two people to her right were discussing the pleasures of reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog. As the morning stretched on into afternoon, the queue continued to deliver people to Abramovi?’s table. She is teaching them about time, Healayas thought. I have sat here for three hours, the morning has slipped away, and I have done nothing but think. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done such a thing.

At last her turn came. She discarded her scarf, slipped off her shoes, crossed into the square and took her place. Abramovi? lifted her head and their eyes met. It was the same tangible effect as the previous time, earlier in the week, as if she’d been plugged into an old resonance.

She settled into the gaze between them, aware of chatter and movement in the atrium. But it was peripheral. She focused on the world of Abramovi?’s dark, moist eyes and pale mouth. She noticed her own eyes blinking, but Abramovi? hardly blinked at all. Healayas stilled her breathing and reached into the darkness beyond Abramovi?’s eyes.

She saw white linen on the table, silverware and wineglasses half full. She began spreading a sliver of toast on her plate with parfait. She bit into it and the toast crunched between her teeth. The texture hit the roof of her mouth, the flavour languid and creamy. She detected salmon, black caviar, sour cream, dill, black pepper.

Instead of Abramovi?, Tom sat opposite her in a white shirt, the way only Tom could wear a white shirt. He was smiling at her. Instantly her eyes filled with tears. He looked as he had looked that last winter, the shirt ironed, the salt-and-pepper hair just curling above his ears and swept back, the careful close two-day beard, the scent of something citrus on his skin.

‘Alone?’ he asked.

‘So it seems,’ she replied.

‘Well, you know why.’

‘Yes, I guess I do.’ She gazed into his eyes.

‘Not celibate?’ he asked. ‘Like being on a diet for you.’

‘My senses become dull without sex. So of course I am not celibate.’

‘You are still terrifying.’

The glass before him was full of red wine and he put it to his lips and drank. The same lips that had done such wonderful things to her body.

‘A man can never really love a woman who is an artist,’ she said, leaning in across the table, drawn to smell him.

‘Is that what I said?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. She wanted to bite his skin until she could feel the texture of it in her mouth. She wanted to suck the smell of him inside her. He had gazed into her eyes as he orgasmed, and told her that he loved her as he exhaled.

She smelled steak and looked down to see chateaubriand, green beans, a truffled pommes puree, sauce Bernaise and a red wine jus. It was a meal they had shared in Australia. Two weeks in the heat and tropical rain making love and every night eating the most exquisite food at a little restaurant with canvas awnings, a giant fig tree and the raucous noise of fruit bats.

‘So, are you singing?’ he asked.

‘Not much. We’ve got the Lime Club starting in June, but I haven’t heard from Arky. Lydia . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Are you still angry with me?’

‘Yes.’ She sipped the burgundy and felt the oak run under her tongue. ‘I have never given my heart to anyone like I gave it to you.’

‘Ditto,’ he said.

‘Why wasn’t it enough?’

‘Sometimes it was.’

‘How will I ever trust a man again?’

‘That’s not a question for me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You were asking it before I came along.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes. It is. It was claustrophobic.’

She became aware of the buzz of people. The face before her with its pale skin and shining eyes. She felt tears on her face. She saw tears in Abramovi?’s eyes. How had that happened? How had she slipped into some other place with Tom in a restaurant?

She continued to gaze at Abramovi? but the vision did not reappear. It was over. There was nothing more. She inhaled, dropped her head, closed her eyes, stood up and crossed the room back to her shoes and bag. She had no words. She went down the stairs, across the lobby, out into the bright street, past trestle tables selling celebrity coffee cups and film scripts. Then, only then, did she laugh. It rippled out of her like a huge wave of relief.

‘My god,’ she said. ‘My god.’ She checked her watch. She had sat for over an hour. She must hurry. She was due at work by five.