Chapter Seven #2
“But you share the same spaces. You’re often in the same rooms, which is why you know what they get up to when they’re not in them.”
Julian doesn’t wince, exactly, but he does go still, and it’s his sudden rapt attention that gives me the confidence to let my thoughts continue to flow, unfiltered, from brain to mouth.
“I’m just saying,” I continue. “I don’t think I have to look through your portfolio to know that you’re probably putting your money where everyone else is.
Broadview Hospital is in one of the richest neighborhoods in the city.
They will never be short of funding. Margaret?
She’s talented, of course, but an easy pick.
Your friend, and already famous in her own right.
She’s been showing in galleries for thirty years, doesn’t even need a day job.
And I’ve looked up some of your other exhibitors—rising stars from all over the world, but none from your own backyard.
“There are a hundred Margaret Wests in Ingleside who are trying to have their work seen and won’t get the opportunity because people with money in this city don’t even think to look anywhere outside their spheres of influence.
” I cross my arms. “You would never have found me, Julian. The places where I existed…you probably would never have thought to look.”
There’s music playing in this restaurant, but I can’t hear it over the roaring in my ears.
I mean what I say, every word of it, and there’s a power in speaking it out loud and looking at this man who has probably been able to use his money to get into the few places his face might deny him and telling him that I don’t find him that impressive.
“Careful,” Julian croons in that same low tone he’d purred into my voicemail earlier this week. “I might think you’re calling me uninspired.”
“Maybe I am,” I say with a shrug. “But I notice that you aren’t calling me wrong.”
Julian opens his mouth to counter, but he’s saved by Devram, who sweeps up to us with a barely suppressed grin that tells me he can sense the tension emanating from our table and is enjoying every second of it.
“Are you ready to order?” he asks.
Julian doesn’t let me get a word in, just launches into an exchange in rapid, syllabic Turkish, only pausing to ask if I have any dietary restrictions. Devram laughs as he writes down the order, gives me a quick glance like he’s in on some joke that I’m left out of, then spirits away.
“That was presumptuous,” I say when Devram is out of earshot.
“I was getting hungry, and you’ve been too busy lecturing me to look at the menu even once,” Julian notes.
“You could’ve prompted me.”
“You were distracted,” he says. He throws a languid arm over the empty chair next to him and smirks, well aware of the pretty picture he makes. “Understandably.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so full of yourself.”
“As I should be,” he says. He blinks those sleepy eyes, gives me a smug smile. “As you should be too.”
I pause, unsure how to respond to the unexpected compliment amidst our barbs.
Devram returns with two tulip-shaped glasses and makes a show of filling them with streams of steaming hot, fragrant tea before offering them to us off his silver tray.
Julian waits for him to step away before lifting one to his lips.
“I assumed you might have decision fatigue,” he explains, his gaze softening.
“I asked you to meet me tonight, after you’ve spent an entire day making hard choices for other people, and so I thought that making this one for yourself might feel overwhelming.
That you might not know where to start, because you aren’t familiar with the cuisine. I took it off your hands.”
My stomach is growling, but my few furtive glances at the extensive menu have only made my head hurt.
I don’t know how he saw this, but of all the things Julian has said tonight, this is the first I can’t find a response for.
Thank you doesn’t seem quite right, because ordering for your date is absolutely a faux pas, but for a woman like me who is so accustomed to doing everything for herself, it feels like he’s lifted the tiniest burden off my shoulders.
I’m still busy trying to figure out whether I’m a bad feminist when Julian leans forward and surprises me again.
“Also,” he says. “You’re right.”
They’re just two words, but they almost make me spill hot tea down my front.
“Sorry?” I say stupidly.
“I said you’re right. I’ve been myopic. I pride myself in investing in my community, but there are many pockets of the city that I’ve left unexplored.
” When he turns to me, the solemnity in his expression feels like an olive branch.
“Our director wants to start discussing exhibits for next spring soon. Do you have any South or West Side Chicago–based artists you would recommend?”
It occurs to me, suddenly, that I’m about to change somebody’s life.
About half a dozen names come to mind: the sculptor whose work I first saw exhibited in Hyde Park Art Center, the multimedia artist who created stunning works by tying and manipulating durags and bonnets, the self-taught seamstress who poured weeks of labor into a striking embroidered portrait that I’d purchased after seeing her posts on Instagram.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, actually. There are quite a few.”
“Tell me about them,” Julian says.
The tone shift after that is abrupt. Julian pours my tea, offers me food from his plate, and I offer him some of mine.
We pore over the profiles of local artists, and Julian keeps note of the names of the ones he finds notable and makes me promise to visit their exhibits with him.
Our conversation transitions naturally to our first shared love, music, and here his knowledge is diverse and deeper than mine: Julian can tell me about the history of New Orleans bounce and South Korean trot but also adds about four new composer/pianists to my Spotify account.
And as we talk, his words come back to me.
That he sees me as someone who could be special to him.
That he wants me to take him “seriously.” It had seemed like a game before, a meaningless declaration from a seasoned playboy picking his best path into my pants.
But I think I understand him now. Maybe I’m just feeling what he felt right away two weeks late.
Like I’m safe to be my truest self, to reveal my thoughts without window dressing or placation or explanation.
Like, for the first time in a long time, I’m speaking to my equal.
Which is concerning in its own way, because “serious” might mean something to him that I can’t provide.
“What did you mean, in your note?” I ask, when we’ve all but cleared our plates. “About me being someone who could potentially be special to you.”
Julian dabs his lips elegantly with his napkin, then says, “You say that like it was a threat.”
“I just don’t want to waste your time,” I insist, holding up my hands. “Because depending on what you mean, I might not be able to be that.”
To my chagrin, he looks only more intrigued.
“And why not?” he asks.
I answer his question with one of my own.
“How many people have you dated, Julian?” When Julian’s grin broadens, I roll my eyes. “How many have meant something?”
Julian’s smile falters, and his expression grows morose.
Suddenly, I’m jettisoned into a memory: me, just a few years older than Julian is now.
Gripping Eric’s phone in my hand as he slept soundly in my bed, incriminating screenshots saved and sent to my email, my heart sitting pulverized in my chest. I’d been young, true, with many more potential loves in my future, but that didn’t stop my pain from being world ending.
“One,” Julian finally says, just when I think he’s going to avoid the question.
“One,” I repeat, after a moment, feeling the enormity of his response. My answer, I know, is the same.
I realize then that I’m once again doing Julian a disservice.
I don’t know him or what he’s been through.
I don’t know who has hurt him too. The narrative I keep trying to craft for him has never quite fit, and yet I keep trying to force it to, like if I can predict who he is, I can protect myself from what he is capable of.
We are silent for a moment. Devram sweeps by our table to bring us more tea, but we don’t look away from each other, trying to decipher something in the other’s eyes.
I’m the one to break the silence.
“I don’t want to get married,” I start. Even though I’ve rehearsed this spiel a hundred times, I’m nervous to give it.
I feel, every time, like I’m providing the prelude to my own disappointment.
“I don’t want children. I’m not sure I even want to share a home with anyone, let alone a bed.
I would like a life partner. Someone I choose every day, who chooses me, not because of a legal document or a mortgage, but because we want to be together. ”
Like Oprah and Stedman, I used to tell potential partners.
They’d all nod their heads and feign understanding, claim to be progressive, cosmopolitan men who would happily accept an arrangement that absolved them of financial responsibility over me.
Until the fire burned out and they realized just how many benefits they were missing out on.
A live-in cook, maid, housekeeper, sexbot.
Someone who couldn’t run from them once they tired of providing romance, because they provided shackles instead.
Julian is rubbing his chin in thought.
“I could have sworn you were about to ask me to join a sex cult,” he says after a moment.
“Julian,” I deadpan, and he laughs.
“Seriously,” he says. “You’re an established woman. I expect you to know what you want. And who knows, maybe I want that too.”
“It’s not a life most twenty-seven-year-olds would want—or know they want, yet,” I say.
“I’m not most twenty-seven-year-olds.”
“I’ll concede that,” I allow.