Picture This

Furious, she shook herself free. ‘Why not here? Isn’t this punk enough for you? Why don’t you just tell me you knew her? Why bother lying, Felix? It’s not like I have any illusions about you.’

‘Okay, so maybe I did sleep with her once. Frankly, I can’t remember.’

‘But she can! She remembers you tried to set her up for a fake suicide, then raped her. She claims you get off on things like that, playing God.’

A couple of feet from them a photographer started snapping away. Snarling, Felix tried to scare him away, but the photographer ignored him, darting from one foot to another to avoid Felix’s outstretched arm. Abandoning the chase, he turned back to Susie. ‘Please, Susie, be reasonable. I mean, it’s not like we’re a couple.’

‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, Doris Day? Do you really think I’m interested in being half of a couple? Anyway, that’s not what this is about. Playing God is one thing; psychological sadism is something else entirely.’

‘Sadism? You can talk! Like you’ve never manipulated anyone for your own pleasure. You think by calling it art you make it morally acceptable?’

‘So that’s what this is about? I should have known you’d turn out to be a hypocrite as well as possessive!’

‘Me, possessive!?’

Just then Martha reached them, a professional smile plastered over her face as she pushed her way between the two of them.

‘Guys, Jimmy over there is with the New York Post, and I can see Mr B from the Times pulling out his camera. Let’s take this lovers’ tiff outside and throw some water on it.’ She grabbed both Susie and Felix’s arms and began moving them towards the exit.

‘Let go!’ Susie tried to shake off the publicist, who in turn only pulled harder. Susie snapped. ‘Fuck off!’ She shoved Martha in the chest; for a second both women tottered on their heels – Susie on her Union Jack eight-inch platforms, Martha (who was five foot ten even without heels) on her Jimmy Choo stilettos – then they both fell over. Immediately several of the guests pulled out their mobile phones and began filming, and the two photographers descended, vulture-like.

On her back, Susie found herself noticing how attractive the plaster cornices were, and how drunk she really was. ‘Christ, I’m sorry, Martha… ’

‘Please… there is no such thing as bad publicity. People expect such things from you,’ Martha replied sotto voce as she stood upright with a struggle, then turned to the small crowd now gathered around them. ‘No drama, boys, Ms Thomas is simply a little under the weather – jet lag and work stress. Besides, Mr Baum and Ms Thomas are entitled to their creative differences,’ she told the reporters as she helped Susie to her feet. ‘Are they lovers?’ she said, echoing a question fired from a tabloid journalist. ‘Darling, who isn’t in this crowd?’ she joked, then pointedly added, ‘Present company excepted.’

As Felix hustled Susie out of the hall she caught sight of an aged John Lydon in bondage trousers and torn fishnet T-shirt giving a Nazi salute to the guards.

*

Gabriel had stepped onto the train but the woman had followed him, squeezing her bulk into a seat beside him, oblivious to the other passengers; most of them Latino and African-American, tired shift workers heading home, a group of brightly dressed loud girls coming back from the city nightclubs, a tourist who looked lost, and himself and a woman who knew his name, who’d broken into his apartment, who, he suspected, had the power to destroy both his career and livelihood.

‘I’m getting out at 125th Street and so are you,’ she told him, her face impassive, broad planes that reminded him of an Aztec statue.

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Leave you alone? You were the one following me. Surely you want to know a few things before I disappear?’

Gabriel glanced quickly up at her; her expression was as closed as a trap. Nervous, he weighed up his options: he could get off at the next station and make a break for it, but she would still know where he lived; or he could find out who she was and what she wanted.

He tried to imagine what Felix would do. ‘When in doubt, stay and play’ was one of Felix’s favourite mottos, his attitude being that it was always better to make informed choices than walk away from a situation that initially appeared unpromising. I’ll be him for the nigh. If I can’t be with him I will be him, Gabriel thought, hugging one knee. Isn’t that a way of summoning him? After all, we’re both in danger potentially. Felix, I am going to make you proud of me, make you want me as much as I want you. It was an irrational argument, but then nothing rational seemed to have happened to Gabriel since his plane hit the runway only 21 hours earlier. He turned back to the woman.

‘Okay, let’s strike a deal: you tell me what you were doing in my apartment and how you know my name. And I’ll promise not to press charges.’

‘Press charges for what?’

‘Breaking and entering. Theft.’

The train pulled into 103rd Street and then pulled out. The carriage was emptier now and the seats around them vacant, as if people were avoiding the strange tension between this ill-matched couple. To Gabriel’s irritation, the woman sitting beside him broke into a low chuckle.

‘Ain’t you the man, sitting there in your low-rent threads threatening me with the law, when I have all the info.’ She put her hand on his knee, which made him flinch. ‘Gabriel, he’s twisting you around like you’re nothing but hay for his horse. I saw you back there at the Met. I saw the way you looked when he was deaf to you and turned his back. Child, I’ve seen it all before. You ain’t the first he used, and you won’t be the last.’

‘I don’t even know who you’re talking about.’

‘Sure you do: the playa, the big man himself. Whatever he’s got over you, it’s gonna kill you, and death ain’t worth any kind of money. You a good painter, I’ve seen your work. What’s he done with that?’

‘You don’t understand, Felix is just taking his time before launching me. No one understands the art world like he does, he’s a genius… ’

The train pulled into 110th Street and two more passengers got off. Gabriel stared down at his feet, suddenly convinced that by persuading this woman the relationship between him and Felix was genuine he would make it real, and maybe Felix would get on at the next station and tell the woman to leave him alone and they would walk off together arm in arm. Absurd, he knew, but somehow – surely? – plausible.