“Of course,” I say, intrigued, and she gestures me closer. Her perfume is heavy but pleasant—an overlay of almond tones on tonka bean that envelops me like a warm embrace. She clasps my shoulder to draw me into her, and I tense at the force of her grip, how it triggers an instinct to fold my hands behind my back.
“It’s a lobster,” she whispers.
She releases me, and I draw back, confused. She laughs, a tinkling sound.
“What?” I say.
“Lobsters don’t die unless they’re killed. Left to their own devices, they can theoretically live forever. And I found that fascinating. Lookat this simple, ugly creature, able to achieve the immortality that humans have been searching for as long as we have existed. Death is something thatcouldhappen to them, not an inevitability.” She pulls back, holds my gaze for a moment. There is a flicker of tension, and for one bizarre second, I wonder if she’s going to kiss me. Then she grins. “At least that’s what I read on some forum on the internet. It’s not true, of course. They get to fifty years or so, then stop molting and suffocate. I should have looked it up. But you know, by the point I thought to do my own research, I was already three pieces deep. So here we are!”
“Oh,” I say, discombobulated. I turn back to the painting to reorient myself, and suddenly it becomes abundantly clear what I’m looking at: a macro view of a lobster’s shell. “Oh! I see it!”
When I glance back at Margaret, she looks pleased. She lifts a finger to her lips in a coy “shush” motion, then hooks her arm through Stanley’s.
“She’s lovely, Jules. Excellent catch,” she says with a wink, and then, before I can decide whether her assessment of me is complimentary or patronizing, she sweeps away, and her husband stumbles after her.
I watch them cross the room, Stanley’s steps lumbering alongside his wife’s confident strides.
“How did that happen?” I mutter.
Julian snorts. In the time I’ve spent chatting to Margaret, he’s acquired what appears to be an old-fashioned, and he clicks his glass to mine before beginning a slow amble around the gallery’s perimeter.
“She’s got a thing for ogres,” he says. “You should see some of the guys she dated in the seventies. You’d think she found them under a bridge.”
When I ask Julian about how he came to meet Margaret, he regales me with a tale of an artisan’s fair in Katy he attended as a teenager, agigantic kaleidoscope of a canvas that Margaret revealed to be a tortoiseshell.
“Our realities are nothing but perspective, she told me. Something that appears beautiful at first glance can be horrifying when examined up close. Something simple, complicated; something wicked, good. It changed how I thought about, well, everything.” He stops, lowering his gaze to me. “Everyone too. It becomes a little bit of a game for me, I think. Meeting people and trying to guess who they are beneath the façade they present.”
“Ah, so I’m being actively psychoanalyzed,” I say, bemused. “All right. Let’s hear what you’ve come up with. Who do you think I am?”
Julian smiles and takes a small sip from his drink.
“Well, let’s start with what’s on the surface,” he says. “You’re a Black woman in a well-respected, male-dominated field that required fifteen years of grueling training to enter. You’re thirty-eight, single, and don’t have children, and thus the same accolades your male counterparts are praised for cause others to be suspicious and resentful of you. You’re rarely respected and regularly undermined, and your attempts at being agreeable have probably historically led to you being taken advantage of, and as a result you’ve developed a tough, no-nonsense exterior and a sort of…deliberateness to your actions that can come across as cold to those who aren’t accustomed to it.”
I rear back to squint up at him; his assessment is oddly astute, even if it is a little reductive.
“I’m curious,” I say. “Do you think it’sjustan exterior? Am I stone all the way through, or all soft and squishy under the surface?”
Julian smirks.
“Oh, definitely the latter,” he insists, and I raise a hand to my chest in faux outrage.
“A baseless accusation,” I declare. “Take it back.”
“I will not,” Julian challenges. “You care so much about your friend that you gave up a rare weekend to drive an hour and a half both ways to take her daughter to an event that you would rather have swallowed glass than attend, where you tipped the bartender handsomely and helped wheel one of Brandon’s elderly great-aunts to her table before dinner. You checked in regularly with Sophie to ensure she was comfortable and greeted the people you knew from Brandon’s side first to ease any potential discomfort around your presence. And then, likely exhausted by the many hours spent taking care of everyone in sight, you sought your solitude.”
The air between us shifts, and I feel it again: that charge that sparked between us when we first met in Edison Mansion, tension so electric it shifts across my skin like static. My mouth opens to respond, then clamps shut. Julian has, to my astonishment, succeeded in stunning me into silence.
“You weren’t joking about watching me,” I manage after a moment. I don’t know how I feel, now that I know how closely I was being observed that night, how closely he continues to observe me now.
Julian tucks one of my locs behind my ear, his fingers skimming ever so lightly against my cheek.
“Did you think I was?” he says.
This is the seduction I expected, I think, as I watch his eyes darken, his gaze drag jaggedly down my body. It’s a safer space than whatever it was he was attempting before—gushing about me to his friends, introducing me to his colleagues, treating me like I’m anything more than a conquest.I’m grown, I want to tell him.You don’t need to pretend to want anything other than fun from me.
But for the next two hours, Julian continues to pretend, and Icontinue to play along. He loops my arm through his, sweeps me around the room, talks to me about music and art, and asks me questions about myself that I give simple, half-true answers to. (“Yes, I’m an only child.” “You’re right, I should try caffeine mints.” “Yes, I have a dog, his name is Onix. I tell people it’s a reference to a brand of stent we use in the cath lab, but he’s actually named after the Pokémon. Don’t you see the resemblance?”)
As the night goes on, the room fills, the lights dim, and the music transitions from a pleasant hum to booming. A party. The crowd gets younger, and they slap Julian on the shoulder or pull him into hugs and smirk knowingly at me. They get rowdier too, drunk off the open bar and the headiness of community and the DJ’s infectious energy. I’m drunk too, or at least more drunk than I’ve been in a minute, courtesy of the two glasses of red wine I’d sipped while we made the rounds and the blackberry mojito I’d downed, given to me by a cute blond woman who complimented my pantsuit. My hangover will be immense, but at the moment, I can’t be bothered. I feel good. Better than I have in a long time. My blazer is draped over my arm, leaving me in a thin camisole that clings to my skin. Julian’s respectful hands have gotten daring, and when the song shifts to a slow R & B jam, he pulls me backward into him, wraps his arms around me as we sway. I clutch his forearms, closing my eyes, feeling the beat reverberate through our bodies.