(Had his eyes always been that startling shade of blue?)
“So, I saw you were moderating a panel,” he said, in an older, rounded-off version of the voice her memory so often thrust at her, “and I thought—”
“I thought you were in bloody Venice!” Catherine interrupted him, having remembered, as soon as he opened his mouth, the bantering, art world line with which she had decided, soon after spotting him from the stage, to begin any conversation which might ensue; having used it now, though, it sounded unduly aggressive, not to mention stalker-ish; yes, someone in her profession would naturally know that James was about to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale, but they would not necessarily know, from James’s Twitter stream, that he was to spend this weekend there taking the measurements of the appointed space. “Didn’t I hear something,” she said now, scrabbling for ground, “about you being there?”
James nodded. “Well,” he said slowly, his gaze sliding to the side. “I was there, actually, until around eight o’clock yesterday evening.”
“And now you’re here?”
“Now I’m here. And so are you.”
“Well.”
“Well indeed,” he said, indicating the auditorium exit. “Do you have a bit of time?”
Probably, it was the fancy artificial light in here, futuristically white and almost breathlessly clear, that made his eyes seem that unfamiliar blue, Catherine thought, as they walked towards the front of the tent, making jumpy small talk about the panel, James’s strides long and hurried in his red jeans and scuffed leather work boots, a pair of green braces looped over his blue oxford shirt. The braces, or rather the look which involved brightly colored braces, she had seen before, in a studio visit streamed on the Greene website and from recent photos on Scene & Herd; it was even more surreal to her in reality, but that was just how things worked; years passed, and the surreal, more and more, was simply the real. James had a beard now, and his red hair was fairer, but also with strands of gray at the temples and in the beard, and his skin, like hers, was now just skin, its textures on show, its pores like dirt flecks, its creases and their tributaries beginning. Probably, if someone’s eyes had been that shade of blue always, that would be the thing, or at least one of the things, you would remember about them most strongly; that would be one of the things you carried with you, wouldn’t it?
That would be one of the things you had, for instance, noticed. What with living your every breath for that person. What with being in love with them.
(The real became the surreal, and the surreal turned its impossible face towards you, and was the real.)
(Emmet’s eyes: they had been blue.)
“Good flight?” she said, because it was the thing you said in these situations, marching along beside someone, with a folder of notes under your arm, in your jacket pocket your BlackBerry buzzing — but she would look at that in another moment, she would deal with that when she had dealt with this.
“Well,” James said, and he gave a short laugh, “it was the kind of flight you’d feel guilty complaining about.”
“Oh,” Catherine said, confused.
“Seen those?” he said, pointing to a trio of Alice Neel portraits as they passed the Zwirner booth. “They’re so perfect.”
“Oh, yeah,” Catherine said, blinking at them; the dour faces in their exaggerated play of shadow and light, the vivid red lips, the bare-chested man with the dark circles around his eyes and his partner by his side. “I can see why you like them,” she said, not even knowing what she meant.
“I love them,” James said, his eyes still on the paintings.
“And that photo of yours in the Greene booth is amazing.”
“I want to stop by there for a minute now,” James said, nodding as though she had said something obvious. “Is that OK with you?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, and thanks, I should have said. I like that piece too. I wanted to keep it back for the show next week, but they wanted it for here.” He glanced at her. “Will you still be here for my show?”
“I fly back Monday night, unfortunately.”
He said nothing, his attention seeming snagged by another piece, or perhaps by someone he recognized in one of the large German booths; his hand went to the back of his neck, she noticed, and rubbed it.
“I’ll just be a minute here,” he said, turning left into the long rectangular space given over to Greene; at a beautiful Danish modern desk, two gallerists were tapping on their laptops. As was the case in many of the booths, a bottle of champagne was open on the desk, and a couple of half-empty flutes stood nearby; nobody ever seemed to be drinking the champagne, but its visibility was crucial, signaling that the gallery was celebrating an already successful fair.
As they came further into the space, one of the women at the desk lifted her gaze, and on seeing James, who was now standing with both hands out as though demanding an answer, a broad grin on his face, she shrieked his name, jumped out of her swivel chair and rushed over to hug him.
“You’re not supposed to be here!” she scolded him, her arms still around him, as the other gallerist, waving madly, came over to do the same. “No artists at the fair!”
“I know, I know, I’m an awful fucker,” James said, and it was so strongly in the accent and the intonation of fifteen years previously that Catherine stared at him.
“I thought you were still in Venice,” the second gallerist said, her hands on his face now, patting his cheeks like those of a baby. “Your Twitter says you’re going to the British Pavilion this morning!”
“Keep the bastards guessing,” James said, in the same accent, which made the women peal with laughter, and then he shook his head. “No, no, I’m only joking. Jonathan was taking the plane back last night and he offered me a lift.”
“Oh, right,” the first woman said, as if to something which made utter sense.
“I was worn out from trying to work with those bloody Italian technicians, to be honest,” he said, and he extended a hand towards Catherine. “Meghan, Veronica, have you met Catherine Reilly from Frieze magazine?”
“We’ve met,” Catherine said, her words echoed by the two women as they shook hands. “I was in earlier.”
“How’d your panel go?” the first woman, Meghan, asked.
“Super,” Catherine said automatically. “A really good conversation, I think.”
“They all know how to tell us what we should be doing, but they’re not so keen to talk about what they should be doing themselves,” James said drily. “Is, I think, what Catherine means.”
Everyone laughed, Catherine watching James out of the corner of her eye; had he really been offended by something in the discussion? She could barely remember a single thing that had been said. Should she have asked him, as they had left the auditorium, what he had thought? Had it been a grave lapse on her part, a grave professional lapse, not to steer the conversation that way, to have assumed that what was between them as they walked was somehow, instead, personal? She realized, with an almost bodily jolt, her assumption: that James had come to the panel, indeed possibly come to the fair, to see her, to have a chance to meet with her, talk with her. When, actually, he was an artist, at an art fair. Yes, the gallerists had flapped at him for being here; yes, they had made all the expected noises about how artists should steer clear of these things, so crude, so commercial, the collectors lurching between booths like drunks between dive bars, but the fact was, plenty of the artists wanted to keep tabs on things just as much as did the people with the checkbooks. That James should be one of those artists: that did not surprise Catherine. That did not surprise her at all. She stepped away from him, pretending a sudden deep interest in the small set of Nielsen photographs on the side wall. She moved her face close to them. She did not permit herself to focus on what was reflected from behind her in the glass of the frame.