"Yeah, I think it might actually be more inappropriate to walk around nak*d in front of your employees," I said, sitting up and stretching out across the sofa as he came closer. "But I won’t tell if you don’t."
He knelt on the sofa, leaning down over me, one of his legs planted firmly between my thighs. "But how do I know I can trust you?"
I smiled innocently. "I’m told I have a trustworthy face."
I wasn’t used to seeing him like this. Usually, at this point, he’d still be at least mostly dressed. I found myself unable to tear my eyes away from the angles of his nak*d body as he loomed over me - watching the way his muscles tensed and stretched, how they moved under his skin. He worked hard to maintain his body, presumably more for his health than for my personal benefit, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
"There might be something you could do," I said, softly, letting my fingers trace each taut little swell of muscle on his stomach. "But I don’t know if you’ll like it very much."
He brushed his lips against mine, so softly it almost didn’t count as a kiss.
"Try me," he whispered.
My throat tightened. I needed him, suddenly, urgently, and I didn’t have the patience to carry on with our little game. And judging by what I could feel resting hot and heavy against my stomach, I wasn’t alone.
"Daniel," I whispered, intending to say more, but he read my face and hushed me with a kiss, pulling my panties aside and slipping inside me quickly. I sighed at the familiarity and how perfect it was. Every time. I locked my ankles around his waist and tilted my h*ps up to meet him, trying to ignore the wonderful, painful twisting in my chest when I looked at his face.
The sun was sinking down low in the sky. By the time he shuddered and stilled on top of me, I could hardly see his face.
***
Before I knew it, we were packing for the journey back home. The time had flown by, as vacations always do, even with the few unusual hiccups along the way. As I rolled up my dresses and tucked them into my bag, I couldn’t help but wonder if every vacation was going to be like this now. Were we going to be warding off wannabe-muckrakers at every turn?
And what on earth had that journalist been talking about?
As I passed by the little table on Daniel’s side of the bed, I noticed the little nautilus shell was still there. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t moved from when I’d set it down the other day. I picked it up and looked at it again. It was even more pristine than I’d noticed out on the beach, every little compartment and membrane intact. Even if Daniel wasn’t impressed, it was pretty amazing to me that nature could create something this complex and beautiful.
I heard the boards creak under his feet as he came into the room.
"Still infatuated with that shell, aren’t you?" he said. But he was smiling.
"I just think it’s pretty amazing, is all." I turned it over in my hand. "Did you ever learn about the Fibonacci sequence in school?"
"Can’t say that I did." He was gathering up his socks.
"It’s a series of numbers," I said, still staring down at the shell. "Starting with zero and one, and then every number after that is the sum of the previous two. So it goes zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen…like that. And it turns out, if you draw a bunch of squares with sides of those lengths all nested together in the right order, and draw a spiral around them…" I demonstrated the curl pattern of the shell with my index finger. "It’s the exact same pattern as this shell."
"Remarkable," he said. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
"I think it’s cool," I said, turning the shell over in my hand. "Sometimes everything seems so chaotic all the time, it’s nice to remember that it’s not, always."
He sat down on the bed, finally looking at me with something vaguely like interest. "Why do you suppose that is?"
"Why the shell?" He nodded at this, and I shrugged. "Who can say for sure? I mean, it’s not just shells. It’s everywhere. The seeds in a sunflower, the spirals of a pinecone - like things just sort of…want to be a certain way, you know? They’re following some kind of ancient pattern they don’t even understand."
"Thats’ a bit X-Files, isn’t it?" Daniel smiled. "Actually, come to think of it - wasn’t there a pinecone or something in the opening credits?"
"Seeds," I corrected, closing my hand around the shell again. "It was seeds sprouting." I went to my bag and started wrapping the shell up in a spare bra.
"I thought that was for me," Daniel said.
"It is." I zipped the bag shut. "I’m just keeping it safe for you."
He didn’t say anything else about it.
CHAPTER THREE
We arrived back in New York at six o' clock, right in the heart of the rush hour. After an arduous trip home, when we finally stumbled through the front door, all I wanted to do was lie down. But there was one thing I had to see first.
I stopped at the end table in the hall. The doorman had been bringing in our mail. I wondered if it was a service he often provided or a special favor just for Daniel - but I was afraid to ask. I sifted through the pile of envelopes eagerly, and then once more, with slightly less enthusiasm. Finding nothing of interest, I dropped it all back on the hall table with a dramatic thump.
"Nothing from the galleries?" Daniel asked, gently kicking his suitcase towards the foot of the stairs while he stripped off his shirt. I had to smile, in spite of myself. He was such a consummate multi-tasker he sometimes seemed incapable of doing only one thing at a time.
"No," I said. "Not yet."
"Well, I'm sure they must get a lot of submissions," he said, walking down the hallway to the bathroom with the majority of his clothes balled up under one arm. I sort of hated the false cheerfulness in his voice, but what did I want him to say, really? Well, dear, you're probably buried deep in their slush pile, never to be seen again.
I wandered into the kitchen and turned the hot water on, scrubbing my arms up to the elbows like I was going into surgery. Daniel always showered after flying, and while I understood the impulse, my skin already felt like a desert. I stripped out of my wrinkled traveling clothes, pulled on some sweats and a tee-shirt from my former life, and collapsed on the sofa.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and began scrolling through it aimlessly. When Daniel came back out, still toweling his hair, I waved the maddening device at him.
"What now?" he said, heading for the fridge.
"You've got to have your tech people do something about this," I said. "Everyone I've ever emailed in my entire life is in my contacts list. It's the most annoying goddamn thing."
"Did you turn off the auto-contact setting?" he called, over the sound of the sink running.
"I shouldn't have to," I yelled back. "Nobody wants this feature. Why is it default? Why do I need a contact entry for some shady online job posting I replied to six years ago? In my phone? It's a throwaway email address. It makes no sense."
"You need to turn off the auto-contact setting," he replied, patiently. "Some people like to keep track of everyone they email."
"Well, I can do that, by looking in my sent mail. Besides, that doesn't help me get rid of all the junk contacts that are already in there." I sat up, suddenly feeling very invested in this fight. Usually, technology problems made me feel like the most impotent moron on the entire planet, but it had just now occurred to me that I finally had the audience to change something. "I looked online. Lots of other people are complaining about it."
"People will complain about anything," he said. "The ones who like it aren't going to take the time to post about it online; they're the silent majority."
"You've got an answer for everything, don't you." I didn't phrase it like a question, because it wasn't.
He smiled, plopping down on the sofa next to me with a drink in his hand. "That's my job," he said.
I eyed him sidelong. "No, I didn't want anything, that's fine, thanks."
"Maybe you should get some rest," he suggested, gently. How could he be in such a good mood after traveling for six hours? I thought of all the tech conferences he had to go to, all the flights to the opposite side of the world - and it started to make a little more sense.
"I can't sleep," I said, leaning my head back on the cushion. I was tired, sure, but I was keyed-up from all the hustle and bustle. Being around large groups of people exhausted me like nothing else, especially when they were all exactly as stressed as I was. I had no idea how Daniel managed to maintain that preternatural level of calm all the time, but I both loved and hated him for it.
"I'm sorry you haven't heard back from any of the galleries yet," he said, cutting to the heart of the matter as usual. "I'm sure they'll get to you. If you want, I can make some phone calls…"
"No," I said, firmly. We'd had this discussion before. I didn't want my art on display somewhere because I was Daniel Thorne's wife. People were going to think that anyway - I didn't want there to be a single grain of truth to it. I needed to be able to tell myself that it was all based on my own merit as an artist.
"All right," he said. "That's very noble of you, but you know most people who get placed in galleries these days have connections. You wouldn't be doing anything that a thousand people before you haven't done."
"Doesn't matter," I said, through a yawn. "It's for me. I don't want to be one of those artists."
He shook his head, letting himself slump further into the sofa. "Well, I'm sure one of them will come to their senses eventually," he said. "It's only a matter of time."
"Sure," I said. I hated it when he took that "public relations" tone with me, telling me what I wanted to hear. But it wasn't worth fighting over.
The wait was killing me. I hadn't been able to draw anything new since I'd done my submissions; I was waiting on pins and needles, even though I knew, realistically, that I was buried under piles of unsolicited portfolios. The whole thing was an exercise in futility anyway. What did a gallery placement mean, anyway? One person's opinion. Maybe I'd sell my work, but so what? It wasn't like we needed the money. Selling one of my drawings was a dream of mine when I was a kid, but now that I no longer lived paycheck to paycheck and prayed my lights wouldn't get shut off, it just didn't have quite the same appeal.
Just my luck - when I finally grew enough courage to actually pursue a career as an artist, it didn't matter anymore.
***
"Can I get you something to drink?" Daniel drifted over to the sofa, absentmindedly pushing a few coffee table books a few inches to the left as he sat down. "Espresso? Water? Scotch and soda?" He switched on a smile, and the interviewer smiled back, then ducked her head down a little and pushed her hair behind her ear.
I turned back to my plate of leftover lo mein, letting my fork slip from my fingers and clatter against the plate a little more loudly than was absolutely necessary.