“André Six come yet?” Ian muttered into Diego’s ear.

“Why? You wanna see if he should be renamed André Neuf?” Diego replied jokingly.

“I want see who him coming wid,” Ian replied flatly.

“You know these models, Ian, they always come with some tired bitch.”

As Ian anticipated, André came a few hours later with Margaret. He was doing a lot of work for Calvin Klein then, and Willi Smith. He was tall and big-boned.

Margaret had told him a lot about André—too much, in fact, for too long. For once it seemed as if she was becoming involved above the waist, at least as high as the liver. And he found that threatening.

He had invited her to the party and she had turned him down, saying that André had already invited her.

“Well, I’m asking you now,” he insisted.

“But I already told him yes,” she replied casually.

“Well, cancel,” he commanded.

“I can’t,” she replied nonchalantly.

“Why?”

“He wouldn’t like that.”

“So?”

“So he wouldn’t like that, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“When did feelings begin to count?”

“They count sometimes.”

“When do mine count?”

“You don’t have any.”

“But he does, right?”

“Yes.”

“And I don’t?”

“C’mon, Ian, I was joking. Don’t tell me you’re serious. We’ve never been like this. It’s always been come and go as you please.”

“I’m tired of that,” he said, stonily.

“Well it suits me fine,” she snapped, put off by his insistence.

“Fuck you!”

She laughed to annoy him and walked away.

He watched her and André as they elbowed their way through the crowd. He watched them dance and he watched them kiss, unaware that he was crying until Diego told him discreetly.

And he felt something taking over his body. He called it mischief then, this thing that took him over to a bubble gum machine in a corner … this thing that made him insert coin after coin until he got a ring … this thing that made him walk up to Margaret and whisper in her ear to meet him in the stairwell … this thing that made him stand his ground when she said no.

André was standing next to her, looking on intently as he held her hand and slipped the ten-cent ring on her finger and told her to read his eyes.

“What do you see?” Ian asked.

“Immaturity,” Margaret whispered.

“Yes, but that’s not it,” he whispered back.

“You’ve got some nerve,” she whispered. “You—”

“You’re mine, Margaret,” he interjected. “And we’re leaving. Let’s stop pretending. We’re special to each other. Let’s … stop … pretending.”

He squeezed her hand and pierced her soul with the pins of his eyes, determined to bully her, beg her, bamboozle her—anything to make her leave with him.

He felt it when she relented. It was nothing that she did. He just knew. They were connected that way.

Emboldened by her collapse of will, he turned and walked to the door without so much as a backward glance, then stopped and waited with his arm outstretched behind him … waiting … a little nervous … but waiting … willing her to come to heel … a little unsure … but waiting … until he felt her hand in his. And he decided on the spot that he was not going back to Paris.