“Yeah. He’s never short of something to say.”
“And you’re the quiet one,” Nate said, skeptically.
“Well, compared to him.”
“Where’s your drink?” Just at that moment, a waitress passed with a tray, and he grabbed a bottle and poured a dark torrent of wine into Catherine’s glass. He pointed to a couch which had just come free. “Take a load off?”
He sat, giving a loud sigh of relief as his limbs sank into the leather cushions, and then he went still, suddenly, and frowned. “Oh, that’s bad.”
“What?” said Catherine, taking a seat herself.
“Saying Aaaaah when I sit down. I can’t believe that’s happening already.” He glanced at her. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” he spluttered, and shook his head. “Man, eighteen. You kids.”
“What do you mean?” Catherine said coyly.
“You know what I mean,” he said, grinning at her. “I see it at every opening. Kids like you, showing up impossibly young and cool and beautiful, sucking all the oxygen out of the room. But—” he tipped his glass to hers—“thank you. It sells the art.”
“So,” she said, feeling she should show an interest in Dunne’s work, “how many hours a day would you usually spend in Ed’s studio?”
Nate looked at her blankly. “How do you mean?”
“Well, James probably told you about when he was working for Malachy Clark in Berlin — he used to work twenty-hour days in there sometimes. Is it that bad in Ed’s?”
He looked no less baffled. “Why would I work in Ed’s studio?”
“I…” Catherine blustered, already feeling the blush climb her cheeks.
“I work in my own gallery,” Nate scoffed. “Ed’s studio? No, thank you.”
“I thought you did. Sorry.”
“No.”
“So you’re not his assistant?”
Amazement spread across Nate’s features; his mouth dropped open, his eyes locked onto hers accusingly. Then a shout of laughter took him, and he slammed a hand down on the couch cushion. “His assistant? His assistant?! ” To Catherine’s horror, he leaned forward, now, and shouted out to Ed, absorbed in a conversation by the fireplace. “Hey, Ed! Eddie! I’m your assistant now! You hear that?”
Ed Dunne made his face into a mask of horror and turned away.
“Yeah, the feeling’s mutual,” Nate said, sinking back into the couch. “Christ,” he said, squinting at Catherine. “Ed’s assistant. Do you know what kind of torture Ed puts his assistants through? What in Christ’s name made you think that? ”
“Well…” Catherine said, mortified, but Nate’s expression had already changed. He had worked it out, she saw from the way he was holding up one hand, nodding and laughing; he had understood.
“James?” he said. “Well, that explains the conversation I just had with him in the kitchen. For one thing, it explains why he kept wanting to talk about Ed’s darkroom.” He laughed again. “Half an hour of me being expected to take orders in Ed’s fucking darkroom and the only photographer in that studio would be from the NYPD.” He shuddered. “Christ. Our relationship only survives because I stay the hell out of his studio.”
Catherine’s breath did something, then, so that she had to make an effort to find it. She knew that it was important, in this moment, not to look directly at Nate; not to let him see reflected in her eyes the rapid calculations and realizations and rearrangements that were clicking and whirring and snapping through the channels of her startled brain. “Yeah,” was all she could possibly manage in the way of speech, and as soon as the word was out, she knew that she had botched it.
“Oh, fuck,” she heard Nate say, through a laugh of incredulity. “Oh, fuck me. Ed and I are partners. Life partners, I mean. You didn’t know that?”
“Oh,” Catherine said, as though Nate had just reminded her of something she had been meaning to do. “No, of course.”
He gave a short laugh. “Of course?”
“No, it’s just…” She shook her head, laughing; going for carefree and landing on crazy. “Just James. James said you were Ed’s assistant. That’s all.”
“Um, I have my own assistant. I’m a director of a gallery in Chelsea.”
“Ah.”
“Which is how I met Ed. We’ve been together now for nearly seven years.”
“Wow. That’s,” Catherine said, stammering, “brilliant.”
“Yeah,” Nate nodded. “And because you’re probably trying to work it out right now in your addled little brain, the age difference is thirty-two years.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He’s ancient. But I love the old son of a bitch.”
“Awww,” Catherine said, which came out sounding unhinged; which came out sounding more like disappointment, actually, than like the sound of someone who was touched or moved.
“So there you go,” Nate said. “God, I really thought everyone knew that by now. Or, at least, everyone who knew Ed’s work.”
“Well,” said Catherine, wanting, suddenly, to defend herself. “There wasn’t anything about it in the Irish Times piece.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Nate said, with a wave of his hand. “Everything that dumb bitch could have got wrong about Ed, she got wrong. I’m surprised she didn’t have him down as married and living in rural Pennsylvania with his wife and family. And Amish. And dead.”
Catherine laughed raggedly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m embarrassed.”
“Well,” Nate said, smiling at her now. He put a finger to her cheek and hissed a long breath through his teeth to mimic the sound of sizzling flesh. “I could tell that. But it’s all right. You don’t exactly talk about this over here.”
“Yeah.”
“Christ’s sake, first couple of years we came here together, it wasn’t even legal.”
David Norris is here, she almost said then, but she stopped herself; probably, that would just give him another reason to laugh at her. She felt young — so young and so stupid.
“So,” Nate said, settling his wine glass on his knee. “Tell me about James. I can tell the two of you are close.”
“Very,” she said, nodding fervently.
“You’re the friend, then,” he said, nodding knowingly. “That’s good. Every fag needs his hag.”
Catherine was speechless. She stared at him, her heart pounding. Had he actually just said that? Was saying that even OK?
Nate, noticing her consternation, gave an uneasy laugh. “Hang on a minute. You do know about James, right?”
“Yes, I know,” Catherine cut across him sharply. “For fuck’s sake!”
“OK, OK, just checking,” said Nate, holding up a hand, but he was laughing at her; he was really enjoying himself now, Catherine saw. She tried to think of something clever to say to him, something very cutting and very clear-eyed, but a second For fuck’s sake was all she could manage, which just made Nate laugh harder, for some infuriating reason. Then she looked up, and there, making his way in their direction, was James — clearly plastered, smiling and waving as though he was meeting her off a train. She scrambled to her feet and got to him before he got to them.
Many drinks later, people began to sing. Was this a new thing in Dublin now, Catherine wondered, that every time a group of people were together in a house they had to start singing? Unlike the evening in James’s flat, though, there were no guitars, and no joints going around; instead, people were taking it in turns to stand by the fireplace and sing mostly ballads of the mournful Irish variety; “Boolavogue,” a woman was wailing her way through now, which was a song that Catherine had not heard since being forced to learn it in primary school.