The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements

Chapter Six

Nathan Spencer was scowling outside Dukes. He had stumbled coming out the door, a glass still in hand. He took one last, long gulp of wine, and hurled it at the camera. The footage cut out at the moment of impact.

The gossip was that Nathan had stormed outside in a rage, following a tantrum at the bar and an attempt to drink beer directly from the tap. After throwing the glass, he vomited into a storm drain (there was footage of that, too, but Marie declined to play it), and then one of his friends bundled him into a taxi.

“Is this bad for me?” Win asked.

Marie held up her hand and tilted it, fifty-fifty. “It looks a bit like you broke him. But mostly it makes him look unstable. It discredits anything he’s said before. Clearly he’s not thinking rationally.”

Win leaned back and exhaled. It had been a successful week of parading Leo up and down the coast. The public was back on her side. Her image had been revitalized. The first thing that came up when you googled her was a barrage of excited rumors about The Sun Also Rises. The Chavanne party was tomorrow, and after that, Win and her staff would be able to pack up and return to their real lives.

“We should dial it back a bit today,” Marie said. “We don’t want you sharing the same front pages. He’s imploding because of what he did, not because of what you’re doing.”

“I like that,” Win said. “So what, we just hide inside all day?”

It wouldn’t be the first time. Sometimes mystery worked better for Win and Leo, their hidden life like a hot, thudding pulse that everyone clustered around.

“Yes,” Marie said, at the same time that Leo said, “Except for brunch with Anya.” They glared at each other.

“It’s just a casual meeting,” Win said. “We could do it quietly.”

Marie looked unconvinced, but Win had the final say, and she was loath to go back on her promise.

“It can just be us,” Leo agreed. “We’ll sneak in through the back. No entourage. We can even give Emil the morning off. Unless you want to come?” he added. “Anya spends all her time surrounding herself with handsome young men, she’d be delighted.”

“Tempting,” Emil said. “Unfortunately I already spend all my time surrounded by demanding older women.”

Marie looked up, sharp-eyed. “What’s that?”

“He’s so brave,” Leo said to Win with admiration as they left. “I hope he’s still there when we get back.”

Anya was staying at Luna Beach, and they met her in the restaurant on the sand, hidden away from cameras and patrolled, in the distance, by stern-faced security in suits. When Anya saw them approaching, she set down her magazine and smiled, standing with arms outstretched. She was a broad-shouldered woman in her late fifties with close-cropped dark hair and a prominent nose. Standing like that, she looked like the figurehead of a ship.

“Look who decided to turn up,” she said. “Late as usual.”

“You know I like to keep you on your toes, Anya,” Leo said.

“You remember Tomas,” Anya said, gesturing at the man seated next to her—dark-haired, with horn-rimmed glasses—who raised his hand to them without rising.

“Hello, Leo,” he said. Win realized he was younger than she’d first thought, maybe thirty-five at most. When Leo reached out his hand, Tomas took it, held it to his mouth, and kissed it as if Leo were a lucky dice roll.

“Tomas,” Leo said. “How’s the PhD?”

“Oh, you know,” Tomas said.

Anya tutted. “He’s a master in his field.”

“My angel is supportive as always,” Tomas said.

“And hello to you,” Anya said, pushing Leo aside so she could get to Win. “Oh, you’re so tall. Are you taller than Leo?”

“She’s wearing heels.” Leo slid into his seat and reached for a menu as Anya drew Win into a tight hug.

Meeting people from Leo’s family circle was always strange. Win was used to wealth in a new money sense, professional success signified by the use of private jets and luxury suites. The people Leo had grown up with operated on an entirely different wavelength. Wealth was inherent to them, and it spoke with unfeigned confidence of second and third homes on the coast, secure spots at elite universities, fresh-cut flowers, stocks and bonds, housekeepers who were part of the family. Leo thought of himself as an honorary guest who showed up only when his presence was requested. But though he might hide his membership card when it suited him, Win knew it would never be revoked.

“You must be nearly six foot,” Anya said, examining Win.

“I enjoy your movies,” Tomas said. His voice was deep and sunbaked. “You have a very commanding presence.”

“Oh,” Win said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Tomas said. He tapped two fingers against Anya’s side. “Antalya, the mimosas.”

“Oh yes,” said Anya, flagging down a waiter. Win slid in next to Leo, who raised his arm to wrap around her shoulders, tucking her against his side. Tomas eyed them with relaxed scrutiny.

As a crystal glass was set in front of her, Win said, “I’ll just have orange juice, thank you.”

Their waiter nodded, but before he could move on, Tomas reached out to touch Win’s wrist.

“My darling,” he said. “We all work so hard. We’re in Saint-Tropez. You need to drink the mimosa.”

“Yes, Win,” said Leo, leaning back so he could watch the interaction in full. “You’re upsetting Tomas.”

Under the table, Win pinched Leo’s thigh through his jeans. He pinched her back, through the thin cotton of her dress, digging into the softer flesh around her waist. She stuttered out a gasp, turned it into a cough, and nodded.

“Maybe just one.”

Anya clapped her hands and said, “Good girl. Leonard, I’m so glad you’re finally over that ridiculous sobriety phase.”

“It wasn’t a phase. It was a…brief period of abstention.”

“That is the definition of a phase,” Anya said. “Your mothers were worried about you.”

Leo said, “Anya’s not forgiven me for refusing to do shots with her at the Royal Opera House last year.”

“Especially,” Anya added, her rising voice indicating she had been nursing her resentment for some time, “when only two months later you were raising all sorts of hell in Los Angeles, with that group of—”

“We were not raising hell,” Leo said sharply. Win wondered if this was a sore point. Leo couldn’t stand his mothers’ disapproval, and he might have somehow upset them in LA.

“I was just detoxing,” he said, calmer. He added to Win, “I met this guy at an ashram in Kerala—”

“Oh, I don’t need details about you finding yourself in India, thank you,” Win said, and Anya laughed from her throat and added, “Yes, do shut up about it.” Leo returned to his drink with a sardonic grin.

“Anyway, darlings,” Anya continued. “I have a confession to make. I didn’t just bring you here for mimosas.”

Leo made a strangled sound, clasping one hand to his heart. “Anya. You shock me.”

“Now don’t be cruel,” Anya said. “We are undergoing something of a crisis. It’s about the magazine.”

Leo had told Win about Ci Sarà on the ride over, a luxury travel quarterly that Anya had been editing since she left Vanity Fair three years ago. It was a pet project that was beginning to make a reputable name for itself. Tomas and Anya’s whole life was a big vacation anyway, Leo said, so it made sense to profit from it.

“We had already put together a wonderful selection for the fall issue. A romance theme, to round off the summer. We had the cover stars lined up: a certain young pop star and her certain young beau, modern love in a classic climate, and so on. Anyway, the whole relationship has crashed and burned, as these things are wont to do, and so the shoot is off. That leaves me with the sets, the gowns, the photographers, and all that’s missing is our star couple.” There was a pregnant pause. “And, darlings, you know that I would never normally do this, but wouldn’t it be so perfectly serendipitous, the two of you just happening to be here and so young and gorgeous and in love—”

“Oh no,” Leo said, with mounting dread. “You know I don’t do interviews, Anya—”

“I’m not asking you for an editorial, Leo. Just a few nice shots, something tasteful. I don’t even need a quote. Everything’s arranged, and it would only take a day. You wouldn’t have to leave the Riviera.”

“We’re very busy,” Leo said.

“Yes.” Anya smiled. “I’ve seen your press.”

“It could be a good opportunity,” Win said. “I have a press tour coming up, and it wouldn’t hurt...” She trailed off. A spread of Win and Leo wrapped up in each other in a heady European glamour shoot would be good foreshadowing for The Sun Also Rises. In a big-name publication like Vogue or Cosmo it would have been too on the nose, but a high-end, more artistic magazine like Ci Sarà would strike just the right note between enigmatic and provocative. It could keep the dream of their summer romance alive into the colder months of the year.

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “When would you want to do it?”

“Well, darlings, we’re on quite a tight deadline,” Anya said. “The venue is booked for tomorrow.”

“We have plans tomorrow evening,” Win said.

“Of course, you must be attending the Chavanne party,” Anya said. “But we’d start early and wrap up with plenty of time for you to get back to town.”

“I’ll have to speak to my publicist,” Win said. “Can you give us until this afternoon to confirm?”

Anya clapped her hands. “Of course. Just as soon as you can let us know.”

Leo groaned. He ran his hand up Win’s neck and into her hair, as if he wanted to tug it, but he only curled his fingers through, making Win tilt back without thinking, almost a shiver.

They sailed back to the hotel a few hours later. The cars took them through the garage to the back entrance, where they could enter without being seen. In the elevator she didn’t bother pretending Leo might go back to his room, and just sent them both straight up to the penthouse, where Leo collapsed onto her bed with a relieved sigh while Win hunted through the bar for more champagne and orange juice.

“That was fun,” she said.

“Yeah, they’re good,” Leo agreed. “Tomas has been with her forever, it’s like a never-ending honeymoon. Thea and Anya went to art school together in the seventies, but I guess now they’re just part of a…an…a…” He waved his hand around, giving Win an expectant look.

“Amalgamation,” Win suggested.

“Yes! An amalgamation of friends,” Leo said. “They’re old and married and stuff, and Thea and Mum don’t know who belongs to who anymore.”

Leo’s mother, Gabrysia Milanowski, was the kind of celebrity who’d captured a moment and didn’t need to do anything else to be remembered forever as the face of the eighties. She had grown up in Poland, moved to London when she was sixteen, become an international supermodel by eighteen, and retained an airy distrust of the world through it all. She married Leo’s father in her early twenties, and a mutual and unsurprising divorce followed several affairs on both sides, concluding with a generous alimony settlement that would keep Gabrysia stocked in couture and pinot noir for the rest of her life.

Leo was only two years old when Gabrysia agreed to sit for an artist friend of a friend who was doing a portrait series on divorcées. Thea decked her in green paint and ivy leaves and sat her behind a work desk like a modern-day Titania. They were engaged six months later.

He’d told Win that he didn’t remember life before Thea. On a family trip to Toulouse, when Leo was six, Thea had told him that when she was a little girl, she’d lived just down the road. Leo had sighed. I wish I knew you then, he had told her, and we could have lived together. It was still one of his mother’s favorite stories.

“Why don’t you call Thea ‘Mum,’ as well?” Win wondered, taking another sip of her drink. “If she’s been part of your life for so long. Or is it too confusing with…” She trailed off.

Leo smirked at her. “Are you being homophobic?”

Win threw a cushion at him, and Leo laughed.

“I used to call her Mum,” he said. “I just pointed when it was unclear. Then when I was a teenager, she had one of her hippie phases and insisted that I call her Thea. She said that there were a billion mums in the world and only a couple hundred thousand people called Thea at most and it was important to claim individuality. By the time she got over it, I was in the habit. Sometimes I call her Mum. I don’t really notice.” He yawned, stretching back against his chair. “It made me feel very grown-up when I was fifteen, anyway.”

“I bet,” Win said. “When I was fifteen, Shift and I started calling all our teachers by their first names, to promote equality. We got detention for a month.”

Leo cackled. “I can just imagine angry little Whitman Tagore in detention.”

“I bet you never were.”

“No,” Leo acknowledged, kicking his legs out. “I usually talked my way out of it. It’s a pity we didn’t meet when we were teenagers,” he added wistfully. “You could have corrupted me.”

Win laughed. “In what fucking universe would we have met when we were teenagers?”

“It could have happened!”

“I didn’t take many first-class trips to Switzerland,” Win said. As a teenager she had been suspicious of strangers, still raw from her father’s death, rude and uninviting. She flipped people off on the street and knew the best places to jump the barrier and ride the tube for free. She had felt on edge everywhere she went, and to make up for it she walked at a quick clip, so she was never anywhere long. Leo would have been pampered, slouching, confident of his welcome wherever he was. Win wasn’t sure he would have been able to keep up with her.

“And look at you now,” Leo said. He bared his teeth. “Come on, it would have been great. We could have had a tortured teenage romance.”

“You wish,” Win said. Privately, she thought that perhaps she would have been fascinated by him despite her own better judgment, an itchy sort of interest she wouldn’t have been able to quell.

Leo gave it up. “Oh well. Are you really going to make me do a photo shoot?”

In lieu of answering, Win held up her phone. The last three messages from Marie were still visible on her lock screen:

THE Anya Willoughby? Ci sara??a bit last minute but i think we can handle itcan she get us a contract by e.o.d?

Leo groaned. “She’s going to dress me up in leather, I know it.”

“You can say no, if you want to,” Win reminded him.

“To you I can,” Leo said. “But Anya will not be refused. And my mums would never forgive me.”

“Done deal, then,” Win said, and forwarded Anya’s phone number to Marie. Leo would get over it by tomorrow. For all his grumbling, he liked photo shoots. They appealed to his love of showing off. She watched him lean back on her bed with almost absentminded interest, the way his T-shirt rode up and bared a dark trail of hair over his stomach.

“So you’ve been raising hell in LA? It didn’t come up in Marie’s Google alerts.”

“Oh no,” Leo said. “I was just in California for a few months.”

“That’s longer than you usually stay anywhere.” She handed him a glass. “What was it, the art? The company?”

“What? No,” Leo said. He frowned. “Oh, the art, sure.”

“Leo,” Win said. She stifled a giggle. Toward the end of brunch Anya had ordered them a round of Bloody Marys, the effects of which were still setting in. “Why are you being so—”

Her phone started ringing.

“Oh,” she said, looking at the screen. “It’s Patrick.”

When she picked up, Leo sighed and flopped backward on the bed, narrowly avoiding spilling his mimosa all over it. “I don’t care for Patrick,” he said.

“Hello,” Win said, ignoring him. “Shit, did Paramount see Spencer’s breakdown?”

“No, no, it’s the opposite. I just got word from their people. They’re sending me their offer as we speak.”

“Patrick,” Win exclaimed, falling back onto her armchair. “That’s incredible.” She glanced over at the bed. Leo had put his glass on her bedside table and curled on his side, eyes closed. She wondered if he was actually asleep or just trying to give her the illusion of privacy. It was sweet but unnecessary: Win was used to having all of her conversations with an audience of at least two people.

“I’ll read over the summary this afternoon, but it looks like they’re going to meet your quote,” Patrick said. “They suggested we all talk at eight a.m. Pacific—that’s five p.m. in France.”

He hung up without much fanfare. Patrick was averse to premature celebrations. It would be months before they’d know if their instincts had paid off. The Sun Also Rises might turn out to be a flop. Win didn’t think so, though.

She set her phone and her drink down, rubbing her hands across her face. It had worked. Everything was working.

“God,” she said.

Leo hadn’t stirred. He’d kicked his shoes off without her noticing, but aside from that he was fully dressed. His chest was rising and falling evenly, and his head was tucked in, chin curling downward.

Win felt like she was cradling the good news in her hands, a warm ball of light. She felt validated for the first time since the breakup. It was proof that every accusation Nathan Spencer had leveled at her in front of a host of delighted cameras—control freak, workaholic, narcissist—had been worth it. It was worth being called all of those things, if she got to feel triumph like this. She had a sudden impulse to call Nathan up and tell him. But Leo was right in front of her. He had never needed convincing.

She lay down on the bed next to him, with a good gap of space between them. The dip of the mattress made Leo’s eyes squint open.

“Everything okay?” he murmured.

“Good,” she said. “Really good.”

“Mmm.” Leo sighed, eyes closing again, and Win thought he was asleep until he said, “I wish we had known each other as kids. I was lonely sometimes. It would have been good to have you.”

Win didn’t respond, and Leo drifted off again. She’d rest for a little while, let the mimosas wear off, take a shower and prep for the call. The room was filled with a sultry afternoon heat, and the familiar sound of Leo’s breathing. Win closed her eyes.

It was sweet that he meant it, that he thought the connection between them would have snapped as taut and immediate as ever. That if they’d met at sixteen when Leo was a rich white boy at a Swiss boarding school and Win was a British Asian girl from the suburbs of London with one weirdo friend and a dead dad, they would still have recognized one another as allies, as partners.

It was a nice image, but it was so divorced from the reality of their lives and the differences between them that it made Win wonder what else about her he’d resolved into such a nice, tidy image. Leo saw their lives so simply, he understood his own privilege so simply. He saw racism or money or power as monsters that you only had to name in order to banish, and once you had, your core remained unaffected, your heart still true. He saw their backgrounds as backdrops they could walk away from, rather than stakes in the ground that they had grown up around, that twisted them into the shapes they were today.

Talking to Leo was sometimes like shouting over a giant gulf that gaped between them that Leo thought was just a crack in the pavement. He thought he could lean forward and offer his hand and guide Win lightly across. But Win wasn’t even sure she wanted to be on the other side.

The dry, awful taste in her mouth woke her up, and she opened her eyes, closed them again, opened them, squinting, each movement painful and sluggish. Her eyelashes felt heavy with grit, her eyelids glazed with sleep.

Leo lay closer, turned toward her now. He’d gotten slightly sunburned, the bridge of his nose pink. Win stared at him, too tired to move her head, sure that she shouldn’t close her eyes again. They’d curled in close, though they weren’t touching, their knees brought up, their bodies forming a loose horseshoe.

Everything felt golden and preserved, like they’d been dipped in amber while they slept. It would be easy to forget the time or day or year, easier still to roll over and move into the circle of Leo’s arms, let him throw his leg over her hip and pull her in close. They’d shared a bed before: when they were in the same suite, dozing off in front of bad Mafia movies and Elvis films, waking up to a blue screen and a busy schedule; or staying at a holiday villa with a bunch of other industry people, where they lay awake analyzing everyone else in whispers that got meaner and funnier as the night went on. And, of course, that first week in New York, poured on top of each other, her nose stuck in his armpit, or his cheek against her stomach, working themselves into new shapes and molds so that even the moment of reaching when they woke up could be avoided.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and then another, accompanied by Emil calling, “Whitman?”

“Mrgh,” Leo said. “Whassit.”

Win gave a huge, bone-cracking yawn. She could feel a headache threatening, looming like humidity.

Leo blinked open his eyes. “We fell asleep,” he said, sounding confused.

Win ignored him. She pushed up onto her elbows.

“Whitman, it’s five o’clock,” Emil said through the door.

“Shit.” Win touched her hand, very lightly, to her forehead.

“Come back,” Leo said. He stretched out an arm. She looked down at him, the light muscle along his upper arm, the soft drape of his shirt over his chest. She thought about falling back onto him and turning her face into the line of his throat. His eyes were half-closed like a snake’s. He mumbled, “I need to talk to you.”

“Shit, I’m late,” Win said. Her brain had started to catch up with her now. She said again, louder this time, “I’m late. Emil, I’ll be out in two seconds. Can you tell Patrick I’m almost there?”

“On it,” Emil called back.

Win half crawled off the bed and stopped, when Leo took hold of her arm. He’d closed his eyes as though he’d fallen back to sleep, but his grip on her wrist was firm and sure.

“What,” Win said.

“What,” he repeated, opening his eyes properly and frowning up at her. He shook his head and let go of her wrist. “Sorry. I wanted to— I need to tell you something.”

“I need to take this call,” Win said.

Leo had pulled himself up now and was leaning toward her. There was something incongruous in his expression.

“Meet me for dinner after, then.”

Win shook her head. “I’ll probably be busy until late. I got that role we wanted.”

“That’s…” Leo rubbed at his forehead. They were both hungover. “That’s great, Win, I’m really happy for you. Can you meet me when you’re done? We could grab drinks somewhere.”

“We’re not going out today,” Win reminded him. “We can talk tomorrow, we’ll both be at the photo shoot all day.”

“But so will everyone else,” Leo said.

“Whitman,” Emil called again.

Win stared at Leo a moment longer, then went and opened the door.