Page 57 of 32 Days in May

An electric throb passes through my chest. “Confident,” I whisper back.

His hand slips higher, his thumb brushing up and over a sliver of exposed skin at my waist before dipping momentarily under the hem of my shirt. “You like it.”

“Stop.” I press my fingers into the taut planes of his stomach, feeling for where the waistband of his boxers hugs his skin just above his belt. “Or we’re going to get ourselves banned from the MTA.”

He shrugs a shoulder. “I can control myself.”

“Barely.”

“Hey.” He untangles his hand from my waist and brings his thumb to my bottom lip, a finger hooked under my chin. “We were both there last night.”

Jesus Christ. I need to physically separate from this man. My eyes are practically rolling back in my head from just a graze of his fingers over my chin, memories of last night coming rushing back to me, sweeping through my body. His firm yet gentle hold on me, the unbearable weight of his eyes watching me, the scent of his skin.

I curl my fingers around his wrist. His lips part, half a word formed as I bring my mouth to the soft, hollow skin underneath his ear.

Then, absolutely sick of our shit, the subway doors fly open and everyone shoves their way through us.

“It’s huge,” I gasp. We’re standing underneath the glass ceiling in an old, converted warehouse deep in Brooklyn. Around us, shipping containers have been stacked and converted into cellular gallery spaces for various artists. But the exhibit Marco really wanted to see hangs over our heads.

He has his film camera held up to his face, pointed right at me. My neck is tilted all the way back. Above us hang hundreds of shards of sea glass—each one ranging from the size of a penny to a hubcap—intertwined and connected like a wind chime. They split the light, splattering geometric rainbow explosions all over the floor and walls and me. Underneath them, I feel like an ant standing in the center of a spring snowfall. The last frost before everything blooms. The light warms me from the inside out, like everything has over the last few days.

“Now, there’s something I’ve never heard you say before.” Marco laughs, his camera shuttering in his hands. “Look to your left.”

I follow his instruction while letting out another over-the-top gasp. “This one’s even bigger!” A stalagmite of sea glass dangles precariously close to my head—maybe six or seven feet above me. One snapped wire and I’m done for. How thrilling.

Marco takes a few more pictures, directing me to look this way and that, to extend my arms and relax my hands, even though I complain almost continuously that I hate pictures of myself.

“These aren’t supposed to be thirst traps. You look beautiful,” Marco assures me.

I’m tempted to make a joke about how he better send them to me for my Tinder profile when this is all said and done. Just to see how he reacts.

Afterward we wander from gallery space to gallery space. I’m particularly taken with a glass artist from Emilia-Romagna who creates anal beads from recycled Murano chandeliers.

“Come on,” I beg Marco, clutching his biceps. “If we split the cost, we can both use it! It’s an investment piece.”

“No shot, Fabiola. I’m not paying two hundred dollars for something that goes in my ass when we have four perfectly good hands.”

“But it’s artisanal.” Then, I gasp. “Artis-anal.”

“I’m walking away,” he deadpans, dislodging his arm from me. “I’ll see you on the second floor,” he calls over his shoulder, tossing a two-finger salute at me.

Eventually, Marco says he wants to show me something and pulls me toward the very last gallery on the second floor, which overlooks the Hudson.

While the other makeshift exhibit spaces have logos affixed to their front window, business cards set out on little silver trays, or even have champagne flutes filled with sparkling water, this cell has only a simple black-and-white sign on an easel that reads ADAM WEST PHOTOGRAPHY.

Adam West has turned the small space into a sort of canvas. The lights have been dimmed and the walls are covered in enormous black-and-white prints, larger than most gallery-displayed photographs. Somewhere, distantly, I swear I hear ocean sounds—waves crashing and gulls. All of the galleries are freezing cold, but only in Adam’s does my skin goose-pimple.

“I recognize this one.” I point to a print that takes up the majority of the back wall. Here, the contrast and texture of the photos paired with their size make the figures within them look alive. Like they could stand up and step out of their poses. “From your apartment; it’s the same artist.”

It’s my favorite photo of all the ones Marco had on display: the two men, sleeping in their beach chairs, side by side and a world apart. The man on the left holds his lolling head up with a thick, deeply tanned fist. The man on the right is reclined, fingers intertwined over his pecs, mouth slightly agape. A placard underneath displays the title: Rest.

“Yeah.” Marco nods. He’s gone unusually quiet, camera tucked under his arm and hands deep in his pockets. “I collect his work. Do you like it?”

“Really? I love it. It’s vibey, evocative.” All of the prints in Marco’s apartment by this artist were of people sleeping; in this exhibit, West has expanded on the theme by including shots of people laughing with their eyes closed, squinting against the sun, meditating by various bodies of water. Everyone has their eyes closed. It’s powerful, strangely sexy. There’s one photo in particular I can’t stop staring at. A woman with a million freckles splattered across her face and shoulders shot from an upward angle. Her eyes are scrunched close and her unfathomably thin body twists against a cloudless sky. Her mouth is open, her jaw jutting to the side, black hair flying against a pale gray sky. She might be singing or yelling, dancing or thrashing. I reach out to her and almost run my fingers over her face.

“Did Adam inspire you to take up photography?”

Marco nods. “In a way. I discovered his work while I was in film school. I liked being behind a camera, but I didn’t like dealing with all the people.”