Wednesday evening

click here to be bored with further pictures 

(it's something to do at the LBF during a cancelled appointment)

I'm watching the door in a gallery in Chelsea.  There are two waiters circling with drinks that I can't yet face, and tiny, wonderful canapes that, unusually, I am not waylaying as the emerge from the kitchen.  The exhibition is of a Japanese artist with huge smoky, hinged panels on which are painted fantastical creatures and in front of a pair of Kimodo Dragons, matched like inkblots on a Roschach test breathing into each others mouths, a table has been set up with an ominously empty chair.  When I'm not looking at it nervously, I'm watching the door.

I am incredibly anxious, and I suddenly ask myself, who am I waiting for?  Audrey is here.  Her daughter and her assistant Ryan, a tall, sweet faced boy with a complexion so soft and creamy you feel you could dip your finger into it, are both here, and then Ryan's boyfriend Scott turns up, looking like an American Nico (you Pedants will appreciate the comparison) - same upswept hair and a pencil tie.  Audrey's cousins come in from New Jersey and, then Luis, the most beautiful man in New York arrives, and I am still clenching and unclenching my fists which don't yet contain a glass, so at least there's no blood.  I smile and kiss - Americans only do it once, and so I'm continually leaning my cheek in for the second and they've already walked off,.  I find myself looking again towards the doorway which is dark now and filled only with a person holding a clipboard.  And then it hits me with a flood of dismay.  I'm waiting for my husband to arrive.  But since he's now the ex, of course, he isn't coming.  It's just me.

Behind a barricade of spirits, a waiter is pouring champagne into flutes.  I take one.

And a deep breath.