i've got it all.

maybe it was the ten foot tall sculpture of dead rats glued together, but she was beginning to feel very strange. she was on her first date with gabriel at the saatchi gallery and she was sure that there wouldnt be another (though actually there would be one more- he would come to her loft with his nearly mute cousin and they would gulp down vinegary wine at a dark pub across the street before she told him it just wasnt going to work, before she told him to loosen his grip on her as he was hugging her goodnight, stabbing hard kisses on her neck and cheeks). they had met at the club on her campus; after a few pints of beer she felt like stirring something up and walked up to his table, where he was surrounded by equally awkward looking paint-stained-hands artist types, and told him she liked his jacket. which she didnt- it was ripped up patches of denim and canvas and pin-stripe messily sewn together and splattered with images like sid vicious's face.
i like your jacket, she said as she made a teepee with her fingers on their sticky table.
his thinning blond hair was cut at a jagged angle and his eyes stuck out from his head. he wasnt cute, just to clarify. but he looked interesting, and as i've already told you, she was in the mood to stir something up. he looked at his friends and then at her and said, with an expression that exploded off of his face,
mine?
and then a week later on a cold grey day in feburary they were at the saatchi gallery laughing at the wax tourists placed strategically around the museum, scaring the shit out of them at every turn. as they were standing next to each other looking at a piece he would lean into her, sometimes more violently than others, and though after the 17th time she felt he needed a new trick, it was charming at first. she was enjoying herself despite the strange feeling; she was mostly enjoying how desparately he was enjoying her (which, as you know, isnt a strange way to feel).
oh they kissed that night at the club, i forgot that part. though she was there with someone she was already sort of involved with, in a peripheral but still extremely insidious way. and gabriel kept walking up to her, after the jacket comment but before the kiss, and she would look over at the peripheral boy and roll her eyes, just to ensure he understood that she was being courted and could take it or leave it, really. and though she pretended to be irritated by his incessant attention, as he was leaving she snuck into the stairwell with him and let him engulf her. but only for a minute.
at the saatchi gallery he began making comments about valentines day. as in, "my friend has a lovely boat we could take for a go on the thames." the thought of it made her feel itchy all over, and she had no plans of ever seeing him again as i said earlier, so she would reply with something coy like, "we'll see." it was driving him mad all over the museum. she adored one of the tracey emin pieces so much that she told him he could go busy himself with something else for awhile but she had to stay there for at least ten minutes. he stood there with her the entire time, quietly too.
the picture is of a woman sitting on the floor wearing a dress with her legs spread open. there are coins and pound notes spilling out from her crotch and all in between the triangle her outstretched legs are making, and the woman, though you cant see her face is obviously gorgeous (you can tell by the line of her collarbones, the evenness of her skin, the arc of her arm). shes bent over the money, and shes collecting it, pulling it all toward her with open, hungry palms. what makes it so perfect is that you cant tell if the coins are escaping and shes trying to hold them in, or if shes found them and is trying to keep them to herself.
the name of the picture is "ive got it all."
after he kissed her ravenously on the london bridge she, keeping a taut pull the whole time, told him she had to be going, her friends were expecting her for dinner. he stroked her face and said
you know i'm mad for you.
she said, are you?
and as she began walking across the bridge to get on the tube that would take her back to her tiny loft in the east side of london, it began to snow.