The Benefactor Read online

  Instead she turned the dance into an opportunity. Henry’s rhythm was in tune with the music, following it. But her feet moved before his. Every so often she would deliberately swerve away from the direction she thought he would take, to watch him react as he stumbled and tried to regain control.

  She’d been to this club many times since moving to New York six months ago, knew the owners, could have drawn a floor plan of it from memory. This summer they had begun inviting her in during the day to escape the blistering heat, drinking tall beers, smoking joints as they prepared the place for opening. Always taking the vinyl-topped stool with the biggest rip in it. Discussing the community and their shared fears about its longevity. She’d been surprised, flattered, as a relative newcomer, to find herself included in these conversations.

  No matter how hard he tried to appear comfortable in this environment, Martha couldn’t place Henry’s avoidant gaze or his quivering, stiff mannerisms in here so naturally. It was as though somebody had forced him to come here and dance gracefully with a woman at gunpoint. The common rules of attraction didn’t apply: she would explore him a little more, wait for him to truly slip up and then judge accordingly.

  She wished she could have seen him interact more with his colleagues. Then she would have been able to gauge better what her intuition had already tilted towards.

  ‘How am I not like the others?’ he continued. ‘You were going to tell me.’

  ‘I was? Well, let’s see. You’ve put too much thought into what you’re wearing. Nobody throws on those brogues and those trousers by accident. The Beatles hair—too long or not long enough, depending on the situation. I get the feeling some part of you knows what it’s doing, but there’s another part holding back. I can’t tell what the balance is exactly. Or whether you’ve got it right. And the worst part of that is you know what to do, deep down.’

  He must have been stung. Still, he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

  ‘Aha,’ he said. ‘And you dress like that because you need the attention.’

  She grimaced, against her will. ‘Sure. How else would you carve out a name for yourself in this business? They called me and the other two women at my old law firm the witch coven, and that was only when they were being friendly.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. What would you like to be doing, in ten years?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘So all you can hope for is that it’ll be better.’

  The quartet came to the end of their performance with a flourish. Henry and Martha broke apart and joined in the applause. She liked seeing her hat on him. When Martha took out a joint, he lit it for her.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he said.

  ‘No, I feel like we should go to my place. Around the corner—Jane Street. There’s a chardonnay open. I can tell you some more about yourself, if you’d like.’

  Henry took off her hat and put it back on her head.

  HIS memory didn’t stretch much further. It was a difficult business, straightening out what had happened, separating truth from speculation. Deciding what deserved to be emphasised, what would speak loudest.

  He highlighted the few paragraphs he’d managed to type, his finger hovering over the delete key. He thought of the people who would read it, the permanent impression it would beat into their memories.

  June 1986, he typed in place of these paragraphs—he would think of a punchier opening sentence later. And it was my first month in New York, the big city I’d always dreamed of. Moved from Boston to help my old buddy Kurt Wilder with his new magazine, Look Closer. Plenty of pressure to succeed in those days, to prove what we were made of. I was there to win. Kurt gave me one piece of advice, the day we started working together, over lunch at the Four Seasons at that table in the Grill Room they always had reserved for him, right between Si Newhouse and Barry Diller—if I remember correctly, Ron Perelman was behind us. He sat me down on this beautiful Brno chair, ordered us three dozen oysters, and he said to me, ‘Listen, Calder. There’s no harm in doing well. Know your talents and stick to them.’ I took that to heart.

  He was happy with this opening—even though it felt wrong to quote verbatim from a conversation he could barely remember, and even though it needed padding, which he would add later. It made 1986 seem like a simpler time.

  He wasn’t going to include anything about Martha—not until he had to. He signed off for the day. Out the window, the skyline began brightening against thick November cloud. A helicopter flew over Jersey City, making its way down the Hudson, leaning into the horizon—blinking its solitary light at him.

  He finished the whisky he’d poured himself an hour ago and considered opening a bottle of wine. One bottle split so naturally between two that diving into it alone felt wrong. Someone had told him when he was young—his father, or his sister, Christine?—that drinking was all very well, so long as you kept your dignity. Whichever of them had said it, the advice had doubled back. His father had died swiftly from liver failure. He didn’t want to think about that. Christine, by way of contrast, was a self-diagnosed alcoholic who’d found therapy and God after falling asleep at the wheel in the late eighties with her two young sons in the back seat. The boys were unhurt, and Christine had escaped with a scar on her forehead. Faded over time, though it showed up from certain angles if she hadn’t applied enough make-up.

  Henry thought as he paced the room about how long it had been since he last spoke to his sister (too long for her, not long enough for him, as always), and then went to put on a record, as if hurrying to change the subject in a conversation with himself. Miles Davis. The soundtrack to Ascenseur pour l’échafaud. It didn’t work. The sparse trumpet conspired with the emptiness, he felt, rather than muting it. The record blew around like a mound of dust.

  He couldn’t stay here.

  As he was preparing to leave, wrapping himself in overcoat and scarf, Henry caught sight of himself in the dark window. He couldn’t wear his thin, grey hair as he had in the eighties, in the don’t-give-a-damn mop of his recollection.

  A devilish rogue had once occupied this same mirror image. He would have reached in and hoisted that kid out, if he could have. It wasn’t so long ago, but his memories of that life felt like the fragments of a long, broken dream he’d just woken up from.

  The clack of his heels sent the pigeons scurrying across the cobblestones. Washington Square Park had always been dirty. Even now, long after the global elite had moved in and made this part of town their own, the homeless still wheeled their jumble of possessions around the fountain in shopping carts. The trash bins still overflowed, the rats still picked at discarded pizza slices, the lawns were still worn out from too many pairs of feet. That was why Henry preferred to look up, not down. He could make out a few of the skyscrapers from here at the start of 5th Avenue—famous spires piercing the low cloud, flanked by forgotten seventies boxes, all aligned precisely on their blocks.

  In front of the triumphal arch, Henry slowed his impatient stride to watch the jazz band playing on the corner, as he often did. Not so interesting today. He couldn’t help thinking that lately New York had grown staid, stolid. This band had been here, in its different forms, for decades. Their tune was familiar. But it didn’t so much conjure a specific memory as an irreconcilable tangle of them.

  The music followed him, the notes drifting around the park listlessly, lost on their way to somewhere better. The saxophonist had broken off into a solo, pushing each note to its limit, trying to burst it.

  Henry walked up Fifth. His destination was a wine bar on West 8th Street. The perks of becoming a regular hadn’t been so clear to him as a young man—he’d always forced himself to go somewhere different, to avoid the familiar—but tonight they would have a place saved for Mr Calder, whether or not it was busy.

  And a busy night it was, and all couples. Henry took the last free stool and waited for Beth, the bartender, to finish her conversation with a man in a baggy dinner jacket
. The man had a wife, a tan lioness of a woman with big white teeth and a blue satin blouse. Age hadn’t been generous to her, Henry thought. Not that he was in any position to judge. The woman said something about how bored she was and how badly she wanted to be working the tables at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, and why weren’t there any decent casinos in New York state? Her voice took on the whole room, daring anyone to stare at her.

  Martha and Henry had never been to this bar together—it had opened since. They’d once gone to all sorts of places, walking Zagat guides that they were. Foie gras and truffle-stuffed chicken at the NoMad. Sea urchin pasta at Perla. Babbo, Minetta Tavern, Mas, the Pearl Oyster Bar. Outside at Pitti on summer Sundays. Their favourite places had been many degrees cooler than this one, a bar that aspired to chic but didn’t quite attain it. The fit-out was almost slick, the glassware and the chilling systems all new and expensive, suggesting the owner was gambling on success. But he would never have brought Martha here.

  A few factors normally led him to a new spot—recommendations, reviews, an enticing interior design. Fitting none of these criteria, this bar simply happened to be close to home. And nobody from his old social sphere was likely to end up here. Not by choice.

  With effort, Henry could make Martha appear there next to him, in the lioness’s place, her hair tied off in a topknot. Wearing the leather jacket most women her age were neither brave nor slender enough to pull off. Faded jeans, rolled up to the calf.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  The impatient voice cut through Henry’s reverie. He was dismayed to find that it belonged to a new bartender, one he hadn’t seen before. Her hands were braced against the bar, her knuckles rapping on it. She had a nose-ring, hair cut in a short bob with squared-off bangs that made her face seem heavier-set than it was. The skin on her nose was rough, and around her eyes it was an undulation of raised, dark marks. Her off-white plaid shirt was too big for her frame, one cuff rolled up while the other drooped over calloused, cracked fingers. She stared at Henry, challenging him.

  ‘Where’s Beth?’ he asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Where’s the young lady who usually serves me?’

  Henry knew Beth’s parents, though the connection was tenuous at best. He’d talked to them occasionally at industry parties, nothing more than that. But Beth knew how important he was, and Henry drew some satisfaction from it.

  ‘I can take your order,’ the new bartender said. ‘Do you know what you want?’

  ‘No. How about giving me a minute?’

  ‘Sure.’

  And with that she was gone.

  As a seasoned New Yorker, Henry had received worse service, no question. But he didn’t expect outright apathy—not here. He should have been given a new wine to try, or at least been asked how his day was going. In that moment the illusion fell away, ugly details leaping out from nowhere: the water spilt on the bar, crumbs that hadn’t been wiped up, a child running around between the tables, bored, unchecked.

  No sense in letting the young woman’s churlishness spoil his evening, he thought. Better to push on as though the exchange had never happened. That was what Martha would have done.

  ‘How about now?’

  The same voice, the same young woman. This time Henry felt less equable.

  ‘The malbec.’

  ‘Which one? We have a few.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve tried most of them. Beth gives me the one from Napa Valley. It’s the main reason I come here—can’t get it anywhere else. Over there on the top shelf.’

  She searched for the bottle, taking a hesitant step onto the library ladder. Henry saw through the young woman’s cape-like shirt, cut off completely beneath the armpits, to her bra. A tattoo wound up her ribcage: a feather that appeared to be dissolving into a bird.

  She poured the esoteric malbec without giving Henry the opportunity to read the label or test the new bottle. A big glass, bigger than it needed to be—what some might have mistaken for generosity striking Henry instead as carelessness. If he’d been her boss, he would have noted how many dollars they lost on each oversized pour.

  He swirled the glass then took a mouthful and spent a while contemplating its palate. Expressive, chewy. Concentrated violet, plum, Christmas cake. Medium-plus finish. Warm and comforting as coming home from a long trip.

  ‘You like this one?’ Henry said to the new bartender.

  ‘I haven’t tried it.’

  ‘You should.’

  Her indifference couldn’t have been clearer. He wished he could communicate how important it was to have these sensory experiences, how they added up to compose a beautiful gallery of paintings in the memory, which she would be able to dip into at will.

  That didn’t explain why drinking this wine today felt like examining a grainy facsimile of the other paintings.

  ‘You alone there?’

  These words came from the lioness, whose husband had left for the restroom. Her deep New Jersey drawl stretched the question out of all proportion.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Trying to enjoy my wine.’ He sounded cantankerous, and it upset him. ‘I’m sorry. Been a bad day—not in the mood to talk.’

  The lioness caught the bartender’s eye, not really trying to be subtle about it. Two strangers sharing a non-verbal conversation about him—he’d forgotten how much he disliked that kind of attention, the implications it threw up.

  ‘So you’ve had a bad day, you’re drinking alone at a bar and you don’t want to talk. That’s bananas.’ She eyed the band on his finger. ‘What does the wife think?’

  ‘She’d understand.’

  ‘Haven’t we met somewhere before?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on. You’re Henry Calder. I knew it. We met at the NMAs a few years ago. Don’t you remember? You wouldn’t stop talking to me. Where have you been hiding?’ Then her face fell, understanding and pitying. Henry wondered what she’d heard.

  He hadn’t been recognised in a long time, and it didn’t help that he couldn’t place this woman. The National Magazine Awards. Her would have been nominated for its photography. His magazine was precisely the sort of luxurious glossy that would appeal to the lioness and the rest of her demographic.

  By the time he remembered who she was it was already too late: a columnist at a rival publication. Her name? Lost to the tidal flow of them. He couldn’t be sure what had happened during the awards after-party, but he wondered if it had reflected well on either of them.

  ‘So you’ll know I’ve left the magazine,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t heard.’ Of course she had. ‘I’m sure that was the right decision. Shame Her lost its edge—used to be so forward-thinking. I see you haven’t changed one bit, though. Still know how to rock a scarf. What is it, Gucci? Margiela? So dapper.’

  Henry tried not to bristle at this. His favourite scarf, pulled up in a false knot, bulged against his chest. Beige silk. A hint of gold showing up under these lights, perhaps. Tassels. Too ostentatious, if he was honest.

  ‘Honey,’ the lioness said as her husband returned, reaching out to take his arm. ‘This is Henry Calder. You remember, he used to edit Her?’

  The husband did something worth knowing about: his air of impatience said so. Wall Street, advertising, partner at a big law firm, perhaps. A few months ago Henry might have made the effort to impress these people.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you, Henry,’ the man said.

  ‘Yeah, pleasure.’

  ‘What are you working on these days?’

  ‘New projects. Nothing definite yet.’

  ‘I see. Well, all the best. We’re due at a gallery opening.’

  ‘Fancy running into you,’ the lioness said. ‘You were such a star back in the day.’

  Henry shook her hand with a fraction of his usual grip, feeling hers slip away like silk.

  Before he could beat himself up for not inventing a new project on the spot, Beth appeared before him w
ith a cheese plate—which he’d stopped bothering to order when they began bringing it out on schedule. He relaxed as he thanked her. This was what he needed—for someone to anticipate his needs. It kept things ticking along.

  Beth had big, brawny arms and wore her hair swept up in a pompadour. Her glasses were heavy and horn-rimmed, worn for show, Henry suspected, not because she needed them. She was good at her job: attentive without being obsequious, judging when to interact and when to back off.

  ‘Where did you find this new girl?’ he said. ‘She’s brought an attitude with her.’

  ‘Who, Maggie? I told you about her last week. She’s the artist with the gallery show in Chelsea. Mixed media—painting, sculpture, photography, some video. Don’t you remember? I mentioned I’d hooked her up with this job so she could pay rent on her studio.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’m sorry you’re not getting on. She can be abrasive sometimes, and she’s new to this. I’ll talk to her.’

  ‘So she’s the one with the ridiculous pseudonym,’ he said. ‘What was it, Mary Magdalene?’

  ‘Sister Magdalene. Trust me, she’ll grow on you—she’s wild.’

  ‘That seems unlikely—she’s not going to last here long enough for me to get to know her. That’s not my opinion—that’s a statement of fact.’

  A statement of fact. Conclusions came so easily to the New York elite, when they thought they’d seen it all. Maggie had to restrain herself from going over and giving him a piece of her mind, reminding him that she (everyone) needed a break when they were raking in the minimum wage—and a smattering of conservative tips from men who’d chosen to ignore the common shift from ten to fifteen percent.

  Instead she watched from the other end of the bar as Beth turned on her ready charm with this old man. She’d met plenty of New Yorkers cut from the same SoHo boutique cloth—a liberal in name only, tolerant in his own imagination, impatient and crotchety when anybody broke from the script he’d written for them.

  Wife and kids must have been waiting at home, perhaps in Westchester or Jersey. He would call them an hour from now—snowed under at work, he would say. Too late to get the train. Staying overnight in their city apartment. Again. Whether or not the wife believed him, the mutually beneficial response would have to be one of acceptance. And in that he would take satisfaction, pride.