by Louis Begley
Thanks for the compliment, Mike, Schmidt replied. What have I done to deserve it?
That’s a stupid question, Schmidtie! Are you trying to prove I’m wrong? You want to know what you’ve done? Let me tell you. You put on a real class act for those directors. Pas de problème. They were wowed. The question is: does it matter what those guys think? They’re just WASPs in suits I put on the board to make the foundation look good. Holbein is something else. He’s smart, and let me tell you he was impressed.
Holbein was the secretary of the foundation and so far as Schmidt could tell the secretary or vice president of everything Mike Mansour owned, a factotum so entrenched and so Machiavellian that Schmidt occasionally permitted himself to wonder whether Mike himself was not under his employee’s occult control.
How did you deserve the compliment? Mr. Mansour continued. You gave a lecture on the political and economic situation in eight countries you’ve never been to before and the condition of my Life Center in each. You never once looked at your notes, and you didn’t make a fool of yourself. Or of me, because I hired you. They all believe you know what you’re talking about. Even Holbein!
Schmidt repressed the urge to ask whether Mr. Mansour was among the believers. He had learned that the answer would be the truth as Mike saw it, unmitigated by any trace of tact or desire to spare his interlocutor’s feelings, and once you had heard it you had better be ready to live with it. Yes, it was true that he had spoken without notes, but he had written an outline of what he wanted to say on a yellow legal pad during the flight from Paris and afterward had silently rehearsed the presentation he was going to make. That was no more and no less than what he had done in preparation for countless client meetings at which he had led his clients, executives of the insurance companies and their in-house lawyers, through the structure of an investment and the risks it entailed. But there was a difference: during this presentation, and afterward, when he answered the directors’ questions, he had been on autopilot. His mind had been elsewhere. That had never happened when he was in practice, however urgently personal problems had pressed on him or how badly he was suffering from lack of sleep or, in the sixties and early seventies, from a hangover, the effect of those dinners Mary and he and his married contemporaries took turns giving, at which nightcaps of scotch or snifters of cognac were de rigueur and followed the ingestion of a large quantity of red wine, Chinon or Côte du Rhône, greater than he was likely to drink in a week these days. He had luxuriated, allowing his thoughts to dwell on Alice and the plan he was hatching. It was to make in May, probably mid-May, a follow-up visit to the Centers in Warsaw and in Prague. The reason? On his way home he would stop in Paris and see Alice! The secret knowledge had made his heart pound. He had already, before the meeting, obtained Mr. Mansour’s approval for the project. Did he need it? Certainly not, he was perfectly able to pay his own round-trip airfare to Paris, in whatever class he chose, and his other expenses including a hotel room perhaps not quite so grand as the suite Mike put at his disposal. But a lifelong habit of traveling at clients’ expense played its role—even Mary, he remembered, had liked to time their occasional trips to Europe so that they coincided with the Frankfurt Book Fair that she attended as a matter of course as one of her publishing house’s representatives or some other, similar event that called for business travel. Yet another reason made Mike Mansour’s blessing desirable. A quirk of Schmidt’s psyche? To go to Paris on business lent structure and dignity to the Parisian escapade. He would arrive not as an old goat improbably courting his young partner’s widow but as an executive—indeed the president—of an important nonprofit on his way home, having completed a valuable mission. The thought that it would be more romantic to arrive in Paris for no other reason than wanting to be with Alice had traversed his mind as well. On balance, he preferred the mission sanctioned by his friend and chairman.
Are you spending the night in the city? Mr. Mansour inquired as they were leaving the foundation’s office. Schmidt looked at his watch. It was a quarter past three. By the time he had rented a car and gotten going, the traffic out to the Island would be murderous. He wasn’t up to it. Yes, he answered, I’ll stay at the apartment the foundation has so thoughtfully provided and head for Bridgehampton tomorrow morning.
He was truly grateful for the pied-à-terre on Park Avenue, which had not been called for by his contract with the foundation and was, instead, one more example of Mike Mansour’s quirky munificence. But Schmidt had more to be grateful for that day. Speechless joy had overcome him the previous evening when he arrived from the airport at close to eleven, exhausted and feeling strangely dehydrated, although he had drunk bottle after bottle of water. A huge bunch of white and purple lilacs stood in a vase on the living room coffee table, and next to the vase was a note scribbled on a smiley Post-it. It read These are from your garden. It was signed Guess Who! Carrie. Even without the signature he wouldn’t have doubted that it was she, with her unalloyed affection and natural grace, who had been responsible for that welcome. He hoped only that it had been one of Mike Mansour’s security men who had driven the offering from the country, and not she. Pregnant as she was, she shouldn’t be hopping into her little BMW to make the round-trip from Bridgehampton.
Another smart idea, said Mr. Mansour. You are becoming a real Jew. Is your car here?
Schmidt shook his head. I got here from Paris late yesterday evening.
Pas de problème. If you had your car here, Manuel—that was Mike’s manservant—would drive it back to the beach. But this is simpler. You’ll come with me in the helicopter. Manuel will pick you up. Take off at twelve, early lunch at my house, and after lunch I send you home. You know the Cannings? Joe and Caroline?
Yes, Schmidt knew them. He had been at the dinner party Elaine and Gil Blackman had given before Christmas, an event distinguished by that little prick Canning’s baiting of Mike Mansour, whom he was meeting for the first time, and Mike’s manifest appreciation of Caroline’s looks and chic.
We’re having dinner together tonight, Mr. Mansour continued. At Fabien’s. You want to come as my guest? I wouldn’t have asked Canning if I could have invited the wife alone, but for the time being the price of admission is having him around. For the time being—Mr. Mansour hummed an air Schmidt did not identify—for the time being.
Fabien’s was a French restaurant on the Upper East Side that had risen to prominence, indeed, if one were to believe the Times’s inane reigning food critic, to the pinnacle of world gastronomy. Schmidt disliked it, having been obliged with some frequency to have dinner there with Mary and her star authors. Decorated in what he called Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel style, it managed to combine exorbitant prices with cheeky and inept service and offered a menu so complicated that Schmidt had trouble finding anything on it he wanted to eat. As for the clientele, a majority consisted of beefy men, hardly in need of a meal rich in animal fat and cream, and their bimbos, whose high-pitched voices reduced Schmidt to sulking silence. No, he was full of truly warm feelings for Mike, but the prospect of having dinner with him and the Cannings à quatre at that place made him want to go on a hunger strike. It was in fact astonishing that Mike’s plan had been to dine with those two alone. Could he intend to slip Joe a Mickey Finn, and spirit Caroline to his penthouse? Or would someone like Holbein and wife—Holbein surely had a wife—be on hand to complete the table? No, that would not be an improvement, not from Schmidt’s point of view.
I wish I felt up to it, he replied, but the old jet lag is going to hit me hard. I had better get some rest this evening. We’ll catch up tomorrow.
Suit yourself.
That was Mike Mansour’s favorite response when an offer of his had been turned down, and almost always it was the harbinger of a stinging reprisal. And so it was this time.
Though it’s too bad. I have Enzo Errera and his girlfriend joining us; I thought you’d like them. It would have been a good occasion for you and Enzo to bond. Afterward you could see him when yo
u liked, on your own, without waiting for an invitation from me.
How annoyingly right he was! Schmidt would have liked to have that opportunity, not only because he admired the great pianist but also because he was beginning to think that if his incredible luck held, and Alice came to live with him, or even only spent long periods of time in Bridgehampton and New York, he had better have a circle of friends and potential houseguests who might amuse her and make up for whatever she would be missing in Paris. Gil Blackman and Elaine were great, but who else was there? No one. Why did fate condemn him to look into the mouth of every horse that Mike offered, to underestimate and reject him and his gifts? The vestige of something he would have called his good manners held him back from saying, Oh, in that case, Mike, I’ll take a short nap as soon as I get home and join you at the restaurant. Instead he said, I hope you’ll give me a rain check, watched Mr. Mansour get into his vast black Rolls, waved good-bye to him, and walked home. Eight blocks translated into ten minutes: early enough to catch Alice before she went to bed. But there was no answer. He let the phone ring until the answering machine switched on, and left a message. Please call me at my New York number. He had written it out for her, together with his number in the country, his cell phone, and his e-mail address. To be on the safe side, he gave her the number again slowly and repeated it digit by digit. Then he undressed and got under the covers.
It was after six—midnight her time—when he woke up. She hadn’t called. He made himself a cup of tea, shaved, took a bath, and waited. Seven o’clock—nothing. A quick look at the television told him the death toll in Oklahoma City was climbing. Seven-thirty, and still nothing. She had said—he couldn’t remember apropos of what—that dinner parties in Paris started late and broke up very late. Often people didn’t sit down at table before ten. All the same, her not answering at one-thirty in the morning seemed strange. It was close to eight by the time he was ready to go out. Could she have come home and gone to bed without checking her messages? At that late hour, it did not seem impossible; she would have felt sleepy. He knew that the telephone could not be heard in Madame Laure’s room so that if he called again he wouldn’t be disturbing her. If Alice was asleep, she would forgive him. He dialed the number and let it ring five, six times, and hung up. Had she perhaps gone to Antibes? There had been no mention of it, but something might have come up. Perhaps her father wasn’t well. He went into the kitchen, poured himself a stiff bourbon on the rocks and drank it avidly. There were graham crackers and cashews in the cupboard and nothing else. If he wanted to have dinner—he had begun to feel hungry—and wanted to have it at his club he had better hurry. The sky had clouded over. He took his raincoat and an umbrella and rushed out of the apartment.
Contrary to habit—unless the distance was forbidding or it was raining hard, he liked walking in the city, and the thirty-five-block distance to his club was just right—Schmidt took a taxi. In fact, he needn’t have hurried. His friend, the hall porter, assured him that this being a busy night the kitchen wasn’t about to close; there was even time for him to have a drink at the bar. But Schmidt felt his strength flag. He was feeling the jet lag he’d used as an excuse without believing in it. Deciding to skip his predinner gin martini, he climbed the second flight of stairs to the dining room. The maître d’hôtel was also a friend and greeted him like a returning prodigal son. Yes, it was a busy night, so busy that they had put some members and their guests into the members-only dining room, but there was no one at the long table reserved for members. He suggested that Mr. Schmidt have dinner at a table for two in the main dining room. It was more animated. Although club custom, which he liked to uphold, called for members dining alone to sit at the long table even if no one else was there, because any moment another solitary member might materialize, Schmidt acquiesced. Rafael was a good man, trying to be nice. Why hurt his feelings? Besides, it had occurred to him that it would be interesting to see who—members and guests—was to be found in the main dining room, in which he hardly ever set foot. In fact, he hadn’t used it since a disastrous lunch—two? three? years ago—with Charlotte’s mother-in-law, Dr. Renata Riker, the dreaded shrink. The memory of that woman’s duplicity and gall distracted him momentarily from his worries about Alice. Imagine inviting herself to lunch with him and during the meal handing him a copy of the tape her sneaky son Jonathan had made of a telephone conversation between him, Schmidt, and his own daughter! The daughter who was then that man’s paramour but not yet his wife. He had pushed the tape away with all the indignation and scorn it merited and hadn’t forgotten the outrage or forgiven Renata or Jon. As for Myron Riker, Renata’s shrink husband and Jon’s father, he was the only member of that awful family to have any merit: he mixed a first-rate gin martini and mostly kept his mouth shut. No, he wasn’t about to breach the armistice between him and Charlotte, but the past couldn’t be erased, certainly not the accusation Charlotte had hurled at him during the taped conversation, the vicious lie designed to hurt. How could she have come up with it? “Aggressive when feeling guilty” had been the bland rationalization offered by Renata the shrink. But even if accurate, that description of the mechanism of Charlotte’s behavior left unexplained and incomprehensible the lie itself, the claim that in his law firm he had been known to one and all as a Jew-baiting anti-Semite. What abyss of ignominy had she dredged to concoct it?
The waiter standing at his right elbow brought him back to the present. He glanced rapidly at the menu and wrote out his order on the chit. Examining the wine list he found that none of the half bottles of red were to his taste; he shrugged and put down the number corresponding to a full bottle. Perhaps it would bring him the uninterrupted night’s sleep he needed. What was left over could go into a sauce or be savored by the kitchen staff. These tasks done, he looked around the room and waved to members he knew whose eyes he was able to catch. Among them, two tables away, was Lew Brenner dining with his wife. Lew not only waved back but rose from his table and invited Schmidt to join them. They had just ordered their dinner, and there was room for Schmidtie at their table. Tina would be so happy! Advances, technological and social, never ceased to fascinate Schmidt. He had been a member of this particular club for more than twenty years, without it ever having occurred to him that Lew might want to become a member or be invited to join. His election must have happened recently. Good for Lew, who seemed entirely at ease, and, Schmidt supposed, good for the club.
I would love to join you, he told Lew. It’s very kind of you to think of it.
It couldn’t be helped. When two W & K partners got together, even if a wife was present, shoptalk took the place of conversation, its flow facilitated first by the bottle of Bordeaux Schmidt had ordered and then by Lew’s Burgundy. Accordingly, after paying their respects briefly to the Oklahoma City victims and expressing their horror at the monstrous criminal act, they passed in review the recent missteps of Jack DeForrest, still the presiding partner, important additions to the client roster and to whom among the partners they could be attributed, the financial results of the first quarter, and the probable candidates for partnership during the election, which had been moved from the traditional year-end to June, and the candidates’ chances of success. Then they drew a deep breath.
I’ve just been in Paris, said Schmidt. I saw something of Alice Verplanck.
It was out, and it couldn’t be helped. He wanted to say her name, to feel it form on his lips. What a hard time she’s had, he added, thinking that this was the most anodyne statement he could make and yet avoid sounding brusque. It would have been easier not to have been told that Lew knew all about Tim’s homosexuality and death of AIDS.
Oh yes, Lew replied, a tragedy. We followed it step by step. Tina used to say I had to get it out of my mind, but how could I? I’ve got to hand it to Alice. She was very decent throughout, but without Bruno.…
His voice trailed off, and he seemed atypically at a loss for words.
Brenner was a good man, in Schmidt’s opinion, an
d had been a good partner. He wasn’t going to play games with him. Therefore he said: Lew, I heard a good deal about what happened to Tim from Alice. She told me. I guess Tina knows all about it?
The possibility that if he said anything more he might become guilty of a gross indiscretion had suddenly crossed Schmidt’s mind.
Oh, I do! He told me before he talked to Lew, Tina interjected, during a weekend when Alice and he came out to stay with us in the country. He was more at ease with me. He knew from being with me on the board of the ballet that I have lots of gay friends, guys with whom I really get along. It’s a fact that gay men like nonthreatening, maternal women. So while we were on a long walk he told me how he loved Alice and the children and all that but also had this other side, which was Bruno. But I said he could talk to Lew, that Lew would understand. Later we met Bruno. What a charmer! It’s too bad he plays on the wrong team.
That’s right, Lew chimed in, he was worried about what I would say, how I would react. That was, of course, after the affair with Bruno heated up and some months before they left for Paris.
Wait, said Schmidt. You mean he told you before he left for Paris, a couple of years before Alice found out, which was after their daughter, Sophie, died in the summer of eighty-five? And you knew—Alice said only you, Lew, she didn’t mention Tina—and Alice during all that time remained ignorant?
That’s one way to look at it, Lew answered. If you stick to the admitted facts, that’s correct. He told Tina and me. We kept our mouths shut, and so did Tim and Bruno. There’s never been anything like the way those two wanted to stay in the closet and keep the door shut. Then came the tragedy with Sophie, and Alice caught them at it. Is that the whole story? To be frank with you, I don’t know any better than you whether it is, but I’ve found it difficult not to doubt it. Remember that I kept on working with Tim just as much after he moved to Paris as before, and I felt that knowing what I knew I had to watch him like a hawk to make sure that nothing happened that would spook a client. Then after he told me he’d tested HIV positive and began to have symptoms, I had to watch him like two hawks. You can imagine my concern about his emotional state, his cognitive ability, and the quality of his work. This may sound strange, considering what a great lawyer he was, and what a perfectionist! I haven’t kept up with the science, but at the time there was some concern that there could be an impact on how the brain functioned. Let me tell you, except for the ability to concentrate, which was shot once those horrible illnesses piled on, his acuity was A plus—A plus to the very end.
