by Louis Begley
The color photo he received by return mail showed the lady in a see-through blouse, her breasts small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, the nipples rouged. She had large black eyes, a large and slightly hooked nose, a wide mouth, and black hair. He concluded she was of Italian extraction. She wasted no time, proposing to meet him the following week on whatever day and in whichever bar near his place he would specify, though not too late in the afternoon. She wanted to be able to catch the 9:22 to Katonah. All things weighed, he proposed the Carlyle at 5:00—why be rushed by the train schedule?—on Tuesday. She was better than he expected: not just fine breasts but a good figure and decent legs, and she struck him right away as clean. That had been a worry. He had planned to get her to bathe or shower with him before getting down to business, but it was better to have her be clean to start with. Judging by the size of her pocketbook, she had with her all she needed to repair her makeup, mascara and all. Vera was her name, and once more she wasted no time. Her scotch on the rocks drunk, she said, You don’t look like Mr. Goodbar, let’s go.
She was also in favor of washing and had brought a toothbrush and toothpaste, and in the tub, which she preferred and in which she asked him to join her, she washed his T & T (tool and testicles, she explained) and invited him to reciprocate. There was no foreplay. She lay down, raised her knees, and said clearly but nicely, Eat me, in the process coming with a good deal of noise. He had thought that she would return the favor, but she shook her head. Let’s screw first. You won’t last sixty seconds if I go down on you. Later I’ll give you head to raise you from the dead! She was right. When he proposed dinner afterward, in a trattoria on Third Avenue, she looked at the alarm clock—it was past eight—and asked if he had anything in the fridge. Just some cheese and scotch. That’s fine, she’d have a snack and be ready to hop on her train. You want to meet again? she asked. You’re OK. Just kinky enough. If I see you again, and if you’re still nice, we’ll do anal.
Over the years—she would say good-bye to him on her sixtieth birthday, allowing that she and her husband were moving the following week to Fort Lauderdale—he learned very little about her. The husband was a podiatrist with a practice in the rich suburbs successful enough to pay for the house in Bedford Hills and the second one on a Floridian canal, as well as putting a son through Cornell’s hotel management school and a daughter through Iona College—she’s a dope, Vera explained, she takes after him. Schmidt assumed that “him” was the husband. She never volunteered, and he never asked, why she wanted him to service her weekly, complaining when he was out of the country but assuring him that she hadn’t replaced him during his absences. It was an arrangement that he would have understood better if she had asked for money or expected presents, but no, when after two unsolicited “anals” he tried to show his appreciation in the form of an Hermès silk square decorated with a Greek motif, with good humor she pushed away the shopping bag containing the scarf in its box and said, Hey, your wife will like that. Save it for her. Come on, let’s fuck! We’re wasting time.
This form of friendly, unalloyed carnality was new to Schmidt, but he grew to look forward to it, the way, before Mary had forced him to resign from the Bridgehampton Country Club because it would not brook Jewish members, he had looked forward to his weekly Saturday and Sunday morning singles game with the local surgeon who beat him more often than not, thus spurring him to play better than he would have with a weaker opponent. An absurd detail: he appreciated Vera’s punctuality and, on those occasions when she agreed to have dinner afterward, her no-nonsense unvarying regimen: caprese, veal cutlet Milanese, and two cappuccinos. It was the same with wine: she never failed to drink her half of the bottle or deviated from her preference for the Piedmontese. If he allowed himself a personal question unrelated to the business at hand in bed, he was rebuffed. For instance, when he asked her if her family was Italian, she told him, It’s none of your business.
How right she was. Schmidt continued to read the personal ads in the NYRB after Vera’s retirement, but he never again launched himself into the adventure of connecting with a lady seeking companionship. He’d been so brilliantly lucky once; it was better to quit while he was ahead. Besides, the hunger that had made him restless and willing to execute his repertoire of well-worn, hardly varied, mostly grotesque moves with any woman whose body did not repel him had at last abated. Had Vera left him sated, a condition that would prove temporary? Or had he aged? It was difficult to be sure; during his tours of Life Centers it seemed inevitable that some sufficiently attractive woman—a researcher, Center employee of one grade or another, a professor lecturing under the aegis of the foundation—would give the unmistakable signal of availability. In such cases he responded and performed. Schmidt, it must be said, had progressed in savoir faire since his first couplings with Danuta. He no longer felt that a vodka or slivovitz binge was the price he had to pay for climbing on top of those ladies or letting them ride him, and he learned to bring down the curtain on sessions with them early enough to allow himself a good night’s sleep. It occurred to him that he had at last grown up.
XX
AT LUNCH en tête-à-tête in Water Mill, some months after the disastrous second visit to Sunset Hill, Schmidt heard Mr. Mansour say he’d felt for a while they should have a talk.
You’ve been busting your chops at the foundation, he told Schmidt at the end of their long review of new initiatives. Holbein says so too. Whether you know it or not, he thought it was a mistake to hand the foundation over to you. Now he says he was wrong.
That’s good to hear, replied Schmidt.
It was interesting to learn that the foundation had been handed over to him; he’d always had the impression that Holbein was spying on him and that Mike was looking over his shoulder.
So I’ve told Holbein to give you a raise and a bonus. Don’t tell me you don’t need it. You just think you have a lot of money. Let me tell you you’re wrong. You definitely need it. Pas question! I’m also putting you on the board of Mansour Industries. That’s a big job and an honor that comes with an honorarium. Ha! Ha! Ha! Don’t tell me you don’t accept. I’m telling you that you do.
Of course I accept, Mike. It’s an honor and an amazing show of confidence.
Yes. You can say that again. But that’s not really what I want to talk about. I have some other news.
Coffee had been served. Schmidt nodded when Mr. Mansour’s houseman Manuel offered to refill his cup, and it being a cold Saturday afternoon with sheets of rain obscuring the swollen surf beyond the plate glass windows, he nodded again when Manuel showed him the label of the bottle of Bas-Armagnac. 1965. The year of Charlotte’s birth, he told Mr. Mansour.
Santé! Mazel tov!
They clicked, Schmidt straining to control a tremor in his hand and lip.
When we both went to Paris, and you had to go back, but I stayed, Caroline and I spent some time together. I told you that. You remember?
Schmidt nodded. He didn’t think he’d forget that week if he were condemned to drag out his days as long as Job.
But here is something I haven’t told you. I’ve bought a little house in Sagaponack. I wanted to get closer to you!
Mr. Mansour began to cough and choke on his own joke, until Manuel, appearing behind him without having been summoned, as though rising from a trapdoor, hit him hard twice between the shoulder blades and offered him a glass of water.
Yes, said Mr. Mansour once he had recovered. That wasn’t part of the program, but that’s how it is. We’ve gone on seeing each other. A lot when I’m here, sometimes every day. No one knows, not even Holbein, except Freitag, the T and E lawyer at the law firm, because if anything happens to me I’m leaving money to Caroline. And now you know too. I’m telling you, you WASP schmuck, because I love you. She said it was OK to tell you. So what do you say?
Goodness, Mike, replied Schmidt, so many things. I’m honored that you chose to tell me, I’m astonished, I ask myself how in the world can she get away with seein
g you here. She’s got Joe right in the house!
Pas de problème. He spends all day in his office with the door closed. She doesn’t think he knows or cares whether she’s in the house or out, so long as she’s put his lunch in the refrigerator in his room. Always the same: tuna salad on white bread, three celery sticks, an apple, and bottled water. That’s all. She works on her own stuff in the morning, but in the afternoon she can drop in, and she does. She does, she does, she does!
Mr. Mansour left his chair and did a little tap dance as he pronounced those last words.
But she doesn’t like having my guys see her go in and out. Anyway, with the traffic back and forth between here and where they are in Sagaponack sometimes we lose close to an hour! That’s why I bought the little house. She crosses Route Twenty-Seven, drives half a mile, and I’m there waiting for her. Et voilà! The housekeeper comes in the morning and so never sees her. Nobody sees her! Pas de problème! Except guess who.
Mr. Mansour jabbed himself in the chest repeatedly with his index finger.
And when I’m in the city, he continued, sometimes she says she’s going to the opera or the ballet. He doesn’t care if she goes alone.
Mr. Mansour laughed some more before continuing: He’s such a schlemiel; he’s never once said, I’m coming with you, not once since she and I have been together. So what do you think?
Love in the afternoon squared! I think you’re very lucky.
Thank you!
And what happens next?
Schmidt didn’t need to ask why Caroline was unfaithful to her husband with the great financier. Mike’s boast about his unique tool and sexual prowess was still fresh in his memory, and perhaps it wasn’t a boast; perhaps he was telling the unvarnished truth. Schmidt could think of at least two more reasons: Canning was a dreary pill. Mike could be weirdly amusing, possessed of the sort of omnipotence that before the era of billionaires had been the attribute of monarchs reigning by divine right, if not Zeus himself. Showers of gold were de rigueur for kings and could be used inventively by a god, but there were so many other tricks. Had he come to her as a swan? Imprisoned her in a cow that he mounted like a bull? One could put nothing past him. But Canning was hardly more of a pill and a turkey than when she married him—there was nothing new there. She had been attracted by something—God knows what, probably his talent, which had not yet been recognized. That talent, to believe NYT critics—Schmidt didn’t—was still there, in full bloom. But pas de problème! as the man with the golden dick would say. He sleeps with her in the afternoon, and at night she opens her legs, or however they do it, for Canning. Nice!
And what happens next? repeated Mr. Mansour, working the worry beads. What should happen?
I mean you’re single—divorced—she’s a very serious woman, very gifted, very much respected. Do you go on getting together in the afternoon and so forth in your new little house or wherever you do it in the city?
If she’d only leave the schlemiel, I’d marry her tomorrow, answered Mr. Mansour. I said to her I’ll give him money, lots of money, to get him to move on. Out of our lives! She won’t let me. He needs her! That’s what she says. He won’t be able to write! Big deal. Entre nous, if he never wrote another word it wouldn’t be a big loss. You know why I’m financing that stupid novel of his? One, I like Gil and I like what he does. Two, it gives me some control over the schlemiel. A slam dunk! Joe, you’re needed on location in Brooklyn or out in the Midwest, wherever that stupid book starts. Joe, we need you to present the project to distributors! Pas de problème. Caroline and I are doing our best. One more thing strictly entre nous: he’s got all sorts of things wrong with him, blood pressure, cholesterol in the stratosphere, on and on. He might do himself and me a big favor and die. I’m saying this to you on the Q.T. Right?
That was the first time Mr. Mansour had ever asked him to keep something to himself. It must happen from time to time, he thought, when he’s about to buy or dump a public company. But in private conversation this had to be a first.
Then you’ll just go on happily and hope Joe won’t figure it out.
Schmidtie, said Mr. Mansour. I want her with me all the time. I invite them every time I have someone coming to dinner or lunch unless it’s with you or Gil and I don’t want him to fuck it up, or Holbein when we talk about money. You know why? So I can look at her and hear her laugh. Dinner with them à trois, without another guest or two, I can’t do it. So I wait. So I wait!
Another first. Two big tears escaped Mr. Mansour and ran down his cheeks before he could wipe them with a yellow silk handkerchief he produced from the pocket of his black cardigan.
Enough about me, he continued. I wanted you to know. That’s all. The question is: have you got a life yet? You haven’t told me what happened last summer with the nice lady in Paris, but don’t bother. I’ve figured it out, with just a couple of hints from the great filmmaker. Don’t get upset: it was just a hint or two. He didn’t tell me anything he shouldn’t. The question is, can you get on my plane tonight—I’ll come with you or you can go alone, but you’d be better off if I came with you. We’ll go to Paris, you pick up two dozen red roses, and what else? A nice pin at Buccellati, something simple, with a nice diamond and maybe some sapphires, and you’ll ask her to forgive you. She will. I guarantee it.
It won’t work, Mike. She won’t have me, not after the way I screwed it up, and at this point I don’t want her. Not on her terms. It can’t be. It was a beautiful dream, but that’s all it was. It’s over.
You give up too easy. I don’t, but I’ve had a different life. I had to fight. Fight every inch of the way. Now I don’t. I just raise my pinkie. So the question is, have you got a life? What do you do when you’re not at the office or visiting Carrie and little Albert? By the way, smart move taking care of all the kids; that is what I would have told you to do.
How the hell do you know about that?
Pas de problème. I’ve told you already. My guys and Jason talk.
I see, said Schmidt. Tell me, is there any way to get rid of you and your guys?
Click click. There isn’t. Once you’re my friend I never drop you. Especially when you’re in trouble.
All right. Can I have some more of this Armagnac?
Be my guest! But first answer the question.
It took Schmidt a moment to bring himself to speak.
All right, Mike, he said. I haven’t got a life. It’s true I work hard at the foundation. I’m glad Holbein has noticed. Since you know everything, you surely know that next week I’m going on one of those tours of your Life Centers. Then I’ll come back, and my nonlife will go on. At some point, something will break. The perpetual motion machine will stop. Are you satisfied now?
No, I’m not, because I’m the best friend you’ll ever have. Let’s move over there, Mr. Mansour said, gesturing toward a group of armchairs. He must have pressed a button, because Manuel arrived to pull out his chair and strike a match to light the wood in the fireplace.
Mr. Mansour thought longer than usual before speaking again. Charlotte is still bad? he inquired. The question is, how bad?
Ever since Schmidt could remember, ever since he was a little boy living in the shadow of his huge and competent father, and the mother who’d robbed Schmidt’s life of color and taste, he had held his tongue. He allowed Gil Blackman to know much of what he didn’t tell anyone else, not even Mary. With her, he had never entirely let down his guard. There was no reason to do so. He told her all she needed to know about his standing at the firm, his money—what he earned and what he spent and at the very beginning what little he owed—his thoughts about Charlotte’s education. But beyond that? About what he might have called his feelings? Had anyone asked—had she asked—he might have said, There is nothing to tell, it’s easy to see, I wear my heart on my sleeve. And now this strange man with worry beads and private jets wanted to know about Charlotte. That he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had been told everything was clear to Schmidt. And that he cou
ld tell when something was being held back was clear too. Mike had forced his friendship on him but, after the one outrage that perhaps had taught them both something, had been a true friend. One who, for all the ocean of differences that separated them, understood him. Schmidt drained his glass and began to feel very tired. He hadn’t told Gil, he hadn’t had the heart to inflict on him this great sorrow, but someday soon he would have to.
Manuel was lurking in a far-off part of the huge living room that Mr. Mansour used for lunch and dinner when he was alone or with only a guest or two. Schmidt raised his hand with the empty glass, waited for Manuel to fill it, and asked for a glass of water. His lips were parched.
Click click.
He looked carefully at Mr. Mansour. For the second time that afternoon he wasn’t smiling. All right, Mike, he said. Here is what’s been happening.
In April of the following year, some months after that conversation, Charlotte telephoned Schmidt at his office. Mrs. Riker on line one, said his secretary. Aha! Mrs. Riker, therefore his daughter, not Renata, not Dr. Riker.
Dearest Charlotte, he started.
Dad, she cut him off, I need to talk to you. Not on the telephone. Can you get over here?
Certainly, he answered, when would you like me to be there.
How about tomorrow? Can you be here in the morning?
