Super Host

by Kate Russo

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  The restaurant is heaving. They’ll be waiting forever for a table, but Bennett doesn’t mind because it means extra time with Mia. They hover around the host stand, surveying the cavernous warehouse space; open kitchen, long bar, large windows, exposed bricks, and . . .

  Wait, what the fuck?

  “Dad, isn’t that one of yours?” Mia points to a painting on the back wall. It’s a large still life of aubergines, courgettes, and tomatoes on a table covered by an intricate fabric that could only have been painted by Bennett Driscoll.

  Seriously, what the fuck?

  “Yeah.” He squints in disbelief. “How long has this place been open?”

  They all look at Gemma, since she’s the expert. Well, she acts like she is.

  “Not long, six months, maybe.”

  Bennett hasn’t received money for a painting in more than a year, but he’s not about to admit that. They all look at him now. He shrugs, confused.

  “You didn’t sell that to them?” Richard asks, scandalized. He’s always excited when a plot thickens.

  “I did not.”

  Bennett stuffs his hands back in his coat pockets, making fists in secret.

  The host returns to his stand; he’s a young man, wearing a stern expression more appropriate for marching troops into battle than organizing seating charts.

  “How many?” he asks, coming face-to-face with Gemma’s disapproving eyes.

  “Where did you get that painting?” Gemma points to the artwork like a dog owner would point to a puddle of piss. She wants to rub his face in it.

  “Pardon?” He looks at her like she’s insane.

  Gemma raises her voice. “Where was that painting purchased?”

  He glances at the painting. “I can’t say that I know.” He returns his focus to the seating chart. “Four of you?”

  Gemma ignores the question. “This man, here”—pointing to Bennett—“he painted it, and you didn’t buy it from him.”

  Shut it, Gemma.

  The host looks at Bennett and waits for confirmation.

  Bennett nods, silently. Yes, he did paint it.

  “I can ask my manager where it was purchased, but I’m not sure he’ll know, either.” What else can he say? This is way above his pay grade.

  “It’s okay.” Bennett briefly removes his hand from his pocket to wave this off.

  “You can give us a good table for now,” Gemma continues, with her authoritative tone. “But your manager will be hearing from this man’s representatives in the morning.”

  What representatives?

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  It wasn’t long after being nominated for the Turner Prize that Bennett decided to abandon nudes in favor of produce. By then, he’d been married for a while and had a daughter on the way. Inviting strange women to undress in his studio didn’t feel right anymore. After all, the nude paintings had happened, sort of, by accident, anyway. During his own time as a student at St. Martins, Bennett had fallen for Henrietta, a Scottish student two years above him. A sculptor, Henrietta spent all of her time in the “life room,” drawing and molding figures in clay. She had crazy, frizzy ginger hair and wore her terra-cotta–stained apron everywhere. She bit her fingernails until there was almost nothing there. Henrietta represented everything Bennett imagined a serious artist to be. Plus, she liked to stroke his wavy blond hair. What else was an impressionable young man supposed to do except toss aside his interest in still lifes in order to spend a few extra hours a day sketching strangers’ limbs alongside the woman who infatuated him? For a year, he followed her around like a puppy that needed feeding. As it turned out, the side benefit of his infatuation was that he became an excellent figure painter. His paintings earned a lot of attention from his tutors, so he started entering competitions and they got in. At the end of his first year, when Henrietta buggered off to Glasgow without so much as a goodbye, he saw no reason to quit the figure painting. In fact, this weird thing was happening: other women were starting to use the life room to be near him. Who’d have thought?

  Switching to produce presented certain new challenges, all of them exciting, especially the new palette. The deep purples of an aubergine, the bright reds of a tomato. A banana is never the yellow you think it is. The still-life installation in his studio was ever changing based on what was available at the farmers market. “Why don’t you bring some vegetables home when you’ve been to the market?” Eliza had asked him one night. She had never minded his models much. She never asked him to stop painting naked women. So far as he could tell, she never felt the slightest bit threatened by them, whereas, the fact that he would go to the farmers market every day and never brought home so much as an apple to his wife and daughter . . . that bothered her. Maybe she wouldn’t have wanted the fancy car, the giant washing machine, or loud, American, hedge-fund Jeff if it had only occurred to Bennett to bring home just one of the fucking aubergines instead of taking them all to the studio?

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  “Mr. Driscoll?”

  Bennett turns around, a braised leek on the end of his fork.

  A bearded thirtysomething man in suspenders hovers over him. “I’m Chris, the manager. I understand you enquired about the painting?”

  No. She did.

  Bennett looks across to Gemma, who is on the opposite side of the fantastic window table that her insolence secured them.

  Chris pulls on the end of his beard. “I’ve spoken to our designer.”

  Gemma sets down her cutlery and looks up at Chris like she means business.

  Bennett scrapes the leek across his tiny plate, releasing it from the fork which he still grasps, tightly.

  “She’s informed me that the painting was bought at auction. Sotheby’s, she thinks.” He puts his hand on the back of Bennett’s chair in a far too personal gesture. “If you like, she can pull up the paperwork? E-mail it to you?”

  “That’s not necessary.” He takes a sip of his wine, needing to find a purpose for his free hand.

  Confused, Chris looks to Gemma for confirmation.

  “Have her e-mail it, definitely,” she chimes in.

  Mia looks at her dad, her expression somewhere between embarrassment and compassion. Either way, it makes Bennett’s heart sink.

  “She says it’ll likely have the name of whoever put the painting up for auction,” beardy Chris adds, his thumbs in his suspenders like he’s ready for a hoedown.

  “Really, it’s alright.” Because Bennett doesn’t want to know who put it up for auction. He definitely doesn’t want to know if the bastard got more money for it than he did. He stabs another leek with his fork, despite not having eaten the first one.

  “Seeing as we love the painting, we’re sending over a double portion of our special beetroot ravioli to show our appreciation.”

  Sounds like you hate me.

  “That’s very kind. Thank you.”

  “He is FIT,” Gemma says as she stares at Chris’s ass walking away, the fight over the painting forgotten.

  “You’re such a flirt!” Richard is, once again, scandalized.

  That was flirting?

  Bennett looks over at Mia, who smiles back at him.

  “Poor Dad. You hate beetroot.”

  “But you love it. You can have mine.” He can’t go back in time and bring home apples and aubergines, as Eliza had wanted him to. But he can give his daughter all his beetroot ravioli. With pleasure.

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  Even with the free beetroot ravioli, Acreage had been staggeringly expensive. Bennett’s wallet aches as he heads to the Tube, hoping, at the very least, the three nineteen-year-olds are going home happy and full. Truthfully, he knows they’re not headed ho
me. Their night is only just getting started. Though Mia was polite and only checked it once, her phone vibrated several times during dinner. He glimpsed a smile when she looked down at the screen. He didn’t enquire who it was, but he hopes desperately that it’s someone who is good to her. Someone who wouldn’t balk at buying her three hundred quid’s worth of braised vegetables.

  Dinner has cost him roughly what one night in his house is costing Alicia. He can’t help but wonder which one of them got the worse deal. All night it’s been difficult to get the vision of Alicia, alone in the house, out of his head. At one point it occurred to him to order an extra plate of beetroot ravioli to bring back for her. Although it’s not uncommon for Bennett to feel the entirety of any emotional spectrum all at once, it’s confusing to feel both fatherly toward and sexually attracted to Alicia. He decided not to order her the ravioli, because he prefers the sexual fantasy to the fatherly impulse. As he steps onto the down escalator at King’s Cross, putting in his earbuds, he thinks that, inaction, for once, was the right choice. Young women don’t like gifts from strange old men, especially when that gift involves beetroot.

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  When Bennett changes to the District line, he has the carriage all to himself. Faced with all the empty seats, he decides to remain standing, recalling being in the center of the fountain earlier this evening, arms outstretched. He grabs on to the central pole. He pulls the ancient iPod from his coat pocket and with his thumb, turns up the dial on Roots Manuva. The old train lurches, throwing him forward and causing him to strengthen his grip. He looks around him, still self-conscious, as the music vibrates through the empty train car. He taps his foot and bobs his head. After a few seconds he can’t help it, his lips move . . .

  Taskmaster burst the bionic zit-splitter

  Breakneck speed we drown ten pints of bitter

  We lean all day and some say that ain’t productive

  That depend upon the demons that you’re stuck with

  He taps hands along on the handlebar, keeping the beat, surfing the train.

  ’Cause right now, I see clearer than most

  I sit here contending with this cheese on toast

  I feel the pain of a third world famine

  Segue, we count them blessings and keep jamming

  “Ravenscourt Park,” the woman’s voice says over the intercom.

  The doors creak open and a dignified man in a flat cap about ten years Bennett’s senior boards the train. The older man hears the hip-hop and looks around the carriage, searching for its source. Holding on to the iPod in his pocket, Bennett’s thumb finds the wheel and the volume drops. Regardless, the flat-capped man takes a seat at the far end of the carriage. Deflated, Bennett stares down at the train’s speckled flooring for the rest of the ride.

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  Lights are glowing from the ground floor of his house when Bennett returns. He stops at the garden gate, looking, covertly, through the windows to find where Alicia might be. He sees her shadow moving through the living room, the TV flickering in the background. He squints to see if he can tell what she’s watching. It looks like some sort of comedy panel show. She walks past the window again, her blond hair down now, draped over a mustard-yellow hoodie, zipped up tight. Bennett hastily fiddles with the latch of the gate, hoping to seem as though he has been in perpetual motion and not, in fact, spying on her. He doesn’t think she’s spotted him. He wonders whether he should close the gate quietly or announce his presence by slamming it shut? He’s never asked himself this question about any other guest. In the past, he’s always closed the gate quietly, not wanting to invite any interaction. If he does slam it, what is he hoping to achieve? Does he want Alicia to see him? To invite him into his own house for a drink? He has a bottle of amaretto locked in the study. Women like amaretto.

  Sexist assumption? Probably.

  Nevertheless, amaretto is a better gift than beetroot ravioli. Sexier. He’s not thinking about being fatherly now. He doesn’t want to go in the house to, say, read her a story. He’d like to kiss her. If she’s as lonely as she seems, then maybe they could both benefit.

  He sees her take a seat on the couch, covering herself with the blanket from the linen closet. It warms his heart to know he helped in that regard, at least. It looks like there is a bottle of wine on the coffee table and maybe a plate.

  Good, she’s eaten.

  The fatherly impulses return. Either the constant fluctuation of emotion, or possibly Acreage’s crispy kale, is making him queasy.

  He closes the gate quietly behind him and jams his cold fingers back into his coat pockets. In that split second, he remembers the security light in the back garden. The lamp illuminates all of the yard, including Bennett, who stops abruptly. Another reminder he’s not so invisible after all, his movements traceable for the second time tonight. He can’t help it; he turns around.

  There she is, having stood up from the couch, looking out the window at him. She tucks her hair behind her ears, apprehensively, maybe even a little frightened.

  He smiles his gentlest smile—the exact opposite of his professional one that he gave Evan earlier. He nods with a little wave, a guilty kind of wave. One that attempts to apologize for all his perverted thoughts. She smiles back, but it’s an embarrassed smile. However unwisely, Bennett feels in this moment that if there is anyone to whom he could convey his uncertainties, his solitude, his stagnation, Alicia is somehow that person.

  Seeming to share in his uncertainty, she quickly looks away.

  He doesn’t have to tell her about his vulnerabilities. She already knows. His burdens are just that, his burdens. No sexier than beetroot ravioli. Nothing for him to do now but turn back around and keep moving.

  Beggars Can’t Be Choosers

  Alicia’s never seen sheets this white before; they’re unnaturally so, like the teeth in whitening strip commercials. Her tired eyes survey the large bedroom. There’s a cream-colored chaise lounge in the corner, a white-painted parquet floor and a chest of drawers that’s been painted white, but then sanded back to give it a distressed look. Above the chest is a small square painting of white flowers in an antique white bud vase. In the painting, the vase sits atop an intricately detailed ivory-lace doily on a whitewashed wooden table—a hundred different shades of white in one painting. It was painted by her AirBed host, Bennett, a middle-aged bachelor, who put a tiny little “B.D.” in the lower right-hand corner of the painting, barely visible in yet another shade of white. She wishes she knew more about art. She thought she’d learn a lot more through her job at the online auction house, Virtual Paddle, but she’s just there to crunch the numbers and in actuality, there’s very little art in the art world, anyway. She knows the hashtags that sell—#abstraction, #photorealism, #landscape—but she doesn’t get to see the art, not beyond the little thumbnail that accompanies her stacks and stacks of spreadsheets. Still, something about Bennett’s painting speaks to her, its intimacy. He really knows that vase, that doily, that whitewashed wooden table. She can’t imagine knowing anything that well. She can’t imagine having anyone know her that well, either. She wonders what it’s like to sleep with a guy that pays that much attention to detail. It’s an odd impulse, thinking about sex with her AirBed host—he could probably be her father—but it’s been a while. Five years.

  She lies in the middle of the bed, gliding her legs under the duvet from end to end, making snow angels on the white sheets. It would be nice to meet someone, she thinks, someone to push her over to one side of the bed, someone she can annoy with her restless legs syndrome the way it annoyed William five years ago in a different bed, in a different part of London. Dating William, a classmate at LSE and the heir to the large French bistro chain, Café Chartreuse, was like buying a house over budget—a giant emotional expense that she’s now paying back with interest. Keeping up wit
h a man of his privilege, charm, wit, and good looks was exhausting, and no man has looked as appealing since.

  God knows what he saw in her. She never was able to figure that out. Because she couldn’t figure it out, she never told her mother about him. William was the kind of guy that would have made Annette roll her eyes. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” her mother always said when she was growing up. Annette meant it mostly in regards to dinner—if Alicia wanted beans and hot dogs but was faced with tuna-noodle casserole—but the phrase bled into all aspects of her young life: clothes, homework, clarinet lessons (she had wanted to play the piano). She went to the only college that accepted her—Denison University in Ohio, her “safety school.” She’d wanted to go to one of those liberal arts colleges outside of Philadelphia, but none would have her. Same thing with her master’s. She went to the London School of Economics, because the U.S. programs had all rejected her. And it hadn’t helped that until the day he died, her father called her “Mouse,” an endearing term for her dark blond hair as well as her relative invisibility. When she met William, she thought she’d finally shifted from beggar, straight past chooser, to lottery winner. Of course, lottery winners rarely stay rich.

  Coming back to London was a bad idea. The plan was hatched at an Anglophile’s bar on the Lower East Side, GinSmith, a place that boasts a hundred types of gin and a playlist weighted heavily in favor of the Smiths. A lover of all things British, but especially Morrissey, Alicia suggested her friends all meet there for a gin tasting—a step up from their usual Friday night “Buds with Britney” event that her friend Andrew, an Alabama native, hosts in Bushwick. While at GinSmith, three shots in, her friend Zoe, a short and bubbly assistant children’s book editor, expressed an interest in a London trip. To the amusement of the group, she re-created the moment from Peter Pan where Wendy and Peter fly over Big Ben and the River Thames, in what appeared to be interpretive dance. Everyone else, also three sheets to the wind, agreed that a London getaway would be amazing. They should totally do it. Alicia, over the moon, said she’d look into houses on AirBed. But it was an error to interpret her friends’ drunkenness as genuine enthusiasm. After she booked Bennett’s house, one by one, they dropped like flies: Zoe decided it made more sense to buy a car rather than to go on vacation; Matt, a sous chef, met a beautiful girl and didn’t want to risk her finding a new guy while he was gone; and poor Andrew, an off-off-Broadway actor, never had a real prayer of being able to afford the trip in the first place. Liz was the one that upset her most. A childhood friend from Southern Illinois, Liz had taken Alicia under her wing when she moved to Brooklyn five years ago, despite having almost no contact. She and Liz had drifted apart after high school, when Alicia went off to Ohio and Liz remained in Carbondale to attend Southern Illinois University. Then when Alicia was living in London, she’d never thought much about her old friend. During that entire year, she didn’t really think about anyone back in America. There was a small part of her that hoped she’d never have to think about any of them again. If Alicia is honest, she knows they don’t have a ton in common anymore, not like they did when they were little girls—an idyllic time when the most important thing in the world had been scoring each other’s dismounts off the monkey bars. I thought you were into the idea, Alicia replied to Liz on Messenger.