The Benefactor

by Sebastian Hampson

  He could have kept up the conversation with Timothy, but these thoughts were stewing in him. Hundreds of people were sharing this stairwell, which had become steamy with their condensed breath and sweat, all of them trudging down each flight in silence.

  ‘You heading out West?’ Henry said as they reached the lobby.

  ‘I doubt they’ll be flying. What are you doing?’

  ‘Going home.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, then, and stay the night.’

  ‘I…well, yeah, sure.’

  ‘Don’t want to be stuck in an airport terminal with a bunch of refugees—and I wouldn’t want to miss out on Martha’s company. Hardly got to see her this time.’

  ‘I said you could stay, okay?’ Henry snapped.

  ‘Thank you, thank you. You know I appreciate it, buddy. Calm down. Where’s the car meeting us?’

  Henry hadn’t arranged a town car on his way out. Nor had he collected his briefcase, with the layouts for the new issue in it. He might as well have sleepwalked down here.

  Slinging his blazer over an arm and rolling up his sleeves, Henry joined the procession down Broadway. Fogel strode ahead, the former lacrosse champion of Livingston, New Jersey, now limber on legs that had begun competing in marathons. In the rush to get moving, Henry hadn’t had the chance to analyse Martha’s words. He wasn’t prepared for bad news, especially not when he had no idea what it could be. He was expecting some grief over the Sforza story when it was finally published, but she hadn’t seen it yet and didn’t know how much it would play down the politics.

  She was just home from a trip to Malawi. Had she missed an immunisation and contracted one of those untreatable diseases? Cheated on him with some handsome local activist and ended up with HIV? She had looked ill, but he’d put that down to jet lag and stress.

  They were going to San Juan next week, as they had every other summer for the last several years; Palm Springs with Timothy and the loud-mouthed horror Lizzie had become too much to handle. Henry hoped a flame would rekindle when he and his wife were alone, away from the madness, on those rum-stained beaches where they were simply Henry and Martha, with no excess baggage.

  On the already-clogged corner of 34th Street, a man in a silk shirt and tie with a five o’clock shadow had started directing the traffic, briefcase at his feet, cell phone on his belt. A passing driver handed him a whistle. In place of a police baton he used a Poland Spring bottle, gesturing wildly and shouting at the drivers ignoring his orders. Further down the street, a preacher proclaimed that the day of reckoning had come. Everyone ignored her too.

  After an hour of his feet slipping around like fish inside his sweaty shoes, Henry punched the code into his building’s keypad. No response. He pushed at the loose magnetic latch and it swung open into a shadowy hallway, where the live-in super had set out candles.

  ‘Ready for the stairs?’ Fogel said.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  He tried to hide the heaviness of his breathing, dreading the five-floor climb ahead of them.

  Martha had opened the windows, but the day’s heat lingered. Close to fainting, Henry steadied himself against the bookshelves, his grip so tight they vibrated. The leather of his watchband had turned stiff, soaked in sweat.

  He was gratified to see Fogel wipe his brow and slink off to the bathroom. The son of a bitch deserved it—no number of marathons could counter all those Davidoffs and the grappa and the long lunches at Il Mulino.

  ‘Is that you, Henry?’ Martha called. ‘Come in here.’

  She was in the kitchen, cracking ice from the freezer into wineglasses and filling them with water. Her bare arms were dewy, her make-up smudged at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Timothy’s staying the night,’ Henry said. ‘And no, I didn’t invite him.’

  ‘You might as well have,’ she said, brushing loose strands of hair off her face, ‘if you didn’t tell him no. I told you we need to talk. Doesn’t he have a hotel booked? He should give his reservation away to someone who needs it if he’s going to stay here.’

  ‘So what’s up?’

  ‘It’s…complicated. There’s this—’

  She broke off as Fogel called out from the other room, asking where they’d got to. A moment later he was there with them and no further conversation was possible. Henry wasn’t complaining.

  ‘Martha,’ Fogel said, his energy renewed, kissing her cheeks—as he got closer, Henry noticed an anointment of white around his nostrils. ‘Thank God you made it here.’

  ‘Easy walk. Here, drink this, then I’ll get the chardonnay going while it’s still cold. Henry, do we have an ice chest in the storeroom?’

  ‘You’re so practical, Martha,’ Fogel said as Henry went searching for it.

  The storeroom was crammed with all the utilitarian things Henry didn’t want out on display. He avoided it whenever possible. He felt as if he was plunging his head into a badger’s burrow. Or, worse, his father’s tool shed. Among the dated appliances and his incomplete attempt to build a wine cellar, beside the old AC, he found the ice chest. They hadn’t used it since their wedding reception, which they’d held in the garden on the roof.

  Timothy had gone out on the terrace to make a phone call while Martha lit candles. She scooped ice into the chest and filled it with leftover zabuton steaks Henry had braised months ago, sealed in plastic and dated with a marker pen.

  ‘Is that the best thing to do?’ he said.

  ‘They’ll spoil if the power doesn’t come back on soon. Drink that water. You’re parched.’

  ‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Later. Not in front of Tim.’

  Henry splashed some of the water across his face, shaking it out of his hair and leaving drips on the kitchen tiles. He finished the rest in a single gulp and replaced it with a slosh of the chardonnay, then took the bottle out to Fogel.

  A sea of black stretched out before him from the foreground of surrounding townhouses to the expanse of the Midtown skyline, the skyscraper spires drawn vividly against the fading afternoon sun. Isolated trains of headlights ran down the avenues between the buildings, blinking but barely moving. The hole where the city had once been filled Henry’s field of vision, so deep he could have fallen into it.

  Fogel was wrong about New York being held together by nothing. On the contrary, it was built on so many thousands of connections that it should all have broken down more often. Small wonder that the whole fragile system had collapsed under this surge.

  Martha joined them on the terrace with her own glass of wine. Her face was tired and lined, and her stare was directed at nothing in particular. The sleeveless turtleneck she wore didn’t project the same air as those herringbone slacks, or her Rue des Rêves blazers. In fact, nothing about her had the same air anymore. It was as though she were an actor trying to play Martha Beaucanon, and she’d slipped up on some of the essential details.

  She and Fogel sat together at the table, he in Henry’s chair, Martha fanning herself with a spare copy of the magazine. Henry was nearer to her than Timothy, yet his view of them was more like a framed photograph that had faded in the sun.

  ‘How was Africa?’ Fogel said. ‘Where were you again—Namibia? Must have been hard, seeing all that tragedy and suffering firsthand.’

  ‘Oh, Tim, I thought I told you it was Malawi—and I thought you would be an expert on African geography by now? You’d be surprised—what I found over there was real determination, because they can’t expect their government to provide anything. They have to make the best out of what they have. It goes beyond famine. Bush won’t admit it, but our spending on foreign assistance is the lowest among all wealthy countries. For those who aren’t starving, even the most rudimentary education and healthcare are more a privilege than a right—not something the government can provide universally, and not something we’re willing to provide through foreign aid. And part of that is because we can’t fund these things universally on the domestic front. Right?’

/>   ‘I don’t know. More college graduates in the States than anywhere else. Can’t stop the little suckers from hounding us for a job—am I right, Calder?’

  ‘Education in the US is stratified,’ Martha said, before Henry could voice his agreement with Timothy. ‘You wouldn’t send Lizzie to the Green Meadows local.’

  ‘Of course not. I want the best for her.’

  ‘Sure, but nobody in Green Meadows could send their kids to wherever Lizzie goes in Malibu, could they? The toughest thing about the work we do in Malawi is how clear it makes our own hypocrisy. There’s as much rot in our society as in any African dictatorship. The difference is just one of degree. We pretend it’s not happening and get on with our lives, but they can’t afford to.’

  Though he didn’t disagree with what she was saying, Henry wished his wife would exercise a little more sensitivity in these conversations—the way she had in the past, when she couldn’t afford to alienate a potential sponsor. Her failed attempt to change UNICEF’s position on Iraq earlier that year only seemed to have galvanised her, rather than acting as a corrective.

  Here we are, in New York, she might as well have said, drinking our buttery chardonnay, preparing to vote in another term of invasions and counterterrorism measures.

  ‘Got it,’ Fogel said, uncharacteristically sincere, leaning in towards Martha as though she were at the end of his telephoto lens. ‘So how do we help them?’

  ‘In Malawi, we need to restore aid—there’s no other choice. But we can’t go in there and tell them how to live, how to organise themselves. They need to be treated with dignity.’

  Henry couldn’t take any more of this lecture. He went inside to find more chardonnay before it too went warm. Through the windows, he watched as Fogel faced his wife, one hand on his chin, the other hidden beneath the table, and was seized by a sudden desire to kick his old friend out of his house. He wanted him gone. Right now.

  Pity that couldn’t happen. Within the small window open to him, Henry tried to rationalise the consequences of following through. He would lose his chief ally at the magazine. And, perhaps, Martha’s respect. If he hadn’t already. Long ago. A picture of control, Henry walked out onto the terrace and poured Fogel another glass, his mouth dry, the heat rising beneath his skin.

  Over dinner they returned to well-trampled turf. Martha avoided the subject of her job, instead asking questions about the photo shoot Fogel had done for Sforza, their plans for the September issue. She hadn’t known about the Moroccan souk. Though she didn’t express her disapproval when Timothy described the concept in his usual rabid terms, Henry noticed immediately that she’d gone stiffer and quieter than she had been.

  He and Timothy poured themselves a round of bourbons after dinner. Told jokes. Turned it on again, at maximum power. When Martha finally excused herself, Henry hardly noticed her go. He stayed up with Timothy, determined to reinforce normality. Talking shop. Trading rumours about Michelle Darrow. Discussing the feasibility of a shared villa in Puglia—of weekend trips to Rome and Florence and Milan, with the wives. He could have raised the subject then, gently, perhaps even jokingly, had he felt more daring.

  At midnight, Henry went from room to room and blew out the candles, letting Timothy set himself up in the guestroom. In their bedroom, he found that Martha hadn’t taken off her clothes or her make-up. She was on the divan, clutching her own whisky, more hunched than usual as she faced the unpopulated cityscape, as though she’d given up on having good posture.

  ‘I’m beat,’ he said. ‘We should go to bed.’

  ‘Hey. Come here.’

  But he couldn’t bring himself to sit next to her. ‘What’s the matter? You didn’t enjoy all the attention he was giving you?’

  ‘Not particularly—in fact, I didn’t really want him here.’

  ‘I didn’t either. I was this close to punching him at one point.’

  ‘Were you? I couldn’t tell. I can never tell what you get out of him. One minute you hate him, the next you’re a couple of fraternity brothers again.’

  ‘I don’t get on with him as well as you do.’

  ‘What do you want, Henry? Honestly, if you have a problem with the way Tim behaves towards me, you should confront him. Don’t you remember the conversation we had? When I asked if everything was all right, after that stupid party? And you laughed at me for bringing it up? I thought we agreed it wasn’t a cause for concern.’

  ‘How persistent has he been?’

  ‘He called me from LA, once or twice. I brushed him off.’

  ‘You wouldn’t consider…would you?’

  ‘Jesus, Henry. I can’t believe you would think to ask such a disgusting question.’

  ‘And I can’t believe you won’t answer it.’

  Martha went silent for a moment, though she felt an uncontrollable tremor in her limbs, a tightening in her forearms. She could have pushed her husband right out that window he was standing in front of, bearing over her, into the sea of black.

  They had apologised to each other, after that big fight in 1997. Right when she was prepared to walk out, she’d come home from work to find Henry had cooked one of his fancy dinners and bought her a copy of the same Talking Heads record they always used to listen to on Jane Street. He’d cried a little, told her he was an idiot and his love for her was greater than anything at work, and excused his bout of anger as a symptom of burnout. She’d bought this act, though not readily.

  And in general he hadn’t changed. Not really. She could no longer guess which Henry she was going to encounter on a given morning. The resentful creature who curled in around some secret hurt? Or the conventional husband full of fake, secure love and a dismissive, snotty sense of humour—the same New England prep school boy she thought he’d grown away from, who behaved as though nothing unusual was going on?

  She didn’t always have the energy to tell him what he wanted to hear, to manage his moods, and nor did she believe it was her duty to stand in for his mother.

  The idea that she and Timothy could be attracted to one another was ludicrous enough. But after seventeen years of living with Henry, Martha couldn’t deny the frustrations that came with an insecure man, a man who tried too hard and overthought every decision. The idea of losing herself in a brief vacation from Henry’s narrow, self-serious world was something she would always flirt with. In her mind. Never something she would feel the need to act on—not while Henry could still be useful to her.

  ‘Perhaps I should sleep with him,’ she said. ‘I think you’d like that. I think it would make everything simpler.’

  ‘Please keep your voice down. He might hear us.’ He lowered his own voice, though his tone remained harsh. ‘If I’d like anything, it’s some straight-up honesty. I think you’re doing this to destroy me. Because I didn’t run that stupid article about AIDS relief you and Ottelia wanted me to publish. This is your way of hitting me where you know it hurts most, huh? Simpering whenever he’s around, giving him more attention than me.’

  ‘You’re being…so hyper-sensitive, Henry. Stop it. On the subject of honesty, tell me—how can he be your friend, how can he mean so much to you, if you’re in constant competition with him? I don’t believe you’re anything like him. And I don’t get why you’re wasting so much effort on trying to beat him at his own cruel games.’

  Henry could have heard what she was saying and accepted it, but in the most curious way Martha felt he also didn’t hear it—as though she were on the other side of a dance floor, shouting at him, and he’d drunk too much to focus on her words, which were swallowed up by the deep bass notes of the music.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, closing his eyes and putting a hand to his forehead, perhaps bargaining with himself. ‘Okay. I guess you should tell me whatever you were going to spring on me before.’

  ‘You’ll hate it.’

  He spread his arms. ‘Please, do your worst.’

  ‘There’s a journalist preparing an expository piece on me, which I understand to be
code for smear campaign. You know that speech I made last month about sweatshops in Pakistan using child labourers? I…I didn’t know your designer friends were outsourcing to them. At what meeting, after how many martinis, does that get discussed?’

  ‘It’s news to me.’

  ‘The journalist has details of the outfits I’ve worn to red carpet events with you. She’ll be naming specific labels and linking them to sweatshops. Perfect excuse to tear me down. I’m telling the world we have to put an end to child labour—and being paid for it—while I’m wearing clothes sewn by seven-year-olds.’

  She crossed her legs, rather awkwardly, and gulped down the last of her whisky like a man.

  ‘Hey,’ Henry said. ‘Come on. It’ll be all right. Is this seriously what you were worried about?’

  ‘Henry, I’m going to be crucified. Have you heard anything about the conditions those children endure? The suicides? Christ, if I can’t even convince you it’s important—my own husband…’ She straightened up, realising that she’d made it about him when this was her reputation at stake. ‘I’ll have to resign. Leave before it gets messy, go somewhere I can make real changes. I should’ve gone to Rome when I had the chance.’

  Henry took her hand and squatted beside her on the divan, not prepared to sit down fully, as though about to run away.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said again, taking her glass. ‘You don’t need to resign. You have more dignity than that. There’ll be a solution. There always is.’

  IT was late in the day when a knock sounded at Henry’s bedroom door, or so he figured, judging by the angle of the light coming in beneath the curtains. Next to his bed were four spent foil blister packs and half a glass of wine. His sheets had been thrown across the room. He had one arm out of his shirt sleeve; the other was dead from being slept on. He still had his shoes on, and his heels throbbed harder than his head.