‘I’m sorry. Why would she do that?’
‘She thought…she thought I was lying to her, that you and I had some kind of a…thing going on.’
He wished it were that simple. Then he might understand why she was there, what she meant to him.
‘That’s not how it is,’ he said. ‘You know this.’
‘Yeah, well. Doesn’t make much difference why I’m here. I’ve got nowhere else to go now.’
‘Why, because the girl you had a crush on screwed you over? You have to meet the right people. She wasn’t one of them. I’ve seen her type before, fishing around for scraps at industry parties they haven’t been invited to. They reek of desperation. That’s one small advantage you have.’
He’d intended this as a compliment, but she didn’t take it well. Her expression sagged. She must have seen losing Beth as a defeat, not a validation of her own integrity.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was trying to say you’re better than her.’
‘No, I get it.’ She put down her sketchpad, making sure the cover was folded over the page she’d been working on. ‘I’m going to a party tonight, actually. I’ll try not to fish around for scraps.’
‘You’ll be great. What’s the party?’
‘This guy I met, Jason, he invited me. Beth won’t be there. It’s at somebody’s apartment in Clinton Hill. Converted church. I’m going to grab dinner with Jason now, then head over later.’
Henry realised as she spoke that he hadn’t ventured to the outer boroughs in years. If he left Manhattan, it was to go much further afield. Funny how living on the most interconnected island in the world bred an island mentality nonetheless.
Henry settled in at his desk while Maggie went off to get changed. Though he saw no attraction in spending the next several hours awake and alone, he had to stay up past ten o’clock so he wouldn’t need Ativan. At the same time, though, he was trying not to drink. He unpacked another shoebox, for the sake of doing something. Another set of articles. Editorials, memos to staff—his manner in them so curt, so intimidating. Drunken ideas scrawled on cocktail napkins from the Four Seasons, where he would stay at the bar, alone, after whoever he’d just met with had left. To delay coming home.
The photograph of Martha—the one of her naked on the bed upstairs, reading a report—stuck out from between two sheets of paper. He thought of her alone in Berlin, chipping away at a piece of concrete. Mingling with the locals, trying out her German on them. Young people. Asking them how they felt about this event. How they were living. Their hopes for the future. Truly interested, without a thought for her husband, sulking like a child in the Geneva hotel.
‘I’ll see you later,’ Maggie called out, dressed in the same riding trousers, the same leather jacket as the other day.
Henry turned around and watched her as she walked towards the door. ‘Wait,’ he called.
She stopped and turned around, halfway through the open door. ‘Could I perhaps…’
‘What is it, Henry?’
‘How far is Clinton Hill from Park Slope?’
‘Around the corner.’
‘I have a friend I need to see in Brooklyn. I’ll give him a call and see what he’s doing. If I had dinner with him, could I meet you at this party, later on?’
Maggie looked surprised. ‘Why would you want to? It won’t exactly be your scene.’
‘I’m curious,’ he said. Please, he thought, I don’t want to be here all night alone.
‘I really don’t think you’d enjoy it,’ she said.
‘I…I need company tonight.’ He was pathetic, he knew it.
Maggie wasn’t dismissing him, though. She was staring at him from across the room, weighing him up.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I suppose you can come. We won’t get there until at least nine. I’ll text you the address. Wait…I don’t have your number.’
‘Oh. Of course.’
Henry hesitated a moment—he wasn’t sure why—before giving it to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Bring your friend, if you want.’
Henry waited for a minute before searching for Timothy on his cell phone. The photo of him with a big fat cigar in his mouth, pulling his middle finger at the camera. They had to see each other. They had to talk properly, somehow.
‘Calder,’ Timothy said, answering after a single ring. ‘What’s happening, my man?’
‘Nothing much, man. You?’
‘I’m meant to be at Mr Chow with an advertiser and the Condé Nast honchos. But now you’ve called. Should I blow them off?’
‘I don’t want to make you miss out on anything.’
‘The deal’s dead on arrival. They’ll be delivering it stillborn.’
‘Are you at home?’
‘Just got in. Snow might be forecast over here, not sure at this stage.’
‘A few flurries?’ Henry chuckled. ‘Not for me. Do you mind if I invite myself over? I’d like to talk.’
‘Oh, of course, of course. I’ve been teaching myself how to cook these past few weeks, but I won’t subject you to that torture. I’ll order pizza.’
‘No need, I’ll throw something together. And I’ll bring a cigar.’
‘Bring two.’
It had been a long time since Henry had felt any sort of excitement about finding an excuse to leave his apartment. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, hadn’t thought Fogel would have this much time for him. Especially not after everything that had happened between them. He’d allowed himself to forget how badly things had ended between them three years ago, when Timothy had announced out of the blue, via email, while Henry was at dinner with Martha at Mas, that he was going to work for Vogue, with their promises of creative control and the prestige clients Henry was haemorrhaging. No hard feelings, he’d said. But Henry couldn’t bring their relationship to any other logical conclusion, and the next day, after a sleepless night, he’d lost his temper.
Resolving not to think about it, Henry found his overcoat and went over to the liquor cabinet to try to find a bottle. He hesitated, his hand hovering over the collection of Henri Giraud champagnes, none of which he’d ever opened. Though he couldn’t bring himself to break the collection tonight, he was no longer sure what compelled him to keep them.
Instead, Henry took a bottle of whisky and two of his finest cigars.
Timothy felt a need to prepare for his friend’s arrival. He turned the music up on his stereo—one of his and Henry’s favourite Kraftwerk records, which he used to play in the background when they were working on an issue together in his office. He didn’t bother tidying up, leaving the empty wine bottles and glasses lying around his living room, various ashtrays overflowing with cigarette and joint ends, newspapers laid down for the puppy all over the floor.
Though he didn’t keep it the way he would have as a married man, Timothy was proud of this place—a full townhouse that had cost close to five million. He wanted to show it off, and he made sure a stack of other things was lying around for him to show off: the Lucie award, the Goyard luggage set he’d just purchased, the new monogrammed suit that had arrived from David Lance that afternoon, still in its display box on the dining table.
A slight resentment towards Calder hadn’t left him. He felt it return as he was going through his cellar, wondering which bottle deserved to be cracked (he’d already had a few grappas). This shouldn’t have been so complicated—why should he feel this way towards the man who should have been an unambiguous best buddy? He didn’t like to stop and interrogate himself for too long on these matters. If he resented this man, he shouldn’t have wanted to see him so badly, shouldn’t have been thinking about him as often as he had ever since Gloria left.
When the doorbell rang, Timothy charged through the house like a bull, hoping to find Henry on the other side of the door with a big, shit-eating grin on his face.
This wasn’t what he found. Timothy was dismayed to find that his friend appeared to have lost even more weight since they’d seen
each other for lunch two weeks ago. He was pale, and appeared not to have shaved for days—hadn’t so much as trimmed the patchy stubble. At least he wasn’t wearing the same horrible grimace he’d left Timothy with when they last said goodbye.
‘My man,’ Timothy cried, refusing to let his energy abate. ‘Come in, come in. Welcome to the mansion. And I’m dead serious, I think it counts as one—C.P.H. Gilbert doing Romanesque Revival, though I hardly need to tell you that. My bedroom’s in the turret.’
‘Very impressive,’ Henry said. ‘Isn’t this a lot of space for you by yourself?’
‘So is yours. And I don’t care. I’ve got a room furnished for Lizzie in case she ever needs it.’ In case she ever decided to forgive him. He wished he hadn’t brought her up. ‘Oh look, here’s Arthur. Come and say hello, buddy.’
The pup was sleepy, and he meandered over from his bed. Henry bent down and scooped it up. Timothy watched as Arthur licked all over his friend’s face, from his ears to his nose. He hadn’t done that with Timothy once in the week he’d been here.
‘Anyway, make yourself at home,’ Timothy said. ‘Whisky? There’s a plan.’
He took the bottle from Henry and pulled the cork out with his teeth, spitting it into the air with full force and watching it fly across the room. Arthur ran after it.
‘You like what I’ve done here?’ Timothy continued. ‘That’s a Faruk Malhan living room suite—cost more than my car in LA.’
‘It’s nice,’ Henry said. ‘Not my style. Not what I would’ve chosen.’
‘Yeah, so what? That’s why you’re you and I’m me.’
‘Of course. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to dig at you.’
‘I know, I know. Here.’ Timothy overfilled a glass and gave it to Henry, raising his eyebrows and patting his friend on the shoulder. ‘Down the hatch, sir.’
Without asking, Henry went into the kitchen and started going through the cupboards for utensils. Timothy sat at the counter and watched him. It reminded him of when he and Martha used to come out to Palm Springs, and Henry would more or less insist on cooking every meal, pushing Gloria out of the kitchen. She’d hated that. One of his curiously maternal habits. Timothy had always liked it.
‘You won’t find much,’ he said.
‘I don’t need much. Beauty is in simplicity. I’ll do pasta with garlic if I have to.’
‘You’re a genius and you know it. So, what’s brought you to this strange new borough? You want to get the ball rolling on that job? I’m telling you, it’s there. Been talking it over with the right people. How about it? Corner office in the Freedom Tower? We’d be in the same building. Plenty of positions available. Belt-tightening’s passed. In fact, I even heard about some vacancies at Architectural Digest, which has you written all over it.’
‘Not really.’
‘Isn’t that where your real interests are?’
‘I don’t know anymore.’ He’d found an onion and begun chopping it, fast and hard. Timothy marvelled at how he hadn’t cut his fingers off. ‘Besides, I’m done. Thanks for thinking of me, though. Means a lot.’
This wasn’t the response Timothy had expected.
‘So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?’ Fogel asked. ‘I hate to say it, but you’ll be forgotten if you keep this low profile. It’s my duty, as your friend, to give you a kick up the ass.’
Henry turned and smiled. ‘They can forget me. I don’t care anymore. Might go travelling.’
‘That’s more like it. Get away from this place? Where to? San Juan? Mikey Milstein was in Amalfi last week, said it was stunning—you should go there. We both should.’
‘I wouldn’t mind getting a car, doing a road trip through the heartland. I’ve hardly been off the two coasts my whole life.’
‘That’s because there’s nothing there, unless you want to see a bunch of hicks with NRA bumper stickers. Heartland? That’s a joke. New York is the heart of this country. For better or worse. Why would you bother with the rest of it?’
‘Yeah, I get that. But I’m so sick of New York.’
Timothy took a slug of his own whisky. Henry wasn’t usually so vague, and it made him uneasy. His steady, dependable type had become rare these days. He’d given Fogel more direction than anyone else he’d ever worked for. Your trusted confidant wasn’t supposed to stop caring, stop driving towards the goal they’d both been focused on.
He thought of Henry’s final editorial. Kurt Wilder had emailed it to him, complete with poisonous annotations. He’d been wondering for a while now if Henry was losing his mind.
‘How’s the niece?’ Timothy tried. ‘Straighten her out? Dispense with her delusions?’
‘Oh. Yes. I lied to you there, actually. She’s not my niece. She’s an artist I met when she was working at the wine bar in my neighbourhood. I found out she wasn’t making her rent, so I offered her the guestroom.’
‘Okay.’ Weston feigned amusement, trying to gauge if it was a joke. ‘Hang on. Calder…why would you do that? You getting some action out of it?’
Henry threw the onions into a pan of oil, which he’d allowed to get too hot—they burned quickly. ‘I’m not attracted to her in that way. I don’t know. Maybe…maybe it’s that I’m trying to understand her, so I can really help. Because nobody does that.’
Timothy came around the counter and turned on the extractor fan. ‘I see. So you’ve taken her under your wing, out of the goodness of your heart, and I’m supposed to be impressed.’
Timothy forgave himself for acting so dry and scathing. This was eccentric, even by Henry’s standards.
‘Hey,’ Henry said. ‘I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m trying to help her.’
‘Sure you are. Tell yourself whatever you like, Calder. I’m not going to argue with you.’
‘I don’t want to argue.’ Henry hadn’t taken the pan off the hob—it was smoking now. ‘Tim, I wanted to forgive you.’
Timothy snapped to attention. ‘Forgive me? That makes no fucking sense. I wasn’t the one who let you go, my man—it was the other way around, three years ago. I haven’t forgotten that.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake—I didn’t fire you.’
‘When I said I had another job offer, that was your cue to show me you still cared. You didn’t so much as try to keep me. I have no idea why you turned so cold.’
‘You made a pass at my wife, Tim. You were always trying to flirt with her right in front of me. Let’s be honest, for a second. You were jealous of her. You didn’t think I deserved her. I wasn’t the best husband—I’ve come to terms with that. You were partly to blame for our unhappiness. But I forgive you.’
Without thinking about it, without hesitation, Timothy took the pan off the hob and pushed Henry into the counter. Henry resisted, put his hand up and tried to keep him away. Though tempted to slap him, instead Timothy put an arm around his friend’s shoulder and squeezed it tight through the Egyptian cotton shirt.
‘Come on, man,’ he said, shaking him. ‘That’s crazy. I made a pass at Martha once—once—and I knew you knew. And, buddy, it was twenty years ago. I thought you’d forgiven me. Why did you never say anything? I love you, Henry. I’m sorry if I haven’t made that clear enough…I’m an idiot. You know this. And you’re a needy bastard, but I love you. You think I enjoyed that job? I went through hell for you. Our friendship was the only reason I stayed.’
He really did love Henry, in a way that he’d never been able to fully quantify or express before. It wasn’t a straightforward kind of love. He was almost prepared to tell Henry that he’d got close to Martha to remain close to him—that was the truth, after all. But it wouldn’t be the truth anymore if he said it out loud—his dear, strange old friend would likely take it as an indication of something else.
‘I did have this fantasy of running off with Martha,’ he said. ‘That speaks to what a great person she was, more than anything. But it was a fantasy. I could never have done something like that to you.’
‘You’re a hard man to read, you know that?’
‘Ha. I guess I am. Come on, hug it out, brother.’ They embraced each other, Timothy pressing his nose into the shoulder of Henry’s shirt, picking up his friend’s signature scent in the fabric—the same James Heeley cologne Timothy had started wearing himself, embarrassingly, without realising. ‘I wish you’d told me how you were feeling instead of suffering in silence. I might have understood a little of what you were going through. You can work through it, Henry. Go to a shrink, do what you have to do. Get yourself back on track.’
‘Everything comes so easily to you.’
Timothy laughed. ‘I’m glad that’s how it seems. Guess you haven’t thought about how easy you make everything look. Like your cooking, when you’re not burning it. Come on, back in the kitchen, boy. I’m hungry.’ He let go of Henry and banged the pan on the countertop for effect.
Through his own laughter, Henry took both cigars out of his pocket, cut them and bent down to light them off the gas flame, then gave one to Timothy.
‘Couldn’t believe it when I saw you come up the stairs at Felidia, all those years ago,’ Timothy said, rolling the velvety smoke around his mouth. ‘This quiet kid I met in Boston, transformed into a straight-up boss. And you and Martha were the power couple. I couldn’t have handled a woman like her.’
‘Yeah, well…I’m lost without her, Tim. She made me feel like a better person.’ He paused. ‘This girl…she reminds me of her. I keep thinking it could be the same again, if I found a way.’
This intrigued Timothy. He gave Henry another splash of whisky and dug out one of the few unused ashtrays in his collection.
‘Martha’s gone,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never find anyone like her again. There’s nobody else with her particular charms, so don’t even try. If you want to be with this girl, be with her, but don’t pretend she’s someone she’s not. Jesus, I was almost happy to think you might be having sex again. It’s certainly helped me. There’s this girl—French-Japanese make-up consultant. She’s wild, man. She won’t get off my dick.’
The Benefactor Page 24
