Kyle had heard the story before, said in reply, “There’s always a risk in every deal. The tragedy’s not in our effort. You know that.” He lifted his fork and told Benchere, “If you’re really worried about us, why don’t you help?”
“Help?”
“You know the row houses we’re developing on Broad Street?”
“I know them.”
Kyle said, “Carla and I thought you could look over the design, let SWAP attach your name as a consultant and sell the project with your endorsement.”
“Wait,” Benchere stared back across the table. “Slow down there, captain. You want me to do what now?”
“If you’re concerned about us selling the spots.”
“You want to use my name?” Benchere moved his plate to one side, hoisted his hands behind his neck and said, “You realize I don’t do designs anymore.”
“We’re not interested in a design. Just a touch or two.”
The request came from the blindside, caused Benchere to sort through all possible answers. Kyle knew what Benchere was thinking and addressed the matter directly. “I’m not asking for a sculpture,” he said. “This is business. It’s leverage. Putting your name on the project is resourceful. It’s practical. It’s just that.” He slid his dish next to Benchere’s and left the kitchen, went out to the hall, returned with the tube which he carried into the den and leaned against the desk. Coming back to the kitchen, he said of the tube, “I can pick it up in a few days, either way.”
In the den after Kyle left, Benchere stood near the glass door and looked for Jazz. The moon overhead was orange-silver, the flowers in the garden yellow and blue. Jazz trotted along the edge, seemed to know not to disrupt what Marti had planted. Benchere turned and went to where Kyle had left the tube. He stared for a minute, imagined the reaction from the press and others if he resumed any sort of design work after all these years. What a twist. The question was one of probity, of whether lending his name to Kyle’s project was different than the restrictions he applied to his art. That Kyle had never asked a favor of him like this before did not so much clarify the situation as provide the tipping point. “Ahh hell.” The decision became foregone. Benchere tossed his head back and laughed.
He finished his drink, opened the door and whistled for Jazz. Reaching then, he went and popped the lid on the tube and slid the contents out. The prints unrolled across the desk. The design showed sixteen row houses, two sets of eight units facing one another on a single block. Benchere noted their plainness, considered what was needed. Using a white marker he revised the positive and negative space, applied informed simplicity and the solid void theory to reconfigure the entrances, moved columns to enhance the circulation path, reconciled complex patterns into one coherent arrangement, adjusted the program/core space and reevaluated the rooms for light.
The job took less than thirty minutes. Even after all this time Benchere’s ability to visualize structural design came easily. He signed his name on the side of the prints, slipped them back into the tube and leaned the tube against the wall. Done and done. All he had to do now was ask Kyle to keep quiet until he’d left for Africa so he didn’t have to deal with anyone making more of things than they should.
Jazz came from drinking water in the kitchen. Benchere moved to the center of the room, stood listening to the silence of the house. He pictured Marti in bed, told himself she was there and then that she wasn’t. There was a Joni Mitchell song that Zooie sang, “Down to You.” Everything comes and goes … Benchere knew the first verse. He went back to the open door, stuck his head outside and howled. Jazz came over. The breeze from the yard warmed Benchere’s cheek. He closed the door and pulled the blinds. Bending down, he picked up Marti’s slippers, walked back through the hall, turned off old lights and felt along the wall for new ones.
5.
IN THE KALAHARI, ATOP THE HIGHEST BEAM, THE WIND moves the chime recently set. The sociable weaver birds fly through the beams and check out the source of the sound.
BENCHERE IN THE morning woke and swam. Halfway through his laps Marti asked, Are you ready?
Am I …? He gave the question some thought, arms over shoulders and belly down in the water, legs set to kick as he turned and churned back through his wake.
STERN STANDS ATOP the hill, peers down and says to Rose, “Look at it, will you.”
Rose stares as well, hesitates then says to Stern, “Yep.”
LEAVING NAMIBIA, HARPER flew the red-eye home. Sixteen hours from point to point. He bought paregoric as a preventative, determined to keep his belly from souring the way the woman’s had back at the hotel. The dose he took did the trick, inspired sweet opium dreams out over the Atlantic.
ON HER WAY from Beckley, Zooie drove north along Route 119. Seven weeks on tour. A long time gone. She sang, “It’s been …”
Her two final gigs were in State College on Friday and at Maxwell’s in Jersey Saturday night. Rayne took the train down, showed up to surprise Zooie while she performed. She resented him for coming, his arrogance and persistence. Still, when her final set ended, she went with him to the room he’d rented. The walls were soft green. The bed king-sized. The carpet plush. There was a mahogany framed mirror and flowers in a red vase.
Rayne waited to see if Zooie was pleased, then pulled her toward him, moved her hair and kissed her as she let him. She kissed back for no reason other than she wanted to feel something. On tour she’d abstained from sex, did not indulge with any of the other musicians, the club managers or men from the audience who came on to her. Kissing Rayne was different, was casual now, reminded her of things that had nothing to do with him.
In bed, Rayne tried to talk but Zooie told him to be quiet. His desires were not her concern, his expectations not her responsibility. She let him do things he knew she liked. No guesswork, their time together worth something. She closed her eyes, anticipated, was interested only in the payoff, the shiver shake that came as she did.
Rayne slept deeply after that. Zooie dozed. When she woke the early light in the room was sandy grey. She found her clothes, found her way to the door, opened quietly and went out. Back on the interstate, she pictured Rayne waking and waiting for her. Silly boy. What did he expect? She decided to text him in an hour, took I-95 further north and made it home before Harper.
DEYNA DRINKS WITH friends at McCabe’s Tavern in Colorado Springs. A professor of anthropology at the University of the Rockies, she teaches graduate level courses when not in the field. Tomorrow she leaves on sabbatical, is eager to depart. The semester has left her antsy, she feels more at home on the road. Peripatetic by nature, and now by occupation, she has lived in Haiti, in Mesopotamia and Iran, has studied the Indus Civilization and its earliest incantation of urban planning pre-2000 BCE, has done peyote beneath a Tibetan moon with Paul Farmer, explored cultural phenomena with Marko Lebel, lived with a Russian poet in Minsk, been drunk on dandelion wine while conducting research on the Sumerian Settlement in Iraq, tended to the broken femur of a colleague while visiting the Bnot Ya’akov Bridge on the banks of the Jordan River, avoided seductive advances from Naama Goren-Inbar while charting the social significance of man’s move from Africa through the Levantine corridor. Lately, she has spent additional time in Africa, studying the San Bushmen and Ju/’hoansi of northwest Botswana, has postponed offers to continue her research this summer as she’s become intrigued by something else.
A toast to her travels. A friend tells a joke about an anthropologist working in South America who is told by a tribal brujo that the leaves of a particular fern are a natural cure for constipation. The anthropologist had his doubts, though the brujo insisted, “Let me tell you, with fronds like these, who needs enemas?”
The first time Deyna heard of Benchere’s plan to build a sculpture in the middle of the Kalahari, she also thought it was a joke. She pictured the San coming upon a 300-foot tall monolith in the flat of the desert and what would they think? There are over 47,000 San in Botswana, each living in sm
all cooperative groups, nomadic in their search for water. A San village is rarely more than 60 people. Deyna lives on her own. The apartment she keeps near campus has her bed and books and stereo, some dishes in the kitchen, the tools of her trade packed and ready. The last lover she lived with left almost a year ago. Despite her professional training to evaluate the past, Deyna rarely thinks of him anymore.
She offers a toast of her own, “Here’s to experience.” In the Kalahari, she will be close enough to the San to resume her research should she choose. She has read additional stories about Benchere, older interviews and newer articles over the last six months. Curious, she can only imagine in a broader context what sort of impact a sculpture like this will have; autonomous in its construct, independent in its intent. She has also read about Marti, and again of Benchere, has weighed the potential for what will come, made arrangements and in the morning flies to Maun.
BENCHERE WORKS WITH Naveed and Julie putting Helix at Rest on a flatbed truck for delivery to the Pare-Mathus Institute. The unveiling is scheduled for Saturday. The forklift Julie borrowed is painted bright orange, has an automatic alarm which sounds each time the gears are put in reverse. Benchere backs the truck into place, then helps Naveed keep the sculpture balanced as Julie raises the lift and slides Helix into the bed.
“Everything that rises,” Benchere says and grunts against the sculpture’s weight.
Before he traveled to Africa for the first time, Benchere had a dream about the desert. This was after Marti first became sick. He saw himself there alone, the wildebeests and hyenas watching, the vastness of the Kalahari making even someone as large as he feel small. He wandered in search of what he could not be sure, the sense of something missing so acute that when he woke and found Marti beside him, he wailed with relief.
Two nights later, he presented his plan. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said and spoke of the desert, expressed a desire to merge their talents, both sculpting and engineering, to create in tandem an objet d’art. Desperate to not lose Marti, still haunted by the fear from his dream snaking its way through him like a shiver cold shot, Benchere convinced himself as long as he and Marti were working together no harm would come to her. The plan was a fiction at best. He did not confess this part, went ahead and drafted a sketch of a sculpture that would stand above the desert like the myth of Akhenaten.
Marti reviewed the dimensions, calculated the size and weight, resolved the bracing of the armatures, how to balance the base and set the foundation as firm as the roots of a ziziphus tree. Since first volunteering with Engineers for Humanity and augmenting the water wells, Marti had gone back twice to Africa. She had always wanted Benchere to come with her and visit the spots. Ready now, Benchere and Marti together began to prepare.
All went as planned until Marti’s cancer returned, forcing them to postpone their trip. Benchere took the news poorly, insisted at first there must be some mistake. Ultimately, he regrouped and addressed the reality, got Marti through treatment, through surgery and recovery and what came after that. Reporters writing of Benchere began publishing updates on Marti’s decline, reduced her role in the project to that of a spectral muse, her mastering the constructional demands of the sculpture’s scale dismissed. Benchere argued otherwise but the reporters were there to sell papers, took the story in another direction. More and more Marti was described in mournful terms, marginalized and eventually eulogized. As Benchere remained determined to complete the project, Marti was given the title of his dear dead wife.
HARPER LANDED AT Logan and drove the fifty-two miles to his apartment in Bourne Mill. Since his divorce he lived in a fourth-floor apartment on the east side of the city. Connubial downsizing, a consequence of the consequence, he regarded his failed relationship as pilot error, a turbulence his instrument panel had warned him of. “Fucking radar.” He blamed himself, “I should have seen it coming.”
In his apartment, Harper showered and shaved, slipped on clean slacks and a shirt, went through his mail and messages before calling Abby at HighLine.
Abby Berecht was HighLine’s comptroller, ran the office when Harper was away. Creole, Louisiana born, Dutch-based, a Berecht of the Morgan City Berechts, her first language was pidgin, her first husband a landscaper from Medford who left her for a florist from Laredo. An original hipster, Abby’s cigarettes were hand-rolled, her brown hair worn in large braids. Her figure was round, not gone to seed but gaining in a proportional expansion at forty-seven. Expert at keeping HighLine’s planes on schedule, Abby’s occasional dates with Harper did not compromise their professional relationship. “Don’t flatter yourself, little one,” Abby teased. At their age nearly everything, including sex, was performed casually, without drama or expectation.
Harper spoke with Abby about business, then said, “Mwen sonje w! So cheri, did you miss me?” They made a date for later. Harper phoned Benchere next and arranged to meet for dinner. “The cat is back,” he told him and settled on Stonebridge at seven.
KYLE’S APARTMENT IS on the Upper South side, near Dudley Street and the Davey Lopes Rec Center. A two bedroom with cherry wood floors, secondhand retro Alphaville chairs, a dresser and table bought from Brian Furniture near Oxford Street. Last night, Benchere delivered the row house designs to Kyle’s apartment, was given hearty hugs from both Cloie and Kyle in thanks for his support.
A bottle of wine was opened and glasses poured. Kyle raised his arm and offered a toast, “To things to come.”
DAIMON PARKED BEHIND the white van in Benchere’s drive. Mid-morning. He brought two large coffees, freshly brewed, black and hot. Burnt offerings, he rehearsed the joke, slipped his camera over his shoulder and carried the coffees toward the house.
When the doorbell rang, Zooie was sitting in the kitchen reading emails off her laptop. Two days back, she had yet to sleep at her own apartment. She pictured Marti in the chair next to her. Yesterday as Zooie walked from room to room, she found Marti on the couch, in the fixtures and photographs and shadows on the wall.
Daimon wore his hair short. He had on blue cargo shorts, a grey t-shirt and brown Hamilten boots. He introduced himself and asked for Benchere.
Zooie recognized Daimon’s name from what Benchere had told her. She had somehow expected an older man, had pictured one of those sun cragged documentarians in hiking boots and a canvas safari jacket, smelling of Pall Mall cigarettes and road dust. For whatever reason, she didn’t tell Daimon her name, said instead, “Mr. Benchere isn’t here. Do you have an appointment, Mr. Daimon?”
“I was told I could come by this morning.” Daimon handed Zooie the coffees, showed her his camera case, explained about the film.
Zooie left the door open, stepped back and said, “If you’d like to come in and wait.” She turned and walked down the hall.
Daimon followed her to the kitchen, stopped on the near side of the island and took his camera out. Zooie set the coffees down. The familial resemblance made it easy for Daimon to determine who Zooie was, and curious why she’d yet to introduce herself, he went ahead and asked, “And you are?”
“Housesitting.”
“No, I mean,” he took note of all the Benchere traits; the cockiness and confidence, the playfulness which seemed at once an amusement and a blood sport. He smiled then said, “Ok. So, Ms. Housesitter, how do you know Benchere?”
“Mr. Benchere.”
“Mister, sure,” he began filming. “How do you know him?”
“What’s that?”
“I asked …”
“No, what are you doing?” she pointed at the camera.
“I’m filming.” Daimon stated the obvious, explained no more, asked only, “Does it bother you?”
Zooie took the lid off one of the coffees and sipped. “I’ve known Mr. Benchere for years,” she answered Daimon’s question this way.
“Are you a family friend?”
“I’m close to the family.”
“And you also work for Benchere?”
“Mr. Benche
re.”
“Sorry.”
“I do, sometimes.”
“Beyond housesitting?”
“Yes.”
“So you are what, a personal assistant?”
“Something like that.”
“And you’re working now?”
“I am working,” Zooie pointed to her computer.
Daimon continued to film. He asked more questions, zoomed the camera in until Zooie put her coffee down, put her hands on her hips, pushed her head forward and told Daimon to stop. “Why are you filming me?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“I’m not Mr. Benchere.”
“No,” Daimon moved the camera around the kitchen, panned the space then slid back onto Zooie before giving up the game and saying, “But you are close enough, aren’t you?”
Zooie had her father’s laugh, a quick horn blast of a sound which rose fast and gave notice. She looked at Daimon closer, tried to see what she hadn’t yet, considered the way things went from one point to the next without ever stopping really.
“HALLO BWANA.” HARPER was waiting at the bar, called out as Benchere came into the restaurant.
A hostess led them to their table, introduced them to their waiter. The dining area was to the left of the bar, the windows in the rear of the restaurant fronting the water. Wicker chairs lined the deck. Over drinks they discussed Harper’s trip. The route to camp was now mapped, the distance from point to point, the driver hired to truck the supplies down from Maun: the food and water, tents and sheds, generators, sanitation and refrigeration units, medicine and tools. All the metals Benchere purchased, the derrick crane and 2,500 pounds of unmixed cement, were set to arrive by ship at Walvis Bay or from Rianburg & Associates in Johannesburg. Harper calculated the cargo space and fuel load of his DC-3 to transport the other supplies.
“Here’s to,” he raised his glass, suggested bringing extra bottles of whiskey and rum to the desert. “For medicinal purposes, malaria and scurvy, snake bites and scorpion stings. Maybe a crate or two more for personal consumption,” Harper quipped. During their first trip to Africa, in search of the perfect spot to set up camp, charting the landscape from Kasane to Nata, Rakops to Kayne, around the parks near Chobe and Gemsbok, all the distant dots of towns miles removed from where Benchere planned to build his sculpture, Harper had an idea to fly in extra goods and sell them in the untapped markets.
Benchere in Wonderland Page 6
