Super Host

by Kate Russo

  He called Libby, immediately.

  “You got the letter,” she answered. “I love your work, Bennett. You know I do. But it’s not selling, not right now. If interest piques in the future, the gallery would be very interested in representing your estate.”

  “You’ll be interested in representing me when I’m dead?” he clarified.

  “We no longer represent living artists, so, yes.”

  Fuck the present.

  * * *

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  Alicia arrives right at four o’clock as planned, pulling her suitcase behind her. She has a thin frame and her straight, sandy-blond hair is in a ponytail. Her eyes are visibly tired through her thick tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. Bennett watches her approach through the front window of the living room. He likes to observe his guests as they arrive, hoping to catch some glimpse of their true selves before he greets them. Bundled up in a double-breasted navy blue wool coat, Alicia hunches over, dragging her suitcase up the pebbled drive. She bites her lower lip as though she intends to confess something. Since becoming profoundly lonely himself, Bennett now feels he can spot it easily in others. Alicia is lonely. Halfway to the door, she stops to tighten her ponytail by taking a section of hair in each hand and tugging. He remembers both Eliza and Mia would do this, too. He adored all their strange habits, all their alien feminine rituals. He can’t help smiling to himself as he opens the front door.

  Noticing his smile, she smiles back, relieved.

  “You must be Alicia.”

  “Bennett?”

  He nods. “Please, come in.” Despite inviting her in, it takes him a moment to move out of the way. He’s struck by her tired eyes, glazed and a bit dark. He’s always been attracted to heavy eyes. Eliza, he thought, was always at her most beautiful at the end of a long day. Alicia steps forward with one foot, looking at him expectantly. He gestures grandly when he finally moves out of the way, revealing the large entryway and contemporary, open-plan living space.

  She looks behind her and hoists her heavy suitcase over the front step.

  Take the suitcase, you knob.

  “Let me get that.” Reaching for the handle, he grazes her hand; it’s soft, but cold from the winter air. Uncomfortable with the sensual thoughts that are now suddenly and unwelcomely flooding his brain, he clears his throat. “I’ll put this upstairs in the master bedroom. I assume that’s where you’ll want to sleep?” And now he’s thinking about her lying naked in his bed.

  Pervert.

  He runs his hand over his hair, a nervous habit he’s had since he can remember.

  “I guess,” she says, looking around the house. “This place is huge.”

  He smiles back from the bottom of the stairs, not quite sure how to respond.

  “Where do you live now?” she asks.

  Bennett points to the window behind her. Through the glass there’s a small building at the end of the garden, not much larger than a shed, though certainly more solid.

  “Oh.”

  “You won’t notice I’m there, I promise. I’m an artist. That’s my live/work space.”

  Her eyes are drawn to the paintings on the walls around them. “Are these yours?”

  “That one is.” He points to a large red-and-blue painting of an intricate pattern, not unlike a Persian carpet.

  “Wow. Beautiful.” She seems unsure of what else to say. “I feel bad taking up your house all by myself.”

  “You shouldn’t. You paid for it.” He starts up the stairs with the suitcase. Was that curt? he wonders. He turns to face her again. “Make yourself at home.”

  “All my friends backed out after I booked the place,” she explains. “Nobody has any money at the moment.”

  He nods, understanding. “Any plans while you’re here?”

  “Hoping to see some old friends. I did my master’s at LSE a few years ago.”

  Nostalgia, Bennett thinks. Everyone chases it. He can see that Alicia already knows her mistake: you can’t go back.

  “I’ll get this upstairs,” he says, pointing to the suitcase. “Then, I’ll leave you to it. Obviously, you’ll know where I am if you need anything.”

  “Great. Thanks,” she says, wandering into the large kitchen.

  He watches her as she aimlessly opens the cutlery drawer. When she looks up at him again, he grabs the bag’s handle and hoists it up the remaining stairs.

  * * *

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  Bennett opens the back gate of his garden onto Blenheim Road at four-thirty. He tucks his white earbuds into his ears and spins the dial on his iPod. He still uses the now-antiquated device that Eliza and Mia bought him for Christmas in 2006. “You can get rid of it, Dad. It won’t hurt my feelings,” Mia’s told him many times. He can’t throw away anything she’s given him. In his studio, he still has the first little clay sculpture that she made him when she was four: a bust of a man on a pedestal. He thinks it’s supposed to be him, but he’s never been quite sure. It’s been sitting on the same windowsill for fifteen years, too brittle to move. “You can put all of your music on your phone now,” she’d added, sounding more like the parent than the child. “It’s easier.” He hadn’t used the iPod much when Eliza was around, mainly because they traveled most places together and he didn’t need the distraction. Now that he is traveling everywhere solo, it’s become his closest companion.

  Turning onto Priory Ave., Bennett makes his way to the Tube. Bennett and Eliza bought the house in 1994. One of the few detached houses in Chiswick, Eliza’s heart was set on it. It was the same year Bennett was nominated for the Turner Prize. He didn’t win, but sales still skyrocketed. His series of life-size nudes reclining on intricate fabrics that reflected the rich history of textile design in London’s Spitalfields neighborhood were an instant hit. He hadn’t even needed a mortgage. When the crash of 2007 happened, they’d lost a lot of money, both in investments and paintings sales. Eliza’s salary from publishing was thankfully steady, but the financial stress, Bennett now believes, was the beginning of the end. He was willing to forgo the nice dinners and shopping sprees at Selfridges, the giant appliances, and the fancy car so long as they were able to keep the home he’d made with his family. Maybe it would even be romantic. It wasn’t that Eliza loved money more than she loved Bennett, but she felt he lacked the ambition it would take to get back on top. She was worried that he’d run out of good ideas. He was worried she was right. He still is.

  He taps his Oyster card to the reader at the station and the gates open. Truth is, if he could have lived anywhere, he would have bought one of the old Victorian terraced houses in London’s East End. Whitechapel, maybe, with all its history, its old shops, and the dark pubs. He’d grown up nearby in Hammersmith, and was desperate to leave the suburban feel of West London behind. During the nineties, he watched with jealousy as his artist friends cultivated a creative hub in the East End. Back then, he would travel the length of the District Line—west to east—at least three times a week, visiting studios and exhibitions. Once Mia was born, the journeys to Whitechapel felt impossible. Even his own studio in Ealing was difficult to get to. Eliza wanted him to spend more time with his daughter, but at the same time, was frustrated by his lack of productivity. And this was just one of many mind-fuck conundrums of their twenty-five-year marriage. When he suggested that they build him a studio in the back garden, Eliza was initially against it.

  “It’ll be an eyesore,” she protested. “It will devalue the house.”

  “But we’re not planning to sell the house,” he’d replied. “Who cares about the value?”

  She frowned at that. God knows why. He had thought she loved the house.

  “You’re constantly throwing up roadblocks,” he said. “You have to help me solve problems, my love.” He’d always called her “my love,” thinking it was endearing. He was deeply wounded when,
in the middle of a row last year, she told him she found it patronizing.

  Lately, it’s been hard to remember the good times with Eliza, but like a swift kick to the gut, those memories come flooding back every time he takes a seat on the Underground. From day one of their relationship, whenever they rode the Tube together, Eliza would slip her arm through his and rest her head on his shoulder. He’d smooth her hair back and kiss her on the top of the head. Eliza always wore her hair down in long, thick, wavy brown curls. She never cut it, like so many women do when they get older. It always smelled of sweet pea blossoms. God, he loved that about her. She’d nuzzle into him and kiss him on the arm. Every damn time. These days, when he sits down on the train he looks like a lunatic entertaining an imaginary friend. Without Eliza to lean into, he sits awkwardly, shifting in his seat, unable to find the sweet spot. Today, he fiddles with the dial on his iPod, hoping to find the ideal volume to drown it all out.

  He changes lines for King’s Cross, the relatively new location for Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, where Mia is in her first year studying painting. King’s Cross would never have housed an art school when he was nineteen. Thirty-five years ago it was one of London’s dirtiest, most transient neighborhoods, a gaping wound between Bloomsbury and Islington, filled with seedy pubs and even seedier hotels harboring tramps, drug dealers, and prostitutes. As a boy growing up in the leafy suburbs, hearing stories about King’s Cross was like hearing stories about Vietnam: atrocities happened there, true, but at least it was far away. As he and his friends got older and started taking the Underground by themselves, trips to King’s Cross became a rite of passage. It was so easy to tell your parents you were going to see a film in Leicester Square. King’s Cross was only another four stops. He remembers the first time he and his friends—all of them fifteen—went there. Bennett was such a wimp that his mates didn’t even tell him beforehand where they were going. He still remembers standing up when the speakers announced, “Leicester Square,” and his sniggering friends remaining in their seats. He didn’t have to ask where they were actually going. He already knew.

  * * *

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  His mate Stuart nudged him as they rode up the escalator at King’s Cross Station. “How much money you got?”

  “I don’t know. Thirty quid, maybe.” He knew it was exactly that much. His neighbor, Mrs. Garvey, paid him thirty pounds to clean out her pet budgie’s cage while she was on holiday.

  “Bennett’s got thirty,” Stuart shouted down the escalator. “What can he get for that?”

  The other boys, farther down the escalator, started laughing. Owen and Jay—idiots—were the masterminds of this mission. Stuart was the middleman, the one that communicated Owen and Jay’s plans to Bennett. It was also Stuart’s job to convince Bennett of everything they had in mind. The other three boys had tried going places without him before this, but as it turned out, Bennett Driscoll brought credibility to any scheme. Their parents were far more apt to give permission if they knew do-gooder Bennett was going, as well. “Such a lovely lad,” they all said.

  “He can get a blow job from that, I bet,” Owen shouted up the escalator. No need to whisper. Nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Wait, what?” Really, he shouldn’t have been surprised. They’d been talking about prostitutes for weeks, ever since that night at Jay’s house, when his brother, Neil, bought them beers and told them they were stupid to wait for the girls at Godolphin to put out. “Fifty quid will buy you everything you need,” he’d assured them.

  “My brother said his mate Jeremy got his finger up a girl’s cunt for twenty,” Jay said, adding a handy visual demonstration that involved sliding his index finger through a hole in his fist.

  “Yeah, I brought the full fifty,” Owen said, proudly.

  “I don’t want anything,” Bennett said, regretting the statement immediately.

  “Don’t be a poof,” Jay shouted loud enough for people on the down escalator to turn around, though he knew Bennett was anything but. He’d watched Bennett pine for Beatrice Calvert, the blue-eyed brunette whose dad taught English at their all-boys school. Bennett had worked out that she came to meet her dad after school on Mondays and Thursdays, so he joined the Shakespeare Society, which met then, and he’d have a reason to stick around. The problem was he hated Shakespeare. Hated him even more when Beatrice ultimately started going out with Jay a year later.

  They exited the station into hot, thick summer air that smelled of cigarettes, vomit, and piss. At first glance, there seemed to be more tramps than prostitutes around, not that Bennett could tell the difference. According to Jay’s brother, Neil, the prostitutes approached you. That was the extent of their plan: wait for a prostitute to approach. They’d heard Caledonian Road was the best place, so that’s where they went and stood around awkwardly—four teenage boys in Chelsea football gear, sticking out like dolphins on safari.

  A woman in high heels and trench coat came toward them. Owen, confident, stepped forward. “She looks like a prossie,” he said to his mates over his shoulder.

  She looked him over without even breaking stride and walked straight past them. “Eat shit, you little twat.”

  This, Bennett thought, was probably the best outcome he could have hoped for. “We can probably still make the film, if we leave now,” he suggested, hoping to capitalize on Owen’s bruised ego.

  “No fuckin’ way, mate. I came here for pussy, not abuse.”

  They stood in silence for another fifteen minutes before a young woman in a tight black dress, clearly high as a kite, approached them. As she got closer, Bennett thought she couldn’t be much older than they were. She looked bizarre, like a little girl playing fancy dress with her mother’s makeup.

  “You got money?” she asked Owen, her eyes straining for focus.

  “I got fifty.”

  “Alright.” She looked at the other three. “Wait. I’m not doin’ all of you for fifty.”

  “We’ve got one hundred and eighty total,” Jay chimed in.

  Her eyes lit up. “Yeah, alright then.” She led them toward Pentonville Road. She walked fast, both cold and jittery.

  Bennett grabbed Stuart’s arm and they lagged behind. He pulled out his wallet. “You can have my money. I’m not doing this.”

  “We know, mate. We need you to keep watch for coppers or angry pimps.”

  “You’re serious?” There was really no worse task to assign Bennett, a scrawny kid with a reputation for being skittish, except for maybe fucking a prostitute.

  “’Fraid so.”

  Owen already had his hand on the prostitute’s bum as she led them down a dank mews with a metal door at the end of it. On the other side of the door was a dark hallway and an even darker staircase. The four boys followed her up the stairs, single file and silent, Bennett, of course, bringing up the rear. At the very top, four stories up, she opened another door where a skinhead stood. Bennett suspected he was the only person thinking about fire exits. The skinhead looked at Owen, then at the other three boys. To judge by his expression, he’d seen this a million times before.

  The skinhead held out his hand for Owen’s money. “Fifty quid. You pay first. You go in one at a time.”

  The prostitute was already in the room. Was it her room? It would be nice, Bennett thought, if she had her own room, at least. Jay and Stuart leaned up against the wall in the dingy hallway, so Bennett followed suit. A strip of flowery wallpaper came cascading down on his head when his back made contact with the wall. He was careful to keep his hands in front of him. Even though this was long before he learned about black light technology, he suspected these walls were covered in semen. The hallway reeked of weed, BO, and another smell that Bennett would now identify as sex, though he couldn’t at the time. The three boys didn’t say a word to each other. It wasn’t long before they could hear a bed creaking. Then some moaning. It
had to be Owen. The girl hadn’t made so much as a peep since she’d picked them up. In the hallway they looked at their feet. It was possible, Bennett hoped, that the other two were chickening out.

  The creaking and moaning stopped and the skinhead asked, “Who’s next?”

  They all looked at each other. The color had drained from Jay’s and Stuart’s faces.

  Owen opened the door, buttoning his trousers. He didn’t even look at his friends, just headed straight down the stairs.

  Bennett immediately went after him—partly to check on his friend, but mostly to get the fuck out of there.

  “If you’re not going to pay, piss off,” he heard the skinhead say to the other two. Seconds later, Jay’s and Stuart’s footsteps clattered down the stairs behind them.

  Outside in the mews, Owen just kept walking, picking up enough speed that Bennett had to run to catch up.

  Owen looked back at him, but kept moving. “Fuck off, Bennett.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know. Get your own pussy, mate.”

  Finally Bennett got ahead of him, stopping him in his tracks. “You ran out of there like you were upset.”

  Owen tried to get around him, but with skittishness comes speed, and Bennett was able to block his path.

  “Fine. I couldn’t do it. You happy?”

  Bennett looked at him, confused. “We heard you.”

  “I fucked her tits,” he whispered. This he was ashamed of.

  If this was the same young woman they picked up on Caledonian Road, her tits wouldn’t fill a thimble. Bennett’s face must have expressed his disbelief, because Owen was quickly on the defensive. “Yeah, I know, mate. Mostly I just rubbed my cock up against her rib cage.” He looked back at the other two, who were catching up. “Don’t tell them anything.” They never discussed it again. Owen went off to university in Australia a few years later and never came back.