by Kate Russo
“Sure.”
“Love you.”
“You, too, Dad.”
That bugs him, when she drops the word love. Hanging up, he tells himself it’s not intentional.
He rolls up what’s left of the Doritos and takes them, along with the salsa, back to the kitchen counter, where he screws the cap back onto the wine and pushes the bottle up against the wall, signaling the end. He looks back through the window of the main house, where Mrs. Easton is sitting at the kitchen island eating dinner by herself.
* * *
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In the morning, Mrs. Easton is sitting right in the same spot as though she never left. This confuses a groggy Bennett, when he pulls himself up to his spying perch, his head pounding from the combination of red wine and Doritos. Has he slept through the Eastons’ normal morning ritual? he wonders. He checks his phone. It’s eight. Where is Mr. Easton? Bennett fell asleep early last night, but still, he’s pretty sure the guy never came home. It’s a drizzly day. Condensation on the windows makes it hard to discern Mrs. Easton’s mood, but that doesn’t stop Bennett from assuming she’s miserable. It’s a selfish thought, but a rift between the Eastons could prove quite useful. Maybe, like Alicia, they’ll leave early. Only he won’t give them a refund. He’ll keep the money and then invite Claire around to have sex in all the beds.
It’s been two years since Bennett’s had sex, hence the urgency. He wonders if maybe he’s jumping the gun by planning a sexual encounter with Claire, a woman he barely knows, but he wants to be prepared. He glances at her stick figure drawing, which he’s propped up on the windowsill. After all, she’s given him her phone number without him having to ask. That’s the thought he keeps returning to.
Mrs. Easton finishes her granola and pushes the empty bowl away from her. She looks at her phone again, then slides it aggressively down the marble counter of the island and buries her face in her hands. Bennett’s starting to feel guilty about witnessing all of this. He remembers that first week after Eliza left. He couldn’t let his phone out of his sight, he was so certain she was going to call asking to come home. Mrs. Easton’s wallowing might be proving detrimental to his own recovery, he thinks. Time to look away. Besides, compared to most others, today feels like a relatively big one. There probably won’t be much time for painting. The brown ochre remains unopened on his palette table. The yellow he mixed yesterday is forming a skin.
All he can think about is returning to the Claret. He wants to see the look on Claire’s face when he walks in again. He thinks, from that, he’ll be able to tell. Tell what, exactly, he’s not sure, but something important, maybe even life-changing. Cup of tea. Shower. Clean pants. Hair gel.
Go get ’er, tiger.
* * *
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He dresses himself thoughtfully before leaving the studio. He even squirts on a little cologne—black cedar and juniper, the label says. According to the bottle, it expired a couple months back, but he doesn’t think anyone will be able to tell. He puts a little extra goop in his hair to keep it in place. He is wearing his favorite chocolate-brown blazer and blue-checkered button-down shirt, both of which have been hanging on a hook in his tiny linen closet, awaiting a special occasion. Taking a deep breath, he reminds himself he shouldn’t be looking to sleep with Claire tonight. He’s just planting a seed.
A seed in her mind, not a seed in her . . . get a grip.
He has reason to be nervous. The last time he had sex was awful. Previous to his final attempt with Eliza, there’d been a steady decline in pleasure, sure, but nothing that could have prepared Bennett for the gut-wrenching feeling of being inside her, a woman he’d been with for twenty-five years, and knowing it would be the last time. The worst part was that Eliza had been so nice about it. As she lay beneath him, he could tell that she was, genuinely, trying to muster up some sort of passion.
Not many relationships last twenty-five years; that’s what he tells himself. Yes, he thought they’d vowed to share a lifetime, but in prison, twenty-five years is a life sentence. Things were bound to go stale and when they do you can’t fix them, you just have to chuck them. Just as Eliza chucked him.
* * *
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“Bennett?”
He hears his name being called with an American accent as he locks the door of the studio. He’d purposely waited for Mrs. Easton to be out of sight before stepping into the garden, but here she is anyway. As far as he knows, she’s the first guest that’s been annoyed by his close proximity, but right now, he’s annoyed by hers. Normally, he’s inclined to make each guest feel as welcome as possible in his home. After all, he’s a Super Host, but he’s not feeling super about Mrs. Easton. He musters his warmest smile before turning around.
“Sorry to bother you.” Her tone suggests otherwise, her arms crossed. She leaves a good ten feet between them.
“Not at all.” He matches her tone. Two can play at this. He crosses his arms, too.
“We’ve managed to break one of your nice wineglasses.”
“Oh,” he replies, surprised, having expected a complaint rather than a confession. He’s tempted to tell Mrs. Easton to break the lot. He’ll send the box of shards to Eliza in America. “Not to worry. I expect things will break.”
“If you let me know where you got them, I can replace it when I am in town tonight.”
“Really, it’s not necessary.” He takes a step away and then recalls her sitting morose at the kitchen island last night. “Going somewhere nice in town?”
“Some tapas place,” she says with a shrug.
“Well, have fun.” He makes for the gate. Claire is waiting. She doesn’t know she is, but she is.
“Oh.” Mrs. Easton lurches forward, stopping him before he can escape. “Just so you know, my husband won’t be around much. His brother is sick and he’s spending the majority of his time at his mother’s place.” She says this with a twinge of sadness, but mostly contempt.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, remembering how Eliza lost patience with him during the final year of his mother’s life. “If there is anything I can do . . .”
“No, no. I just thought you might wonder. Since you’re so close by.”
Can’t let that go, can you?
“Well, I hope everything turns out alright, Mrs. Easton,” he says in his best Super Host voice.
“Thank you. And call me Emma, please,” she says, more of a command than a kindness. “I didn’t take my husband’s last name.”
“Of course. Emma.”
Eliza didn’t take his last name, either.
“I may not be back tonight. Depends on how late the night goes. My friend’s got a flat near the restaurant. I might stay there.”
Why is she telling me all of this? I’m not her babysitter.
“Honestly, do what you need to do. Pretend I’m not here.”
He has no intention of telling her what his plans are for the night. Well, they’re not plans so much as hopes, but either way, none of her damn business.
* * *
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One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure, right?
Bennett’s brain has become a place where positive idioms go to die. Walking to the Claret, he’s cycling through all of them. Just because Eliza chucked him doesn’t mean he has no value for any woman. There are probably plenty of women out there who are looking for the exact traits that Eliza criticized; women who would appreciate the company of a kind, if slightly neurotic, man, who yes, arguably spends too much time in his garden shed and thinks his fabric collection has feelings. This isn’t how he’s going to pitch himself to Claire, because the more he thinks about it, that guy doesn’t sound like much of a catch. Presenting himself to Claire as a successful, talented, caring and, dammit, sexy man (no beer gut!) will be a challenge, b
ut maybe acting successful, talented, caring, and sexy will make him all of the above. Maybe, eventually, it’ll come naturally to him.
You don’t know until you try is the last adage that goes through his mind before checking his reflection in the pub window, careful not to look himself in the eyes where doubt is lurking. It takes a second for his focus to shift to the figure on the other side of the glass. Claire is smiling at him, beckoning him inside with her index finger.
“Hello, Bennett Driscoll,” she says when he enters, as though she is saying, Checkmate.
How on earth does she know his name? He paid with cash yesterday. He swallows hard, facing the door, a little afraid to turn around. What does she know?
The bar is quiet, just a couple of tables occupied in the back and a few of the old boys from yesterday sitting in the window. Claire is behind the bar, smirking, her arms spread out, balancing on the counter. It’s a splintered and sticky kingdom, but it’s hers.
“I was going to introduce myself, but I see there’s no need.” He approaches the bar, tentatively at first, then he remembers that tentative is what lost him the last woman he had. He adds some swagger to his final steps, before spreading his arms across the other side of the bar, mirroring her.
“One of my regulars recognized you,” she says, reaching for a wineglass on a rack of recently washed glasses. She starts polishing it. “He said he went to school with you.” She watches Bennett’s reaction through the glass, before placing it between them.
“Did he have nice things to say?” Bennett asks, leaning on his elbows now, trying to appear comfortable.
“He said you were always in the life room drawing naked ladies.”
Feeling himself blush, Bennett drops his gaze to the floor and touches his hair, then looks up again with a sheepish smile of a boy caught stealing.
“I googled you,” she adds, picking up another glass and holding it up to the light, looking for smudges.
He knows exactly what she’d have found in her search. He googles himself, weekly. His Wikipedia page comes up first, followed by several archived articles from the nineties and early noughts.
He leans in closer. “And what did you learn?”
Is she wearing more makeup today? She definitely wasn’t wearing mascara yesterday. He’d have noticed because he finds the stuff disturbing, like spider legs crawling out of a woman’s eyeballs.
“I think that drawing you did of me could be worth money.”
Nope.
He chooses to act mysterious rather than divulge the depressing truth that she probably couldn’t give the damn thing away, so the conversation devolves into a staring contest. He’s going to let her win, but he’s going to make her earn it first.
She sets the second wineglass next to the first and reaches behind her, without looking, to pull out a bottle of wine from an ice-filled well that runs along the inside of the bar. “You like white?”
He nods, yes, not breaking their gaze.
“Good. We normally only sell this by the bottle,” she says, pushing the label toward him, hoping to trick him into looking. “Some guys convinced me earlier to sell them two glasses.” Her eyes conspiring with his, she uncorks the bottle. “I need to get rid of the evidence. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“A willing accomplice,” he agrees. The words sound smooth coming out of his mouth. So long as she continues to flatter him, this will be easy.
She fills the two glasses with the wine, both hitting the same level, all without her having to eye it. This is some sexy shit.
She pushes one toward him and keeps the other for herself. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” He clinks her glass, still careful not to break eye contact. Sipping the wine, he remembers the old superstition about seven years bad sex. He’s not normally superstitious, but two years of no sex, followed by seven years of bad sex for breaking eye contact is too big a risk; plus, now he’d like to win the staring contest. He squints a little to let her know he’s not backing down. Eliza never let him win at anything, it didn’t matter the game, she was always better. He hated that.
Defeating Claire on her own turf is a bad idea. He reminds himself to focus on the long game. He ends the battle with a wink, before turning his focus to his wine.
“This is nice,” he says, spinning the wine around in his glass.
“I don’t normally drink during my shift, but I’m off in fifteen minutes.”
He brings the wine to his nose. He’s seen people do that. It smells like cat piss, but oddly, not in a bad way. “I was going to do another drawing for you. I brought another sketchbook, with perforated pages this time.”
“Is this what you do?” she asks, but it’s not quite the right question. She tries to rephrase. “Do you normally draw women in bars or don’t you have a studio for that kind of thing?”
He nods. He likes this mysterious nodding business. “I do, actually.”
“So you draw women in bars and then you bring them back to your studio?” She leans back from the bar and sizes him up. “They take their clothes off and you paint them?”
This feels like a trap.
“Looking for new recruits, are you?” She swirls the wine in her glass, confident that she’s got him figured out.
“I used to have paid models,” he says, setting his glass on the bar. He’s going to tell her the truth, although there’s no chance in hell she’ll actually believe it. “I haven’t painted a naked woman in fifteen years.”
She laughs. “Please! There is a picture on your Wikipedia page of you grinning next to a painting of a naked woman reclining on some giant banquet table.”
Dammit.
He points to the wrinkles under his eyes, which are more pronounced around his scar. “That was fifteen years ago.”
She shrugs, conceding that, yeah, he does look older than the man in that photo. “So why were you drawing me?”
“I told you yesterday, you have a pretty smile.”
This feels like the easiest answer. Certainly easier than telling her that he’s suffering from crippling self-doubt, that he’s hoping to rekindle his career with his old tricks, that if he doesn’t start leaving the studio and conversing with other humans, he’ll probably stop changing his underwear. There is a lot at stake, but she does have a pretty smile. That’s not a lie.
She’s questioning whether or not to trust him, he can tell. “How about this,” she says. “I’ll let you take me for a drink. Then we’ll see.”
“See” what? I haven’t asked for anything. Yet.
“Let’s go to Townhouse,” she says, gesturing in the general direction of the posh cocktail bar down the street. She doesn’t need to; he knows the place well. He and Eliza used to go there on date nights. The owners, avid art collectors, have a Bennett Driscoll hanging above the bar. They’d commissioned a painting of a nude, seated in one of their signature hunter green upholstered armchairs, recognizable by its intricate navy blue embroidery of stags’ heads. (Bennett had questioned whether the portrait would give customers pause about sitting in the chairs, but apparently not.) Townhouse didn’t pay him real money for the painting, but instead, with a giant bar tab. Eliza, of course, scoffed at this, but was still determined that they were going to drink every drop of the painting’s worth in pretentious cocktails. He’s reasonably sure it was just a coincidence that she started seeing Jeff around the time the bar tab ran out. Anyway, if he and Claire go there now, she is going to see his painting hanging above the bar. Dated 2015, it is literally the only nude he’s painted in the last fifteen years.
* * *
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The five-minute walk to the bar is strange. Claire is a different woman when she leaves the comfort of her own bar. She talks faster, can’t stop talking, in fact—and in a voice that Bennett swears is pitched higher than the one she uses behind the bar, like
someone hit fast-forward on a cassette tape. And she also walks faster and doesn’t sway her hips like she does in the pub.
Despite being nearly full, Townhouse is the kind of place that never looks busy. There is a long bar that runs the length of the room. The rest of the space feels like a hunting lodge, although the clientele look as though they couldn’t tell a shotgun from a toilet brush, having never held either. The room is full of short, round, dark wood tables that can hold no more than a few cocktails and a small bowl of nuts. These tiny tables are surrounded by luxurious armchairs, like the one Bennett used to pose his nude. The armed bar seats have the same fabric upholstering. A far cry from the rickety wooden stools at the Claret. The marble-top bar glistens like an ice luge.
There are only two bar seats left when they arrive. They happen to be conveniently located right in front of Bennett’s painting. Maybe she won’t notice it, he hopes. Yes, it’s a five-foot-tall painting of a naked woman and it’s meant to be noticed, but she doesn’t necessarily have to know he painted it. His signature is small, barely noticeable. (The bigger the signature, the smaller the cock is Bennett’s personal philosophy.) Plus, it’s not like Claire’s an art historian and it’s not like Bennett’s personally responsible for every nude painting in London. It just so happens he painted the one currently staring down at them.
“Blimey,” Claire says, stroking the bar. “I bet all this marble cost more than I make in a year.” She runs the full length of her arm across the smooth surface, making a crescent, stopping just short of knocking over the drink of the man next to her. “I just want to lick it.”
It hadn’t occurred to Bennett until now that Claire wouldn’t know how to behave in a classy establishment. He looks around at the other drinkers, mostly suits, a few hipsters. He doesn’t think anyone will recognize him. “Let’s get you a drink,” he says, pulling out her seat for her, “before you start licking things.”