Super Host

by Kate Russo

  “Yeah, it’s beautiful,” Bennett agreed, secretly preferring the interiors of his imagination to the actual images on the screen.

  She shrugged her shoulders at him expectantly. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Should we go look?” she asked, taking the paintbrush out of his hand and setting it on his workbench. She had a habit of doing that when she wanted his attention and it pissed him off.

  “We don’t have five point five million,” he pointed out, picking up the paintbrush again, defiantly, and turned back to his painting—a large canvas, featuring radishes and a loaf of bread on a ticking-stripe fabric.

  “That’s what mortgages are for.”

  They’d been lucky enough to buy their current house with cash during Bennett’s heyday.

  “I’m fifty. A mortgage will outlive me.”

  “This is your dream,” she said, angry now.

  “No. It’s a fantasy. I also have a fantasy where you wear a French maid’s outfit. You don’t seem as eager to make that a reality.”

  She stormed out.

  That was, now that he thinks about it, her storming-out phase, the part of their marriage where she was so desperate for change, any change, to alter the monotony of their days. His fantasy house had become her dream. She had co-opted it and nurtured it. She’d actually put a property alert on that house, so she’d be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to tell Bennett that his dream (her dream) was coming true. And in an instant he crushed it. To Eliza, it didn’t matter that they couldn’t afford that house. That was just an obstacle to overcome. The larger issue, she believed, was that Bennett never wanted to share his fantasy house with her in the first place. “You think I stole your dream,” she told him later, after divorce papers had been filed. “But only because you refused to share it.”

  * * *

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  He slows down, approaching the back gate of his house. Leaning on the fence, he stretches out his calves, or pretends to, while catching his breath, then paces around the garden while his heart rate slows, the sweat turning from liquid to sticky sap on his skin. Plopping down in the middle of the grass, he empties his pockets of the phone and iPod, dropping them onto the lawn. Lying down on his back, he stares up at the airplane exhaust–streaked London sky, music still playing:

  Mind to motion. Know the notion.

  Notion! Know shun, No. No -shun . . .

  There’s no one renting the main house at the moment, which means Bennett can once again pace around shirtless in his own yard if he wants to. Emma’s no longer holding court at the kitchen island, watching him. Of course, he was watching her, too. That, it turns out, she knew. After they’d checked out, Bennett found a cookie jar full of little slips of paper, all with strange and angry observations written on them. Obviously, he had to read them all. Mostly, she was really mad at some guy named Charlie . . . but two slips of paper had Bennett’s name on them: “Bennett touched my avocado.” What are you on about? No, I bloody didn’t. And “Bennett is spying on me.” God knows what the purpose was for this random selection of accusations or what the fuck they were doing in the cookie jar, but Bennett kept the last one that pertained to him. He liked the matter-of-factness with which Emma wrote it. Bennett is spying on me. Full stop. Not, Is Bennett spying on me? She knew. There is something strangely comforting about knowing that she noticed him. She could have included that in her AirBed review, but she didn’t. Maybe they were friendly after all. Also, did she paint his bedroom? It smells like fresh paint in there. Who does that?

  Of course, he could also move back in until the next guest arrives, but the house doesn’t feel like home anymore. Looking at it from the lawn, he can feel it bearing down on him, unfriendly, full of past mistakes and the promise of a future that at one time felt so certain he’d somehow let it slip right through his fingers. He’s thinking about selling it, though he doesn’t want to tell Mia yet. She’s been trying to get him to sell it ever since Eliza left. He doesn’t want to get her hopes up that he might finally be ready to move on. After all, it’s more necessity than personal growth that’s led him to consider a sale. London has recently changed its policy on AirBed lettings. Hosts must now live in their properties three-quarters of the year and rent it out no more than ninety days. He doesn’t want to live in his old house for two hundred and seventy-five days a year, and the ninety night maximum won’t generate enough income to pay taxes and his living expenses. He can either let it long-term or sell it. But a long-term letting is tantamount to kicking a can down the road. That’s something he’s good at doing. As with so many things, what he’s hoping for is his next chapter to be presented to him on a silver platter. All he has to do is accept it. A new house, new wife, new gallery—like bundling your TV, phone, and Wi-Fi. He hasn’t brought up this idea with Claire, either. He’s worried she’ll take it as an opportunity to discuss their future. It’s only been six weeks.

  Six weeks.

  He likes Claire; she’s a good reason to take a shower and wash off all this crusted-on sweat. They don’t have a lot in common, though, except a deep need for companionship. He hates Britain’s Got Talent, but he likes watching it with her because he can complain to her about how stupid it is and she listens. It’s nice to have someone who’ll listen when he’s telling her that her taste is stupid. She just smiles and sometimes, if she really wants him to shut up, she’ll stick food in his mouth. Or kiss him. Both are good results for insulting another person’s taste. But he never says anything too mean and by the end of the show she always agrees that the singers can’t sing, the comedians aren’t funny, and no dog can be inherently British. He likes her best when she’s tired, especially on the nights after a long shift when she says, “I just want to curl up with my book.” On those nights, she’ll lay her head in his lap and read a Ruth Rendell, holding the paperback open above her head, until she falls asleep and the book slips from her fingers right onto her face. He’s started reading The Shining while he’s at her flat. She has all the Stephen King books, the ones his father never let him have. He’s going to read Misery next, if the relationship lasts that long—The Shining is a big book. It’ll probably last, they have a nice rhythm going, so long as she doesn’t want to talk about the future. He’d like for things to last at least until autumn, because Eliza asked Mia to spend the summer with her in America and she agreed. Bennett hates the idea of his daughter being away for two whole months, but he knows it’s the right thing. Mia has been cold with Eliza ever since the affair. Her loyalty to him is very touching, but he knows she needs to have a relationship with her mother. So long as she doesn’t come back saying things like, “Jeff isn’t so bad.”

  Jeff is the worst.

  Still, he can’t very well tell Claire that he wants to continue dating her until the end of the summer, so she can distract him from his daughter being gone. Chief distractor can’t be the future she has in mind.

  He runs his hand through the grass, searching for his phone. The AirBed request is still on the screen when he locates the phone by his ankles. A woman named Kirstie: Hello, Bennett, I’m a recent divorcée looking for my first place in London, the message says. I’ve lived the last thirty years in Devon and I’m looking to escape my small town and my ex-husband!

  He clicks out of the message for a moment and clicks on her photograph. She looks about his age, and she’s standing on a beach in a floral wrap dress with a plunging neckline, the effect enhanced by a push-up bra. She has one hand on her hip and a cocktail in the other, her eyes concealed by giant sunglasses. She’s smiling, but it doesn’t strike him as a happy smile. It’s more of a possessive smile, a queen in her kingdom smile. Sort of like Eliza.

  It looks like your place is available from next week, but that seems too good to be true?! she continues. I’d like to book for a few months, with the possibility of extending until I find the right place to buy. I have three gr
own children who might be in and out (when they’re broke or hungry!). Would this be a suitable arrangement for you? You live in a studio behind the property? How delightfully bohemian!

  How delightfully patronizing.

  Does he really want to live behind this woman for several months? The money would be good and it would give him a chance to think longer about whether he wants to sell the house.

  But her? Eliza 2.0?

  He could live at Claire’s for a couple months, but then he’d have to concede that she’s his girlfriend. He’d have to introduce her to Mia, too. Suddenly, the future feels very present.

  * * *

  ||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Back in the studio, using photos now, he spends the morning painting Claire’s legs, trying to perfect the moment where her thighs cross, pressing against each other, creating a crevice of deep purple. Against the original yellow background of the painting, the blues and purples had been easy to achieve, but as the painting has progressed and the yellow is vanishing, it’s starting to look muted and dull. He thought the yellow, left over from his last fabric painting—the one he named “Alicia yellow”—was an inspired choice for the background of Claire’s painting, but Claire wrinkled her nose when she saw it.

  “I’m not going to look jaundiced, am I?” she had asked.

  “No, of course not,” he’d answered, though truthfully, he wasn’t sure. It had been a long time since he’d painted flesh. Looking at it now, Claire doesn’t look jaundiced or ill, rather, she looks porcelain. No, that’s too fragile. Maybe stone? Actually, stone is no better. Hardly flattering, especially for a woman he knows for a fact is soft, warm, and supple. He adds a little ultramarine blue to his pinky flesh tint and a bluish-purple forms. Then a little brown ochre to tamp it down—let’s not go crazy—holding the color up to the painting and then tweaking it with a little more flesh tint. When he finally gets the color right and applies it to the fleshy blob on the canvas, just like that, her legs really appear, ample and round, grope-able. Suddenly, he’s hungry. Taking a break for lunch, he pulls out a block of cheese from the fridge—the block of English white cheddar that Claire demanded he have stocked at all times. A lover of seriously mature and crumbly cheddar, she’s offended by the mini Babybel he prefers at lunchtime. For Bennett, the small red-waxed circular cheeses are more a matter of convenience than taste. It’s a cheese you can eat without thinking. Mature English cheddar is a thinking cheese. It requires a cutting board, a knife, and at least a fraction of your attention. Today, he decides to forgo the cutting board and the attention, slicing the cheese straight on the countertop while looking back at his painting of Claire on the easel. Most of what he cuts is cheddar, but he soon realizes he has also sliced the cord for his phone charger. With only ten percent battery left, he has to halt his afternoon painting session and make a trip to the phone shop.

  In his paint clothes and flip-flops, earbuds in and head down, he rushes down the high road, eager to finish his errand and get back to the studio. The deadline for the Royal Academy Summer Show is coming up and he intends to enter the painting of Claire. In the late nineties and early two-thousands, Bennett was a fixture at the Academy’s yearly salon hang of the best U.K. art, but he hasn’t had a painting in the show since 2011. Lacking confidence, he hasn’t entered a painting in five years. When he strides past Bedford House, an exclusive West London club where he and Eliza used to be members in his heyday, he recalls drinking overpriced mojitos with other self-aggrandizing artists and media-types.

  “Benji! Oi, Benji!”

  Bennett pulls the earbuds out of his ears and sees Carl Willis, an old classmate from the Royal College, sitting at a table outside Bedford House, drinking a glass of white wine, a pit bull asleep at his ankles. Carl has long believed that Bennett’s name is actually Benjamin and there’s nothing he can do to convince the guy otherwise.

  “Alright, Benji?” Carl asks, waving his old friend over to the table. “You looked deep in thought just then.” He takes a swig from his large glass of wine. He’s got on Ray-Ban aviators, despite the overcast day. His pink Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt clings tightly to his chest and spray-tanned biceps.

  “Fine, thanks.” Bennett hovers over Carl’s table, shifting his weight between legs, anxious to get to the phone shop. Never Bennett’s favorite person at art school, Carl was loud, opinionated, and “touchy,” always asking the other blokes to flex their muscles, grabbing their behinds, and giving them unwanted embraces, because, apparently, he was in touch with his feminine side.

  “Sit, mate. Take a load off.”

  Bennett looks down at the strange beast at Carl’s feet, a pit bull with a lazy eye and faux leather booties. The dog raises its head and growls.

  “Keep cool, Rosie. It’s just Benji.” He pushes out an empty chair with his foot, signaling Bennett to sit down. “You look like you’ve been working it,” he says, pointing to Bennett’s paint clothes, but seeming to insinuate prostitution in the tone of his voice.

  Wanker.

  “Yeah, studio day,” Bennett explains, sitting down across from Carl. “Just need to replace my phone charger.”

  “What? There?” Carl points in the direction of the phone shop down the road. “Don’t go there, mate. I got a geezer sells them discount.” Carl’s always got a geezer.

  “My phone’s almost dead. I just need to get one now.” He starts to get up, but Carl gestures for him to sit back down.

  “You got an exhibition coming up, then, mate?”

  Fuck. Not this.

  He doesn’t want to talk about the stagnation in his work, certainly not with Carl, who has never suffered from a lack of confidence, having just recently finished an exhibition at the White Cube, where he showed a selection of large-scale paintings of biblical scenes set in working-class London locations: The Crucifixion in East Street Market, The Annunciation in a Council Flat, The Virgin and Child in Primark, The Last Supper at KFC. Bennett didn’t see the show, but it was a hit, at least according to the Daily Mail, the rag that also happens to be currently on Carl’s table. At art school, Carl claimed to read the right-wing paper ironically. Bennett suspects he just reads it, now, full stop.

  “No, nothing specific,” he responds.

  “I haven’t seen any of your work in a while. I was worried maybe you wasn’t painting anymore, nuhtamean?”

  Here it comes. Every time Bennett has the displeasure of this guy’s company, his fake, working-class accent gets thicker and thicker. He’s pretty sure Carl grew up in Tunbridge Wells and moved to Chiswick five years ago after a stint in the East End. Bennett suspects he’s putting on the inflection to challenge the stiff upper lips of West London. He always had a strong command of grammar in art school. Either that or the guy’s had a stroke.

  “Nope. Still painting.” When Bennett shifts in his chair, the dog growls again.

  “Come on, Rosie. He ain’t so bad.” Carl speaks to the dog in a baby voice.

  “Rosie?” Bennett can see Carl has “Rosie” tattooed in large cursive on his forearm.

  “Yeah, named her after my lil’ sis.”

  Jesus. Does she have a lazy eye, too?

  Bennett raises an eyebrow. “How does your sister feel about that?”

  “She’s passed on, mate.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Thirty years, now, but she’s in the old ticker, nuhtamean?” He points to his heart.

  Bennett nods, solemnly. He can’t just get up and leave now. He’s trapped.

  “You a member?” Carl asks, sipping from his glass of wine, nodding at the entrance of Bedford House.

  Bennett runs his hand through his hair. “Not anymore. I wasn’t here enough to justify the cost.” That’s better than saying he flat out can’t afford it.

  “Let’s get you a glass of vino, my friend.” Carl looks around for a server.

  Bennett puts hi
s hand up. “No, that’s okay. I just need to get the charger, then it’s back to work.”

  Carl ignores this and waves down a waitress in a tight black cocktail dress. “Hello, love. He’ll have a large glass of chardonnay, as well,” he says, his posh Kent accent returning. “On my account, darling.”

  She nods, saying nothing. Carl’s eyes follow her bum as she heads back inside. When the waitress is out of earshot, Carl continues, “Fuck, mate, they always dress like that ’ere. It’s fuckin’ Saturday night at all hours of the bloody day. You eaten?”

  “Yeah,” Bennett says, his belly full of mature white cheddar, thank God.

  “They got this wicked pheasant ’ere. Bloody delish, mate. You gotta pick the bullet out your teeth, nuhtamean?” He mimics picking a bullet out from between his two front teeth, the whiteness of which suggests he’s as liberal with bleach strips as he is with the spray tan. “Proper fuckin’ grub.”

  Bennett just nods. What else can anyone do when Carl is talking?

  The waitress returns with Bennett’s chardonnay. He gives her a half-smile when she sets it down, hoping to convey more sympathy than gratitude. He takes a sip and tries not to smile, thinking how much Claire would hate this disgusting, woody wine.

  “Now, that’s vino!” Carl says, pointing at Bennett’s glass.

  “It’s nice,” he says, though it tastes like the inside of a moldy barrel.