The Benefactor

by Sebastian Hampson

  Timothy touched his neck, which had gone blotchy. Henry noticed that his palms were glistening. It could have been the heat.

  ‘I’ll admit you’ve got my attention,’ Timothy said.

  An hour later, Henry and Martha were undressing each other in their reception area, knocking the door closed behind them with his naked hips. He’d never felt power drip from himself like this. From them. Martha’s pulse was harder than his. He pressed his chest to hers as he reached around and undid her dress, sliding it down to the floor.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said as Martha broke free from him and headed for the living room. ‘Come upstairs.’

  ‘Here. On the table.’

  Martha swept the coasters and the vase off the precarious Noguchi table. The heavy glass supported her weight, barely—the isosceles of her legs spreading to a revealing equilateral, her curvilinear body one with the geometry of the table. She slid all over it as he worked her shoes off with his toe, until he could feel her naked foot against his. He ripped open his sweat-soaked shirt, exposing his chest.

  The table overbalanced. They toppled off it, onto the carpet.

  ‘Terrific,’ Henry said, once they’d recovered their breath. ‘We’ve officially desecrated the living room. Do you think that woke the neighbours up?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  They lay together in the warm summer air. Henry could have sunk through the floor, the tension he’d held in through the evening dispersed. The glass on the Noguchi table was all smudged now. Already in a dream-like state, he became fascinated by the way its two crescent-shaped supports rested weightlessly on each other, connected at one thin pressure point. A fine act of balance and illusion.

  ‘How do you do it?’ Henry said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Get your claws in like that.’

  ‘Obviously you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not when it produces those results. Christ, Martha. I wouldn’t change a thing right now.’

  Martha didn’t respond. She watched as her husband got up and rocked the table upright again, making sure it was aligned as it had been before. Her husband. That word had never sat with her. It felt stifling—like slipping into a too-hot bath.

  She believed in him, shared his determinations. The prudent investor in her believed his ambitions would pay off. Marriage was a speculative market, ultimately—one in which you had to take your chances. No gambling, no rewards.

  ‘What do you think of Timothy?’ he said.

  ‘He’s a good acquisition,’ she said. ‘Have to say I’m surprised you were friends. He’s nothing like you.’

  ‘How do you figure? We always moved in the same circles.’

  Martha was about to explain what she meant, but her pessimistic side called a halt to this initiative. She focused on Henry, affronted, to an extent, by how much he’d kept from her. Not that she judged him for that—his decision, ultimately, to tell her what kind of a man he’d been before they met. But she’d been happier, so much happier, without that little tease. It made her speculate further. She saw Henry and Timothy pumped up on testosterone and alcohol, as they’d been this evening: the ringleaders inducting pledges into their Jewish fraternity, barking orders, egging each other on, outdoing the last idea for humiliation, bullying, with something crueller and more unusual—until it went that little bit too far. Swearing to a code of silence about whatever happened.

  Crazy to think that way, with no evidence. But she couldn’t help it when she had no assurances to the contrary.

  Martha went upstairs to have a shower, leaving Henry to pour himself another drink. Ran it lukewarm, warm enough to loosen her mind but cool enough to bring her core temperature down. Her excitement for Henry faded the longer the shower ran, the more it sobered her and washed away the tension, the excitement, that had built up over the course of the evening.

  She didn’t have to be surprised, recalibrating the image of her husband as a fairly typical man. And she wasn’t. But she was disappointed—resigned to that recalibration. She couldn’t square a man who appreciated beauty, architecture, art, music, with one who pummelled that side of himself into a snivelling heap.

  It shouldn’t have bothered her. No—Henry served his purpose regardless of what kind of a man he turned out to be. She could afford to be indifferent. To him and to his friends. Even when their gaze lingered on her for a few seconds too long, as Timothy’s had from across the table, several times that evening.

  She went downstairs. Henry had collapsed into one of those Wassily chairs he’d taken pride in selecting from the Knoll showroom a few weeks ago. The bourbon had splashed down his naked torso. The glass was on the floor.

  Martha turned out the light and returned upstairs.

  AS a reward for making it through the week, Henry returned to the wine bar on Friday. The owner was around, huddled up with papers in the corner, and welcomed him like an old friend.

  Henry appreciated this more than he let on. One of the first shocks he’d received after leaving Her was the realisation that nobody outside that world had much stake in him. Sales associates and waiters might have noted the weight of his Palladium card. His name embossed on it. The more attentive ones thanked Mr Calder for his business.

  ‘There you are,’ Beth said to Henry. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to. We were worried.’

  ‘Ha. No more new staff for me to scare off, I see. Where’s…oh, what was her name?’

  ‘Maggie should be here soon.’ Beth’s tone betrayed distress, as though Maggie’s imminent arrival were in some doubt.

  ‘You’ve been hanging out with her?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I’m showing her around, getting her acquainted with some of our finer establishments. We went out with my friends in Alphabet the other night. They’re mostly musicians, some writers. I thought we were all getting along. But then Maggie takes a phone call and disappears on us, and she didn’t answer my texts until the next day.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Henry paused. He hadn’t meant to say that, and it caused what remained of his composure to topple. ‘I mean…I’ve dealt with plenty of artists. Famously unreliable. How’s her show doing?’

  ‘Hard to say. Between us, I don’t think she knows how lucky she is. You have no idea how many talented people our age are killing themselves trying to get noticed.’

  Henry suspected Beth was referring to herself.

  ‘We’ll stage an intervention,’ he said, complete with a lame wink. ‘Drag her down to earth again.’ He noticed that a few of the people next to him were waiting to order. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be keeping you,’ he said, though he couldn’t deny the pleasure he felt at making them wait. ‘How about a glass of that malbec?’

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s the bad news: we haven’t received the new shipment yet.’

  Henry made an exaggerated show of being outraged, but he was genuinely affronted. That wine was the main reason he ventured across the park to this place. It may have seemed a microscopic detail, but the flavour of that particular malbec put him at peace somehow, gave his other senses something to rally around.

  ‘I can recommend something else you might like,’ Beth said.

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll figure it out.’ Henry reached around desperately for adjectives. Spicy, big, bold, rich, gamey. Barnyard? Earthy? He used to be so much more decisive about precisely what he wanted. ‘Napa cabernet. Best one you have, but not a big name.’ Weak, Calder, weak. He hoped the way he’d said it had conveyed more certainty than he felt after bringing Maggie up in the conversation.

  ‘Have you got plans for Thanksgiving?’ Beth said once she’d located the bottle, ignoring her other customers as she filled his glass. She must have been hanging out for his usual generous tip.

  ‘My sister’s invited me down to DC. What do you think? Worth the effort?’

  ‘Getting out of town’s never a bad idea, right?’

  ‘If the point of tra
velling is to change the scenery for a few days,’ he sighed. ‘In which case you should go somewhere you want to go. San Juan’s always nice. What about you? Suppose you have brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Two brothers—one older, one younger—but I won’t be seeing them this year. They’re all over the place.’

  ‘I guess that’s how it is for everyone these days. Count yourself lucky. My sister’s insisting on this so she can show off that perfect life…’

  Henry was briefly aware that he often had this sort of conversation with Beth, but tonight it had begun before the first sip. He was fighting a compulsion to drain his glass and ask for another. It had been a bad day. A significant day. One year. One calamity of a year, which had slipped by so fast he’d hardly registered the collapse.

  That was no excuse for talking bitterly about Christine, whom he loved so dearly. Didn’t he? Love was a mutable thing, and prone to wearing thin if you over-buffed it. No, he loved what she had been more than what she had become.

  A chill ran through Henry when Maggie rolled in ten minutes later, obviously late for her shift, weighed down by a Strand bookstore shoulder bag that appeared to be splitting at the seams. He couldn’t face her, keeping his eyes down while she and Beth went into the corner, talking in hushed voices. Though it made no sense, he felt they must have been talking about him.

  This bar had lasted him well as a site of disassociation, where he could insert his blank public self, free of judgement. Where he had no reputation. The fact he could be known for something over which he had no control, and especially something as ridiculous as taking the new bartender under his roof, destroyed that disassociation. He began to think about what Maggie could have concluded from seeing his apartment, what assumptions she might have come to about his situation. He’d made an irreversible error, getting involved in her drama. He knew already she wasn’t going to let him forget it.

  She wasn’t wearing make-up, but unlike other women who let their natural features out, unmediated, she wasn’t showing Henry an intimate, authentic side of her. She hadn’t tried to hide the blemishes on her dry skin or the puffed-up irregularities around her eyes. He had to contemplate them as an intractable part of her that would never be hidden.

  Much as Henry tried to keep himself to himself, he couldn’t help but sneak a glance at Maggie and Beth while pretending to be busy with his phone. He couldn’t hear their conversation, but they appeared to be arguing, Beth raising a flummoxed hand to her temple. And then, out of nowhere, Maggie took the same hand in hers and held it, tight.

  Henry turned away, amused. He’d hunched forwards over the bar, his hair coming out of its coif, strands dangling before him invasively. He became fixated on the group next to him. A young and recently engaged or married couple, showing off their rings to their friends, taking the shrieks of delight with smug indifference.

  ‘Obviously I didn’t scare you off from coming here.’

  Beth had disappeared. These words came from Maggie, who had come up to his end of the bar and was pouring him a bigger refill than he needed.

  ‘Is that what you were trying to do?’

  ‘I wanted to yank some kind of reaction out of you.’

  ‘I thought we’d agreed not to bring it up. See these people?’ He nodded discreetly to the Hallmark-styled lovers. ‘They’re the ones who’d scare me off.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘If you were on the other side of marriage you’d understand.’

  ‘Your side?’ she laughed. ‘Henry, I might not have had the same experiences as you, but that doesn’t mean I’m inexperienced. Or that I wouldn’t understand. The fact you were married doesn’t make it special or incomprehensible.’

  ‘Christ. Where did Beth get to?’

  ‘She’s having a cigarette break.’

  ‘Interesting. Surely you didn’t need to tell me that? You could’ve said she was having a break and left it there.’

  ‘But that’s not as interesting.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t want to hear it. You have a habit of invading people’s privacy—going through my things.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. So do you.’

  She’d got him there. Though he made sure not to show it, Henry appreciated the bluntness. If somebody was going to call him out and get away with it, imperative that they do so convincingly. Though privacy seemed an impossible luxury, he saw what sort of a hurricane he would be releasing if he were to open his windows to a mean-spirited world that couldn’t place his suffering within fifty-seven years of context—that could only blow the truths he held onto out of alignment.

  He didn’t ask for sympathy, coming to this place alone. Not in a direct way. She thought he did.

  ‘In that case,’ Henry said, ‘I should go and see your show. Make my mind up about you, based on what I see there.’

  ‘That’s what it’s there for.’

  ‘How did you enjoy the opening? The attention? I used to go to them. For work. Never cared for the artists as much as their work.’

  ‘If it was hard, it’s because I was surrounded by men like you and I wasn’t sure what they all wanted me to say. So I didn’t say much.’

  Henry noticed then that Maggie was wearing spectacles this week. Horn-rimmed ones. Almost the same design as Beth’s, except he could tell they were prescription lenses. Perhaps she wore contacts and couldn’t afford new ones.

  This stirred in him an odd sort of pity. Despite the appeal of having uninflected, interchangeable bartenders, he wanted to see her for who she was—no, he wanted her to insist on who she was. Even if it displeased him.

  ‘What do you do for work?’ she was asking.

  Henry looked at her blankly.

  ‘Another time,’ he muttered, tapping the rim of his glass and waiting for her to refill it.

  His phone vibrated on the bar. A text from Timothy Fogel.

  Have you seen the finalists for IPA? Celebrating with friends. Come over to Sterling—we’re drowning in franciacorta.

  He illustrated this with a selfie, the camera pulled back to take in his entire overstuffed living room, the wine displayed on ice, the friends crowded around him in a big hug of a circle, hands clasped over each other’s shoulders.

  If Henry had been more sober, he might have considered it. No, Timothy, he thought, I haven’t seen the finalists for the International Photography Awards. Are you on the list, by any chance?

  Henry typed out a response that brushed him off in the politest way possible. Fogel never read for nuance the way Henry did. He wouldn’t be offended.

  Without realising it, Henry had already finished that fresh glass of…whatever he was drinking. It tasted nothing like the Napa cabernet—bitter, as if it had been open for weeks.

  ‘I think you’ve had enough for now,’ Maggie said.

  Henry must have asked for another glass. He didn’t recall doing so.

  ‘You might be right about that,’ he said. ‘I should get out of here.’

  Henry tried putting a soft-soled foot to the floor, and it was as though his whole body had become liquid. He landed on the ground with a thud and a groan, hitting his head.

  Maggie came around to the other side of the bar and took his arm. He gripped her shoulder, digging his shaking fingers into the flesh.

  Drinking alone at a busy bar was undignified, perhaps, but falling off his stool was another thing entirely. The Henry of Village jazz clubs and straight-up bourbons would have been disgusted. The less he thought about how Martha would have reacted, the better.

  The intoxication had hit him so quickly, like a whole lot of camera flashes popping in his eyes at once, that he found Maggie had brought him home and got him to unlock his front door without any time seeming to pass. He broke free of her grasp once they’d crossed the apartment’s threshold.

  ‘Please,’ he grunted. ‘I’m not an invalid. I can walk.’

  ‘Yeah, well, if you’re anything like my dad then you’ll fall on the stairs. I had to get him
in from the front lawn one night. He woke up with snails on his jacket.’

  Henry became curious again, surprised at what he’d encountered. This young woman was really trying to help him. Unless some implication lurked in the comparison with her father.

  Maggie was trying to find the light switches, which were carefully concealed, like components of a machine that could only be operated by its owner. In the living room, a bottle of George T. Stagg stood on the table where Henry had left it. Beside it was a glass, a pale golden ring around its base. He wished he’d cleaned it up before he went out.

  ‘If you’re planning another bender,’ Maggie said, ‘maybe go for a lower-proof bourbon next time.’

  ‘I’m not on a bender. I’m…I’m grieving.’

  ‘What sort of loss are we talking about here? Composure?’

  ‘No.’ Henry swallowed, breathing hard, staring at his feet because everything else seemed to be moving. ‘My wife. She’s dead. It happened a year ago today.’

  It had taken him a long time to accept the word dead, instead of the polite euphemisms. She passed away. She’s in a better place. The latter might have been true.

  He hadn’t explained the situation to anyone for some time. Hearing himself slur the slippery words out made him wonder if they could possibly be true, or if this whole year had been an elaborate, drunken nightmare he’d wake up from in the morning.

  ‘Oh,’ Maggie said, with more concern and surprise than Henry expected. ‘That sucks. Sorry.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But I don’t think you can use that as an excuse for self-medicating. At least try not to drink alone.’

  ‘Are you saying you want to join me for a nightcap?’ he smirked, briefly forgetting his humiliation and finding himself funnier than usual.

  ‘Yeah, you need to go to bed.’

  He made a point of not allowing her to help him up the stairs, though she followed two steps behind him. The linen on his bed was twisted, the pillows overturned and piled haphazardly, like a teenager’s bed. He couldn’t help but collapse into it as though he’d come home from one of those freshman year frat parties, while Maggie fetched him a glass of water from the bathroom. Henry swept the blister packs of Ativan and Zyloprim off his bedside table so she wouldn’t see them.