A man with a Dalí moustache and what appeared to be a glass of milk lingered by the entrance. His zebra-striped jacket was identical to an Armani cut Henry had once worn to a party on a yacht in Saint-Tropez, only he’d rolled the sleeves up and paired it with frayed stovepipe jeans. After a decade spent trying to prove that he wasn’t out of touch, Henry felt a little cheated by how recognisable half these fashions were, resurrected from the depths of his best years.
Henry thought of the many parties he’d attended over the years, how he’d avoided the too earnest, the too radical, the too uncomfortable, the writers who wanted a job, the B-list celebrities who got drunk and spilled their most intimate stories over the tables. He’d certainly never invited a stranger to confide in him.
Martha, on the other hand, often had to be led away from such people—like that one night at the Met Gala, when she spent too long talking to the wrong person about the child poverty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like the people at those parties he used to attend, these kids seemed to hover at a distance from any outsider, unenthused, speaking only to those they knew, coolly dropping names and making no effort to include the stranger in their midst. It was as familiar as their outfits, but nobody here cared who he was. They had no stake in him.
Henry remained on the fringes of the crowd, trying to spot Maggie among them. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been an object of pity at a social gathering, someone whose place was by no means assured and whose conspicuousness made him hard to avoid.
He’d found a bottle of Napa cabernet at the discount liquor store around the corner, covered in dust on the top shelf. He set it down on the table, next to the craft beers and obscure spirits.
The man with the glass of milk appeared next to him, silent. Henry started.
‘So,’ the young man said, with a thick Texan accent that couldn’t possibly have been genuine. ‘So. You here in some capacity? Landlord, goin’ to shut us on down? Or you somebody’s daddy, come to take ‘em home?’
‘No, no. I sleepwalked here from Manhattan like Rip Van Winkle.’
‘Ha. You’re a funny fella.’ He drank the milk, leaving a white ring around his whiskers. ‘I’m sorry to doubt you—thought you were fixin’ to bust us.’
‘I couldn’t care less. What’s the most fashionable choice of drug amongst you people?’
‘Could be any number of things goin’ on out back. Who d’you know here, fella?’
Not knowing where Maggie was, being unable to point her out, made him anxious.
‘Maggie,’ he said. ‘Do you know her? She’s an artist. Sister Magdalene. She has an exhibition in Chelsea. I support her.’
‘Well, that’s decent of you.’
Henry thought he detected a slight note of irony. The ridiculous accent made it hard to say for sure.
‘Fancy a taste?’
The young man dangled the glass of milk in front of Henry, who got a whiff of pure ethanol, and possibly a few other things.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
‘So why’d you come here? Stay in the city with your artist side-chick if you want to drink that pretty little bottle of wine.’
‘Oh, no, we’re not…’
‘Shut up, fella. Go on. Drink it.’
He had a point. Henry hadn’t insisted on coming here just to be an observer. He tried the drink and found that the creamy milk was a thin smokescreen for something that tasted strongly of aniseed. Bitter. He spluttered.
‘Green fairy got you, huh?’ the young man laughed, whacking him between the shoulder blades. ‘She’s pushing the legal limit. How you like ’em. One-eighty proof.’
So it was absinthe. Henry been about to return the glass to its owner, but he hesitated, then took another, bigger gulp. ‘I’m no stranger to the stuff,’ he said. ‘My name’s Henry, by the way.’
‘Enchanted. Mine’s Walter Gropius.’
‘What, like the architect?’
‘Yeah, fella. Like the architect.’
‘That’s not your real name.’
‘Tell me, what’s a real name? Tonight I’m Walter and you’re whoever the hell you want to be. No rules here.’ Walter Gropius moved uncomfortably into Henry’s personal space. ‘What’s goin’ on, Henry? You got the shaky hands, the crazy eyes. Hot and bothered. Seen it before. You had a bad day?’
‘I went to see my mother-in-law.’
‘That ain’t it. There’s more goin’ on in there. Let it out, Henry. Let it out.’
It sounded so simple. But the thought of talking to this young man anymore had become too much. Draining the glass of absinthe and milk, Henry handed it back to Walter Gropius and felt his footsteps glide as he walked away, trying to find Maggie. In the corner by the record player—an original Jensen-designed Beogram 4000, in excellent condition, hardly a scratch on the aluminium—he noticed a group of bearded young men in cardigans examining a bottle of rum. He recognised the label: Ron del Barrilito Five Star. He’d had it in San Juan, poured over a single cube of ice, accompanied by a cigar. While Martha danced in the waves. And he’d never been able to find a store that stocked it here.
Once the bearded young men were gone, Henry filled himself a glass, a big one, and gulped it down. No sweetness or smoothness, no too-perfect cobblestones or white beachfronts or seersucker pants or carefree cafe owners who knew him by name. The burn repulsed him, but he persisted with it, thinking that if he tried hard enough the undiluted beauty of the Caribbean would return to him.
He saw Maggie across the room, part of a small circle passing a joint around beneath an exposed brick arch by the sacristy. He was surprised at the air she’d adopted, wearing somebody else’s bowler hat and hanging at a well-judged distance from the generic young men and tattooed, short-haired women around her. Henry watched her talking, not loud or obnoxious like her companions, but with a quiet, fervent authority. She’d become the kind of person he would want to meet at a party like this. Whatever she was saying didn’t matter—the image was what drew him in.
He could buy an apartment here, live in it with Maggie. He imagined having a space like this, furnishing it with a big studio for her, watching her work on her installations, then going out in the afternoon and discovering the new bars and restaurants in the neighbourhood with her. Wandering around to the Sunday markets in Prospect Park. Cooking her elaborate meals.
He edged towards the group, trying to hear what she was saying.
‘I’m so glad this party’s a thing,’ she said, mostly addressing a surly young man with a shaved head, whom Henry assumed to be Jason. ‘Everyone in New York is too sheltered these days. No, seriously—you’ve got rich kids moving into neighbourhoods like this one, because it’s in, and they stay in their rooms and get stoned and they never see what’s going on outside their doors. I noticed there’s a rehab centre down by the subway stop. I can’t imagine any of those rich kids would think about the kind of poverty and addiction that’s still on their doorstep.’
‘You should paint that,’ Jason said, putting on a dumb-boy flirtatious manner. ‘It’s such a beautiful idea. When’s your next show?’
Maggie appeared to sigh, though she hid it. ‘You sound like my dealer. I need to rethink everything, start fresh. I want to travel. Go to Iran or Lebanon or wherever, take my mind off this place.’
She took a long drag on the joint, closing her eyes as she inhaled. Henry liked to see her getting pleasure. He could have spent hours observing her, as an invisible spirit.
‘Want to join us?’ one of the tattooed women said to Henry, breaking his trance. ‘Or are you going to keep staring?’
Maggie saw him and stiffened. As she passed the joint on the group moved around her, closing him out of their circle. Henry pushed past them and into the sacristy, which had been converted into a moodily lit bedroom.
He collapsed onto a pile of coats, spilling his drink over himself like a child. The alcohol had built up and hit him in a wave, his defences weakened by exhaustion, adrenaline
, hunger.
His phone rang and he fumbled for it. The letters on the screen slipped over each other, eventually spelling out Christine. He let it go to voicemail.
He was gone for too long, Maggie noticed. She kept talking to her friends for a while, even though the pot had made her drowsy; she might need an upper to counteract it. Somebody must have an 8-ball around here.
She wasn’t sure why Henry had come, and she wished he would leave. Deciding this was the ultimatum she needed to give him, before he got any more drunk, she went into the sacristy to find him.
‘Hey,’ she said, seeing that he was on the end of the bed with his arms braced against his knees, staring at the empty chair across the room, catatonic, hardly registering her. ‘What are you doing here? You can’t creep around me like that, like some kind of stalker. You really threw me off. I’m trying to meet people who can help me here.’
He faced her with glistening, glassy eyes. ‘You don’t need them. I can give you all the help you need.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘I’ll take care of you. Like I should have. We can go somewhere together, somewhere nice. A beach.’
‘Jesus, Henry. What’s wrong with you?’
The glass fell from between his hands, bounced off the carpet. Maggie drew back as Henry stumbled to his feet and lurched towards her, grabbing her around the middle.
‘Whoa,’ she said, trying to break away gently. ‘Take it easy. I think you’ve had enough for tonight, Mr Calder.’
‘Dance with me for a minute.’
‘No, Henry.’
He seemed not to hear her. Maggie felt him press up to her, the hot, musty smell of his breath and his cologne sickening. She tried to pry herself away as he pushed her down onto the bed, the pile of overcoats.
‘I came here tonight to be with you,’ he murmured, his tone eerily calm. ‘Because you make me a better person.’
‘Get the fuck off me.’
She kicked him in the shin. To her relief, he loosened his grip and pulled away from her. He’d already started to unbutton his shirt, leaving his belly exposed. Maggie got up and headed straight for the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve hurt you so much.’
This didn’t make any sense to Maggie. In the strangest way, he seemed not to be talking to her. It was as though he’d directed it at somebody else sitting in the empty chair where he’d been focusing all his attention when she came in.
She left him and his apology, and whoever else was in this room in his imagination, to themselves.
HENRY would forget about the pace of New York unless he went out among it all. After spending so many years and so many thousands of dollars on creating his haven, it was easy to ignore. The city was a capillary network, and he was a single cell, one of many pumped through it.
He joined a crowd of last-minute Christmas shoppers on Herald Square, most of them on their lunchbreak, most of them visibly unhappy. How much of this year’s bonus could they justify dropping on their families? More than last year, perhaps. The Times had just reported that unemployment was finally falling, seizing this as proof that the economy would be reborn in the New Year. Henry wasn’t convinced.
He crossed the patch of green in the middle of the square over which the statue of a balding Horace Greeley presided, slumped in his chair, bronze newspaper crumpled in one hand, surrounded by titillating Victoria’s Secret billboards and newsstands selling the latest glossies.
The great man wasn’t commanding the attention he deserved. Nobody passing by would identify him, or identify with him—the courageous editor who’d brought about public reform, in the face of his own limitations, his failed presidential bid and his ineffectual term as a congressman. Deserving of the civic pride he’d helped to generate, but also lost in it. Henry was reassured by the way Greeley had been memorialised: as integral to the fabric of this city as any other of its heroes, and as worthy of being passed over. New York moved on around him without a second thought.
Henry had listened to the message from Christine when he got home last night: she wasn’t going to stay with him and had booked a room at the Plaza. He’d barely thought of her lately—hadn’t called to offer her a bed during her stay here, or arranged to get rid of Maggie so she could. His sister sounded angry, and shared an uncharacteristic nasty thought about how he’d rejected everyone, and had only himself to blame if he found himself alone.
It had been too late to call, so he’d written her a text and rewritten it several times as the painkillers kicked in and his head cleared. He was sorry for neglecting her, the final draft said. Not his intention. And she was welcome to stay with him in the future. If she wasn’t going to beat him up some more.
No response, and his attempt to call her that morning had gone unanswered.
Now he was going to find her a gift. He would send it along to the Plaza. He had to demonstrate, somehow, that he wasn’t a bad person.
Maggie hadn’t come home last night. He’d stayed awake, head against his pillow, waiting for the click of the door downstairs. Though he didn’t blame her, he nonetheless felt the silence and denial keenly.
In the past, when he knew he was in the wrong, he’d always been able to manipulate the outcome by convincing himself that he wouldn’t behave that badly again. This time he couldn’t make any promises—he was paralysed, moving around weakly, doing no more than what he had to do to stay alive. He felt blank, no sort of person at all. Halfway out the door already.
With no justifications to engineer, nobody to listen to his groans of self-pity, he’d gone searching for something to do. But he was uneasy in Macy’s, a store he’d always avoided. The customers in here were his readership. Aspirational middle-class people he’d treated like the subject of an anthropological study, grouped into categories and subcategories, their diversity documented and filed. They gravitated towards the brands they recognised from his pages—the striking, expensive ads that sold sunglasses and perfumes with designer names that become more desirable to the mass end of the market. Years spent negotiating with perfume manufacturers for those spaces, and Henry had no idea what fragrance his sister wore.
The clothing department made him even more uncomfortable. Last year’s top-tier designs, simplified and reproduced in Pakistan or China or wherever, by exploited workers—cheap commodities, their value commercial rather than cultural. These women could have been browsing through a wider selection of ethically produced coats and scarves—fair-trade fashion could have been a viable alternative. He’d never thought about that before.
Feeling faint in the store’s heat, Henry pressed on through the homewares department, heading for the exit. A cut-crystal salad set attracted his attention, similar to their mother’s—a family heirloom Henry had smashed when he was a five-year-old trying to help with the dishes. Among the stylish new objects on display, it was one of the few designs that hadn’t changed.
The clunky box in the carrier bag weighed on his arm as he walked out onto Broadway. Having stood in line for half an hour to pay for the damn thing, and waiting to have it wrapped, he’d decided to keep it for himself if she didn’t turn up.
About to hail a cab, Henry paused as his phone began to vibrate. His heartbeat picked up, thinking it was Maggie, that she was going to tell him what he’d done and allow him to apologise.
It was Christine. He let the phone ring a few times as he got into a cab. ‘Chris,’ he said. ‘You want to talk?’
‘I just walked out of my last meeting. Mom fell out of bed, smashed her neck bone. She might have complete paralysis now—they’re not sure.’
‘Jesus. That’s awful.’
‘Where you going, sir?’ the cab driver said.
‘Bleecker, between Thompson and Sullivan. Wait, no, hang on…’ He put the phone to his ear again. ‘Chris, where are you?’
‘I’m heading to the hotel. I’ll get packed and go up to Boston on the late train. I would ask if you wanted to join me, but I
think I already know the answer.’
‘Why would we both need to go? Me being there isn’t going to help anything.’
‘Henry, this is your mother we’re talking about. She’ll be in so much pain.’
‘And she won’t recognise me.’
‘Sir,’ the driver said, ‘I’m blocking traffic here.’
‘I’m going to the Plaza. Chris, meet me downstairs at the Palm Court. I’d rather talk about this in person.’
Henry had been to the Palm Court several times, for breakfast meetings and afternoon teas with a handful of his more conservative clients. It was also the site of his and Martha’s first dinner with Cathy and Gus. Though the decor had changed slightly, he couldn’t escape the image of the four of them gathered in silence around a corner table. Any hopes Gus might have had about finding in Henry an honest, hard-working son-in-law who would discuss the intricacies of team sports and operating heavy machinery were dashed the second they shook hands. As were any hopes Henry might have had about pretending to be that person, even in part.
The restaurant had Christine written all over it. Opulent and palatial, with fronds leaping out from every spare inch of space and a skylight that wouldn’t have been out of place on the Titanic.
Henry took a table and asked for coffee, even though it was almost cocktail hour and the place was busy. He wanted a shot of something to cure his hangover, but it felt wrong to do that today—he couldn’t have said why.
Chico Hamilton began playing in the background. The complex syncopation was lost in this lofty space. Staccato rhythms, the drum’s and the piano’s punches evenly distributed. They didn’t inspire joy or movement in this setting, the crowd caring little for jazz unless it hung around politely in the wings like the waitstaff. Henry tapped his foot along with the music, more delicately and with less intention than he would have when he’d first heard Hamilton’s music back in the eighties.
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