Benchere in Wonderland

by Gillis, Steven;

  Benchere phoned on Monday and suggested another date. Marti declined, made him wait until she called again and then they went out. They had dinner downtown, shared a smoked carpaccio and later a walk. Benchere expected a parting kiss, but Marti still refused, pushed him off with fingers to the chest. What is this? Benchere went home and paced through his apartment. I … I … I … He could not figure out, What gives?

  The pattern continued for several weeks more. Despite their nightly talks and twice-weekly dates, Marti balked at extending Benchere affection. He took her to his studio and showed her his art, tried to impress her with his work, spoke excitedly and rapturously about his vision to create inspired and influential sculptures while redefining the perception of form. He invited her to rallies and public debates, marches and protests supporting the ERA, the ALF-CIO, and nuclear disarmament. He asked her to come drinking at the Green Bar, hoped to entertain her with stories and introduce her to his friends. He gave her every reason to fall for him, to see him in a multitude of lights, and still she kept him at a distance, baffled and unsure.

  Say now … Benchere handled each rebuff poorly, regretted how Marti treated him with chilly dispatch. If she was punishing him for what he said the night they met, he apologized and told her his argument at the party was just for show. What did he know about architects and engineers and the whole top dog/bottom dog debate? He fell asleep exploring the tendril roots of relationships and the complication of all things interlinked.

  Early on in their non-affair, Benchere went to the library where he read through books on architectural design. A crash course. While logic suggested he educate himself on the fundamental rules of engineering in order to impress Marti, Benchere thought differently. He spent several days studying place and construct, complexity and informed simplicity, points and counterpoints. Relying on first impressions and his own artistic eye, he reviewed the works of Jean Nouvel, Paolo Soleri, Ernest J. Kump and Jack McConnell, Richard Neutra and Ernst May. On the seventh day, he surrounded himself with paper, charcoal and pens and began to sketch his own design.

  The house he imagined had roughhewn beams and exposed trusses, beige adobe brick in front, stone cladding to the east, vertical windows arched and cut. Varying rooflines were covered with sculpted clay tiles, set above a stone arch and alder planked door. The flooring was cream colored marble, the rooms with open galleries and sculpted ceilings. Both the library and dining area had a view of the courtyard and loggia. The kitchen was in the west end, the bedrooms and main bath on the second level. The stairwell was sketched as cherry wood, ascending in a circular twist.

  Working daily, Benchere made advances, overcame miscalculations and wrong turns. He said nothing about his project to Marti. On the phone, he invited her to dinner, for walks and movies and coffee dates. Each time Marti turned him down, would wait a day or two then tease him with a different invitation.

  Frustrated, Benchere tossed up his hands, tried to dismiss his feelings but couldn’t. All of his experiences with women and he’d somehow never fallen this hard. In need of diversion, desperate, suffering like a schoolboy with his heart crushed and aching, he resumed dating other girls. A bad idea. In his unrequited pine Benchere was not up to the task.

  He sat at the table in his kitchen and added Mocha-glazed maple cabinetry to his floor plan. He sketched granite counter-tops and stone pavers for the terrace, a dentil frieze, concrete cast doorway, sienna-hued balusters and a maple wood balcony off the master bedroom. Determined not to create a Pei-like pretty mess, he researched the finer points of construction, studied solid-void relationships and issues of circulation, where to place the columns to insure harmony within the interacting elements; establishing asymmetrical balance in an imbalanced world.

  Near the end of summer Benchere called Marti as she was coming in from yoga. He asked if she had eaten, if she would like to grab a bite. Marti sighed and said she had to wash her hair. Ten minutes later she called back, invited him to come dancing the following night.

  “Now see here,” Benchere decided to let Marti know he’d had enough. “Dancing is it? And why couldn’t you just say yes to dinner?” He insisted this game of hers was too much, her need to control everything and manage him like some unruly pup. “Isn’t it sufficient that you’ve won?”

  He told her how she disturbed his sleep, hounded his head, distracted him constantly. “What is it you want from me?” he asked, then said, “Goddamn it but from you I want everything. Is that selfish? I don’t think it is. I don’t think you’d accept anything less. Other girls, other girls,” he trailed off. “Haven’t I been patient?” he began again. “When I call and you don’t answer, I find myself worried and need to know you’re safe. How strange is that? Very strange for me. And yet here you are and don’t you know by now what I want?”

  Marti said nothing.

  Benchere tapped his finger against the phone, became more animated, spoke of the conversation they had the first night they met and how he realized now how ridiculous he must have sounded. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “I think it’s no different the kind of connection architects and engineers have from what the rest of us want. Everyone knows architects and engineers are inexorably linked, like fish and water, Bert and Ernie, Masters and Johnson, Sears and Roebuck, Porgy and Bess. It’s evolutionary,” Benchere went on. “We all want to be independent, and then we want to be half of a perfect whole. I wouldn’t have admitted this before, but it’s the relationship that completes us.” Benchere caught his breath, anxious, his large fingers growing hot, he had to wipe them on his shirt while he spoke. He put the phone down on the floor, addressed the receiver as he did pushups and said, “What-point-is-there-to-anything-if-we-don’t-act-on-how-we-feel?”

  He lay with his belly on the hardwood, his head turned with the receiver cradled in front of him and repeated Marti’s name, told her, “I have something to show you, something for you, something I want you to see.”

  When she still didn’t answer, having gone this far Benchere said, “Marti, I …” and waited again for her reply. He could hear her breathing, then nothing more but the click of the phone.

  Well that’s just great, Benchere. Well played. Nicely done. He climbed to his knees, stood in the center of his apartment and howled until his neighbors banged on the walls. Benchere! A fine kettle, that’s for sure. He dropped and did more pushups, more pacing and sweating before walking outside.

  In shorts and a BU windbreaker, he cut across the Main Green, circled Lincoln Field, came back around Thayer Street and South Main to the front of his building. Marti stood on the bottom step. Not expecting, Benchere stopped at the curb. He had his keys in his hand and Marti came and took them, went upstairs and unlocked his door.

  Inside were books and clothes scattered, dinner dishes in the sink, a radio without knobs, the furniture mismatched and turned at odd angles. “Benchere in captivity,” Marti moved toward the center of the room and examined the mess. On the walls were modern prints, Rothko and Avery and Cy Twombly. The smell was coffee and candle wax. The bedroom door was open and the bed unmade. On the table in the kitchen were several large sheets of drafting paper containing Benchere’s design.

  Marti turned in a circle. Benchere watched, remained silent, tried to ask but couldn’t bring himself to say, Why are you here? What now? He still wasn’t used to being this way, exposed and at a loss for words. Marti laughed, less surprised. She came closer, rose up on her toes and kissed him. Then she kissed him again, more tellingly, before sliding back down and saying, “Alright Benchere, so what is it you have to show me? What have you got?”

  2.

  IN THE ATTRITUS, BESIDE A BAOBAB, NEAR A RIVERBED a thousand years dry, miles from the Okavango which flows in the Dorsland as the only permanent body of water, Benchere sits and imagines his whiskey chilled.

  The temperatures during the day rise quickly, cool again at night. Harper pours from the bottle. Grains of sand float to the surface of Benchere’s drink. He scr
apes the sand aside with his teeth, spits then swallows.

  South of Maun, equidistant from Serowe and Ghanzi, between Tshane and Kalkfontein, north of the Cape, in the Kalahari seven thousand miles from home. Tonight the fire Benchere’s made sends out ash orange sparks. A second fire burns behind the tool tent where one of the new arrivals is smoking dagga. Benchere sniffs the air. Jazz chews on a stick while Harper hums and Daimon films the scene.

  All the huts and lean-tos in camp are temporary, will be taken down when the work’s complete. The common area used for meals and meetings is to the north of the tents, the garbage pit and sanitation unit, straddle trench and burn out latrine to the west. Near the perimeter of the main field, the generator and welding equipment are kept under a tarp when not in use.

  Zooie sits out by the other fire, playing guitar. Benchere’s sculpture is there in the distance. Some three hundred feet tall, it dwarfs the hillsides and centers the horizon in every direction. Benchere looks across the grounds, thinks about the friction piles used in the foundation of his sculpture. Marti designed the piles to settle the beams the way deep roots hold the trunk of a tree. Without her help, Benchere knows the sculpture would not have survived against the first real wind or any shifting of the sand.

  Harper sees Benchere lost in thought. He lifts his glass and tells a joke. “I met this Buddhist once who refused Novocain during root canal because he wanted to transcend dental medication.”

  Benchere groans and sips more from his drink. Daimon comes over and Harper offers him a cup. At thirty, Daimon is a study in contrasts, his features boyish, his eyes seriously set. Leanly framed in brown safari pants, a blue t-shirt and tan Timberland boots, he’s rawboned about the edges with a quick promethean smile and high angular cheeks. In the desert, he looks less auteur than rock climber. A graduate of Tisch, disciple of Errol Morris, professionally seasoned. In the last seven years Daimon has made three feature documentaries: one each on the Chinese activist Gao Zhisheng, the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and the painter Chuck Close. Hired to record Benchere’s time in Botswana, he is still feeling his way along with his subject.

  Benchere tosses the stick for Jazz, says of the two tents Daimon and Zooie have put together, “It’s a cozy arrangement, but you do know polyester isn’t made to keep in sound?”

  Daimon laughs. His relationship with Zooie came about unexpectedly. A handful of possibilities, he replies to Benchere, “I hope we haven’t kept you up.”

  “Ha!” Benchere stands. Puffed to his full size he is a man of formidable dimension. A middle-aged Hermes of Olympus. The noise he makes when he howls causes Jazz to bark. He sets his drink in the sand, comes at Daimon and wrestles him down, his heavy chest crushing as Daimon offers no resistance, lets himself be pinned.

  “One, two, three,” Harper rules. Benchere rolls off, gets to his knees, gives Daimon a hand. In the Kalahari the thornbush helps secure the soil. Rising, Benchere ignores the ache in his back. Above him the sculpture rises. Harper smokes. Daimon recovers, brushes the dirt from his face. The ash from the fire blows south. Benchere reaches and pets Jazz. The desert covers 120,000 square miles, goes on and on like a memory.

  Harper shifts his shoulders.

  Daimon retrieves his drink.

  Zooie sings Hallelujah, “There’s a blaze of light in every word/It doesn’t matter which you heard.”

  Benchere listens. He points skyward. “Kak,” he says, and gives the moon fair warning.

  AN HOUR AFTER Benchere told Marti he loved her on the phone, after she walked across town, took his keys, came upstairs and asked what he had to show her, Benchere pointed to his kitchen table. Marti sat and studied the design. “Honestly,” she asked, “who did these?” Examining the pages further, she told Benchere it wasn’t possible to complete this level of work without any formal training.

  “Who knew?” Benchere in reply.

  Marti found a pen and offered comments, advised Benchere on engineering issues concerning the placement of columns and joists in rooms of a certain size, the dead load and live load to be considered, the interaction between the materials selected and how best to make the relationships engage. All these things were easily fixed, she said, and did not detract from the original beauty of the design.

  She stayed the night, made a few calls in the morning, had her architect friends take a look at the drawings. Each reacted the same, did not believe at first. “Who is it?” They guessed Emmanuel Di Giacomo, van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gropius and Alto. Marti said Benchere and they laughed. “Bullshit,” they told her. “Bullshit to that.”

  More calls were made. A meeting was arranged at Lerner/Ladds where Benchere’s work was reviewed again. The partners at L/L were impressed by the design, yet skeptical when told Benchere was not an architect. They took a day to consider then brought Benchere back for an interview, ran him through some tests before presenting him with an offer. “Here’s the thing,” they explained how Benchere lacking a license or any formal credentials made his work impossible to sell on his own. What they would like to do, were willing, as a favor, was clean up the design, make it all nice and legal and then sell it under their name. “You’ll be compensated, of course,” they said.

  Benchere weighed the proposal then answered, “I don’t think so boys. The work is mine. I didn’t set out for any of this to happen, but since it has, here’s what I propose.” He said he would give them his work to bring up to spec, would let them go out and sell it and they wouldn’t have to pay him anything if no one bit. But if his design did sell he wanted 60 percent and his name on the project. If they didn’t like the terms he would simply take his work somewhere else.

  “Take it then,” the partners told him. “We obviously overestimated your grasp of the situation. You clearly don’t get it. Do you honestly think you can sell your work without our firm behind you? Do you think anyone else will – what’s the word you used? – bite? Go ahead then.”

  Benchere got up to leave but the partners called him back. Another offer was presented and then a third. Two days later Benchere closed the deal. His first design sold in under a week. Built in Newport, fronting the North Atlantic, the buzz surrounding the house made the partners giddy. They offered Benchere a contract, put him on salary and paid him for future works. He was given an office, a secretary and company car, then told to, “Create!” When his second original sold, Benchere used his bonus check to take Marti to Lanikai Beach.

  In the end Benchere did seven originals. He also worked on dozens of ongoing L/L projects, offered his unique creative touch, increasing their value with the inclusion of his name. Keenly aware, the partners helped build the Benchere brand. Private clients sought commissions while Benchere was celebrated in magazines, at conferences and on tv. He took to the suddenness of his celebrity with great ease, was accessible, outgoing and good humored. A popular after-dinner speaker, he came with antidotes and irreverence and kept everyone amused.

  Impressive this, and yet as the experience was never planned, Benchere eventually grew dissatisfied and tired of the work. The demands on his time afforded little chance to sculpt. He spoke with Marti, and then the partners at L/L who reluctantly agreed to accommodate his schedule and give him more days off. The arrangement worked for a while and then it did not. Eager to abandon the rigid constraints, the purposefulness, functionality and form of architecture for the abstract inferences and influences of art, Benchere began to wrap up loose ends. After his seventh Benchere original sold, after marrying Marti and having in turn Kyle and Zooie and settling into what he never predicted as his working life, Benchere announced he’d had enough.

  What?

  Enough.

  That summer he gave notice to L/L.

  But you can’t. No one could quite believe. What are you thinking? You want to walk away from what made you rich and famous?

  I do want to, yes.

  To do what? No wait, don’t tell us.

  I was a sculptor before.

  S
o? What good were you? None of us knew you. Think of where you are now.

  I have thought, Benchere said. And I want to go back.

  Again they asked, To what? Anonymity? A shared studio and tending bar? You’re Michael Benchere. You can’t just walk away from that.

  Christ. I’m not walking, he told them. I still am.

  Are what? They accused him of trying to manipulate his own mythology by becoming an artist.

  Bah, Benchere answered the charge with a quick, If you think I’m living my life in order to get a reaction from you, you’re nuts.

  So you say. But you plan to show us your art. You’ll want to sell us your sculptures. You’ll solicit our reviews. Be assured, our opinions won’t be neutral. Of Benchere’s claim that he was tired of traditional design, of form necessitating function, they asked, What does that even mean? All your art-speak is nothing more than you looking to make a bigger splash. It’s all about Benchere, isn’t it?

  Of course it is. Benchere in a huff, barked back, Of course it’s that.

  Marti listened, let Benchere have his howl, then said he should, “Forget them, Michael. Ignore what they think. Why should you care? Save your energy for things more important than this.”

  Sage advice. Marti with sound counsel was the voice of reason, unflappable, indissoluble, confident and consummate. Even after she got sick and then sick again she remained fearless and inviolate. Benchere loved her then. He missed her now. As he yelled and snapped, cocked his arms and set his fists, Marti laughed. “Look at you,” she said. “All this chirping and who are you fighting? Really now. What’s the problem? Who’s there to stop you from doing what you want?”

  STERN SITS WITH Rose atop the hill. They are 600 yards away from Benchere and the others. The rise is dune-like but with firmer soil, thorny shrubs and grassy patches. Rose’s chair has blue vinyl straps stretched out beneath his weight. A red umbrella is stuck in the ground behind them. Even in the shade the temperature this afternoon is over 95 degrees. Stern swats at the termites which swarm and the black flies that are relentless.