Men Like Air

by Connolly, Tom

  The woman leaned forward and repositioned her baby’s pacifier, and seemed to be telling the infant that it was ‘… twelve years since I even considered that sort of thing with a guy… who with? With Sparks of course, you remember, Sparks, the guy who used to winter in Aruba, that was a very free expressive relationship but no, yuk, no way, no urge, no interest, uh-uh. And that’s really not where our problems lie, at all, not significantly, anyway, yuk, I was younger and he was hot. I’m not saying Mark isn’t hot but, you know…’

  William watched the woman, open-mouthed. A younger man at the adjacent table said, ‘It’s really damn hard to seem like a mad person these days, isn’t it? Talking to yourself in public used to be the clincher, but nowadays people presume you’re just on your cell. One has to do something more impressive to make it clear you’re cracked.’ He leaned closer to William. ‘She’s talking on the phone. It’s in her ear, beneath all that crazy hair.’

  William wondered just how old his nerves were making him appear. ‘I’m aware of that. I’m fifty-five not ninety-five.’

  The man took offence so William smiled at him and confided. ‘What I’m not aware of is when it became okay to have intimate conversations at the top of one’s voice in public.’

  ‘You don’t look ancient,’ the man said, gathering up his things. ‘But you sound old as fuck.’

  When the man had gone, William smiled publicly to try to negate his sadness at being on the end of such aggressive language. Drinking hot tea out of a bowl with no handles did not make him look any younger or more dextrous. He gave up, paid up and got out. He had four blocks to go and it took three and a half of them for his mind to belatedly catch sight of the truth that there was no way Mrs Bolton was going to invite a stranger with a grudge into her apartment.

  There was a doorman, who let him in, and a concierge behind a desk. Without deciding what he should say, he reminded himself what he shouldn’t: I’m not here looking for trouble but I just need to see the defenceless, wealthy old woman who lives in the penthouse.

  ‘Good morning. My name is William Fairman and I’m here to talk to Mrs Bolton. If you could tell her I’m from Fountains Emporium –’ this seemed like a building in which to name-check the store’s full title ‘– and only want to talk on the phone or intercom or whatever…’ His voice trailed off. He should have written to her. He should have come here with a letter and delivered it and maybe he would have bumped into her and she would have seen in his body language that he was not here to cause trouble.

  ‘Take a seat, sir.’

  He walked across to a chesterfield, noticed the doorman observing him from the sidewalk, and sat forward. He watched the elevator doors to one side of the lobby. The concierge spoke into a phone in a hushed voice, seemed to William to be miming. A smaller elevator door opened at the far end of the lobby where it had blended invisibly into the walls. Inside, the elevator was velveteen and luxurious. A bald-headed man poked his head out and studied William until the doors slid shut again. A few minutes passed and the concierge took a call. The small, hidden elevator arrived again in the lobby. The doors opened and William watched for the bald man to appear but there was no one inside. The doors closed again.

  ‘That was for you,’ the concierge said.

  ‘How was I to know?’ William asked.

  The concierge nodded to the doorman, who came inside and summoned the elevator back and beckoned William with his white-gloved hand. The elevator was a miniature room, dark, carpeted and scented, with a sumptuously upholstered bench seat and a small table with a Chinese vase holding a delicate posy of freesias. The flowers were haloed by the glow of a single weak, smoky yellow down-light in the elevator ceiling. There were two buttons, L and P. The doorman pressed P and backed out of the elevator as the door shut. Ascending, William nodded at the trembling flowers as if they were both in the same boat.

  The elevator opened directly into the drawing room of the penthouse apartment and the crowded opulence meant that it took him a moment to notice the stout, tweed-clad figure of Mrs Bolton amongst it all. The room owned her as much as she owned it. The elevator door closed like a murmur and disappeared seamlessly into the wall. She beckoned William to join her, and through a doorway to another room he saw the bald man from the elevator. He stood in overalls, paintbrush in hand, and watched William closely. He was tall and intimidating, and at least twenty years older than William.

  ‘Now,’ Mrs Bolton said, ‘you sit down right here.’ Her voice became more haughty in her efforts to be amicable. She pointed to a high-backed armchair with side wings and watched William take his seat with great dignity for such a pathetic man.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Mrs Bolton. I need you to have me reinstated.’

  ‘My son is working,’ she said. ‘Or, at least,’ she corrected herself, ‘he’s at work. I will get us some tea. I’ll make it myself, Marie’s not in until noon.’ Her mouth widened and trembled under the strain of what William realised was her attempt at a smile. ‘We can talk turkey,’ she added, deliberately, as if recently taught the phrase. She went into the kitchen. Somewhere out of sight, the bald man cleared his throat.

  William’s chair was deep. It sank him low into a soft cushion, and raised his feet an inch off the floor. On the opposite side of the room was a grand picture window through which he could see treetops and a big blue sky and beneath which, William presumed, would be a view of the Park more stunning than any he had seen, from a vantage point he would never have again. A shift upwards of a few inches would have given him the whole vista, but he felt unable to change his position now that he had settled into it. His cell vibrated. He peeked into his inside jacket pocket and saw Joy’s name but knew it would be rude to take the call. He could hear the tinkering of chinaware coming from the kitchen. His cell vibrated again and he was still toying with the idea of listening to Joy’s message when the formidable lady reappeared, crockery and silverware trembling on the tray in her hands. She walked with a ballerina’s turnout and a fishwife’s gait.

  The apartment was airless. Surrounded by the clearest views and oxygen on Manhattan, it forbade William both. Mrs Bolton put the tray aside as if the notion of their actually drinking tea together was out of the question.

  ‘What was your wage?’ she asked, curtly.

  Her chair was fractionally behind his and he had to lean forward past the wing of his chair to look back at her. ‘I just want my job back, it’s terribly important and it will be very easy.’

  ‘That would be completely unfair on Hunter. He took a position, and the one thing he cannot bear to be is undermined.’ (This was not entirely true. A more exhaustive list of what Hunter Bolton III could not bear to be would have included: inconvenienced, interrupted, told no, and in the same room as a non-white person.)

  His mother continued. ‘Now, your wage… the fact of the matter is, I do feel a little guilty, but to compensate you I have to make some sort of calculation based on your earnings.’

  William felt the energy drain out of him. ‘I just need you to say to my employers that you would like me reinstated and they will do it. I know for a fact they will. It is more simple than you can imagine.’

  Despite being firmly seated upon a chair worth more than the annual salary he was being asked to disclose, William felt that he was on the brink of falling off it, and that if he fell off his chair he would fall off the world. They sat in silence for a while and the old lady’s breathing altered as her benevolence turned to impatience. She had not been contradicted by anyone since acquiring widowed status and she found it irksome. She went to her bureau and sat at it and took a cheque book and a fountain pen from the drawer.

  ‘No!’ William snapped. ‘It has to be my job.’

  ‘Did you just raise your voice to me?’

  The decorator stepped into the room. ‘How are we doing in here?’ he growled.

  ‘How are we doing in here?’ Mrs Bolton asked William.

  William glared at the man, in desp
air at how simple this all could be if the old lady would just do what was asked of her. A phone call now to George White and he would walk to work tomorrow, be smoking a cigarette with Susan in a matter of hours.

  The decorator goaded him with his expression, dared William to get this any more wrong than he already was doing.

  William muttered, ‘We’re doing fine but it absolutely has to be my job. I beg you.’

  ‘I’m going to make it five thousand dollars,’ the old lady said.

  The decorator came forward. ‘Then, I’ll see you out.’

  William rose from his seat. It seemed to take him forever to do so and he had a premonition of old age. He felt cornered, powerless. He placed his hands behind his back, the way his father used to do. It always made him feel a foot taller, which was sometimes welcome. He saw himself for what he was: the little man without choices. If he hadn’t known that before, he knew it now, in this apartment, squeezed between the henchman and an old lady’s loose change. He was not going to get what he had come for. But he wanted something out of this godforsaken place. Perhaps a little respect would be nice, and to see the view. He liked the idea of a rich person who owned the view knowing that William Fairman was a good man, a giving man, a man with no material ambition and a generous heart, the better man. The love that was trying to burst out through the walls of his chest every living day, the love that was waiting there inside him in limitless supply should his wife ever unearth a frailty in herself and turn to him for help, or if Susan French should ever ask to be taken in completely, adopted and cared for, the love that made him yearn for Leo to be completely happy, the love inside William that knew satisfaction only in countless small acts of unnoticed kindness – that love cried out right now for a one-off moment of recognition and to turn down a rich woman’s money, which might just feel good enough to repair the disappointment of not getting back the job he hadn’t lost.

  He went across to the window. Indeed, it was a magnificent view. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bolton,’ he said.

  She remained stony and said, ‘I’m so pleased…’ in the tone of someone who was anything but.

  He heard her pen scratch across the surface of the cheque. ‘Your full name, please, dear.’

  He turned and looked the decorator in the eye and sneered a smile at him that said, You would not do what I am about to do. He cleared his throat, holding a clenched hand to his mouth. This was his moment. It was small and harmless and second prize, but he wanted her to know. He wanted everyone to know. He always had, from the moment he saw the light of God. It was not how he was meant to feel, he knew that, but he didn’t see the harm in this one woman of substance and her Rottweiler knowing that he was good.

  ‘Please make it payable to the Church of the Disciples of Christ.’

  She would mention this moment one day, in this magnificent room, to her friends: the small man who wanted to give away everything.

  Mrs Bolton glared at the wall in front of her. ‘No,’ she said. She put the lid on her pen and crossed her arms.

  William slumped. He cursed himself.

  She turned to him. ‘I know the first name is William. But now I’m confused. Should I be generously writing you a cheque, or calling the police – or perhaps your former employers?’

  ‘Or getting me my job back…’ William said, beseechingly. ‘Please.’

  ‘We’re not discussing that again. And I’m not funding your church.’

  William felt a little faint. His heart was thudding. He knew nothing about what to do, only that he shouldn’t be in this place. He was furious at himself for being here.

  ‘Alright, payable to me, William Fairman.’

  ‘But you’ll just give it away.’

  ‘No, I won’t!’

  The decorator stepped forward. ‘Don’t take that tone.’

  ‘Sorry,’ William said. ‘I promise I’ll keep it.’

  She picked up the pen. ‘F-a-i-r-m-a-n,’ she asked, as she wrote his name.

  William walked closer and as he watched his name appear on the cheque a panic rose in him and as he caught sight of a new wave of insight into the myriad flaws of his being here. He had arrived with a plan that worked only if she played the part as devised by him for her. But rich people didn’t allow themselves to be scripted by others. They were now way off the page, and in her handwriting he saw clearly the name of a man who had come to an old rich lady and extracted compensation for a job he had not lost, and exposed Fountains for their lie. He had never imagined himself capable of having such effect.

  ‘My job, please. As if nothing had ever happened.’

  ‘How ungrateful,’ she sighed, finishing off the cheque and ripping it out of the book. She held it up for him to take but didn’t look at him. He looked helplessly towards where the elevator was hidden, marched across the apartment and groped the wall for a button. In his anxiety he couldn’t locate it. He darted for the first door he could see. It took him into a small lobby where through a glazed door he could see a stairwell.

  Down in the lobby, Mrs Bolton and her decorator emerged from the elevator as William reached the ground floor. She held the cheque in her hand and the decorator stared threateningly as William continued out through the swing doors and on to the sidewalk, terrified of the sensation of being pursued. He heard Mrs Bolton’s voice ring out: ‘STOP!’

  They’ll think I’ve mugged her, William thought.

  He ran, and in his jagged movements two distinct, liberating truths came to him: that he could stand to do any job as long as he had Joy to go home to, and that he wanted to take care of Susan, properly, openly, with Joy. He saw a cab up ahead, and the Park. The Park across the street seemed a good place to go to, to hide, to gather himself. But a cab seemed right too, the quickest way home. He grabbed for his phone and fumbled it as he ran, juggled the phone two, three times, then caught it and called Joy.

  ‘I have to tell you all about Susan French, and you have to forgive me,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’ she gasped.

  His arm was raised as he ran, he realised, to signal for a cab he must have seen or imagined, but he was looking across to the Park and the swaying manes of the spring trees that seemed to be speaking to him, saying something urgent he could not decipher but drowning out the distant sound of Joy’s shouting from the phone, ‘What the hell do you mean? What does that mean?!’ and then a hot, tingling sensation shot through him as he realised he had strayed out of bounds, and as he felt the excess space around him, the absence of buildings, the removal of the sidewalk, he knew he was exposed, as if in mid-air, treading water, being picked up off his feet by the swaying trees, and the feeling that had accompanied him through the day, of being in the wrong place and heading further in the wrong direction, crystallised perfectly as he glimpsed the seven-ton U-Haul truck that hit him and dragged him down to an underworld of grease-caked metal.

  Deafness was immediate, but the dark was not. Across the sweep of tarmac that separated his cheekbone and the kerb, he saw Mrs Bolton arrive and stare. She slumped, as if taking a blow to the stomach, and then, in the next instant, she straightened up and the expression on her face withdrew into her skin and left her lifeless, and she turned and walked calmly away, as others lurched into William’s field of view and knelt over him. He could see them talking into the silence, and then, he could see nothing. He was alive but there was nothing to prove it. No sound, no light, no shapes. It altered only later when he realised he was being lifted. The faint impression of motion rippled his senses and an image formed in the liquid of his mind’s eye, an Ektachrome slide projected on to a distant wall, of the vase of freesias in the small, lavish penthouse elevator, blooms cut and placed where they could only die, after bringing a little colour and perfume to a very few people in a small, enclosed box travelling up and down, up and down, a lightless shaft.

  19

  Leo stopped outside Richard Bovenkamp’s gallery and admired the Dot Yi. He took a call from Astrid, expecting her to test his interest
in the painting. Instead, he heard her say, ‘You need to get over here.’ He turned and saw her standing in the window of the gallery. The sun burned through the clouds and Astrid looked back at him without expression and he understood immediately the nature of what it would be, but was wrong in presuming that it would be Finn’s name that came from her lips, not William’s.

  Leo explained who he was to one of the receptionists at St Luke’s Roosevelt but the words sounded strange to him.

  ‘He’s my sister’s husband.’

  He felt he should say more. He is my brother-in-law. He is my closest friend, one half of my entire family, the love of my sister’s life, the one man standing at the door to an apartment in this city to greet me with open arms. He is William, ‘William’ is the only word that describes all the things he is to me.

  Initially, he saw only Joy kneeling at the bed. He could not see William until he forced himself to look. What stole Leo’s breath was not the visible injury but the lifelessness, the vacuity to William’s face that remained even when he opened his eyes, slowly recognised Leo and smiled at him, causing the oxygen mask to rise on his cheeks. Leo raised his right hand in return and wiggled his fingers, a gesture that amused William. This exchange took place not so much behind Joy’s back as above it, her head bowed in silent prayer.

  Leo touched his sister’s arm. When she turned there was anger in her face, and when Leo held her he had the ludicrous sensation that it was an enormous effort for her to allow him to do so. She was rigid, as if under attack.