‘No sympathy,’ Leo reflected, ‘but I would like someone to understand, the hole it’s going to leave in my life.’
‘Okay,’ Finn said. ‘I’ll understand.’
And Leo did not doubt it, that Finn would understand and remain a man who did what he said he would do. I’ll understand you. I’ll work for you. I’ll be there on time. I’ll beat the crap out of you. I’ll burn down your shed. I’ll never talk to you again. I’ll never understand this art stuff. I’ll never let you down. I’ll die for you.
Astrid paid her respects that morning by continuing with her job silently, in slow motion and barefoot. She parked her Lanvin ballet flats neatly beneath her desk, and tiptoed around the gallery like a teenager coming home after curfew from a park bench tryst with an unsuitable boy. She evaded Leo deftly, performed somersaults to avoid catching his eye. Disturbed as she was by her own mortality, she was more unnerved by grieving in another.
Finn seemed on the verge of saying something all morning. Astrid knew it and it was driving her crazy. If Leo had left the gallery for five minutes she’d have beaten it out of the boy. At eleven, Finn headed out into the sunshine on the coffee run. Astrid chased after him and changed the order. She didn’t want Leo having the rich double macchiato blend he had asked for. ‘Get a kind of relaxing, herbal, lift-the-spirits tea for him,’ she said, with her caring voice.
‘Like a cure-for-bereavement-type thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I wasn’t serious.’
‘I’m worried about him; it’s eleven o’clock and he’s still very quiet. I don’t want him to… you know… fester.’
‘Give him till noon to get over the death of his best friend.’
Finn wandered away, looking all grown-up to Astrid today. She called out to him, ‘Get him some resurrect-the-dead tea or something!’ and immediately had the sensation of standing in the glaring sunshine of West 26th Street in her underwear, and the feeling that Finn could crush her if he wanted to. She wanted to be invisible.
‘Eh?’ Finn said. He was squinting at her.
She patted her skirt to check it was still there. ‘I was trying your sort of humour. I was reaching out. It didn’t go well. I’m dying here. I feel weird.’
Finn smiled. He had turned into a man and she had regressed to the teenager she denied so emphatically having ever been. She returned to the office, bawled out a couple of late payers over the phone and felt better for it. Leo was quiet and methodical, reading letters and looking at artists’ slides on the computer screen and the lightbox. He left a couple of messages for Joy and told Astrid to put his sister through if she called.
‘Of course,’ Astrid said, offended by the idea that she might not have done.
Finn returned and handed Leo his double macchiato and finally came out with it. ‘What about me? Would they take twenty-four thousand dollars from me?’
Leo and Astrid froze while they caught up with Finn’s train of thought. Leo laughed. ‘Only in cash.’
Finn looked at Leo. Leo laughed again, nervously.
‘Please let me go over there and do the deal in cash. And you can’t ring them in advance to tell them. I just wanna walk in there.’
Leo had flinched once and knew he couldn’t do so again. To take his time answering would be to miss the point. Finn had clearly been giving this some thought. Whether it was a matter of proving himself to Leo or something else, Leo didn’t know. He knew only that he was being asked to trust a boy he was employing illegally with twenty-four thousand dollars in cash. If the little thief, as Astrid liked to call him, had been doing a sting on Leo from the start, this moment was the endgame. Leo had to act quickly and without caveat.
As if sensing a need to buy him time, Astrid intervened. ‘I’m totally sure I had a date with a gay man last night. You want to hear about it?’
‘Sure…’ Leo said, marvelling at her.
‘Not really…’ Finn grimaced.
‘This guy met me at Reuben’s ’cos its right outside where I live but obviously I didn’t let him know exactly where I live because I don’t know him, he’s a cousin of a friend of a friend.’
‘So, an internet date,’ Finn said.
Astrid was appalled. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Yes, how did you?’ Leo was amazed.
Finn shrugged. ‘Because it’s fucking obvious?’ he muttered, through a Cheshire cat grin.
I absolutely love it when he swears in that accent, Astrid thought.
Please stay and work here forever, Leo thought.
‘Please don’t tell anyone I’m internet dating, please,’ Astrid said.
‘Of course we won’t,’ Leo said. On condition you show me how to try it out, he thought.
‘It’s a very cool thing to be doing,’ Finn said.
‘Really?’ Astrid said, and suddenly she looked like a girl showing her homework to her parents and collapsing with happiness at their approval. ‘You think?’
Finn turned to Leo. ‘You should do it.’
Leo shrugged as if the thought had never occurred to him. ‘You think?’
‘Yeah. It’s gutsy and kind of essential. Look, the deal with an English person would be this. We totally back you, hope it goes well, that you meet someone great, we take interest, listen if you wanna talk about it, but we also constantly, mercilessly rip the piss out of the fact you are internet dating.’
‘“Rip the piss”?’ Astrid asked.
‘Make fun of you. Big-time. That’s how it would work back home.’
‘It’s not a Kabbalah dating thing, is it?’ Leo asked, suddenly concerned.
‘No.’
‘Good. I think it’s good that it’s not.’
Astrid remembered that she had only started talking about her date to distract the little thief from the idea of taking twenty-four thousand dollars in cash out of the building. It was working, for sure, but she needed to finish the job.
‘So, he’s impeccably groomed, you know, like very thoroughly groomed…’
‘Who is?’ Leo asked.
‘My date.’
‘Her cousin’s friend of a friend,’ Finn said, deadpan.
‘Like, seriously well groomed,’ Astrid continued, ‘and I like men who keep themselves clean but there is a line beyond which it’s just a little bit un-male if you know what I mean and this guy was dangerously close to the line in terms of awareness of his own, you know, sprucing. Anyway, when I see this guy I immediately feel totally underdressed and so I say that I wanna go back to my apartment to change into something a little smarter and he says there’s no need but, of course, me being me, I insist. Now, I could have just crossed the street and gone into my building but then he’d know what building I live in because we have a window seat at Reuben’s. So, I have to walk all the way round the block and wait till he is looking away before going into my building. I change into a Helmut Lang Lyra Twist top I got in the sale for seventy bucks which I love and kind of live in most of my social life and go back and he says he’s going to walk me to a bar he likes and I say “what’s wrong with this one?” and he’s like “no, come on” but we just keep walking and walking and it’s a hell of a long way and we walk past three hundred bars and then it turns out we’re walking back to his apartment before we go to his favourite bar because now he wants to wear something a little bit smarter because he feels underdressed next to me and, get this, he has a suit that will colour-complement – his phrase – my clothes. My clothes are black. Black. So, of course he as a man doesn’t mind me coming to his apartment but I as a woman don’t feel safe to go up so he installs me in a bar nearby and returns THIRTY MINUTES LATER wearing this fucking suit and I swear he had taken a shower, I swear. I mean, are there any real men left in this city? No offence, both of you, – of my age, I mean.’
The men stared at her. Finn shook his head as if to reboot to where they had been before.
‘Let me buy the painting,’ he said to Leo. ‘I can’t explain why, but it would jus
t be so perfect.’
Leo looked at the floor. He wore the smile that Astrid’s convoluted intervention had painted on to him but all he could see was William’s face in the patterns of the floorboards and the impossible idea of never being with him again. Ever. It was unthinkable. It stabbed him in the heart.
‘Call the bank,’ Leo said, winking at William.
Amy was waiting for Finn outside the gallery at lunchtime. In the deepest reaches of his twenty-hour incarceration inside Ann and Stefano Parker’s house, it had felt impossible to Finn that he would ever see Amy ever again and he had returned to the city convinced she wouldn’t show up. He pressed his forehead against the glass frontage of the gallery and looked at her. She smiled on the other side and he watched the rise of her cheeks and her brown eyes. He heard Leo call his name and turned to see his boss stood at the threshold to his office, holding a large white envelope.
At one in the afternoon, the orphan child of a sink estate in a worn out English seaside town stepped on to a Chelsea sidewalk with twenty-four thousand dollars in his pocket. He held the hand of a petite, beautiful waitress from a restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, USA, and the pulse in her wrist beat like the heart of a small, rare bird in his hand and he couldn’t believe his luck.
‘Is my boss watching me?’ Finn asked her.
She glanced back. ‘No.’
‘The woman?’
She looked again. ‘No one’s watching you. Why?’
He shrugged and smiled to himself, and stood aside for her as they entered the Bovenkamp Gallery. Beryl Streep watched with contempt as Finn and Amy criss-crossed the floor to activate the paintings’ 3-D, like children in a hall of mirrors.
‘How much is this one?’ Finn called out.
Knowing that her boss was within earshot in his mezzanine office, Beryl scraped out a polite reply.
‘Thirty thousand dollars.’
Finn took Amy’s hand and walked the line, studying each painting as if on the verge of choosing one. ‘And this one?’
‘Also thirty thousand dollars.’
‘And this one?’
‘They are all thirty thousand dollars.’
‘This one here, is this one thirty thousand dollars?’
She hated him. ‘They all are.’
‘Mmm, I can’t choose.’
He leaned towards Amy, grinning, and kissed her lightly on the lips. She kissed him too. The grin on his face collapsed. He drew away from her.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
He felt ashamed as he smiled at her. ‘Nothing.’ He squeezed her hand.
‘Is my breath off?’
‘No! No…’
She smiled, nervously. He squared up to the painting and stared at it. He thought it all through, lived it once in his mind’s eye, the perfect scenario that had fallen into his lap in which he turned and asked Beryl to fetch Mr Bovenkamp, as he was interested in a purchase. Initially, she refused outright, through gritted teeth and a low whisper. Eventually, she agreed, in the expectation that her revered boss would throw him out. Richard Bovenkamp appeared and Finn asked about the artist and allowed the man to woo him, before negotiating a cash price of twenty-four thousand dollars. No, Finn bartered Bovenkamp down to twenty thou and returned with four thousand dollars for Leo, of which Finn was given a thou by his proud, trusting boss. Finn drew the money out of his pocket and Beryl went into a small, ultimately harmless, seizure. It was a perfect moment. A totally perfect moment.
Amy had wandered across to the far side of the gallery and stood at a floor-to-ceiling window looking out on to West 26th Street. She was on tiptoes, to see above a metal girder that braced the front of the building. Her calves were taut and long, and she was just as she had been the first time Finn saw her, leaning against the bar of the Gay Hussar, standing on one leg. Was he really going to make the first significant act he performed in front of this woman a demeaning one, a petty revenge? Was he really going to use Leo’s money to do this when Leo was grieving for someone he loved? He felt the danger in it, of behaving like a fool, and of then needing to devote the next era of his life to distancing himself from what he had been today. Of one act of meanness being irreversible, always present in him in some small way. However good and true he might be with Amy hereafter, she would nevertheless have seen this in him.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Finn said. His voice was thin. He was blushing.
Beryl’s spine lengthened and her poise returned. ‘Knew it…’ she said, and snorted as they left.
‘You okay?’ Amy asked, taking his hand as they crossed the street.
He squeezed her fingers. ‘Yeah. I was being really stupid. You look really nice.’
‘Thank you.’ She rested her head against his arm.
‘Come and meet my boss,’ Finn said.
Leo was enchanted by her, by the hint of a curtsey she gave when she shook his hand, by the way her smile and her skin and her minuteness cast a spell on Astrid, who was warm and soft with her, as if under hypnosis. Leo adored her for not knowing about William, for bringing into the room the world of Amy in which it was not the case that a man named William Fairman had died.
‘Can I talk to you?’ Finn asked Leo.
They went out back to the office and Finn returned the envelope of Leo’s money to him. ‘I’m really sorry about your brother-in-law,’ he said.
They stood, heads bowed.
‘Thank you,’ Leo whispered.
Finn heard himself exhale. He wanted to leave the room but felt stuck to the spot. He stared at his feet. ‘Me and Amy are going for a sandwich,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’
Leo looked at the floorboards. ‘Okay.’
They remained as they were for a few moments and then Finn turned on his heel and left the office. Leo followed him out and noticed Finn place his boxer’s hand softly into the small of Amy’s back. It pleased Leo to see their happiness.
‘I want you guys to take the afternoon off. Get outta here,’ Leo said to them. He turned to Astrid. ‘Go do something nice, all of you. It’s a beautiful day. We’ll start again tomorrow.’
Leo watched Finn and Amy from the window. They stopped in the sunshine on the opposite side of the street, for Amy to remove grit from her shoe. She leaned against Finn and removed her plimsoll, shook it and put it back on. Finn stood framed by the high mesh fence of the parking lot he had stolen from the first time Leo set eyes on him. He reminded himself that the untamed boy who had run from that parking lot into his gallery was the young man in front of him now, with a job and a girl and a new set of clothes. He smiled to himself, on a day when it had seemed impossible to do so.
He withdrew to his office and sat at his desk and drew out from his wallet a photograph of himself and William that Joy had taken on Leo’s fiftieth birthday. He sobbed until he was exhausted. He sat then, motionless, for an hour, as the tears dried on him and left their mark. Later, he became aware of Astrid sitting by his side, holding his hand. Through the teary mucus filling his sinuses he felt a stab of burning behind his eyes and fought against a new wave of tears.
‘I’m okay,’ he whimpered.
Her left hand moved to his arm, which she squeezed and stroked. ‘That isn’t true. Tell me.’
He shrugged. ‘Feel sad,’ he said.
She leaned across and kissed his cheek. She smelled of cucumber. He heard her lips move and knew she was smiling. ‘Tell me,’ she said, her voice quieter than her breathing.
‘My brother,’ he said. ‘He was like my brother. We had planned to grow old together. I’m not whole any more.’
She held him now and he wrapped his arms around her and she kissed his cheek again and afterwards she pressed her cheek against his. They held on to each other and from time to time they squeezed each other tight.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, ‘thank you, thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied.
She parted from him and looked at him and she
placed one hand against his cheek. She smiled into his eyes. ‘I’m going to go have that afternoon off,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you are.’
‘And tomorrow, I’ll be here and it’ll all be as usual, except I’m going to hug you tight when I see you.’
‘Sounds good,’ he laughed, through the snot and tears. ‘Now, get out of here. And go have some fun.’
‘Well,’ she said, ruefully, ‘I’ll give it a go.’
‘Perhaps you should be having more fun than you do. You’ve so much going for you.’
She laughed. ‘I have some issues.’
He became serious. ‘Okay, then. We have to address them. I want you to be well.’
‘It’s not about me, it’s you who’s hurting.’
‘Every day is about all of us. There’s room for everything.’
‘You’ve lost your best friend.’
‘Astrid, talk to me. I want you to feel good about yourself.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then you have to look at that. I’ll give you whatever you need, as your boss, as your friend.’
‘I need a hug sometimes when I come into work. I need to…’ She trailed away into the place she inhabited alone, the world she was evicted to every evening beyond the beautiful, safe, tasteful walls of Leo’s gallery, where she would remain permanently if she could.
‘You need to what?’
She began to cry. ‘I hate myself for talking about me now, when you’re going through all this.’
He leaned away from her and looked at her anew, pale and thin before him, and to his own surprise he understood completely, and he felt elated at his ability to do so. He embraced her and he tucked her head beneath his chin the way her father had done and would still do if she ever, ever left this city and went home to see him and the woman he married.
‘Don’t let go,’ she said.
He soothed her and called her my dear, dear girl and, when it was safe to expose her once again to the world beyond his arms, he held her face and looked into her eyes.
‘You’re going to get better,’ he told her. ‘You’re beautiful and talented and if you were my daughter I would be the proudest man on earth. We are going to make you well and everything is going to be okay again.’
Men Like Air Page 32