Again Bruce was sitting on a bed with a silent woman, methodically outlining a plan of rescue. That the bed was in a hotel on West Forty-third Street, and the silent woman not Kathy, but Sandra, made surprisingly little difference to the import of his monologue.
Sandra listened patiently. She did not fidget or crack her knuckles or tear apart a Kleenex. Her grandmother had raised her to respect her elders and to keep her back straight in company.
When Bruce was done speaking, he took a long gulp from the tiny bottle of Evian he’d gotten out of the minibar fridge. He rubbed his eyes. He wiped his nose.
“Well, what do you think?” he said.
“What do I think?” she said. “That you’re a good man. Too good for your own good.”
“Of course, when I came up with the idea, I had no clue that Eva was going to find this apartment. In fact, it was the next day that she told me.”
“If you’d known, would you have done anything differently?”
“I’ve thought about that. I don’t think I would have. I think I still would have given Kathy the money. What I wouldn’t have done was let the business with the apartment get so out of hand.”
“Do you want to stop it?”
“In some ways, yes. I mean, let’s say you were one of my clients and you were asking me, from an investment standpoint, if I thought buying an apartment in Venice was a good idea. What would I tell you? I’d tell you that from an investment standpoint, you’d do better to buy real estate in Florida or Hawaii or New Mexico—anywhere in the States, really—since buying abroad invariably entangles you in a whole separate tax system, legal system, economic system. I’d tell you that, then I’d tell you to do what you want.”
“But I’m not one of your clients. Neither is Eva.”
“My policy is that what people want is none of my business. My business is what they can afford.”
“Even your wife? Even yourself?”
“Oh, what I want … That’s a question I’ve only just found an answer for.” He smiled as he said this. “As for Eva, I can only take her at her word. I suppose what rankles me is that there are so many people at so much more risk than she is. And yet the only person she’s out to save is herself.”
“Whereas you’re out to save Kathy.”
“At least that’s altruistic. It’s not just self-preservation.”
“And yet self-preservation has one virtue, which is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. With altruism, there’s almost always a hidden motive. The benefactor wants to be lionized or, worse, have the person he’s helping at his mercy. Otherwise why would people who give money to universities want buildings named after them?”
“Neither is the case here. No one knows what I’m doing for Kathy except Kathy. And her kids. And you.”
“So what happens next? What happens, for instance, when Eva finds out about the check?”
“She won’t. I’ve made sure of that. I wrote it from an account she doesn’t know about.”
“And yet she knows something’s up.”
“Something, but not what.”
“You could just tell her.”
“Why should I? What business is it of hers?”
“Married people’s lives are always each other’s business. Even after they get divorced, that’s true. In addition to which—and please forgive me if I’m stepping out of bounds here—there’s the issue of the money. Of course, I don’t know exactly how much this apartment is likely to cost you, but I can make a rough estimate. I mean, am I right that we’re talking about a pretty substantial outlay of cash here?”
“Yes.”
“To which you have to add the money you gave Kathy.”
“Yes.”
“Which, if Eva learned about it, she’d probably find … concerning, right? I mean, to the point that it might make her think twice about the expense—”
“I shudder to imagine what she’d think.”
“She’s not stupid, Bruce. She knows what you can afford and what you can’t.”
“Afford—it’s amazing how that word keeps coming up. And yet what does it mean, really? I mean, when I think of my clients, if they were to decide to just stuff all their money into a safe behind a painting, or have some huge cellar full of gold coins into which they could dive headlong like that duck, Uncle what’s-his-name—”
“—they’d have broken bones.”
“—they’d only get poorer.”
“My own ideas of finance, I’ll admit, are crude. Basically they’re derived from nineteenth-century novels. You know, ‘Miss Bleek had five hundred a year.’ Things seem less clear-cut now.”
“I doubt they were so clear-cut then.”
“You still haven’t answered my question, you know. You still haven’t told me if you can—this time I won’t say afford—if you can manage it. Not to put too fine a point on it, I have no idea how rich you are. I mean, I know you’re rich. I just don’t know how rich.”
“Rich enough that I can’t really say how rich I am.”
“But how can that be? Everyone has a net worth.”
“Once you pass a certain point, your net worth ceases to correspond to anything real. It’s less a matter of what you have than what you can get hold of.”
“In that case, I want you to consider something. I want you to consider the possibility that buying the apartment might actually be a good idea. Not as an investment, and not for Eva, but for you.” Sandra was silent for a moment, letting the remark sink in. “I didn’t think about saying that before I said it. If I had, I’d never have had the courage to get it out, because of course I know it’s way too soon to be talking about these things. I know there’s a gun I’m jumping, but sometimes you have to. You have to. Even if there’s every chance the thing—affair, relationship, whatever you want to call it—will peter out. And if it does, so much the better, because it will make life that much easier for all of us. But what if it doesn’t? I guess what it comes down to is that if Eva buys the apartment, she’ll start spending a lot of time in Venice, and there’ll be that much more time that you and I will have here. By ourselves. It’s a chance to try it out, to give ourselves a trial run, and if we can have that chance and we don’t take it … well, I’ll regret that. Maybe you won’t, but I will. Because there have been other times—I’m full of clichés today—when the iron was hot and I didn’t strike. And I regret them.”
“Is the iron hot now?”
“For me, yes. Is it for you?”
“Isn’t the answer obvious?”
“Last Saturday, when we were at Grady’s, you talked about the rush. I like the rush, too. I like a little danger. And yet, given the choice, I’d rather have time with you, alone, in a bed big enough that we can both sleep in it without doing permanent injury to our spines, than a few minutes in a narrow bed waiting for Grady to get home, or in a hotel room where God knows who else has been in the bed. And we won’t get that, Bruce, we won’t get what we want—at least what I want—unless Eva gets what she wants, which is the apartment. And if she doesn’t get it … I don’t know Eva that well, I won’t pretend I do, but I know this about her—that her longings are as fragile as they are ardent. When the iron cools, so does she. I mean that if this chance falls through, she might not look for another. And we’ll have lost ours.”
For a few seconds Bruce was silent. Then he said, “This is all so new to me. Not just you, or this, but this whole way of thinking.”
“Then let me say one more thing. You’ve told me about your money situation. Well, let me tell you about mine. When my grandmother died, she left me five million dollars, more or less. That’s my money. It’s not community property. Rico can’t touch it.”
“Good. It means you don’t have to worry.”
“Oh, but that’s not why I’m telling you. The reason I’m telling you is … well, I have wealth, and you’re—what is it you are? A wealth management consultant?”
“Wealth management adviser.”
“Whatever. Here’s what I’m proposing—that I give you my wealth and you manage it.”
“That wouldn’t be ethical. If you want an adviser, I can recommend someone else.”
“Believe me, I understand why you might think it’s a conflict of interest. And it would be if you’d suggested it, but you didn’t. I’m the one who’s suggesting it. And the reason I’m suggesting it is that if you have access to my money, and at some point find yourself short of cash, you could use it—”
“Sandra—”
“Of course, we’d have a signed agreement. It would be understood that any money of mine that you used, you’d have to get my permission first, and that you’d reimburse me. With interest if you like.” She put her hands on his neck. “I’m not trying to buy you. I just want to do for you what you’re doing for Kathy. Make things easier. Give you a backup plan, in case the economy goes south, or haywire, or Trump changes the tax code, or the plumbing in the new apartment turns out to be a thousand years old.”
“But why?”
“So that we can have our chance.”
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know what to think. All my life, I was sure my course was mapped out for me.”
“It was. But now you’ve crossed a boundary.”
“But how did it happen? That’s what I can’t fathom.”
“You did it yourself,” Sandra said. “You did it the day you decided to help Kathy.”