“For what?”
“I wasn’t of much use to you, was I? In the end?”
Ellen doesn’t know what he means by this-if he’s being honest, or deeply sarcastic, or if he’s just confused.
“I don’t look at it that way, Frank.” It’s the only answer she can think of.
“Well, who knows,” he says, “maybe we’ll get one last shot at it.”
He’s definitely confused.
“I wish you all the best, Frank.” She raises a hand and gives it a gentle wave. “Take care of yourself.”
On the way down in the elevator, she curses herself for getting up this morning.
Normally, Howley doesn’t mind this getting-ready period at home prior to going out. Jessica isn’t one of those obsessive, neurotic women-and Howley has known a few-who make a production number out of it, parading all their insecurities, fussing over clothes and hair, soliciting opinions and then dismissing them instantly. Jess is levelheaded, and rightly confident in her looks and how she dresses. But this evening is a little different. The Kurtzmann gala benefit is the culmination of several months’ work, and although she has an excellent staff and committee who appear to be on top of everything, Jess is understandably on edge.
Howley is, too, as it happens, though it’s got nothing to do with the benefit. He feels he’s under siege. Vaughan has called him twice this afternoon, and both times Howley refused to take the call. He’s never done that before, not even once, and he somehow doubts that anyone else has either. But he can’t go on doing it.
Nor does he want to have the conversation-the one where he tells Vaughan, in whatever ingenious formulation of words he can summon at the time, that he’s effectively being an interfering pain in the ass and must stop. Howley’s only hope here is that Paul Blanford will come up trumps by cutting off the supply of this new medication, and thereby, he doesn’t know, slow Vaughan down, return him to the seemly and steady decline to which they had all… happily… become accustomed?
Whatever.
But the problem now is that Paul Blanford won’t return his calls. They said at the end of their conversation this morning that they’d talk at the benefit, but soon after he put the phone down Howley remembered what a control freak Jessica can be at these events and that a discreet, private confab with a colleague might actually be hard to arrange.
So he called him back, after lunch.
Twice.
It’s now nearly seven o’clock, they’re heading out in ten minutes, and Blanford hasn’t returned the call yet. Howley is irritated as a result, because this is really not the frame of mind he wants to be in this evening. The benefit, which is being held in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, will be his first major social engagement as the new head of the Oberon Capital Group, and he’s determined to make the most of it. It’s a culmination of months of work for Jessica, sure, but it’s more than that-it’s also a culmination for them, as a couple. This is a pinnacle, of sorts, an arrival.
Looking stunning, Jessica eventually emerges from her lair-leaving behind, he’s in no doubt, a deeply frazzled team of stylists and cosmeticians. She’s in a ravishing Tom Ford dress and nude leather Christian Louboutin pumps. Her strawberry blond mane is embellished with a beautiful floral headband. She’s clearly nervous, but not letting it get the better of her. Holding hands, they take the elevator down, then float-pumps notwithstanding-out through the marble echo chamber of their lobby to the waiting car on Sixty-eighth, assistants hovering, security on point, every detail in place.
It’s still earlyish, Manhattan’s electric background thrum carrying everything, carrying them all, into a warm, familiar, crepuscular embrace. They settle loose-limbed into the back of their spacious limo and then break out their devices.
The driver hums forward and quickly angles right onto Park.
They have eighteen or so blocks to go. The driver-his name is Pawel-knows what he’s doing, he’s wired in to the system, hyper-aware that the timing of arrivals is choreographed to within an inch of, if not his, then someone’s life, and consequently he’s working the traffic-the flow, the pacing, the lights-like a smacked-out bebopper on a serious roll.
Howley is sending a text to Angela when he gets a call alert. He answers it.
“Mr. Howley, it’s Vivienne Randle, from Mr. Blanford’s office.”
Howley sits forward. Jess looks up from her iPad, but only for a second.
“Put me through to Mr. Blanford.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Blanford is indisposed.”
“What?”
“He was taken ill this morning, at the office.”
Howley rolls his eyes and then turns to look out the window, all too aware that they’re probably gliding past Vaughan’s building right about now. “Is it serious? Is he in the hospital?”
“No, Mr. Blanford is at home. He’s receiving medical attention there.”
“What was it, his heart? No, not his heart, he wouldn’t be at home if it was his heart.”
“I believe it was some stomach problem, or intestinal issue.”
Yeah, right. A fucking ulcer. We all have those, sweetheart.
“Okay, thanks.”
Jess glances up at him again. “Who was that?”
“No one. Paul Blanford. Don’t worry about it. Just one name off the list.”
She returns to her screen.
They stop at lights.
Howley is seething now, furious. He feels like jumping out of the car, storming over to Vaughan’s building, grabbing the old bastard by the throat and throttling him to death.
That’d cure any stress-induced ulcer right there.
The lights change, and they whoosh forward.
As Frank walks east along Forty-ninth Street, he feels his heart thumping in his chest. He feels other things, too, elsewhere in his body-minor sensations, twinges, darts of pain or discomfort. These are mild and intermittent. But he does wonder if he’s having some form of coronary, or pre-coronary. He doesn’t eat well and doesn’t get enough exercise, and even though he’s lucky to have the kind of metabolism that means he generally doesn’t pack on the pounds (and looks fairly okay as a result), the reality is, he’s almost fifty years old and could well be in the grip of various conditions and diseases already.
Without knowing it.
He’s a prime candidate. Plus, the stress he’s under at the moment is of a level and intensity he has never experienced before-the kind he imagines you ignore at your peril.
Perfect storm, sounds like.
Nevertheless, he wonders if it’s possible, by sheer force of will, to delay something like this, a heart attack-if that’s what he’s actually having-to hold it off, to keep pushing, until you get over some… line.
Real or imaginary.
At Sixth, he waits for the lights to change.
In this case, the line is very real, and very close, three blocks away.
People gather on either side of him, in front, behind, waiting. The lights change. He pushes forward, across the avenue, and then on toward Fifth.
He catches his reflection in a store window.
Anonymous man in a suit.
Denizen of the city.
Architect.
For so much of his life that’s how Frank defined himself, which meant that he never had to struggle with his identity. It was simple-the world, and his place in it, consisted of angles and forms, of light and space. It was the ordering of the infinite into the quotidian, the perfect marriage of art and science. For a quarter of a century, as a student and then as a professional, but also as a husband and as a father, he needed no other terms or rules to live and breathe by-that is, until one Friday afternoon two years ago, in the Belmont, McCann conference room, when he got laid off and had to surrender his identity… simply give it back, then somehow carry on without it, making do with whatever ramshackle alternative he could piece together from the Help Wanted section in the paper and the weird looks he got from, among others, his precious daughter, Lizzie…