Matrimony (18 page)

“I’m not saying I didn’t love her,” Carter said, “or that she didn’t love me. I’m saying we weren’t the right fit.” Meeting Pilar, he explained, hadn’t been that different from meeting Julian. He loved them both, and all right, he admitted it, they made him feel bad about himself. He wanted to be Pilar and it seemed she wanted him to be her, too; she made him into her project. “I was the rebel,” he said, “and she was going to civilize me. The boyfriend on the motorcycle.
Épatons les bourgeoisie.
At dinner last night you asked how I feel about having all this money, but I could have ten times the money and it wouldn’t change where I come from. Give me a little credit, Wainwright. The expensive clothes, the dinners at Chez Panisse, the friendship with Alice Waters? You think I don’t know I’m compensating?”

Julian was silent.

“Last summer, I was working at this big law firm and one of the partners mentioned Toulouse-Lautrec. Now, I’d heard of the guy, but I didn’t grow up going to museums, so art isn’t my strong suit. Inadvertently I made clear that I thought the artist’s first name was Toulouse. Not Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but Toulouse Lautrec, like Carter Heinz. Okay, so big fucking deal. But to me it was. Everyone was laughing, and I felt like saying, ‘I know more than all of you. I speak more languages, I’ve been to more countries, I’ve read more books.’ When I got home that night, I read up on Toulouse-Lautrec, and because I can afford it, I contacted an art dealer and bought one of his paintings.” Carter looked up at Julian. “Not that you’d understand.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know what it’s like to have to prove yourself.”

But Julian disagreed. He had spent his whole life trying to prove himself, especially to his father. Yale, summa cum laude. Head of the arbitrage division. His name at the top of the company hierarchy. Julian recalled a conversation when he was small, his father telling him that at a certain hour each day it was today in New York but in Hawaii it was yesterday, and soon his father was explaining to him about the sun and the earth and the speed of light—a conversation Julian found himself irretrievably lost in and that, even in retrospect, seemed to embody a storehouse of knowledge his father had that he would never possess. His father had gone to Yale, a school, he once explained, where everyone believed they were so good that even Yale itself didn’t deserve them and where it was unfashionable to be happy, for happiness was the domain of the credulous and the callow. Yet his father had been happy at Yale, so happy, in fact, that growing up, Julian had come to believe his life would be incomplete if he didn’t go there. But when it came time to apply he refused to do so, afraid he might not get in.

“The first time I visited Pilar’s house,” Carter said, “it was like I’d landed in a different galaxy. Pilar’s father brought me into his study and showed me his memorabilia. An early draft, care of Ted Sorensen, of Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs speech. A get-well card from Dean Acheson on the occasion of having his appendix removed. The stub of a Cuban cigar reputedly smoked by Castro himself.”

Julian remembered. He’d visited Pilar’s house once, and when only he and Carter were in the room, he reached into the glass case where the cigar was kept and inserted it in his mouth. “Groucho Marx,” he said. “Fidel Castro.”

“Put that back!” Carter said. Julian had never seen him look so terrified.

“After graduation,” Carter said now, “Pilar and I were traveling from country to country, and for the first time I felt we were on the same footing. But then Pilar got into Stanford and I didn’t, and that was a blow someone else might have shrugged off, but it was hard for me. I insisted we move to California, but it only alienated us from each other. We’ve been here for seven years now and Pilar still misses the East Coast. If only I’d taken that more seriously.”

“You’re saying you’d still be together if you’d gone east?”

“Coming west certainly didn’t help things.” Carter considered this. “It’s good Pilar and I didn’t open our own law firm. We’d have been terrible business partners.”

“So it’s really over?” Julian said, still not believing it.

“And the worst thing is my parents—my mother and father who are so fucking proud of me. Graduating from Boalt, getting Signet off the ground, and it’s as if none of that matters.”

“That’s not true.”

“Half the country is divorced and California leads the way, but it’s never happened in my family. My parents see it as shameful, and in a way I do, too.” Carter was staring out the window, and he had a heartsick look on his face, as if he were trying to imagine how he could have done things differently. “You know what? I think people should marry their own.”

“Their own what?” Julian said. “Race? Religion? Class?”

“Yes,” Carter said. “All of it.”

“That’s ridiculous. Mia’s Jewish and I’m not. Are you telling me we shouldn’t have gotten married?”

“There are those who would say you shouldn’t have.”

“What would
you
say?”

“I’d say fundamentally you come from the same place.”

“Our parents couldn’t have been more different from one another.”

“In the scheme of things, the distinctions are minuscule.”

“So what are you telling me? That we all should just marry ourselves?”

“I think there’s some truth to that.”

“And what should you have done then? Married the daughter of another balloonist?”

But Carter, it was clear, didn’t want to talk about this. He started the car, pulled out of park, and drove them back to the highway.

At graduation the next day, Julian watched Carter onstage in his cap and gown. Next to Julian sat Carter’s parents, his aunt and uncle, a few childhood friends, and Max and Sander, Carter’s cofounders at Signet. For an instant Julian caught Carter’s eye, and Carter nodded, then looked away.

After the degrees were conferred, everyone hugged and congratulated him, and Carter’s mother was crying, which made Carter cry, too.

Carter’s uncle handed out cigars. “Now all this young man has to do is pass the bar. Then he can hang out a shingle.”

Sander, Signet’s CEO, said, “To Carter Heinz! The man taking the world’s biggest pay cut!”

Carter introduced Julian to his family and friends, and everyone shook hands.

“Wainwright,” Sander said. “So this is the Sugar Daddy.”

Julian started to respond, but Carter’s aunt broke in, holding a gift wrapped in a large box, and everyone was demanding that Carter open it.

Soon campus began to empty out. Strawberry stems and empty plastic champagne cups littered the green, and the chairs were tilted toward one another, a few of them having been toppled as people departed. A sanitation worker was stacking chairs and another was stabbing at refuse with a long, pointed stick, and Julian was reminded of the term “shit-picker,” which was how Carter used to describe himself, cleaning his classmates’ dorm rooms back at college.

Carter went off to change into a tuxedo, for tonight was the law school’s black-and-white ball, the final dance after graduation.

When Carter emerged, Julian was on the steps, waiting for him. “The penguin cometh,” Carter said.

“Congratulations, Heinz. You’re a lawyer now.”

“Not until I pass the bar.”

“When does that happen?”

“The test’s in July.”

“Are you going to take it?”

“I might as well keep my options open.”

Across from them stood the graduate library, where a professor was resolutely making his way up the steps, holding a stack of books in one arm like someone protecting a football.

“Look at that guy,” Carter said. “Do you think he even knows it was graduation today?” Carter was still holding his cap and gown, and a breeze came through, sending the tassel flapping back and forth.

Julian said, “I’m so sorry about what’s happened.”

Carter nodded. He repeated Julian’s words from senior year: the last two couples standing. He and Pilar had gotten married three years to the day after Julian and Mia; they’d chosen that date, he told Julian, because they’d thought it would bring them good luck. “Not that it should have made a difference. Who cares about a fucking wedding date?”

Julian was silent.

“Are you flying out tonight?”

“In a few hours.”

“If it weren’t for the dance, I’d drive you to the airport.”

“Heinz, you’ve been more than accommodating.”

A couple was tossing a Frisbee on the lawn, their German Shepherd running back and forth between them. Monkey in the middle, Julian thought, except the monkey was a dog.

“We can walk around if you want,” Carter said. “I can help you check out of your hotel.”

They left Julian’s suitcase at the front desk and walked down Telegraph Avenue past the crowds. At People’s Park, they stood outside the playground where Carter had played basketball with his law school buddies. The courts were unoccupied, but a ball lay on the far end beneath the basket.

“How about it?” Carter said. In college, he and Julian had played basketball together several times a week.

“Heinz, you’re wearing a tuxedo.”

Carter removed his tuxedo jacket and slung it over his back. “Now I’m not.”

Julian pointed to Carter’s pants.

“Those will have to stay on.” Carter spun the basketball on his index finger, then transferred it to the middle finger and the one after that, going from finger to finger, hand to hand. “If law doesn’t work out, there’s always the Harlem Globetrotters.” He made a couple of foul shots, then handed the ball to Julian, who did the same. Sweat stains blossomed across Carter’s tuxedo shirt. “Should we play one-on-one?”

Julian took the ball out first and drove to the basket, but his reverse layup missed, and Carter followed with a missed shot of his own. For the next few minutes they went back and forth like this, the score locked at zero.

“Have you ever seen such ineptitude?” Carter said. “We’ve got the score of a soccer game here.” But then Carter spun past Julian for a layup, and finally someone had scored a point.

They were thirty-one and they’d slowed down since college, but what they’d lost in speed and buoyancy they’d made up for in know-how. There was no shade on the courts, they were sweating immoderately, and when the ball came loose they both dove for it. On one missed shot, Carter slipped and fell on his rear, and now he had a dirt stain on the back of his tuxedo pants.

The score was tied at five, and at seven, and at eleven again. The first player to reach fifteen won. Julian would elude Carter and get an offensive rebound. He was a better jumper than Carter, quicker and lighter-footed, but Carter was stronger and he had a deadly outside shot.

Julian slapped the ground to encourage himself. Carter was breathing heavily. He kept wiping his brow with the back of his hand, and now some sweat had dripped onto the ball, which got away from him momentarily.

Carter backed in, using his strength, and he put up a little leaning jump shot that swished in.

“I need a drink,” Julian said, and he walked over to the water fountain.

When he returned, he made a cross-over dribble to the left. He was a step ahead of Carter, he was going in for a layup, and Carter, coming at him to block his shot, kneed him in the thigh.

“Fuck.” Julian lay on the ground, and when Carter bent over to help him up, he batted Carter’s hand away.

“I’m sorry,” Carter said.

“Jesus Christ, Heinz!”

Carter missed a jump shot from behind the three-point line, and when Julian fired off a shot of his own, it rolled around the inside of the rim like toilet-bowl cleaner before popping out.

Carter had tied his tuxedo shirt to the fence, and now he was wearing only his black shoes and pants, which he’d rolled up past his knees. He looked like someone about to enter the water, as if he were going fly fishing.

It was game point and Carter muscled in on Julian, but instead of spinning around toward the basket as he usually did, he propelled himself backward, lofting a fall-away jump shot that sailed over Julian’s outstretched arms and went in.

“Game!” Carter was lying on the ground. “Call the paramedics. Hook me up to an oxygen tank.” His tied-up tuxedo shirt blew languidly in the breeze, the cuff links jangling against the fence. “Good one,” he said. “A couple of lucky rolls and it would have gone the other way.”

Julian nodded noncommittally. Already he could feel his thigh tightening up. He pictured the plane ride home, returning to Ann Arbor at two in the morning, back from his friend’s graduation with a charley horse.

A teenager shouted something from a passing car, but Julian couldn’t make it out. He looked at Carter still lying on the ground. “That guy from Signet?” he said. “The CEO? What was that supposed to mean, calling me a sugar daddy?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m just asking what he meant.”

“He wasn’t even talking about you.”

“Oh, really, Heinz? Do you know some other Wainwright?”

Carter put on his shirt. The tuxedo jacket, which he’d taken off before the game, was the one piece of clothing no worse for wear, and he put that on, too. He examined his reflection in the metal pole that held the backboard up. “Your father’s the other Wainwright, if you have to know. He’s the sugar daddy.”

“What?”

“I talked to him at college graduation, and he said if I ever needed anything I should give him a call. So a few years later, when Signet was looking for investors, I sent him our brochure and our financial plan.”

“And he invested in you?”

Carter shook his head. “He saw us as novices, a bunch of kids. But he told me he liked me and wanted to help us out. He gave us a loan of a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And we paid back every penny of it, with interest. The fact is, he’d have done a lot better if he’d invested that money with us. By this point he’d have made it back tenfold.”

Julian was looking at Carter, shaking his head.

“Wainwright, would you get off your fucking high horse? So I asked your father for help. Tell me you don’t do that every day.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Are you kidding me?”