Before the Fall(47)

Ben felt something electric run down his back and pucker his *.

“You can trust us, I’m saying,” he managed. “Me. That was always my pledge. No one’s going to jail over—because of this. That’s what Barney Culpepper says.”

The guy looked at Ben as if to say, Maybe I believe you, maybe I don’t. Or maybe he was trying to say, It’s not up to you.

“Protect the money,” he said. “That’s what matters. And don’t forget who owns it. Because, okay, maybe you cleaned it so good it doesn’t connect to us, but that doesn’t make it yours.”

It took a second for Ben to translate the implication. They thought he was a thief.

“No. Of course.”

“You look worried. Don’t look like that. It’s okay. You need a hug? All I’m saying is, don’t forget the most important things. And that’s the following—your ass is of secondary importance. Only the money matters. If you have to go to jail, go to jail. And if you feel the urge to hang yourself, well, maybe that’s not a bad idea either.”

He took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one between his lips.

“Meanwhile,” he said. “Get the flan. You won’t regret it.”

Then the man in the turtleneck walked to the waiting black sedan and got in. Kipling watched as it pulled away.





Chapter 17




They went to the Vineyard on Friday. Sarah had a charity auction. Something about Save the Tern. On the ferry out she brooded about their failed dinner with the maybe in-laws. Ben apologized. A work thing, he told her. But she’d heard that too many times before.

“Just retire then,” she said. “I mean, if it’s stressing you out this much. We have more money than we could ever use. We could sell the apartment even, or the boat. Honestly, I could care less.”

He bristled at the words, the implication that this money that he’d made, that he continued to make, was somehow worthless to her. As if the art of it, the expertise he’d accumulated, his love of the deal, of every new challenge, was valueless. A burden.

“It’s not about the money,” he told her. “I have responsibilities.”

She didn’t bother arguing further, doesn’t bother saying, How about your responsibilities to me? To Jenny? As far as Sarah was concerned she’d married a perpetual motion machine, an engine that must keep spinning or never spin again. Ben was work. Work was Ben. It was like a mathematical equation. It had taken her fifteen years and three therapists to accept that—acceptance being the key to happiness, she believed. But sometimes it still stung.

“I don’t ask for much,” she said, “but the dinner with the Comstocks was important.”

“I know,” he said, “and I’m sorry. I’ll invite the guy to the club, play nine or eighteen. By the time I’m finished buttering, he’ll be president of our fan club.”

“It’s not the husband that matters. It’s the wife. And I can tell she’s skeptical. She thinks we’re the kind of people who try to buy their way into heaven.”

“She said this?”

“No, but I can tell.”

“Fuck her.”

She gritted her teeth. This was always his way, to dismiss people. It only made things worse, she believed, even as she was jealous of him for being so carefree.

“No,” she said. “It matters. We have to be better.”

“Better what?”

“People.”

An acerbic reply died on his tongue when he saw her face. She was serious. In her mind they were bad people somehow, just by being rich. It went counter to everything he believed. Look at Bill Gates. The man had committed half his wealth to charitable causes in his lifetime. Billions of dollars. Didn’t that make him a better person than what—a local priest? If impact was the measure, wasn’t Bill Gates a better man than Gandhi? And weren’t Ben and Sarah Kipling, by donating millions to good causes each year, better people than the Comstocks, who gave—at most—fifty grand?

*



Sarah was up early Sunday morning. She puttered in the kitchen, straightening, figuring out what they needed, then put on her walking shoes, grabbed her wicker basket, and walked across the island to the farmers market. It was muggy out, the marine layer in the process of burning off, and the sun magnified through airborne water molecules made the world feel liquid somehow. She passed the leaning mailboxes at the end of their turnoff and walked along the shoulder of the main road. She liked the sound of her shoes on the sand that lined the macadam. Her rhythmic soft shoe. New York was so loud with its traffic and subterranean subway clatter that you couldn’t hear yourself moving in time and space, couldn’t hear your breath sounds coming and going. Sometimes with the jackhammering and the explosive hiss of kneeling buses you had to pinch yourself just to know you were still alive.

But here, the steel chill of night giving way to the mug of a summer day, bubbling rainbows in the air, Sarah could feel herself breathing, her muscles moving. She could hear her own hair as it brushed against the collar of her light summer jacket.

The farmers market was busy already. You could smell the seconds fermenting in hidden baskets out of sight, bruised tomatoes and stone fruit boxed for cosmetic reasons, even though the mottled fruit was the sweetest. Every week the vendors set up in a slightly different order, sometimes the kettle corn at one end, sometimes another. The flower vendor favored the middle, the baker the end closest to the water. Ben and Sarah had been coming here for fifteen years, first as renters and then, when rich became wealthy, as owners of a modern concrete sleeve with an ocean view.