Carey shook Fraser’s hand and smiled while Marian Fleming said, “And this is Honoria Fraser, his wife.”
“I’m glad you could come,” said Carey. “I had heard you had given us quite a bit of help in the past, and I wanted to thank you.”
Fraser looked shocked. “Who are you, anyway? What do you do?”
“I’m a surgeon.”
Fraser leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek. She laughed, then put her fingers over her mouth as though it were a breach of decorum. Her husband said, “That’s another one for you, Honey.”
Carey said, “I don’t understand.”
“I made a bet with Honey two years ago. Every year I get a printed thank-you note with my name written on it so the I.R.S. will be satisfied. But to this day, no actual human being connected with the hospital ever walked straight up like a regular person and said thanks. I said nobody ever would, or if they did, it would be an administrator from fund-raising. You just won her the bet.”
Carey looked worried. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s wrong?”
“If nobody ever did it before, maybe I wasn’t supposed to. I guess this means you’ll stop giving money now?”
“Do I look like an idiot?” asked Fraser. He looked down at his tuxedo. “Well, I suppose I do. But I’m not. I do lose most of my bets with Honey, but so would you.”
Carey looked at Honoria Fraser and smiled. “I can believe it.”
“Let me tell you something about fund-raising, since you seem to be sensible,” said Fraser. “These dinner-dance things are a mistake. When I want to lure investors into my business, I take them to the plant. I let them meet the good people I’ve got working for me. They show them the machinery and computers and trucks. They let them see how we make our products, from the quality of the raw materials to the packing and shipping. They show people what Charlie Fraser’s going to do with their money. Now, if I was an idiot”—he turned his head to survey the room—“I would put on something like this party.”
“Charlie!” said Honoria sharply.
“The doc doesn’t care,” Fraser assured her. “He can tell I mean well.” He turned to Carey. “There’s nothing that makes a person who gives money cringe more than a fancy party. It costs money, and if he’s reasonably intelligent he knows it’s his money. He didn’t give it so he could go to a party. He gave it so some poor kid gets his turn on a kidney machine. He’d like to see that. If it comes down to parties, he knows he could do a pretty good party himself for a few thousand, invite whomever he pleased, and serve better food.”
Honoria said to Carey, “Charlie’s quite the blowhard, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Carey agreed. “You are, Charlie. But you’re absolutely right. I can’t talk Marian out of throwing these parties, but I can do the rest for you.” He wrote a telephone number on his ticket and handed it to Fraser. “This is my office. Call any day, and I’ll have somebody arrange a tour for you, and for anybody you want to bring. If you see where the money goes, and what it does for this city, I think you’ll be proud.”
“I am proud,” said Charlie. “I’m just telling you how to get more.” He glanced at the number on the ticket. “I will do this, you know.”
“I expect you to,” said Carey. “Bring some friends.”
There was a chime, and people began to move beyond the screens dividing the cafeteria in half. “That’s dinner,” said Charlie. One of the waiters pushed the button to make the opening widen, and Carey could see white linen and gleaming silverware for the only time this year. “If you don’t have anybody to sit with, you can come with us.”
“Marian’s got other plans for me,” said Carey.
He drifted across the paths of a few familiar couples moving toward the tables and scanned for Susan Haynes. He found her standing with one arm across her chest and the other holding a glass of champagne, listening to Harry Rotherberg talking about the ultrasound machines the hospital was about to buy. Katie Rotherberg moved in ahead of Carey and separated them.
Carey said, “Dinner time. Don’t worry if the meat tastes funny. You’re already in the hospital.”
“ ‘Please be seated and the maître d’ will call you when your stomach pump is ready’?”
“I can see you’ve been to benefits before. Why this one?”
She shrugged. “I’m new in town, and I saw it in the paper. Hospitals tend to be everybody’s charity. I thought it was a good opportunity to get a look at the local gentry and make it clear I’m one of the good guys.”
He looked at her in mock suspicion. “You’re some kind of businesswoman, aren’t you?”
“Good grief, no.” She giggled. “Nobody in my family has ‘been’ anything in ages. My father used to sit on boards of directors. That way he got mail and was allowed to own a briefcase. But he didn’t actually know anything or do anything, or they wouldn’t have wanted him around. His epitaph should have been ‘He Voted Yes.’ ”
“Your mother?”
“She voted no. When I was about three. She turned up a few years ago, but we didn’t have much to talk about. To complete the whole sordid family tree, I have an older brother. Come to think of it, he’s something—a fisherman.”
“A commercial fisherman?”
“No, silly. Trout. He spends his summers at his house in Jackson Hole and his winters in rehab places. They don’t seem to have any therapeutic value, but it’s a quiet place to tie flies, once his hands stop shaking.”
“I’m sorry.”
She touched his arm, and it felt as though it had been brushed by a bird’s wing. “Don’t sound so solemn. None of this just happened, you know. It’s all old history.”
As they reached the newly unscreened section of the cafeteria, Marian Fleming caught Carey’s eye and nodded toward the front of the room near the head table. He gave his head a tiny shake, and she picked up two place cards from the front table, ushered Leo Bortoni and his wife from the back to Carey’s place, and watched Carey take Susan Haynes’s arm and walk her to the rear table. He could see that Lily Bortoni was delighted, having interpreted the move as a sign that her husband was appreciated. He liked them both, and he congratulated himself for having accidentally made them feel good. He pretended he had been looking past them for someone else, gave a little shrug, and continued toward the back of the room.
Carey and Susan Haynes sat at a table for four, but they were alone. He looked at her. “I guess this is where we’re supposed to talk about Cornell.”
“Do we have to?”
“Briefly. Uris Library.”
“Cruel to put it at the top of a hill,” she said. “Thought I’d die.” One of the photographs in the alumni magazine had shown the view from the library, so its altitude was all she knew about it.
“Goldwin Smith Hall.”
“Big, old, and cold.” She said it with an air of profound boredom. She hoped that was the long, low one across the quadrangle with the statue in front, but whatever it was, the description seemed to satisfy him.
“Had enough?”
“More than enough.” She leaned closer. “So what about your life story?” she asked.
“I was born in this hospital, and sort of never got out,” he said. “My education was just a leave of absence. I’m a surgeon.”
“Married?” He wasn’t sure if she said it so quickly and adroitly because she didn’t care, or because she did care.
“Just. Three months ago. She’s out of town right now.”
“Oh, yes. Marian said something about that. I forgot. What kind of surgeon are you—plastic surgery?”
“If you need anything cosmetic done, Buffalo isn’t really the best place. There are hospitals in Los Angeles and Boston that do more of those in a week than we do in a year. What I do is mostly basic medicine. If you have no further use for your gall bladder or your appendix, I’m your man.”