The One In My Heart

A face-palm moment if ever there was one. I sighed and bit into a dried fig.

“He wanted to be a medical researcher,” Bennett continued. “But when he was in his first semester in medical school, his older brother, the one who was always supposed to take over the family business, died. So he put aside medicine to become a businessman.

“I, on the other hand, made my fortune by being in the right place at the right time, with an inheritance from my grandmother that came at the exact right moment for me to invest in a passel of start-ups.”

Zelda had told me something of Bennett’s success. The inheritance from his grandmother had contained a lot more than a single Pissarro. His great-great-grandfather, the too-good-in-bed gentleman who had been married to the lady in the John Singer Sargent portrait, had been an important collector of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art—the contemporary art of his era. Over time the collection had splintered and diminished, but Bennett had still received a veritable treasure trove.

He sold some of the paintings at auction for twenty-five million dollars and invested in a number of start-ups. Within a few years the twenty-five mil had turned into more than six hundred mil: Half a dozen of the start-ups had been acquired by iconic companies, and a few more by less iconic companies whose money was just as good.

“My largely accidental good fortune as an investor came about at a low point. Moira and I had just broken up for good—and so much of what I’d planned for the rest of my life was with the two of us together. I was adrift and angry. Since it was easier to be angry at someone else than to be angry at myself, I decided that my dad was to blame, especially since he’d been eerily prescient about how it would all end.

“I hated that he was right. And I hated that I’d failed so spectacularly, that my great love had turned out to have been pretty ordinary after all. So after another unsuccessful attempt at taking over his company, I decided to make it even more personal. I would go to medical school and have what he never had.”

I might have raised my brow a fraction of an inch.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You can be openly horrified. I was a very spoiled young man.”

I didn’t say anything.

His lips twisted in an expression of self-disdain. “And I might still be one.”

Whereas his father, from just as privileged a background, had never been a spoiled young man. Had probably exemplified duty and sacrifice. And had kept his long-term relationship intact.

“It was a strange feeling,” Bennett said slowly, “to realize that I admire him. That in a way I have always admired him, even when I thought he was both stodgy and despotic.”

And he wanted his father to think well of him in return. But how was it possible when his wealth had come too easily—at least in his own view—and his profession was a giant middle finger to Mr. Somerset?

I dug into the paper bag again. There was, thank goodness, a chocolate bar at the bottom. I broke it in two, lobbed half at him, and gobbled up the remainder in two bites.

“You should have had ‘asshole’ tattooed on your forehead while you were at it—so your parents would never forget.”

He sighed and broke off a piece of chocolate. “I’m surprised I didn’t. When I made up my mind to go to medical school, I was high as fuck—having a shit-ton of money and no purpose in life never fails to lead straight to cranking out on a yacht in Saint-Tropez.

“Looking back, even though it was a decision made purely from spite, it saved me from myself. I had to sober up, for one thing—I was going to stick it to the old man even if it meant I had to actually study. And drugs and dissection”—he grimaced, as if remembering a particularly bad trip—”those two did not go well together.”

I, who somehow managed to be on university campuses for fourteen years straight without ever smoking a joint, fished in the paper bag again. But it was empty of further calorie-laden solaces. Bennett gave the rest of his chocolate to me. “Don’t worry. I haven’t had any hard drugs in eight years. If anything, I miss smoking more.”

That was only part of what bothered me. “Do you even like medicine?”

The thought that he might have devoted nearly a decade of his life to a field in which he hadn’t the least personal interest, the only value of which was in how much it would rub his dad the wrong way…Something very close to a desperate unhappiness swamped me. “Because if you don’t, you should get out right now—I don’t care how close you are to the end of your fellowship.”

He smiled a little, not the glossy, glamorous kind of smile, but one tinged with a trace of sadness. “You’re a good friend, you know.”

I wasn’t. I was with him only because of a wretched covetousness that overrode my self-control.