“You’re not looking at the picture,” Nan said. “I said I was sorry about all this.”
“Exactly right. I accept your apology.”
“Please don’t shout.”
“You wish I were shouting,” Benny said, ostentatiously whispering. “You can hardly hear me. My dial is turned all the way down. We’re in the negative numbers now.” His hand shaking, Benny took a sip of his festive Bloody Mary. “So what’s this guy’s name?”
Nan peevishly put her phone back into her purse. “What? His name?”
“Yeah. You know, his name.”
“Well, his name isn’t him. A name is so…whatever. His identity is his own,” Nan said in a vague monotone, watching a toddler walk by outside clutching a teddy bear in one hand, his other hand in his father’s. “Okay,” she said, apparently gathering her thoughts while rubbing her left knuckle with her right thumb. “So maybe I’ll tell you.” Clearly the name constituted a difficulty, a distraction. Benny waited for whatever she would say, and while he waited he noticed that she gave off a scent of lavender, which, he feared, was from massage oil.
“Go right ahead,” Benny said, sensing an advantage.
“Okay, but you’re going to laugh. I know you. His name’s Thor.”
“Thor?” Benny exclaimed. “That’s a good one. He must be from around here. That’s a real Minnesota name for you. Is he a Lutheran?”
“See, I knew you would be like that. Under your nice hides the snide. And I have to point out that you’re being defensive. Talk about the predictability factor! Like I said, I feel bad for you and I blame myself, but I’m glad I’m moving on to those green pastures they all tell you about.”
On the other side of the plate-glass window, civilians went about their business, seemingly indifferent to the wars of love, and from time to time they glanced in at Benny and Nan, the pleasant-looking young couple sitting at a bar table, apparently lost in conversation. The midsummer sun eased itself behind an office building, casting a conical shadow that pierced Benny with melancholy, while the bar slowly filled up with professional-managerial types getting off work in time for happy hour, the men loosening their collars, the women quickly, almost surreptitiously, checking their faces in the mahogany-framed mirror above the bar. To the side, a couple of outcast full-figured ladies in slimming dresses leaned toward each other in the corner, whispering.
The stars wheeled in the empty space of Benny’s desolation. He would tell Dennis about the wheeling stars. Dennis would be amused.
He took another sip of his drink as he fought off soul-nausea and the urge to beg. The in-surge of employees getting off work was tidal now. They were making a racket. He would not tell Nan how much he had loved her, the size and mature intensity of that love, its ability to give his life meaning. A man does not beg to be taken back, he reminded himself. Begging qualifies as the primary criterion for admission to loserdom, that territory inhabited by platoons of nice vanilla guys who belong in civilized places like Denmark and Sweden, not here in the United States, where they are held in contempt and trampled.
He habitually carries images around in his head. Chained to his consciousness at that moment as he sat across from her was one of Nan. The morning after their first night together, she had stood over his little apartment’s gas stove scrambling some eggs for them both, the sunlight streaming through the east window backlighting her hair in glory. She wore a cream-colored nightgown that set off her tanned skin to good effect. Benny and Nan had shared a nearly sleepless night of lovemaking. By morning they were love gods. He rose out of bed with the succulent sea urchin taste of her clitoris still on his tongue. Inspired by the sunlight and her bare feet on the linoleum and her expression of sleepy sensual concentration and the smell of the garlic and the salsa in the eggs, he thought he was the luckiest man alive at that particular hour, that morning, on the planet. Wilhelm Reich was correct: orgasms constituted the meaning of life. The kindly knife of sentiment stabbed at him again and again.
It occurred to him that maybe he hadn’t actually known Nan as a person, despite his memories of her. She had said, several times, jokingly, that he was self-deluded. Perhaps she was inexplicable, or maybe he was. Returning to the present moment from his reverie, he tried to look at her across the bar table. Her inexplicable mouth was moving in a half smile: she was saying inexplicable things about how she had felt that way then and felt this way now. More apologies came out of her.
Following the nausea and the stabbing and the pecking crows and the murderous rage, sadness dropped over him like a cone, inside of which all the oxygen consisted of more sadness. Time undoubtedly passed at Whiskey Sour’s, and the waitress replaced his drink with another. Had he said anything? He couldn’t remember if he had spoken up or had remained silent as the bar filled with merrymakers, and Nan continued to explain whatever she was explaining. His Bloody Mary glass somehow emptied the Bloody Mary into his mouth. The celery stick in the drink poked at his lip. His mind raced and stopped, raced and stopped. Nan—composed, elegant—sipped her Tom Collins and dabbed her bread in olive oil as she spoke. What was she saying now? One woman over at the bar suddenly screamed with laughter. Thank God, Benny thought: someone can scream.
As the bar grew noisier, Benny and Nan gazed at each other without tenderness, in the hard labor of separation. He felt the first wellsprings of hatred—liberating, a breeze from the soul’s window. You have to hate them first if you’re going to break up with them. Gathering himself, he nodded at her, stood up with what he hoped was quiet dignity, and left her with the bar bill. At the entryway, like Orpheus, he turned to see her one last time. Would she follow him or at least keep an eye on him as he walked away? Certainly not: she was gazing through the window glass toward the street, studiously ignoring his departure and, worse, wearing a grim smirk as she reached back down into her purse for her phone. She’d give this Thor the good news: free, now and forever. Free to be you and me! No more Benny! She didn’t look up as she tapped the letters.
—
All night Benny fought the beast of jealous rage, and he drank. Four a.m. found him in a whiskey stupor, lying on the floor in his apartment, cursing Nan and contemplating creative bedlam.
By morning, he had acquired an atom-smashing headache. His brain was a particle accelerator, throwing off broken pieces of thought. He emptied the savings account meant to pay off his student loans, transporting the cash out of the bank in a brown grocery bag he’d brought with him. The oversaturated sunlight blazed down on his hair, and his car’s interior smelled like a bakery oven. Back at home, cash in hand, he wrote a letter to the dean of admissions of the architecture school he had planned to attend in September, saying that he would not be arriving this fall, or ever. Then he called Dennis.
“Nan broke up with me,” he announced.
“No kidding. How come?” his friend asked.
“This guy. She says she…I dunno. She fell in love with him or something. Law school guy. Love bloomed in the lecture hall. His name’s Thor, if you can believe it.”
“Too bad.”
“Also he’s a triathlete.”
“A triple threat. How could you possibly compete with that?”
“Couldn’t,” Benny said. “I’m going to take all my money and gamble it away.”
“That’s a really good idea. An excellent idea. Where you going?”
“Phelps Lake. One of those Indian casinos. Hey, you want me to visit you first? This morning? How’re you feeling?” Benny hadn’t been over to the hospital for two days now.
“Naw. Go up to the casino and gamble all your money away and then call me or just come down here and give me the full rundown about how you’re totally broke and ruined.”
Benny’s idea is that he’s keeping his friend alive by sending out stories from the battlefield. Before he got sick, Dennis was a real player. In any particular room, if Dennis hadn’t made a pass at an attractive woman, it was just an oversight. He had coached Benny in the complicate
d norms of seduction, separation, and betrayal.
Accordingly, Benny had loaded himself and his life savings into his rusting and dented Corolla and driven eighty-seven miles north on the interstate, past the antiabortion billboards and the federal prison in Sandstone, and now here he is, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sandals, a recent college grad playing blackjack at a casino staffed by Native Americans. He’s bleary and hungover and soul-sick. The trouble is, he’s on a lucky streak and has won three hundred dollars, and he just keeps winning. A curse is on him: he cannot lose. More people are gathering around to watch this desperate, bloodshot young man, and they’re stupefied by his behavior. What they regard as a blessing, he believes is a catastrophe: look at the expression of dismay on his face as his winnings accumulate! Once in a while, the gates of the City of Ruination are closed to visitors. He knocks; he cannot get in.
—
Behind him, the casino zombies are living it up. Air thick with cigarette smoke and fetid hopelessness circulates dully around him, and the blinging electronic music from slot machines projects a kind of hypnotically induced amusement-park ruckus. Having won again on a double down, Benny backs up from the blackjack table and decides to survey the main floor. He will call Dennis later.
Ghouls smoking cigarettes drop tokens into the slots. The machines continue to sing their manic little robot ditties. Here and there, officials survey the operation, pretending that they are merely there to help. It’s a low-rent casino, and the patrons are more humble than you might expect—shabbily dressed, glowering, half-mad with unrecoverable losses. An old couple, holding on to each other for stability, newly broke, shuffle past Benny and nod in a stubbornly friendly way to him, this being Minnesota. She’s wearing a cap that says SAY HI TO GRANDMA! and his cap says GONE FISHIN’! A red-haired middle-aged woman at a slot machine to Benny’s right labors away at losing money, and on her T-shirt are the words WHOA IS ME!
Behind him, a man speaks to a woman, probably his wife. They’re both wearing wedding rings. “He looked like a faggot undertaker,” the man says in a thick Minnesota accent, “and I know I’m half-right.”
That does it. The spell breaks. The romance of self-destruction can only go on for so long, and it can’t go on here among these politely unpleasant people. This isn’t Las Vegas, a professionally designed entryway to Hell, where experienced Technicolor devils have been in comfortable residence for decades tossing Mom and Pop down into the pit. It’s just lowly Phelps Lake, where small lives become slightly smaller. Time for Benny to go back to his life, to return to the cities, and drop in on Dennis.
He seems to have sobered up. His headache has gone away. He checks his watch.
Now he’s standing near the entryway door, close to the last-chance slots, and is about to return to his car with his winnings when a man wearing a green tie over a white shirt approaches him with his hand out as if in greeting. The man’s thinning hair is arranged in a halfhearted comb-over, and his eyeglasses sit on his nose at a tilt, the right lens lower than the left. He looks, it is fair to say, like a survivor of a plane crash dressed up to go on a talk show. On the approaching face is a Mr. Potato Head expression of rigid bonhomie.
“Hello, there. I saw you looking at me,” the man says, shaking Benny’s hand, “from across the crowded room, and you were wondering who I was. Who is that man, you were thinking.”
“No,” Benny says sourly. “I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
“It often happens,” the man says, as his hand continues to shake Benny’s. “People see me and it’s like, ‘I know that guy. Who is that guy? Is he famous?’ ”
“I didn’t think that.”
“Well, you will. I have one of those recognizable faces.”
“I don’t recognize it,” Benny says. “Please stop shaking my hand.”
“Will do,” the man says cheerfully. “Do you recognize me now?”
“No.”
“You could say I’m the greeter here.” Finished with shaking, his hand returns to the man’s side. “You could say that I’m the spirit of fun. Ha ha! I like for everybody to have the best possible time here at the Gray Wolf.”
“I have to go,” Benny tells him. “I have to get back.”
“What’s your hurry?” the man asks. “By the way, I’m Nathaniel Farber.” Again the hand comes out, and, unthinkingly, Benny takes it. The shaking recommences. “I was in pictures.” He waits. “The movies,” he says, to clarify.
“Pleased to meet you.” Benny pulls his hand away abruptly. “I have to go.”
“Sometimes people say, ‘Not the Nate Farber!’ Usually they say that. Or they cry out with recognition.”
“I must be the exception that proves the rule.”
“They say, ‘I saw you in Moon over Havana. And I saw you in Too Many Cats! You were so funny!’ ”
“Are those movies?”
“Major studio productions. One at Warner’s, the other at Metro. Of course, that was some years ago.” Fleetingly, the rictus dies on the face of the showbiz veteran. “What’s your name, young fella?”
“Benny.”
“And what brings you to our Gray Wolf Casino, Benny?”
“I was trying to lose my life savings. I was upset.”
“And did you succeed, Benny?”
“I did not. I won a few hundred dollars.”
“Goes to show, Benny, how unpredictable the future can be. The stars, dear Brutus, are not in ourselves. Would you like my autograph?”
“No, thank you.” Nathaniel Farber’s breath, floating like a soap bubble in Benny’s direction, smells of mouthwash tainted with vodka.
“Are you leaving? Please stay. We here at the Gray Wolf feel that you haven’t yet enjoyed yourself to the outer limit.”
“Actually, I have an appointment, sort of, with someone in Minneapolis.”
“A sort-of appointment? I never heard of such a thing.”
“You have now.”
“Who is she?”
“He. Not ‘she.’ He. His name’s Dennis. He used to teach film at the university before he got sick. He’ll know who you are. Excuse me, but I have to go.”
“Why doesn’t he teach film now?” Nathaniel Farber asks.
“He’s dying,” Benny tells him. “But I’ll tell him all about you anyway.”
—
On the way back, he runs into a rainstorm. The car shakes from side to side from the force of the crosswinds. Overhead, the clouds have a horror-movie look. On the freeway, cars coming in the opposite direction have their headlights on, and their windshield wipers are oscillating at high speed. Inside the cars, the drivers have the stricken I-was-there faces of trauma survivors. Soon enraged supercharged raindrops mixed with BB-size hail pelt the front windshield like liquid bullets, the impact sounding metallic as the projectiles hit the glass more forcibly with each mile, until the windows fog up, and Benny pulls over to a rest stop, where he waits out the storm.
—
“Guess who I saw at the Gray Wolf Casino?” Benny asks upon entering Dennis’s hospital room. “Nathaniel Farber. The old actor. They hired him as an official greeter up there.” He sits down next to the hospital bed, facing away from his friend, who does not like to be looked at in his present condition.
“No kidding. Moon over Havana. Billy Wilder used him once. He played a health inspector. Our grandparents’ generation—he always reminded me of Gene Raymond. Just a minute, just a minute,” Dennis says, staring at the TV set hanging from the ceiling. “Storage Wars is on. I gotta see what’s in the locker.” The gap in conversation allows Benny to examine his friend’s face, which has grown gaunt. His eyes have that staring look. He wears a maroon-and-gold stocking cap.
“I won a few hundred dollars up there,” Benny says. “I couldn’t lose. By the way, where’s your mom?”
“Downstairs in the cafeteria. She likes the hubbub. It’s a contrast to here.”
“How long will she be in Minneapolis?”
When De
nnis doesn’t reply, Benny turns to him and sees that his friend has fallen asleep, probably from the morphine. Or perhaps he’s had a pain spasm. Benny reaches over and shuts off the TV set.
“Hold my hand,” Dennis says, his eyes still closed. Benny takes Dennis’s hand in his own, and they sit there for a moment in silence.
“Can you believe that she left me? For a law student?” Benny asks.
“Can you fucking believe this? I’m dying,” Dennis says, with his eyes still closed. “I talked to my oncologist yesterday. He had just looked at the new X-rays. He said, and I quote, ‘Dennis, if I told you your cancer hadn’t spread, it’d be like saying that shit doesn’t stink.’ ” He sighs. “He needs to practice his bedside manner. What happened to tact? Tell me again about what she said to you last night.”
Benny tells him the story again: Nan’s new guy, Thor, the runner, dedicated to practicing poverty law once he passes the Minnesota bar, has replaced Benny in her affections. Dennis’s hand feels cold and dry in his own. Once again he seems to fall asleep. “I can’t even think about architecture,” Benny tells Dennis. “All I can think about is her. She’s got me in her grip.” Dennis nods. “Buddy, is there anything I can do for you?”
“Get the nurse,” Dennis says. “I need more morphine. Like right now. Pronto.”
Benny releases Dennis’s hand and walks down to the nurses’ station and tells the woman—Lucille, her name is—who’s in charge of his friend that his friend is in pain again and needs more morphine immediately. Lucille says she’ll be down in ten minutes, and Benny returns to room 530.
“You’ve been losing weight,” Dennis says dreamily, before coughing uncontrollably. “So have I.”
“I’ve been running. I gotta try to look good.”
“You’re going to end up like Nathaniel Farber, that line of thinking.”
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