Rude Boy USA

by Victoria Bolton

  Ben and the other soldiers turned to drugs to take their minds off the situation, and the mental illness Ben had fought to shield from the world was beginning to manifest itself on the field. He used marijuana and morphine to deal with the environmental stress. The soldiers would rig a gun with a smoke pipe and use it as a bong. They would pass it around and inhale the cannabis smoke from the shotgun barrel. They called it riding shotgun. Ben first got his taste for heroin in Vietnam, where the purity was nearly 100 percent. The purity back at home was only about 5 to 10 percent. He started using heroin because his friends were snorting and shooting it and he wanted to blend in. It was also cheap, costing only a couple of dollars for a vial of white powder in Vietnam. At home, the same amount would run about fifty dollars. The residents of Vietnam used it for leisure, and so did Ben. Ben would get sick from viral or mental stress and snort the heroin to feel better, which usually worked for him. Before he knew it, he was sick and addicted. Many of the soldiers contracted hepatitis from dirty needles, and some overdosed. Ben overdosed on heroin. About three months after his first use of heroin, his five-dollar vial purchases turned into hundred-dollar purchases. The Army provided rehabilitation and gave him amnesty for admitting he had a problem. Frustrated by the requirement that he remain at Fire Support Base Aries, which was fifty miles north of Saigon, Ben was one of ten GIs who staged a pray-in for peace. When he declined his squad leader’s and officer’s requests that he stop praying, they court-martialed him for refusal to follow orders. Bernie’s connections to military personnel helped bail Ben out of the situation. Bernie sympathized with Ben because he had also been in trouble while serving. Ben began working for Chimera full time.

  Ben did not divulge all of this information to Celia. He did not want to scare her away. He kept the conversation about the war light. Celia wanted to talk about the protests that were happening throughout the country. She told him about the time when she attended the march that went from Central Park to the United Nations building. All sorts of people attended the rally. Martin Luther King walked with them from start to finish. She told them that some people even burned their draft cards. “Would you have burned your card?” Celia asked him.

  “I would have. I thought by joining I was doing something honorable. I would have run to Canada with the rest of them if I really knew what I was getting myself into. It changed me forever,” he said. “Thank you for marching for us,” he added.

  Celia reached her hand to touch his. “You’re welcome. Most of us think this war is senseless,” she said. The date was reminiscent of her times with John, and she had a brief flashback. She quickly cleared her mind and continued on the date. Neither one would ever have thought a meeting like this possible when they first met each other.

  Once they left the restaurant, they went to the movies and watched The Me Nobody Knows. He thought it was appropriate since the storyline seemed to parallel their lives in New York City. After they had left the theater, they went back to her place to end the night. Ben was impressed with the way she arranged her apartment. Celia had her eight-track player running. She had the bottle of wine that he had gifted her still unopened. He noticed it and suggested that they pop the bottle. Celia went to get the wine glasses. Ben looked around, sneaking a peek into her bedroom. He noticed her bed. It was small. He wanted to ask her about that but decided not to. He then saw a keyboard in the corner of her bedroom. It was a Bontempi electric organ. She had splurged on it as a gift to herself. She did not want to get rusty in her piano playing and thought this would be an excellent way to brush up on her practice, just in case she decided to return to school or play for someone special. He asked her about it.

  “I didn’t know you played instruments,” he said.

  “I do. I have been playing since I was a little girl. My mother taught me,” she replied.

  “Can you play for me?” Ben asked. Celia did not want to do it. She had promised John that if she were to demonstrate her abilities, he would be the first to hear it. She was a woman of her word, and she felt that some things were reserved for special occasions. This was not one of those occasions.

  “Not today. Maybe some other time,” Celia answered. They both sat down. They were comfortable on her bed as they continued small chatter. He gave her a loving glance. He leaned over to kiss her, and she kissed him back. He unzipped the back of her dress and proceeded to remove it. She paused. For a brief moment, she thought, It was supposed to be John doing this. She had to shake him out of her head. She let Ben continue, and they ended up making love on her twin bed.

  When they were done, he got up and used her bathroom. While he was there, Celia’s telephone rang. It was John, and he just wanted to chat with her. She spoke to him for a few minutes, not mentioning that she had Ben over at her place. While Ben was in the bathroom, he heard Celia talking to someone on the phone. He noted her lowered voice and peeked through the crack of the door.

  John wanted to come over, and he said that he missed hanging out with her, but she told him not to come. She said she was on her way out on the town with Rose and some other friends. Ben continued to peek through the crack, and he noticed her face was relaxed with a slight smile on it. He made a noise to distract her. Celia sensed that Ben was finishing in the bathroom, and she told John that her friends were there, and she had to go. Ben returned from washing his face, and Celia ended the call with John. Ben looked at her and then lifted her chin with his finger. He kissed her, and they were ready for another round of lovemaking.

  Another day passed with no word from Bernie. Celia was concerned, but the guys were not. They had known Bernie to take days away from the office often. He did not always divulge his whereabouts. He felt that some things needed to remain private. Celia decided to pay a visit to Bernie’s townhouse to check on him. She was terribly concerned. She took a cab over to his place. To ease her nerves, she had a conversation with the driver, who was polite. When she arrived, she got out of the cab and made it to the top of the stairs. She rang his doorbell to no answer. Celia had obtained keys to Bernie’s place; he had locked spares away in a safe at the office. He kept a backup of important things in his life in that safe just in case he misplaced his first set. He was a big fan of redundancy. She unlocked the door and went upstairs. His front door had several locks for security purposes. She knocked and called his name but received no answer. She figured if he had gone on vacation, everything would be okay and she would inform him of her visit to his place. She knew that he did not have a lady to look after him anymore since the sudden passing of Gina. She was willing to take on the role, as she had been used to visiting her mother to check on her. It took her a while to get all of the locks undone, as she had to figure out which key went to each lock. She finally got them all open and walked in.

  She walked through the short hallway, which led to the living room. Both of the windows were open, which she found unusual since it was early April and it had snowed after the rainstorm a few days prior. The temperatures had dipped below freezing. It was freezing in the apartment. She looked over at the couch and found Bernie covered in a blanket. He looked like he was sleeping peacefully. She did not want to scare him with a sudden noise, so she slowly walked over to touch him. He was cold, stiff, and unresponsive. She shook him to no avail. In her heart, she knew what she was seeing. Bernie was gone. She leaned over and hugged him. She thanked him for everything and cried. She went to the telephone to call the police.

  When the ambulance arrived, they attempted to revive him to no avail. They announced him deceased at the scene. They inquired of next of kin, and Celia replied, “We are his family.” She informed them that she would let the others know. She went back downstairs and stood by the steps to collect her thoughts. She watched them remove his body, which was covered with a white sheet from the apartment. Her mind kept returning to the open windows. She looked up at them from below. When she was younger, her mother had told her that when a person dies, you have to open the window so the soul can
go up to heaven. Celia wanted to think that he had known that it was time and had been letting himself go. She took the information she had about where he would be located and returned to the office to find the others and inform them.

  When Celia returned to the office, all three guys were there, to her surprise. It was a rare occurrence these days for all three of them to be together with a few subworkers and security. They were having a discussion among themselves when she walked in. They welcomed her back in unison. Her eyes were red and teary, with smudged mascara, as she had cried in the cab ride back to the office. All three looked at her. They asked her whether anything was wrong with her and asked everyone else to clear the room. They had never seen her in such distress. They wanted to make sure that she was OK.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  “Who’s gone?” John asked.

  She looked at him. “Bernie’s gone,” she replied. All of them stood silent. You could hear a feather hit the floor. They were all in shock.

  Chapter 7

  The first two weeks after Bernie’s sudden passing went by in a blur for everyone at the company. It was the first time in Chimera’s existence that they had no leader. Productivity completely halted for a week before Celia and John agreed to reopen the offices so they could move on and heal. John was a mess, and Celia thought that he should get out of the apartment. Jerome was stressed and sad. He had his parents, but Bernie was the second father to him and a person whom he felt understood him and his ambitions the most. Ben handled the situation the best way he knew how, by disappearing and indulging in mind-numbing narcotics.

  People from all over the city came together for Bernie’s funeral. The church pews filled. Mourners included some of Bernie’s distant relatives who had not spoken to him for years. Some of them still held a grudge about the way he’d handled his grandparents’ store. Chimera’s security was heavily present because John wanted everything to go off without incident. The services made the local papers and evening news. Despite some questionable activities at times, Bernie had a stellar reputation in New York City. At the funeral, Edina and Celia finally came face to face. John was forced to introduce them. Edina had no clue about Celia besides her being a person who worked with John. Celia was uncomfortable, to say the least. She did not want to talk more with Edina than she had to. Both were seemingly too distraught to socialize. John looked like he just wanted to leave the area entirely.

  John became the boss of Chimera by default and presumed the leadership role. Bernie had left him in charge of most of the activities in the company, excluding his plans for Atlantic City. John met with Luci Graziani briefly after the burial to discuss what would be next for them. Graziani was still interested in working with them. John wanted to avoid a hostile takeover, a possibility since the other families knew of Bernie’s passing and were ready to seize everything Chimera had built in the past decade. John was determined not to let that happen, as Bernie’s legacy was important to him and everyone who was still there.

  Ben began to slide backward. Celia had ended her outside contact with Ben altogether. There would be no more dates. She just did not feel right about the entire situation. The one-time sex with him had fulfilled a physical need, she realized. Ben wanted to see her more often, as a support crutch and a girlfriend, but she declined. Ben would not admit it, but his feelings were a bit hurt by the distance. Much like John, Ben used his time at work to be close to her. His productivity slowed, and he did not want to take orders from John. He was too busy snorting coke on his off time to deal with his grief about the breakup. It had become so bad that he was now experiencing nosebleeds. Ben did not want Celia to see this, as he knew it would scare her away for good. He needed her because now she was his only ally at Chimera. Celia had become the neutral point in the group as well as the unofficial number four in the company, even if she did not participate in the initiation ceremony. Her role was now more important than ever. Ben was bitter overall, and he thought that he had to make moves soon or else he would fade away from all the work he had put in over the years. He had helped build Chimera, and he felt unappreciated. He began to use his time with Celia as a way to get at John, even mentioning to John that they went out, which made tensions worse between the two. John knew that Ben was no good for Celia but understood that he had no real power to control her. He had no choice but to sit back and hope their relationship would implode.

  Jerome sought comfort in his girlfriend. The shock of Bernie’s death prompted him to propose to Mariana on a whim. She accepted. He felt good about his decision to finally settle down. Nightlife was becoming mundane to him, and he needed a higher purpose to justify some of the things he did on a daily basis. The entire death situation had Jerome questioning life. He felt that he should do the things he had always wanted to do before it was too late. Jerome and Mariana had discussed marriage before, and he felt that now was the time to take the plunge. They planned to walk down the aisle soon, as Mariana did not want to wait too long. Her family wanted her married sooner rather than later, but first Jerome had to get a few things in order at Chimera before he could settle down.

  Since Bernie was no longer there, Edina knew that John was not handling things well. Instead of using the combative tone he typically employed when they argued, he now sounded defeated. He was too occupied to hate her. Edina was aware of the father-and-son-like relationship between John and Bernie. John had not spoken to her much since the funeral, and he had increased his drinking. John’s workload increased, and he split his time in too many places. Edina felt that this was a prime opportunity for her to step in, provide the comfort that he needed, and help him. Besides, she and John had been there since the beginning with Bernie; therefore, she and John should be the ones who kept things afloat. Before she could plan, she had to do some investigating. She needed to know the details of his other residence and find out why he wanted to spend so much time there instead of at home with her.

  Edina made the trip over to John’s apartment. It was situated in a luxury high-rise. She had called his place earlier in the day to make sure that he would not be home. John was traveling out of town for the day, which gave her plenty of time to take a cab over, get in, survey the place, and get back. When she arrived at the building, the door attendant stopped her. He did not know who she was. He was usually the night-shift door attendant, but he had agreed to fill in for the day-shift attendant, who was sick. John had only tipped off the day-shift door attendant about the chance of his wife showing up unexpectedly. There were also different people working the concierge desk that day. The replacement staff were not fully aware of John’s security protocols. Many who worked at the tower often saw John bring numerous women back to his place. For privacy reasons, they never divulged details about that to anyone.

  Edina asked to speak to management to see if she could gain access to the apartment. She identified herself as John’s wife and said that there should not be any problems. She claimed that he forgot to leave her the keys, and she had to get something important out of the apartment. They knew she was his wife. The woman at the desk was aware of John’s extracurricular activities. She felt sad for his wife. The manager woman agreed to let her in for a time. They led her upstairs and into the apartment.

  Edina looked around and was surprised by how clean the place looked. She had expected a pigsty. The decor was decent, but not as good as what she would do. To her, it was enough to be passable. She thought the light fixture on the ceiling was gaudy. It looked like a lunatic had designed it. Black-and-white framed photographs covered the light-gray walls. The sofa was a dark gray with black pillows, and the carpet had a strange pattern on it. He had a large floor television against the wall. She thought the entire setup was a bit drab and sad. The city views were excellent, as the windows in the living room were nice and large. She saw clear evidence that another woman had been in the apartment at some point, as she found an earring on the kitchen counter. His refrigerator had minimal food in it. Just some ope
ned wine, TV dinners, and what looked like an old carton of eggs. Edina quickly closed it. She looked over and saw the wine rack and record console with his collection on the side. She knew he liked to drink, but she had not been aware of his fondness for music. She felt like she was learning about a brand-new person and not the man she had been with for a decade. She peeked into his bedroom and saw that his balcony was attached from there. She found the bed unmade and saw some clothes lying on the floor and the chair. His dresser held his comb, brush, cufflinks, and deodorant. She could smell the scent of his favorite cologne. She looked in his closet, through his drawers, and under his bed. She saw nothing out of the ordinary, except the numerous unopened packets of condoms, one recently used condom, and women’s underwear that was not hers under the bed. He must not have realized those items were under there. She was disgusted.

  Another door in his bedroom led to a small, attached room—his darkroom. She peeked in. The first things she noticed were hanging photographs. A couple of them were drying, and she was careful not to ruin them by turning on the light. The natural sunlight coming from the bedroom was enough for her to see by. She looked over and noticed the camera she had bought him. It made her happy that he was actually enjoying something she had given him. She looked up to get a glance at the photographs he had taken with the camera. Many of them depicted architecture. She noticed that these were the same photos he had hanging on his walls. She made mental note of his talent. Other photos were of women. She took one down and attempted to look at it carefully. She wanted a clearer view of the picture, so she went back out to the bedroom toward the window to look. It was a photograph of Celia in her bunny suit at the club. She recognized Celia’s face immediately from their meeting at the funeral. She went back into the room to look at the other photographs. One by one, she discovered that each of the photos were of Celia. John had taken some at the club, and others appeared to be at an eatery and at the office. There were two pictures of the four men of Chimera and one of all five of them together. John did not have a single photograph of Edina in his darkroom.