by John O'Brien
A slight vibration in the earth, real or imagined, pulls the thread of Ben’s dream to Los Angeles, causing him to awaken with a start from his first long nap since they returned from Boulder City two days earlier. The nap, though, has been too long, and as he sits up in the bed, he realizes that he must act quickly if he is to prevent the imminent withdrawals from seizing control of his body. Already his hand shakes violently as he staggers to the kitchen for some vodka. Sera is standing over the stove.
“Hi,” she says, and kisses his sweaty cheek. Sensing his condition, she turns back to her cooking. This is a performance that she finds too disquieting to watch. “You probably don’t want to hear about it right now, but I bought some plain rice. I thought it might be something that you could eat. So if you get hungry later just let me know and I’ll whip some up.” She turns smiling, hand on her hip, in mock parody of her housewife role.
“Okay,” he mutters. “I’m gonna get in the shower.” And he staggers back out of the room, a fifth of vodka in each hand.
It is a rare, cloudy afternoon in Las Vegas, and the diffused sunlight is muddied even further by the translucence of the tiny bathroom window. The heavy sweat on his palms makes it difficult for him to keep a firm grip on the neck of the vodka bottle, but with two hands he is able to drink, then set it down without incident. Hunched over the sink with his hands now grasping the cold porcelain, he immediately vomits, as he knew he would, and tries again. Not until he opens the second bottle is he able to keep any of it in his stomach. Five minutes later, standing upright a little more firmly, he manages a quick shower, punctuated by carefully timed drinks. Thirty minutes after entering the bathroom, he emerges, carrying the two empties, feeling well enough to grin, and as ready as he can be for his first drink of the day.
“I think I’m ready for rice,” he says, finding her still in the kitchen.
When he is dressed, sitting at her kitchen table, sipping alternately from a beer can and a glass of bourbon, she places a bowl of rice before him, and he obediently eats from it. Her own bowl, a rather more elaborate affair including vegetables and soy sauce, remains untouched. There is no conversation, and only an occasional passing car can be heard above the silence.
“You’re pretty sick,” she blurts out. “What are you gonna do?” She waits for a response, but gets only a stare. “I want you to go see a doctor.” With this she folds her arms and continues to meet his eyes.
“Sera,” he starts thoughtfully, “look, we’ve never really talked this over… well, I mean.…” He stammers, searching for an explanation that sounds even remotely acceptable. “Sera, I’m not going to a doctor.” And then, prepared, as he has been from the start, to burn this final bridge, he says, “Maybe it’s time I moved to a hotel.”
“And do what, rot away in a room? We’re not going to talk about that! I will not talk about that! Fuck you! You’re staying here. You are not moving to a hotel. One thing! This is one thing you can do for me. I’ve given you gallons of free will here, you can do this for me.” She is outraged. Leaning forward, as if it constitutes her final argument, she says, “Let’s face it. As sick as you are, I’m probably the only thing that’s keeping you alive.”
And Ben, though he offers no response, has to agree that this is true.
Wandering the Strip that night, exceptionally far from the good judgment that he may have once been capable of, he makes a two hundred dollar bet at a craps table and wins. As he collects his chips he is simultaneously confronted with a glimpse of a leggy show girl, the sudden smack of a recently consumed double shot of bourbon, and an erection. In no time at all he is seated in the back of a cab bound for the apartment, an irresistible idea in his head and a pornographic circular in his lap.
He refuses to think about anything—blind but for the well placed, useful smells and sensations of liquor and pussy—as the cab, the universe, sweeps him down the short stretch of semi-highway that leads to his—her—bed. Sera is out working, will be for another hour or so. Might get interesting, he thinks, excess bourbon from a misjudged swill streaming down his chin. The cab arrives, and Ben returns the flask to his pocket, pays the fare and stumbles to the apartment.
Thumbing through the paper, he selects a quarter-page advertisement from the rear: A hand drawn girl on all fours advises, Don’t be alone in Las Vegas. He makes the call, giving the address of the apartment, a vague request for expeditiousness, and a definite request for a girl that has had “a lot of use.” After hanging up, he regrets this latter unfortunate phrase for its tactlessness, and hopes that it doesn’t find its way to the subject’s ears.
The girl, as it turns out when she knocks on the door, doesn’t seem to be the sort that would care one way or another what Ben has to say about her. Big and busty, a would-be blond with an attitude that is pure, cold business, she pushes her way past Ben and looks curiously around the room.
“I need to call in and let them know that I got here, then we can talk. I also need a hundred dollars up front. That’s the service’s fee—I don’t see any of that—and I need to tell them that you’ve paid it, or they’ll tell me to leave,” she says.
He dutifully peels off a hundred, hands it to her, and shows her the phone. While she is calling, he pours himself a glass of bourbon, and takes it, with the bottle, to the bedroom. When he returns she is done with her call.
“I need,” he starts, mocking her, his voice thick with liquor, “to fuck you for an hour.” Satisfied, in his alcoholic haze, that he has just made an attractive offer, he drops into a chair, grins and folds his arms.
“Straight fuck is two hundred, but I doubt that you’ll be awake for an hour.”
“How mush to lick your pussy,” he slurs.
“Sorry,” she says, pleased at this opportunity to refuse him something, “only my boyfriend can do that.”
Not having the energy for even the smallest debate, he swallows this, though he is disappointed, and gives her three more hundreds, saying, “Your tip in advance. Bed’s in here.”
The hooker is on top, suspecting, by his diminishing penis inside of her, that he has fallen asleep, which he very nearly has, when Sera, turning on the light, enters her bedroom. Sera winces at the picture, then immediately seizes her composure. She looks expectantly at the hooker, who, in one continuous motion, gets off of Ben, pulls on her dress, and silently walks past her and out the front door. Sera looks at Ben, and a tear grows in her eye.
“There are limits,” she says.
“Yes,” he says, sobering slightly, “I guess I knew that.”
She drops her purse and collapses against the wall, coming to rest seated on the floor, weeping quietly.
Then, claiming his prize, he says, “Perhaps I could crash on the couch for a few hours before looking for a room.” He picks up his bottle and walks out to the couch, where he hears no argument, only the sound of her bedroom door closing.
The room, dark though it is midday, is thick with the smell of liquor and the taste of atrophy. She presses inward, behind his naked body as it retreats to the bed after answering her knock. It has been twelve days since they have seen each other, twelve days between the morning that he left her apartment and his phone call an hour ago.
“Ben,” she says, sitting on the bed. But the scene is too far removed from her experience, too low, and she is at a loss for words. She strokes his sweaty forehead. “Have you been in here since you left? It smells awful. It’s so dark.” Leaning forward, she turns on the nightstand lamp, and is stunned by his appearance. “Oh, Ben, you look so very sick. You’re so pale. Wait here.” Rising, she goes to the bathroom and wets a washcloth to wipe his face.
“I wanted to see you,” he says. He is very drunk; he is, in fact, very much beyond drunk. Punctuated by frequent coughs and gasps, occasionally blocked by mucous, his broken speech is difficult to understand, difficult, even, to listen to. “…called you to see you.” After several unsuccessful attempts, he manages to sit up in the bed and, producing a bottle f
rom under the sheet, drinks instinctively.
Sera, stepping out of the bathroom, stops and watches, impressed at the fluid skill of this one action, the strange precision that seems to guide his hand for this single task, when everything else about him, even his breathing, is inept. Sitting again on the bed, she wipes the sweat and dirt from his face, which vaguely smiles in acknowledgement, and stares across the room at the drawn drape.
“I’m sorry I put us asunder,” he says, tears welling up in his eyes, and drinks again from the bottle.
Too close to the source of her pain, she repairs to the window, where she draws the floral drapery. There is a balcony, so she opens the glass door and sits—half inside, half outside—and looks out onto the Strip, the desert. But after a few moments, the distant sounds of traffic and wind are augmented by a rhythmic creaking from the bed, and turning, she sees that he has thrown the sheet off of himself and is masturbating furiously. She returns to the bed, but he doesn’t seem to know that she is there. The tears are now streaming down either side of his face.
“Why don’t you let me do that,” she says, covering his hand with hers.
Silently withdrawing his hands, he clutches her thigh, and she takes up gently, expertly the motion. Eventually—she has no idea how much later, for her hand is tireless and her emotions overflowing—he ejaculates, and she falls prone at his side, on the bed, where they both escape to separate dreams.
She awakens to the sound of a gasp. One of his frequent muscle spasms jolts the bed, and she finds him staring out the now dark window, blinking his eyes.
“Ben,” she says, “do you want me to help you?”
He mutters what sounds like no and begins searching the bed for his bottle. Unable to watch him drink another swallow, she stands and walks to the open window.
(She caught a glimpse of him in the kitchen on their second night together. She couldn’t believe his posture, the intensity with which he winced as he drained the bottle.
He trembled with pain, eyes squeezed tightly closed; then they opened and saw her. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He smiled awkwardly, reddened and turned away so that she might vanish and never mention it.
She never did.)
A siren is screaming down the Strip. Red lights flashing, it is a surprisingly rare sight for such an alive and therefore precarious place. When the sound fades it is replaced by nothing, nothing.
(“That’s amazing,” he said, truly impressed. “What are you, some sort of angel visiting me from one of my drunk fantasies? How can you be so old?”
She turned away on the pillow and said to the wall, “I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m just using you. I need you. Can we not talk about it anymore. Please, not another word, okay?”)
Suddenly feeling the vacuum in the room, petrified by relief and sorrow, exhausted by reality, she knows, even before she turns and sees his still body, that he is gone.
(“Quiet,” he said, resting his hand over her mouth. “Try not to be so consumed with the future.”
But Sera hadn’t felt the future at all, for it wasn’t until that moment, laden with his words and redolent with his prescience, that she too knew what would come to pass. It all became clear, how much more deliberate his life was than hers, how he knew the one great trick that she couldn’t do, and how she would fall in love with him every minute, every second, over and over again, for the rest of her life.)
And his lifeless body grows cold on the hotel bed; unaware of her kiss, ripped from her soul and ordered to her lips as a final act, to bring to conclusion the hours she has spent at the window, watching his dead eyes watch the ceiling, and to give her a way to touch him beyond shutting those eyes; unaware of her eyes, at first wet, but then drying and remaining dry, even as the whimpers begin to rise from her throat, only to be lost in the din of the casino as she walks out of the hotel; unaware of her bed, the truth of her life, as it meanders back to her apartment. She undresses, brushes her teeth, lies awake in the darkness.
the end
John O’Brien was born in 1960 and
lived most of his life in California until
his death in 1994.
A Note on the Type
This book was composed in Monotype Bodoni Book, a computer version of the typeface Bodoni. Designed in 1788 by Giambattista Bodoni, court printer to the Duke of Parma, it embodies Bodoni’s ideals of a face with a modern design —flat and unbracketed serifs, decidedly thick and thin lines, and a mechanical-like form. When this face made its first appearance, printers of the day were shocked by its drastic innovation. It is today considered an outstanding type design, and is used extensively.
