“So far?” Now it was her turn to look uneasy.
“In cases like this there’s frequently more than one.” Ben slouched further into his chair, resting his head on the back.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “God, you sound like a textbook.”
“Might be because I’ve read more than one.” He gestured to the pile of criminal investigation books and missing persons case studies piled beside his desk. Fat lot of help they had been, with their doomsayers time charts and statistics.
“So, do the detectives think Benny is one of them?”
“Detective O’Connor told me to buzz off for now. He didn’t say anything, but—”
“There’s always the possibility.” She brought back two beers and handed one to Ben. “To the investigation then. May it speed along.”
They tapped bottles and each took long pulls.
Ben stared at his bottle and started picking at the label. “It’ll be weeks still. With the search, testing…god, testing takes forever in this state. I know from before.” He put the bottle down, more to keep himself from shredding the label all over his desk than anything else. It certainly didn’t need any more paper added to it.
“So we wait. Do you want to go out again this weekend after the auction and paper some more?”
Ben thought about it while he drank. “I think I’d like to wait and just see what happens first. With...” he gestured vaguely at the pages mentioning the truck, “this.”
They ate while listening to the political talk program on the radio. At the hour, the host changed over to yet another political junkie.
Sylvia made a face and went to turn it off. “How can you listen to this stuff?”
“I don’t really listen. I just kind of like the noise when I’m here. I’m used to a full house, lots of racket, between a five year old and working with my wife.” Ben shrugged. “Then there were all those people around.”
They were quiet again, which suited Ben just fine. He didn’t really want to think, talk, or eat; he just wanted to sit for a little while.
Sylvia gave in to her garrulous nature and broke the silence. “Do you mind telling me more about him?”
Ben took another sip of his beer before answering. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah, I do.” Sylvia stood and stretched before sitting on his desk, trying to even the height difference between them.
Ben nodded, took another pull on his beer, and then rolled it back and forth between his palms. He didn’t look up at her. It would be easier to talk about him if he didn’t have to see pity welling up in her eyes.
“My son was born on Saint Patrick’s day. We used to joke that no one would realize it was his twenty-first birthday because everyone would be so drunk. I thought he was ugly at first, all wrinkled like an old man, but after a day or so, his skin smoothed out and he was just the sweetest little cherub of a boy. Had the cry of a mule though, kick, too. He grew so fast…”
Sylvia didn’t prompt him, rush him, or ask questions. Not like everyone else who had ever asked about his son. She simply waited until Ben finished his beer and set it down.
“He didn’t really like sports, but he loved being outdoors or in the workshop at the antique store. Jeannie was terrified that he’d hurt himself while he was in there. I never thought he would. He always listened to me while we were there and knew what he was allowed to touch and not. Heck, his bassinet stayed in there most days while I worked on restoring and pricing items while Jeannie was out front. Kept the customers from getting distracted from the merchandise, she said.” He dropped the empty bottle on the table.
“But, he was my little prince. Sure, he was trouble, any healthy boy is, but not too much. Just enough. I remember, this one time, I’d gone out front to help carry a wardrobe out of the store for a customer and that boy thought he’d help out. I had been refinishing a table with a linseed oil coat, and he picked up the brush and proceeded to coat it and the floor liberally with the stain. Got it just everywhere, and it is not easy to clean up. All over him, too. I laughed so hard when I saw it, thanked him for his help, and handed him over to his mother to go wash up, as she was already headed to the apartment to make lunch. This was just before…”
He trailed off, and then stood abruptly, leaving his chair to spin behind him. The whiskey bottle was still sitting on the counter and he picked it up, pouring another measure into his glass.
“Hey now, Ben.” Sylvia got up off the floor and joined him in the kitchen. “Is this that friend you keep ignoring me for, then?” He stared at her, not comprehending. “What bottle number is this for you this week?”
Confused, he stared at the bottle. “Two, why?”
“Two full ones?”
He shrugged, not really caring. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“Things are a little clearer.” She walked over and took the glass out of his hand and downed the shot.
“Hey, I was going to drink that!” Ben tried to take the glass back from her, but she resisted.
“Maybe you were. Now you’re not. I think you may want to look at your drinking habits.” She wrested the bottle out of his hand and ducked out of range.
He was getting irritated again. He didn’t like how comfortable she was getting in criticizing him. She wanted to know about his son, and he was telling her, and she repaid him by taking away the one thing that numbed his pain enough for him to think and sleep. “My drinking habits are fine.”
“Really? I walk in here tonight and you’re drinking by yourself, standing there with an open bottle. When I came over with breakfast you had spent the night sleeping at your desk. I bet you do that often.” Ben started to protest, but she overrode him. “And you look half dead from a hangover when you come into work in the morning. Every morning.” She put the glass in the sink, out of his reach, and then recapped the bottle.
“It helps me sleep at night.”
“Obviously not well. Ben, I’m only concerned about what’s healthy for you. This,” she waved the bottle in his face, “this is not healthy.”
Even in his distracted state he knew hypocritical reasoning when he heard it. “You were drinking with me tonight. And the other night.”
“I don’t drink myself to sleep every night.” She threw the bottle in the trash under the sink.
“I don’t.”
“Prove it.” She stood there, bracing herself in front of the sink, waiting to see if he’d go for the bottle in the trash or submit to her judgment.
He was silent. He had kept telling himself that the booze was only for the short term, until he found his son, until the pain lessened and he could sleep without it. And then he realized what utter bullshit that was. He heard Jeannie’s voice again yelling at him that he was always drunk. He sagged against the counter, wondering just when it was that his drinking had gotten so out of hand. Wondered if it was possible to deal with his pain any other way.
Sylvia saw his face collapse and walked over to give him a fierce hug. “I care about you. You’re the first boss I’ve had I actually like. And I’ve seen this kind of behavior destroy people before.” She tilted her head back to look him in the eye. “There are healthier ways to deal with the stress, you know. Much healthier. Exercising, getting a hobby.”
Their faces were less than four inches apart, she still held him tightly. His hands tentatively came up to her shoulders so he felt less awkward being held by the diminutive woman. “But I feel like I’m wasting time if I’m not working on finding my son. That’s the most important thing. Okay, maybe I can cut back some on the drinking. I think you’re right in that regard, but I can’t give up what little time I have for the search to do anything else.”
“You’re not wasting time. You’re living. You should live a little. Spend time with friends, make friends, people who care.”
Ben considered her words carefully, trying to decide if she was saying what he thought she was trying to say. “Like you?”
She pulled herself closer in to him, turning their standing embrace into something a bit more intimate, her eyes downcast and demure, an odd look for a woman who was normally so direct. “Yes, like me.”
Ben bent forward and closed the distance between them, landing a tight-lipped kiss on Sylvia’s forehead, testing. Sylvia leaned into him and murmured. “I lied. I knew what you were talking about, and yes.”
He sighed, pulling back just enough to make eye contact again. “Now you’ve lost me.”
She refused the eye contact at first. “Last weekend. I meant what I said about you.” She finally looked up at him, her eyes curiously bright, eager almost.
“Oh.” He hesitated a moment longer, trying to decide whether it was a good idea or not, him being her boss and all, then he bent forward to close the half-foot gap in their heights, and carefully touched his lips to hers. He noticed briefly that they smelled minty and made his mouth tingle before she wrapped her arms tight around his neck and rose on the tips of her toes, nearly suffocating him with the force of her returned kiss.
She pulled back briefly. “You know, this is not what I meant when I suggested you take up other activities. I was thinking along the lines of a gym or continuing education classes.” He kissed her again before she could say any more. It had been over a year since Jeannie had allowed him to touch her, a year since he had felt any kind of human contact that wasn’t at its heart just an empty consoling gesture. It felt so good to touch and be touched that he prayed she wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t pull back. He hesitated, and she redoubled her advances, pinning him roughly against the counter.
After that they quickly began shedding clothing, his hands fumbling the buttons of her vest, her’s smoothly undoing the row of buttons down his wrinkled dress shirt. They barely made it to his bedroom, where he didn’t even have time to think that he hadn’t changed the sheets since he’d moved in.
An hour later they lay diagonally across the mattress, Sylvia curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder. She pulled at the sheets until Ben shifted enough for her to cover herself before she started getting chilled in the draft from the air conditioner. They didn’t say anything, and Ben absently ran his fingers through her short mop of hair, which had come out of her pigtails.
His brain, for once, was quiet, not screaming with recriminations or demanding he make his way out to the living room to work. “You look older with your hair down.”
“If my hair is down, it gets in the way.” She brushed it impatiently out of her eyes and curled up tighter to him, throwing one of her legs across his thighs. They didn’t say anything else for a while; Ben was content to simply lay beside her, relishing in the feel of her skin on his.
He had almost drifted off to sleep when she stirred. “Ben?”
“Mm?” He struggled to bring himself out of the sex-induced fog.
“Tonight. While we were talking. You never said his name.”
He was almost instantly awake, the last bits of endorphins and alcohol speeding from his system. “What?”
“Benny. You never said his name. I just thought it was interesting.”
Ben sat up, ignoring her muffled complaints as she flopped over onto the mattress. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he sat with his back to her. He hadn’t said his name, was that true? He thought back over the entire course of the evening, and she was right. He hadn’t. It unsettled him, but he wasn’t quite sure why. It’s not like he had forgotten his son’s name. No, he just hadn’t named him once while talking about what their life had been, the happiness of those times. Benny had become the missing poster boy; that’s all he was anymore to Ben. It was almost like that cheerful, troublemaking boy was fading, being replaced by the over-photocopied face on the poster.
Sylvia reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. He knew this was a mistake when he had started. Sleeping with his coworker, his younger coworker, but he hadn’t expected it to hurt. He had just wanted to forget and feel good, for just a little while. Now that was fading and something worse was taking its place, worse than he had felt than before she had come over.
“You should go home; we have work to do tomorrow.” He refused to turn and face her, to watch her face fall as he dismissed her. He couldn’t bring himself to watch the pain he was passing to her, and he desperately needed to be alone.
“I thought—” She stopped herself and studied his back for a moment before acquiescing. “Alright, Ben. I’ll go. See you in the morning?”
“Yeah. Sure.” At that moment he wanted to do nothing so much as rush out into the night, searching and searching, and calling Benny’s name to prove he wasn’t being forgotten, slowly replaced by an ink and paper version who never lived. The last thing he wanted to think about was having to return to the warehouse in the morning and the loud Minnesotans and piles of unending lost items which never found their proper home.
Sylvia quickly gathered her clothes and made her way to the bedroom door. He waited until he heard it shut behind her before he curled back up in bed, his held-back tears making his face ache.
Auctions
Now, these are the days to live for. Once a month, every month. The bated breath, the auctioneer’s hammer strike, the blessed release as an item is won, frequently after a struggle...nothing is more powerful. And nothing illustrates the greedy weaknesses of the human soul more poignantly.
~ Gertrude Biun, Property Office Manual
The next morning Ben seriously considered not going into work. He didn’t know what had possessed him the night before, though he felt like blaming the alcohol. That would mean he wasn’t responsible for taking advantage of Sylvia, not really. It helped that his entire body was blaming the alcohol, especially the several shots he’d gotten up to get after Sylvia had left. At least she had wanted him; it wasn’t like it was a pity fuck, or so he told himself. She’d as much as said she wanted to screw him last weekend. But with his current life situation, how could it not be a pity fuck? He didn’t think he could handle it if it was, and he was afraid if he had to face her, that’s what she’d tell him. A one-time pity fuck.
He dragged himself out of bed and sat in the shower for a good twenty minutes before he felt together enough to get in the car and stop at a Krispy Kreme for a large coffee and two donuts, his usual breakfast. Back in the car, he took one bite of a donut, chewed slowly, tried to swallow, and threw the rest of the donut out the window for the birds. The coffee went down better, and he actually felt his eyes open.
The office was already in full swing by the time he got there, and Judy tisked his hour-late arrival. “Auction this week, Ben, but you must have things together well enough to afford to be late, I see.”
“Actually, yeah. Thanks. Want a donut?” He waved his donut bag in her general direction.
“Ah, hmm, no, thanks. Oh, Krispy Kreme? I guess I can take care of that for you.” He handed over the second donut and headed back toward his office. “Oh, and by the way, the auctioneers are here today getting set with the inventory for the month.”
He turned to walk backward while still talking to her. “Thanks for the warning. Haven’t met them yet. Are they good people?”
“You mean less antagonistic than Tanya? Yeah. Actually a fun pair of boys from just north of Savannah. I think they’re, you know,” she held her arm in the air and let her hand fall limp. “But they’re good boys. Always polite and they’re good auctioneers.”
Ben decided to ignore the rather poorly mimed slur on the men’s sexual orientation. “I see. Thanks, Judy. Enjoy the donut.” When he made it to his warehouse, he opened the door just enough to hear what was going on inside, but not wide enough to draw attention to himself.
“I said, next item, Jeffrey.
”
“Can’t a boy finish a conversation, woman?”
Ben had no trouble identifying the first voice as Tanya, but he didn’t know who the light tenor was that responded to her in such an amused fashion.
“We’re almost done with this. Another hour, and you can chat all you like before we head back north. Jeffrey?” Despite herself, Tanya sounded somewhat tolerant of the interloper. Ben wondered what his trick was.
“Jesus, hun, you have got to relax.” That was another new voice, this one more of a bass.
“You watch your mouth, mister. I don’t care who you are, you shouldn’t be taking the Lord’s name in vain. And I can’t relax down here in this godforsaken heat. Now enough, go do your work and leave us to ours.”
Ben rubbed his temples with his free hand and tried to summon up the patience to deal with the people behind the door. He finally kicked the door all the way open and strode in.
“Morning, Tanya, Jeffrey.”
“Hey, Ben,” Jeffrey returned. Nothing from Tanya, which Ben was rather grateful for this morning. He wasn’t sure his body could handle another irritant on top of the hangover.
The two new men in the warehouse were huddled over the shelves of the auction staging bay but turned at the sound of his voice.
“Ah, you must be Mister Benjamin Grant. So nice to meet you.” The smaller of the two men was dressed in a pink short-sleeved dress shirt and tan slacks and hurried up to him to shake his hand. “I’m Larry, and this is Steve.” He gestured to the taller and slimmer man behind him.
“Don’t we know you? Larry, don’t we know him?”
Ben opened his mouth to reply but was cut short.
“He does look familiar now that you mention it.”
“But where, that auction in Maryland?”
“No, definitely not Maryland; he’s a Georgia boy.”
“Yes, yes, I can see that. But not Atlanta, no.”
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