Ben Soul

by Richard George

continue without any sexual payoff. Thank you for all you have done for me, and for us. Perhaps, now, between watching the gulls and the fog, I’ll have time to write one or two monographs on psychiatric subjects.

  Your friend, and former client,

  Dr. Chester Field

  Vanna Reads the Paper

  Vanna Dee opened the second section of her newspaper. She poured a second cup of strong black coffee and began to peruse the headlines. One caught her eye:

  Ceremony at Chinese Consulate

  The City, June 27, 1977.

  The People’s Republic Consul, Dong Ding, honored two residents of the City today. Malcolm Drye and Mae Ling, both of the City, turned over to the Consul rare manuscripts containing poems by Bu Ti, a noted Chinese poetess, whose works scholars thought were lost in the time of the Boxer Rebellion.

  Mr. Drye and Ms. Ling recently obtained three small clay statues. When Ms. Ling took them to her grandfather for appraisal, he discovered that, while they had little value in themselves, they concealed a treasure of great worth to the People’s Republic. Dr. Foy Ling has made an English translation of the poems, which will be available at the Tickling Feather Book Store on July 1.

  Consul Dong Ding praised Ms. Ling and Mr. Drye for their noble gift to the People’s Republic and celebrated them at a banquet. As a further reward, he awarded them the statues that contained the poems.

  Mr. Drye is a well-known dahlia breeder in the City. Ms. Ling is an employee of the Wong Brothers Import/Export Emporium. Dr. Foy Ling is a co-owner of the Palace of the Jaded Concubine, a famous Chinese restaurant in the City.

  Consul Dong Ding told reporters the Chinese Government will house the manuscripts in a Beijing museum under carefully kept under climate-controlled conditions, so future generations may study them.

  The paper trembled in Vanna’s hands. Toy Boy had lied to her. The tape he had given her, which clearly carried the sound of the statues breaking into pieces, was a fake. How much might the People’s Republic have paid for these statues, or at least their contents? And these fools just gave them away for a banquet and a few measly words of praise. Fury flamed in Vanna’s bosom and incarnadined her face. She vowed to get even.

  It took her the better part of the morning to devise a plan. Each time she wanted to stop to think about what to do, a client or co-worker interrupted her plotting with one or more inane questions she could not ignore.

  At last it came to her. Toy Boy would pay! She took the telephone book, looked in the government pages, and dialed the INS.

  Ophelia Payne sat at her boss’s desk to answer the telephone over the lunch hour. She had just come to the INS offices as an intern, supplementing her college knowledge with on-the-job experience. When the telephone rang, she answered it.

  “Hello,” she said. “Immigration and Naturalization Service. Ophelia Payne speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Ms. Payne?” the woman on the other end said.

  “Yes. Ophelia Payne.”

  “May I call you Ophelia?”

  “Please do.”

  “My name is Vanna Dee. I work in the City Social Department. Recently I have discovered someone working illegally in the City. Is this the proper desk to report that information to?”

  “Yes, it is. Do you have a name and home address for the person in question?”

  “I have his name. It’s Toy Boy. I don’t know where he lives. He works at the Palace of the Jaded Concubine.”

  “Oh, yes, the notorious restaurant. We’ve been suspicious for a long time about that place. The name is Toy Boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know he’s in the country illegally?”

  “He showed me a green card he’d recently purchased. It was obviously a fake.” Vanna, of course, didn’t mention she had provided the card to Toy Boy.

  “How could you tell? Was it such a poor forgery?”

  “That I don’t know. But, it had the word ‘Specimen’ in bright red letters across its face. Surely that isn’t part of the standard green card.”

  “By no means. Do you have any idea whether the employer, the Palace of the Jaded Concubine, has knowledge of Mr. Boy’s immigrant status?”

  “That I can’t say. You’ll have to ask them.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Dee, for your information. It is citizens like you who make our country so strong and safe.”

  “Just glad to do my civic duty.” With that, Ophelia and Vanna said their goodbyes, and rang off. Ophelia began to draft a memo for her supervisor, and then thought of a better plan. She drew a pad of investigation request forms toward her and patiently began filling in various blanks. Among other things she entered, was that she, not Vanna, was the source of the information. When she had finished the form, she slipped it, in its quintuplicate copies, into a stack of papers waiting her supervisor’s signature. Later that afternoon her supervisor signed the form without reviewing it, and thereby set in motion an investigation of the Palace of the Jaded Concubine.

  In short order the investigation turned up evidence that not only Toy Boy and several other employees of the restaurant were in the United States without proper visas and papers, but so were Mae Ling’s parents and her grandfather. Ophelia joined the raid task force that arrested the Lings and most of their staff. Wisely, the task force leader let the customers who were in the restaurant at the time of the raid go without taking their names or requiring them as witnesses. A notable slice of the City’s elite could thus deny ever knowing the immigration status of the Ling family.

  The INS had hoped to quietly deport the whole Ling family, but the family’s prominence brought a great deal of media attention to the hearings. Foy Ling, Faw Ling, and Fu Ling could not prove either citizenship or legal residence. They had slipped into the country underneath the Immigration radar. Mae Ling, however, had been born in the City Hospital, and had the papers to prove it. Under pressure from City officials who had no desire to force the Lings to tell secrets, lawyers drew up papers to transfer the entire Ling holdings to Mae Ling, so they would not be forfeit. Then the rest of the family agreed to peaceable deportation.

  Mae Ling promptly sold the family real estate. She sent a large share of the proceeds to her dear deported kin, keeping only enough to start a bookstore in Lost Lane near La Señora’s mission.

  Letters from Osso Del Oso

  Ben and Len moved south because their jobs moved. Ben’s job included a promotion, and Len found a job better than the one he had in the City. They both left friends and acquaintances hoping to make new friends and acquaintances. Ben wrote Hardin and Minnie Vann.

  Hardin Soul

  Box 27

  Rural Route 2

  Berthoud, CO

  December 5, 1980

  Dear Hardin,

  I’m moving to a new home in the Southland. My company has built a new data processing center at a town called Osso Del Oso. Len has found a job with the county as an office administrator. It provides him medical and pension benefits far better than he got when he worked for Shocker Electric.

  My new address is:

  1589 Camino Esqueleto

  Osso Del Oso

  I hope your first Christmas with Lawson is a great joy for you. Please give my regards to Enna.

  Your brother,

  Ben.

  Ms. Minnie Vann

  1217 Free Radical Lane

  The City

  December 7, 1980

  Dear Minnie,

  Well, Len and I have moved at last. It seemed the packing was going on forever. Now the unpacking begins. That promises to take even longer. As a “new kid on the block,” I’m assigned to the night shift. It’s not so bad; we do batch processing, and are busy enough to keep awake. I sleep all day, while Len’s at work. We have our evenings together, and then he goes to bed and I go to work. Kind of stifles romance, but we’re an old married couple now, so we survive.

  The climate here in the S
outhland is rather dull after the changing microclimates of the City and its suburbs. There are lots of palm trees, unrelenting sunshine, and a lot of dust. The air is hazy most of the time, and smells like an old car’s exhaust. Len has had some trouble breathing; he may have incipient asthma.

  The traffic is heavy on the freeways, but we both are lucky because we can drive to our jobs on surface streets. Most of them are wide boulevards that no one uses, except on weekends.

  We have rented a small house in an older neighborhood. Many of the people here are older couples who have raised their children. It’s quiet, except when grandchildren visit. The yard is small enough we can keep it up. There’s a bit of grass in front, and a large redwood deck takes up most of the back yard. We’d probably enjoy the deck more if we could breathe the unfiltered air.

  Gay life is minimal here in Osso Del Oso. That is to say, there isn’t any. We have to drive about a half hour to the nearest bar, a little neighborhood watering hole called Joe’s Blowhole. It has a nautical décor. We don’t go often, since one of us has to stay sober to drive home. Our work schedules make partying difficult as well. I work ten days through, and then have four off.

  Len has a job with the county administering their secretarial force. It pays about what his job in the City paid, and offers superior health and pension benefits. He has already made a place for himself in the county staff. As you might expect, he’s already active in local causes. He has joined a committee to preserve the historic town center, which dates way back to the 1920s.

  Before I forget, I should give you our address:

  1589