Ben Soul

by Richard George

hand.

  “Yes. You are?”

  “I’m Dickon Shayne. Mind if I join you?”

  “Okay with me, if Butter doesn’t mind.”

  “I don’t think she will. We’re acquainted.” He reached his open hand to Butter. She licked it. He rubbed her skull behind her ears. “Butter you call her?” Ben nodded. “Unusual dog name.”

  “She answers to it at dinner time,” Ben defended his choice.

  “Dogs do answer pretty well at dinner time. She went catch as catch can for a meal for a while before she adopted you. I fed her a couple of times, but she didn’t stick around.” He sat next to Butter and stared out at the shimmering wavelets on the Cove. “I think she was meant for you.”

  “Oh?” Ben looked at Dickon’s profile. His nose was a little large and sharp, and a second chin had just begun to form, but his skin was clear. He looked at Ben, and smiled. Ben looked out at the Cove, embarrassed to be caught studying him. The silence seemed to swell between them like a black balloon. Ben looked sideways from the corner of his eye; Dickon was studying him. Ben took a chance and looked directly at him. He didn’t drop his eyes. Ben saw a hesitant invitation in their green pools.

  “Have you lived here long?” Ben asked him.

  “Several years. I’ve been here since La Señora came here. What brings you here?”

  “I’ve been a little lost since Len, my lover died. I came here to sort things out.”

  “How long were you together?” He looked at Ben again. Ben closed some windows inside himself, to cover places he wanted to keep private. He hadn’t talked with anyone for so long. He was afraid he’d let too much show. People get hurt that way.

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  He whistled. “That’s a long time.”

  “I’m not quite used to being alone, yet,” Ben said.

  “Takes time, whether it’s a breakup or a death. Did he have the virus?” Dickon’s tone was quietly conversational.

  Ben tossed a chip of driftwood toward the water. “No. We neither of us ever had that. We got together before either of us was exposed. It was his heart. It just wore out and stopped. Len was older than I am by twelve years. You’d never know it, until near the end. Even when he died, his hair wasn’t as gray as mine is, and he had more of it on his head. He was tired all the time, the last few months, and had trouble breathing. We knew the end could come at any time. He went one evening after a spaghetti dinner I’d fixed special for him. He ate a little bit and went to bed. I guess he died easy compared to some ways people die.”

  “People think heart attacks are easier.” Dickon stared out at the wavelets on the cove. A light breeze had sprung up to ruffle them. Ben felt the sadness swelling in his throat. Some things were still too near to talk about easily.

  Ben let the silence hang for a while, and so did Dickon. He stretched his legs out and braced himself on the sand with his hands behind him. He considered the sky. Ben looked up to see what attracted his attention. He saw blue hazed with gold from the afternoon sun. Dickon didn’t say what he saw. Butter whined, eager to go again.

  “Guess I’d better take her home,” Ben said, and pushed himself to his feet.

  “Yes,” Dickon said. “See you around, I’m sure, Ben.” Butter tugged on her leash.

  “Yeah, see you around.” Ben wondered how many other eccentric souls there were in the village. Then he wondered if he qualified as eccentric. Ben watched Dickon walk seaward toward his end of the beach and the village. He guessed Dickon must be the man he watched getting dressed through that cottage window on the morning he had discovered the village. Butter whined beside him and tugged on the leash. She wanted to walk.

  “Okay, girl,” he said to her. “Let’s walk.” They turned east toward the Station.

  “What do you think of this Dickon,” Ben asked her. “He’s easy enough on the eyes, isn’t he?” Butter wagged her tail, and turned her head slightly toward him, but kept urging him forward. They were getting close to her evening suppertime. They rounded the corner and climbed up the trail to backtrack toward their cottage.

  “You seemed to like him well enough,” Ben said to Butter. He was panting just a little with the effort of keeping up with Butter. Nothing inspires a dog so much as mealtime. “You do like Dickon, don’t you?” She wagged her tail again when Ben spoke his name. He took this for a good sign. “Dad often said, ‘Never buy from a salesman the dog doesn’t like.’ If you like Dickon, he must be a little bit okay.” Butter and Ben went in to supper.

  Supper at the Four Rosas

  The next evening, over Butter’s protests, Ben went to the Four Rosas Café for his supper. The special for the evening was a filet of beef with capers and black pepper. Rosa’s famous zucchini fritters, dripping with butter and redolent with garlic and thyme, made the side dish. Emma had spoken of them ecstatically. Ben was eager to try them.

  Harry greeted him with a tight little smile, no words. Ben had come to appreciate that Harry’s tight little smile was a lavish greeting granted familiar faces. He escorted Ben to his favorite table in the far corner of the dining room. Harry laid a menu in front of Ben. Ben gave him his order. Harry got a teapot and teabags for him. While he waited for his tea to steep, Ben picked up a menu. The menu included a brief history of the café’s origins.

  How a Café Got Its Name

  The Café of the Four Rosas was a dream my mother and three of her friends had. They were nurses during World War II in the Pacific Theater. My mother, Rosa Terghi, and her three friends, Rosa Lamb, Rosa Biff, and Rosa Rhee, patched up a lot of sailors and marines from the Battle for Guadalcanal. The Navy gave them a week’s recreation and recuperation in Honolulu to reward them for their nursing.

  While they were on leave, they went to a little tea shop on School Street in Honolulu. They got to talking about “after the war” and what they’d do with themselves. None of them was keen to marry, at least not right away, and they made a vow to open a tea shop together somewhere in the States. They agreed to call it the Café of the Four Rosas.

  Fate would not have it. Rosa Biff died off Iwo Jima of a blood poison she contracted tending wounded marines. Rosa Lamb fell overboard when her hospital ship lurched in a typhoon. Rumor had it she was leaning over the rail dreaming about a certain sailor she’d met. My mother, Rosa Terghi, and Rosa Rhee made it home. Rosa Rhee had a religious vision and joined a convent. My mother, desperate for food, agreed to marry my father, River Krushan. He was much older than she was, and soon died. She had his widow’s pension to raise me on. I grew up with the story of these four Rosas. When I came to operate this café, I chose to honor these four women.

  Rosa Krushan, Prop.

  Ben nodded as he finished reading the history. He thought it a charming tale. He leaned back to sip his tea and watch the other customers.

  Several couples, tourists, sat at tables near the cash register. None of them was particularly remarkable, although two young men, obviously in the first throes of love from the way they gazed all gaga at each other, took Ben’s eye for a moment. The young men left soon after he arrived. Ben reflected that watching them wasn’t good for him, anyway. It made him miss Len in ways he hadn’t missed him for a long time. Ben didn’t want to stir up all those feelings again, not here in the corner of the world he’d chosen for his retreat.

  Ben was halfway through his filet and fritters when a magnificent specimen of young manhood walked in. He was slender, with coffee colored skin, curly black hair, delicate features, and large brown eyes that were pools of mystery. He moved with the tight grace of a prowling panther. He was in a sheriff’s uniform. He stopped to talk with Harry. Ben was too far away to hear what either of them said. Harry shook his head a couple of times, and the young man left. The room seemed suddenly jaded and dowdy when he had left, as though someone had turned on too many lights in a dark and romantic bar, showing the cracks in the p
laster and the dust in the corners.

  Harry came back to pour Ben more water for his tea. Ben was about to ask him who the young man was when the door opened again. A woman came in. The young man followed her. It looked to Ben as though the young man was trying to dissuade the woman from something. Harry excused himself and hurried to the door.

  Ben studied the woman. Her hair was short, carefully coiffed in sculpted waves. She was dressed in a black sheath that outlined her figure. Her face was sharp, honed to an edge as though she used a grindstone to sharpen it. Her bust was not large, yet she thrust it forward like an advance cavalry. He shrank into his corner involuntarily, lest she see him and turn her scrutiny on him. He couldn’t read auras, as he’d told La Señora, but this woman emanated hostility the way the young man emanated sex and beauty.

  Her jaw line proclaimed determination as she said something to Harry. Harry cringed. The young deputy intervened. The woman turned an angry look on him. Even his charm went dim in the fury of that glance. He urged her to leave. She resisted, but then turned and charged out the door like an evil spirit thwarted in its wrongdoing. The young man gave Harry a rueful look over his shoulders, shrugged, and followed the woman out. Harry took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Ben couldn’t be sure in the Café’s light, but he thought Harry was