The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “In order to move on. In order to put the pain behind us, what must we recognize comes after anger?”

  Of course Ben knew the answer. Unlike the day before, the five primary stages of grief tripped across Ben’s brain like listening to a child recite the alphabet.

  Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

  “What about blame?” said Ben. “I think that should be a stage.”

  “We both know the next stage is bargaining. Have you made any deals with yourself lately? Promises to God that if you’re a better person or, let’s personalize it, make the world just that much safer—”

  “Listen to me! What if I know who did it? Who he is. Where he works. His fucking address? Christ Almighty, I shook his goddamn hand!”

  “Ben. Sit. Please.”

  “Why the hell can’t we talk about what I want to talk about?”

  “Sit and we’ll talk.”

  Sit?

  Ben glanced downward and strangely enough, discovered his legs were straightened under his body in a full, vertical pose. How the heck did that happen? A half moment earlier he had been seated, head back and resting on a comfy cushion while his eyes pinged off warts in the knotty-pine ceiling.

  “You know you can’t fully recover unless you—piece by piece—move yourself through the steps and stages—”

  “Goddammit, I was recovered! You know it. I know it. I was over all of it. Why the hell should I have to reclaim the same territory over and over again?”

  “That’s life. That’s grief. That’s how we move on. By falling. By getting footholds. Then foot by foot, hand over hand, climbing back out.”

  Before the session, Ben was ready to buy anything the doctor had to sell. Daniel Dhue and his kind had resurrected Ben and countless others from the darkest of human places. Given them life and hope and even love.

  But the bastard had to look at his watch.

  Fucking headshrinker!

  It was as if a power circuit in Ben had been thrown, redirecting the electrical charge to another part of his being. Suddenly, he couldn’t stand to look at the doctor. To even smell his David Beckham cologne! Ben was instantly repelled by the man’s trimmed beard and casual style. For Christ’s sake, Ben screamed from inside his own skull, the man was wearing Birkenstocks. A walking cliché! Was it all just posturing and psychotherapeutic pretext? The decorated office, the whole image-thing made Ben feel sick, invaded, like he had been victimized by a con man.

  “Push your next session,” begged Ben. “I need more time.”

  “I’m having lunch with my niece—”

  “Then call her. Tell her Uncle Danny’s got a flat tire and is waiting for Triple A.”

  “I can fix my own flat tires.”

  “Dammit, Danny!”

  “Calm down. All your feelings are normal. Regression is normal. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”

  The therapist had his electronic calendar open on his iPhone. He was poised over the two-by-three-inch screen, ready to make a time in digital ink.

  “I can fit you in at—”

  “Please!”

  “How’s first thing? 8:00 A.M?”

  Ben could hear it in his head. He could see it as vividly as if it had really happened—as if Ben’s mind had reached out and picked up the ceramic vase at the neck, caring not at all about the beautiful display of dried wheat, and swung it with a two-handed backhand. Ben felt the weight and stepped into it. The sound of the ceramic colliding with the doctor’s skull had just the slightest concussive effect. It was like the vase simply dissolved into pieces, falling apart like a ten-dollar piñata.

  But it hadn’t happened. Ben hadn’t picked up the vase. Ben hadn’t hurled it into his therapist’s head.

  It was just a thought.

  “Eight o’clock tomorrow morning?” confirmed Dr. Dhue.

  “Right,” conceded Ben, head lowered, sunglasses on, and not even shaking the doctor’s hand. “8:00 A.M.”

  As Ben set out from the doctor’s backyard office and walked up the driveway, he recalled the day he had first visited. At his wife-to-be’s insistence, Ben and Alex had embarked on a special series of couple’s grief sessions with Dr. Dhue. “A tune-up for marriage,” the shrink had called it. The widow and the widower needed to make sure that their union was built on more than the sum of their combined losses. They would need to believe in the future. So they turned to Dr. Daniel Dhue, Zen Master in the art of mourning and recovery.

  They believed in him.

  At one point, Ben so believed in the doctor’s advice to “reject the past in order to build the future” that, in what felt like an act of new-age chivalry, he offered to jettison his surname of Martin and take Alex’s surname of Keller. Upon reflection, it was a silly gesture with little therapeutic results. But what was done was done. There would be no more looking back. From that point on it was all about looking forward.

  As Ben walked to his car, he still wanted to believe in Daniel Dhue. He wanted to believe that he could still move on with his life. He wanted to believe in eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

  But Ben would miss his appointment.

  Ben would never see Daniel Dhue again.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Ben.

  “What noise?” answered Woody.

  “That thump, thump, thump sound.”

  “Can’t hear it. Must be a sketchy cell connection,” answered Woody, totally lying.

  Woody Bell could not only hear the thump, thump, thump, it was so loud he could feel it. And noisier still just beyond the door of the janitor’s closet where Woody was parked in his souped-up wheelchair. The only light came from the keypad on Woody’s phone, revealing the faint but familiar shadows of mops, brooms, and stacks of paper towels and toilet paper.

  “Maybe I should call you back,” said Ben.

  “My answer’s gonna be the same, bro.”

  “That my request is illegal. You already said that.”

  Thump, thump, thump, thump...

  “You wanna know if the guy did it.”

  “For certain,” said Ben.

  “Beyond a reasonable doubt and all that,” said Woody.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re talking confession. Which has to come out of the bad guy’s mouth. And lemme tell you, bad guys don’t confess to capital crimes because there’s no statute there.”

  “Statute of limitations,” confirmed Ben.

  “Damn straight, bro.”

  There came a wolf whistle and a smattering of applause from outside the closet door. Next would come the fuzzy introduction of the next, slow-eyed stripper. His favorite girl, Siobhan, wouldn’t be on for at least two more songs. This gave Woody time to wrap up the call from Ben and possibly return two more.

  “Only way to get a real confession is to torture a guy,” said Woody. “Are there operators out there who run that kinda game? Yeah. There’s operators. Underworld guys that you don’t want to be in business with.”

  “Guys you know.”

  “And what if I do know somebody?”

  “Do you?”

  “Here’s the question you should be asking, ‘What if it’s the wrong guy?’ Huh? What if I know somebody? And what if I pull some trigger for you and we do this dumb thing? What happens if you put the screws to an innocent guy?”

  “You know he’s not. You sent me the sheet.”

  “C’mon, Ben. This isn’t you.”

  “Really? You know me that good?”

  “Well enough, I think. Well enough that the Ben I know would rather peel off his own fingernails than do the wrong thing.”

  “I don’t know about that anymore.”

  “That’s right. You don’t know. Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be asking for this kind of trouble.”

  Applause. The next song began. But the beat never changed.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump...

  “You hear it?” asked Ben. “That sound
just started again.”

  “Ben. Go talk to somebody. Get your head right.”

  “If it was your family?”

  “You askin’ me about family? You know my story. Shit. All I had I left on the bottom of that pool when I was twelve fuckin’ years old.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry,” said Ben, his voice filled with sudden regret.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. You just have to be cool. You and me have had enough tragedy for ten lives. That means we know the pitfalls of courting certain disaster. You’re the numbers man. You assess the risks. I’m tellin’ you, what you’re asking is a big risk.”

  “But you know people.”

  “’Course, I do. And sure as shit they can make the meanest man cry if that’s the job. Pull off this fucker’s skin and you’ll have your confession. And then what? You can’t use it in court. Because you broke the law in order to get it. And guess who goes to jail? You and me!”

  Thump, thump, thump, thump...

  “Lemme add one more fun fact,” said Woody. Ain’t no handicap access for me in prison.”

  Woody heard nothing but silence on the other end of the cell connection.

  “Hey man, laugh,” said Woody. “That was damn funny.”

  “On another day,” said Ben.

  “I hear you, bro. Now, go home to your safe family in your safe house. Remember, you keeping shit safe for everybody is what pays my electric bills. Need that juice to keep my batteries charged. Don’t want you screwin’ none of that up.”

  Ben clicked off, leaving Woody in a moment of worry. He felt deeply for Ben, his life and his losses. But Ben was also talking out of his ass. Speaking from his pain. And Woody knew plenty about loss and pain. Such was his daily grind. So apart from the private detective work that Woody performed from his wheelchair, the rest of his life was about self-gratification. Instant and immediate giggles. From Seinfeld reruns to strippers, Woody was all about the now.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump...

  “There. That’s better,” said Woody to himself as he parked his chair in the usual spot. Three feet from the neon-striped stage and slightly left of dead center. The owners of Smokey Blues strip club were such good pals to Woody that they had spray-painted a blue handicapped sign on the floor in the exact dimensions of his doublewide chair. They had assured Woody that every day, from the moment the doors opened until closing, that space was reserved for him and the never-ending supply of one dollar bills he twisted into the dancers’ g-strings.

  But due to California’s overly strict secondhand smoke laws, Smokey Blues wasn’t smokey anymore. The only haze found inside was between the ears of the inebriated customers, all male, each kept in check by the two beefy bouncers flanking the stage. Each bouncer was perched on a stool so spindly it appeared to defy basic physics.

  “What do you like today?” winked Siobhan.

  She wasn’t near naked yet, with a bustier, fishnets, and panties still waiting to be peeled off. Siobhan split her legs then lay on the floor, propped up by her elbows, cradling her chin. Her teeth were like new porcelain.

  “I like you, today,” said Woody.

  “You say that every time.”

  “But today I mean it.”

  “Tease,” she said.

  Siobhan was surely Woody’s favorite.

  Goodness, he mentally gasped. She was utter perfection. Ceramic and creamy. Untouched by a plastic surgeon’s scalpel.

  And she was a real dancer.

  Sure, they were all real dancers. Probably were once little tyke ballerinas. Scared. Hanging onto their mommies’ hands on the day of their first class. First position, he remembered. Back straight, heels together, toes out. That was when Woody was five and still too small to realize he was the only boy in the ballet class. Thank God it didn’t take, he thought. Or that stupid accident would have cost him even more.

  Siobhan removed her stockings and climbed onto the pole, her raven black hair tinged crispy blue in the backlight.

  Woody missed the smoke. Too bad that public smoking had pretty much been relegated to parking lots and Porta-Johns. And not-so-ironically, Ol’ Smokey himself had recently died from lung cancer. This made Woody think of Safety Ben. He didn’t wonder if he had given his client the correct advice. Ben had no business endeavoring into a criminal enterprise. And it didn’t matter how righteous it was. Ben wasn’t wired that way. Thank goodness for that. He was Safety Ben. And Safety Ben was one helluva good customer.

  “Somethin’ on your mind?” asked Siobhan.

  “Yeah. What’s your phone number?”

  “You know the rules.”

  “You knew I’d ask.”

  “Every time, lover.”

  The bustier came off, floating over the stage and landing in slow motion. Siobhan made sure to make eye contact with her favorite, crippled fan. Was he staring at her breasts? If he wasn’t, Siobhan had screwed up the timing.

  Woody fanned his stack of singles out of habit.

  Siobhan twirled to the edge of the stage, stepped onto Woody’s table, squatted and froze. A coquettish glance over her shoulder. She had expected to hear the familiar whine of the motorized wheelchair underneath the throbbing dance music. She had expected to see Woody with a fistful of dollars to slip between her skin and the elastic of her g-string.

  “You didn’t like that, lover?”

  But Woody wasn’t ogling her. He was lost in space, his eyes tracking the dust particles dancing in Siobhan’s spotlight.

  “Wood Man?”

  “Smokin’ hot,” said Woody.

  “I’ll show you smokin’ hot,” she recovered, losing neither her attitude nor come-fuck-me smile.

  Again, Woody fanned the stack of cash. As far as he was concerned, it was all hers. She could sweep the table, take the money, steal his wallet, and strut off the stage without so much as a thank-you.

  He would love her no matter what.

  But Siobhan wouldn’t leave her Wood Man without something to write home about. After she had worked the stage, flexing her body for the chronic drunks and middle-aged masturbators, she returned to Woody’s table. The colored lights gathered in her Lucite heels, displaying a constellation of rainbow-colored snowflakes across the paraplegic’s face. Siobhan turned away from Woody, spread her feet, then folded at the waist until she was flat against her thighs.

  “See anything you like?”

  “’S’all good, girl.”

  “You’re still not with me.”

  “Sorry,” said Woody. I’m thinking of a friend.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Naw. Just some customer who needs my help.”

  “And I’m sure you will help,” she cooed. “Wanna help me, now?”

  “How can I help you?”

  “Make a deposit and you’ll see something I saved just for you.”

  “Think I should help him?”

  “Help who, lover?”

  “My friend.”

  “Sure, you should. He’s a friend, right?”

  “Did I say friend? I meant customer.”

  “There a difference?”

  No, thought Woody. There wasn’t. Not in Woody’s lonely world. He was her customer. She was his friend. And to think of it, Woody’s customers were his friends. Who the hell else did he have?

  Woody knew some guys. Operators. Men who straddled both sides of society’s moral guidelines. If Stew Raymo was the demon in Ben’s life, Woody had connections that could extract a confession, put it on the record, then do away with him. So what if Ben wasn’t the wiser for it? He would do his friend a solid. His friend would be grateful. His friend would forever owe him for putting a lid on his nightmare.

  Siobhan stroked her index finger along the only patch of fabric that kept her act legal.

  “Right there, lover,” she whispered. “Pull it and you’ll get a private peek.”

  Woody rolled what must have been thirty singles, pulled her string, and looked into a world he could only imagine.r />
  It was a typical winter’s day in Simi Valley.

  Sunny, seventy, with five-story palm trees swaying slowly in a five-mile-an-hour breeze. Every so often Ben was amazed at how unnaturally the palms dotted the local landscape, each tree equidistant from the next, perpendicular, and always perfectly placed to add vertical accents to some architect’s vision of Southern California.

  The tall palms were really quite beautiful. Elegant. It was like seeing queues of slender-necked giraffes on every horizon. Palm trees grew quickly and were common, shallow-rooted, easily transplanted, and required minimum maintenance, making them popular in most Southern California landscape designs.

  But those damned shallow roots.

  A recently transplanted thirty-foot palm didn’t stand much of a chance in a fifty-mile-per-hour gust. And though such wind speeds happened only once or twice a winter, when they did scores of “new” palms would come crashing down onto power lines and parked cars.

  Though already late for his lunch with Alex, Ben still took the extra time to search for a parking space that was safely out of danger from falling palm trees and fronds.

  They had agreed to meet at Pane Dolce, their usual Saturday haunt. It was a sweet spot with a patch of outdoor tables, conveniently nestled between a pet salon and the neighborhood Jamba Juice. Across the parking lot stood a Target and Trader Joe’s.

  Nirvana for Alex, thought Ben.

  “Sorry,” he began.

  He had glimpsed Alex as he had approached from the parking lot. She was inside the picture window, working her iPhone. Probably making lists, he thought.

  “No problem,” she said, accepting his lips on her left cheek.

  As usual, Alex looked put-together, wearing tan capris and a black t-shirt. Ben always felt dressed down around her. Wearing his predictable uniform of denims, sneakers, and a simple polo, today was no different.

  Alex already had a glass of iced coffee. Ben gestured to the waitress to please bring him the same.

  “You ordered yet?” asked Ben.

  “Waiting for you, hon’.”

  “Got stuck on a call. Then discovered I’d missed the exit.”

  “Not at all like you...”

  Alex let the rest of her thought just lie there.

  She was so right about him. Ben wasn’t at all like himself. Not even close to the man he had been just a month before. The door had opened, he thought. She wanted to talk. She deserved an explanation.