Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  He nodded for me to sit. “What in holy hell is that Kelly doing with booking double, in all places, the Vegas Strip?” Tony demanded.

  “I’ll talk to her—got that same call from Paul over the weekend, or at least I assume you got one….” I hoped my fishing wasn’t too transparent as I sank into the chair.

  “We were at Mustang’s in Walnut Creek with my mother-in-law. Paul interrupted brunch.”

  “From England? Visiting?”

  Tony grimaced, broke off another hunk of the scone, stuck it in his mouth and continued. “They come over and stay for six weeks. Six goddamn weeks. What do I do with my in-laws for six weeks?”

  I didn’t know, but it looked like he was going to focus on that instead of trashing Kelly. One of his shoes was off. It was Monday, so the socks were fresh—I could smile confidently and breathe in deep.

  “Christmas is just around the corner now, so there’s all that nice holiday crap down in Union Square,” I said. His expression didn’t change. “Tourists love that shit.”

  Still nothing. A persistent crumb stuck to his upper lip.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll talk to Kelly. I know her motivations are in the right place if her judgment isn’t all it should be. We’ll work on that.”

  * * *

  On my way back down the aisle, I stuck my head in Kelly’s cubicle. She was oblivious, reading the fucking Chronicle with her bare feet up on the desk.

  “Anything good?”

  She didn’t even bother to move them when answering. “Not really. Kind of a slow morning.” She smiled and finally looked at me.

  I bit my lower lip and felt the blood rise through my chest and shoulders and up my neck. In a second or two my face would be bright red.

  “After lunch”—calm down, Ben—“after lunch, let’s meet for a few minutes and go over your preparations for Vegas,” I said. “Tony wants to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

  “Sure, it’s going fantastic; I’ll tell you that already!” She shook her L’Oréal’d head.

  If the cubicles had real walls, I could’ve banged my head against them—with anger directed against not her, but myself. Clearly, if she didn’t improve, I’d need to do something about her. Soon.

  Making matters worse, it was nearing eleven and Jason hadn’t shown up yet. I tended to look the other way rather than stick to a rigid attendance-at-work formula. I always figured if you got the work done, it really didn’t matter when you did it or where you did it. Unfortunately, that liberal management style, not shared by many of the other executives at Safe Harbor, was backfiring on me.

  Jason and Kelly were in their twenties, routinely stayed out till three or four in the morning and still came to work most often at nine.

  I was in awe of this and not just a little bit envious. If I stayed up late on a “school night,” I paid dearly for it the next day and often for days afterward. Not that I’d ever admit that to anyone.

  I figured Jason had gotten laid the night before. Kelly’s smile was also suspect. Of course, I’d had sex with two wonderful men over the weekend—Jake, the boyfriend, and Eric, the San Francisco treat. There was no reason to complain.

  The phone rang—a local number I didn’t recognize.

  “This is Ben.”

  “Ben Schmidt? It’s Dr. Kim out at Presidio. How are you this morning?”

  My Adam’s apple hit my navel, his voice like a cold slap in the face. “I guess that’s what you’re going to tell me.”

  There was noise on the line, impossible to tell whether Dr. Kim was in traffic on a cell phone or if it was just static.

  “Mr. Schmidt. I’m sorry to tell you—we did find cancer in nine of the twelve core samples we took at biopsy.”

  I tried to swallow, grabbing the now empty take-out coffee from earlier.

  “Oh.”

  “The cancer appears to be midrange aggressive, particularly for someone of your age. Let me see, that’s right, you’re…forty-four.”

  My breath bounced back hot from the surface of the receiver. I thumbed through papers on my desk, scrolled the e-mail list, searched for an anchor to a reality other than the one Dr. Kim was playing in.

  “Mr. Schmidt?”

  “I’m listening, making some notes.”

  I couldn’t focus on finding a blank piece of paper, had I really wanted to write anything down.

  “My office will call you back later today to consult about treatment.”

  “OK—I wondered what would be next.”

  “Do you have any questions?” he asked.

  My ears were hot and my heart pounded so hard, my gray silk shirt actually vibrated. It was as if all cognitive function left me and I was able to absorb his words only in tiny bits, pixels that didn’t form any coherent image.

  “I’m sure you will,” he said. “Mr. Schmidt, I’m really sorry about this.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Kim.”

  The line went dead; he must’ve hung up.

  * * *

  As the shock of Dr. Kim’s words settled in, the most reasonable thing I could come up with was he simply must be wrong.

  Doctors make mistakes. They do—the press was full of those stories. Lab results getting mixed, malpractice suits soaring, wrong limb amputations, more.

  Just then Jason stuck his young, irritatingly cheerful handsome face into my cube. “Sorry I’m late, Ben. My bike had a flat this morning, so I had to walk.”

  I noted that there were no bags under his eyes, no lines, yet I assumed he’d been up all night. The bike excuse could be real, could be fiction; still, I found it very hard to be irritated by Jason.

  “Tony’s pissed that Kelly is fucking things up for Paul Sutcliffe’s Vegas trip,” I said in one breath. “Do me a favor and get into it with her?”

  “You got it, boss.” His head vanished as fast as it had appeared. My heart raced, and I felt light-headed, my mouth dry.

  Honestly, I didn’t know what to do.

  But I knew I wanted my mom.

  No matter how old or successful I became, somewhere deep within was the belief that if things really went to shit, Mom or Dad would be there to bail me out.

  Cancer definitely constituted a jam. Margaret Kanner Schmidt’s number was still in my mobile’s memory—no, it was still in my head, the same number since 1970—I’d made the decision, and I’d call her. She’d provide maternal warmth and reassurance; she’d make it all OK.

  I went into an empty feng-shui’d conference room, where the tones were muted, the lighting indirect. The rain beat horizontally into the windows. I wondered whether it would still be pouring when I rode home later on, then remembered that the crisis of the day was cancer, not rain. I dialed her number.

  Two and a half rings later, my mother was on the phone with me.

  “Hello?” she said. Her soft voice sounded slightly more optimistic than I remembered.

  Emotion boiled up like a gusher inside me, and I slapped my hand over my nose and mouth, my vision blurred by tears. She sounded the same as she had when I was a boy, only I knew the person on the other end of the line was firmly now in little-old-lady territory and no longer the fiery, frustrated brunette with the bourbon and ice, needling Dad for a light.

  “Is someone there?” she asked, with a hint of concern, or possibly fear. Margaret didn’t believe in things like call waiting (“I can’t imagine ever putting my friends on hold”) or caller ID (“I couldn’t possibly remember all those numbers. Waste of money!”), so she was going to know it was me only if I said something, or if I emitted some identifiable heavy breathing pattern.

  I did neither. I hung up.

  * * *

  I hadn’t spoken to Margaret in a couple of years. My sister, Ellen, and I, as well as our younger brother, Vince, had what would best be described as an odd relationship with our mother. She still lived in Milwaukee, in an old, drafty brick monstrosity on the edge of a park overlooking Lake Michigan—the house we grew up in.

 
; Since the divorce with my dad—made final the day after Vince graduated from UW-Madison in 1990 with his degree in horticulture—she’d immersed herself in obscure causes, causes that always needed an angel to help out with volunteer work. She could afford to do this not only because of a generous divorce settlement—she’d proven that my dad was an adulterer; how Puritan could that possibly hope to be—but also because she had a small but effective trust fund as a descendant of one of Milwaukee’s original robber-baron industrial families: the Kanners of Kanner Fixtures. They made, and still make, toilets.

  Our estrangement was chronic rather than acute. I’d become frustrated, and since both Ellen and Vince lived so much closer to her, Mom management became their domain. The end result was that our communications dwindled, and I was just as surprised that her calls stopped coming as I imagined she was about mine.

  Wiping my nose on the navy Sloane & Bradford sweater—“borrowed” from Jake’s closet—I turned my head once again toward the depressing wet and gray scene outside and plotted my escape.

  * * *

  The Slog was a bar on Folsom Street in the same SoMa neighborhood as Safe Harbor. There was no sign or other indication of its existence except for the black leather slats covering the doorway, which today had become wet flapping paddles to slap anyone who dared disturb them. I shook off my umbrella outside and headed in.

  The place was listed as a not-to-be-missed shrine in San Francisco gay guidebooks. It had been extant since the 1960s and had probably been a watering hole since the day the building was hastily and crookedly reconstructed after the 1906 quake. It was dark and still smelled vaguely of smoke, even though California hadn’t allowed cigarettes in bars in years.

  A smiling older gentleman—I would have guessed about seventy—sat on a barstool in a leather jacket and a white jockstrap. At a table against the wall next to the trilling pinball machine, a young girl, who I assumed was working, slept with her head on her forearm. Her skirt had been caught on something and was hiked up past her hip. She had what looked like a rash on her otherwise fair thigh and wore dirty pink panties.

  “Wet out there, huh?”

  This came from the bartender, a heavy man with long, light brown hair, a dyed beard showing gray roots, and dark eyes that had seen their share of insanity. His north woods—style flannel shirt was open way too deep for his body type, and when he leaned on the bar his considerable body odor violated my nostrils.

  “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t very well ignore him, but I was much more used to that current SoMa incarnation, the loft-coffeehouse-yuppie-and-guppie kingdom of the dot-coms, which had this expected and antagonistic relationship with institutions of a quainter era.

  “What can I do you for, sexy? I’ve always been a sucker for a clean-cut type like you!” the bartender said.

  In slow motion, my ass hit the vinyl on a barstool at the opposite end from Jockstrap Guy. I hadn’t been in a bar—any kind of bar—in several years.

  I hadn’t had a drink in several more.

  “You got Wild Turkey bourbon?”

  The bartender smiled. I hadn’t seen his braces earlier. “Single or double?”

  “What the hell; make it a double.” Behind him, the bottles shone in the reflective light of a stained mirror. I could taste the sweet whiskey. I could feel how warm it would be going down.

  * * *

  The double shot sat on the bar. The bartender spilled a drop of it, which I rubbed off the polished wood with my finger, bringing it to my nose and touching just inside my nostril. It tingled, and the fumes from just that one drop brought back to me immediately a world of contradiction, of pleasure and of hurt, of extreme highs and of the worst despair.

  I could feel the pressure of the phone in my pocket rub against my thigh. At times like this, I’d been instructed to call my AA sponsor, and I briefly considered it. Since Terry would tell me not to take the drink until he got there, it seemed not the wisest thing to do if I really wanted that bourbon.

  I took out the phone and scrolled down to his number, staring at the glowing integers. I laid it on the bar next to the shot, then folded my hands in my lap. My reflection was visible in the mirror, but I couldn’t watch myself do this. Sobriety had given me everything—that great job, my lovers, my friends, of course the film, even a modicum of self-esteem. But somehow, it had also trumped me with cancer.

  “Bottoms up, sweetheart.” It was Jockstrap Guy. I turned to him and smiled but was sure to keep my gaze above his nipple line. I wondered where he’d left his pants.

  “You’re fucking right, it’s bottoms up!” I said. I raised the shot to my lips and licked around its edges; then I felt the fire descend, inch by inch, deep inside me, till it lodged in my heart and began its work.

  * * *

  All I wanted to do was have some drinking fun without unfortunate consequences—like it was a long time ago, before it got messy.

  I found myself getting closer, bar stool by bar stool, to Jockstrap Guy, as the morning now threatened lunchtime. The rain came in sheets, at times right through the leather slatting, a horrible northern California winter’s day that only promised more dark months of the same.

  I’d had several shots. Actually, three: I counted my drinks. The bartender, who had by now shaken my hand and told me his name was Rickie, had placed the Wild Turkey bottle on the back part of the bar, elbow level, as if I’d be ordering more. Clearly, this was my own private bottle. He insisted I have a beer chaser, gratis. This was almost the same as being at Presidio Heights and getting expert medical advice without the fluorescents.

  Of course I’d have that beer. Was Heineken still a cool brand? It had been such a long time. Rickie popped the top off with a flourish and didn’t laugh, so apparently…

  Calling Jake had crossed my mind. Several times, in fact. I couldn’t form the words. Any way I practiced, starting it off with a you see, it’s like this or a baby, I don’t want to have to tell you, sounded like an absurd TV movie made even more comical by my reflection in the Slog’s embarrassment-provoking mirror.

  Dirty Pink Panty Girl had been jolted into consciousness by the rain and soon joined us at the bar, which she leaned on for support. She pulled her long black hair into a ponytail and fastened it with a rubber band from her wrist.

  “Why you sloggin’ today, Ben?” Rickie asked as he wiped a drowned fly off the bar in front of me with a dirty rag.

  I pretended not to hear, which was disingenuous, as there were a total of three people other than Rickie in the Slog, and one of them was me.

  “He was thirsty, retard,” said Jockstrap Guy. I wondered what it would take for me to sit in bars during the day without my clothes on and pay for my drinks with Social Security money.

  “Just walking by, never been in here and I wondered, you know, what it was like. Plus, I was getting drenched. My work’s close.”

  I was sure I didn’t sound drunk. Three shots of whiskey, a few sips of the Heineken. AA had lied to me. I didn’t feel anything but a little bit of warmth and comfort and certainly was not impaired in any fucking way.

  Dirty Pink Panty Girl leered at me and at Jockstrap Guy. “Isn’t this supposed to be a gay bar?” I asked, tourist like.

  “We’re as gay as anything is in this town,” Rickie said, the slight irritation apparent. “You’d be surprised how many gay guys turn straight after a coupla drinks in here.”

  I pushed my change toward him now that the bar was dry. The last thing I wanted was my friendly bartender to be angry with me.

  At times like this, I could feign being that marketing guy, the cheerful glad-hander who lied well and felt no remorse about it. This worked best in a suit, and only in spurts—at formal events such as trade shows and press conferences. Today at the Slog, I became reacquainted with how alcohol could help in a big way.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said, flashing my fake smile at Dirty Pink Panty Girl. “I’d like to talk to some of those guys sometime.”

  “The
n you’d be coming ’round here nights, ’cause that’s when this place really fills up.” Rickie was still indignant, but softening. He poured himself a shot of the Turk and threw it back. He let out a belch like I’d never heard.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Jockstrap Guy slid on his stool toward the dark back of the bar in revulsion. I made a mental note to never, ever, pick up, say, a stray pretzel off a barstool, if in the future I found one in such a place.

  My gaze followed Jockstrap Guy’s lurch to the right, and I was sure there was an animal sitting patiently in one of the bar’s corners, slightly hidden behind the pinball machine. A dog. Small, reddish brown, maybe even a dachshund.

  “That your puppy, Rickie?” I fingered the empty, sticky shot glass in front of me.

  “Wha’?” He now looked at me as if I was just another irritating drunk who asked stupid questions.

  My eyes leveled with his. “That dog in the corner,” I said, my head cocked in that direction, my lips parted in a challenge.

  All three of my new friends turned to look. The dog was gone.

  * * *

  I was sure I’d seen the damn dog, though Edmund and Dallas just smiled dismissively. Right—we’d finally introduced ourselves, and Jockstrap Guy was really Edmund and Dirty Pink Panty Girl, who was indeed a prostitute—excuse me, call girl—insisted her name was Dallas, though I suspect Rickie didn’t believe much of what she said about anything.

  I’d had a dog just like the one I saw.

  It really was there, you fuckers.

  Connie had died a few years earlier, and I’d never been able to replace her with another pet. I sat there, maudlin, as it got to be slightly past noon, and a few of the lunchtime regulars made their way in. Rickie fired up the portable bar-top frankfurter rotisserie.

  The alcohol tally finally came to four shots of Wild Turkey and about three-fourths of the Heineken, just down to where the bottom of the label Jim Arnold met the bottle. This was the hangover point, the line at which I used to mark my bottles back when I was a real drunk, that person I could hardly remember. Strangely, that esoterica of the lush life was stored somewhere inside me and easily retrievable.