Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  All this attention was a bit surprising. It felt good, especially on this hangover morning, to have someone else make decisions. I’d fantasized about this man, and now it appeared he was going to buy me a cheddar cheese omelet and a glass of orange juice.

  And I hadn’t even asked.

  “Don’t you have other patients?” I slid into the booth across from him.

  “No. On Fridays everybody schedules it early. A lot of the patients go out of town for the weekend—hard to believe, but they do.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “I wonder where I could go on such short notice.”

  A middle-aged Asian man with thin gray hair and a pen behind his ear appeared at our table.

  “Coffee?” the waiter said, glancing quickly at us both. “Espresso,” I said.

  “Just a decaf, thank you,” Davis added. The waiter dropped menus and walked away.

  “I can take care of myself—last night was an exception. But I really do appreciate your concern—and I mean that; all doctors should be this way.”

  Davis grinned.

  A few moments later, the waiter, whose name tag read Herman, brought us our drinks.

  “I want the treatment to be as effective as possible; that’s all,” he said, as he compared my espresso with his sorry-ass fake coffee. “This looks awful.”

  “Maybe you should get something else.” Like, duh. I studied Davis’s hands, noting how the muscles moved under the skin, counting veins.

  Though he made me nervous, I liked that he appeared strong, self-assured and in control.

  “Can I order what I want, or are you going to tell me what to eat?” I asked, looking over the enormous menu.

  He laughed. “Have whatever—as long as there’s protein, and fat, and some carbs in it. I figure you know what that would be, right?”

  “I certainly do. Every single gay man my age has figured out that nutrition math—heaven forbid we should gain a pound.”

  This time both his eyebrows went up.

  * * *

  I ordered an egg-white omelet with a side of tomatoes and a dry whole-wheat English muffin. He was not nearly as healthy minded, with his chicken on mayonnaise sandwich and a Coke—and not the diet kind.

  “I thought you were probably gay, but it’s not something I’d ever ask a patient,” he said, lowering his voice a moment after Herman left. “Heidi—that’s why—you know, that’s why we broke up.”

  “She’s gay?” I asked, raising the tiny espresso cup to my lips. “No.” He was very serious. “It’s me. I’m the gay one.”

  Of course he was. Once he’d started down that path, I knew what he’d say. But right now Davis looked frightened.

  Maybe because of my post-hangover state and its related horniness still consuming me, I put my right hand over his left and squeezed. He didn’t pull back.

  My phone, shoved up against the nearly dry Defendor in the corner of my pocket, vibrated right on cue.

  “Excuse me,” I said, fishing the phone out. “Could be work.”

  That’s right; make him think you’re important there and that they’d be calling.

  Glenda Bourne’s phone number flashed on the display. I let it go to voice mail.

  I looked back at Davis, giving him a reassuring grin. “It’s not important—the call, I mean.”

  Herman was coming with our food. I hadn’t let go of Davis’s hand, and now he was stroking mine with his fingers!

  “Looks like we’ve got to find you a new radiologist,” he said.

  19

  That breakfast with Davis was the last time I wet my pants. Or, more accurately, it was the last time I wet my pants having the luxury combination of a Defendor and black slacks to camouflage it all.

  It was as if the week that radiation started was also the week that the thousands of Kegel exercises Dr. Kim had prescribed finally kicked in.

  Tighten sphincters, release. Repeat. Endlessly, repeat.

  I’d been doing them at my desk while answering e-mails, sitting bored in meetings with Tony Mallard, on my bicycle when forced to stop at red lights, even while assisting Karen as she cooked up some masterpiece at home. The pads became increasingly dryer, to the point where I had to wear only one a day.

  Davis had indeed found me another radiologist at Mount Horeb—which I’d begun to call Mount Whore.

  Dr. Bev Slater was a resident who’d decided to go to medical school after an earlier career in nursing. She had a comforting “mom” quality, a reassuring softness, even though I was sure she was younger than me. Between Bev, whom I saw about once a week, and Monica and Chris, who took care of me every day, the feminine nurturing energy overwhelmed me.

  Davis was Bev’s boss. He effortlessly kept tabs on my radiation despite the fact we’d started dating. I call it that because Davis was so new to the whole gay world that unless I challenged him constantly, we were destined to follow a heterosexual relationship model with power roles that certainly didn’t apply.

  I was able to look past the fact I was a successor to someone named Heidi.

  For his part, I admired the way Davis navigated the social subtleties of his change in “status,” shall we say. In stark contrast to Jake, whose bohemian unconventionality and modern-frontier manliness made me hard just thinking about him—or at least used to make me hard—Davis Sternberg knew his way around the power centers of the City and was comfortable in that role.

  He was lucky to live in San Francisco, where being a newly gay, freshly divorced Jewish doctor was a social asset rather than a liability. Davis had an interesting and crammed, to say the least, activity calendar—which meant he liked going out and doing things rather than just lying around and having sex.

  Oh, well.

  * * *

  At home, Karen and I got along OK—when she moved in, she brought her aforementioned highly developed cooking skills with her and seemed to feel duty bound to ensure that my nutritional needs during radiation were well taken care of.

  Inevitably, while I cranked my bike up the Douglass Street hill the last few yards to my door, the spicy aroma of a Karen “Oh, it’s nothing, Ben” dinner would fill my nostrils, mixing in with the cool fog rolling over Twin Peaks.

  “Hey,” I called out, somewhat weakly, pushing the bike through the day’s mail still littering the front hallway floor. “Smells really good…” My standard line to her almost every night—clearly, we were in danger of becoming a boring, middle-aged couple.

  We were a boring, middle-aged couple.

  “How you feeling?” Karen said, her usual line.

  “Dr. Slater’s agreed to suspend a few days of Primus so I can go to Turin,” I said, repeating something we already knew but nonetheless deserved continued vocalization.

  Anything, please—to not have a silence in which Jake, that big hairy invisible elephant in the room—might be conjured up.

  I still hadn’t talked to him, any more than the quick nod when we’d been forced to encounter each other due to our obviously close living arrangements. It was awkward—I didn’t know whether he knew about Davis; I certainly didn’t mention it, and we’d had all our romantic liaisons at his home up near Buena Vista Park, but I also knew Jake and Karen had a relationship of their own, and they talked.

  I suspected they talked about me and “the situation” quite often, perhaps all the time when I wasn’t home.

  Talked about my drinking again. Talked about my cancer.

  “Fantastic,” she said. “I’d go with you, but Dennis’s money is still tied up,” she added, more information we’d digested previously. It was quite presumptuous—I hadn’t asked Karen to come with me to Italy, but apparently she assumed an invitation, since she was, after all, the producer—

  “It’s only for a few days,” I said, coming into the kitchen. Karen wore the Michelangelo’s David—torso apron David T. had given me once as an AA birthday gag, which made her look like she had oiled washboard abs and a smallish, somewhat disappointing uncut cock.


  “God. I thought you were naked.”

  “You wish,” she said, ladling some rich, reddish-brown sauce over something—most likely chicken—that was already in the oven.

  Karen was no dummy. She knew the way to a male—straight or gay—heart was more easily conquered with this kind of sustenance.

  “Look, I’ve got so much of this food—overcalculated again. We could have a dinner party. I wonder what Jake’s doing tonight. We could ask him down,” she said, the last sentence noticeably louder than the first.

  “You’ve been talking with Mr. Perfect?”

  “He does live upstairs. We’re friends; you know that.”

  There was a look of apprehension on Karen’s flushed face, something I’d never seen.

  “I think he’d be…amenable, or something, to coming down here, to seeing you, talking to you…”

  “He’d be amenable to coming into my home? I don’t think so—and by the way, Karen, where do you get off taking Jake Brosseau’s side? Aren’t you my friend?”

  She went to the cupboard, quickly turned around and returned to the prep table, as if looking for an implement she couldn’t find. Her hands shook. Finally, she picked up the sauce bowl she’d just used for the chicken and stirred its contents frenetically.

  “It’s so clear to me you’re perfect for each other, and I just think you should try to be friends with him.” She looked past me, into the pantry. Her behavior was so odd, I turned and half expected to see one of the rat children in the middle of the floor.

  “What are you looking at? And what do you mean, perfect for each other? Karen, how would you even fucking know that?” My face was hot, my voice loud.

  She reminded me of a Goody Two-shoes I knew in school whom I always wanted to slap but hadn’t.

  “We’re not perfect for each other, and besides, I’m dating someone else. A doctor.”

  I immediately regretted this, as if Jake’s artist cred and his day job as a window designer weren’t at least as sexy as a staff position at Mount Whore, because in fact, despite the obvious financial differences, they were.

  “Ben—”

  “Know what? Why don’t you call him and take all this up there or have him come down here, and I don’t care because I’m going out. I don’t fucking feel like eating anything anyway!” I slammed the door so hard on the way out, a small piece of siding fell off Bunny’s building.

  About a block away was a church where in a fairly recent life I’d attended AA meetings. The door was open, the amber light from an inner room spilling out onto the wet pavement, looking hypnotic in the fog. I stopped just outside, heard honest sober laughter wash down the ancient wooden stairs and puked my lunch into the street.

  * * *

  I didn’t go inside the church—never intended to, sick to my stomach or not. There was a taco place on Eighteenth, a few blocks down toward Church, which always seemed to have the same characteristic steamed-over windows I’d associated with Karen’s cooking. I sat there alone and drank a diet soda, not chancing the suspect quesadilla that sat on the plate in front of me.

  That weekend the San Francisco Symphony was holding its annual Black and White Ball. This was a grand, famous fund-raising affair encompassing several big Civic Center venues and was a major deal.

  Davis just happened to be on the honorary planning board. He really was rich. And he’d invited me to be his date.

  I’d never been, despite offers of tickets through Safe Harbor and—it was an event Jake would have never gone to. I supposed there were certain behavioral requirements at this level of society access, but I had no problem putting that out of my mind. I’d taken to “Slogging it,” as Rickie would put it, a few times a week. Where I used to go over to Java SoMa, or up to Peet’s all the way over on Market, now I’d take breaks at the Slog.

  Perhaps it wasn’t smart, but, then, I’d lost a lot of the good sense I’d had with both the resumption of alcohol and drugs mixed with the cancer. So what if I told Dallas or Rickie that I was dating a big-ass symphony benefactor and going to Italy in a couple of days but before that I was going to something they’d only dream about from their leaky SoMa rat hole?

  I didn’t really put it that way to them, but they were jealous. I knew by the silence—Rickie’s raised eyebrows, Dallas’s uncharacteristic pauses. Rickie even guffawed, like he didn’t believe me, or thought I was lying.

  Part of me knew this couldn’t really be good, this giving over of myself back to—what, where I’d been so long ago—with the whiskey, in particular. That I was getting radiation treatments and drinking anyway kind of seemed normal. Seeing ghosts seemed kind of normal. Maybe one had led to the other.

  I pondered this, as drunks tend to do, licking my lips for the last sticky sweetness of a whiskey shot as I made my way through the wind back to Safe Harbor. The place where there were no friends, only traitors. Fucking Jason, fucking Paul!

  * * *

  Saturday afternoon I took a radiation-inspired disco nap in preparation for the ball. I heard a creak and then a shuffle overhead—Keith or Ralph was moving around upstairs. It startled me. My eyes opened, staring up, the discoloration and the imperfections of the plaster swirling into their own unlikely images—waiting for more sounds that didn’t come. It was too quiet.

  My heart beat in my throat and my hands trembled, so I tucked them under my ass, fully expecting a ghostly visit.

  Instead, my phone, which had been switched to vibrate, danced across the nightstand.

  “Yes?”

  “‘Ben—Ben Schmidt, right?”

  I turned over, facing the wall with the still-unsightly bulge in it. I knew exactly who this was.

  “Dallas,” I said. “I don’t remember giving you my number.”

  “You passed around business cards the first time you came into the Slog. You also gave me another in New York—but you were under the influence, so maybe it doesn’t count,” she said, laughing.

  “Oh—”

  “I threw them away, but it don’t matter, my friend, cause you’re listed in the white fucking pages. So here I am.”

  “I’m trying to take a nap. It’s a big night, with that ball downtown. I told you about that, right?”

  Dallas was silent for a second. “I think I heard something about it, yeah.”

  “I don’t want to have bags under my eyes.” I sighed.

  “OK, just one question, asshole. I want to know more about the sperm you have in the bank. Unless you were lying to me at Tanga.”

  “It’s not a lie,” I said, having only the murkiest recollection of that conversation that apparently we’d had. “Don’t tell me you have mommy aspirations?”

  She snapped a cigarette lighter on her end.

  “I just might, Ben Schmidt.”

  * * *

  Davis and I were late for what he referred to as the “pre-mash feed,” actually a fancy sit-down dinner in a tent set up on Civic Center Plaza just east of city hall. We threaded our way through the crowd, which, having been exhorted to sit down and start eating, had done neither and was still in major mingling mode.

  Being on the symphony board, Davis had seats at a VIP table up front. The two empty places bearing the name cards “Dr. Davis Sternberg” and “Sternberg Guest” were conspicuous in their vacancy, as the other important diners at our table were already well into the salad.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, to no one in particular. He turned to grin at me, put his hand on my back and actually pulled out my chair.

  “Uh, thanks…Davis,” I said, sitting down, grabbing the cream-colored napkin, which had been fashioned into some kind of origami-like swan, and dabbed my sweat-soaked brow with it. An older woman opposite me, who, in fact, was largely hidden behind a flower arrangement accessorized with silver-foil starbursts, pursed her lips; then, as she saw me looking right at her, nodded.

  Her big Pacific Heights hair, blond and stiffly flipped to perfection, crowned a delicate, wrinkle-free tan and what looked
like some very expensive gold earrings.

  “Evening, Davis,” she said, looking around the centerpiece, raising her glass.

  I sensed his body stiffen even before his ass hit the white wooden chair.

  Davis exhaled. “Why, hello, Mary Jo—you look beautiful—as always.” He, too, noted her glass. “Now, that looks like a good idea.”

  I’d already been glancing around for someone with a tray of cocktails.

  “Who’s your friend? Now, don’t be rude, Dr. Sternberg,” she said. Indeed, the rest of our table appeared quite interested in the exchange.

  Davis turned to me with the warmest smile. “This, Mary Jo Newman, is Ben Schmidt.”

  I rose about halfway out of my chair, which allowed me an opportunity for the dual tasks of nodding to Mary Jo, who waved back, and signaling a waiter with my hand. “Good evening, everyone. It’s a pleasure.”

  That afternoon, I’d made a decision to be on good behavior. The radiation fatigue certainly helped in that regard, but this benefit could easily be neutralized by alcohol or other drugs—not that there were any, or at least any I could detect. Yet.

  Davis whispered to me that Mary Jo had been and was currently a very good friend of his ex-wife Heidi’s, who had now reverted to her maiden name, Wolf. “Heidi might be at this shindig,” he said. “But she’d have a table closer to the entrance, since the symphony sponsorship came directly from me this year.”

  Poor Heidi. Near the entrance meant close to those noisy hot-air blowers and miles from the kitchen and bar station. A waiter finally managed to drop off two glasses of champagne in front of me. One I gave to Davis; the other never left my hand.

  As he made introductions to his other friends at our table, I began to feel more and more like the prized pig on display at the state fair. Even my extensive business travel history hadn’t quite prepared me for this crowd.

  Next to Mary Jo was her wealthy, quiet husband, Sandy—he of the shiny blond comb-over—who seemed to do his best to ignore her. He wasn’t having as much luck with the woman on his left, Becca Paulus, a put-upon, thirtysomething symphony foundation employee, who’d been “planted” to further shake down the very rich while they ate.