Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  He hadn’t said anything at all about Hell for the Holidays.

  * * *

  We sat in the roped-off section of red velvet chairs. I’d met some of the other filmmakers at La Reseda and over coffee at Fratelli, and now they nervously populated the rows in front of and behind us. Among them were Piet, a quiet Dutch youth with a cute upturned nose and tight, curly hair; Tal, the serious, Israeli boy-genius who’d named his documentary after himself; and Olivia, the older British woman who gave off a comforting den-mother vibe.

  None of us was as well dressed as our Italian hosts.

  “Ben—you avoiding me?” Christian’s voice always registered a decibel level over everyone else’s. He was in the next row, pushing his way toward the unoccupied seat in front of Adriano.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Been jet-lagged. How’ve you been since Sydney?”

  “Busy. I’ve been busy. We missed you at the Montreal festival and of course in South Beach,” he said, eyes settling on Adriano. “There’s no accounting for taste, Ben, so don’t worry—”

  “We never submitted to Miami,” I said.

  “Who’s your friend—?”

  Christian’s line of questioning was drowned out by Cosimo, on stage in a tuxedo. He spoke in a flurry of Italian; all I got was that he was introducing somebody, and the lights went up.

  * * *

  Sauna Club—the Turin bathhouse Adriano pointed out to me on that first walk over to La Reseda—was the unlikely venue for the after-awards bash, tucked as it was in a nondescript brick building on a commercial street.

  It was particularly jarring to see a gay baths teeming with a loud, chatty, drinking crowd that was also totally clothed. Half were women, which made it even stranger.

  Turin being the civilized, continental city that it is, this party location didn’t raise much of an eyebrow with anyone except perhaps myself and the other Americans, used to gay sex clubs as basically unmentionable dark and dirty dives tucked away in questionable neighborhoods and popular only in the wee hours.

  Even in a cosmopolitan city like Sydney, places like Den’s Delight had been belowground. At the Sauna Club, the festival partiers could take a break from the familiar and tiring schmooze to wander through the pitch-black labyrinths—where in normal operating hours towel-clad men did all sorts of interesting things to each other.

  At this party, it seemed the heterosexuals were getting a thrill at play-acting in a no-holds-barred gay sex space, while the otherwise “Kinsey Six, all-gay-all-the-time” types were finding out what it was like to rub against a surprisingly soft and willing woman in the dark.

  A staircase flanked with floor-to-ceiling black poles—perhaps a jail-house effect for those into the rougher side of things—provided the bar with an impressive entrance or exit, depending on one’s level of interest in the dark rooms beyond.

  To me, it was the grand staircase down to my fans—because I won the fucking award!

  * * *

  It was a disc. The award was framed, a brass plate inscribed with “Best Short Film,” etcetera, all in Italian, of course. I was careful to cradle it with the disc facing outward so it could be read by passersby and catch and reflect any stray beams of light.

  The proceedings at Teatro Nuovo had plodded on. Not understanding a word of what anyone said, I was ready to fall asleep.

  Adriano would whisper important details like award category and winner to me, his hot breath in my ear, intoxicating me further with each disclosure. At one point Christian turned around and winked at me—or maybe it was Adriano he winked at. Anyway, the upshot was “you’re up next, Benny-boy.”

  I smiled through my teeth. Pondering my revenge for force of personality—for charisma, specifically—I wasn’t even sure it was possible for someone with an ego the size of Christian’s to notice.

  Truthfully, I hated my attraction to him. It was so unfair.

  Giovanni and his fashionably bespectacled lesbian counterpart, Paola, rattled off the names of all the short films nominated for the prize—including the one about a crooked cop getting a blow job from a priest on the Eurostar, the one about a taciturn Swedish lesbian getting pregnant, then lured to a dreary cottage on a frozen lake, and the one about a sad but very hot Parisian guy who got serially laid but couldn’t find love.

  In this group, Hell for the Holidays was a breath of cool San Francisco air. A short fellow with a mop of brown curls wearing a coat that was too big for him handed our category to Paola. She opened it, smiled and whispered into her mike:

  “Per la pellicola corta migliore, il premio de Torino va a Ben Schmidt e Karen Kling, San Francisco, Hell for the Holidays.”

  I felt my back being slapped and got a peck on the cheek from Adriano. I got up and more or less floated to the stage, grateful I’d remembered to wear black pants in case of any recidivism in the incontinence department.

  The applause was polite and enduring. Both Giovanni and Paola kissed me on both cheeks, European style. Cosimo handed me the disc. Looking out from the stage, I was blinded by the lights and couldn’t see anyone except the judges in the front row. I felt very alone, wished Karen were there, wished Jake was by my side and even wished Davis could see this.

  * * *

  “So, Ben Schmidt. This award is nice thing?”

  “It’s a very nice thing, Adriano, a very nice thing indeed.”

  We were in his car, a Fiat that had once been red. It was my last day in Italy. There’d been some official festival-associated after-parties and encore screenings, but Hell for the Holidays, despite being a winner, wasn’t one of those.

  I never did see Adriano again at the Sauna party, and Christian Banner had irritated me by asking endlessly where he was. As if I would know. I sulked my way home alone through the Royal Gardens or whatever the fuck they were. There wasn’t even an opportunity to give some skinny ragazzo a quick suck in the bushes.

  “Piemonte, you like?” he asked, as we rounded yet another curve in an hour filled with them.

  “Of course.”

  The landscape was indeed beautiful, and even my sour mood couldn’t destroy that. We were on a highway headed west into the hills toward Avigliana, the town Adriano’s family came from. If we kept going we’d end up in the Alps, still covered in snow, their craggy black faces becoming visible every now and then out of the fog. Beyond was France.

  “So. The vines are a little budding,” he said.

  They were. On my side of the road were terraced vineyards, quickly rising up in a patchwork of fields, separated by occasional bands of broadleaf forest, which were also shrouded in an ethereal green mist of early spring.

  The other side of the road was much the same, except for the towering mountains, which came out of hiding with the increasing sun. If I turned to glance at them, Adriano would think I was looking at him.

  The phone in my pants vibrated. It hadn’t rung once since that call from Jason, when he’d told me to expect to hear from Tony Mallard about the “issues” with my computer.

  That time had come.

  “Tony?” I spoke into the static dimension, imagining my voice shooting up into a satellite over the ocean and bouncing down across space into Safe Harbor’s SoMa building.

  There was a slight delay. “Ben? Yes, it’s Tony Mallard in San Francisco,” he said, a few decibels above his usual drone, as if that would help with the distance. “How’s everything going for you there? My wife and I have gone to northern Italy quite often on holiday.”

  I supposed the airfares to Malpensa and Venezia were quite reasonable from Heathrow. How unfortunate for the Italians.

  “It’s been fantastic. A friend and I are on the way to see an abbey in his hometown. I fly back to the states tomorrow.”

  Then there was a longer pause, which could not be accounted for by technology alone.

  “I wanted to let you know we’ve given you a new PC—twice the memory of the old one, writable DVD drive—very nice if I do say so myself.”

  “Why
—?”

  “I’m sorry, Ben. We need to search your old drives. A technician doing routine maintenance on your system found a homosexual pornography movie.”

  Outside the car, houses became more frequent, a signal we were approaching Avigliana. Adriano told me the glaciers stopped here during the last ice age, explaining the sudden appearance of lakes and moraines.

  “I don’t know how that got onto my computer.”

  “Well. Surfing X-rated Web sites, dating sites, that sort of thing, is against company directive—”

  “I’m not saying it’s not there, but a good question to ask is how it ended up on my computer in the first place.”

  We’d pulled off the highway and into town. The cobblestone streets got narrower and darker as they led between ancient redbrick and stucco buildings. A clock on a church steeple ahead showed that it was just before two.

  “We change the road here,” Adriano whispered, his right hand scratching my thigh.

  “You’re really up at the crack of dawn,” I said into the phone.

  “The insomnia’s back,” he said.

  I didn’t recall the conversation, but a lot, of course, had happened. I was glad the fucker couldn’t sleep. He probably spent the Orinda nights huddled in his bathrobe and dirty socks, shivering around a pool too cold to swim in.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not meaning a word. “I’ll be back in a few days; there’s a quick stop in New York—”

  “You realize this may very well be grounds for termination?”

  Adriano turned onto a stone upgrade at a sign that said, “Sacra di San Michele,” along with an arrow, and the car began its climb.

  “You know what? I’d like to see those IT guys prove that I’m responsible for putting that damn movie on my computer.”

  * * *

  Sacra di San Michele, or Abbey of St. Michael the Archangel, was the main tourist draw of this area near Turin. The asphalt pathway outside led along a ridge with magnificent views of Avigliana and its lakes below.

  Adriano walked in front of me. His tight, cute, round ass, hot underneath a thin layer of worn denim, was definitely more interesting than the Turin plain beyond us. We climbed a series of stone staircases to an entrance right out of Dracula and paused looking up at an enormous arched window at the top of a pile of uneven, worn steps.

  There was that modest smile again, the same one I’d seen when I first opened that hotel door. “They call this ‘staircase of the dead,’” he whispered, his lips briefly brushing the top of my ear. “Between some of the bricks you can see priest bodies.”

  Jesus Christ.

  I turned to the walls on my right. There were tombs placed into the stone itself, often with appropriate lettering—but then there were also random skeletons, as if stuffed into niches there after death, those who for some reason didn’t merit a decent burial with a marker.

  “Let’s keep going,” I said, my hand on his back, pushing him lightly up the stairs.

  I didn’t like this at all. Imagine knowing every day that this slot in the wall would be one’s final resting place, but only if one was lucky and didn’t get shoved between layers like so much sticky mortar.

  It seemed so undignified. How cold and dark it must be in here on winter nights, when wind and snow screamed down from the nearby Alps. To this end all their toil and prayers—I supposed they prayed; they were monks, after all—just to end up in this endless shiver.

  Adriano really did know his way around. Perhaps he’d had a lover who was a priest here. Assignations among the ancient rocks, in the dank corridors, furtive hands under robes—had to admit, it had an appeal in a sort of porno-Italian—Dark Shadows universe.

  The sun, which had by now risen to full strength, brightened up the gray stone floors and columns considerably, making the redbrick sanctuary walls glow a hot blood rose. The mountaintop itself formed part of the left wall, receding gradually into a dirty ochre plaster that covered the rear of the room.

  “There’s no stained glass in here,” I said.

  “Is too old here for that, I think,” he said.

  “You’ve come here before?”

  Adriano smiled and took my arm, leading me to the right. “I show you something very cool, Ben. The oldest part of San Michele.”

  Cold stone steps led down into darkness, past a huge arched entry made out of vertical wooden slats. A faded, typewritten sign indicated this was the Chapel of San Giovanni.

  As the light dimmed and we made our way down the steps, Adriano took my hand. So this was it, finally. My last day in Italy and he made his move, the Avigliana equivalent of Ringold Alley back in San Francisco.

  Up ahead, warmer, incandescent lighting cast a timeless and sexy mood onto the rough stone walls. Mostly bare of furniture, the ancient chapel—the basement of the church above—was a series of low rooms, which I supposed had held altars, tombs or dreary monk cells.

  It was nearly silent, the only sounds being the echoes of doors closing somewhere above us in the abbey. There were no other tourists, either—this part of the church may even have been off-limits—

  “Hey, do you know where you’re going?” I said, worried more about being locked in than anything else.

  “Si, the primitivo part is just up here.”

  He led me through a narrow corridor occasionally lit by tiny pin lights, haphazardly directed. The floor was uneven; the toe of my shoe caught on an obstruction that nearly sent me reeling.

  “What if there’s a giant hole in the floor, something we can’t see?”

  “Do not worry. Like you say, I been here before.” Adriano chuckled, and it echoed off the rounded vault above. A few steps more took us to another stair, going down, to an even colder, mustier place.

  There were one or two sconces, as well as two small, square windows cut high up into the stone, allowing small shafts of light inside. In an alcove to our right were niches in the rock wall—for the sacraments, perhaps—or to hide something secret, the nature of which was now lost to time.

  Didn’t matter. We were no longer on an archeological expedition.

  I pushed him gently into the corner, against the cold stones.

  He grabbed my wrist, but didn’t pull me toward him—instead, he held it out in front of me, like a barricade.

  “Do not do this,” he said, louder than I’d ever heard him speak before. I tried to pull my arm away, but it wouldn’t budge. “Jesus—Adriano—why’d you bring me down here?”

  “Ben, do not do this. We are in church!”

  Yeah, like we’re the first people ever to contemplate sex in a sanctuary.

  The more I tried to push my hand against him—it was headed to his crotch, or at least that was my intent—the stronger his resistance.

  “You’ve been coming on to me the whole time!” The reverberations in the chamber were such that this sounded whinier than it might have, say, on Fifty-fifth Street in Manhattan, the site of that other extremely embarrassing situation—

  “You must stop this now,” he said, slapping my face with his free hand.

  I backed up, almost losing my balance.

  “Adriano!”

  “I go back up to the main church,” he said, receding into the blackness of the passageway. “Meet me there when you done touristing.”

  * * *

  A couple of minutes must’ve passed before I moved at all. Since my eyes had had a chance to adjust during the preceding bizarre encounter, I noticed how dark it really was in this secret chapel.

  I could make out the individual dusty brown bricks and stones in the wall—much of the grout had worn away—and the abbey had apparently shored up the ceiling with modern plaster.

  How could I have misjudged Adriano? His friendly words, suggestive actions—all the clues of the preceding few days—swirled inside my head, making it ache.

  There was nothing left to do but ride back with him to Turin and pack my bags for the trip home. I turned to walk down the same little passage he’d fled
through, feeling my way along the wall in the darkness.

  “Not so fast.”

  Not only did the hair on the back of my neck and the back of everything else stand up, but I nearly jumped a foot. The voice, even with the ubiquitous echoes in the chapel, was painfully familiar.

  I was about to turn my head when I felt the cool, slightly wet breath on my neck.

  A hand slipped under the waistband of my trousers and cupped my ass cheek at the same time I let go in front, feeling the warm liquid dribble down my leg.

  “Goddamn it!”

  “Now, now, you’re in a church, bub,” he said, directly into my ear. “Careful.”

  It was Wayne, last seen at Presidio Hospital. He’d told me I’d be OK but I’d need more treatment. So far, so good.

  “You guys are scaring me half to death!” I gasped, collapsing against the wall in front of me.

  “I think it’s funny; you thought this one, Torino-dude, would love you, and boy, did you ever get it wrong!” he said.

  “Don’t you have someplace you’re supposed to be? My pants and socks are soaked,” I said.

  His arms encircled me, his tongue on my neck, licking back and forth just like the way he used to back when—

  “I love you still,” he whispered, so quietly it might have been the zephyr that blew in from the thawed-out fields below.

  Wayne rocked me from side to side. The darkness made it hard to get my bearings, and I became lightheaded, not in an unpleasant way.

  “You won the award; isn’t that what you always wanted?”

  “It doesn’t seem as great as all that now.” I spoke slowly, sensually, as if I were drugged or drunk, though I’d not had anything since the night before. My hands squeezed his dead arms, suddenly missing them so much, it was as if the ache of his passing was a bleeding wound.

  “People don’t tie flannel shirts around themselves anymore. Kurt Cobain is dead.”

  “Something I’m in a good position to know,” he said. “I have to get to the airport.”

  “We like the warmth—selfish of me, I wanted as much as I could get while—

  “Ben! Please come; they are closing!” Adriano’s call boomed down the stairs at the head of the passageway.