Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  I’d just march right up there on those shaky wood stairs and blurt it out. An “I’m sorry” might do, but since I didn’t remember the absolute specifics from that night in West Hollywood, more detail might not even be possible. He’d just have to accept it.

  The newfound enthusiasm I’d mustered up on the walk home dissipated the closer I got to my building. My front door was open, light spilling out onto the cracked sidewalk. Karen’s Mini was parked in the neighbor’s driveway, the hatchback open.

  There were a couple of small boxes in the car, but mostly it was clothing, much of it still on the red plastic hangers Karen preferred.

  We met at the front door. She had her favorite Calphalon sauté pan in one hand and a succession of purses in the other.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “I thought you got back.”

  “I was at a meeting. What are you doing, packing up your car in the middle of the night?”

  She tossed the purses on top of a sweater, then tucked the pan under layers of fabric. “My first settlement check from Dennis was here when Jake and I got home.”

  That hit me like a punch. “You’re moving out now?”

  “I thought you’d want your space back.” She closed the passenger-side door. “What meeting? AA?”

  “Yeah.” I leaned back against the building, the old shingles scratching my neck.

  “That’s good, Ben, really…good.”

  We stared at each other for way too long. I knew I had to say something—

  “I got a little suite at the St. Francis. Temporary, of course. Dennis is so fucking rich,” she said.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Karen, the Mini and most of her stuff disappeared down the hill. I watched her turn right on Eighteenth—she signaled and stopped just like you’d expect a good librarian would (now one really rich librarian).

  It was too quiet inside. I hated to admit it, but I missed her already. The faded sheets she’d left in a ball on the futon were ready to be washed. The laundry basket was in my bedroom, but I didn’t want to go in there.

  Above me, the floor creaked.

  Just the tweakers, pacing back and forth, forth and back, same as every night, something I really didn’t notice much anymore but for some reason startled me now.

  I could easily keep the lights on and just sleep in here. Don’t be such a pussy—this is your home, I thought. I would’ve whistled if I knew how. Lamp-light shone through the partly open door to my room—had I left it on?

  Going in was inevitable. I pushed the door open all the way, my tense reflection staring back from the mirror propped up against the wall. Looking every bit like the unfortunate, middle-aged foil who gets garroted in act two of a teen slasher movie, I stepped inside.

  Even in the gloom, peripheral vision indicated that someone was in the right corner in back of me.

  I froze.

  “Which one are you?” I said.

  “I wanted to share at that meeting, but they wouldn’t call on me.” It was Mark. “Natch, I had to come back and at least share with you.”

  He looked different now. Maybe it was the low light, but Mark’s skin was grayer, maybe greener. His teeth were dirty, yellowing. If I was an unkind person, I might say he appeared to be on the verge of major rot.

  Nevertheless, this was my room. If nothing else, I’d be comfortable in it. I lay back on the bed, my neck and shoulders propped up against the pillows. Mark stayed put.

  “Why are you standing in the corner?” My head throbbed. I checked the bedside table drawer—if there was Tiger Balm in the house, that’s where it would be.

  “It’s as a good place as any. It’s my…post,” he said.

  “I hope you’re not going to be there all night, because I can’t sleep if there’s a ghost in the corner staring at me,” I said. “You’re like a bad grade school kid on detention.”

  He smiled. “I could be invisible to you and still be here. For all you know, this room is filled with my spirit friends.”

  “Is it?” I scraped the last bit of waxy goo from the balm jar and smeared it on my forehead. “You’re lying like you always did. Come on, Mark, what is it you couldn’t say at the meeting?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. The entire scenario was preposterous. Continuing creaks from above reminded me of my drug-addled neighbors. A lot of help they’d be in an emergency.

  “There’s a long tradition of substance use in the arts, as you know,” he said. “I’m just not sure you should give it up so easily.”

  “You think I should stay drunk, huh—?”

  “I think you should enjoy yourself. Life’s short; just ask me.”

  I opened my eyes. Mark was transparent again but hadn’t moved. “I really don’t need to hear this kind of shit.”

  I fished the phone out of my front pocket. “Who you calling?” he said as I keyed in Terry’s number.

  “My sponsor. And, by the way, fuck you.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, fading back into the wall.

  * * *

  It turned out to be a mostly sleepless night, my aching eyes riveted to that spot where Mark had been, sometimes roving over to the mirror. The traffic never died down completely, as it usually did, another car waking me each time I nodded off.

  I’d been called in to see Tony Mallard in the morning. Since keeping me on wouldn’t have required a face-to-face, this wouldn’t be good.

  Soon enough, the dreaded five a.m. bus went by. I sat on the edge of the bed, reminded of that September day a year before when my whole cancer story began.

  Even though I could’ve slept for another hour or two, I got up, dressed and left for work, leaving the bike in the hallway. Lately, contemplating that bike ride conjured more exhaustion than excitement. I had plenty of time to walk.

  * * *

  I knew Glenda would be up. Her Vietnamese neighbors—who, like Keith and Ralph above me, never seemed to sleep—unloaded boxes of vegetables from a dirty brown van in front of their restaurant, Nguyen Long.

  One man had stringy black hair and the younger guy I took to be his son, whose eyes remained downcast during the entire procedure. Perhaps he was in high school; perhaps he even knew Dan Lau, the champion gymnast.

  I hadn’t been over to Glenda’s in quite a while, and never this early. The steel security doors were propped open, this time with a fat Sunday Chron. A curious black cat waited in the vestibule, half-hidden behind a pillar.

  “Somerset, is that you?” I’d forgotten what kind of kitty she had, but knew there was one. The creature fled, so I followed it down the hallway.

  Through her door a heavily accented man’s voice said, “His eyes need to be closed. Can you check?”

  Another man said, “Fuck, George, you’re the one who shot him.” Glenda was working.

  I knocked. The Spanish voice repeated “los ojos!” much louder, then abruptly cut off. A chair scraped across the bare wood floor.

  She opened the door a sliver and peered out. “Sport! You better have donuts.”

  * * *

  Indeed, that cat was Somerset. He brushed up against my leg while Glenda brewed Yerba Mate.

  “So you got some low-budget horror thing.” She turned down the tea-kettle, which had begun its irritating whistle. “Either that, or…this place isn’t big enough to hide a body in.”

  “I suppose if I needed to, I’d find the space.”

  “One thing, you’re resourceful,” I said. She put the steaming cup in front of me, a Christmas in the Catskills pastoral-scene mug with a little chip in it.

  Although most of the one-room apartment was taken up with computer video-editing equipment, she’d recently placed two wing chairs on either side of a small round table in front of the lone bay window.

  Glenda sat down opposite me. “You’re not here to talk about that,” she said.

  “I’m not.” Her hair was up in its top-of-the-head ponytail, making me think of the possibility of a lesbian Ann-Margret. “Why is it you want my
‘spermies’?”

  She took a calm sip of the Mate and smiled. “I know you’re not a serial killer, sport.”

  “That’s the only reason?”

  “I suppose there’s that Anglo-Saxon background…that modicum of talent, dubious though it may be. And of course, the blue eyes.”

  I took in the space again—the humming electronics, Somerset and the homeless shuffle below the window. “You’ll need a bigger place for a baby.”

  * * *

  Probably a good decision overall—to pick Glenda over Dallas, although she’d be more the type to get huffy and renege on all previously agreed upon visitation schedules.

  We hugged at her door—the first time any physical gesture of affection had passed between us. It was awkward. Glenda said, quite softly, “Thank you.”

  A few minutes later, as I walked by my colleagues’ cubicles inside Safe Harbor, all talking stopped. Some nodded; most looked surprised I was there. I could only imagine the kind of gossip going on about me:

  “He’s got AIDS and that’s it. The cancer story is just a cover!”

  “He was in that porno movie that was on his hard drive! Moonlighting—until they fired him for being too old!”

  “Ben sexually assaulted Paul Sutcliffe on the ASMA business trip—slipped a rufie into his vodka; they had to take him to emergency! The ‘movie on the computer’ was planted to boot Ben out.”

  Both Amy and Kelly were in the quad we shared—along with Jason—who, not surprisingly, wasn’t there.

  “Ben!” Kelly said. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

  This was a pretty bad lie, but the effort was appreciated. “Hello,” I said. “Good to see you both. Is Tony—?”

  “In his office. With that blond freelancer we worked with in Vegas. What’s her name, Deborah…?”

  “Deborah Bowens?”

  Through the glass office wall I could see Deborah’s familiar blond head nodding in appreciation of something Tony was saying.

  Kelly sat back down at her desk, arranging manila folders in a complex pattern known only to her. “She was already here when we got in,” she said.

  I glanced over at Amy, who quickly looked away and picked up her phone.

  Here was a man about to be thrown overboard. In a few minutes, these two women would ignore me, but for right now, I was still their boss.

  “See if you can find Sutcliffe,” I said, leaning in to Kelly. “I want a meeting, in, I’d say, about half an hour.”

  “I’ll see if he’s here—”

  Tony’s door opened and a piercing cackle cut her off. Deborah emerged, her eyes lighting up when she saw me. “Good morning, Ben!”

  Well put together as usual, Deborah wore a peach scarf tied loosely around her neck, matching her nails, which she scratched along my forearm.

  “Guess I could ask you what you’re doing here, but I’ve already heard too many lies this morning,” I said. “You’ve got bigger balls than I ever dreamed.”

  She cocked her head and slung her bag over her shoulder, not missing a beat. “He asked me to come in for some tea. I was in the City, so…”

  I looked past her to Tony. He looked sick.

  Deborah stopped near Kelly and Amy. “Nice to see you girls.”

  Her heels clicked on the tile where the carpet ended near the elevator, adding to the rising dread.

  When I opened my eyes, both Kelly and Amy were staring at me, giving me a look like I was the naughty boy at a birthday party who’d smeared cake frosting in a little girl’s hair.

  * * *

  It all went down pretty much like you’d expect from somebody like Tony. He wouldn’t even let me sit until the HR person got there, a young Benediction woman I’d seen but didn’t know, whose long brown hair was still wet, probably from her morning shower.

  “Barbara” sat comfortably with me in Tony’s guest chairs, where we casually crossed our legs so our toes pointed to each other.

  With every point he made, Tony looked to Barbara for validation, to make sure he was doing this right, to make sure he was doing the legal two-step correctly.

  I’d been fired before.

  I wanted to stop his agony. “Don’t worry, Tony,” I said, “I’m not going to sue. I’m not going to sue you and take away that pool so your wife divorces you and you’ll have to either let the parents move in or go back to chilly England.”

  That broke his concentration. As he looked to the desktop for notes, Barbara turned to me and said, much like a nun, “That really wasn’t necessary, now, was it?”

  At that point, I really didn’t have anything to lose. “Actually, it was necessary,” I said. “Why don’t you just shut up?”

  Not wise.

  Security arrived shortly thereafter. They escorted me out, past Kelly and Amy—who did, as I predicted, ignore me—and wouldn’t even let me clean out my cubicle. Most likely, they were hoping to find more forbidden pleasures there, interspersed among old Balance Bar wrappers and the unopened mail I’d tossed into an empty drawer.

  I was deposited about ten feet from the Safe Harbor main entrance on Harrison. The Slog was the first thing that came to my mind, calling Terry the second. I turned and thought I saw Sutcliffe and Jason standing in a second-floor window, looking down on me, no doubt laughing their asses off.

  25

  The Safe Harbor security guy sneered at me through the glass double doors. Feeling freer by the step and nearly weightless, I walked up Eighth Street toward Market.

  One thing nice about being freshly fired is there’s always time for a leisurely breakfast.

  I did some mental math on finances, tried to figure what was left, what was coming in, and what I’d get from unemployment and severance, which was still to be worked out. Barbara from HR was going to “get in touch before the end of the week.”

  “Don’t worry; we’ll make sure you’re whole,” she’d said to me as security led me from Tony’s office. He’d closed his door on us, looking at the floor the entire time.

  I wasn’t even sure any more whether I wanted that Safe Harbor job.

  I hadn’t had much time to dwell on such questions in the last few months. Sure, Sutcliffe should get what was coming to him. Now that I was an exemployee, revenge would be more problematic.

  Block after block of store windows forced me to see my reflection whether I wanted to or not. The cancer treatment, the work problems and the various man dramas had taken a bit of a toll on me, mainly in the form of weight lost, but it was only fifteen or twenty pounds, which I was actually quite happy to be rid of.

  * * *

  The tables outside the Dolores Park Café were still mostly full, but I did see one in the corner empty and waiting for me.

  “Ben Schmidt,” a familiar, slightly accented voice said. “Where are you going?”

  It was Eric, out on the sidewalk, wearing a red-and-white-checked apron and a white bandana around his bald head.

  “The question should be, What are you doing in that outfit?” I asked.

  “How’s everything going, you know…with the cancer and all?”

  “It appears to be gone,” I said, believing it more with each declaration. “Thanks for asking.”

  He smiled. “I’m really happy about that.”

  I nodded. “You didn’t answer my question about that thing you’ve got on.”

  He looked down at the apron. “Figured I spent so much time here, I might as well…you still with that tall guy, Ben?”

  “Are you on a break?”

  “I got a couple more minutes,” he said.

  We were surrounded by stressed-out hipsters laid off from their once-promising dot-com jobs. I wondered whether they treated Eric with kindness.

  “You’re talking about Davis. No, the answer is definitely no, I’m not with him. I’m not with anybody.”

  “I didn’t like him,” he said.

  I felt a warm rush of possibility. Eric retied his apron around himself, accentuating that trim
waist and broad shoulders.

  “How are the tips?”

  “They have me cooking,” he said. “You should come over; I’ll make you dinner, maybe my empanadas, they’re not bad.”

  “I never imagined that. Other things, but not that.”

  He laughed. “I have a mama and everything. You’d be surprised.”

  “I guess I would. Look, I gotta go—”

  He hugged me tight, the starch from his uniform filling my nose, then kissed me softly on my neck. A young black woman across the street, who was about to light her cigarette, watched.

  I hoped he would invite me over for dinner, and I’d try not to fixate on the likelihood there’d be drugs there for the asking.

  My cell chimed, interrupting us.

  * * *

  I wondered how long it would take for Karen and me to talk again and got my answer—not even twenty-four hours had passed since we last spoke. We’d chat about the Safe Harbor firing drama, and, of course, I had to see her hotel suite.

  She invited me right over to the St. Francis. Eric had gone back to work, so I decided to eat later and made a beeline for the State Office Building to grab the unemployment compensation forms—no sense in wasting time. It would probably cover my rent on Douglass if not much more. The promised severance package would have to make up the difference.

  Karen’s suite was at the end of a long, thickly carpeted hallway. The dark wainscoting between the doors appeared freshly polished, and the prints above—all of pastoral, northern California scenes—were perfectly lit by tiny spots in the ceiling.

  Why did I always pick relatively struggling men—Jake, Eric, Adriano—and when I found someone with means, like Davis, they turned out to be evil? This certainly wasn’t fair.

  Her door opened on my approach, as if she’d heard me coming. “Come in,” Karen said, her poker face obscuring the inside of the room.

  “I think you should adopt me, sweetie,” I said. The living room looked out to the east, Union Square vaguely visible through the sheers covering the windows.

  “Nice, eh?” she said, flopping down on one of two expensive-looking sofas in the room. Opposite the window was a real wood-burning fireplace topped by a polished mirror.