by John O'Brien
He sits waiting, drinking at the table. A few minutes later, upon entering the room, Sera finds him staring at the floor, motionless.
“You okay?” she says.
He seems not to hear and then responds, smiling at the repetition, “Of course. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.” But a concerned look visits her face, and she finds herself even more aware of just how not-okay he is. “It must be late,” she says. “What time have you got.”
“Sorry. My watch went the way of my car. I’m not only too drunk to drive anymore, but I’m also too drunk to participate in the world of timekeeping—even as an observer.” He holds up his empty wrist, his drink with the other hand. “Two hairs past a freckle. See, in LA I kept running out of liquor after it was too late to go out and buy some. For some reason the clear-cut solution was to move someplace where it is never too late. And, of course, now that I’m here I seem to have solved my stocking problem—you saw my room. But that sort of backward up-sweeping comes as no surprise. Anyway, I was getting tired of being looked at funny when I would walk into a bar at six a.m.. Even the bartenders in my neighborhood started preaching to me. Here people drink at all hours. No one cares. There may be legitimate reasons, vacations and whatnot, but it just doesn’t matter because they’re not from here. They’re not overtly fucking up.” He pauses, afraid that too much is being said too soon. “I’m rambling. I really like you. You make me want to talk. I don’t know what time it is.”
“I like hearing you talk,” she says, and means it. “If you feel up to a short walk we can go to a place just up on the corner. All the food in Las Vegas is terrible anyhow, and this way we won’t have to wait for a cab. How does that sound to you?”
“Drinks?” asks Ben, but he really doesn’t care. He can carry his own if necessary. They go off on their way down the street, walking. That sounded just fine to him.
Talking effortlessly at the restaurant, they continue to pursue the tangential conversations that go with new acquaintance. This acquaintance, however, is maturing faster than most. Both of them feel an unspoken urgency to their friendship. Beyond the more obvious time factor that Ben feels, this impatience is due to an even more immediate need that they share. A vacuum, long unaddressed in Sera and always fundamental in Ben, is being looked at and considered. They are recognizing an opportunity to prevent an emotional tragedy. They are struggling with the bewilderment of finding that a long-held assumption may not be so. They are, at once, seeing for the first time decisions that they may have made and unexpected options that they may now have.
To Ben these feelings are apart from what he is doing to himself. The short term that he has assigned to his own life is having its effect on his mentality beyond his day to day conduct change. He believes that dying, dying soon, is an unalterable fact of his life, and as it becomes more deeply rooted in his reality, he thinks of it no more than anyone else thinks of their own natural death; he is aware of it, but not obsessed with it. Subtly, though, his actions have taken on added significance to him. The governors have all been removed and he now looks for the direct and deliberate, embracing the aggressive and shunning the abusive. With the specter of the finite looming very near, Ben can almost envisage this time as a microcosm of his whole life, a narrow but tall area, to be played very intensely. So a girl is a girlfriend, and a girlfriend is everything. It is the psychology of a fourteen year old, who is also disinterested in the not-so-foreseeable future. Ben adores Sera, would like her to be a part of his life. But changing his life, extending it, is no longer an option that would occur to him. She should accept that context in the same way that he has. Though it may be wishful, he sees in her the capacity to do this; it is what he considers to be her charm.
“So why are you a drunk?” asks Sera. She had been watching him pick over the small, undressed salad he ordered in lieu of dinner. He finally pushed it away and called for another drink.
“Is that what you want to ask me?” he says, measuring.
“Yes.” She knows that this is more than a question and is willing to stand her ground.
“Well,” he says, “then I guess this is our first date or our last. Until now, I wasn’t sure it was either.”
“Very clever. Fine. First. It’s the first.” She surrenders this. “I’m concerned. Why are you killing yourself?”
“Interesting choice of words,” he says. Then, after a pause, he says almost to himself and as if out of frustration, “I don’t remember. I just know that I want to.”
“Want to what? Kill yourself? Are you saying that you’re drinking as a way to kill yourself?” She leans over the table, close to him, listening intently.
“Or killing myself as a way to drink,” he says and laughs playfully. He has decided not to deal with this apparently inevitable discussion yet. Maybe he’ll die in the rest room and so avoid it. But in fact he is not sure just how silly his answer is. He is not at all sure about any of the how or why questions anymore. He no longer cares to address them.
Annoyed, she lets it go. But she too can see that this is unfinished business, though in a way it seems less than imperative, almost irrelevant, certainly not worth risking things right now. In all fairness she considers that she, herself, would not care tonight to expound the happy-go-lucky world of prostitution, and she is again impressed by his failure to bring that up. Sera tries not to look too deeply at things anymore, for fear that they may not hold up to scrutiny. Everything should roll along, and she should be able to just play her part. She likes being here, and it feels good to like something. So she can see no reason to fuck it all up by challenging this man, Ben, over his life plan.
Her own life plan these days is limited to just about that. Plan: stay alive. If she has to sell her soul to make that work, then fine. At least her blood doesn’t flow as freely as it once did, and he sleeps somewhere else. Now some guy wants to come up her ass—okay. Maybe Al wants to start sticking her with the knife again—no problem. She’s older now, more mature. Everything’s different than before, when she was a kid and used to fret over such things. She can turn off now, let it happen and still wake up in the morning. And if the cut runs too deep and she doesn’t wake up, well at least it won’t be by her own hand; she will have played out her part. After all, there’s really only one not-so-fine line. Everyone is so proud of their own insignificant little boundaries. Scrupulously they vow, I would never do that! And perhaps they wouldn’t. More likely, they’ll never have to. Anyway, that’s them, that’s fine. Not all men want to do that to her. Some men like her. A lot of guys appreciate her. She helps them out. It feels good to help people. It’s a bonus to being alive. Icing on the cake. Everything’s working out just fine.
“Ben,” she says, watching him suck out of his glass, watching gin dribble down his puffy face. “Why don’t you stay at my apartment tonight? I mean…,” she falters, “Look, you’re so drunk—or you will be soon, at this rate—you could sleep on my couch. I trust you. I like you. Don’t make a big deal, but I hate to think of you at that cheesy motel. You seem so alone… I mean… Let’s face it: What the fuck are you doing in Las Vegas?” And with this blurted out, she sits back to enjoy her resolve. Despite the amused look on his face, she is secure in her deployment of that ultimate authority that all women ought to have over all men. All real men.
“That’s astonishing, Sera. Or maybe it isn’t.” He is profoundly moved by her offer, as he always is by any overt show of compassion. His initial surprise is mitigated as he realizes that this type of behavior is very much a part of her, that she is indeed good. “Don’t worry. I told you, I’m going to move to a hotel soon—tomorrow, if it will make you feel better. Thank you, but I’m fine. I’ll just pass out. Let’s talk about tomorrow: wanna do something?” He likes the youthful sound of this simple question crossing his lips, but it is followed by a cough, and a gasp for breath.
“Sure. Let’s do something tonight first. We have to take a cab to the Sahara so I can drop off someth
ing personal. Then please stay at my place. Do it for me. We can talk till late and sleep till late. As you know, I am my own boss.”
At this he starts laughing. Sera, though startled by the unintentional irony of her remark, laughs to join him. In the mirth he assents. But his hesitation was genuine, for he is in love with her, and he must be careful—oh, so careful.
Not too early, not too late, the hour is about right for her to be here. She warned Ben, now waiting down at the main bar, that she might be a few minutes. Fortunately he is quite willing to be left at a bar and didn’t act at all concerned. Nor was he curious about her errand, though this, she supposes, is out of polite regard for her earlier use of the word personal. She knocks on the door with surprising insistence, considering whose door it is, and it seems to buckle under her fist.
“Yes? What?” The muffled voice sounds strange to her: Al, but not Al.
“It’s me, Al.”
He opens the door, first just a crack, then fully. “Sera,” he says, straightening his back and his face. “It’s…” He looks around, presumably for a clock, but fails to find one. “It’s late,” he asserts, as if the absence of a clock is a sure sign of lateness.
She ducks past him into the room. “Sorry, Al. Good night, lots of tricks,” she lies, digging from her purse the seven hundred odd dollars she has—most of it from the overpriced head—and handing it to him. “I think things are picking up.”
He doesn’t respond, just takes the money silently and puts his finger to his lips, apparently listening for something. She notices a film of sweat on him, and it worries her. She suddenly does not want to be alone with him. She feels weak in the knees.
Standing next to his bed, he looks at her and with one finger still on his lips beckons her with the other. His single ring dully reflecting a forty-watt nightstand light. Where’s all your jewelry, Al?
Okay. She has no choice. Five minutes ago she thought about this contingency when she hinted to Ben that her errand might drag on a bit longer than expected. Now she’s amazed at how much she doesn’t want to do this; suddenly she doesn’t feel all that numb. Dropping her purse on the foot of the bed, she begins unbuttoning her blouse.
But he waves her off, shakes his head vigorously, and whispers, “Have you told anyone that I am here?”
Confused, frightened by his strange behavior, and maybe just a little miffed despite herself, she wants to say, Who am I gonna tell, Al? Who the fuck’s supposed to care? but she says, “No.” She stands, waiting, unsure of whether or not she should continue to undress, braced for his fury if she guesses wrong.
The sweat is pouring from him. He wants to ask her. He wants to tell her. He really, really wants to beg her to stay and listen with him, to tell him why these strangers in the room next to his are talking about him. It would be so easy: Do you hear that? But she wouldn’t. She hates him, he knows, and she would pretend to hear nothing. He is completely alone. Now, of all times, he cannot afford to appear weak in her eyes. “Go, Sera,” he whispers. Then, because he has to, again in a louder voice: “Go, Sera. Stay at home. I will call you tomorrow.”
She stares at him with growing concern, a messy concern for both tormented and tormentor, an amalgamated concern for everyone who is fucked, whether they know it or not. He reminds her of the boy throwing up in the corner of the cheap motel room—a lifetime and some harmless bruises ago. She wants him to hit her, to be himself, but this time she wants it for him instead of for her. “Are y…,” she starts, but is cut off with a frantic motion.
He turns to her and says patiently, in a low voice, “Sera, please go. This is very important to both of us. I am setting up a very big deal. This is about our trick, and I must listen.”
Hit me! Fuck me! Give me something familiar. Please! Unable to comprehend, her feet feel frozen, until he again waves her away with a ridiculous, almost slapstick gesture, sweat flying from his head as it shakes vigorously. She leaves his room, unwittingly popping a button as she undoes her undressing.
As things happen, with the occasional seemliness of fate, Sera’s one night invitation to Ben evolves into an unspoken arrangement between the two of them. Sera, thirsty beyond even her own reckoning for companionship, has easily taken to his comfortable, accepting manner, his subtle, sincere devotion. By not verbalizing any definite plan, she is able to maintain the confirmed independence of those who live alone, while satisfying the craving for friendship which has gone mostly unanswered in her and is now burning with heretofore unsuspected intensity.
Beyond these universal needs he is functioning as a catalyst of her catharsis. He is a lever with which she is attempting to impel Al from her soul, for she has learned that to run away is nothing more than a quick fix. Ben, hours, days, and nights all blending together for him, is willingly manipulated into the situation; indeed, to him it is a most benign manipulation, and he is inwardly grateful for being given a function to serve.
Sera has not called Al, now to her an unknown quantity, volatile and strange. Nor did she respond two days ago to the ringing of her phone, this an impulse which seized her as quickly as the harsh ring had startled her; they had been sitting on the floor, and Ben had just grabbed her knee as part of a punch line delivery. There were only three rings, one series, nothing since, and she finds this protracted silence terrifying, knowing as she does that he will soon have to be dealt with. Perhaps even now he lurks, scorned and desperate, outside her window. Ignorant of the menace—she has kept Al a secret—Ben, who is often too drunk to walk, much less fight, still manages to passively impart to her a sort of vanilla intrepidity; or does he simply conjure it from where it sleeps within her?
For three days she and Ben have spent their time in one long, life-reviewing conversation, punctuated by excursions out for food, liquor, and a change of clothes for Ben. They have neither confessed their mutual infatuation nor continued the sexual relationship that might have been started in his motel room on the night of their first meeting. This afternoon, upon waking from a nap and finding him watching her from the corner of her bedroom, Sera chooses to consummate their cohabitation.
“Isn’t your rent coming up at the motel?” she starts.
“Yeah, must be,” he says. “I’ve sort of lost track of time here at Hotel Sera. I’ll go take care of it today, or tonight, or whatever the next available solar segment is. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll find a real room for me? You can pick it out, a tower on the Strip.”
“What I meant was that you should bring your stuff over here. What the fuck! We’re spending all this time together as it is. There’s no reason to blow all your money on a hotel room. Face it: we’re having fun here. I think we can dispense with formality at this point. You know, Ben, if anything, I trust in your integrity completely. I want you here now. I’m not too concerned with long term plans, and as far as I can see, you don’t seem to have any. Are we gonna screw around like kids? This is what I want. Why don’t you go get your stuff?”
Ben wants her to be right, but he also knows that he’s been drinking carefully, very measured, and she hasn’t seen him at his worst; that can’t go on. The closer he gets to her, the deeper he falls for her, the more he thinks that this might be a mistake. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t start anything with this girl. Things are set nicely for him to curl up and die as a stranger in Las Vegas, just like he planned. Why should he do it in this girl’s lap. She shouldn’t have to see that.
“Don’t you think that you’ll get a little bored living with a drunk?” he tries. “You haven’t seen the worst of it yet. I knock things over. I throw up all the time. It’s a miracle that I’ve felt so good these last few days. You’re like some sort of antidote that mixes with the liquor and keeps me in balance, but that won’t last forever. You’ll get very tired of it very quickly.” His eyes fix on a black dot, just a few feet from his corner. It is a spider, suspended on a single strand of either an old or future web, swaying with the currents of the room. This appears to be its
only movement, so the spider may in fact be dead. He returns to her, mouth set defiantly: wake up, sister.
But she is determined. “Okay, so then you can move to a hotel, and I’ll go back to my glamorous life of being alone. The only thing that I have to come home to now is a bottle of Listerine to wash the taste of come out of my mouth. I’m tired of being alone… that’s what I’m tired of. Jesus Christ! Look at you! You look like you’re about to drop dead. I want you here with me, and all you want to do is crawl off into a dark motel room. I can’t face worrying about you. We gotta decide this right now, before we go any further. You either stay here with me, or I can’t see you anymore.” She wonders if she should tell him about Al. She’s hoping to deal with him in his suite, and let it all become just a story to be told later, but part of her insistence with Ben might be motivated by plain fear; she owes him more.
The room is silent as he burns under her demanding gaze. He must respond, and he hates this kind of pressure. As the quiver starts in his neck, he picks up his shaking hand and empties the cup of vodka, which he has been nursing, down his throat.
“What you don’t understand is…,” he begins, wanting to come clean with her, to tell her not to worry about the cost of the room because it will all be handled by his plastic estate; in other words, to tell her that he not only wants to crawl off into a dark motel room, but that he really does want to die there as well. But it is too much, too unkind. This isn’t what she wants to hear, and it certainly isn’t what he wants to say. No, he’s still alive and he wants to be with her. She apparently wants to be with him. So what’s the problem? He’ll spend some time here; then, when things get really bad, he’ll move to a hotel. She’ll probably be glad to get rid of him. He starts again. “You can never hassle me about drinking,” he warns.
“I understand that,” she says, nodding. “I really do understand that.” Now she is smiling. “I want to do some shopping alone. You go out for a few drinks and then get your things. Don’t hurry, and I’ll be back before you to let you in. I’ll have a key made while I’m out.”