by Ron Hevener
“I need to call Aunt Sarah,” Ben said, and Wembly gestured to a phone. “Do you want to say anything to her?” Ben asked.
“No, Benjamin, I’ll fix myself a nightcap. And you?” he asked, flattering Ben with the idea that he might know something of how one finishes off a fine day.
A few minutes later, if he had known he could have had a J & B, he’d have taken it straight.
CHAPTER 11
Dirty Secrets
Studio lights, or is it her questions, are drying him out and he reaches for another glass. “Excuse me,” he says. “Can we take a break?”
“Certainly, she says, looking off camera. “David?” she asks the camera man. “Do you think we can take a break here? I could use one.”
“Sure thing, babe,” a voice from the blackness says. “Everybody! Let’s take five.”
“Are you OK, Ben?” she asks.
“Fine, Diane,” he says. “I just need to stretch my legs, that’s all.”
“Me, too,” she says, setting aside her notes, which, instinctively he scans, and finds her way to the patio.
“I don’t trust that woman, Bennie!” It’s Sidney Leigh, flustered and sweating little beads above her lips as she rushes over to him. “Aren’t you scared?”
“She’s leading up to something,” he says, “but, I can’t tell what. She’s being too nice.”
What makes anybody think she has to be nice?
“OK! Break’s over!” David the cameraman shouts, and Diane returns with an aura of Carlton 100s.
“Better?” she smiles to Ben.
“Much. How’re we doing?” he wants to know.
“Fine,” she says. “When the camera starts rolling again, I’ll pick up where we left off.” Smooth as a filly rounding the far turn with a ten-length lead, she assumes the exact position, expression and tilt of her head abandoned only moments ago. “Growing up, would you say you were something of a…playboy?” She chuckles slightly, flirtatiously.
“Spoiled? Rich? Irresponsible?”
She doesn’t comment, but, instead, drives on, as if she hasn’t even heard him. “Then,” she pauses that famous pause, “your grandfather dies and you have all this money. Then—something happens. Do you remember what happened, Ben?”
He decides to chart his own course now. “I had no idea he had so many investments. At that time in my life, I couldn’t imagine my grandpa—or anyone from Steitzburg, for that matter—knowing so many people from such faraway places.”
“Oh?” She wonders where he’s taking their conversation and glances quickly at her notes.
“Well, I mean, Steitzburg is a small town, Diane. We’re not exactly used to sheikhs and princes showing up here.”
“Sheikhs? Princes? Ezra was a smart cookie,” she laughs, trying to reclaim the camera.
“Maybe he just found a way to balance the scales, Diane. Is that such a bad thing? Maybe it took a long time, but he proved being turned down by a bank doesn’t mean the end of the world. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would hope not,” she says, asking herself where this is all going.
“After Grandpa, I grew up fast. Up to then, Diane, I was a kid with a car and a girlfriend. I had no idea what BG Investments was all about. No idea how far it went. You could have told me I had shares in a company in Africa or the Middle East or Latvia and I’d have laughed in your face! Wembly took care of those things”
“Wembly DeCroy, you mean.”
“After my grandpa died, Wembly guided me, yes, and Theodore handled the legal end. It turns out, I was in for some pretty big surprises.”
“What kind of surprises, Ben?”
“Well, the thing that consumed my life.”
“OK”, she coaxes.
“Diane, have you ever heard the expression Acres of Diamonds in your own back yard?”
Nodding slightly, letting him know this is exactly what she wants to hear, she lets him finish.
“Believe it, Diane…acres of diamonds.”
* * *
New York City
Ben hung up the phone.
Ezra.
Dead.
Why now, God? Ben asked. I can’t tell him what I want to! I can’t ever say how much I need him—how much I love him! I’m scared. Scared!
“Don’t worry about anything, Lucky One.” That’s what Ezra would say. But now he was gone!
Wembly knew. Without asking, without hearing the words, just from watching the droop of Ben’s head, the silent hanging up of the receiver and how silently Ben turned away from the phone, the bearer of bad news. He knew. “He is gone?” Wembly heard himself asking, but, really, more like confirming.
Unable to breathe, Ben nodded, and went to the couch.
“You must go back,” Wembly said, to Ben’s silence. “To whom did you speak?”
“Aunt Sarah. She said he was asking for me.” The burn of heartbreak couldn’t stop the tears. “He must have forgot he sent me here!”
“It’s OK,” and Ben felt Wembly’s reassuring arms around him. “You are not alone. Remember that. Always,” he said, pulling Ben’s hair and petting his head. “You are not alone.”
“I have to get out of here!” Ben managed to say. Tell me it’s a dream! Make it go away so I can wake up. Can you do that? Can idols do that? Can they?
“I must call Theodore,” Wemby said. “He must be notified immediately. And I’ll come with you.”
“No…no. I’ll be OK. I,” Ben took a few breaths, “I knew it was going to happen. I should have known he was sending me away so I wouldn’t be around—so he and Sarah could be alone.”
“It’s almost midnight,” Wembly said. “It can be dangerous out there.”
“I know. I’ve been here before.”
“For you,” Wembly said, handing Ben a key to the store. “Find your freedom and do what you must.”
*
What he had to do was wash off the feeling of Death. Erase it. Flip to a channel where Death was the farthest thing from his mind. Grandpa…dead?
He knew where he was going. He knew the street by heart, ever since the first time he had found it, and he could have found it blindfolded ever since. “Ninty-eighth & Broadway,” he said to the cabbie: “The Temple.”
New York City nightclubs come and go faster than a cab can get you there. But The Temple had a staying power like no other. This one—like the woman it belonged to lock, stock and barrel—didn’t care what anybody said, thought or did…as long as they kept coming.
And they did. They came from high society and they came from low. Mostly, they came for the music, and the secret rooms where even the most wicked and depraved among them could count on never being stopped, never being scolded…never being found out.
Judges…lawyers by the hundreds…dealers…cops…senators…congressmen…the high and mighty and the ones they pushed around. Girls. Boys. Anything you wanted. All in one, easy-to-find place…where the beat of humping, thumping music covered up everything. Everything, that is, except the anger of the one for whom it meant everything.
Night after night, they played…night after night, they danced like the anonymous, sinuous, writhing of a pit of nameless, faceless reptiles. And night after night, when the clock struck twelve, a single spotlight would hit the stage…the crowd would silence and step back for a black-haired woman dressed in a beaded red gown covered in jewels from her necklaces to the golden bracelets on her arms and the rings on every one of her fingers with their perfectly polished nails. Accustomed to this intrusion on their debauchery, and long-since knowing even the slightest disturbance or show of disrespect would mean their immediate and unceremonious removal in front of everyone, they stood as if in homage. It had been like this so long, the performance was part of New York City’s nightlife now. If you wanted to make connections, you came here. If you wanted to stay, you shut up and listened to the gospel songs of Ruth Anne Hoover.
He listened, too, that night. Just another stranger in the crowd, Ben won
dered what she would think if she knew he was there—if she knew he had been there before—if she knew how much she fascinated him.
Not a sound came from the crowd as she sang. So sad, so mournful. Not at all like the selfish, mean-spirited woman he so often felt she must be.
Come to me, all you sinners! All you troubled souls! Gather ’round and hear my song!
There was an energy here. He could feel it—an energy that was part of mankind since the first baby took its first breath. Energy in the nameless, faceless men and women in this great big city. People laughing! Crying! Screaming! Bawling for life—balling for life! Ruthie knew that energy and she knew it had two sides. She knew the good, and it had never done anything good for her. She knew the bad, and decided it was the only thing she could depend on.
There in the blackness, drowning in an orgy of thick, musty smells familiar and strange to him at the same time, Ben felt only one desire going through him: flesh—blood-pumping, pulsing flesh—the one absolute thing Death could never have.
Turning sideways, he bumped against a mesmerized body, then another; he pushed—two women. Let me breathe! Let me breathe! Pushing, pressing, bumping one mindless soul into the next—pressing, squeezing arms, legs, gut—onto the street outside again…and running. Running away. Running as fast as he could away from the followers of the woman in red under the hot white spotlight of his longing…of his memory without her. Wasn’t I good enough? Wasn’t I bad enough?
Into the night, he ran. Away from death, away from suspicions he couldn’t explain, all the way to the arms of a 42nd Street porn shop with legs wrapping tight around him and a mouth washing away everything but naked skin enough to make a scared and lonely boy forget everything.
He found a booth, fumbled for the slot machine and pulled quarters from the pants of the new DeCroy suit that was his armor now. What happened to the country boy that was him until tonight? Gone! Tossed in a corner with the ring of a phone call. Easing quarters into the slot, he picked up a different phone this time. Don’t let me go, he prayed. Don’t let me be alone. Please. Let her be sexy. Please let her be beautiful.
She wasn’t.
As the curtain spread open like her skinny legs, the woman on the bed wore nothing but an “I’ve seen it all” expression, remote and disinterested. Looking straight at him, naked-real in black heels and a red scarf, she rubbed her hands over worn out breasts, peaked with nipples dark and hard she had pinched to look excited.
Guiding him deeper, nipples flowing to a belly slightly rounded, the belly of a beer drinker, her hand rested on her most distinguishing feature: plush and sleek with oil—for she had long since lost wet and natural desire—the outline of her hairy crotch was shaved into the inviting shape of a heart.
Skillfully, she picked up her phone and balanced it between an ear and a somewhat fleshy shoulder. She didn’t mind being soft. Men liked her that way and she knew it. The other thing she knew they liked was how she handled a cigarette. She could tell. She could tell a lot of things. She could tell by the way their eyes drifted away when she used her mouth on a long cigarette, like it was a man’s dry cock—a man she would slaughter and suck dry, throwing away, greedy for the next, in an endless orgy of smoke. Men/sex/smoke. Get them. Use them. Throw them away. “My name’s Valentine…ya got five minutes. Whatcha wanna see?” She laughed at herself, jaded and far away.
Nothing.
The quiet type, she guessed. Why did they always come to her? Well, she’d fix him. Valentine could fix anybody. She fixed what ailed neighbors, friends, teachers, old boyfriends. Even a new one now and then. It didn’t matter who. Men behind glass walls couldn’t reach her heart. Even women dressed like men couldn’t. She laughed at her heart, so neatly shaved. Some wore them on their sleeves. “Well, Kid?”
Eyes locking into his, she made the first move. Experienced, know it all, and sure, she worked her cigarette. Slowly…very slowly…sucking. Looking right at him while she did it.
Get into his eyes, kind of glazed over. He’s loving it, she thought, oblivious to any possibility that they might be tears. Smugly holding his gaze, she took the cigarette out of her mouth, threw a kiss with a cool toss of her head—then (He had never imagined such a thing) jammed it, filter-end first, deep into her slick, oily cunt and kept it there. Like a skinny tampon, too puny to fill the hole. He laughed, in spite of himself, and she smiled. See? She knew she could fix him.
Cigarette still burning, she pulled it out, took a drag, and whispered, “Hadda do sumphin’ ta loosen ya up,” she said. “Make yourself comt’able, baby…I’m going to.” Gracefully, she lifted both legs now, pulling wide the lips of her tunnel of love, as she called it, she ran thick fingers up and down herself, petting everything sensitive in little circles that felt so good.
Supremely in control, she shoved a finger up her ass. “Ohhhhhhh….”
He jerked.
“Ohhhh…. This could be you, baby,” she moaned, “if the price is right.” Oh, I’m good, she thought to herself.
Shaking his head side to side, Ben managed a grin. She wasn’t the only one who could fake it.
“No ma’am,” he said deeply, leaning closer to the glass for a better look. Not knowing where he found the worldliness to say such a thing, or what she thought he was going to do, he whispered back, “Wanna know why?” He stared at her crotch. “Because…Miss Valentine…” the hot liquid of his answer poured over her, “I’m a lot more than an asshole.”
He laughed. Sharp. Derisive.
She yanked out her finger—fast, wanting to say Get out of here, fuck-face! I hate you! Grabbing for the curtain as if to cover herself, she squawked, “Oh, yeah?” she screeched, not nearly as secure of herself as just a few minutes ago, “Well, if you think you can do any better, baby…show me that ass!”
He stood then, cold. Slowly, hanging up the phone between them, he stepped back as if to go. But where to? The bright streets? No. It was dark here. Safe here. With a valentine that couldn’t touch him, couldn’t hurt him, couldn’t abandon him like grandfathers, or mothers or anybody else when he really started to love them.
Here, it didn’t matter. Nothing he could do or feel would shock—no one would say he was less of a man for crumbling inside, so lost. No one could know, here, as far away from a funeral as it was possible to get, soaked in the farthest thing from death he knew, that he had never needed more than now, to feel wanted.
Cold-blooded quarters slipped into the slot.
Suddenly hers, he shucked his jacket casually across the lone chair beside him. From his tiny stage, not a move wasted, he pulled at his tie and dropped it loose.
First one cuff link…then the other…pulled off. Kissed. Laid down.
Slowly. One at a time. Buttons opened revealing a chest he was proud of, he moved to the beat of a native rhythm played for ears growing warmer as he swayed.
He undressed like he would for a doctor, but in a way none but the most perverted of doctors would allow…hands finding the bulge in his pants and slowly, lovingly circling.
He rubbed. Hypnotically, he unbuckled his belt like he had done a thousand times before, but never like this. Pulling the strip of leather across his mouth, over his neck, between his legs…back…forth…a saw cutting deep into him, cutting, cutting into what hurt the most and then dropping it to the filthy floor at his feet.
One, then two, then three…the buttons of his fly opened, spreading pants that hugged him like a lover. Don’t go…don’t go!
Bumping and grinding like he had seen strippers do on stolen Saturday nights like this with his buddies, his muscles rippling like water, he ran beautiful hands down over narrow hips, feeling her eyes telling him what to do, and doing whatever he knew she wanted.
Get out of those pants and turn around. I want to see your butt. Hook a thumb around your underwear. Both hands. Both sides. Move like you’re walking, but don’t go anywhere. Don’t you dare go anywhere. Move that body of yours and make me hungry, even a woman who thou
ght she was numb to all this. Are you sweating because you’re scared…or is it because I’m watching you?
Pull down that underwear! Show me those cheeks! Up. Down. Pull it tight up your ass and bend over. Spread ’em!
Turning with a smile from out of nowhere, cock hard and ready, he faced her. Smiling with torture, throwing back his head like an animal without thought, reason or pride, bursting, steaming hot, he fell against the window of glass separating them and splashed into black, endless space.
Finally, he could forget. Life was pulsing all the way through him. Real. Raw. Life!
*
If Ben was followed on the way back to DeCroy’s, he didn’t turn around to look. If he had done so, he might have recognized Willie not far away. Willie crossing the streets behind him. Willie in the shadows. No matter where he had gone, he wouldn’t have been alone in the city that could lose a soul without ever feeling it. The apartment was silent when he returned. The guest room was waiting.
By morning, breakfast was ready: juice, eggs and toast. Wembly was saying he would be there for the funeral and they parted company, and the road from New York to Pennsylvania, Stietzburg and to Mattison Farm had never seemed longer or more distant.
* * *
Pennsylvania Dutch Country
There is a peculiar kind of silence in someone’s house when they’re gone. Almost as if the house is aware of the absence, and waiting for what might come next. Almost as if the walls are listening to every thought and every heartbeat.
“What was it like?” he asked Sarah.
“Peaceful, Bennie,” she managed to say, after a while.
“Pain?” he wanted to know.
She shook her head, no. “He was on so much medication. Bennie.” There was a quietness about her now, the sense of calm when one has taken love to its finish, and reading his thoughts, she smiled. “He said he loved you. He said,” she paused, “a lot of things.”