Ben Soul

by Richard George

could cut through the noise of large lecture crowds or raging jackhammers. Dr. Erma Geddon, at fifty, packed a lot of personal dynamic power into her very small package. She was notorious for working six eighteen hour days a week, with Sundays set aside for twelve-hour stints of volunteer work in soup kitchens, missions for the derelict, teaching immigrants English, and other good works.

  Emma answered several questions about the library, especially her work with the children’s summer program. She was a little puzzled; Dr. Geddon could have asked these questions over the telephone without bringing Emma into her office.

  “Emma,” Dr. Geddon said, suddenly very serious, “how did you become pregnant?”

  Emma stared at her supervisor. How on earth had she figured out Emma was pregnant when Emma had just learned it for herself?

  “Please don’t deny that you are pregnant,” Dr. Geddon went on. “I could tell it the moment I saw you in the grocery last Saturday.” Vaguely Emma remembered waving to Dr. Geddon across the produce section.

  “I won’t deny it,” Emma said. “I just confirmed it with my doctor a few days ago.”

  “And when were you going to mention it to me?”

  “I hadn’t thought that through, yet.” Emma wrung her hands in her lap. She wished she’d worn gloves with this dress. Her palms were sweating.

  “The County Library System is quite severe about expectant mothers working with children. This is even more the case with unmarried mothers. I ask again, how did you become pregnant?”

  Emma choked and coughed. She spoke in a tight dry voice that strained her throat. “It was the result of a chance encounter on the day of the Great Temblor.” She cleared her throat. “It was my first such adventure.”

  “And, I hope, your last.” Dr. Geddon frowned severely. “Will the father support the child?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how to get in touch with him,” Emma said. She heard the whine in her voice. She swallowed hard. “It was, as I say, a chance encounter.”

  “No doubt brought about by the stress of going through the Great Temblor.” Dr. Geddon nodded. “You are probably only one of many to succumb to the stress of that event by seeking more intimate than usual companionship.” Dr. Geddon folded her hands together, raised her index fingers in a steeple and touched those fingers to her lips.

  “Do you intend to find the father?”

  “I’ll inquire,” Emma said. “I don’t have much hope of finding him.”

  “Good luck with that,” Dr. Geddon said. “Now, as to what we do with you, your work with the children’s program is, of course, no longer possible. You would be too scandalous for our rather conservative parental population.”

  Emma shrank in on herself. She waited for Dr. Geddon to go on, to fire her. Dr. Geddon appraised Emma. “I think,” she said, “you’d best take up another position.”

  “I don’t know where to go,” Emma said. “I’ve always been a librarian.”

  “And a very fine one, too. The children’s program you’ve developed is an excellent example of your work. Yet, I must put you where you won’t shock your clientele, or worse, their parents.”

  Emma looked up. Tears trembled at the corners of her eyes. “Do you know of a place that’s open?”

  “I would like to re-assign you to the University Library. We manage it under contract to the University. Would you like to work there?”

  “Yes,” Emma said. “Yes, indeed.” The commute was a little longer, but if that proved onerous, Emma could always move. The University also had a day care center that provided discount rates to University employees and contract employees.

  “Then we’ll arrange it to start next week. Good luck with your new position.” Dr. Geddon waved her hand.

  Emma recognized a dismissal. She stood, clutching her purse, and thought about bending over the desk to shake her supervisor’s hand. She realized the impracticality of their arms bridging that vast distance, so she smiled, instead, and said, “Thank you, Dr. Geddon, for being so understanding.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Do not mistake my understanding for approval of what you’ve done. I knew your mother well, and know how stressful this would be for her, if she knew.”

  Emma kept her knowledge of her mother’s behavior to herself. No need to shock Dr. Geddon any more than she had.

  “I am glad that you will take on the burden of your action, and bring this child to term. If you decide to keep it, be as good a mother as your own mother was. Now, goodbye.”

  Emma left the supervisor’s office with a lightened heart. She reported to the University library at the beginning of the next week, and, at the allotted time, Notta Freed was born in the stacks between moldering volumes of obscure Victorian poetry and mildewed heaps of turn-of-the-century cycling periodicals.

  What Kind of Fool Was He?

  Thinking himself several kinds of fool, Dickon followed Vin out the door, admiring the fit of his jeans while berating himself for taking such a chance. He was amazed to discover he was trembling as he walked beside Vin, his briefcase firmly in front of his telltale bulge.

  The sexual encounter was not, as Dickon would later realize, much more than a kind of mutual masturbation. It was the emotional release that Dickon wondered about. A lifetime spent resisting this truth had not prepared him for the rightness of man on man sex. Forever after, even in his bitterest and darkest moments, Dickon could hearken back to this moment of liberation, a small sweaty encounter in a drab dormitory room in mid-afternoon.

  Dickon pursued the connection well beyond that afternoon, of course. He slipped from liberation to infatuation to love in about twenty-four hours. Vin promised to see him again, and did meet him for dinners Dickon provided and hasty sex in odd corners of bathrooms and alleyways. Dickon was too naïve to notice Vin did not return any affection, that it was always sex between them, mechanical on Vin’s part, passionate on Dickon’s. Nonetheless, Dickon had his season of euphoria. Despite all that followed, he remembered the time as a glorious episode in his mundane life. Then Vanna contacted Chief Inspector Pryor.

  Dickon was sitting in the Eleemosynary Eel, hoping Vin might drop by. It had been three days since he had seen Vin. Father Roman Hands surprised him by dropping into the seat next to him.

  “Forget we had a staff meeting this afternoon?” the Father asked him. Dickon blushed.

  “Yes,” he said. “I forgot, completely.”

  Father Hands nodded. “Been a bit distracted, haven’t you.”

  Dickon felt a cold chill start at his tailbone that crept up his spine.

  “He isn’t worth it, you know,” Father Hands went on. Father Hands studied the table in front of him. He wanted to allow Dickon some time to get past his shock that someone had found him out.

  “I…” Dickon coughed. He cleared his throat.

  “I know what’s been going on,” Father Hands said. “You may think you’ve been discreet, but I have contacts in certain clubs. One of them recognized you. Recognized Vin, too.”

  Dickon was rigid with embarrassment and fear. His voice shook when he spoke. “What are you going to do?” he choked out.

  “About you? Nothing.” Father Hands looked at Dickon with great compassion. “I’m willing to consider the whole matter an aberration brought on by grief over your marriage breaking up. You’re not the first assistant I’ve had who has strayed, one way or another.” He smiled kindly at Dickon.

  “You will, of course, not see the man again,” Father Hands said with steel authority in his voice. “My source will remain discreet out of his own need for discretion,” he went on. “I’m afraid, however, Vin’s role in life is entirely too public now.” Father Hands drew a newspaper clipping from within his cassock.

  “Here,” he said. “Read this.” Dickon took the clipping and read it slowly.

  Hustler Arrested

  The City, July 23, 1978

  Police today arrested a
male prostitute for soliciting a policeman in a restroom at City Hall. “Bold as brass, he was,” Chief Inspector Polk N. Pryor, the arresting officer, said. “Touched me inappropriately, in front of a witness.” Chief Inspector Pryor identified the man as Vincent Decatur, of the City, and discovered, upon booking him, that he was on probation for similar offenses in the past. Chief Inspector Pryor did not identify the witness. “He’ll spend a few years in City Jail now,” Chief Inspector Pryor said. “One more pervert off the street.”

  “I need to go to him,” Dickon said, and half rose from the table.

  “You do not. By no means will you go anywhere near him, not if you value your career.”

  “Jesus said something about visiting the imprisoned was like visiting Jesus himself.”

  “He’ll have spiritual guidance, if he’ll accept it. You don’t understand, do you?”

  “Understand what?”

  “Vin Decatur’s a male prostitute, pure and simple.”

  “A male prostitute? Vin?” Dickon’s chest was tight, as though a boa constrictor was squeezing him.

  “Yes. My discrete contact says Vin’s been a working rent boy for at least five years in the City.”

  “I had asked him to move in with me. He was thinking about it.”

  “Be glad he didn’t move in. How much did you pay him?”

  “I didn’t. I bought him a few meals, a few drinks, that’s all. No cash exchanged hands. Not even expensive gifts. I don’t have the money for that.”

  “You’re probably the only