Terminal House

by Sean Costello

  Ben wished they’d gone to McDonald’s.

  Roxanne turned her attention to the menu now, saying, “What do you recommend?”

  “Steak,” Ben said, trying to let it go. “Any kind you like. The bacon-wrapped filet melts in your mouth.”

  “Then I’ll have the filet.” She closed the menu and slid it to the edge of the table.

  Ben followed suit, saying, “It’s settled, then. Filets all around.”

  He tried to salvage the mood after that, but Roxanne was quiet now, maybe even a little annoyed. He wanted to fix it somehow, get her laughing again, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. She kept sipping her water, then glancing toward the bar, as if searching for that strutting peckerwood. She even checked her phone a couple of times, something Ben had always found rude and disrespectful, something she’d never done in his presence before.

  Inevitably, the waiter showed up again, approaching the table from behind Ben this time, tricking him into thinking Roxanne’s pleased smile was intended for him.

  Annoyed now himself, he made things worse by ordering for both of them, asking Roxanne how she wanted her steak done, not letting the kid do his job. When the kid left, Roxanne excused herself, saying she wanted to make a quick call home to see how Gram was doing.

  Feeling like an idiot, Ben watched to see where she went, afraid she was looking for the waiter. But she headed for the washroom, raising the phone to her ear as she moved out of sight. Ben tried to think of what he’d say when she got back, maybe ask how her grandmother was doing.

  But the food arrived just as she did, one of the chefs bringing it out, a chubby guy with an Italian accent who seemed to know Ben. “Good to see you again, Doctor Hunter,” the chef said. “It’s been too long.” Ben tried to be polite, but he couldn’t recall ever meeting the man. By the time the guy left, waddling penguin-like through the double kitchen doors, the tension in the booth seemed impenetrable.

  Now Roxanne said, “Gram’s fine. She took a nap and now her headache’s gone.”

  Hating the quaver in his voice, Ben said, “That’s good.”

  “She’s such a sweetheart. I’d love the two of you to meet.”

  Realizing Roxanne was being the adult now, Ben said, “I look forward to it. Maybe we can work out a lunch date, just the three of us.”

  “That would be nice.” Slicing her steak, Roxanne said, “Is everything okay, Ben?”

  He thought, Be careful. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. You just seem…out of sorts.”

  He said, “To be honest, I think the little pharmacy twerp that works my floor has been replacing my B-twelve tablets with birth control pills.”

  Roxanne laughed and Ben felt a weight lift off his chest.

  She said, “Oh, really? Feeling a tad bloated, are we?”

  He nodded, running with it, adding a flagrantly gay lilt to his voice now. “That and my nipples. You know.” He ran a hand across his chest. “So sensitive.”

  And for a while, they were okay again.

  * * *

  Roxanne said she was too full for dessert, but Ben had a bowl of butterscotch ice cream, his favorite since childhood. Russ showed up a few more times, but his behavior was more professional now—though he did flash Roxanne a flirtatious smile when he brought the ice cream, making her blush again.

  When the bill came, Roxanne offered to pick up the tab, saying she was flush now, the scholarship money allowing her to splurge a little. But Ben firmly objected, tucking his credit card into the discrete black bill folder the waiter had left. Then he excused himself, saying he had to visit the boys’ room.

  Trying to disguise his feebleness as he stood, he shuffled off to the bathroom, cursing his traitorous bladder. He’d put up with it as long as he could, but in the past few minutes that full sensation had ripened into frank discomfort, and it was either go to the can right now or wet his pants.

  Russ was on his way out of the bathroom as Ben got to the door. The kid smiled and gave him a congenial nod, holding the door open for him. The little bastard smelled like a spring breeze.

  * * *

  Russ said, “I don’t think your doctor friend likes me.”

  Roxanne could feel her face turning red again. She hated that about herself. She said, “I’m sure he likes you just fine. He’s normally sweet as can be. He just seems…I don’t know, not quite himself tonight.”

  She thought, Understatement, and watched the muscles flex in Russ’s tan forearm as he picked up Ben’s dessert dish. He caught her looking and her face grew even redder, sweat blooming on her forehead now in a prickly film.

  This guy is so dreamy.

  He tucked the bill folder under his arm and started away, his cheeks looking red now too, though it was hard to tell in the tastefully-muted ambient light.

  Then he was facing her again, saying, “I realize this is sudden, Roxanne. I mean, we barely know each other and—God, I could lose my job for this, but—”

  Touching his arm, Roxanne said, “I’d love to see you again, Russ,” relieved to be the one holding the trump card now. “Can I borrow your pen?”

  He plucked an Al’s Steakhouse ballpoint out of his vest pocket and passed it to her with a shaky hand. Roxanne laughed, the excitement making her giddy. She scribbled her number on a paper napkin and handed it to him, watching as he first made certain he could read it, then tucked it into the hip pocket of the trim black dress pants he was wearing.

  He thanked her now—and yes, he was blushing—saying he’d give her a call soon. When she tried to return the pen, he said, “Your friend’ll be needing that for the bill.”

  * * *

  Ben made a point of avoiding the mirror. He got his business done—sitting in a stall like a girl—sprinkled water on his fingers, and got the hell out of there.

  Access to the washrooms was tastefully concealed behind a series of stained-glass panels, and when Ben got to the end of them he saw the waiter at their booth again, handing something to Roxanne. It looked like a pen, and at first he thought she was being a sneak, trying to pay for the meal herself. Smiling, he started toward the booth to put a stop to it. The evening had been his idea, he should be the one footing the bill.

  But now he saw her jot something on a napkin and he froze, watching as she handed it to the waiter, the kid giving it a quick look before tucking it away. He thought, She’s giving him her number, and felt rage rise up in him like a taunted demon, and he wanted to lash out, make the kid pay for his audacity—

  Then he glanced at his hands, curled into feeble fists, and felt something fracture inside him, his impotent fury suspended on one side, some unbearable truth shedding its cloak on the other. He looked away, trying to hang on to the vitality the rage had awakened in him.

  But it was no use.

  He looked again at his hands, the bony fingers uncurling now, the action impeded by arthritis.

  Shaken, despondent, he returned to the booth, added a generous tip to the bill and asked Roxanne to drive him home. She tried to make conversation during the twenty-minute trek, and Ben did his best to play along. But he was hurt and angry…and it wasn’t long before he had no idea why.

  Roxanne pulled up in front of his apartment building and thanked him for a lovely evening. She asked if he wanted her to walk him inside and he told her he wasn’t a little girl. He struggled with his seatbelt for a weighted moment, then got it undone and heaved himself out of the car, shrugging off Roxanne’s helping hand.

  The metallic thud of the closing car door was the loneliest sound he’d ever heard.

  * * *

  Roxanne navigated the drive home through a veil of tears. Hurt and confused, she kept replaying the evening in her mind and arriving at the same bewildering conclusion: He’s jealous.

  But it didn’t make sense. Ben was four times her age, and—most of the time—the parameters of their relationship were both natural and clear. He was like a father to her, and she loved him for it.
He’d come into her life at exactly the right moment, and, perhaps because he was so much like Gramps, had slipped willingly, even gratefully, into the role. In that regard, they were a perfect fit.

  But sometimes…well, things got weird. Like the day he brought her up to meet Ely. Or that afternoon by the falls when he asked her to go steady, then wrote it off to daydreaming.

  Or tonight. Especially tonight. For a while there, she’d felt like she was out with a jealous boyfriend. It was ludicrous and deeply twisted…

  But there it was.

  No. You’re being paranoid. Ben’s not like that. Not at all.

  It was true. She was being paranoid. Ben was no more a dirty old man than she was a brain surgeon. He was always the perfect gentleman.

  It had to be something else.

  Pulling into the driveway at home, a light drizzle falling now, Roxanne wondered again if he might be having mini-strokes, like the ones Gramps had suffered before the big one took him down for good. TIAs, the doctors called them. Transient Ischemic Attacks. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation. The mini-strokes had presented differently in her grandfather—numbness on one side of his face, temporary loss of vision—but she’d looked it up on the Internet and knew TIAs could also present as confusion or flash personality changes.

  Worried now, she wondered if she should head back to the Center, insist he go to the emergency room.

  Yes, do it.

  It occurred to her then to call him first, see if she could get a sense of how he was doing. Maybe he was just having a bad day and she was fretting over nothing.

  Concern flared again when by the seventh ring he hadn’t picked up, and she pictured him lying face-down on the kitchen floor, his brain slowly dying like her grandfather’s had—

  Then he answered and she said, “Ben?” a little too stridently.

  “Roxanne! It’s so nice to hear from you.”

  She was mute for a long moment, her thought processes stalled by the sheer unexpectedness of what she was hearing. The man on the phone sounded exactly nothing like the one she’d dropped off at the Center less than a half hour before.

  “Roxanne? Still there?”

  “Yes, Ben, sorry. I guess I was…”

  “Daydreaming?” He laughed. “Don’t I know what that’s like. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “I, uh…I was just wondering how you were doing.”

  “Well, aren’t you a doll. I was just thinking about how we should celebrate your scholarship. There’s this wonderful restaurant downtown: Al’s Steakhouse. Ever heard of it?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thursday, June 29

  BEN SAID, “ELY, I’VE got a huge favor to ask.”

  Ely glared at him over her horn rims. The eagle painting was almost done—she was adding pine needles to the bird’s perch now, a repetitive task requiring her full attention—and the man was driving her crazy. She said, “Hunter, how many times do I have to tell you not to hover when I’m trying to work?”

  Curled on the couch with her reader, Roxanne stifled a laugh.

  Ben shuffled back a few steps and Ely said, “Thank you. Now what is it you want?”

  He said, “How would you feel about doing a portrait of Roxanne?”

  Roxanne flushed cherry-red.

  Ben said, “I was thinking in oil.”

  Huffing, the artist plucked the glasses off her nose, letting the neck strap take their weight. Now she turned to squint at Roxanne, as if measuring her. “And how does the young lady feel about this?”

  Roxanne stammered, clearly caught off guard, and Ely could tell he hadn’t discussed it with her yet, not at any length. He’d pulled this same sort of stunt in the seventies, after losing the girl he’d hoped to marry. He’d gone off the deep end for a while, drinking too much, smoking pot, and leading an endless parade of ‘girlfriends’ up to her Gatineau Hills lake house, trying to impress them with his edgy lesbian artist friend. He’d pester her to sketch them, nude if they’d allow it—that part she’d never complained about—then try to get into their pants in the spare bedroom in the loft. It had been as if he were trying to fuck away the heartache.

  As this recollection played out in Ely’s mind, she believed she understood what was going on between Ben and Roxanne—and she knew exactly how she was going to handle it. She loved the man like a son, always had, but he needed an awakening. And she was just the person to give it to him. He’d thank her in the end.

  A week ago, he’d come to her like a scared kid, telling her how Roxanne had turned up on his doorstep the night before, insisting he go to the emergency room. How she then tried to convince him they’d been out to dinner earlier that evening, and finally forced him to check in his wallet, where she’d seen him tuck the credit card receipt. And how his last clear recollection of that day, before Roxanne showed up at his apartment, was of the girl running up to him in the lobby to tell him about her scholarship. “And I still can’t remember having dinner with her,” he said, a bewildered glaze in his eyes. “Any of it. I’ve had memory lapses before, Ely, and we both know why. But never like this. We’re talking hours here. Hours.”

  Ely had sensed there was more to it than that, and got the full story from Roxanne later that day. They sat together by the Koi pond during the kid’s lunch break and Roxanne gave her all the grim details, culminating with Ben acting like a jilted boyfriend when he saw her flirting with the waiter.

  “Russ is a really nice guy, Ely,” Roxanne told her. “I’m going to be seeing him again, and I want Ben to like him too, you know?”

  But Ely had darker things on her mind. Never one to skirt a delicate subject, she asked Roxanne if Ben had ever made a move on her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sexually. Has the old bastard ever tried to put his hands on you?”

  “God, Ely, no. It’s not like that.”

  “What is it like, then?”

  Roxanne stared at her hands, as if searching them for answers. She said, “It’s not all the time. Only when he has these episodes. The first couple of times, I thought it was just old age, you know? My grandmother gets a little weird sometimes, too. She calls it mental doddering. But when it happens to Ben, it’s like…it’s like I’m not even there. I mean, he’s the one who’s not there. The real Ben.” She looked at Ely with genuine concern. “When it happens, I get the feeling he’s stuck somewhere in the past, and I just…provoke it somehow. Do you know what I mean?”

  Ely said, “I believe I do.”

  “But, no, he’s never even hugged me. Sometimes I hold his hand, and if we do hug, it’s always me who initiates.”

  “Word of advice? No more touching. Of any kind.”

  Roxanne nodded, but Ely could see she didn’t like it. She really did love the old boy. For all his many quirks, Ben Hunter was easy to love. Or maybe it was just an indicator of how much the girl missed her grandfather. Probably an equal measure of both.

  It was clear Ben hadn’t told the girl about his Alzheimer’s, and she was betting pride would prevent him from ever telling her. But Ely didn’t feel it was her place to do so in his stead. At least not yet.

  As if to confirm the assumption, Roxanne told her she’d finally convinced him to go to the ER that night, saying the doctor told him the spells were most likely the result of a drug interaction, and suggested he stop taking his anti-depressant medication for a few weeks to see if it made any difference.

  Ely said, “Were you in the room when the doctor said all this?”

  “No. Ben asked me to wait in the lounge.” She smiled. “I don’t think he wanted me to see him with his shirt off. Why do you ask?”

  Ely said, “Just curious,” and thought, Hunter, you old liar. Get ready for a good swift kick in the balls.

  * * *

  Roxanne was saying something now, and Ely tuned her in.

  “I’d love you to paint me, Ely, but I’m sure you’re already very busy. And I’m not—”

  Ely raised a hand, cutt
ing the girl off, a plan of action taking shape in her mind. “Actually, sweetie, I’d love to paint you. You’re a classic beauty. And the light worships you.” She glanced at Ben, the man grinning like a dummy now, and said, “You know what? Why don’t I paint the two of you, together,” stifling a laugh when the girl’s face lit up and Hunter’s almost slid off his skull.

  They were all talking at the same time now, Roxanne saying, “Oh, Ely, that would be so great,” Ben saying, “No, I don’t want to be in it,” Ely taking the girl’s side, saying, “Come on, Hunter, don’t be a spoilsport.”

  They bickered back and forth for a while, until Ely said, “All right. If the big baby doesn’t wanna be in the painting, the big baby doesn’t have to be in the painting. God, Hunter, you’re such an old woman.”

  Roxanne took one last shot, glancing doe-eyed at Ben with her bottom lip stuck out, and Ben said, “Tuck in that lip, young lady, or a bird’s gonna come along and land on it. Maybe an eagle.”

  Now Ely said to Roxanne, “Okay, honey, forget about him. Pass me that camera off the table over there, would you?” Roxanne brought it over, an old Nikon SLR with a big portrait lens. Ely took it and told her to go stand by the wall facing the windows.

  While Roxanne got positioned, Ely opened the bottom drawer of her paint cabinet and retrieved a special lens with a circular cut-out on the side, which she attached to the end of the portrait lens. The cut-out contained a precision mirror assembly allowing her to aim the camera straight ahead, but shoot subjects off to one side. She’d used it back in her portraits-for-money days to capture bratty kids who didn’t want their picture taken. Great on nude beaches, too.

  Ready to go, Ely backed her chair away from the easel and turned to face Roxanne, the girl fidgeting now, Ben telling her to relax, she was gonna love having her portrait painted.

  Ely made a few practiced adjustments to the camera, then said, “Okay, young lady, now Ben is right. I want you to relax. All we’re after here is a few preliminary poses. Casual stuff to give me a sense of how I’m going to paint you.” She snugged her eye to the viewfinder and took a couple of shots, saying, “Hunter here tells me you’re going into environmental studies.”