“Holy— Was that…?”
Ben hit the rewind button and Plant spun the mic at exaggerated speed, the shot cutting to the front of the stage now and all those excited young faces in the pit, long hair flailing. Now the video paused, obscuring the image—then flickered ahead in slow motion, closing on two shaggy heads partially hidden by the monitors, faceless at first, then rising up in unison in a transported bounce, shining faces suddenly visible, at once familiar and long forgotten.
Ray said, “Jesus Christ…that’s us.”
Then he closed his eyes.
* * *
Ben kissed his old friend on the forehead, startled now by a ferocious banging at the door, and an urgent voice over the PA system.
“Hunter, what the hell are you up to in there?”
It was Hicks, the CEO.
Ben felt Ray’s neck for a pulse and found none. He said, “I love you, man,” and unlocked the theater door.
CHAPTER TEN
SHADOWED BY A SURLY security guard, Hicks led Ben to his office on the main floor of the admin building, tugging him along by the sleeve until Ben jerked his arm away. Without a word, Hicks dismissed the guard and opened the office door, indicating the chair in front of his desk as the lights came on. “Sit,” he said, and Ben did, an acid mix of grief and dread churning in his guts.
Shrugging out of his overcoat now, Hicks shook his head, his corned-beef complexion darkening to an unhealthy plum color. Watching him, Ben entertained the slender hope the son of a bitch would have a coronary right here in his richly-appointed inner sanctum.
No such luck.
Hicks strode into the space behind his desk, draped his coat over the back of his antique-leather executive chair, and lobbed the key to his two-hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes SLR onto the desk. Adjusting his suit coat, he eased himself into the chair with practiced elegance, steepling his fingers under his chin, looking directly at Ben now. Angering Hicks further, Ben held the man’s laser gaze without flinching, thinking, If looks could kill, I’d already be dead.
Hicks said, “Do you have any idea the kind of trouble you’re in?”
Ben said nothing.
“You’d better talk to me, old man, because I am this close to picking up the phone and calling the RCMP. That was murder you committed in there, and I’m telling you right now, the Mounties aren’t going to give a rarefied fuck who you are or who you think you are, you’re going to spend the rest of your miserable life in prison.”
Ben thought, Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke, and grinned, knowing exactly how he was going to handle this. He said, “So call them.”
Hicks was on his feet now. “You think this is a joke?”
Ben reached across the desk and slid the phone toward Hicks, using his free hand to palm the man’s car key.
Turning that nasty plum color again, Hicks picked up the receiver. “You think I’m screwing around?” He switched the unit to speaker, dialed 411 and waited, saying, “Ottawa,” and “No,” to the computerized prompts. When he said, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Ben said, “But you might want to reconsider.”
Hicks glared at him, apparently determined to continue—but something in Ben’s calm gaze backed him down. He cut the connection, but held onto the receiver, saying, “And why would I do that?”
“You know goddamn well why. Now sit.”
Hicks cradled the receiver and sat, confirming a suspicion Ben had harbored for several years. He thought, You bastard, I own you now.
Ben said, “Do you recall a fellow by the name of Samuel Cleary?” and watched Hicks’s mouth drop open like the hatch on a garbage chute. “Old classmate of yours, if I’m not mistaken. Gambling problem?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I believe you do. I noticed it about a year after you took over for Robb Flemming as CEO. Decent man, Robb. Shame about his heart. It struck me as a little extravagant, you know, nine-hundred-thousand dollars over a ten-month period for ‘physician recruitment’. The checks made out to Cleary and Associates. I expect a quick accounts-payable audit would clear this up. How much did old Sammy-boy kick back to you, Clifford? Fifty percent? Seventy five?”
Hicks started to object, then slumped in his chair. “Why didn’t you expose me back then?”
“Because I wasn’t certain. And we were facing enough controversy over the Euthanasia Foundation. I was afraid a scandal like this would bring it all crashing down.”
“And now?”
“An even trade. You clean this up, I take it to the grave. Assuming you’re not still embezzling.”
Hicks shook his head. “Sam’s dead now. Brain tumor. The prick threatened my family, Hunter. I had no choice.”
Rising, Ben said, “There’s always a choice, Clifford. Always.”
Hicks said, “Easy for you to say,” and got to his feet. “All right, you win. Now get the hell out of my office so I can sort this out and maybe get home before sunrise. And if you ever pull a stunt like this again—”
“It’ll never happen again,” Ben said, bone-tired now, content to let the prick have the last word. Turning to leave, he said, “He was my best friend, Clifford, and he begged me to do it. And don’t worry, I had him fill out the proper forms. I left the box for the technician’s name blank. All you’ve gotta do is fill it in. And please, see that his remains are treated with respect. He was a better man than both of us.” He made his way to the door now, droop-shouldered with sadness and fatigue. Before leaving, he said, “And Cliff?”
“What?”
“In the future, try not to be such an asshole."
* * *
Still fully dressed, Ben lay in bed and closed his eyes, as exhausted as he’d ever been. He thought of Ray, the way his eyes had lit up when he saw their teenage selves grooving to the great Led Zeppelin, thinking the timing couldn’t have been better.
And in a fast-forward reel of comic vignettes, he relived some of the sidesplitting stunts Ray had pulled in those days: coming out of a gas station bathroom with the leading edge of a roll of toilet paper stuffed down the back of his jeans, the roll unspooling through the open doorway, Ray feigning embarrassment when people began to notice but continuing to walk just the same; belting out a prolonged shriek of horror in another bathroom, this one in a respectable restaurant, while he, Ben, sat among the capacity crowd, everyone freezing at the horrific cry, Ray waltzing out a few seconds later as if nothing had happened; offering to buy snacks for a party of six that included himself, his wife Angie, Ben and his date, and another couple at the premiere of the movie M*A*S*H in 1972, returning a few minutes later with a cardboard tray crammed with popcorn and pop, pretending he’d forgotten where they were sitting, Angie hissing at him now—Ray, Ray!—Ray scanning the theater but continuing to walk—RAY!—then doing a pratfall in mock alarm, the vats of popcorn and pop exploding down the aisle, the sold-out crowd roaring laughter while Angie sat in furious silence, face burning hellfire-red in the dark…
So many good times. It had been like having his own standup comic for a best friend, every last one of those gags and countless others intended solely for his amusement. What a wonderful guy. He would miss Ray mightily. But once he’d gotten a clear sense of the man’s suffering and how long it had been going on, he had to concede there was no other option.
Following these precious reflections, Ben lapsed into a kind of exhausted semi-trance, half-aware of his resting self and half-invested in something that might have been a memory, the fringes of a dream, or a fatigued variant of dementia. In it, he was about to have sex for the first time—or some frenzied, adolescent version of it—fumbling with his belt, shoulder aching from leaning on the bottom mattress of the creaky bunk bed he shared with his brother, the girl beneath him scrambling to get her jeans off, both of them breathing hard, giddy with anticipation, ditching school today to get the deed done. Now he fumbled his way inside her and it was warm and wet and enveloping, and he felt himself already
on the verge, and now she swept the hair out of her face and it was—
Roxanne
Ben sat bolt upright, clothes stuck to his baking skin, the first real erection he’d had in years straining against the fabric of his trousers.
Now the room was spinning and he was on his feet, lurching from handhold to handhold to slump over the toilet, the contents of his stomach geysering up his throat.
He hunched there a while, waiting to see if there was more. But he’d wrung himself out, and now he sat on the toilet seat, feeling like the worst kind of deviant, wondering what on earth was wrong with him.
Once the room agreed to stand still, he flushed the toilet and stoppered the sink, cranking the cold tap to full blast. Waiting for the bowl to fill, he glanced in the mirror, seeing a stooped old man gaping back at him, really seeing him, a seventy-eight-year-old man having erotic fantasies about a girl he’d come to love—but God, not that way. If this was what dementia was going to be like for him, his mind serving up horrific shit like this…well, it might just be time to fill out those euthanasia forms for himself.
He shut off the tap, bent to submerge his face and heard a brisk knock at the apartment door, followed by frantic, muffled voices. He checked his watch—twenty past midnight—and wondered if it was Hicks calling his bluff, bringing a couple of cops along to haul him off to jail. But as he made his way to the foyer, he recognized one of the voices—Quinn—and thought, What the hell is it now?
He opened the apartment door.
* * *
Three hours earlier, Ben’s nearest neighbor—an eighty-year-old Russian physicist by the name of Viktor Sokolov—had been hatching an escape plan.
But perhaps ‘escape’ is too strong a word, Viktor thought now, the fact that he might be in serious trouble beginning to dawn on him. He didn’t want to leave the Center for good. Just for the night. He had it all arranged too, his appointment at Rubens scheduled for two AM. He’d never been there in person, but he’d been a regular on their website for several months. And in that time, he’d fallen helplessly in love with a twenty-eight-year-old working girl named Lisa, whose statistics were prodigious: three hundred and thirty-six pounds of pale, powdered flesh that took his breath away. He knew the IT guys were going to catch up with him soon enough, cut off his Internet access and ban him from using the computers in the library, probably for life. The Center’s rules regarding porn sites were clear and inflexible. But the delight he derived from his sessions with Lisa were worth the risk. And the cost.
The thing of it was, he wanted to be with her now. Do some of the things she promised in their online chats. Explore the vast mounds and musky valleys he’d glimpsed on the screen. But there was a problem—a humiliating one. About a month ago, his prick had stopped working. No warning. No ceremony. The brute had simply died. True, he’d had a good run with the thing. Until this merciless betrayal, his pecker had always been up before him in the morning, ready for action at the slightest provocation. And in the size department, the gods had been more than generous, his willy already seven inches long when it sprouted its first hair, Viktor a twelve-year-old farmboy at the time. And it hadn’t stopped growing until he was nineteen, maxing out at eight inches at ease, ten-and-a-half at full attention, hard enough to deflect bullets. He’d even appeared in a few Russian porn films in his twenties, wearing a black-leather fetish mask and collecting easy money for school, Saint Petersburg Polytechnic, where he’d earned a PhD in experimental physics. In the many years since, he’d buried three wives and pleasured uncountable mistresses. And under different circumstances, he might have allowed his wang a well-earned retirement.
But then there was Lisa. Sweet, bulbous, breathy Lisa, spread out like a fleshy fairground on a bed the size of an aircraft carrier. And here he was, a broke-dick Ruski hound dog with a thriving libido and nothing to back it up with. He knew the condition was treatable, all sorts of drugs out there for erectile dysfunction. But Viktor was a proud man, and he didn’t want to admit to anyone, not even a doctor, that the magnificent instrument that had served him so well had finally given up the ghost.
It was a dilemma.
He’d tried all manner of over-the-counter remedies: Panax Ginseng, Rhodalia Rosea, DHEA. He’d even performed acupuncture on himself, using needles he’d pilfered from one of the rehab therapists, his dink bristling like a porcupine before he was done. But nothing had worked.
Until yesterday, when a solution presented itself. On his way down to lunch, he’d spotted an unattended med cart in the hallway, the pharmacy tech a few doors down at the time, lending a hand at a code blue. And there, right on top of the cart, stood a big white bottle of bliss: Tumidol. He’d just seen a commercial about it on the tube, a silver-haired dude on a 747 sneaking off to service his old lady in one of those cramped bathroom stalls, joining the Mile High Club at the ripe old age of seventy-five.
Viktor had pocketed the bottle and kept on walking, pausing en route to the elevators to peek in on the failing resuscitation in apartment 9017, the widow Brunet on the floor in there, looking much the worse for wear. He’d had that little minx on the floor himself, and in the bed, against the fridge, in the shower stall…
So the plan had been simple. Make the appointment at Rubens, take one of the pills (he’d taken three, for courage), slip out of the Center through a rear door he knew had a busted alarm, and stroll across the road to the Tim Horton’s, where he’d have a cab waiting. Spend the night with Lisa, God save me, grab a cab in the morning and slip back into the Center undetected.
But the bastards had fixed the alarm, and he was caught before he made it halfway across the parking lot. A dark green sedan with a twirling blue light on the dash overtook him, and one of those grim black-shirts hopped out to escort him back inside, the man mute as a statue, his grip on Viktor’s arm letting him know resistance would not only be futile, but quite possibly bad for his health. By the time he got back to his apartment, the pills had kicked in and his johnson had regained its former magnificence. Painfully so.
That had been three hours ago, and the thing was still plank-hard.
* * *
Ben barely had the door open when Quinn barged past him into the foyer, dragging a distressed-looking Viktor Sokolov by the wrist, Wilder bringing up the rear with an amused grin on his face, ambling in like he had all the time in the world.
Shutting the door behind this strange trio, Ben said, “What the hell, guys? It’s after midnight.”
Quinn regarded him in frank alarm, then looked at Viktor, saying, “Show him,” and Viktor dropped his baggy sweatpants around his ankles.
Before he knew what was happening, Ben was staring at a huge, purple, grossly-engorged member, the thing bobbing out of the man’s pants like an exit barricade at the gates of Hell.
Ben said, “Jesus,” and recoiled a few steps, his stomach threatening to turn again. “What in the name of God…?”
Quinn said, “He OD’ed on boner pills and now he’s afraid the damn thing’s going to explode. And not in a good way.” He leaned in for a closer look. “I’m no doctor, Benji, but I’m inclined to agree with the man.”
Viktor only moaned.
Lurking behind them, Wilder stifled a giggle.
Quinn said, “It’s not funny, man.”
“I’d have to agree with you there,” Wilder said. “It’s goddamn hilarious.”
Quinn said, “Asshole,” and turned to Ben. “What are we gonna do?”
Laughing now, Wilder said, “Quinn, you’re gonna have to suck him off,” and Ben could see the man was high as a kite. Nothing new there.
Concerned, Ben said, “All right, Viktor, listen, you’re going to have to take that thing to the ER. You might actually need surgery. Now why don’t you pull up your pants and I’ll give them a call, let them know we’re coming.”
Trying to pull up his pants—Quinn stooping to help him now, almost getting that dusky helmet in the eye—Viktor said, “Coming, yes. Wouldn’t that help?”
Ben said, “Probably, but I was assuming you’d already tried that.”
Viktor shook his head.
Wilder said, “Quinn, you’re already down there,” and Quinn sprang to his full height, looking like he might actually take a swing at his grinning friend.
Chuckling, Wilder faded into the kitchen to raid the fridge. Ben saw him grab an entire six-pack of beer off the bottom shelf, lacing those big fingers through the spaces in the plastic yoke, but he was beyond caring.
Knotting the strings on his sweatpants, Viktor eased onto the couch and told the men about his plans for the evening, saying they still had over an hour to get him there. Saying he’d beg if he had to.
Ben was about to tell the man to forget it, they were going straight to the ER. Then he remembered Hicks’s car key, still in his hip pocket. He took it out, liking its heft. He said, “What time’s your appointment?”
“Two o’clock.”
“All right. If we leave now, we should get there with time to spare.” He looked at Viktor. “But if an hour with…what’s her name…”
Viktor said, “Lisa,” and licked his lips, as if the name had a pleasing taste.
Smiling, Ben said, “If your session with ‘Lisa’ doesn’t get rid of…” pointing at the bulge in the man’s sweatpants now, “that, then our next stop’s the emergency department. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Okay, gentlemen,” Ben said, showing them the car key. “I’m driving.”
Wilder left the apartment first, followed by Viktor, the poor guy not moving very fast. Ben started out next, but Quinn caught him by the arm, saying in a discreetly lowered voice, “This is probably not the right time to bring it up, but…how’d it go with Ray?”
“You’re right,” Ben said, not unkindly, “it’s not the right time. But given the circumstances, I’d have to say it went very well.” Quinn nodded, squeezing Ben’s arm now, tears brimming on his lower lids. Ben said, “I’ll tell you all about it later, okay, Ed?” and Quinn nodded, drying his eyes on his sleeve.
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