Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  “Want company?” he said, louder than he probably should have. He was going to beg and—fuck, this was embarrassing.

  She pretended not to hear and crossed Sixth Avenue against the light, a thin line of cabs racing toward her like deadly yellow tanks. “Damn,” he said, looking at me. “Just like that it’s over and she’s gone.”

  There was a wistfulness in Paul’s voice I never would’ve suspected he’d be capable of, and it stopped my highly tuned sense of skepticism toward him. Here was a little lost boy whose sweetheart had just dumped him for a common sugar fix.

  “I’ve done these kinds of drugs before, but it was…a really long time ago.” I tried to be helpful. “It’s always like this at the end, kind of sad.” I may have even shrugged. “Our night with this was, in all honesty, less real than it seems right now. Try and remember that.”

  There were tears in his eyes. “I feel like shit, Ben.”

  And he looked like shit. Even under the X, now past its peak on the downhill, Paul wasn’t beautiful. I’d had an entire night to compare him to New York’s male club denizens, most of them tall, dark haired, and slim, and many either Latin or Euro. We didn’t measure up well, but still, I was a pay grade or two above Paul—maybe four or five.

  “Go back and sleep. We’ll hit the ASMA general meeting gala dinner tonight,” I said. The part of my brain that had returned to seminormal functioning was already trying to rationalize how to miss even this one less annoying event, albeit one with free alcohol.

  It must have been this momentary distraction that led to the sequence of events that followed, which no sane gay man, high or not, could have seen coming but which came anyway.

  I turned right to walk back over to the Archer. Paul had to cross the street and go in the same direction Dallas did, to get back to his hotel. Instead, he put his fat, sweaty hand on my shoulder, turned me around, grabbed me and laid a wet, cigarette-flavored kiss on my lips.

  I pushed his grappling, flapping arms away as he tried to maneuver his tongue into my mouth. People hurried past. People on their way to work—it was a Friday fucking morning! People saw. What Paul was doing.

  To me.

  “Jesus Christ! What’s wrong with you?”

  I was hoarse. I’d been up all night, my eyes felt scratchy and heavy, my greasy cheeks needed a shave and I desperately wanted to put an end to this little adventure and retreat for a few hours into the hushed confines of the hotel. Then I’d contemplate the next step, which might involve aromatherapy and more alcohol.

  All that took place in the split second it took for me to realize, with a shudder, that some of Paul’s spit lurked unevaporated just below my lower lip, for me to feel and for all of New York to see.

  “I’m lonely,” he said. Jesus, he was going to cry.

  “Paul. Let’s forget this happened. Come on, go back and get some rest.” He stared at me blankly, and then he bit his lip. “Look, you and I both know you’re not gay; you don’t want this, and I for sure don’t want this. I’m going to turn around and walk up the block, and I don’t expect to see you again before ASMA later on. If then.”

  I turned away and walked off, dodging a white-haired woman with two terriers, nearly becoming entangled in their leads as one of the dogs peed on a parked bicycle.

  “Asshole,” I said. Terrier Lady frowned, so I quickly reassured her with a probably cranky “not you, dear.”

  Severino saw me, and even though I tried my best to pass invisibly through the hotel lobby, it was not invisible enough. He smiled, perhaps raised an eyebrow a few millimeters, or maybe I just imagined that, knowing full well it was impossible to fool anyone over the age of six about being out all night.

  I closed the door to my room and leaned against it. Inside, the neutraltoned womb was silent. I closed the blinds to keep out the daylight, found my earplugs and put them in should the quiet not stay. I took off all my clothes—except for the black nylon socks I’d bought at a Vegas JCPenney’s one windy Saturday in my lifetime before cancer—left them in a heap on the floor and fell flat on my back on the bed.

  * * *

  Truth was, I couldn’t sleep soundly during the day under the best of circumstances, so after a couple of hours of twilight rest I got up for good.

  ASMA activities were no longer even a remote option, as the chance of running into fuckface Sutcliffe would be too high. I’d return to San Francisco the next day, but I’d been avoiding the entire subject of the cancer and what to do about it. Now that the ecstasy and alcohol had mostly leached out of my system, it was all I could think about. That and the Kiss.

  Minibar Jack Daniels in my pockets, I grabbed a double latte from the little coffee bar in the Archer lobby and headed downtown. I’d seen the ghostly outlines of the tall World Trade Center recovery cranes from several midtown locations in the previous days. They had an irresistible pull.

  The subway let me out at Chambers Street. Upon exiting at street level, I saw muddy gray dust everywhere and heard the whine of generators. It smelled like a construction site. Concrete dust. That was it. Also, there was an odor of something burning, either something presently on fire or something nearby that recently had been burned.

  I turned the corner and headed west to those cranes and an immense mound of rubble, multiple stories high, of twisted girders and skyscraper skin, steel wrought like pretzels, in which, curiously, many glass windows were still intact.

  A fire engine shot steady streams of water onto the death pile. It was still burning. There wasn’t discernable smoke, but there was that smell. Farther in, the still upright twisted remains of one of the Twin Towers, a corner section, stood there, waiting.

  The entire area was fenced off but visible occasionally through gaps, and at some places a view over the barrier was possible. On any available space were hung hand-written notes, photos, elementary school banners, flowers, incense, baseball caps, ribbons, balloons, and candles. The crowd was alternately occupied in silently reading these memorials, and acting like typical tourists straining to take pictures of the devastation beyond, or, if that didn’t work, taking pictures with fat police officers who held steaming coffee cups and ate cheese Danish.

  There was that hush, but not so much so that parents went unheard telling their wide-eyed kids what happened there. They described the buildings that were no more. They told them what they themselves had been doing that morning.

  The clubs Dallas, Paul and I had been to the night before were within easy walking distance of all this. Life went on, such as it was. I probably wouldn’t have chosen to have my first ecstasy experience with a high-priced call girl I’d met only once in a horribly debauched interlude in a city far from home or with a loathed coworker.

  If there was a cosmic significance to all this, it had escaped me so far.

  As I turned and made my way back to the subway station—the JD now mixed in with the lukewarm coffee—I had to jump out of the way of an ambulance leaving the fenced-off zone. Its lights flashed soundlessly, not wanting to announce its grisly cargo.

  Running alongside was, I was sure, that reddish brown dog I’d seen both at the Slog and in Buena Vista Park. At the corner, the animal stopped. It stood there motionless and stared intently at me. A woman with a crying toddler in a stroller maneuvered around me over all the hoses and wires, and when I looked back up the animal had gone.

  No, little bitch, you’re not going to escape this time, I thought. Sidestepping the baby, I hopped over a thick, rubber-encased cable and ran to where Connie had disappeared.

  A cyclone fence with a green tarp attached to camouflage the view, stretched from building to building across a narrow alleyway.

  The top was a few inches above my head, so I couldn’t see the other side. I got a toehold in a space between lines of wire mesh. I pulled myself up, then managed a higher step with my other foot.

  Over the fence, a lone man in an orange hazmat suit slowly moved a wide rake back and forth over layers of dust in the street. Behind h
im, a bulldozer maneuvered between piles of debris.

  I pushed one leg over the top of the fence. It must have made a noise, because Hazmat Man turned to me, startled.

  “Hey!” he said. “Get off, now!”

  7

  Hazmat Guy whipped out a walkie-talkie, yelling “NYPD!” so I jumped off the fence and hurried to the nearest open subway.

  There was no dog.

  Sweet Connie! That she would show up, off her leash and in the ruins of the World Trade Center, solidified the idea that, indeed, this was her ghost and not some local look-alike. Either that or I’d lost my mind. When she caught my eye, invariably she turned skittish and ran away, leaving me with that same horrible and forlorn feeling I’d felt that day she dropped dead at my feet.

  Connie always had that feisty independent streak. Maybe she just didn’t recognize me.

  Of course, none of that explained why I was seeing the ghost of my dog.

  Regardless, somewhere more useful—like my apartment, to help out with the rat children—would have been an ideal apparition venue.

  They’d made a comeback while I was in New York. Not only was I greeted with a dead mouse in one of the traps, but there were fresh droppings on my pillow.

  I was about to dial Bunny’s number, all set to complain anew, when Karen called.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  “I just walked in the fucking door and the mice are back. I don’t know what to do!” I wanted to break a window with my bare hand.

  “In a minute, you’re not going to care about that; in fact, you’ll forget all about the mice because Hell for the Holidays is going to Sydney.”

  “Huh?” I sat down. There was more mouse shit behind the computer monitor.

  “Did you hear me? I got a call yesterday and the Australians want our little movie at their world-famous Mardi Gras festival!” She laughed. “It’s hard to believe, but there you are.”

  “What’s hard to believe about that? A bigger surprise would’ve been a rejection.” I lied, but OK, I wanted to feel confident and on top again and tease her in the process.

  “Sundance didn’t want us after all. Australia’s more fun than Utah, anyway,” she said.

  A toast—whiskey—would be perfect.

  “That’s such great news, Karen. I had an awful time in New York.”

  “Poor baby; tell Mama all about it.”

  “Cut it out,” I said. Dark circles were still under my eyes. I knew they were there and didn’t have any need to focus on my reflection in the mirror I’d leaned up at an angle to try to camouflage the pregnant wall bulge in my bedroom.

  “Say—Karen—you remember Connie? Or was that before we met?”

  “Your landlady?”

  “Oh, no…Connie was—”

  “The wiener dog! Yeah, I know who Connie was; come on, Ben. You showed me her picture a thousand times.”

  “Well, you know, I…I’ve been thinking about getting another.”

  “Really? You think now’s the best time—I mean, the movie and all that.”

  “Maybe I’ll just window-shop at the pound.”

  “And you’ll go to Sydney. I suppose we should celebrate?” she said.

  I wanted that shot, too, but alone—at least the first one, and then the last one.

  “I’m not even unpacked; let me call you back?”

  “You don’t sound very excited to me,” she said.

  “Give me a nap and I’ll do cartwheels down the hill for you.”

  She laughed. “You better call me.”

  * * *

  I was way past the required demographic for Badlands, but today denial had the upper hand. My movie was going to a film festival! That, as much as anything, now allowed me to call myself a filmmaker. It never seemed legitimate unless someone else acknowledged it—and now they had, those lovely, hard-to-understand gay men and lesbians in Sydney.

  I hadn’t gone upstairs to tell Jake. He’d for sure ask about the trip, about my cancer decision, and really, I didn’t want to go there just yet. I also had no desire to be dragged into a discussion about what went on in New York, the ecstasy, the alcohol, the World Trade Center visit or the ASMA—or lack of ASMA. About Paul Sutcliffe.

  That I saw the ghost of my long-dead dog.

  The bourbon went down hot. My ears tingled. Maybe the Connie sightings were a direct result of this resumption of intoxicant use. She had first appeared to me in the Slog, this was true, but the other two sightings, at the park and then in the WTC ruins, did not seem related to being shit-faced.

  * * *

  Before the biopsy, Dr. Kim had asked me about my family’s history specifically with prostate cancer, and I told him I’d find out. That we were past diagnosis and into treatment decisions and I still hadn’t asked didn’t seem of much consequence to me—but it was like a fallen tree limb in a driveway—you had to deal with it to move on.

  Or maybe I just wanted to talk to Dad for the first time all year.

  I wasn’t close to my father in any kind of conventional sense. In fact, Anthony Schmidt had lived in Florida now for close to fifteen years, and I’d seen him only three times since he’d moved there.

  One of those visits to Coral Gables was when he married Jackie Belle, nearly twenty years his junior, which made her only about five years older than me. She had gorgeous, long auburn hair, which I suspected was mostly natural because green eyes and an acceptable amount of freckles came with it. A very shrewd woman with a genuine entrepreneurial streak, Jackie would have benefited from being at the height of her powers during the 1980s, a decade tailor-made for her.

  Dad had worked hard, and Mom was a real challenge to him—a demanding, eccentric woman—we never knew how much of that was her weird, rich-person act and how much was legitimate mental illness. He coped. He took care of us very well and very consistently, somewhat like an experiment, where if one thing didn’t work he’d try another—which is what engineers do.

  His move to Coral Gables was a welcome change for him. He told me he liked everything about Florida except for the bugs. More important, there was no crazy, formerly rich ex-wife, and no disappointing adult children.

  Dad would know, of course, about the men in his own family—who, if anyone, had suffered prostate cancer and what the outcome was. Longevity was not an attribute the Schmidts had in any kind of spectacular abundance, yet I didn’t recall being told that any member of our family had ever been treated for or had ever died from it.

  * * *

  My back pressed into the slippery wood of the bar, and I nearly lost my balance. Luckily, none of the boys seemed to notice, since apparently I was invisible. Dad’s number, like Mom’s, was saved in my cell phone, though I hadn’t called it since last Christmas, which was, I was reminded by the festively ribboned tree in the corner, nearly a year ago.

  I stepped out onto Eighteenth Street and turned up Collingwood, where it was quieter, and dialed.

  “Hello,” Jackie chirped, from no-doubt-humid Coral Gables. I never figured she’d answer Dad’s personal phone, and for a moment I was speechless.

  “Uh, Jackie,” I muttered.

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “It’s Ben in San Francisco. I…was looking for my dad.”

  “My goodness! We haven’t heard from you in ages. How are you, Ben?”

  I blanched at the familiarity, though I knew without a doubt that Jackie would never dream of trying to be like my mother. She had no children of her own, and any innate maternal instinct seemed the furthest thing from her.

  “Yeah, you know how time gets away from you. How’s Dad? He there?”

  A long second of silence told me she’d picked up on my nonanswer.

  “Actually, he’s right here. I’m going to give the phone to him now. Coming to see us soon? I know how dark and rainy it can be there.”

  “I’d love to. Just one of those things where I need to check my schedule.”

  There was silence and shuffling. I wished I’d
never left Badlands, never dialed the number. A car on Collingwood slowed down to match my pace. Some idiot thought I was cruising the baseball diamond. I cocked my head to see who the driver was when Dad finally got on the phone.

  “Ben?”

  “Say, Dad…” I turned the corner and the car followed. The windows were tinted and I couldn’t see the driver, but it was an expensive car, maybe a Lexus, so whoever was in it was probably not real young.

  “How are you? How’s Jackie?”

  “We’re just fine, Ben. Jackie’s southeast managers are in town, so we’re going to have a cookout for them today. She’s got me slicing up tomatoes, if you can believe it.”

  It surprised me he still used the Wisconsin word for barbecue, but it was oddly comforting all the same, a vestige to unlock memories of when everything seemed right.

  “I wanted to ask you something.” I’d stopped walking and the Lexus had stopped, too. I could see enough through the slightly opened window to believe the driver was holding a fifty-dollar bill against the steering wheel! Apparently, Lexus guy assumed I was a cheap, cocksucking park whore.

  I might be, but—it would have greatly to do with his appearance, which I still could not see.

  “Son?”

  “Oh, you know, health history stuff.” I laughed. “I had a…physical, doctor asked about…cancer history in our family, especially prostate, colon cancer. Wondering if there was any of that sort of thing.”

  “Jeez, Ben, I’m wearing an apron and have a wet knife dripping tomato seeds on the floor. Hold on a second.” He put the phone down.

  I hadn’t moved. Neither had the Lexus. It sat there, idling quietly. One of the straight couples who’d recently invaded the Castro pushed their baby in its navy and gray Eddie Bauer stroller toward me. The kid had a runny nose and wasn’t happy with all the jostling from the ancient, broken pavement.

  Dad got back on. “OK, let me see, cancers,” he said. “Don’t know if we ever told you kids, but my uncle Mike died from prostate cancer, back in eighty-two or eighty-three.”

  “I didn’t know that. Is he part of the family that lived down in Nebraska?” The stroller was upon me, and the couple stood there, waiting for me to move. I heard the buzz of an electric window opening. Lexus guy tapped the fifty on his steering wheel.