Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  “That thing is so loud,” I said, backing away.

  “You’re one of my patients?” He got in, then shut the door, rolled down the window and stared at me, as a pair of enormous crows took off from a tree in the park and soared down over the hill to my left.

  “Ben Schmidt—was there just the other day for consultation—PC dirty margins.”

  “How’d it go? They get you all set up?”

  “Monica was great—got my tattoos.” I pointed at my hips, feeling ridiculous.

  “They’ll come in handy.”

  “I don’t want to keep you; you’re going somewhere.”

  “Sunday afternoon, groceries, that drill,” he said. He turned the key and started the engine. “What brings you out?”

  “Oh—just walking,” I said. “Turned out to be a decent day after all.”

  “Live around here? People don’t usually meander all this way up the hill—unless they’re going to the park, of course.”

  Shit.

  “I just like these old houses.” I said.

  “Buena Vista Park—that large, forested hillside about thirty feet to your right.”

  I turned to look at the trees and the bushes. It’s possible he believed I was clueless. He was a doctor who spent all his time radiating people. And he was straight, right? So he wouldn’t know about gay cruising spots anyway.

  What was his ex-wife’s name again—Heidi?

  “I can give you a ride down the hill, Mr. Schmidt, if you want. I’m going out to Andronico’s.”

  “Thanks, Doctor, but I could use the exercise. It’s a lot easier going down.”

  He smiled more broadly this time. A kind man, he said nothing more.

  Once his car was out of sight, I took a good look at the house Dr. Sternberg lived in. Three stories, bay windows on all floors, a classic center-entrance job, not easily classified. The trim, accenting the blue brick, was a spotless off-white. Most of the windows on the first floor had the requisite lace drapery. It dripped elegance but also gave off an odd chill.

  * * *

  I’d dreaded the talk with Paul Sutcliffe but had put it off for so long that it had to be taken care of.

  In the interim, he’d been given that most coveted of all possessions at egalitarian-leaning Safe Harbor, a private office. How this had happened—they were supposed to be strictly reserved for senior vice presidents and above—was unclear. But there he was, sitting behind his big fat desk.

  “Paul—was wondering where you keep yourself these days,” I said. “Check it out, Benny—come on in,” he said.

  I winced.

  “Ben’s good; Ben’s always been good, really.”

  “You remind me of a kid I knew back in middle school; we called him Benny; always seemed his glasses were broken. Don’t know why.”

  I forced myself through the door.

  “Sit, B-E-N. Whatcha over here for, buddy?”

  He had two black leather guest chairs in front of his desk. In my cubicle, there was only one chair, with a nondescript gray cloth cover.

  “Cause I hear things, Paul.” Reluctantly, I sat in the scolded-child position.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I’ve heard most recently is that, while I was gone, while I was recovering from cancer surgery, you presented a case to Tony Mallard why you should run corporate marketing. Instead of me.”

  At first, he didn’t say anything, just blinked his eyes and licked his lips, the wheels clearly turning.

  “Tone and I talk all the time. We’re good buds; you know that, Schmidtster,” he said. “Chewing over this or that doesn’t mean much.”

  “Really? I heard it was a bit more formal—charts, graphs, even a fucking private PowerPoint presentation on your laptop!”

  He picked up a rubber band and absentmindedly stretched it in one direction, then another.

  “Dude, you were gone. The company missed key trade show opportunities this spring—your people didn’t know what to do, and someone was not minding the store from their little recovery pod.”

  “You saying I’m not doing my job?”

  “I’m saying maybe you need some help—if it’s too much, if you can’t handle—”

  “Believe me, I can handle it and I can handle you.” I stood up, leaned over his desk so that my face was just inches from his. The corner of Paul’s mouth twitched. “Stay away from my staff, Sutcliffe.”

  He burped a small chuckle. “Geez. This was supposed to be a friendly conversation and then you go all weirdnose on me, Ben,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what to think.”

  * * *

  I’d gotten down to two Defendor pads a day, but the conversation with Paul resulted in an accident.

  My Defendor became dislodged—maybe when I leaned over his desk, for that nicely dramatic effect. I quite simply peed down my pants leg. Soren had once mentioned to me that “black slacks are a prostate cancer patient’s best friend,” and I was I glad I’d taken his advice to heart.

  My pants were soaked. I did have backup—my bicyclist’s rainy-day uniform. I was changing into some navy corduroys in the men’s room when Tony Mallard walked in and caught me with my pants down.

  “Oops,” I said, pulling the waistband up as fast as possible. I was sure the Defendor’s contours inside my black Calvins were as detectable as, well, the sun coming up over the horizon on a clear morning. “Had to change—usually there’s no one in here.”

  “Not always, apparently,” he said, and didn’t move, as if waiting for something. He just stood there while I zipped and snapped and buckled.

  “Don’t let me cramp your style,” I said. “I’m almost out of here.”

  “I wanted to talk to you anyway, Ben. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m OK, thanks. I’ll have to submit to a little radiation, but otherwise just about recovered from that nasty operation.”

  “Will you need more time off?”

  Tony shuffled his weight from one foot to the other, his heels coming out of his loafers briefly each time. His socks were a forest-friendly green and brown argyle pattern—certainly British enough. I wondered how many days he’d had them on.

  “Shouldn’t have to—it’ll be transparent,” I said. “A quick trip over there every morning before work.”

  “Outstanding. I’m so sorry you have to through all that.”

  “Well, you know, who can plan—”

  “Jason did a super job while you were out—that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh. That’s so good to hear, that he did so well—”

  “I’m going to promote him. Kelly will now report directly to Jason, so you can focus your energies on more important concerns.”

  Shit.

  17

  My mouth hung open as Tony quickly exited—as a matter of fact, he’d held the door open with a free hand the entire time we’d been talking.

  It closed softly, the click of the bolt in the doorframe echoing off the white tile walls. The overheads flickered twice rapidly, then went out for about a second, then came back on, diminished. They hummed.

  I looked at myself in the mirror, and in back of me Mark, my Deadboy last seen while I was in the Jacuzzi in Palm Springs, came into focus.

  “Not again,” I exhaled.

  “Yes again,” he said, smiling. “You going to let him push you around like that?”

  “Why are you here, Mark? I’m creeped out.”

  “See, Ben, you always were too conventional,” he said. “We get a message to show up when you need our help—that much I can tell you.”

  There were footsteps in the hall outside, at irregular intervals. Someone could walk in at any time.

  “Where’s Connie? She not ‘hanging out’ with you today?”

  “That dog prefers external environment apparitions, you know—outside,” he said.

  “I saw her in a bar. Maybe that doesn’t count.” I turned on the tap and bent to splash cold water on my face. When I st
ood back up, maybe he’d be gone.

  No such luck.

  “They’re trying to get rid of you—your intuition is correct. If you want to keep your job, Ben, you’ll have to fight back.”

  I pulled out two of the Safe Harbor politically correct earth-saving unbleached paper towels made from recycled materials and wiped off my face and neck.

  “Kind of hard. Seems like they’re stacked up against me—Tony, Paul, maybe Jason, who knows who else—and I got this cancer thing and the movie thing and—”

  “Stop being a crybaby!” he shrieked, the first time he uttered something truly ghostworthy. Had he turned green? I thought I might puke. Mark took a step back, never taking his gaze from me, and gradually faded into the wall.

  * * *

  My radiation started the next morning at seven. Traffic was light. The bike drill was the same: downhill Douglass and then Eighteenth to Noe, uphill Noe through the deadly intersection at Market, past Café Flore, where I’d usually had Thursday breakfast with Terry from AA, before my slip, the one he still did not know about. Then it was flat on Noe through the part of San Francisco that reminded me of New Orleans—something about the balconies, or the green hanging plants, something that gave off that mood—then carefully over the Muni tracks at Duboce Park and up into the tougher Haight and Western Addition neighborhoods.

  I’d pass the same crews of homeless each day who searched through the previous night’s detritus left on the Haight’s curbs, as well as random, red-eyed twentysomethings wandering home from the clubs closer to downtown. Nearer Mount Horeb, black parents pushed heavy-lidded children into their cars for the numbing ride to school.

  Just when the endorphins kicked in really nice, I’d be rewarded with the sun rising over the Berkeley Hills and glittering across the Bay all the way to Alcatraz. From that last rise I could see the roof of the hospital just north of Geary—a couple of satellite dishes, an off-white metal guard rail protecting people from—jumping, probably.

  The hospital’s therapy rooms were in the basement. Monica showed me the changing room, where I’d put on a pair of hospital pants from the clean stack in the corner. There were lockers where I could store my valuables as well as my pants and shoes. My bike helmet barely fit on top of the pile—shoes on bottom, then backpack, bike helmet, pants folded neatly, then my undershorts at the very top of the stack, making them the easiest thing to put on first when the treatment was done.

  Monica asked me to sit in an adjacent waiting area until I was called. A dog-eared selection of the previous year’s golf magazines sat on a small side table under an old lamp, which offered subdued lighting in the windowless room.

  I looked ridiculous in my blue Lands’ End dress shirt with the clean but stained flannel bottoms on, nylon socks making my feet slide away from me on the linoleum floor. In the stack of golf tomes I found one skiing magazine, from March 1998, which had a special report on Whistler, Canada.

  A door to a corridor was propped open, and every few minutes a different bald woman walked past. They all wore the same hospital-issue tunic. Usually, eyes were downcast and there was no talking. Sometimes they’d be led by nurses or attendants, but most often they’d just be alone. Each woman had a distinctive walking style—for some it seemed a modified shuffle toward something unpleasant, for others whatever was at the end of the hall was approached with confidence and a surprising amount of energy.

  Eventually, an older man joined me in the waiting room. He wore a street shirt and a pair of hospital pants I’d rejected. “Good morning,” I said quietly, and he either ignored me or didn’t hear.

  Monica stuck her head through the doorway. “Mr. Schmidt, just a couple minutes more, OK?”

  She smiled and tossed her hair over a shoulder, the way some women do when they’d like you to notice how pretty they are. I was an appreciative audience and wondered how early she had to get up to fix it all so nicely, make the breakfast and get the kids off to school.

  Mr. Grumpy and I were joined by another thin, white-haired fellow who used a cane. This guy wore street pants and had a Mount Horeb tunic covering his upper body, which meant he was to be radiated somewhere else and for something other than his prostate.

  It was a huge relief to be let out of the unfriendly waiting room. I followed Monica down the corridor the women had walked along, and we made several twists and turns, disappearing farther inside this subterranean warren. Up ahead was a brightly lit office pod, an island of activity set into the shadows.

  Another young woman sat at a computer console, reading glasses perched neatly at the end of her nose.

  “This is Chris. Say hello to Mr. Schmidt, Chris,” Monica instructed.

  Chris didn’t look up. “Hello, Mr. Schmidt. Welcome to the basement.”

  “Guys, this would be easier for me if you just called me Ben.”

  Chris laughed and looked up. “Welcome to our world, Ben,” she said. “I’ve got your file punched in here. The Machine is ready and waiting.”

  Across the hall was an enormous metal door, slightly open, a pale blue light emanating from within. Monica put both her hands on the steel surface and leaned into it with all her weight, and it eventually responded.

  As we walked inside, Willie Nelson’s voice trembled on softly about his Georgia.

  Primus A—the Machine—stood in the center of the room by itself, under three soft floodlights, a god demanding sacrifice.

  In front of me was the horizontal slab where I’d lie in the made-especially-for-me plaster cradle. Primus towered above, like a giant fat inverted L with a circular light blue face, which could move around in circles with one oversized cycloptic eye—measuring, tracking, closing in—then finally zapping at will with its invisible death ray.

  Off to the side was a table with a small collection of CDs and the player behind it. “You like this singer, Ben?” Monica asked. “You can play anything you want during treatment.”

  “Let me see what you’ve got.”

  While I did that, Monica searched for my cradle in the stack of plaster casts haphazardly piled up against another wall—the sight of which had an oddly disconcerting concentration-camp vibe.

  Someone had arranged the CDs semi-alphabetically, and although I wasn’t usually an opera fan, Andrea Bocelli’s shaded eyes and innocent smile got to me.

  “I like that ‘Con Te Partiro’ thing,” I said. Monica held the cradle—that perfect replica of my nicely toned ass and thighs—in front of her. It had been Magic Markered “B. Schmidt 9781397” in bright red.

  “And I like all things Italian,” she said, and winked.

  * * *

  Even though I’ve been an out and proud gay man since age nineteen, it was disconcerting having this exceptionally attractive young divorcée order me to drop my pajama bottoms and climb into the cradle, which she’d anchored to Primus’s slab.

  It was like a perverse, medically inspired sex fantasy, where I was the victim and Monica was the mistress strapping me in so the Machine could have its way with me. I didn’t complain, though for a second I thought of trying a scream. At that point, they were going to do what they would do, and anyway—how could it possibly be worse than the prostatectomy, the catheterization, the Defendors…?

  Anyway.

  I really trusted Dr. Sternberg. Not just because he was cute—his credentials were flawless. As if picking up my thoughts via mind meld, his voice boomed into the room from speakers I couldn’t see, since I now lay face up on the slab looking directly into Primus’s eye.

  “Good morning, Mr. Schmidt,” he said. “Monica and Chris treating you all right?”

  It was like talking back to God. I figured I should give Monica a good review, as she still hovered, tightening the straps so I wouldn’t fall out, her crucifix dangling above my nose.

  “Yes—everything’s been just great,” I said.

  There was muffled conversation, a medical exchange. “We’re ready to start. I’ll see you for a few minutes afterward, Mr. Sch
midt.”

  Monica squeezed my hand and left my side. She popped in the CD and it began to play.

  The huge metal door closed behind her with a dull but final thud.

  For a second it was just me and Bocelli—not a bad vision of heaven. I hadn’t noticed it until now, but the ceiling had been designed like a planetarium—tiny pin lights in a big circle of plaster above designated constellations viewable from the night sky—there was the Big Dipper, and Orion, and…

  The spotlights above dimmed, and a TV monitor placed high on the wall flickered on. My name was discernible on what looked like a video hospital chart, complete with photos and colored graphs.

  Primus’s blue face circled over me and focused. The enormous L moved sideways, whirred and clicked.

  When the invisible beam struck, red lights flashed “RAD ON, RAD ON” in displays on two walls as well as the monitor itself. Other than that, there’d be little to tell me of the actual radiation event. Nothing looked different. There was no odor. The sounds were merely mechanical and commonplace.

  Yet it was something so dangerous that the “normal” people outside were shielded by appropriately thick, concrete walls and that massive, lead-lined steel door.

  I focused on Bocelli.

  The RAD ON lights would disappear; then Primus would move and refocus from its new position. Then they’d return, flash-flash-flash, their bright red reflecting off the shiny surface of the Machine’s cold torso.

  “Doing OK, Mr. Schmidt?” Monica said over the speaker.

  “Just fine,” I said, shouting over the Italian.

  Her response was drowned out as Primus moved again. If I counted right, there’d been seven radiating positions.

  Start. Stop. Move.

  Start. Stop. Move. Over and over, and then it was finished. Primus returned to its vertical default state and the lights came back on. It was like a museum statue that came to life when one wasn’t looking, constantly playing with your head, even as it stood silent.

  I did my best to control the trembling as Monica worked me out of the cradle and off the slab. Our eyes never met.

  * * *

  Waiting for Dr. Sternberg in a tiny, windowless exam space, I focused on that area between my navel and my dick, tried to sense something different—as in warmth, pain, tingling, anything. Involuntarily my abs clenched tight, as if the radiation would begin a process of irreversible entropy and this was the only line of defense.