Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  I’d had way too much to drink the night before, there was radiation sickness, the nervous anticipation of an international flight, and, of course, the possibility that I’d just been infected with HIV.

  As if cancer wasn’t enough. As in, how could you be so stupid not to use protection—you’re a fucking doctor!

  Apparently, doctors fucking could be just as stupid and selfish as anyone.

  What does one really know about anybody? Even if I assumed Davis spent his normal nights away from me either working, seeing friends, or watching television in his study, truth was he could just as easily be spending that time on his knees at Blow Buddies or on his back in a sling over at Steamworks in Berkeley.

  “What time’s your flight?” he said, finally breaking the silence.

  “Six. Gets into Malpensa in the morning—they’ll have somebody to pick me up for the drive to Turin,” I answered, grateful the conversation was not about us.

  Davis pulled over to the curb. “I hope you win the prize.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and kissed him while the Asian family across the street left their green Victorian in what looked like church clothes.

  * * *

  My shower lasted until the water heater knocked and struggled, and I felt the cool water replace the hot pulses against my shoulders and chest.

  I washed my ass over and over, lathering soap inside myself with a finger, a lame attempt to clean out any trace of Davis.

  There was a deep ache inside my groin—a good word for that mysterious place. This pain was something new since the prostatectomy. It was like big, rusty gears grinding against each other, the sensation a clear, ongoing result of my cancer.

  Dr. Slater had given me a slight, weeklong reprieve from Primus worship. That was fairly unusual—Monica was against it, as was Chris—but I used whatever pushy mojo I had left from the Safe Harbor marketing wars to insist on it.

  Not that it swayed Dr. Slater this way or that. There were about three weeks left to go on the radiation course, still supervised by Davis. With the pubic hair fallout, the fatigue, diarrhea and puking, I’d guessed it had gone pretty much according to plan.

  * * *

  I hauled the suitcase out to Douglass Street and sat on it. It was still early enough in the afternoon to be fog free, and the warm sun filtering through the laurel felt great on my face.

  Karen and I had embraced earlier when she left for work, so we were now officially made up. Shortly afterward, Davis called—I didn’t answer—to leave me a halfhearted message offering a ride to SFO if he could get one of the other radiologists to see a patient or two.

  Go fuck yourself, very much.

  I would have to talk to him about it sooner or later. Over and over in my mind, I tried to figure it out: the wetness I’d felt on my leg was extra lubrication, or he’d quickly disposed of the condom and its wrapper—though I’d looked in the morning in the bathroom wastebasket and there was nothing there. He’d have flushed the rubber—but he never got up after we fucked.

  Had I just passed out?

  I suppose it was possible he went downstairs to dispose of everything, but it was dark, and cold, and why would he ever do that? He must’ve had a reason, because the evidence wasn’t under the bed, in the sheets, in the bath—

  There were footsteps on the back staircase, the one Jake always used to get down to his garden or, in better times, to my door. The cadence of his ankle-height, dusty brown, leather work shoes was unmistakable.

  I can only imagine his surprise as he turned around the corner and saw me sitting there on the sidewalk.

  “Oh. Hi,” he said, caught midstride, mouth hanging open. “Off today?” I asked.

  He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I worked this morning already. A friend’s coming over, said I’d help wrangle the parking. You know.”

  Parking was always at a premium on our hilly block, to put it mildly—one of the reasons I rarely dragged out the desert-sand-damaged Mercedes. But Jake as a willing participant in some enviro-unfriendly charade? This was interesting.

  “Who’s coming over?”

  “I did just say hello to you. And where is it you’re going? I can see you’re sitting on that fucking carry-on.”

  “Oh. Italy. But only for a few days.”

  “Right, Karen told me the other night,” Jake said. “We had dinner. In your place.”

  Jake was one smart cookie, and I’d forget this at my peril.

  “How did the mashed potatoes end up?”

  A De Soto cab raced up the hill past us, then about half a block farther skidded to a halt and began its U-turn.

  “Looks like my ride is here,” I said, pulling up the suitcase handle. “Those long flights to Europe can be so tedious.”

  “You’ll be OK.” I detected a note of wistfulness in his delivery, which was immediately overshadowed by a near head-on collision right in front of us.

  The cabbie had spotted Jake, the suitcase and me, then took his eyes off the road for just the time it took for an old green Volkswagen to climb up the hill with an angry, Teutonic whine. The VW was determined to park in the small space in front of us, so both cars headed there simultaneously, a clearly unworkable gambit.

  There was a deafening double squeal of brakes.

  Then silence.

  I’d closed my eyes and grabbed Jake’s hand, maybe out of habit—or because he was right there, like a tree or a street sign. There followed what sounded like curses in an unfamiliar Asian language, as well as a “Jesus Christ, motherfucker!” which I understood.

  Jake let go of me and rushed over to the VW. “God, Greg—are you OK?” he said.

  My Hawaiian-shirt-wearing cabbie parked downhill, yanked up on his brake and got out of the cab, shaking his head. There was a big smile on his face.

  “Close, uh-huh? That was close!” he said, as he picked up my tightly packed bag like it was a feather and tossed it into the trunk.

  Jake leaned into the VW’s open window. I couldn’t see what he was doing but he was intimately close to the driver—that driver whose name was…Greg.

  It was Greg Graham, the costar of Hell for the Holidays. The man who sat next to Jake in that test screening back in December. The man I’d worried might feel up my boyfriend when the lights went down was here, in front of my now ex-boyfriend’s flat.

  It was so obvious Greg had come over to have sex with Jake.

  The driver opened the passenger door for me and waited. “Lots of traffic on 101; we hurry,” he said, still grinning.

  Greg had actually won the parking battle by a few inches. He turned the wheels of the bug into the curb and emerged, black curls intact, a blue-green scarf sloppily arranged around his shoulders. He kissed Jake—he kissed Jake—then turned to me.

  “Hey, Ben, how are you? How’s that little movie doing?”

  I hadn’t moved from the curb, as if my legs had been planted in the cement. I froze a polite smile on my face, the way I’d memorized years before in an abortive college attempt at male modeling. “We go,” the driver pleaded.

  “Greg. Graham. Look, I gotta go.”

  As we pulled away and lurched down Douglass, Jake put his arm around Greg and led him into the garden.

  * * *

  A young, spiky-haired Italian lesbian named Laura drove me the 135 kilometers from Malpensa Airport outside Milan to Turin. Like every thankless volunteer chauffeur at these types of events, she waited patiently, holding up a hastily lettered sign that read, “Mr. B. Schmidt, California.”

  Laura did not speak one word of English, not even hello, so she brought along a sidekick who did: Stefano, a gay man about her age, who smiled constantly.

  Her car was a beat-up, muddy Toyota that last had been vacuumed several months prior. Every time I moved my foot, forgotten snack wrappers crackled underneath. Laura’s vehicle had an odor reminiscent of my teenage years in Wisconsin—stale cigarettes, wet coats and gasoline. As I looked at them both, it was obvious to me that Vanity Fai
r advertisers had been lying to us all along about European youth.

  I could and did sulk about Davis and his alleged unsafe-sex take-advantage-of-drunk-Ben act, and the equally shocking sight of Greg Graham about to have sex with Jake. That we were in Italy and Hell for the Holidays might very well win an award seemed inconvenient side issues.

  Laura gratefully pushed me out of the car at Hotel Fratelli, which appeared at first to be a sooty office building housing an American-looking pizzeria and a shoe store at street level. It was easy to find, a few blocks down Via Pietro Micca from the Piazza Castelo, which had an ancient, turreted castle at its center—very European, indeed.

  A quick exchange between Stefano and the desk clerk netted me a small but pleasant single en suite room on the fifth floor, with whitewashed walls and dark wood floors and furniture. Double doors led out to a small balcony, facing west onto a haphazard panorama of red-tiled roofs in need of repair, bosco green patio draperies, and the odd Romanesque bell tower.

  * * *

  I was aware of the room, which meant I must not have been deeply asleep. The events of the past few days rearranged themselves into a fashion that occasionally made more sense—as in, the waltz at the ball danced over and over was with Jake, or it was Davis and Jake who went into the sex garden at Douglass together, not Jake and Greg Graham. Instead of Laura, the Italian lesbian, it was Karen, hysterically trying to figure out the country roads, with me as reluctant navigator following the map. Stefano was no longer sidekick—Connie herself held forth in the backseat of, not the smelly Toyota, but my sand-damaged Mercedes.

  “Can we stop at Starbucks?” Karen asked. “I really need to concentrate. Good thing I’m used to the fog, living in San Francisco.”

  “I don’t think they have that kind of thing, at least not here.” Out my window stretched mile upon mile of pasture and vineyard.

  Then the knocking started—at first barely perceptible, then much louder.

  “This car’s been fucked up ever since Palm Springs,” I said.

  She was about to say, “If we get stranded out here, I’ll never forgive you.” Instead, she turned to me and said, “Ben Schmidt? You are there? This is camera 503?” in a very low, heavily accented male voice.

  My eyes shot open. The balcony doors had blown open, the curtains billowing over the bed and covering my feet and ankles. The knocking continued.

  I opened the hotel room door to a younger—well, younger than me, anyway—Italian man of about my height, black hair, brown eyes, with an amused look on his handsome, slightly unshaven face.

  “You were—sleep?” he said, his hand outstretched toward me.

  “I guess—it was only a minute ago, I thought, but—”

  We shook hands. “I’m Adriano Fierro, from festival,” he said.

  Adriano’s hand was strong, tan—apparently, professionally manicured. There was a sage scent coming off his black jacket, something I associated more with New Mexico than Italy. This was what globalization can do for you.

  “So. We go to supper, the group meets,” he said. This was a strain, but he maintained a smile throughout the explanation—which I finally got—having read my orientation on the plane.

  Adriano led me to La Reseda, a little family restaurant in back of the castelo across a little river called the Dora Riparia. I could’ve kicked myself for having missed most of the daylight, as behind the castle were extensive royal gardens, illuminated now with impressive black iron street lamps. The weather had turned drizzly, and a light, cool fog hit our faces at a steady pace.

  “So. Tell me of your film, Mr. Schmidt?” he said, finally.

  “I’m not sure you’ll understand it—there’s this American holiday, Thanksgiving—”

  “Yes. I know this Thanksgiving; we study that. It comes from your… pellegrinos…in New England?”

  We crossed a little bridge and turned left onto Corso Palermo. Adriano put his hand on my arm to gently guide me in the right direction.

  “Another block up this way. In this other way”—he waved his arm off to the right—“is Sauna Club, where you will go to relax.”

  Sauna Club. Interesting, Adriano was showing me where the baths were. Maybe he’d take me there.

  When I felt better, of course.

  * * *

  La Reseda’s several small windows were covered with homey roscafé curtains. Clear round lights were strung over the tables for a cheerful, Oktoberfest vibe, even though it was the wrong country. Most were already filled, I guessed with film festival folks—and then was sure of it when I saw Christian Banner holding forth.

  There was no way to avoid him. I’d had no idea his Crime Brothers would be playing Turin, not that I’d checked or was surprised—they didn’t call it the festival circuit for nothing.

  Christian beamed. “Ben Schmidt, aren’t we men of the year?” He laughed, and the table laughed with him. He’d done his work, his seduction—they loved him, every fucking Canadian inch of him.

  “Christian—good to see you!” I lied, and dug my thumbs into his trapezius as if we were intimates.

  Adriano put his hand on my arm—again. “Over here, there are places,” he said, indicating the table we’d first seen that had vacancies.

  I was easily led away. “Looks like we’ll have to catch up later, Christian,” I said, grabbing a grissini out of the dish in front of him.

  * * *

  Turns out it was the better table, though I doubt Christian would’ve believed that. I was introduced to Giovanni, the festival director, and his right-hand man, Cosimo, who both smoked between courses and gushed about the merits of Hell for the Holidays.

  As grateful as I was for the attention, it was unexpected, and I was embarrassed. Still, it was welcome, and I wished Karen had been able to join me after all. She would have loved this part—the handsome Italians telling the San Francisco librarian-cum-soon-to-be-rich divorcée what a fine producer she was.

  I was trying to make sense of Giovanni’s English when my phone rang. Caller ID told me Jason was on the line.

  “Excuse me, guys; it’s my job calling from San Francisco,” I said, getting out of my chair and squeezing past Christian again on my way out to Corso Palermo.

  The drizzle picked up as a teenage boy on a Vespa roared around the corner. “Jason?” I said.

  “Morning, Ben.” He sounded tired. I’d figured I wouldn’t hear from him at all this trip. Now that he’d been more or less aligned with Paul, we spoke only when really necessary, and certainly he could handle the department during my more and more frequent absences—

  “There’s a problem you should know about,” he said.

  “Oh, man…I’m just sitting down to dinner here with these nice Italian people, and I’m starving.”

  “You’re not going to have much of an appetite after this, Ben.”

  “Jason?”

  “The IT guys were doing some routine computer checks last night, and—Ben, they found the gay porno on your PC.”

  “Huh?” A smart, elderly couple dressed for walking passed arm in arm in front of me and nodded.

  I scanned my memory. Sure, I’d looked at this site or that, mostly hookup concerns, which often had full nude body shots of guys and occasionally personal sex videos—but no way had any of them been saved to my hard drive.

  They were a simple way to relieve the tedium between e-mail drudgery and Safe Harbor staff meetings.

  “That’s impossible, Jason.” I looked back inside La Reseda, where the seat next to Adriano was still vacant.

  “I’m just telling you what they told me. Expect a call from Tony.”

  * * *

  There was a movie I’d watched on my work computer late one night about a year earlier called Surfer Paradise. Produced in the mid-1980s, before condoms were widely used in gay porn, Surfer Paradise starred shaggy blond muscle boy Billy Hewson, one of my all-time favorites, the subject of countless jack-off sessions.

  True, I’d had to purchase the film t
o view it online—but that was just a onetime thing, right? And it wasn’t there for repeat viewings—or was it? The janitors had gone, there was no one in the building save the lone security guard tied to the lobby desk—and I was teased by the blinking cursor next to the question “Purchase movie?”

  Of course I purchased the movie and whacked off to it under my desk—like any normal person would.

  * * *

  By Saturday morning there hadn’t been a peep from Tony Mallard. Also, there were no messages from Davis, which surprised me. If anything, he was a dependable adult—in most things—and he’d said he’d call.

  Prior to my arrival, there’d been two screenings of Hell for the Holidays at the 1960s postmodern concrete bunker Teatro Nuovo, adjacent to the lush Parco del Valentino along Turin’s major waterway, the Po.

  It was a pleasant enough walk from the Fratelli. Giovanni and Cosimo had said they thought it rather odd that I’d come in time for the awards ceremony but not the screenings themselves—actually, a consequence of my radiation schedule. Considering that I’d just seen Greg Graham with Jake, the thought of that actor smirking down at me from the big screen wasn’t all that appetizing anyway.

  The Italians had paid for a rudimentary subtitle system, and audiences were enthusiastic, bolstering the judging committee’s award recommendation. All this came via Adriano, who’d arrived early to accompany me—again—then seemed disappointed I didn’t want to take the Turin bus to the theater.

  He talked about Christian Banner.

  “Yes. Your friend, Canada Christian—his film Crime Brothers might also get the prize.”

  “Oh,” I said, figuring he might not get the dismissive subtlety that would come across to a native speaker of English. “I didn’t realize Crime Brothers was in the running.”

  At least it wasn’t in my category. Christian’s masterpiece was a feature, made for “$243.57, and I mean Canadian”—which he still spouted off at every available opportunity.

  “I don’t know the words for English, but is very good film, makes me feel—,” Adriano said, actually putting his hand over his heart.