Chapter 10 Benji #2
“My best friend Dante is flying in soon,” I say.
“He’s coming to help with the wedding. He offered to handle the vendors.
We’ve done this before. We worked a wedding in Miami Beach where the groom’s ex-girlfriend showed up with a megaphone and started reading his text messages to the crowd.
Dante talked her down while I hid the bride in a coat closet with a bottle of champagne.
We saved the wedding from becoming a news story. We’re a good team.”
“Is he a wedding planner too?” he asks before popping a fry into his mouth.
“No, he’s actually a real estate agent, but he can do anything.
I mean absolutely anything. Which is great for me because sometimes I get in over my head and need help.
Plus, he’s handsome and charming. When things start to fall apart, I send him in to soothe the mothers of the brides, or the brides.
One time I even sent him to calm the father of the bride down when he realized how much the wedding and reception was costing him.
I think that man turned a little bit gay that day.
Dante had him eating out of his hand. And when Dante needs help staging a condo or doing an open house, I’m there for him. We help each other.”
“What does Dante think about all this?” Mickey asks.
“About what? Me doing a wedding in the Panhandle?”
“Sure, and you driving back and forth to see me every day.”
“Dante thinks the wedding here is a good move for my career. The bride’s mother found me through a referral in Miami.
She attended a wedding I did last summer and offered me too much money to turn it down.
It’s a good opportunity to spread my wings.
Or that’s what he says. Of course, he’s never been to the Panhandle.
He might change his mind when he gets here and sees what I’m dealing with. ”
“And about the driving here every day? What does he say about that?”
“Dante thinks I’ve lost my mind,” I admit. “He said so. Multiple times. In both English and Spanish.”
“Have you considered that he might be right?”
“No, I don’t listen to Dante. It’s the foundation of our friendship. He tells me the smart thing to do, I do the opposite, then he shows up to help me survive the consequences of my actions. It’s been working for seven years. I don’t know why he puts up with me.”
“That’s a long friendship.”
“We met in Miami when I was twenty-one. I was working my first wedding solo, a disaster on South Beach. The tent collapsed during cocktail hour. Dante was a guest. He walked up to me while I was standing in the wreckage of a thousand-dollar floral arch having a panic attack and he said, ‘You look like you need a drink and an extra set of hands.’ He helped me rebuild the arch out of whatever we could find, and by the end of the night the bride said it was the most unique wedding she’d ever been to. We’ve been inseparable since.”
“He sounds like good people.”
“He’s the best,” I say. “He’s the only person in my life besides my Mom and Aunt who I’ve never had to perform for. Everyone else gets the show. Dante accepts me exactly as I am.”
Mickey’s quieter than usual while he eats his hamburger. I lean back in the chair and let the silence sit because for once I’m too tired to fill it.
“Tell me about you and Tex,” I say after a while. “I’ve been coming here and I barely know anything about you except that you’re a cop and you like coffee.”
His face relaxes in a way it doesn’t when we’re talking about the shooting or his legs or anything that happens in this hospital room. Tex is safe ground.
“We met in seventh grade,” he says. “First day at Middle School. He was already six feet tall. I was not. He sat behind me in homeroom and the first thing he ever said to me was, ‘Hey! Is your head always this blonde or is it a summer thing?’ I told him it was a genetic thing and he said, ‘That’s cool,’ and that was it. We were best friends from that day.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. Some people you meet and there’s a whole process, getting to know each other, testing the water, figuring out if you fit.
Tex and I skipped all of that. He was just my person from day one.
We played football together all through high school.
We were both on defense. Linebackers. He was already the biggest guy on the team by sophomore year and I was the second biggest. Between us we were a wall. ”
“I’m trying to picture you two playing football and it’s working very well.”
“I was good,” he says. “Not great. Good enough for the team, not good enough for a scholarship. Tex was the same. We were both big fish in a small town pond and we knew it. But the football wasn’t really the point. The point was having something to do together, some place to be where we fit.”
He takes a sip of his cold brew and his eyes go back to a version of himself that’s seventeen and playing defense.
“When we were seventeen,” he says, “we stole a bottle of peach schnapps from my mama’s liquor cabinet.
Went out to his daddy’s dock. We drank about half the bottle, which, if you’ve never had peach schnapps, is like drinking syrup that someone lit on fire.
Terrible stuff. God, it was awful. To this day, the smell of peach schnapps makes me want to puke.
It was a great night though. We were seventeen and hammered on stolen schnapps.
Tex turned to me and said, ‘Mickey, I need to tell you something.’”
I lean forward, listening so hard.
“He said, ‘I think I like guys instead of girls.’ Just like that. No buildup. Just Tex being Tex, saying it directly because he’s never known how to say anything any other way.
And I sat there on that dock with peach schnapps burning my throat, the moon glowing on the bay stretched out in front of us and I said, ‘Really? Me too.’”
“Wait,” I say. “Let me get this straight. Tex came out to you when you were both seventeen? And you didn’t know?”
“No, not exactly,” Mickey says, still eating fries as if this isn’t critically important. “We came out to each other that night.”
“What??? You’re gay?”
“Yeah, we’re both gay.”
“I knew Tex and Stormy were together. But how did I not know this about you? You’re gay? For fuck’s sake! Mickey! How could I not know this?”
“Is that a problem?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “Of course not. Why would that be a problem?”
I feel a sudden sharp heat in my cheeks, not just because I was surprised, but because I’ve accidentally given him the unedited version of myself before I’d even decided if I liked him.
I thought about my unwashed jeans and how I probably smelled like gas station coffee for days straight.
I’m a person who lives for the big reveal, and I’ve completely botched my own.
I’m the guy who tells brides that a single stray hair will ruin a close-up. I’m the person who carries a lint roller like a weapon. And yet, I’ve been sitting here in a wrinkled T-shirt with a bruise the color of a rotting lime, looking like I climbed out of a dumpster.
I thought it didn’t matter because he was a straight cop who only saw a civilian. But he’s a gay man who saw everything, and I didn’t even have the sense to hide it. I’d been walking into his room assuming he wouldn’t notice how I looked.
“It’s just... when I told you why I didn’t leave the bar when Sheila asked me to, you didn’t say a word about those guys being homophobic assholes. Why?”
“That was your story to tell and I wanted to hear what you had to say,” he says.
“But you could’ve still told me or said something. Especially since I’m obviously gay and don’t hide it.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Well, I was gay,” he says, waving a hand at his legs. “Now I’m not anything.”
He says it matter of fact. Like he’s reporting something he’s already accepted and doesn’t see the point in dressing it up. And then he picks up a second hamburger, unwraps it, squirts ketchup on it and takes a bite.
That’s it. That’s all he’s going to give it. A shrug, a wave at dead legs and he’s done. He’s not gay anymore.
But I’m not done with this.
My brain is running back through every conversation we’ve had, every visit, every look.
He’s been gay the whole time. Every time he watched me walk in the room.
Every time his eyes tracked my hands when I set up the food.
That one time I caught him looking at my neck, right where the chain sits, and he glanced away so fast I thought I imagined it. Maybe I didn’t imagine it.
I didn’t see it because he doesn’t look like what I’m used to looking for, and that says something about me and my assumptions.
But more than the surprise, is what he said.
I was gay. Now I’m not anything.
Mickey erased himself in one sentence. And the worst part is how easily he said it. Like he’d already decided.
My mouth has nothing to say. My throat is so tight I can barely swallow and the backs of my eyes are on fire.
I know what it looks like when a person erases themselves. I watched my mother do it for years after my father left. She stopped wearing the red lipstick. She stopped playing music in the kitchen.
I can’t watch it happen again. Not to Mickey. Not while I’m in this room.
Scooting my chair closer to his bed, I fold my arms on the edge and lower my head onto them. I’m so tired. The weight of everything — the wedding, the driving, my ribs, what he said — comes down on me all at once. My body just gives up and folds.
My forehead rests on my arms. The thin hospital blanket is warm under my elbows.
Neither of us speaks. We stay like that. After a minute I lift my head.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him. “Never let me hear you say again that ‘you’re not anything.’ That’s not how it works.”
“Benji...”
“No. You don’t get to erase who you are because your body is hurt. You’re still you. You’re still the guy who stole peach schnapps with his best friend and said ‘me too.’ You’re still the guy who came out at seventeen in a red county and became a cop anyway. A bullet doesn’t get to take that.”
“Benji, I have an incomplete spinal injury. Not to be blunt, but right now I can’t feel my dick. I’m numb from the waist down. Nothing works. At all. Maybe things will come back, maybe they won’t.”
He’s not asking for sympathy. He’s reporting a fact with no feeling attached.
Dead dick. Moving on.
“You’re a lot more than your dick, you know,” I say. “I like you and I’ve never met your dick. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine dick but you’re not just your dick, Mickey.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Is that so?”
“Damn straight it is. You’re going to get better. You’re the toughest man I’ve ever met and I’ve met Tex, so that’s saying something.”
He sighs and reaches for the last packet of fries and holds them out to me. “You want these?” he asks.
“No, go ahead. I’m too tired to eat.”
“About the wedding,” he says, flipping the subject. A habit of his I’ve noticed every time the conversation gets tough. “It’s coming up fast. You’ve got work to do.”
I know what he’s doing because I do the same thing. Deflect, redirect, move the conversation away from the wound and back to the surface where it’s safe. I let him do it because he’s earned the right to decide what he can talk about right now.
“I’ll be okay,” I say. “Since Dante’s coming. He’ll handle the logistics and I’ll handle the ceremony. Between us we’ll pull it off. We always do.”
“Seriously, you need to stop coming every day. Focus on the job.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Why do I think that means no?”
“Historically that means no, but I’m giving myself the illusion of being open to reason.”
The corner of his mouth lifts in a small, tired smile. I hold onto it.
At seven-thirty I stand up and begin tidying up the food. I’m leaving earlier than usual because I’m so tired my legs are heavy and a migraine is coming in fast.
“Need anything else before I go?” I ask him the same as always.
“No, I’m good,” he says. “Thank you. For what you said. About...” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.
“I meant every word and I’ll keep saying it.”
I leave and head to my car. Once inside, I don’t even start the engine. I lean my head back and close my eyes. I’m exhausted, my ribs are screaming, and Dante is flying in to help me save a wedding that feels less important by the hour.
Mickey’s gay. He’s one of us. And he just tried to give that back like it was something the bullet got to take.
I can’t let that happen.
I’ll be back tomorrow.