Chapter 30 Mickey #3
The stall is big enough. Not comfortable but functional. I position the chair next to the toilet, lock the brakes, grab the bar with my right hand, and start the transfer.
The restroom door opens. I hear heavy footsteps of boots on tile. I’d know those footsteps in a crowd of a thousand people.
“Don’t say a word,” I call out.
“I’m not saying a word. I’m here for the coffee. The coffee machine is right outside the bathroom. Very convenient. I’m just walking past. This is a coincidence of architecture and bladder timing.”
I hear him walk to the urinal. The sound of a zipper. Then, because Tex cannot physically occupy a space without narrating it, he starts talking.
“This is a clean restroom. Stormy was right. Four and a half stars. The tile is a questionable color choice but the maintenance is above average. The hand dryer does look aggressive. It’s one of those Dyson ones that sounds like a jet engine.”
I’m sitting on the toilet in the accessible stall trying to manage my business while my best friend provides a real-time review of the restroom from the urinal. The absurdity of my life has reached a level that I could not have predicted weeks ago.
“The soap dispenser is the foam kind,” he continues.
“I’m not a fan of foam soap. Foam soap doesn’t feel like you’re actually cleaning anything.
It feels like you’re rubbing a cloud between your hands and hoping for the best. Give me liquid soap.
Liquid soap has substance. Liquid soap means business.
Foam soap is the participation trophy of hand hygiene. ”
“Jesus Christ, Tex. I’m trying to use the bathroom.”
“And I’m letting you. I’m at the urinal. This is a multi-user facility. We’re both using it. Independently. Like two adult men who happen to be in the same restroom at the same time. This is normal. This happens in restrooms across America every day.”
He finishes. I hear the flush, the footsteps to the sink, the foam soap dispenser.
“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” he says.
“Foam. Look at this shit. I’ve pumped it four times and I’ve got a handful of clouds.
This is decorative soap. This is soap for people who don’t actually get their hands dirty.
I’ve been wrist-deep in a smoker firebox at five in the morning.
I need soap that can handle soot and charcoal and the general grime of a man who works for a living.
This soap could not handle a light dusting. ”
He’s not leaving. He’s standing at the sink washing his hands with soap he despises because he’s not going to leave me alone in a public restroom.
He won’t say that. He will never say that.
He will stand at the sink critiquing foam soap until I’m finished and back in the chair.
If I fell during a transfer in a gas station bathroom and he was standing at the truck respecting my autonomy, he would never forgive himself.
Tex doesn’t desert his friends.
I finish and do the transfer back to the chair. It takes me a minute. The toilet is lower than the one at rehab, which means the angle is different, and I have to adjust mid-pivot. My right hand slips on the grab bar. I catch myself, re-grip and pull through. Not graceful, but functional.
“You good in there?” Tex asks. His voice is casual but I can hear the edge underneath it, the readiness. If I said no, he’d be through that stall door in two seconds and the lock wouldn’t slow him down.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Outstanding. I’m going to try the aggressive hand dryer now so I can tell Stormy about it. How do you turn it on?”
“Stick your hands down in it,” I tell him.
The Dyson fires up with a roar that fills the entire bathroom like a leaf blower in a closet. Over the noise I hear Tex yelling.
“GODDAMN! This is extremely aggressive. This hand dryer has a personal vendetta against me. My hands are dry but at what cost. It took some of my skin with it.”
I wheel out of the stall laughing. Tex is standing at the Dyson with his hands in it, his hair and beard blowing back from the force of the air, making a face like a man skydiving against his will.
“Stormy was right!” he shouts over the dryer. “This deserves the half star deduction. This machine is hostile!”
“Turn it off.”
“I can’t! It’s attacking me. How do I turn it off?”
“Take your hands out.”
He pulls his hands out and the dryer dies. His hair is pushed back on one side.
“I survived,” he says, smoothing his hair down. “But Stormy needs to be informed about this.”
I wash my hands at the accessible sink, and look at myself in the mirror. I’m good. Things are good. I’m halfway home, laughing and managing my own body in a gas station restroom while my best friend provides commentary.
We get back in the truck. The transfer is getting easier every time. Fourteen seconds for the chair.
“So, let’s get to the good stuff,” Tex says when we merge back onto the highway.
“Meaning what?”
“Benji. I’ve patiently waited all this time until now to hear the story. Tell me everything. Because I’ve been getting pieces of this and that on the phone and none of the pieces match up into a picture I fully understand. You say things are good, but I need the whole story.”
“Things are good, Tex. Really good.”
“Define good. Good like you’re having a nice time? Good like you’re falling for this guy? Good like you’re already gone and you haven’t admitted it yet?”
“Definitely the second one, maybe the last one.”
Tex glances at me. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. How far gone are we talking?”
“Enough to try to figure out how to make things work with him, if I can.”
“Have you kissed him yet?” he asks.
“Is that any of your damn business?”
“Damn right it is. Kissing is important.”
“Yes, it is,” I say. “No argument there, but I’ve kissed other men who weren’t important so there’s that to consider.”
“Alright, excellent point.” Tex is quiet for about three seconds, which is three seconds longer than his usual thinking time. “And the physical stuff? Below the waist? Is anything...”
“Things are happening.”
“Can you be more specific? I’m not asking to be nosy. I’m asking because I care about you and also because I sat through seventeen minutes of Doug’s video and I feel like I’ve earned some level of disclosure.”
I let out a heavy sigh. “Sensation is coming back. Slowly. Not everything. Not all the time. It’s not what it used to be. But it’s improving. It’s better than it was a month ago.”
“Mickey, that’s a huge development. Okay, enough about your sex life. Let’s talk about your heart. Do you care about him?”
“Tex. I just said that I did.”
“That’s good because I like Benji. You talk different when you talk about him.
Your voice goes somewhere it doesn’t usually go.
You don’t even know you’re doing it. The last time you talked soft about a man was never.
You’ve been careful and distant your whole life and this little wedding planner has made you cuddly. Now you don’t know what to do with it.”
“Benji is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I say. “Besides you and Stormy and Sheila. He’s the best thing.”
“Then treat him like it. All the time. You can’t go wrong doing that.”
“I’m planning to,” I say.
“Stormy’s looking forward to seeing Benji again. He likes him.”
“Has Stormy ever had a friend before? A good friend?”
Tex goes quiet. His hands are on the wheel and his eyes are on the road but the part of him that’s always producing sound just stops.
Four seconds. Five. Six. For Tex, six seconds of silence is an eternity.
“Not that he’s ever mentioned,” Tex says.
His voice has dropped into the low tone it goes to when he’s talking about Stormy’s past. The tone that doesn’t have any jokes in it.
“None, besides you, me and Sheila. And you’re my friend, so that’s different.
You came with the package. Sheila came with the bar.
The regulars came with the territory. None of those are people Stormy chose himself.
They’re people who were already here when he arrived. ”
He adjusts his grip on the wheel.
“Benji is the first person Stormy picked on his own. The first person he reached out to without me in the middle of it. He walked into the hallway in the ER the night you were shot and tried to comfort Benji. And then the day Benji swung by on his way to Jacksonville, I saw Stormy run out to the parking lot to catch him before he left. I’ve never seen Stormy run after anyone.
Having a friend around will be good for him.
” He clears his throat hard. “So, when I say I like Benji. When I say I want you to treat him right. It’s not just about you and it’s not just about him.
It’s about Stormy too. Because if you mess things up with Benji and Benji stops coming around, Stormy loses the first friend he ever chose.
And I will not watch him lose another thing. He’s lost enough.”
“I hear you,” I say.
“I know you do.”
“Benji’s flying in next weekend,” I say. “If that’s okay with you and Stormy.”
He glances over at me. “What do you mean? This will be your home too, Mickey. No need to ask us who can stay over. I’m not Mama Weaver. Of course it’s okay for Benji to come.”
“Thank you for all of it, Tex. For everything you’ve done for me. I can never repay you.”
He doesn’t look at me. He adjusts his grip on the wheel. He’s working to keep his face steady. “You’d do the same for me,” he says.
“Yes, I would.”
“That’s why I don’t need to be thanked for it. We would both do whatever the other needs us to do. That’s the deal. That’s been the deal since the day we met in seventh grade. And it’ll always be the deal.”