Chapter 40 Mickey
The party is winding down and I haven’t seen Benji in thirty minutes.
The bar is nearly empty. Sheila is wiping down the bar top. Tex is stacking chairs. Stormy is in the kitchen doing dishes.
“Hey,” I call out to Tex. “Where’s Benji?”
Tex doesn’t look at me. He stacks another chair. “Haven’t seen him.”
I wheel toward the kitchen. Stormy is at the sink, hands in soapy water, his back to me.
“Stormy. Have you seen Benji?”
Stormy turns. “He came in a little bit ago. Gave me a hug.”
“Where’d he go after that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought he went to find you.”
I wheel to the back hallway. I press the elevator button and ride up. The doors open and the loft is dark and quiet. But the quiet feels wrong. I flip on the lights and wheel in, scanning the room fast and thorough.
His carry-on bag is gone. His jacket is gone from the hook by the elevator.
The canvas tote with the mason jar candles from the party is still by the door but his toiletry bag is gone from the bathroom counter.
The plant is on the shelf. Leaves glossy, positioned perfectly, catching the light from the kitchen area.
Frankie’s shelf is empty. George without Frankie.
Jesus Christ. He took Frankie.
He took his plant and left mine and the dividing is not a man who went to get ice.
I pull out my phone and call him. It rings four times and goes to voicemail. “Benji. Call me.”
I hang up. I call again. Goes straight to voicemail. He sent it to voicemail. He saw my name and pressed the button.
I text.
Mickey: Where are you? Your stuff is gone. Please call me.
The text shows as delivered. Not read. The screen stays on delivered and doesn’t change.
I take the elevator back down. Tex is behind the bar with a bourbon and his arms crossed. His face is doing the rare serious Tex face, the one that says I know more than I’m going to volunteer.
“Benji’s gone,” I say. “His bag is gone. Frankie is gone. He took the plant, Tex.”
“Well.” Tex sets the bourbon down. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I was standing right here when your cop buddies walked in tonight. I was standing right here when Benji walked over. And I was standing right here when he turned around, wiped his eyes and his face fell apart for about two seconds before he put it back together.”
My hands tighten on the armrests.
“What did you say about him, Mickey? When the sergeant walked up. What did you say about Benji?”
I don’t answer.
“What did you say?” he asks again. “I know you did something wrong. And now he’s gone.”
“I introduced him and said he was helping out with the party.”
Tex nods slowly. “Helping out with the party,” he says. “The man who drove four hours every day to visit you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, Mickey.”
“Tex, wait.”
“Did you think that you were going to keep him locked up in the back room? That he was going to fly up here every two weeks and be your boyfriend upstairs and your party planner downstairs and never notice the difference?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. Those bikers were right there, Tex. Ten feet away. I didn’t know a single one of them and the sergeant was standing right between me and them and if I said boyfriend, Benji would’ve—”
“Would’ve what? Been himself? Smiled at you? Touched your arm in front of strangers?”
“Yes! And every one of those bikers would’ve seen it. And I’m in this chair. I can’t get between him and a fist, Tex. I can’t stand up. The last time someone in this bar decided Benji was a problem, I lost my legs. So yeah, I made him small because small is harder to target.”
Tex is quiet for a long time, then lets out a long sigh.
“I hear you,” he says. “I hear what you’re saying and I know you believe it.
But damn Mickey — I was standing right here when you said those words to the sergeant.
And I watched Benji’s face. I watched it break and I watched him fix it in two seconds flat.
I watched him go right back to working the party like nothing happened.
That’s what I saw from behind this bar tonight.
You’re not protecting him. You’re erasing him.
And those aren’t the same thing. They feel the same to you because the instinct comes from the same place.
But they didn’t feel the same to him. And the thing you’re so afraid of — someone hurting him — you just did it yourself. ”
“I need to find him,” I say.
“Where would he go?”
“I don’t know. He’s got the rental car. He could be anywhere by now.”
I try his phone again. Voicemail. The text still shows delivered, not read.
“He’s not answering or reading his texts,” I say.
“Can you blame him?”
“No, I can’t.”
I reach into the pocket on the side of my chair where I keep my phone, my wallet and the small things that matter. My fingers find a card. Dog-eared, soft from weeks in the same spot.
Dante’s business card. The one he put on my hospital table in Tallahassee, when he leaned in and whispered “call me if Benji gets in trouble.”
Benji isn’t the one in trouble.
I am.
It’s after midnight. I dial the number anyway. The phone rings three times.
“Why are you calling me at this hour, Mickey?” Dante’s voice is cool.
“Where is he?”
“I’m in Miami right now. How would I know?”
“Dante, you always know what’s going on with Benji. You’re his emergency contact on everything. Please tell me where he is.”
“Why? So you can drive to wherever he is and say the right words? You’re good with words when it’s just the two of you. It’s the rooms full of people where you go silent.”
“Dante, please.”
“Do you remember when I came to your loft? With the donuts? Do you remember the conversation we had?”
“Yes.”
“I asked you to do one thing,” Dante says. “One thing, Mickey. Don’t make him feel small. That’s all I asked. And you did it. You introduced him to your colleagues as the help. No. I’m not telling you where he is tonight.”
“Is he okay? At least tell me that, Dante.”
“No, but he will be. Tomorrow morning I’m flying up there. I’m getting Benji and I’m bringing him back home to Miami. Where he can be who he is without someone cutting him down to fit in a closet.”
Dante chose that word on purpose.
“I thought I liked who Benji is when he’s with you,” Dante says. “But it turns out I hate it.”
The line goes dead.
I sit in the bar holding the phone with a dark screen. Tex hasn’t moved. He’s still behind the bar with his arms crossed.
“You heard all that?”
“I heard enough,” he says.
“He said he’s coming tomorrow to take Benji back to Miami.”
“Then you’d better get your ass in gear and fix this before he arrives.”
“I can’t fix it tonight. I don’t know where Benji is and Dante won’t tell me.”
Tex pours a second bourbon. He pushes it across the bar to me. I don’t drink bourbon. I take it anyway.
“Mickey,” Tex says. “I’m going to say a thing and you’re going to listen.”
“Say it.”
“I know why you did it. I heard what you said about those bikers and the chair. I know you think you were keeping him safe. But Mickey — I put my arm around Stormy on this deck every night in front of everyone. Truckers, bikers, college kids. I don’t know who’s safe and who isn’t.
I just know that Stormy deserves to be next to me where people can see it.
And the room adjusts. The room always adjusts.
The people who can’t adjust can fucking leave.
And the people who stay are the ones worth having here. ”
I drink the bourbon. It burns going down.
“You love him,” Tex says. “I know you do. I’ve seen how you look at him when you think nobody’s watching.
You look at Benji how I look at Stormy. This isn’t about being ashamed of him or not wanting to be seen with him.
It never was. The problem is you think loving someone means standing between them and everything that could hurt them.
You did it in the hallway. You did it again tonight.
The bullet and what you did tonight were the same instinct.
The bullet cost you your legs. Tonight cost you Benji. ”
“What do I do?”
“You find him. Tomorrow, if you can’t tonight.
And you don’t apologize with words. You apologize with action.
You put him next to you and you say his name and you say what he is to you.
Not up here with the door locked. Out there.
In front of the people who make your hands grip that chair.
You stop deciding who’s safe enough to know about him and you let people see what they see. ”
I nod back at him. He’s right.
“Get some sleep,” Tex says. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
I take the elevator up. The loft feels wrong without him in it.
At midnight I send one more text.
Mickey: I know what I did. I know why you left. I’m going to find you tomorrow and I’m going to say your name right. To everyone. I’m sorry, Benji.
Delivered. Not read.