 
BUMPS

A Novella

Jon Rutherford

Copyright 2012 Jon Rutherford

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This is a work of pure fiction.

(Revised & corrected in May and September 2012.)

### BUMPS

**A** **Novella**

Part One: How It Began

"Did you have a nice Christmas?" he said.

The sandy-haired youth was holding onto the strap in front of mine. The route between the San Diego de Campostela Avenue and Remington-Staidly stations is notoriously bumpy and has been for years. I guess they can't figure out how to fix the tracks. Experienced passengers know to brace themselves at the right moment, just before all the jostling begins, and then hang on for all they're worth.

The young man must have been new to the subway, for the first jolt after Campostela slammed him forcefully against me. I got whiffs of his citrus-y aftershave and of the clean scent of his skin, along with a hint of stale, honest sweat, probably from working in some low-paying office job. Highly paid workers don't have to sweat.

His body careened harmlessly off of mine, and I saw him firm up his grip on the overhead strap and shift one foot to get better purchase against the next jolt he instinctively knew was bound to occur, the only question being when.

"Sorry!" he said, partially turning to meet my eyes. "That was quite a bump."

"You haven't seen anything yet. Hang on."

As an act of self-preservation, I'd committed to memory, over the course of three or four of my first trips, the pattern of events. Right after you dimly glimpse all those shattered tiles in the tunnel walls about two-thirds of the way between the rotting platforms of the long-abandoned Farley St. and Hildebrand Heights stations, comes a bump far rougher than the first one. It hadn't gone away since my last trip, and it took place right on schedule.

The young man was propelled backwards as though by some invisible hand. This time he actually lost hold of his strap and started to tumble sideways. I'd foreseen this, and was ready. As soon as his body contacted mine and I felt its downward slide, I grasped hold of him, right hand under his right arm, left beneath the left, and in a jiffy had him righted again. I could feel his heart thumping away.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "Is it like this all over town, or did I just pick the worst stretch?" He laughed nervously.

"Well," I said, reluctantly letting go of him now that he was upright once more and gripping his strap with white knuckles, "this is probably the worst, but I haven't explored every mile of the system, so don't quote me."

I knew there was a third, killer bump coming up in about forty-five seconds at the rate we were traveling today, but decided not to warn my fellow rider. To my shame or not, I'd relished that brief physical contact when I broke his fall, and was looking forward to doing it again.

"Man. Thanks for what you did back there."

"Sure," I said. "Oh, and, yeah, Christmas was okay, I guess. How about you?"

"Well..." he said. I hadn't realized so much wistfulness could be packed into one syllable. "I don't really know anybody here yet and I couldn't afford to go back home, so..."

He trailed off, but there was no need for him to continue. I could tell he'd spent Christmas alone, and lonely. Those of us of a certain age eventually become inured to it, but I knew how tough it can be for a boy or girl just out of school, with little money, and only a mediocre or worse, often far worse, apartment or room to go back to every evening, and to be cooped up in all day on Christmas.

To the average middle-class child it seems Christmas Day will always be the most special of the year, with extended family milling about, aunts and uncles picking you up and giving you a hug, and the big twinkling funny-smelling tree with artificial snow underneath laden with heaps of exciting presents.

I had time in the twenty or so seconds still remaining before the Ferguson Bump to form a mental picture of my winsome young fellow rider sitting alone in a shabby furnished room, this first Christmas on his own, opening his last can of pork-and-beans for dinner, then crying himself to sleep.

I shifted out of daydream mode, knowing the big moment was at hand. Okay, here it comes: the infamous Ferguson Bump, terror or delight of us seasoned riders, depending on your perspective and, to a lesser degree, on whether you're seated or standing.

_Wham!_ A deafening cacophony as every last object not screwed, nailed, or glued down, from the undercarriage to the roof of the car, got momentarily dislodged, and with a stroboscopic dimming of the lights followed by total blackout, the car and everybody in it was tossed mercilessly into the air.

The lights flickered back on to reveal two passengers about fifteen feet forward actually thrown to the aisle floor, while seated riders the length of the car were making awkward attempts to retrieve possessions that had been wrenched from their grasp or sent flying off their laps.

But my young friend was still safely if shakily on his feet, thanks to my arms, wrapped firmly around his mid-section, and my left leg, laterally bracing his.

"Ohmigod," he said, "what was that?" There was real fear in his voice. The smell of sweat now won out over after-shave. I could feel the boy trembling, apart from the rhythmic vibration induced in all of us by the routine motion of wheels passing over track joints. I loosed my hold on him and tactfully permitted him a few moments to try to compose himself.

"This is your first ride, isn't it."

"Yes, it is." His voice was still quavery. "I moved here three months ago. I've been using my car for everything, but it quit on me just as I was getting to work this morning, so now I'm using the subway till I can get it fixed. But that will have to be after next payday."

"Well, like I said, I can't be sure, but I think this may be the worst stretch in the whole system. I'm sorry it happened also to be on the path you had to take."

"That's the way it goes," he said. "Thanks for catching me again, uh..."

It's funny how there's a special little pause that only happens when you don't know somebody's name and want to learn it.

"Russell," I said. "But just call me Russ."

Without releasing the strap, and wise he was not to, he half-turned again and extended his other hand. I took it in my own and we exchanged an awkward, unconventional but warm left-handed shake. His skin was soft and pliant. An office worker, undoubtedly.

His eyes were cornflower blue with long lashes, his complexion faintly ruddy. A definite country-boy air, or at least small-town. He smiled as by unspoken accord we kept on shaking hands for a second or two longer than usual. I felt a surge of bittersweet yearning I seldom experienced anymore.

"Benjamin," he said. "My friends call me Ben."

"Ben, I hope your car won't cost a lot to repair. I guess you had to have it towed."

"Yeah, and I barely had enough left after that for the subway. Everything costs so much here."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Ben was not swimming in money. In fact I would have bet he kept at least one foot over the poverty line. His jacket was worn through at the collar and obviously not nearly warm enough for the season; there was a gap at the bottom where the zipper had just given up. His shoes were decent but outworn. His jeans were almost rubbed through at the knees and ragged at the cuffs. And an indoor, probably office, job you could go to in threadbare jeans didn't suggest rising to boardroom status anytime soon.

"I hope not, too," said Ben, still half-facing me and making good eye contact once in a while – he wasn't shy, at least.

For a moment I wondered what he meant, then I remembered my remark about car repair. "I knew it'd be tougher living in the city but I found out it costs way more than I ever thought."

There was a friendly openness in his speech and manner as refreshing as spring water after eight hours or more of first dreading and then actually having to listen to my focus-group participants, most of whom had lived in this city all or the greater part of their lives, and long ago become cynical, or even bitter and paranoid, about everything from their serial divorces to perceived problems with city garbage pickup, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage.

"How far do you have to go, Ben?"

"Well, the map shows that if I get off at Covington Station I can walk the rest of the way home in fifteen or twenty minutes." Covington Station is maybe one-quarter of the way between downtown and my own stop in Terrapin Heights, a fairly remote, affluent suburb.

Suddenly I decided to do something I did not approve of and had almost never done in my life. I would tell a lie.

"Really?" I said. "I'm getting off at Covington myself."

~~~

Technically, it wasn't a lie, for both Ben and I did get off when our car shuddered to a halt at the Covington Station platform.

Five or six homeless people were sitting or lying against the grimy tile wall of the platform, with dirty blankets, bottles of vodka or gin in paper sacks, and cardboard boxes full of belongings. One, an old woman with terminally alcoholic features and a smile that her eyes didn't participate in, wordlessly held out her hand just as we reached the exit portal.

Ben stopped, dug into his left jeans pocket, pulled out a dollar bill, and handed it to the woman, who muttered something I couldn't make out.

In that moment, I saw nothing less than pure compassion written on Ben's face. I don't think I'd ever seen anything quite like it. It sent a shiver up my spine.

I almost didn't say anything. But once we were out of earshot and, with the escalator roped off and marked "Out of Service," climbing the three short flights of stairs to the street, I changed my mind. "That was nice of you, but can you afford to do things like that?" I guessed he had probably never seen a real live beggar before coming to the city.

"I just felt like I should," he said. "I guess you're right. It was kind of stupid."

"No, Ben, I didn't mean it that way."

I thought of conventionally appropriate things to add, such as "But she'll just spend it on more booze," or "But for all you know she's actually doing okay and is part of an organized racket," and "But the police say you shouldn't do it." Yet what I felt like saying, but didn't dare, was, "It was a lovely thing you did."

I just kept quiet.

In the strictest interpretation, I'd failed to lie on board the train despite my intention. I had actually exited at Covington. I rationalized therefore that I still had a lie left to use as I pleased. At least one.

"Listen, Ben," I said as we came out into the last minutes of faltering daylight at the top of the stairs. "I have an engagement near here but it's not for another hour. I was going to get a bite to eat anyway, so maybe you'd like to come along? If you don't have plans, that is."

"No, I don't have any plans. I was just gonna go home and crash, that's all. Sure, I'd like to get something to eat. I didn't get to eat lunch." I saw his expression change. "But...well, I'm afraid that dollar was all I had left. Maybe some other time?"

I knew there was unlikely to be another time. I wouldn't have let him pay for his dinner anyway. Besides, I didn't want to leave him nearly yet. I hadn't enjoyed anybody's company so much in – well, longer than I could remember. "Hey, don't worry about it," I said. I clapped him on the shoulder. "It's on me."

I wasn't familiar with the territory. Covington Avenue runs pretty much the length of the city, but it traverses a wealth of dissimilar districts. From what I could see around me, this was one neighborhood I'd just as soon negotiate only in daylight, preferably armed or with a couple of husky bodyguards.

By the time Ben and I had walked halfway to his place, it was dark and I was so scared I must have been shaking. It seemed as though every alley we passed was full of shadowy figures cursing or babbling incoherently, or else conversing in snarling, conspiratorial voices. I halfway expected to see eyes glowing out of the dark.

Many of the shopfronts were boarded up, the boards covered with ancient graffiti visible under what few streetlights were still working. Some of it I recognized as gang signs and slogans; some was tag art, much of it once beautiful, but now long faded.

The sidewalks were littered with paper, small objects, and unidentifiable filth. Along the curbs it was even worse. There was a faint but pervasive stench of urine. Obviously this was an area that the city didn't even attempt to maintain anymore. The liability insurance alone probably made it impracticable.

Asking where Ben lived would, I felt, not be appropriate. He'd turned to the left, east on Winslow, at the mouth of the subway stairs, and I'd followed along close beside him, already thoroughly scared. I wondered if he thought it was odd that I had an engagement in this part of town, where what life existed did not appear to be of the kind that would make "engagements," professional or otherwise, other than drug deals.

"Uh, Ben," I said, "do you have any...favorite eating places around here?"

"There's a kind of diner called Davey's over on Masonic" (pointing to the south) "that I've been to a couple of times. It's nothing fancy, of course." He laughed. "But I don't imagine you'd expect me to be eating in fancy places anyway, would you."

"A diner sounds fine to me," I said. "I don't much go for fancy places myself." This, at least, was not a lie. I could afford them, but their loud, vulgar, bourgeois clientele always spoiled the meal for me.

I made a mental note to keep tally, as best I could, of how many outright lies I'd told by the end of day. So far, just one. Or was it two?

"Would you mind if we stopped by my place first?" said Ben. "I'd really like to shower and change clothes. I feel grubby."

"I don't mind," I said.

I hadn't planned on going to Ben's place – at least not first thing. In fact, I no longer had any plan at all.

Oh, sure, for the first couple of minutes, during our little adventure on the bumpy tracks, I thought I'd have a go at picking him up for sex. But then as we talked, my feelings rapidly and totally changed. Finally, and to my own surprise, by the time I got off the train with him at Covington Station, it was for the sole reason that I was enjoying his company and didn't want to leave him yet. He seemed to be that rarity, a genuinely through-and-through good person.

Ben lived four blocks farther up Winslow, in a building you wouldn't guess offered housing of any kind. The bottom floor looked to be a used-book store.

His second-floor lodging consisted of a bed-sitting room with a tiny makeshift kitchen area and a bathroom. It was clean but almost entirely bare. A small bookcase stood under the single window, with ten or fifteen books on one shelf. Beside it was the one and only chair, an old straight-backed one. There was a double bed neatly made up with a chintz bedspread, and a little chest of drawers, as well as a kind of kitchen table that doubled as a desk.

The overhead light, a bare 60-watt bulb dangling over Ben's table or desk from a twisted cord dating back to the forties or earlier, was harsh.

Ben walked over to the chair beside the bookcase and switched on an old floor lamp beside it, then he turned off the overhead bulb. It was instantly more cozy, though still undeniably bleak. The room possessed the cold, morbid smell of old semi-derelict buildings, but that would surely improve as Ben lived there longer – if he was so unlucky – and it got used to its tenant. Then it would start to smell more like a normal living space.

"There, that's better, isn't it?" he said with a pleased smile. He did not apologize for his room being plain or for its location, and that impressed me as more evidence of his simple, honest nature.

By now I knew beyond any doubt that I liked him a lot.

"I'm afraid I don't have a TV or even a radio to entertain you," he said. "I'll be getting something eventually, but right now things are pretty much touch-and-go. The rent comes first, then getting my car fixed, and of course gas and food, then everything else. Only by then there's not much left."

I was not at all used to such candor. Suddenly I found myself having to hold back tears.

"Hey, Ben, it takes a while." Damn it. Just as I'd feared, my voice broke. My focus-group training enabled me to get a grip on myself, though. "I know how it is when you're just starting out."

That was lie number two, maybe three.

For I had no idea of "how it was." I'd been pampered as a child, fully supported as a teenager and then all the way through college and graduate school, and, on the sudden accidental death of my parents three years after I got my master's in European history, I'd inherited enough to live on, if not in luxury, at least comfortably enough, probably for the rest of my life. I wouldn't even need to bother holding down a job.

Yet I didn't want to avoid working. I felt I'd probably go crazy without some kind of daily employment. Currently I conducted focus groups for Fassing-Kuyper, LLC, one of America's largest and most heartless advertising agencies, which had a big regional office in our city. The job paid well. Maybe I'd best leave it at that. I often hated it, had never loved it, but it did pay well.

"You can look through my books while I get ready," said Ben, sitting on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes and socks, "if you want to."

I started to browse the one partially-filled shelf of books under the window. In my peripheral vision I could dimly see Ben shucking all his clothes except for a pair of baby-blue boxer shorts, and then taking fresh clothing out of the little chest of drawers, and from a closet built into the wall behind which was the bathroom. He laid a shirt, another pair of worn jeans, and socks neatly on the bed, gathered up the clothes he'd taken off, and put them into what I supposed was a laundry bag or hamper inside the closet.

I thought he looked skinnier than was good for him. He probably was.

He said, "I won't be long. And thanks for the dinner offer, Russ. I really appreciate it." He shut the bathroom door. Pretty soon I heard water running and bouncing off a plastic shower curtain.

His little book collection was eclectic. There was an anthology of English poetry, one I knew was often used in university English courses. There was a Merriam-Webster's _Collegiate_ _Dictionary_. There was a book on Zen Buddhism and _A_ _Field_ _Guide_ _to_ _the_ _Birds_ _of_ _North_ _America_ by Roger Tory Peterson. And a paperback copy of Dickens' _David_ _Copperfield_.

There were also, to my surprise, several volumes in French. I hadn't tried to read French in so long it would have been useless to look at any of those. My French had never amounted to much anyway. I'd only had the first two elementary courses, in my first year of college.

So I pulled the English poetry anthology off the shelf and opened it at random.

By the time I'd read a couple of sonnets of Wordsworth and started in on his friend Coleridge's opium-derived "The Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan," the noise of the shower had stopped. A couple of minutes later Ben stepped out of the now steamy bathroom in fresh maroon boxers. In a couple more he was dressed and we were ready to go find Davey's Diner.

"So what kind of job have you got, Ben?" I asked as we made our way toward the diner along the unnervingly dark streets of the district. At least half the streetlights had burned out or been shot out and never replaced. I wished I were carrying a weapon of some kind.

"Right now, I'm working in the mail-room at Fassing-Kuyper," he said. "Do you know that company?"

"Do I?" I said. "That's where I work. I mean, not in the mail-room, but I work for Fassing-Kuyper."

Ben's jaw dropped. "I can't believe it! What do you do?"

"I run focus groups. You know, to get a feeling for what a tiny, atypical segment of the public wants in all kinds of products and services so that our ads can make everybody else in the country imagine they want those things, too."

"Wow. I bet it's interesting work."

"It varies," I said. "It's a living."

I didn't feel like elaborating. Lately, any thought of my job was apt to provoke a feeling of, maybe not despair, but at least marked melancholy. I was overdue for a change. Yet I was making good money. Really good. And I was more averse to change than to money.

There was only one bright light in all the street, and I saw with relief that it was Davey's Diner that we were nearing. I was reminded of that famous painting of an all-night diner by Edward Hopper, "Night Hawks". Davey's wasn't as luminously beautiful as the diner in the painting, though.

Soon we were seated in a booth next to the big street window. There was nothing to see on the street, and not only because of the dark. There was nothing there to look at, period. The diner was comfortable, however, and the two or three other customers, all at the counter, quiet and well behaved. Somehow you sensed they were regulars.

For the most part, a '50s look had been preserved – and it was the real thing, not some moronic attempt at imitation. I liked that. The seats in the booths were upholstered in that burgundy colored textured plastic you used to find in cheap-eats places all the time. I felt right at home.

We examined our big celluloid-covered menus. Typical no-nonsense diner fare.

"The cheeseburgers are really good," said Ben, "and, this may sound weird, but I really like the liver and onions."

"Not weird at all," I said – truthfully. Liver and onions had been one of my favorites since college, when as part of my stereotypical adolescent rebellion I broke away from the monotony of home cooking and tried many, to me at least, novel dishes — as well as smoking, drinking, weed, and boys. Liver and onions had been one of my first enthusiasms even though the Student Union cafeteria's take on the dish was pedestrian at best.

"Order up, Ben, and get something to take back home while you're at it. For breakfast." I'd noticed he had a little refrigerator and even a small, probably furnished, microwave in the improvised kitchen area. At least the wiring in the old building might be good, I hoped. I'd reached the point already where I was beginning to fret about him, and I certainly didn't want him burning up in an electrical fire.

Benjamin ordered a cheeseburger and fries and a strawberry shake. He didn't take me up on the breakfast offer, which disappointed me as it meant I now had to worry about his having breakfast, since he was broke, as well as about his safety. But I didn't say anything. Everybody deserves an allotment of self-respect, and that was probably part of his.

I ordered the liver and onions, green beans, cole slaw, and coffee. Parker House rolls were included in the price. The food was tasty, attractively served, not too greasy; the industrial off-white china plates sparkled, the silverware was acceptably clean. I was impressed with the place, and thought it curious that it had survived in the middle of such a seeming no-man's-land.

I was glad Ben at least had this resource to fall back on when he had some money. But I didn't like the idea of his having to walk over here, or even, when his car was working, drive, after dark. The daytime was probably scary enough. And I'd noticed, but chosen not to point out, a pair of bullet holes near the bottom edge of the plate glass we were seated next to. They'd been neatly sealed over with clear plastic tape.

"So, do you think you'll be able to move to a...livelier neighborhood before too long?"

"You mean safer, don't you," he said. He looked across the table at me with smile of comradely complicity that I was happy to see because it meant we weren't, in his mind, strangers anymore.

"I don't know, Russ. It'll probably take a while. The way things are going it's hard for me to save up any money at all. And then I'd have to furnish references, probably, and all that."

"Well, you can give me as a reference if you want to. And I can get somebody high up at the agency to vouch for you, too, if you like. A vice-president, even." I handed him my card after scribbling on the back my home address and phone, and my cell-phone number, too. As an afterthought I added my private, unlisted number at Fassing-Kuyper.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll definitely keep it in mind." He carefully slipped my card into one of the little pockets of his otherwise empty billfold. I had the feeling he meant it. I knew by now it wouldn't be his way just to be polite because of silly conventions.

Then I decided to say something that felt a little risky.

"You know, I'm going to feel uneasy about you living out here. It strikes me as, well, to be honest, dangerous territory. And I'd hate like anything to see you get hurt, amigo."

To my surprise, looking me right in the eye, he grasped my hand across the table. He was clearly moved. "That's really nice of you, Russ," he said. "I appreciate it. But don't worry about me. I'll be all right. If I don't have to ride that bumpy part of the subway too many more times, that is."

We both laughed. Anybody would be terrified by their first ride over that stretch of track. I remembered how the first time I experienced it – completely unprepared – I thought at first I'd wet my pants. I'd soon got used to it, though, and now enjoyed seeing the reactions of others, provided they didn't actually get hurt, and thank goodness that almost never happened.

I knew Ben was young enough that even a burger and fries with a strawberry shake would not stave off a craving for dessert, so I suggested having one. Several kinds of pie and a couple of kinds of cake were on display in a glass showcase toward the front end of the counter, beside the old-fashioned cash register. We went over and inspected them.

Our waitress, "Betty," (I learned this from her name tag), who looked as though she must have been serving there since at least World War II, took our order for two pieces of banana-cream pie. "That's a swell choice," she croaked with a wrinkly smile. Then she winked at me making sure Ben didn't see. I could guess what she was thinking. Why, I thought, Betty, aren't you the observant one. But no, dear, we're not. Still, I don't mind you thinking we're the "really together" kind of together. Actually, I'm starting to wish we were.

She was right about the banana-cream pie. Ben said he'd never tried it before, and would be ordering it again. I liked it, too. It reminded me of my youth (sigh).

It was time to leave. I paid and left a hefty tip. From the back of the diner, Betty, rolling paper napkins around silverware and putting the little self-adhesive paper rings on to hold it all together, looked up through her bifocals and hollered, "You two have a great evening." I liked Betty already. It would be fun to have her in a focus group.

I'd enjoyed dinner with Ben. He'd appeared to be relishing every bite of his cheeseburger and fries, and each slurp of his shake.

But nevertheless as we walked out the door of the diner, I felt a sinking inside, knowing I'd soon be leaving my goodhearted young companion and, despite working in the same building downtown, might well never see him again. I began to feel sick at my stomach, and not from the good food.

I didn't know how to suggest further contact without looking as though I were coming on to him, and I didn't want to do that. Frankly, with somebody who didn't seem so sweet and open and vulnerable, I wouldn't have hesitated to get obvious or even blatant – and if necessary, crude.

But I couldn't do that to Ben. Besides, I didn't even want to. He was fast becoming special to me as a person. What I wanted was to be his friend. That prospect even felt strangely exciting. But it also seemed so unlikely.

Then I heard: "Hey, Russ, would you maybe like to come back and have tea or something?"

My heart leapt with joy, to borrow a phrase I'd come across not an hour ago browsing in that poetry anthology of his.

"That sounds really nice," I said. Then, after a carefully timed pause, "Oh, rats. You know what, I forgot and missed my engagement after all!"

"Oh, no!" said Ben. "Will it get you in trouble? Gosh, I'm sorry."

"Not to worry," I said. "I didn't want to go in the first place, and it's nothing that can't be diplomatically smoothed over." Since my appointment was imaginary anyway, I didn't count that statement as a lie.

I called my own number on my cell phone as we walked, and pretended to be rescheduling "our appointment about those contracts with Fassing-Kuyper. Yes, I think we can swing the deal for a couple or three million. Why not." I guess that was lie number three – or was it four? Or only two? I'd lost count, and what's more I didn't care.

Feeling unusually frisky after the hearty dinner and dessert, but mainly because of the reprieve I'd just been offered, I found myself saying, "Ben, I really like you. I'm glad we bumped into each other."

After laughing at this pathetically corny _double-entendre_ as though he'd found it genuinely funny, he said, "Me too, Russ. You've made my evening. I don't know many people at all here. It's hard to get to know anybody in the city. That's another thing I didn't expect."

Once again, my heart went out to the guy. I'd experienced the same thing when I first moved to our city, longer ago than he'd been alive, and I was still perturbed by the unfriendliness, or at least guardedness, that seemed endemic to it.

I'd lived for a few years before that in New York City and experienced just the opposite: There had been a strong sense of social cohesion, of neighborhood identity, and of just plain being ready to support and help one another. Here in the Midwest, though, it wasn't like that at all. Maybe it was the wide-open spaces. Maybe it was something else. I could think of several possible causes.

But there is also the other extreme. I sensed that Ben, despite being apparently a college graduate and surely equipped with some knowledge of the ways of the world, was too naive for his own good, or at least too trusting. For example, he probably should not have consented to let me, still almost a stranger, go with him up to his room. He probably shouldn't even have walked with me on those deserted streets between the subway and there. But he was at least 21 or 22, and I didn't feel it was my place to lecture him. And assuredly not on such short acquaintance.

I saw an all-night bakery standing about half a block to the south of where we were now, near his lodging. Even with the flashing chaser light bulbs encircling the sign over its entrance, it had escaped my notice when we'd passed there on our way to the diner. I'd been too busy expecting us to be mugged or raped or murdered.

"Do you mind if we pop in there for a minute?" I said, pointing.

"Sure, that'd be great," said Ben.

I bought several kinds of sweet rolls and some donuts, ostensibly for myself. I intended to offer at least three-quarters of them to Ben when I left after tea. Or if we talked long enough, we might even want some later in the night. It was only about seven, after all.

We walked the rest of the way to his building without incident, but I felt relieved when we finally stepped inside and the street door locked itself behind us.

Ben heated water in an aluminum kettle on the two-burner gas stove that came with the room. Soon we were holding steaming cups of really decent, fragrant Indian tea. Since there was almost no furniture, Ben half-reclined on the bed, while I had the honor of sitting on the straight-backed chair I'd used earlier to read Wordsworth while my new-found friend showered and dressed for our trip to the diner.

Ben didn't have a phone yet, and saw little prospect of getting one. I suggested a prepaid cell phone, as it appalled me to imagine him navigating this territory, day or night, without some means of calling for help in an emergency. Besides, what if he had to phone in sick some day, or had some other important call to make? Or just wanted to call me. But I didn't suggest that reason.

"I think that's what I'll do," he said. "You're right. It can get pretty scary around here. There are sirens all night long, and I've heard gunshots a few times, and lots of shouting down on the street. I think that's mainly homeless people though. They seem to get into fights among themselves pretty easily."

I'd visited a Benedictine monastery once, years earlier, and what Ben had just said triggered a memory.

"A friend of mine, a Benedictine monk, told me once – we were talking about monks giving up personal property when they take their vows – he told me that when you're down to possessing only, say, a pocketknife, suddenly that pocketknife becomes the most important thing in the world. You feel as though you could kill for it. I imagine it may be something like that with the homeless people you hear shouting and fighting. At least some of the time."

Ben looked impressed. "Wow. What a great story, or parable, or whatever the right name is. It's kind of like what they say in Buddhism, isn't it? You know, excessive clinging is the source of suffering."

He poured some more tea.

"Man — it's so great having you here to talk to, Russ. Do you know you're the first visitor I've had at my place? And I've lived here three whole months already."

My conjecture about loneliness was proving correct, then. "Well, Ben, I'm honored to be your first guest. I hope we can get together again a lot. Say, do you like museums?"

"Sure. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I haven't checked out the ones here yet. They're probably all closed by the time I get off work, and I don't have anybody to go with anyway. I know that's no excuse – "

"Well, if you want, you'll have somebody now. I'd be happy to go with you to the art museum and the science museum both if you're interested some weekend. Or anywhere else you'd like to go."

"Definitely!" said Ben. "All you need to do is tell me when."

"Maybe we can do some museum-hopping this coming weekend, if that suits your schedule."

He laughed. "Anything suits my schedule, because I don't have one. My calendar is a total blank. This weekend would be great."

"What's the extension in the mail-room that I can reach you at?"

"It's 2692, only we're not supposed to take or make personal calls." He looked disappointed.

"Ha! Remember, I'm a Fassing-Kuyper bigshot, Ben." Then, "Only kidding, but there won't be any trouble if it's me calling. I can guarantee that." I made a note of his work extension in the little notebook I always carry.

But I had already thought of a better approach.

~~~

I knew the last train departed Covington Station at five past midnight. It was after eleven by the time we'd discussed everything from our childhoods to our favorite music and what we'd like to do in the future, and of course, our jobs at Fassing-Kuyper, and still weren't nearly finished talking.

I told Ben I'd better get going around 11:40 in order to be sure not to miss my train. I could easily afford a cab in that case, but didn't fancy waiting near the station, or anywhere else in this part of town, especially at midnight, for a cab that might take an hour to arrive. Maybe cabs wouldn't even come to a neighborhood like Ben's. I didn't voice this to Ben, of course.

But he seemed to read my mind.

"What if you miss your train, though?" he said. I saw the concern in his face.

"Oh, there's always cabs," I said as nonchalantly as I could manage. "Don't worry. I won't have any trouble."

"No, Russ, I _would_ worry. I'm going to come along and make sure you get aboard the train, and that way if you do miss it, at least I'll be there too and I'll wait with you for your cab."

"Don't be silly, Ben," I said. "Then I'd worry about _you_ getting back _here_ safely. So, you see, to ease your worry you'd be causing me one. Now, tell me, is that nice?" I said the last playfully in order not to seem too much of a scold.

But he wasn't buying it. It was nearly eleven-forty now. Ben stood up and pulled on his old, drafty jacket again. "I'm not listening to you any more, Russ. I'm going with you, man. It would just be wrong not to."

Just as it had been right to give his last dollar to the old woman on the platform. By now I understood that it was Ben's nature.

I felt inadequate in his presence.

I wondered why fate had, literally, thrown us together on the subway that evening. Whatever the reason, I was thankful it had happened. I'd met somebody extraordinary today, someone I could actually like and admire. He was bound to be a good influence on me.

However, while part of me was touched by Ben's willingness to risk his life for a near stranger, another part was really, really pissed that he wouldn't listen to my version of reason.

What if the two of us were to be waylaid by some psychopath or even physically attacked out there? He knew about my cell phone, but it's highly improbable any attacker would give him a chance to pull it out of my pocket and use it. In fact that scenario was so ludicrous it made me laugh.

Ben interpreted my laughter as a sign of submission. "That's more like it," he said, and gave my shoulder a quick sideways squeeze.

I gave up. I hugged him back. I knew he would not take "no" for an answer. And in all honesty I didn't want him to. It was his choice, and I would feel safer with him along. Best of all, I'd get to be with him a few minutes longer.

So we both set out for the subway station in the pitch black, bone-rattling cold.

I remembered seeing in the paper that there was a new moon. Of all the luck. Barely any functional streetlights, and no moonlight, either. The sky was clear, though, and in the eerie darkness we could see dozens of times more stars than I had ever seen in the city. They were startlingly beautiful.

We walked without speaking down Winslow and then finally onto Covington toward the subway. At one point I looked over at Ben, just to enjoy seeing him again, and he smiled and reached over and hugged me once more — and then kept his arm around me all the way to the subway entrance. Neither of us said a word. I think we both felt it was unnecessary.

I felt both joyous and totally at peace. It was a way I don't think I'd ever felt, unless maybe as a very young child. It made me want to stay in his embrace forever.

We got to the subway stairs unharmed . I swiped my Transi-Pass card. Ben easily vaulted the turnstile. There was nobody watching. We descended to the platform level.

The homeless people had either been shooed away by subway police, or else they'd moved on for reasons of their own. If Ben had asked me to, I was prepared to give them all the money I had with me. I was relieved it wasn't necessary. Then I wondered if I should feel ashamed of that.

The train arrived exactly on time. Engaged in talking animatedly about our upcoming weekend together, Ben and I didn't get a chance to say good-night or good-bye. I boarded the car and remained pressed against the window of the sliding door for a moment, so I could wave at him. He waved back, his slim figure already fast receding into the dark as the train gained momentum.

I sat down in the empty car and the first thing that came to my mind was that I knew I would have trouble getting to sleep, once home, for worrying about Ben. I had no way of knowing if he'd get back to his room safely. Sometimes I regretted that I didn't believe in prayer. But I didn't.

As the train rocked along toward Terrapin Heights, I thought over our conversations in his room and on the platform minutes earlier. The tracks the rest of the way to my station, I knew, lacked any of the roughness of those we'd ridden earlier, between downtown and Covington. There was no need to brace myself this trip.

Ben had graduated from a small but highly thought-of Midwestern college with a degree in French he immediately found utterly useless for getting a job. He might as well have had only his high-school diploma, or even a GED. He'd felt lucky to get the mail-room position at my company, for by then he was down to his last few dollars.

His parents, he knew, had scrimped uncomplainingly for years to be able to pay most of his way through college, and he was not about to ask them for any more help. He was determined to make it on his own, but living in the city posed far greater challenges than he'd been prepared for.

At twenty-two, though, we're more supple and optimistic than even ten years later, let alone, as in my case, twenty-five. So though times were hard for the young man, he took his hardship in stride and felt lucky, despite all, to be situated where he was.

I'd insisted on leaving him enough money for four or five days' subway fare, should he have to ride that long, as well as for breakfast and lunch tomorrow, or, in fact, today, since it was now past midnight.

It was officially Friday now and we'd tentatively planned to go to the art museum Saturday morning or early afternoon, and then just see what else we wanted to do for the rest of the day. I suggested that, if he was up for it, we could even hit the science museum on Sunday. He was not only willing but eager to do both. I could tell the prospect excited him.

It had become clear as we drank tea and talked in his room that he had next to no social life, maybe none at all. But it only now occurred to me that, in our long conversation, he hadn't said one word about dating in high school or college, or about any other socializing. I might as well have been chatting with a Carthusian monk. Even my Benedictine friends socialized now and then, though obviously they didn't date.

I'd once read an interesting if depressing piece in a science magazine about asexual young people. They reported no interest at all in dating, marriage, or sex in any form. Maybe Ben was one of those. Not that it mattered. But it struck me as curious, nonetheless, and gave me yet another thing to wonder about.

Over his protest, I'd left all the bakery goods for him except for a couple of donuts that I stuffed into my coat pockets. I was now, in fact, munching on one in the subway car, despite posted rules against eating and drinking on board. I knew the subway police seldom patrolled this route around midnight, as there were almost no riders, and what few there were, they'd probably just as soon not tangle with.

Besides, if a cop did start to lecture me, or write a ticket, I could always offer him or her the other donut.

It was a twenty-minute walk from the station to my apartment house. By the time I got home it was well past one a.m.

I worked no set hours at Fassing-Kuyper. I could formulate my own schedule contingent only on when my focus groups were taking place or when I was charged with training other facilitators or had boring middle-management meetings to attend. Lately, most of the focus sessions had been taking place on our own premises, though a few were still booked in hotel conference rooms, churches, and other off-site locations.

Today I didn't have a group till one p.m., so I could sleep in if I wanted to. But I had other plans.

Once in bed, I alternated between reflecting on how pleased and fortunate I was to have made my unexpected new friend, and fretting about his well-being in that horrid environment, before finally falling asleep around 2:30. I rose at my usual 6:30, ate the other donut with some yogurt (just as I'd expected, no cop had come down the aisle), and had a couple of cups of coffee. By eight I was on my way to the subway again, this time to head downtown.

As I walked to the station, I suddenly recalled a dream I seemed to have had just before waking.

In the dream, I was aboard the midnight train again, and Ben was there on the platform, and we were waving good-bye to each other as we had in real life a mere eight hours earlier. But this time, the train refused to start up. Yet the door was locked, so I couldn't get out. We just kept waving, and waving, neither of us moving an inch. All the while, a monotone, echo-y voice from nowhere was saying over and over, "It can't last. It can't last." Somehow I knew that only I, and not Ben, could hear it.

I know it all sounds silly, but remember, it was a dream. As I relived it walking to Terrapin Heights station, a shiver came over me that wasn't from the cold December air.

I located a cell-phone kiosk in a shopping center not far from my office, and purchased a smart-phone that had got good reviews in Engadget and on ZDNet, along with a prepaid plan allotting 1200 anytime minutes per month with more or less unlimited data use and limitless texting. The affable and _very_ cute and flirtatious clerk, a young Hispanic man of maybe twenty with bedroom eyes and sporting a tiny gold hoop in one earlobe, seemed as knowledgeable as he was friendly, and told me I'd chosen the phone he himself would go for. He was able to activate the phone then and there, and I asked about gift wrap. He pointed me to another kiosk down the way where they did that.

I made sure to leave my card with him in case he got a hankering some day to make me a sales pitch. He patted my hand and I think he even winked, but I can't be sure.

I'd found a rather sentimental but pretty little "friendship" card beforehand, and slipped it into the box with the phone before having it gift-wrapped. Inside the card I'd written, "Ben, use this in good health. And, yes, I _did_ worry about you last night. Call my cell phone when you get this, okay? Your friend, Russ." I was glad cell phones no longer required charging before first use, but came with their batteries already half-full.

I did some more shopping, since I had lots of time before I was due to conduct my group session, today focusing on the latest release by a truly atrocious popular music group, Unassisted Suicide. I would have to endure several tracks of their latest CD as part of the session, but that was what I got paid handsomely for, so I could hardly complain.

All but a couple of the participants were college students. Though it was the middle of the Christmas break, there were a couple of thousand students, at least, who lived in town, either on the nearby urban campus of Upper State U., or in their parents' or others' private homes. Each of the dozen selected for the panel would receive $50 for participating.

After a decent lunch of white pizza with anchovies and kalamata olives in the mall food court, I visited a men's clothing store and purchased a taupe colored London Fog jacket with removable insulated liner. We had many weeks of bitterly cold weather still in store for us, and I was not willing to watch my friend shiver in that jacket of his that now deserved a decent burial after its years of service. What if he came down with pneumonia?

I suspected he'd object to such an expensive gift, but I was confident I could deal with that. I could always pretend to let Ben reimburse me, and then find a way of sneakily counter-reimbursing him.

I'd already arranged, with the scrumptious young Hispanic's help, to pay the rather high monthly cell-phone charge myself. Benjamin would undoubtedly object to that, too, once he found out as he eventually must, waiting for the bill that would never come; but that's how it was going to be, and it was settled. It would have been a burdensome amount for Ben, while I would never miss it.

Finally it was time to go to my office.

On the way, I rode the freight elevator down to the basement mail room. I didn't see Ben, but there were lots of nooks and crannies in the vast space outside my field of view. I left the package with our mail-room supervisor, Clayton Bosquith, whom I happened to be on friendly terms with. We'd even toured some of the gay bars together a few years ago, though we'd since more or less, and for no good reason, lost touch.

The package was inside a shopping bag, tied shut, so that the gift wrapping was not visible. Clayton said, "He's around here someplace, Russ," and promised he'd hand it to him as soon as Ben showed up again.

"Good to see you again, bud," he said. "Give me a ring sometime and we'll tip a few." And I could tell he was not just saying it. At least I knew Ben had a fair and good-natured supervisor.

I went up to my 30th-floor office. I'd prepared my materials the day before, including a signed copy of the damned U. S. CD for each of the focus-group members, as well as one ordinary disc to, alas, play during the meeting. I wondered if Unassisted Suicide had actually autographed the discs themselves. I found it hard to believe they were capable of writing their names.

It was almost time to descend to the second floor, where the group was about to convene in one of three rooms the agency had equipped with large two-way mirrors so that F-K middle management and some PR and sales people from the record company could spy on us without being seen.

My cell phone warbled a few notes of synthetic Vivaldi. It was Ben, thrilled about his brand-new phone.

"Please try to remember always to carry it, Ben," I said. "Can you give me a call at home tonight, so we can decide how to work things tomorrow?"

"You bet. I don't know how to thank you for this, Russ. I know it's something I should have got long ago, but there were always other things that had to come first. Wow, you're so good to have thought of this. I won't forget it, ever."

"Hey, it's my pleasure, believe me. Just take care of yourself, bud. That will be all the thanks I could ever want. Now I've got to run, we're about to focus on 'Don't Fuckin' Tell Me I'm in Love.'"

"Ohmigod. Will you actually have to listen to that?" said Ben. We both laughed.

"Afraid so. But that's what pays the rent, among other things. I've got to go now. Take care, friend; I'll talk to you tonight and we'll soak us up some culture this weekend."

The focus group was sheer hell, but that's what I'd expected. The twelve participants were all good kids, but their conflicting and loudly expressed convictions regarding current popular music twice almost led to a fist fight. I earned my money that afternoon.

When I had to endure four seemingly endless tracks from the CD, I gently focused my thought on Ben, and that made it almost tolerable.

It also helped that I was able to stealthily insert ear plugs.

I'd decided to rent a car for our weekend. If Ben and I wanted to see or do something outside town the subway would be of no use. Besides, even getting around in town would be quicker and surely more fun in a car.

I hadn't had an automobile of my own for many years, since before New York, and hadn't wanted one. I was a coastal type – or even a European type – stranded, though voluntarily, for the time being in the Midwest where most people abhor public transit and feel the need to possess at least a couple of cars and an SUV and maybe also an ATV. It seemed to be part of the anti-social syndrome afflicting Midwesterners overall and the inhabitants of our city in particular.

The ridership on our subway and bus systems was by and large composed of the underprivileged, underpaid, and disenfranchised. On my daily commutes to and from Terrapin Heights I would seldom see more than a handful of identifiably executive types – the class to which I most likely belonged.

I didn't mind. I'd always felt more akin to real workers than to the overpaid, over-privileged, and over-enfranchised. I got to travel with real people, even if they were close-mouthed and stand-offish. Those characteristics seemed to ignore all class boundaries. At least my fellow riders, most of them, didn't look like corporate zombies.

In mid-afternoon, Ben sent me a text message just to try out texting on his new phone:

**Let** **me** **know** **if** **you** **get** **this!!!** **:-)**

was all it said. I noted with pleasure the lack of cute abbreviation: He might easily have said,

**lemme** **no** **f** **u** **get** **this!!!** **:)**

For all I knew, there were also abbreviations for "get" and "this."

I admit I sometimes do abbreviate in texts, but I always feel guilty afterward.

**got** **it**

I texted back – and had Linda, my secretary, snap a phone-camera photo of me at my desk (where I spent as little time as possible) to attach to the message. I propped my feet up on the desk first, to emphasize how little actual work I was expected to do.

**Wow!!!** came Ben's almost instant reply: **I** **didn** **'** **t** **know** **you** **could** **do** **that** **with** **a** **phone!!!** **:-O**

I marveled that he didn't. I'd assumed all young people, but especially those in college, sent multimedia texts back and forth twenty-four hours a day. However had Benjamin survived at school without that capability? Had he actually... _studied?_ I'd have to ask. But for the moment I just texted back,

**now** **u** **no** **talk** **2** **you** **2nite** **kid**

I immediately felt guilty.

To tell the truth, I've never liked texting.

~~~

Five o'clock came, and I took the subway to the station just beyond my usual stop.

If I hadn't left work early the day before, I might never have met Ben. He got off at 4, as he started an hour earlier than my nominal arrival time (though of course my hours were completely flexible).

I, too, left at four that day, for no special reason except that I'd grown sick and tired of Fassing-Kuyper after only six hours.

And so it was that we literally bumped, or smashed, into each other on the train.

I would, I thought, be forever grateful that I'd reached my corporate saturation point at four that day. And I guessed I ought also to be grateful for the poor state of the tracks.

Not far from Ridley Station, where I now disembarked, was the auto rental agency that F-K often used when visitors from out of town came calling. We had rentals waiting for them at the airport if they were too important to require them to make their own arrangements, but not high enough on the food chain to merit putting unnecessary wear on one of our fleet of black, bullet-resistant, wet-bar- and satellite-TV-equipped Lincoln Town Cars.

I was able to rent a nifty little two-door Mitsubishi in fire-engine red at an impressive discount due to my company connection.

I experienced some initial hesitation about the bright color, but finally chose it over black, the only alternative in that model not already hired out, deciding that a somber color might subliminally dampen our mood. (Yes, years of working in the wonderful world of advertising actually had me routinely thinking in such terms.)

I took the car for a spin before finalizing the rental. It met with my approval and more. It was a feisty little rascal that was actually fun to drive. And it was cushy inside. There was even a high-quality sound system, and I made a mental note to bring along some CD's on Saturday.

The papers signed, I buzzed home in the Mitsubishi, stopping at the supermarket along the way.

I'd brought the London Fog jacket along from work and I locked it in the car trunk so I wouldn't forget it in the morning.

About seven p.m., my home phone rang. It was Ben. We decided I'd pick him up at nine and head for the art museum after breakfasting at a little cafe in the arts district that I often visited. It was appropriately named the Beaux Arts Cafe. The museum was only a few blocks down the street.

Ben had finally figured out how to work his phone's camera, and he sent me a self-portrait. I could dimly make out the little gas range in the background with the kettle sitting on it. Later I printed the photo, though it wasn't really very good because of the 60-watt overhead illumination and camera movement no doubt attributable to Ben's continuing excitement about the phone. I tucked the print safely away in my billfold.

I picked out four or five mainly classical CD's and put them in my jacket pockets for the morning.

I went to bed early and slept fairly well.

I dreamed I was back in college – that is, I was college age and in college – and skipping most of my courses. I seemed unable to help it. I just couldn't bring myself to attend class. As a result, I was about to fail disastrously. But I was going to be permitted to re-enroll.

That's all I could remember when I woke up. I don't think Ben was in the dream.

Saturday morning arrived, both brilliant and exquisitely cold. The Mitsubishi had an efficient heater and within a couple of minutes it was toasty inside.

I put a CD of Bach flute sonatas on to play. "Wow!" I exclaimed after the first notes. Ben was really going to go for this. In our conversation two nights before, Ben and I discovered that we both enjoyed a wide range of classical music, as well as a lot of jazz. This greatly expanded the potential for outings.

But as I drove back toward Winslow Street, and Ben's room, I tried to focus on not getting irremediably swept away – infatuated. I realized that most likely Ben would sooner or later find friends more nearly his own age, and probably, before too long, a special girl or boy who would occupy most of his time and affection. It was only natural. To hope for any kind of exclusivity with the kid – I had to think of him as that, not only because of his age, but because of his basically childlike good nature, enthusiasm, and openness – to hope for such a thing would be to court certain disaster.

That first night, over tea, Ben had remarked that "excessive clinging is the cause of suffering." As I drove the little red rental just above the speed limit along Hatfield Expressway, I reflected that it would be a good thing to keep in mind.

What I needed to do was to enjoy what time we were allowed to spend together and continue to be thankful we'd even met. And then — just let him go when the time came.

I had no way of knowing, that day, how very soon that time would, in fact, come.

Ben's neighborhood looked even more sordid and disturbing in the unforgiving winter sunlight than it had under the sparse illumination of the few remaining streetlights the other night. It made me wish even more for my friend to get out of there. I felt it was inevitable that something dreadful would happen to him if he stayed in that frightful place.

I'd mentioned my visit to the area, without going into specifics, to Linda at the office. She'd shuddered. Then she told me a couple of horror stories about the place, called Rockville by the locals. Nobody seemed to remember now how it got its name.

It seems Rockville had been a lost cause for many, many years. She told me about the brutal torture and murder of the proprietress of a used-book store in Rockville almost 25 years ago, just before I came to the city from New York. From her description I felt sure the store must be the one right under Ben's room.

The crime had occurred as the result of a failed robbery. When the two thieves found there was no money on the premises, they'd bound and gagged the poor woman, in her 60's, who owned and operated the store, then both men had raped her and tortured her in unspeakable ways.

She'd lived long enough to furnish a description to the police, summoned by her next would-be customer, a friend from the neighborhood. She died on the way to the hospital. The perpetrators, of course, were never apprehended.

Linda also told me about the armed robbery several years later of a diner near the bookstore. A cook and two customers had been shot dead. It had to have been Davey's. Linda confirmed that the crime rate in Rockville was astronomical. I would have been greatly surprised to find it wasn't.

I resolved to try to get Ben to move as soon as he possibly could. But he'd told me that his car repair was going to consume almost all his extra money for a year. He was lucky that the repair shop agreed to take payments, and without interest at that. He'd told me the name of the shop. On Friday afternoon I checked by phone with Clayton, who knew about such things, and was relieved to hear that it was an honest operation that did good work for the going rate or even less.

The problem of Ben's living arrangements was gnawing constantly at the back of my mind now. I could afford without any perceptible sacrifice to take care of both the car repair and finding and settling him into a new, better living space.

But there were limits to what a casual friendship should include, or even one that's on a fairly firm and close basis. And from Ben's point of view, our friendship was surely casual. Besides, even if we'd been close for years, I doubt that he would have wanted me to do all that for him. He'd made it plain that he wanted to be self-supporting.

All well and good. The trouble was, self-subsistence could also be hazardous. I'd jump at the chance to help him look for new lodgings, if he would let me. And the sooner the better.

I pulled up in front of the building and tapped the horn gently, twice. I was reluctant to leave the car on the street, so we'd pre-arranged that signal.

In a minute, Ben stepped out of the building. I saw him pause and his eyes grow wide at the sight of the spiffy little Mitsubishi.

Once seated inside the car, he said, "I'm never going to want to get out of this thing, Russ. It's fantastic."

I told him the car had impressed me, too. I started the Bach CD over again.

"Oh, wow," was all Ben said. He leaned forward open-mouthed with wonder, as rapt as in a concert hall. Looked like I'd made a good choice of music.

And that was the exact moment, seeing him absorbed in the Bach like that, that I realized I loved this gentle, caring young man more than I could hope to find words for; more than I'd ever loved anybody; _more_ _than_ _my_ _life_ _itself_.

Well, it wasn't all that big a surprise. I'd seen it coming, despite all.

We parked near the Beaux Arts Cafe and started to walk the remaining block or so. Then I remembered. "Oh-oh," I said. "We need to go back to the car for a minute. I forgot something."

When Ben saw the London Fog jacket, he didn't say anything except "Oh, man ... " but I saw his eyes instantly get watery.

Without a word, he simply removed his old jacket, folded it neatly, and placed it in the trunk. Then he slipped on the supple, warm new one as I held it open for him.

He turned and hugged me for several seconds. "Russ," he said, "I don't know what I ever did to deserve this, but thank you so much. Why are you being so good to me?"

"I hope that question's rhetorical," I said, "because I honestly can't think of a good answer right now. Is that okay?" Caught off guard, I suddenly felt very uneasy.

"Sure, Russ, no problem. I just don't know why I'm so lucky all of a sudden."

I decided now was as good a time as any to deal with what could turn out to be a mighty touchy subject. I didn't want to go any further – even if it was only having breakfast at the Beaux Arts – without getting it out of the way. But I'd neglected to give any thought to how I was going to do it: I'd just have to trust to luck.

"Ben," I said, "let me ask you something. I don't know how you'll take this, and it's got me scared shitless. But I have to say it, to get it off my mind."

His smile faded. He looked puzzled and apprehensive.

"Do you think I'm after you for something other than friendship? Do you think I'm trying to, you know, hit on you? You don't even have to say if it's crossed your mind, I just need to know what you think right now, this minute. I'm sorry if it embarrasses you, but it's something that would come up eventually no matter what."

He was silently looking down at the street. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his new jacket and didn't say anything for a long moment. I hadn't realized how tense I'd become in the last minute. Only now did I notice my racing pulse and sweaty palms.

Then Ben withdrew his hands and embraced me wordlessly for a good ten seconds. Ten seconds can seem like a long, long time.

Finally he stepped back, and making that eye contact that had so impressed me within the first few seconds of our meeting on the train, he said, "Russ, it wouldn't make any difference to me if you did have stuff like that in mind. Honestly. You don't need to worry about it for a moment."

His words caught me by surprise. I didn't have time to think them through, obviously, but the reply seemed to be a remarkably mature and generous, yet disconcertingly novel one.

I guess my question hadn't called for a conventional response, anyway. It was clear that Ben at least was not rejecting me – far from it. I felt a wave of relief.

"Ben, I owe it to you to level with you. At first, on the train the other day, I had in mind to try to pick you up."

"And then you would have taken me off somewhere and...?" broke in Ben. He looked suddenly disgusted and furious.

Then just as I was thinking, "Oh, God, what have I got myself into?" he laughed and punched me playfully in the shoulder. "Gotcha!" he said. "Go on." He slipped his arm around me and held me close against his side.

"Well, hell, obviously you know what I wanted to do at first. Maybe you knew even then. What I need you to understand though, is that by the time I got off the train with you at Covington, everything had changed. All I wanted then was to be with you a while longer because I was enjoying your company so damn much. I didn't know if we'd ever meet again, and it made me feel awful to think that we might not. And that's the truth, I swear. Since then, I've come to admire you and ... and like you a hell of a lot. I can easily afford to help you out, and I'm glad you haven't minded the little things I've done so far."

"Russ, let's go have breakfast," said Ben quietly. He didn't take his arm away. We walked all the way to the cafe that way. I had to call on all my focus-group presenter's skills to keep from crying.

Even so, at the same time I felt a sense of perfect peace, almost bliss. I couldn't account for it. But somehow I sensed it was Ben's doing, something uncanny about his touch. And I couldn't begin to account for that, either.

Like Ben, I didn't know what I'd done to deserve such luck. But isn't that the nature of luck itself? That it's undeserved?

The Beaux Arts Cafe is small and almost always crowded. We had to wait about ten minutes for a table. Ben said he didn't mind at all. At least the line was short enough that we were able to wait inside. Ben stood beside me – and held my hand. I was touched by his quiet determination to assure me I wasn't being rejected. He might be childlike, but he also had mature qualities that I was finding surpassed my own by a long way.

We talked as we waited, but only about some of the student artwork on the walls, the carefully arranged décor, or the whimsically illustrated menu, handwritten afresh every day in multi-colored chalks by art students who worked there, on a big old-fashioned blackboard suspended over the counter in the back.

Once we were seated in a spot secluded enough to carry on a conversation, Ben said, "Hey, Russ, I don't want you worrying for a minute about what you brought up, okay? As far as I'm concerned, meeting you is the best thing that's happened to me since I moved here in September. You can't begin to know how happy I was that evening.

"But if knowing me ever gets to be a big problem for you, if it becomes too hard to handle, then just tell me; it's up to you. Whatever is in your mind is your business unless you want to share it. I hope we can be really good friends – I feel that way already. Is that okay?"

"It's more than okay, Ben," I said. "Thanks. If you'll just let me continue to help you now and then while things are tough financially, and we can enjoy getting together like we have so far – well, to say I'll be happy is a big understatement."

"Good!" said Ben. "As long as you know for sure that if you never did one single thing for me ever again, and even if you hadn't done what you've already done, I would still want you for my friend. Do what you think you ought to do, but keep in mind that this isn't about you helping me. It's about you and me being here for each other.

"You don't ever need to try to justify yourself, or apologize for secret motives, or for your intentions, or anything.

"There's no need to beg for my friendship, or to fear you'll lose it. I've already given it to you, and I would again, and again, with no limit. Okay?"

"Okay. Hell, yes, it's okay! But now it's my turn to ask: Why are you so generous towards _me?_ What makes you want to be so good to me, for God's sake?"

There was quite a pause. I could tell Ben was considering how best to say something.

"Hey, Russ, believe me, I'm sorry, but now is just not the right time to answer that.

"Russ, I need you to realize that, from now on, there's going to be stuff about you and me that you just won't be able to understand. Some of it may even be upsetting, because ... well, because you won't be able to believe it. But it won't be long now till it all becomes clear. Just trust me and be patient, okay?

"Believe me, if I had the skill to do what I need to do some other way, I would. I'm afraid I'm just not that...that advanced yet. I'm still learning – just like you, Russ." He smiled, but it was a sad, wan smile, as though of regret for some secret he had to keep unwillingly... "And that's about all I can say about it, and maybe more than I should have said."

I couldn't think – again – of the right thing to say, so I said nothing. For not the first time, I felt mystified. I had no idea what he might be talking about. I was beginning to feel I should take a week's vacation just to try to sort out some of the puzzles he'd posed so far.

I knew two things: that he was dead serious; and that he cared more about me than I could begin to comprehend. I was determined to trust him despite my bafflement, or go crazy trying.

Our breakfast came to the table, and it was up to the usual standard. We left the cafe more than satisfied. Ben said he was going to treat me to lunch there before long. I said I'd look forward to it. I know he would have, too, if things hadn't turned out the way they soon did.

We got to the art museum shortly after its doors opened at 10:30.

Ben was thrilled from start to finish by our museum visit. It was a delight to experience his enthusiasm; I thought I could even feel it radiate from him as we stood side by side in front of the exquisite but, for the most part, relatively little known masterpieces and near-masterpieces of Western and Asian art.

But there are several well-known items – by well-known I mean world-wide – as well, and I don't know why it should have surprised me that Benjamin recognized them all from photos he'd seen as a kid or in high school and college.

He remained standing for a long time in front of one of those, an ancient life-size Greek sculpture of a _kouros_ , or standing youth. Ben stood transfixed by the beautiful youth, depicted in the familiar _kouros_ pose with one leg advanced.

I'd been resting for a few moments on one of the padded benches set out in the middle of most galleries for just that purpose, so I was observing both the sculpture and Benjamin from a short distance. Ben was just a bit taller than the unknown Greek boy would be without his pedestal. But there the resemblance ended.

The Greek lad was muscular, well-nourished, graceful but strongly built, and, unlike most similar images, grave of countenance. In fact, the impression I got was of a youth taking his first step towards an unknown, and ominous, future.

Had he been condemned to confront the Minotaur as the monster's next sacrifice? Or maybe he was setting out to fulfill his compulsory military service, not knowing if he'd ever again see his hometown or his farm home. Though surely he'd be wearing at least a tunic, some sort of cloak, and sandals in such a case. Instead, he was depicted nude.

I'd rested up by now, and I stood, stretched briefly, walked over to Ben, and rested a hand on his shoulder. Ben absently put his hand on mine, still intent on the sculpture. We stood like that for a good minute, till I started to feel that Ben's fascination with the statue was verging on the unnerving. But I said nothing, and he offered no explanation.

Finally we moved on, but I couldn't get that strange moment out of my head for the rest of the day. Ben had looked very much saddened. Why?

It was only 2 p.m. by the time we'd seen almost everything currently on exhibit, but I was already trying to think of a good place to go for dinner.

I'd thought of suggesting dinner at my apartment, and quickly decided against it because I was afraid Ben would think I wanted him to stay overnight, with what that was often carelessly assumed to imply. I didn't have any wish to put him on the spot that way, even for a moment.

With a list of four or five dinner candidates in my head, I suggested we get something to drink at the museum coffee shop. That way the shopping list of restaurants could percolate in my subconscious a while. (Thanks again, advertising world.)

Ben's mood had turned, not sad or sour, certainly, but distinctly pensive, after viewing the _kouros_. He recovered his usual bright enthusiasm quickly enough, though, so that once again he reminded me more of an enthusiastic twelve-year-old than a mature, if still young, college grad. Once again I felt I'd been granted an inestimable privilege in being allowed to meet and become friends with such a sweet-natured and agreeable, if sometimes exasperatingly enigmatic, young man.

We drank decent _caffè_ _americano_ at the coffee shop, and enjoyed Amaretto flavored _biscotti_ with it. The _biscotti_ were clearly not out of some cellophane or cardboard package, and I returned to the serving counter to ask the attendant where the cafe got them. She named a local bakery I'd never heard of, and gave me a rough idea of its location. I jotted it all down in my pocket notebook.

Back at our table, I saw Ben again looking troubled, as he had while standing before the statue, during the instant before it registered with him that I'd returned. He reverted to his lively persona even before I could pull my chair out to seat myself again.

"Russ, this is so great," he said. "I've liked art and museums since I was six or seven.

"Once my parents took me to Chicago on vacation, and I'll never forget our visit to the museum there. Seurat's _Grande_ _Jatte_ – oh, man... It's amazing even in photos, but to stand there in front of the real thing..."

"I suppose I visit this museum at least five or six times a year," I said. "Anytime you feel in the museum mood and I wouldn't be in the way, be sure to let me know. I do have a pretty busy agenda, but one of the perks of advancing in the agency for so many years is that I have the say-so about scheduling almost any of my calendar events. And I can re-schedule most of them without ever getting barked at by the big dogs."

Ben laughed. "That appointment you said you had the other night was made up, wasn't it?"

"You got me," I said with a mock guilty smile. "It was a ruse simply to be able to stay with you even a little longer. By the time we had dinner, I dreaded leaving you. The thought was actually making me feel sick. Then when you invited me to tea, I ... well, I would have got down on my knees and thanked God, if I believed in him. I'm not so sure I shouldn't anyway."

"Wow. Thanks, Russ. That's so sweet of you to say," said Ben. "But you'll never know — you can never even imagine — how happy you'd already made me just by going with me to the diner. I was afraid, just like you, that we'd never get to see each other again. It's funny, isn't it?"

"Ben, there have been a few, a very few, moments in my life when I've been convinced, and stayed convinced, that something truly unusual had to be going on. That's how I feel about our meeting. How often does something like that happen, do you think?"

He was silent for a few moments, as though considering his response.

"I don't know – not all that often, I imagine, Russ. What I do know, and maybe I shouldn't even talk about it, but I will anyway, is that I cried all the way back home after seeing you off on the subway. It was from a combination of feeling sad to see you go, and being super happy about meeting you and becoming friends. Do you think I was crazy, or weird, or sappy, to do that?

"Oh, Ben. No, not at all. Not as far as I'm concerned – far from it," I said. "Hey, will you excuse me for a minute?" It had once again become hard for me to get words out.

I got up and walked to the nearby rest room, shut myself in a stall, and let the tears flow for a couple of minutes, trying to make no more noise than I could help.

Then I rejoined Ben in the cafe. On my way back to our table, a choice of dinner place popped into my consciousness. I guess my list had perked long enough. Oddly, though, this one hadn't been on the list.

"You like Vietnamese?"

"The food? Gosh, I don't know. Would you believe I've never tried it? There wasn't a Vietnamese restaurant anywhere near college or in my hometown. And I didn't eat out much anyway – too expensive. I was pretty much a ramen guy. Do you know a good place?"

"I do. It's down near the riverfront. I thought we could go down and walk along the river and feed the ducks and geese, and then have early dinner, if that suits you." We hadn't had lunch, and there was Ben's 22-year-old's appetite to keep in mind. He'd be hungry long before I was, but I could eat almost anytime, too.

"Sure!" he said. "Won't we need to get some bread crumbs for the birds?"

"Yes, and of course so we can leave a trail for finding our way back to the car."

"Well, I'll buy us a loaf of bread, or some crumbs, whatever works."

Within 40 minutes we were standing on the river bank, or at least as near it as they let you approach in the city limits, with a good-sized bag of day-old bread crumbs each. Ben knew where there was a brand-name baked goods outlet that sold outdated but still good products. I confess I picked up a couple of couldn't-resist little fruit pies to take home for myself.

There was still about three hours' daylight left. Anyway, the paved walkways near the river were well lighted at night. The riverfront had become a trendy place to be seen in recent years, so the city had a reason to keep it in good repair and relatively safe for residents and tourists, unlike Ben's derelict Rockville.

There were hundreds, maybe over a thousand, of geese and ducks. The ducks were reluctant to come up out of the water; the river rarely froze even in deepest winter, and even when it did you'd see a few ducky stragglers sunning themselves in little unfrozen patches here and there, some of which they'd probably engineered with their own beaks.

But the geese – they were everywhere. Every now and then a rowdy one would lumber up behind me or Ben and try to take a bite out of a leg or a butt. Pretty soon we were laughing hysterically at the brazenness of the big birds, while trying ineffectually to avoid attack.

For all their seeming bad temper, though, the geese weren't about to refuse bread. Once word spread among the flock about the two beneficent (and tasty) strangers bearing food, we were the undisputed star attractions of the afternoon.

Some ducks were sitting on the very outer edge of the bank, looking disgusted. The ducks obviously didn't trust the geese enough to try to squeeze their way through the feathery, smelly throng to get a share of our handout. After several minutes, and the expenditure of about two-thirds of our stock of bread, we gingerly made our way down to the neglected ducks and fed them, too, as best we could.

We tried to toss crumbs out onto the water for the most timid of them, who would not venture anywhere near the land. As lovely as the geese were – despite their atrocious personal hygiene – the ducks literally outshone them, with their striking displays of iridescent green and purple plumage.

The noise from the combined flocks was nearly deafening. How could they enjoy living in such conditions? I posed that question to Ben.

"Well...I suspect that's all they know, so they think they're living okay. What you don't know about, you don't want, or miss, right? I mean, that's what advertising's all about, isn't it? But you're the expert there."

"Good point. Or maybe they don't enjoy it at all. Could they be wishing they had it better, even if they don't have a clue about what might actually _be_ better?"

"Oh, gee...I don't know. That gets into an interesting philosophical area, doesn't it? I'll have to give that some more thought.

"I know! When I have it figured out, I'll text you my theory."

He was gently teasing me: I'd told him about my aversion to texting.

"You could go into greater detail with email," I said.

No sooner were the unfortunate words out of my mouth than I recognized that they rhymed like an advertising jingle. I could only hope Ben hadn't noticed.

"Hey, that would make you a good ad, wouldn't it, maybe to sell to Google? 'Go into detail: Get Gmail.'"

"God, Ben, don't get started, please."

He lobbed a fistful of day-old bread at me. An aggressive young gander dashed in between us with a godawful slapping of wings, and snapped most of it up in one lightning-fast swoop – and then nipped twice at Ben before waddling rapidly away, guffawing.

"That'll show you," I said.

Time passed amazingly fast coping with the noisy, filthy, but endearing birds. Before we realized it, the park lights had come on, controlled by photoelectric sensors. It was that time of day when there's just enough light to make everything seem hazy, indistinct, and doleful.

Our bread stores exhausted, we started walking slowly back towards the Mitsubishi. Ben had his arm around me again and drew me right up against his flank. Once again I felt that inexplicable, unworldly near-bliss that his embrace, or even merely his touch, was somehow able to confer.

I don't believe I had ever felt so happy and contented in my life, and I had had far from a harsh life.

All I could think as we strolled slowly along the path was, "I don't deserve such happiness."

That, rather, was all I could think for about half the way. The rest of the way, I thought, "This can't last."

And I knew that, too, was true.

Saigon Hideaway's owner, Pham Van Thuon, always waited on his customers right alongside his employees. He bore a remarkable resemblance to the "Laughing Buddha" statue that sat, subtle incense often burning before it, on a shelf behind the counter with the cash register. Mr. Pham, however, was not covered in fake gilt. He was generally sweating and I'd never seen him not smiling, or even laughing. He was the most genial person I'd ever had the pleasure of meeting. He wore a small jade-beaded Buddhist rosary around his left wrist.

This afternoon, or evening (for it felt like evening, with darkness already upon us), Mr. Pham, who'd always seemed to particularly like me, I had no idea why, met us the moment we walked through the doorway.

"Russ! Expecting you! Good to see you, man!" he said, clapping me happily on the back. I hadn't called ahead, but I didn't think of the incongruity till much later.

He showed us to a table near the back of the restaurant, from where we could observe all the goings-on in the perpetually bustling place.

I introduced him to Ben, "my coworker and friend." I wasn't sure that Mr. Pham would understand "coworker," as his English was limited at best, but I knew he was familiar with "friend." It was, in view of his character, probably one of his favorite words.

I could tell that Ben immediately took to Mr. Pham; I expected as much. I sensed that they had much in common, even though they were from such different cultures.

When I spoke to Mr. Pham – which means every time I visited Saigon Hideaway, and that was often indeed – I always found myself using a kind of idiotic improvised sign language that really conveyed next to nothing, but at least created the impression that I was trying earnestly to make myself understood. Mr. Pham would respond in kind. Thus our conversations might not get all that much information across, but at least they were colorfully kinetic.

With various universal gestures including the hanging-from-a-strap gesture and the bumpy-tracks gesture, I tried to tell Mr. Pham about the subway adventure that had brought us together before we had any idea we both worked at the same ad agency. Mr. Pham smiled contentedly, chubby hands clasped atop his ample stomach, and nodding without letup. I doubt he had the least idea what I was talking about.

He was one of those people who radiate goodness. I would many a time have come to the restaurant just to be in his presence, but the food was amazingly good, so there was always the bonus of a satisfying and relatively healthful meal.

Mr. Pham remained at our table, ignoring all his other customers except to wave at those on their way out, and this or that favorite who entered now and then. When he waved his bushy eyebrows would wag up and down like semaphores. I think it was involuntary.

He continued to wait as I explained a few dishes on the menu to Ben, who was fascinated by the variety of ingredients and their myriad combinations, all bearing distinctive, unpronounceable names. All the accent marks struck fear into my heart, and I never attempted to pronounce anything lest I should unwittingly be uttering some terrible insult or curse. Luckily, as also in many Chinese-American restaurants, each dish had its own number prominently posted beside its list of ingredients.

Since Ben knew nothing about Vietnamese food, I asked him if he'd mind if I ordered for him. He said he'd been hoping desperately I would. Mr. Pham nodded vigorously and laughed.

Service was generally very slow at Saigon Hideaway, in part because it was always crowded to overflowing, virtually every moment it was open, every day. And in part because Mr. Pham and his kitchen staff took their time and cooked things just right. It paid off. Saigon Hideaway had recently achieved a very high rating in the Zagat survey. As soon as that news was in the papers and on the Net, the line out the door almost doubled.

We had (no doubt contrary to every Vietnamese custom and instinct) iced coffee and condensed milk as we waited to be served – with the coffee dripping from those little metal things into a cup from which we would eventually (man, oh man, did it ever drip slowly – you didn't come to Saigon Hideaway if you were in a hurry for _anything_ ) – eventually pour the coffee over the ice and milk already placed in the tall glass you finally, after all this was accomplished, drank from.

I thought this drink incomparably delicious, and was pleased to see Ben's reaction to his first tentative sip. His expression said it all. I wouldn't have been surprised to see him go shopping for one of the little filter things. Of course then he'd have to find the right kind of coffee, and make sure to have ice cubes handy, and the condensed milk.... But it might be worth it.

Well, it seemed Mr. Pham had been keeping a sharp eye on us, all the while waiting on about a dozen other customers. After a bit, he strode, or waddled, rather like that gander in the park, back to our table and plunked down one of the little metal filters in front of Ben.

"Russ, I see your young friend likes very much the _café_ _sué_ _dah_. You take this," (now addressing Ben directly) "so you enjoy _café_ at home. Enjoy _café_ , okay?" Followed by hearty laughter.

He then bent down (as nearly as a man that fat could bend) and whispered in my ear, "Your friend not be charged. His meal is gift from me. He is very, very special person. You be kind to him, Russ, okay?" I wondered if Mr. Pham had a gift for discerning character. Some people are said to have that, after all. And I thought Ben was "very, very special" myself.

I'd halfway expected something like Mr. Pham's gift, and knew it would be useless (and probably impolite as well) to remonstrate. Instead I made the Asian gesture the Japanese call _gassho;_ in India it's _namaste:_ hands together in a kind of steeple and, depending on the eminence – or spiritual advancement – of the person greeted, placed in front of the heart or the forehead. In this case, the forehead, even if it was an exaggeration. Much laughter again as Mr. Pham bowed (more or less) and returned my gesture at heart-level.

Then, curiously, losing his smile for the first time I'd ever seen, and looking quite somber, almost grim, for the briefest instant, he looked Ben squarely in the eye, gave his shoulder a firm squeeze, and waddled off without another word. We didn't hear any more from him that evening.

Ben was speechless. "Is it like that every time here?" he said.

"No, it's because you are new, and my friend. Mr. Pham takes friendships very seriously – hence all the laughter."

"Oh," said Ben. "I think I get it. No, I know I do. Wow."

Oddly, he didn't ask about Pham's curious behavior towards him — nor seem puzzled by it. Just as well; I couldn't explain it to myself.

Ben must have used the word "wow" at least a couple of hundred times every day, but somehow it always seemed appropriate coming from him. (And it was far preferable to "awesome," which I was overjoyed to find apparently absent from his vocabulary, despite his age and background.)

He examined the little filter device minutely, with the concentrated enjoyment of a kid inspecting a new toy. Then he slipped it carefully into one of the big inner slash pockets of his jacket.

There was a Vietnamese market not half a block away, and if it was open when we left the restaurant, I wanted to pick up some of the proper kind of coffee there, as well as condensed milk. The ice cubes were up to Ben, however.

After what seemed an eternity, but gave Ben and me the opportunity to tell each other more about our childhood and many other things we'd only had time to touch on in his room with the tea, our food came.

Ben was enormously impressed and I had the feeling he would want to come back often. The trouble was, it was a pretty expensive place. And naturally Mr. Pham could not be expected to donate a meal to Ben more than this one time. Well, at least Ben could come with me now and then and let me treat him. I hoped he would agree to that.

The market – cavernous inside despite its humble exterior – was indeed open, and we looked around at leisure. I found the coffee I wanted, and the condensed milk too.

The odor of fish was so strong that I'd seen Ben recoil as we first entered the place. But he soon got accustomed to it, and was taking this and that package down off the shelves and attempting to figure out what was inside. The labels sometimes gave a clue, sometimes not. You could not count on any item to rate an English description. There were generally pictures, but they were not terribly informative, either.

Vietnamese markets are a great place for good quality tea at a low price. Ben found some jasmine tea — labeled in both French and English — that was a steal, and bought a tin of it. I gave him the coffee and milk as token of a thoroughly enjoyable day together. I couldn't remember when I'd had such a good time. Maybe never.

It was still fairly early, but we'd already planned on visiting the science museum the next day, Sunday, so we headed off for his place along Hatfield Expressway with, on either side below it, the monotonous rows of industrial workshops, warehouses, one or two stinking chemical plants; one of the big power stations that furnish electricity to the city, and so forth.

All industrial. No shopping centers, no residences. No trees or green plots. And hardly any free space left. Everything so enormous in scale that even the powerful floodlights dotting the landscape almost like the stars in the sky, seemed not to make a dent in the unsettling darkness out of which the shapes of the hulking, humorless buildings dimly loomed.

I played a CD of Hindemith's _Mathis_ _der_ _Maler_ as an antidote to some of the ugliness. The sound system acquitted itself brilliantly.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to go to the symphony concerts," said Ben as the Hindemith played – that elegant, somber, moving music.

"Okay," I said, "I'll give you a choice: Either I give you season tickets next year, or I get them for both of us. We'll know more about all that when the time rolls around. I think they start ticket sales in August, but I'll have to check. You may not be speaking to me by then, or I may be so pissed off at you that I wouldn't even want to go to a movie with you. Somehow I doubt either of those things will happen. Anyway, I guarantee that, no matter what, you'll get your wish next season. And don't try to argue your way out. It's a done deal, bud."

"Oh, gosh," said Ben, "I hope I didn't sound like I was hinting that you do that. Honest, I was only thinking how nice it would be to hear live symphonic music."

"I know," I said, "it never occurred to me that you meant anything else. It's one of those things, though, Ben, where if you miss it, you've missed it forever. It's not like a movie that you can watch any old time on DVD or streaming. So you just have to bite the symphonic bullet and buy the tickets, or in your case, accept them gracefully. Okay?"

"Okay," said Ben. "I'm trying really hard not to feel funny or wrong about accepting your generosity. But are you sure you aren't putting yourself in a bind with all this?"

"If that was going to happen, believe me, I wouldn't be doing it. Relax and enjoy. What little I do for you, doesn't make a tiny dent in what I make.

"And I don't know if it sounds right to tell you this, but I also have a pretty sizable inheritance from years ago. I haven't touched the capital in probably fifteen years or more; the interest alone is enough for me to live on even if I told Fassing-Kuyper to go fuck themselves. If you'll excuse a little hard-earned vulgarity."

"Wow,"said Ben. "In that case, I guess I don't need to feel totally rotten about it. I'm going to have to remember you want it this way. Maybe some day I can repay you. It sure doesn't look like it right now, but who knows? Meanwhile I'll just say 'thanks' and think of you a lot. Well, of course I think of you a lot anyway. But you know what I mean."

After the Hindemith, I asked Ben to put on Steely Dan's _Countdown_ _to_ _Ecstasy,_ which I'd packed away on impulse with the classical CD's the night before. If any music suited Rockville, which we were now about to re-enter, it was surely Steely Dan's, with its continual reference to shady deals, the underworld, and crime and sorrow – all dealt with in Donald Fagen's concise, inimitably ironic lyrics.

When "Bodhisattva" began to play, Ben said, "Oh, I love this song." I did, too.

We were finding more common ground all the time. That made me happy.

We arrived at his building. The Mitsubishi was of course well insured, and I'd already decided that if Ben invited me up – for some of the new jasmine tea, for example – I'd be brave, or foolish, or both, and leave the car parked on Winslow Street just long enough for a nightcap. Once again, I simply didn't want to leave him. Never had I – quite apart from the matter of love – met anybody whose personality had such a galvanizing effect on me.

Sure enough, he said, just as he opened the passenger door, "Hey, how about trying out the jasmine tea? You got time?"

"I do," I said. "And if I discover I'm missing another appointment, I'll just reschedule as before."

He laughed and we both stepped out of the car; I locked it with the remote and we entered the building.

He stopped suddenly. "Russ, do you notice anything different here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Some – I don't know exactly – a feeling. Something not right. I can't explain it. Like something really, really bad had happened here sometime. I've felt it from the first day I moved here."

I was fairly taken aback. Was Ben sensing that crime that had occurred within a few feet of where we were standing, some 25 years ago, before he was even born? Had he perhaps heard about it? But why should he have?

"Uh, Ben, no, I don't think so. No."

He said nothing and we went on up to his room.

The tea was delicious, and Ben had saved a couple of the sweet rolls I'd picked up at the bakery the first night. They were as good as new – almost.

"Russ, I can't get it out of my mind. Something terrible happened down there, I know it. I can feel it."

God, I thought; this is getting downright spooky. I decided to tell him what I knew, from Linda's account.

When I'd finished, I saw that Ben had tears on his cheeks. "I knew it," he said. He found a handkerchief in the little chest of drawers and used it. "That's so awful. The poor woman... How can people do things like that?"

"If I knew the answer to that, I'd probably be in another profession," I said. "Ben, I was hoping I wouldn't ever have to tell you about that. I'm sorry. I knew it'd upset you."

"That's all right. It's better if I know."

Nothing more was said about it. We enjoyed the tea and found, as before, all sorts of things to talk about. I had not had such long, and interesting, conversations since I myself was in college, what seemed like a century ago.

But even if we hadn't had one word to say to each other, I think we would have been content just to sit there in each other's company. That was the kind of relationship we seemed to be forming. It was something I'd never experienced, at least on that level. I'd always scoffed at the notion of "soul mate," but now I was having to seriously re-evaluate.

Finally I thought it was time to go; it was almost eleven again. And we intended to visit the science museum on Sunday, now only an hour away.

Ben hugged me at his door and didn't let go for several seconds. "Be careful, Russ. I'll look for you around nine tomorrow. Thanks for a great day – it's the most fun I've had since I moved here, and maybe for some time before that even. You were great. But so were the ducks and geese!"

"Well, at least I hope I smell better than them," I said. "We'll feed them again one of these days. Sleep well, and get into a scientific mood for tomorrow."

Ben decided to see me down to the street. As we passed the foyer entrance to the used-book store, I still didn't feel anything unusual. But out of the corner of my eye I saw Ben, behind me, half-turn toward the store, form the gesture of _gassho,_ and quickly mumble something.

Well, I was beginning to get used to strange things and unusual behavior. I'd just add that one to my growing collection.

The car was where I'd left it, apparently untouched. I breathed an audible sigh of relief as I got in and started my trip home. I turned on the CD player to keep me company. The strangely moving "Bodhisattva" played again. Yes, like Ben, I'd always loved that song.

I found myself humming it all the way from where I parked the little Mitsubishi in our gated garage, to my apartment on the 14th floor. Even without a car of my own, by choice, I still had a parking space. Every tenant has one; it's written into the lease.

When had I felt this happy? In fact, when had I felt as happy as I'd felt virtually every instant since my decision to fib about my subway stop and get off the train with Ben at Covington Station? I thought back to happy incidents and times in my life from childhood on, and it seemed to me that none of them could begin to compare to what I was feeling now, and for the past two or three days.

And it wasn't just because I knew I was in love. In my experience, for that matter, love seemed as apt to provoke confusion, frustration, sadness, even depression, as to result in happiness. If you were in love and happy, it might be by coincidence, but it was probably not cause and effect.

No, love had nothing to do with it. Or very little. My love for Ben, strong as it was, was only incidental to a more basic, more grounded, pervasive sensation of calm joy, if that makes sense. Maybe there's just no name for it. I decided to call it happiness for convenience. But it felt like more.

I bathed and started getting ready for bed. Before I lay down, I removed the little photo from my billfold, the one that Ben had snapped of himself seated at his little table with the two-burner stove in the background. It wasn't much of a photo, but it served to bring him vividly before my mind's eye. I thought, "Ben, what in the world have I done to merit knowing you? How can anybody deserve such a gift?"

I looked at the picture a while longer before putting it away again. Maybe I could get a better one made, and put it in a frame. I would even set it on my desk at work, except for Ben's being employed there. There would always be a possibility of causing Ben grief by doing that. There are ignorant, bigoted, and mean-spirited people everywhere, and maybe especially at Fassing-Kuyper. I would not let that happen to my friend. Myself, I was not concerned about.

In bed, I found it hard to get to sleep. I started thinking about my relationship with Ben; how it was pretty convincingly destined to remain non-sexual. What I found strange was that I felt a pretty intense physical desire, yet I was experiencing not one bit of frustration or disappointment from knowing that my desire was never apt to be satisfied. I was in fact completely content with things as they were – and yet, the desire wouldn't go away, nor did I try to make it disappear. It was just...there, like a simple furnishing for my psyche, no more of a problem than a chair or a table would be, brought into an empty room. That was so strange I couldn't begin to know how to explain or understand it. Always before, I would have tried to move heaven and earth to gratify that kind of longing.

Finally I slept; I don't remember my dreams except for one that I seemed to have right before waking. In that dream, I seemed to be floating through boundless space. I was somehow detached from my body; indeed I'm not sure I was even aware of possessing a body. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. I was just floating, as though in search of something, but I didn't know what. At least, if I knew in the dream, I didn't know when I woke.

Yet if I didn't have a body – how was it that "I" even existed?

Part Two: How It Unraveled

At nine, I pulled the Mitsubishi up in front of Ben's building and, like the day before, within a minute he stepped out onto the sidewalk. He was wearing the London Fog jacket and a red floppy knit cap that he'd perched haphazardly atop his sandy hair, and the effect of that was to make me want to, I don't know, gobble him up, maybe. He was so damn cute it was almost unbearable. At least in my eyes.

Desire suddenly asserted itself full-force, ferociously, including the unmistakable male physical manifestation of it.

Yet though I felt it – and how! – still, it didn't make me feel frustrated, or uncomfortable that Ben would soon be seated close beside me yet always frustratingly out of reach, or like things would have to escalate between us, or anything like that. It was just...there. I could take it or leave it.

And I left it.

"Damn," I thought, "I must be getting old." But no. It was definitely the same thing I'd felt as a teenager. No doubt about that. But it had lost its hold over me. Before meeting Ben I wouldn't have thought it possible. I actually had control over something that had seemed to control _me_ all my post-puberty life.

Soon we were on our way, not to the Beaux Arts cafe, but to a McDonald's on the edge of downtown. Ben had insisted on treating me this time, and McDonald's fit his budget a lot better than the Beaux Arts.

I didn't know if he was still drawing on the funds I'd left with him that first night when he was flat broke, or if he'd been able to spare some from his paycheck that he got on Friday afternoon.

But I did, at least, now know the amount of his check. I'd looked into it with the help of one of our financial officers who owed me a favor or two. The amount was paltry, and that's putting it charitably.

While not nearly of the quality, let alone the originality, of breakfast at the Beaux Arts, our McDonald's fare was tolerable and filling, and we enjoyed sitting there, watching the sparse Sunday morning foot traffic and hearing faintly a carillon somebody was playing a couple of blocks away. Amazingly, there was no background music playing in the restaurant, till I heard it start up right as we were going out the door into the street again.

We speculated as we ate about what we might do after our trip to the science museum. Ben had not heard about Frontier Town, the elaborate recreation of a frontier village not far from the city; about an hour in the Mitsubishi, I calculated, if we could manage to stay clear of the highway patrol. He was eager to go see it. So I said we would. We might even have time for a movie when we got back to town.

Then we'd go have dinner at my place.

Yes, my place. I'd thought it over some more as I drove over to Rockville to pick up my friend – my love! – and decided, in effect, why the hell not. If Ben felt any uneasiness about it, he would surely let me know.

I had the feeling by now that we had no secrets between us anyhow. In this I was mistaken, as I was to find out all too soon. At that moment, though, I was sure I could trust Ben to be up-front about everything. I'd go ahead and invite him to dine with me on my own turf. After all, he'd had me as his guest three times already.

The science museum, the Murray Plenthnor Museum of Science and Technology, to give it its full name that, understandably, nobody ever used, was just opening as we got there.

It was named after the brilliant but eccentric local inventor. Murray Plenthnor had, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, made some stunning contributions to machine cryptography. It is widely agreed now that if the Plenthnor Cryptographic Engine, a kind of predecessor of the famed, or infamous, Enigma Machine, only even more sophisticated, had been adopted by the U. S. military, the First World War might have ended at least one year sooner than it did. The Second World War might not even have taken place.

Of course, we'll never know. Murray's invention was rejected for one reason only: that its inventor was openly homosexual. It was another in the seemingly inexhaustible series of pigheaded rebuffs to minority sexual preference that have consistently worked to our nation's disadvantage.

Murray ended his own life not far from where Ben and I had fed the ducks and geese less than 24 hours earlier. He simply waded into the river (in those more reasonable days, you could walk right down to its edge unimpeded) loaded down with rocks in his coat pockets. Virginia Woolf was to do the same thing only a few years later.

Ben proved every bit as enthusiastic and gleeful among the myriad science exhibits as he'd been at the art museum the day before, apart from that mysterious reaction to the _kouros_ statue. We took part in several of the interactive exhibits aimed at kids. There was no age limit, so we could work them, too. I saw several spectators obviously getting a kick out of watching Ben's enthusiasm at play, as much as from watching their own kids.

By noontime, we still had taken in only about a third of the museum's riches, and neither of us was the least bit tired. Even so, we took a stretch break in the great open lobby, with its walls of sheer glass letting the December sun flood in, where it bathed in its radiance an enormous chandelier, blown glass from the ateliers of Dale Chihuly, spilling a prismatic cascade of light all over the gleaming marble floor and the big multi-jet fountain set into its middle. I tried taking a photo with my phone camera, but it didn't begin to convey the grandeur of the effect.

Suddenly, we heard a commotion from across the lobby and above us. We looked up to see a teen-age boy, probably acting on a dare from his young companions – there seemed to be about six or seven all together – teetering precariously atop a narrow safety railing at the edge of the balcony that stood some thirty feet up in the air. Then there came a collective gasp, an awful sound, as those of us watching helplessly saw the boy take a single disastrous false step and start to topple head-first toward the floor three stories beneath him.

Instantaneously something amazing, inexplicable, happened.

The slender figure of a young man appeared from nowhere, grabbed the boy's ankles as he began his fall, and hoisted him by main force back to safety on the balcony. Then, just as suddenly, the rescuer was gone. Evaporated. Just like that.

How I wished I'd had the video or even just the still camera going, but I'd pocketed my phone again seconds before it all took place in the space of a couple of breaths.

Most remarkable of all to me was that in the two or three seconds that it took for the near-fall and the rescue, I'd seen a stunning resemblance of the rescuer to — Ben.

We'd visited the museum gift shop just before arriving in the lobby, where I'd purchased a little inch-long Lucite prism on a thin chain that Ben liked so much he insisted on wearing it outside his T-shirt, and visible through his open jacket. There it shone and sparkled and broadcast the colors of the rainbow, plucked out of the sunlight inundating the concourse.

The rescuer, I'd seen, had worn a taupe jacket, standing open like Ben's – and there had been a flash of prismatic light in the brilliant sun just like from the pendant around Ben's neck.

And both he and Ben were wearing red floppy caps perched nonchalantly at an angle on their sandy-haired heads. His build and height, his by-now familiar manner of moving, even in that split-second of view, all was so similar that I started to get goose-flesh.

It was as though Ben had materialized on the balcony, instantly rescued the boy, and then simply vanished.

I doubted my senses for a moment, but I couldn't kid myself: I knew very well what I'd seen. There was simply no way to doubt that resemblance, which amounted to identity.

And yet, I knew just as certainly that Ben had been standing right there beside me before, during, and after the incident. I'd even grabbed at his jacket sleeve in case he hadn't known where to look, and had not let go.

I felt I was either losing my mind or else something so odd was happening that there was no way I could imagine it could ever be explained.

"Ben!" I said. "Did you see that?"

"I...uh...saw somebody pull the poor kid back to safety," said Ben. "Boy, was he lucky."

"But did you see how... I mean... The young man that saved the boy looked exactly like you, Ben. Exactly. Even to the pendant around his neck, and the jacket, and the cap, and... My God, then he just vanished! I saw it all, Ben. What's going on?"

"I don't know, Russ. They say everybody has a doppelganger, don't they? Maybe that was mine. Do you think? That's all I can come up with."

"Oh, come on, Ben. Do you expect me to believe in something like that? A doppelganger, for heaven's sake? No, but seriously, what the hell do you suppose – "

"I didn't really get that good a look at it, Russ. Maybe you saw a reflection or something that gave you that impression."

"I know what I saw, Ben. At least..." I was backing down now, under the weight of the sheer physical impossibility of what I thought I'd seen. "At least, I think I did. It beats anything I ever saw in my life."

"I'll bet it was some optical illusion. The sun's awfully bright in here, and with all those reflections off the chandelier and the water in the fountain – and it was quite a ways off, you know. Let's see...the square of the hypotenuse is equal to...hmm..."

He started muttering: "...maybe 30 feet up, 60 feet across the room, that would make...okay...uh, huh... It's nearly 70 feet away, Russ. That's pretty far."

"Hmm. Maybe." I was not ready to concede defeat, but I wasn't ready to find myself committed to the psycho ward, either. Even if they let Ben come visit me every day.

We toured most of the rest of the museum, and Ben had a splendid time. But from the moment of that near fatality, I was bothered and kept replaying the scene, at least as I thought I'd witnessed it, in my mind.

I could hardly even have told you what we looked at in the museum after that.

Frontier Town is a historically accurate depiction of the kind of settlement that existed here in the 1840's, when our own city was still not much more than a pioneer settlement. It's not a theme park; there are no rides, except ponies for the kids. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg to gain admission. Kids get in for free. It's non-commercial. And Fassing-Kuyper helps support it, anonymously. One of the few decent things the company does, I think.

A couple of buildings were actually shipped in piecemeal and re-assembled using original building materials, hand-forged nails for example. They're probably about as authentic as such a thing ever could be.

I'd asked Ben if he'd like to drive the Mitsubishi to Frontier Town, when we finally left the science museum. I figured he'd jump at the chance; of course he did. Besides, I wasn't sure I was in a state to be behind the wheel, so shaken was I from the seemingly miraculous event I'd witnessed, and above all by my conviction, which would not go away, that it had been Ben, not a doppelganger, not a reflection, not glare or anything else, that I'd seen. The only remaining alternative I could think of, that I was simply nuts, was not a comforting one.

He was a good driver. I'd taken that for granted.

No. "Good" is a ludicrously inadequate assessment of his skill and its application. He drove under the speed limit, something I wouldn't have done. He came to a complete, smooth stop at every stop sign or red light. He signaled every turn. He did everything perfectly, in short.

We got to the park several minutes later than I would have got us there, but I must say that if a patrol car had been behind us all the way, he would only have pulled us over to nominate Ben for a commendation of some kind. In my case, I would probably have ended up with a summons to some out-of-town traffic court, if not in handcuffs.

We didn't talk much on the way. I was obsessed with the strangeness I'd experienced at the museum, worried about my own mental health, and wouldn't have made a good conversationalist.

There was a mouth-watering smoke-house scent riding on the sharp December breeze. I was surprised to see how many visitors were present even on such a frigid day. Almost all seemed to be families, with two or three children.

Ben, predictably, enjoyed every square, or cubic, inch of Frontier Town. He wanted to tour every building, watch the demonstration of soap-making, the glass blowers, the blacksmith – just about everything. I think the only thing he didn't do was to ride a pony, and that was only because he was too old, or just a little too big, so they regretfully had to tell him no. But at least he tried.

I insisted on buying him any souvenirs he wanted. The only thing he asked for was a photo of us together, outside the old school house, where there was a photographer, with modern equipment, that would take your picture for a couple of dollars. I had him make one for me, too. Now I had a better picture of Ben.

It made me happy, despite my continuing distraction, to see us standing together in the photo, Ben's arm draped over my shoulder – he now never left me alone when we were within touching distance, and that was fine with me. It made me happy, and strangely peaceful inside; and yet it also sometimes made me sad. I think I was experiencing again that knowledge that such happiness as I'd been basking in for the past few days, simply could not last.

And of course it couldn't. But for now we were both happy, even very happy, apart from my increasing perplexity about – well, about what the hell was going on.

By the time we got back to the city, it was around five, and I asked Ben if he felt up to seeing a movie. Sure, he did. So I checked listings using my cell-phone's browser, and discovered that one of my favorites, _Microcosmos_ , a French film only 80-some minutes long but breathtakingly beautiful, was playing at the Morocco Cinema, an art house I considered a civic treasure.

At the little cinema, which seats probably a hundred people at most, we watched on the big screen, well, big for that room anyway, the incredibly detailed photographic journey through the world of insects and a few other tiny creatures which French movie-makers with more patience and skill than I could imagine anybody possessing, had put onto film.

Ben was astonished and as wide-eyed as any kid. He sat literally on the edge of his seat, bracing himself with both hands on its edges, just like a grade-school kid totally immersed in watching an exciting adventure film. A couple of times I saw him brush tears away.

When we came out of the theater, he said, "Oh, man, Russ, thank you. That was so wonderful. I wouldn't have dreamed a movie like that could be made. I'll never forget it." The reaction would have seemed excessive, even funny, or at the very least a bit strange, coming from anybody else. From Ben, I almost expected it. And it was natural and believable, because he really, truly felt that way. I'd been certain he would love the film. I'm not sure why I knew, is all.

I'd already advanced the notion of dinner at my place, and he'd enthusiastically accepted with no qualms or hesitation. Then I felt foolish for even thinking there could have been a problem.

It wasn't so much a question of Ben being trusting and in a sense naive, though that was true; it was more that there just _could_ _not_ be a problem. It simply couldn't happen.

And again, I had no idea why this was so. He hadn't even cared that, on that first day, I'd at first intended to seduce him. It simply was no problem for him. Sometimes he made me feel I must have started living in an alternate universe. Things just weren't supposed to work that way – not in this one.

We parked in the gated garage and went up to the fourteenth floor. Through the 20-story glass wall that surrounds and encloses the lift shafts, Ben and I looked out over the suburban sprawl of Terrapin Heights. The city itself could be seen, twinkling dimly in the far distance. It was dark by now, of course, and what you saw was primarily thousands and thousands of sparkling lights.

"Wow. This is an unbelievably nice place, Russ."

"It's okay. I like it. It's not real fancy, but it's pretty safe, they do good maintenance, and I have no complaints."

"I'll never live in a place of this quality," said Ben, matter-of-factly.

We'd almost reached my door, down the long, softly-illuminated hallway from the elevators. I debated saying what I said next, but decided I might as well.

I stopped us for a moment in the hallway. Speaking quietly, I said, "Ben, I want you to know that, if you want to live here, there's more than enough room for both of us in my place. There are two big bedrooms, two baths, and, really, we'd be rattling around like two peas in a pod, or however that expression goes. No strings attached. And you'd finally be in a safe place. Above all, that's what I want to see happen, whether it's here or somewhere else, before something dreadful happens to you."

"That's so nice of you I don't know really how to answer," said Ben. "But, Russ, I could never afford it. You must think I make a lot more money than I do!" He laughed.

"I know exactly how much you make, Ben," I said. "I found out. I hope you don't mind. It seems criminal to me, to pay anybody so little for eight hours of work a day. Though in a way it doesn't surprise me, considering its those bastards Fassing-Kuyper doing the paying."

"I don't mind you knowing," said Ben. "But that means you ought to understand I can't afford something like this.

"And, Russ, I'm sure there are good people at Fassing-Kuyper, too. You ought to remember them sometimes."

"I wasn't thinking of your paying anything," I said, feeling I might be dipping my toes into untested, possibly shark-infested, waters and wondering if it was wise.

And conveniently ignoring his remark about the people at Fassing-Kuyper. I knew he was right, there were good people there, too. And yes, I ought to think of them sometimes in addition to the greedy, cretinous, power-hungry control-freaks in upper management. All true.

"Russ, you're just too good for words," said Ben.

We'd just arrived at my door. He hugged me and kissed me softly on the cheek. I couldn't help it; I started to cry. I unlocked the door through a haze of tears and groped for the light switch inside.

"Oh, Russ, I didn't mean to upset you," said Ben. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not upset. I just don't know what to think about you," I said through sniffles. "Damn it, Ben, what is it about you, and why have I met you, and why have we become so close this way, so quickly, and..."

"Russ, all I can do now is to say again that it'll be plain to you before long now. Don't worry. I can't say any more about it than that, but what I said is true, you can count on it."

"There you go being mysterious again," I said, both crying and laughing. "God, Ben, you're just about too much to handle." I felt like I was falling apart now.

Ben put his arms around me and didn't say a word, but I swear I felt again that strange presence there, one of the many things I couldn't begin to explain. Within seconds I was calm again, no tears, no anxiety, nothing except...I suppose I could call it a profound peacefulness. We stood like that for several seconds, silently.

"Are you all better now?" said Ben, almost in a whisper, still holding me close.

Nobody had spoken to me in that tone of voice, or with such, I don't know, loving concern, I guess, since my mother, when I was a little kid and scared or hurt. It was as though it was Ben, yet not Ben – as though something, or someone, even more remarkable were speaking. I can't even describe it, let alone explain it. The best I can do is to say it felt as though he were the embodiment of compassion itself.

All I knew for sure was that two weird, unsettling experiences – even though this one was wonderful, while the first, that rescue at the museum, remained deeply troubling – were just too much for one day, at least for somebody with as limited a grasp of reality as mine increasingly seemed to be. Suddenly I felt tipped over the edge of my emotion.

"Ben, I love you. I love you more than I can begin to say. I wasn't going to burden you with that, but you've just about given me no choice. I hope you don't mind."

He patted my back, still holding me gently pressed against him.

"It's okay, Russ." He was still almost whispering, his voice still conveying that...otherness...that I had no words for.

"I knew you loved me. I knew it before you found out yourself, yesterday morning in the car, when the Bach started playing. It's not like it was some big surprise. And of course I don't mind. I'm grateful you feel that way. Just don't get too attached, okay?

"I love you, too, Russ. I've loved you more than myself ever since you stepped on board that train the first day. Like I said, before long you'll understand all this.

"And remember: I'm never going to forget you, ever. If you don't remember anything else about me, I want you to remember that. I love you and I will never, ever, forget you. Okay?"

I couldn't speak. He'd known I loved him before I did? And he'd recognized the exact moment it first became clear to me? And he'd loved me _since before we actually met_ on the train?

It just made me feel more lost than ever. If I hadn't been in his mysteriously calming arms, I think I would have at least had to pour myself a stiff drink.

He slowly released his grasp. He was smiling; he looked happy, unconcerned, cheerful even.

"Hey, do you think we could we have some tea or something before dinner? And I want you to show me the rest of this great apartment, too."

I welcomed the chance to do something other than try to cope with all the strangeness and with my own feelings, which were seesawing between something like bliss and deep distress. He had calmed me, true enough, but I wondered if I'd ever go back to what I used to think of as feeling normal.

I led Ben to the kitchen and put water to boil for tea. Then I showed him the two bedrooms, the little study that I didn't really use all that much (I told him he might just as well have it for his own).

The big balcony overlooking more of those twinkling lights, and, in the daytime, a lovely wooded park as well. The two baths, one with a Jacuzzi, both with big walk-in showers as well as separate tubs. The utility room, even. He got the grand tour of the place. I thought it was a bargain for the rent I was paying, even though that was at least eight to ten times what Ben would probably ever in his life be able to pay.

I didn't know if I really hoped he would take me up on my offer to come live with me, or not; I wasn't sure I could manage being with him that much, not because of erotic desire, though of course that was there, but just because there was so much...force around him, like a magnetic field. He was just about too much to take, sometimes.

I loved him as I'd never loved anybody before in my life, and yet I wanted to get away from him sometimes because I felt I simply couldn't stand any more joy. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how I felt.

We sat in the big living room with our tea, Darjeeling this time, and some Italian cookies I'd bought last time I ate at La Fiorella, a little Italian _ristorante_ in the city on Grainger Avenue that a novelist friend of mine had introduced me to. I was feeling more composed now, more like myself, I guess, and made a mental note to take Ben to La Fiorella soon. I knew he'd like it. Well, he would have....

He was impressed by the stereo system that I'd built up over the last few years, examined every component, wanted to know about all the different functions.

I asked him to pick out CD's to play, and he chose some Mozart symphonies and the late Beethoven quartets. Wow, I thought, without realizing I was increasingly adopting his vocabulary: He really knows what he likes, and what he likes is the best of what there is. By now, though, this kind of thing didn't particularly surprise me.

As we listened to a couple of Mozart's middle symphonies, I was looking at Ben, seated a few feet away, and experiencing that desire that strangely didn't cry out to be satisfied but which was intense none the less.

Ben said, "Yes, Russ, I wish we could have, well, a physical relationship, too. Believe me, I've thought about it. I'm really attracted to you, too.

"The trouble is, it just wouldn't work. I'll just have to hope you can trust me on that. If I didn't know it would be self-defeating, I'd say yes in a moment. Do you see what I'm saying? I don't want to make you feel bad. It's just that it's not possible, if I'm to do what I'm here to do. I know, I know, there's another mystery! But you'll understand before long, just as you will a lot of other things. That much is certain."

"Ben, it's okay. I've been thinking about it a lot, too – and, oh, by the way, I guess you read my mind just now, huh?"

He just laughed. "Could be. It's not that important."

"The funny thing is, the desire's strong, but there's no compulsion to act on it. I've never experienced that before."

He nodded, smiling approval. "That's about what I'd expect at this stage, Russ. That's how it's supposed to be. It's a really good sign."

"What is it that you can't tell me, Ben? Come on, you've been hinting, especially today, that something bizarre is going on, or that...I don't know, it's like you know the future or something, and I get a spooky feeling that somehow you do. Can't you tell me even a little bit what it's all about?"

"When the time's right, sure, I will. This just isn't the time. You're just not ready for it.

"Maybe I shouldn't even have said what I said just now, or at the museum cafe yesterday. If that's so, then I'm sorry and I apologize. I don't use very good judgment sometimes. It's something I need to work on. I really was trying to be helpful. I guess it's kind of dumb to expect to be helpful and hard to figure out at the same time, though."

"I trust you, Ben. God, if I ever trusted anybody it would be you. I may not understand you, but I get the feeling – I've had it ever since that first evening, when we got off the train together – that if you can't be trusted, nobody can. It's like – even though you're hardly more than a kid, you're the wisest person I ever encountered, far and away. Another thing I can't explain, damn it!"

He laughed again. "Thanks, Russ. Yes, you can trust me. And that's about all I better say right now. Hey, let's have dinner, want to?"

By then I was good and ready for another chance at diversion from my perplexity.

"Sure. Come into the kitchen and watch me cook. It ought to be amusing if nothing else."

"Maybe I can help. Or maybe not," he said. "I think I know how to break an egg. Does that count?"

"We'll see. I'm pretty sure I can find something that suits your skill level."

We went into the kitchen again. Even walking that far, maybe forty feet – Ben had to put his arm around me again. It was as though he was determined to protect me from something. Or maybe it was just to show me he cared about me. Or maybe he knew I needed tranquilizing still. Anyway, it felt unbelievably good. I wasn't about to object.

But, God, what a strange kid. And getting stranger all the time.

Ben hadn't been exaggerating. He actually did know how to break an egg. Unfortunately that was where his kitchen ability ground to a halt. But after he'd employed his unique skill four times, I was able to whip up a couple of secret-recipe omelets in almost no time, while he watched, I trust in awe.

I had a baguette from the supermarket bakery that I'd thought to purchase on the way home the night before, and it was still okay. There was a decent pre-packaged green salad in the refrigerator, too, and Ben was able to cut it open fairly successfully after only one lesson, so he actually was making himself useful, after all.

We ate at the kitchen table, sharing a bottle of 2002 Beaujolais I'd been saving for some special occasion, as those were generally the only times I drank. When I'd bought it, probably a year earlier, I could not have imagined I'd be sharing it with the one person I loved most in my life; loved even more than my life, for that matter.

Ben was practically ecstatic over it all. Once again, a reaction that would seem downright crazy coming from anybody else, yet from him, it was natural, appealing, and strangely touching.

I'd started wondering, in fact, if, rather than Ben's reactions being excessive, most of us merely failed fully to appreciate the things right there in front of us. Maybe we'd all react like Ben, if we truly paid attention to some of the wonders around us.

After dinner, we had coffee in the living room while listening – actually listening, mind you, not just playing – to two of the last Beethoven quartets, which some have called the pinnacle of Western music. I would have to agree, even though perhaps I shouldn't, having not heard, by a long shot, all of Western music. Let's say I suspect that they may be the summit: for it's hard to imagine any music penetrating deeper into a human heart. And to think early listeners were baffled by them.

I don't think we said one single word during the performances. During the first movement of the first quartet that played, Ben quietly moved over to my easy chair, sat on its arm, and kept his arm lightly around my shoulders. When the last notes of the last quartet had finally faded from our consciousness, Ben said, "Russ, thanks so much for letting me come here and have dinner with you and hear this music. You can't know what it means to me. I'll never – "

"I know," I said, laughing, "you'll never forget it, ever."

With complete seriousness, Ben said, "Yes, that's right. Never. Remember that."

"Ben, for heaven's sake, for the last time tonight – I promise – can't you give me a clue as to what's going on? Something really strange has been happening ever since we met, and I can't figure out what it is. I don't even know how to try."

"Russ, I told you before, you'll know pretty soon. And I'm sorry, but that's all I can say. Can't you just be patient and trust me?"

"I guess," I said, feeling defeated. "As long as I can be with you, I suppose I can be patient for just about anything."

"That's sweet," said Ben. "Russ, you're kind and you're thoughtful. Do you realize how rare that is?" As so often, and increasingly now, I got the feeling there was something special behind his words, or beyond them somehow.

"Not too rare, I hope, if it's me you're talking about. I don't think there's anything extraordinary at all about me, unless maybe it's some of my many weaknesses."

"Don't say that," said Ben. "You're extraordinary, you can count on it. You'll see."

I gave up at that point, tired of being asked to wait and see about this and that. I trusted Ben to tell me whatever it was he had to tell me, when the time was right. I finally resolved to stop pressing.

So I thought then. In a few more hours, I would find myself singing quite a different tune.

Since Ben needed to be at work in the mail room at 8 next morning, he asked me if I'd drive him home. We went down to the garage, his arm around me all the way. In about thirty minutes, I had him safely – I hoped – inside his building again. If you could be safe anywhere in Rockville.

I was sad driving back home alone. I no longer felt content unless in Ben's presence. I still mostly wished he would accept my offer to move in with me, but I realized now it just wasn't going to happen. And that it was probably for the best.

I stopped at the 24-hour supermarket and stocked up on health food: three kinds of ice cream in the half-gallon size; various kinds of cookies; five or six ten-inch frozen pizzas. And as an afterthought, another pound of overpriced coffee beans. And five or six chocolate bars.

I was set for the week; nutritionally, at least.

Morning came, as it had every day of my existence so far, and I got up and prepared to go downtown, if not to work right away. There was no special reason for me to be at the office before three p.m., believe it or not.

I guess I shouldn't criticize F-K too, too much, as I admit the policy about my attendance was about as liberal as it could be, in fact downright lax. Considering my salary – well, I had no room whatever to complain. And of course Ben had been right; there were some good people at Fassing-Kuyper. I knew at least three – no, four, now. There was Tom, a VP I'd been friends with for years; Clayton in the mail room; Linda, my secretary, who'd pulled me out of some potentially embarrassing jams in her time – and now, of course, Ben. And I promised myself I'd follow Ben's suggestion and be on the lookout for more good souls there. Undoubtedly some, perhaps many, had been right in front of me and I hadn't even bothered to notice.

I'd make it a little easier on myself and not start with upper management, though.

I lazed about in the kitchen for an hour or so. Then I took a second, or was it a third, cup of coffee into the living room and without thinking switched on the TV. It was time for the morning news on WICN. It was my ritual.

The familiar faces of "Claudia" and "Bill," the two anchor persons, appeared in supersaturated color, the giant WICN logo looming over them from the background of the tacky news set. As usual, Claudia and Bill were dressed in such a way as not to offend even their most rabidly fundamentalist viewers. I had to agree that it was probably a wise thing to do, even though they looked like buffoons in their absurdly conservative suits, subdued neckties, and frilly lace collars. At least to me.

"First in the news," Claudia began, "absolutely _awesome_ amateur video of a near-tragic event yesterday at the Murray Plenthnor Museum of Science and Technodg – Technology." She corrected herself with a little chuckle, as anchors are no doubt trained to do; her blush and the corners of her mouth betrayed her real feelings. I'd learned to spot such things from years of handling my focus groups, or out-of-focus groups, as I sometimes preferred to call them.

Then there appeared on the screen something that almost caused me to drop my 3/4-full coffee cup on the almost-convincingly-fake Bokhara carpet.

It was of course the accident and rescue that had so disturbed me when Ben and I were at the museum.

A spectator had been making a video of the big fountain in the concourse when the outcry came that signaled something gone wrong, and had had presence of mind to swing her small but hi-def camera up to auto-focus on that balcony, where now, on my own 57-inch plasma TV screen, I saw the teenager tottering on the railing, about to fall.

The same figure I'd seen with my own eyes – while I was tugging at Ben's jacket where he stood beside me in case he was missing it – that lithe figure appeared literally from nowhere, grabbed the boy's ankles just as I thought I'd seen, hauled him back to safety exactly as I'd seen it – and instantly disappeared, again just as I felt certain I'd seen.

My eyes had not deceived me at all. Nor had my imagination played some heartless trick on me – and neither had I been mistaken about it being Ben who had saved the kid's life.

There was simply no way it _wasn_ _'_ _t_ him.

The video was unusually clear, and I could even make out the pendant's unmistakable sparkle, and the faint glitter of its chain, as well as enough detail in the floppy cap to know it too had to be Ben's.

The clincher was that even Ben's face was clear as day.

As usual, I'd set the DVR to record the news in case I had to go to the bathroom, or wanted to make more coffee, or had a phone call or something while it was being broadcast, so that I could watch it again, or resume watching, at leisure. I was profoundly grateful now that I had acquired that habit.

I watched and listened to the rest of the reportage.

"The mysterious rescuer apparently just vanished after saving young Ricky. Ricky's parents have made an appeal to the public to identify the young man that saved their son. There is a substantial reward waiting for him." (A hotline number now appeared in the "crawler" space at the bottom of the TV picture.) "And the police are asking for anybody who witnessed the seemingly miraculous event to come forward and give an account of what they saw. For now, forensics experts are saying that there must have been an unusual malfunction in the video camera that caused what's now being called 'The Rescuing Angel' to appear to vanish instantly. The experts stress that such a thing obviously cannot have happened. Stay tuned to WICN for further developments."

"Awesome, Claudia," said Bill, looking up from the script in his sweaty hands. "It's not every day that we have a story like that at the top of the news." You could tell from his voice that he hadn't been paying one bit of attention, but rather devoting all his brain-power to memorizing that challenging line from his script.

"No, indeed, Bill," said Claudia. "It will be interesting to see what develops here. Awesome!"

"Right you are, Claudia," said Bill cheerfully. "Now, also in the news, a worker at the municipal animal shelter was electro– "

I switched over to the DVR at that point, and replayed the segment about the rescue at least ten times, if only to try to convince myself I hadn't dreamed it all. Or to convince myself I was wrong despite all, if I possibly could.

But I couldn't. And I hadn't just dreamed it. And it _had_ been Ben.

And that was that. End of story.

I don't think I'd ever felt so un-grounded in my life. I had no idea where to take this. What the ever-loving hell was going on? I had to know, if I wanted to remain even halfway sane.

~~~

It was 8:15 a.m. I called Ben's cell phone. Personal call or not, I had to speak to him. I felt I would go out of my mind if I didn't get this cleared up fast. His suggestion about an optical illusion, or glare from the sun, was obviously meant to throw me off the track, or just to shut me up. I couldn't accept that.

There was just no way he didn't know exactly what had taken place, and I felt I had to know, too, or...or end up in that psycho ward after all. And if that happened — I wasn't sure now that I would even want him to visit me.

I felt first saddened, then in rapid succession angry, angrier, and finally flat-out betrayed, and furious.

Ben's voicemail answered, as I'd halfway expected. He probably turned his phone off while at work, to save the battery. That would be like him.

Even though I practically melted as I heard the familiar boyish voice delivering the banal announcement about leaving a message, I was enraged.

What did he hope to accomplish by concealing – whatever it was – from me? Why was he doing this? And above all, how the hell had he managed to save that boy, Ricky's, life? Of course part of me was glad he'd done it, and even proud of him, but I was also really, really mad.

He had deceived me. The guy who'd assured me I could trust him had bitterly deceived me.

"Okay, Ben," I told his voicemail. "Call me as soon as you get this. It's important. I mean it. Call me, damn it." I terminated my call. Even in the midst of my furor, I was immediately sorry I'd said "damn it," but I couldn't erase the recording and try again.

I fretted and fumed for hours after that. I think I even bit my nails without realizing it. I remember kicking a few pieces of furniture and talking out loud, probably incoherently.

I toyed with the idea of just stepping out onto the balcony and jumping off. But it probably wouldn't have done any good. Ben would no doubt have materialized just in time to rescue me.

Finally I was crying from a mixture of disappointment, anger, frustration, and love. Each feeling was vying with all the others in an almost unbearable emotional stew.

Next thing I knew, my cell phone woke me. I'd fallen asleep in the easy chair from sheer exhaustion both emotional and physical. I glanced at the clock on the phone's display: It was just past noon. And it was, of course, Ben calling – on his lunch hour. At least he'd had the decency to check his phone instead of leaving it off through lunch, too.

"Russ?" he said. "What's wrong? You sounded angry."

"You know damn well what's wrong, Ben," I said. I didn't care anymore if I cursed. I was fairly sure he'd heard far worse, though never from me, at least not directed at him – till today.

"No, Russ, honestly. Please tell me. Maybe I can help."

"Oh, you can help all right. You can start by admitting it was you that did that rescue yesterday. I saw it on the goddamn news, Ben. On the damned WIC-fucking-N news! They had the whole thing in glorious color and hi-def, and what's more I have it on my hard drive now, too. So don't tell me you don't know – whatever it is you know. I'm just not having it anymore. Is that clear?"

My tirade must have taken him by surprise, as there was a lengthy silence from his end.

"Russ," he said finally, "try to calm down. I can tell you're really angry, and I'm sorry that I made you so upset. But there's nothing else I can tell you right now. Besides, are you really sure about what you saw? I still think it must have been a – an optical illusion or something. Maybe the sun was in your eyes? Something like that."

"Cut the crap, Ben," I said. "They're calling it a goddamn miracle on TV. The police forensics people are trying to forestall mass hysteria by babbling some nonsense about a malfunction in the camera. I know different. I know now what I saw was what I thought I saw. There was no fucking malfunction anywhere. Not in that camera, and not in my eyes, either. You rescued that boy and there's simply no doubt on earth about that."

"I just don't know what to say, Russ. Honestly. Can't we maybe meet after work and talk about this? Wouldn't that be better than on the phone?"

At that point I totally lost control, and I wish to this day I hadn't said what I said next.

"Ben," I said, "if you won't tell me what's going on, then...then...I don't think there's any fucking point in us seeing each other, after work or any other time. You could damn well tell me right now, I know you could. But for some fucking reason you won't."

By now my voice was all broken because I was bawling as I talked.

"You'd rather see me go fucking crazy from not knowing what to think, about you, about us, about... Hell, I don't know. Shit, Ben. This is crazy. This isn't right and you sure as fuck know it. Just forget about me, us, then, you worthless little shithead. It's plain that you don't care about us anyway."

And now I was sobbing, hyperventilating, shouting, and probably almost impossible to understand on the other end. Actually, I hope I _was_ unintelligible, in view of the inexcusable things I was yelling at Ben.

"Oh, Russ," he said, and his tone even over the phone was gentle, compassionate, bearing not the slightest hint of the anger I would have expected – and would definitely have exhibited – in response to what I'd just thrown at him.

"Russ. You know that isn't so. I care about you so much – so much you can't begin to know. I need you to believe that. I love you, Russ. Can't you be – "

I jabbed at the little red phone icon on my phone that they put there because people are too stupid to cope with difficult words like "End" anymore.

That was it. I'd had it. With being put off, cajoled, humored – and, as I saw it, lied to and betrayed.

I'd had it with Ben.

Part Three: How It Ended

I called in sick for the first time in months. Maybe even a couple of years. I had a bottle of Scotch I'd been keeping back, just like the Beaujolais, for special company. I poured a stiff Scotch-and-water, and I would have left the water out only I was afraid that having not drunk the stuff in so long I might not be able to swallow it straight.

After I drank that, in about ten minutes' time, I had another. And another after that. And then another for good measure. Each one with progressively less water. I vaguely remembered something about how you should gradually taper yourself off of dangerous substances like water. I increased the amount of Scotch each time to compensate for the missing water, though.

By that time I was fairly looped, and I went to bed to sleep it off. I swallowed five or six Xanax tablets first. And a couple of Mellaril I had left over from attempting to cope with an unsatisfactory relationship a few years earlier. And a handful of Tylenol just because I noticed the bottle sitting there beside the Mellaril.

I didn't wake till the next afternoon at two. I had to go to the bathroom really, really bad, but at least I hadn't wet the bed. Not too badly, anyway. My head felt like a power washer had exploded inside it. A power washer full of nitric acid.

I didn't even realize till I picked up my phone and saw the date displayed on it, that it was New Year's Day. Damn. And here I could have caught a great balcony view of all the midnight fireworks. But I'd slept right through them.

I found no fewer than five messages in my voicemail. All from Ben.

"Screw this," I muttered, and dropped the phone on the floor and stumbled back towards where I figured my bedroom would probably still be.

I crept back in bed and brooded for what seemed like hours, and probably was. I was alternately cursing and imploring Ben, in my mind. I still loved him passionately, damn it. I felt as though I always would. And I didn't have a clue what to do about that part.

But the treacherous little sonofabitch had let me down badly. As far as I was concerned, he'd been flat-out lying to me. How could I accept that? Yet that seemed to be what he expected me to do.

I dozed off and on between brooding sessions. Then all of a sudden during one waking period, I remembered those five messages from Ben I'd seen chalked up on my voicemail.

I'd left the phone in the living room so I padded in there barefoot in my dirty underwear and retrieved it. There were also three more messages now, for a total of eight, all from Ben.

My anger had cooled down quite a bit; for one thing, in the state I was in from the Scotch and the drugs, I could no longer muster enough clear-headedness to be angry.

I played through the eight messages. They varied in length but all amounted to the same thing as message number 5 from him, quote, "I'm so worried about you. Please, please call me, Russ. Please. I love you, man!" Close quote. Every syllable uttered in his voice made me ache with love for the guy, and then burn with anger because I couldn't seem to help the love part.

But even in my remarkably sub-optimum condition, I recognized the pain in Ben's voice and it hurt me to hear it.

Hell, yes, I still loved him, so much. So much.

I knew from extensive experience you can love somebody a hell of a lot and still be homicidally angry with them. Well why not – you're more apt to be angry with somebody who means a lot to you than with somebody you hardly know, after all. Because you feel more unfairly used. More let down. And maybe most of all because you don't _want_ to feel angry towards them. If you love somebody, damn it, you want to love them all the time.

I debated whether to call him. It was around five p.m. now and Ben was probably at home in his room. I wondered if he was thinking about me. It was more than likely. He wanted to hear from me; should I gratify his wish, _or_ _keep_ _him_ _on_ _the_ _hook?_

Whoa.

I saw as though in big print what I'd just thought, even down to a couple of those stylized pointing fingers from the old typefaces emphasizing it, and I felt ashamed to the depth of my soul, or whatever it was I had in lieu of one. "Keep him on the hook?" My God, that was an unworthy way to think about anybody. Well, at least anybody who's not a politician or a CEO.

Still, I couldn't bring myself to call him. And so I didn't. I tossed the phone aside again and headed for the kitchen I'd noticed on my way to the living room.

I heated up one of the 10-inch pizzas I'd had the forethought to bring home with me, and ate it in about five minutes. I set the oven to 600 by mistake so it was mostly charcoal, but I didn't care. Now I could be sick on top of drunk and drugged, I thought. Maybe if I stepped out onto the balcony in about a half hour, when it would be pitch dark, Ben wouldn't notice and I could jump off unhindered.

It occurred to me at that point that perhaps I wasn't thinking too clearly anymore.

To clear my head, I poured out another couple of tall Scotches – straight this time, having successfully kicked the water habit – and was soon back in bed. I'd run out of Xanax, but I took another couple of Mellaril on principle. And some kind of tablets I found in the back of the medicine cabinet but couldn't read the label on, they were so old. I figured it couldn't hurt; I took all but a couple of them. I might want the others later on. You never know.

When I woke next, it was Wednesday noon. I hadn't spoken to Ben since noon on Monday. I trusted he was _good_ _and_ _worried_ _by_ _now_.

And even in my drug-fortified, semi-comatose state, I immediately recognized that as another deplorably unworthy thing to be thinking. About anybody.

I was still in my now rancid underwear. I crawled unsteadily out of bed and took my billfold from the dresser where I kept it at home, and shakily pulled out the photo of Ben that he'd sent me. Then I remembered the one we'd had made at Frontier Town, and I rummaged around in my clothing till I found that one in a jacket pocket.

I went into the kitchen and placed both photos on the table. Then I got a half-gallon of Double-Choco-Cherry ice cream out of the freezer, and a used soup spoon I found in the sink, and sat down with it in front of the photographs and stared at them as I scarfed about half the contents of the tub.

Then I tore both photographs into tiny pieces and ground them down the garbage disposal.

I was about to go looking for what was left of the bottle of Scotch so I could have that for my dessert, when my cell phone rang. I couldn't remember where I'd left it, and I wasn't sure I remembered how to use it, but at least I was able to follow the sound of the Vivaldi mandolin concerto till I found the phone in the living room, on the floor near my easy chair. By now it had stopped ringing. As I looked at it, I saw yet another voicemail register on its screen. In addition to that one, there were seven more since last time I'd checked, the day before. One of those was from Tom, my vice-prez friend at F-K. The other six were from Ben, of course.

I dutifully played them all back. Ben was still pleading with me to call him. He certainly could be persistent. Though I no longer thought of it as leaving him on the hook, I still couldn't bring myself to call him, either.

But now, such was my chaotic mental state, I was crying because I'd destroyed the only two pictures I had of him. It didn't occur to me that I probably still had the digital one he'd sent me, either on the phone or my computer hard drive. Now it's the only one I have of him, and, even a year later, I can't bring myself to look at it.

Tom's message was one of concern that I hadn't shown up today. "I smoothed it over with Ed," he said. Ed was another vice-president, and, unlike good old Tom, not a friend of mine. Ed was, however, my immediate superior. "Don't fret too much about it, I can probably unruffle Ed's feathers again. But I'm worried about you, pal. It isn't like you to just disappear. Give me a call at home tonight if you want to. Hope you're okay." He left his home number in case I didn't still have it; we hadn't got together socially for a year or so.

Tom's a super guy; I'd never understood how he rose to vice-presidency without, apparently, kissing a single ass.

He hadn't had to cover for me. That was just the way he was, always ready to help a friend. In his spare time, he did Big Brothers volunteer work. He drove an older model car, lived in a modest house in a distinctly modest part of town: I suspected from things I'd heard here and there that he gave away most of his sizable income to charities.

Maybe I would call him at home later. If by some miracle I was sober enough. That seemed highly doubtful. Meanwhile, I reflected on how I'd so far caused two people (Tom and Ben) a lot of worry about me, for no good reason. Two people and counting. Something in me needed fixing. I couldn't deny that.

I possessed just enough clarity of mind to realize, spurred by Tom's message, that I'd better make an appearance pretty soon at Fassing-Kuyper or face some unpleasant consequences – which wouldn't mean much to me financially, after all, but would make me feel diminished, even coming from such a contemptible, bottom-feeding source as F-K.

The last message – the one left at the moment I was picking up the phone off the floor – was from a number I didn't recognize. The voice in the message was unfamiliar, too. "This call is for Russ," it began. "If you receive this message, please call" and the number on the caller ID was stated. "It's important that we talk to you."

I would have dismissed it as one of those soliciting calls you get even on a cell phone from time to time, except that my last name hadn't been used, only my first.

If I'd been sober I would have been intrigued and maybe a little suspicious. As it was, I was simply befuddled. I decided to take the bait and call the number. I didn't have presence of mind enough to just touch the entry in the list and let it do the dialing; no, I thought I had to use the stupid fucking virtual keypad, so it took seven or eight tries to succeed. I was lucky I didn't erase the contents of the phone in the process.

"Detective Banning's desk," came a female voice. What the – ?!

"Uh...hello? My name's" (it took a moment for me to think of it) "Russ Fielding and somebody called my cell phone and asked for me to call this number. Is it some...some kind of mistake?"

"Just a moment, sir, I'll see if I can find Mr. Banning. Will you hold?"

"Yes."

There followed a long, long moment in which I began to exude cold sweat (cold and malodorous — even I could smell it), because somehow in the back of my mind, even in my sorry state, a terrible notion was starting to take shape and creep out of the shadows. I began to hope fervently that it had been a mistake, but I also knew it hadn't been.

I suddenly was about 70% more sober than thirty seconds earlier.

"Jim Banning," came a not unfriendly, but distracted-sounding man's voice. "What can I do for you?"

"Detective Banning?" I said. "My name's...uh, Russ Fielding, and for some reason you or somebody called my ph — cell phone and asked me to call your number."

"Oh, yes, Russ – Mr. Fielding," said the detective. "Mr. Fielding, are you sitting down?"

Damn. I'd always suspected it. It wasn't just in movies they said that.

"Yes," I lied, but immediately collapsed into the easy chair to make it true.

"Well, Russ – is it all right if I call you Russ?"

"Sure. That's sup – Uh, that's fine." My voice was shaking and I was sweating both hot and cold now, and not from alcohol, drugs, or ice cream.

"Russ, there's been an...an incident you probably need to know about. A young man was found injured and unconscious a while ago outside the diner a couple of blocks south of Winslow, on Masonic. Do you know that place?"

"I think so, yes." (Ohmigod, ohmigod, no, please don't let it be him, I was thinking.)

"His billfold was missing, if he'd had one, and the only lead the officers had to his identity was your entry in his cell phone, which we found in his inside jacket pocket. In fact, that was the only entry in his phone's contact list. Have you got any idea who the victim might be? He's about five-foot seven, slight build, let's see...sandy blond hair, maybe about 22 or 23 at a guess. Oh, wait, I see they attached a photo. Hmm. Nice-looking young guy, considering." I didn't like the implications of that last word.

I felt like I was about to pass out. Things were getting simultaneously sparkly and dark in my field of view and I was hyperventilating like crazy. I thought I was about to piss, or worse. I started staggering as fast as I could toward the bathroom. I almost fell down twice.

"My God," I managed to say, just as I reached the bathroom. "Where is he?"

"Do you know his name, Russ? Or how to contact his family?"

"His name's Ben. Ben Jarvis. I...I don't know about his family. I only met Ben last — recently, lesser – less than a week ago. Where is he? Can I see him?"

I had to struggle to retain consciousness. I sat down on the toilet and put my head between my knees. It made it harder to talk, but it kept me from passing all the way out.

"Let me check, just a minute, Russ. I'm going to put you on hold. Don't hang up, okay?"

"Sure. You bet. Detective Ba... Be..." I couldn't remember his name.

It was one of the longest 45 seconds in my life. I'd estimate that was what it took for Detective Banning to come back to the phone. At the time it felt like a couple of years. Bad years.

"Russ, you still there?"

"Yes. Go ahead."

"Ben was taken to Mid-City Medical Center. Do you know where that is?"

"I think so. I can get directions easy enough." Thank goodness, and certainly not for the last time, for the Internet. If I could operate the computer. The so-called smart phone was out of the question. I had enough trouble with it sober.

"Okay. They'll probably let you see him. If there's any trouble, hold onto this number, okay? But if you give my name that will probably work."

"Is he...I mean, how bad's he hurt?"

"I don't have a way of knowing, Russ, I'm sorry. The officers found him this afternoon about four-forty-five, while they were on routine patrol. The report mentions a head injury and a stab wound, but that's all I know at this time. Again, I'm sorry. It was almost surely a robbery. The report...let's see...it says no defensive wounds. That means it looks as though Ben didn't even put up a fight." (Damn it, Ben, of course you wouldn't, I thought. You probably offered to buy the fucker a meal instead.)

"Listen, if there's anything I can do for you or if you come up with any more information, please call me, if you would. We'd appreciate it." (I could hear what must have been a police radio faintly in the background. And then what sounded like a single scream and some chairs being knocked over and running feet on a wooden floor. Headquarters must be one hell of a fun place to work.)

"I will. Thanks. I'll be in touch if I find out anything. I'm gonna head for the Medical Center now." All this was so slurred even I could hardly make it out, and I was the one saying it. I was surprised Detective Banning didn't caution me not to drive. But he didn't.

"Right. Thanks for returning our call, Russ. Don't hesitate to call if there's anything we can help with."

I knew I was basted to dripping with alcohol and a fascinating assortment of mind-altering pharmaceuticals, so I took as quick a shower as I thought I could get by with and dashed on some industrial-strength aftershave and changed my underpants and hoped for the best. I threw on the same shirt and jeans I'd tossed on the floor like a demented stripper when I'd gone back to bed the first time — was it Tuesday? Saturday? Whenever. I grabbed my billfold and cell phone and my keys and headed for the garage.

Luck was with me at least insofar as I didn't get pulled over on the way to the hospital. I drove slower than usual just in case. At least, I think I did. Most of the time anyway.

The Mitsubishi was at least two days overdue by now, but I didn't give a damn. All I could think about was Ben. I was crying as I drove and it made it hard to see the road, but that helped keep the speed down.

Every bit of my anger was behind me and all I felt was consuming love along with almost unbearable anguish, guilt, and fear. I was still half drunk, but I was all the way chastened.

If Ben had been assaulted and robbed, that was clearly not my fault, yet I was blaming myself every inch of the way. I felt that somehow I was responsible regardless. If I hadn't yelled at him, hung up on him... Cursed at him. Sounded like I didn't love him anymore. Fuck, it was, _too_ , my fault.

Somehow I managed to get parked and find the right entrance – what looked like a whole fleet of ambulances, a couple with lights flashing, offered an invaluable clue. Then I found the Emergency Room information desk inside the huge medical center. The plant covered two square blocks and was perched between the more affluent part of the city and crime-and-vice-ridden areas like Rockville where most of its emergency business undoubtedly came from.

I knew it was touch-and-go whether a non-family member would get to see any patient these days, with the absurd encumbrance of Federal privacy laws and other regulations designed to make the medical experience as hellish as possible for patients, staff, and others alike. Christ, it was reaching the point where even family would probably not be permitted. And patients would have to take assumed names. As long as the fucking bureaucrats were happy, though, I guess it was all worth it.

Luckily, whether it was because of a willingness to bend rules, or whether somehow the family thing didn't apply to me for reasons I wasn't supposed to understand – or, I thought much later, maybe Det. Banning had called ahead to somehow clear me — I would be allowed to see Ben. But not just yet, because he was still in emergency surgery.

By now it was about seven p.m. That meant he'd probably been in surgery for at least two hours. I had no idea what that might indicate, but to me as a layman it didn't sound like the kind of news you'd break into a great big grin over.

I waited nervously – to put it mildly – near the OR. Hearing about the surgery had sobered me up some more, though I still had a long ways to go.

They had a special waiting room for family members, and I suppose the chosen few others, like me, who were waiting for operations to be completed.

The staff were professional but surprisingly kind, and a middle-aged nurse even sat down and held my hand and chatted with me a while. I think she was feeling me out about my relationship to the patient, which was understandable. She even left briefly to look at Ben's chart so she could tell me, if possible, the extent of his injury.

"Well, Mr. Fielding, it looks as though your friend received quite a blow to the head, but that's not what worried the doctors. He also was cut, probably stabbed, in the right leg, and the femoral artery was at least nicked, enough to cause a massive blood loss. If the police hadn't found him when they did...

"Uh, well, anyway, I wish I had better news for you, but it's not as bad as it might be. We see a lot worse every day, a lot worse, and you'd be surprised how well most victims recover. I don't want to raise false hope, but at least it's not what we'd call a grave injury, just a pretty serious one."

I thanked the nurse for letting me know these things. Then I sat there in the waiting room, kicking myself inside for yelling at Ben and generally being a Grade-A asshole towards him.

Actually, I wasn't even Grade A. More like Grade C. Whatever I'd been feeling the past three days of rage- and drug-induced semi-oblivion, I repented heartily of it now. I was willing to accept anything, no matter how improbable it might seem, about Ben. I'd believe it even if I knew it wasn't true.

Just let him live and be well again, I thought. I would gladly die this very moment to have that happen, if that's what it takes.

About an hour later, the same nurse came back to tell me that Ben had been taken to recovery, and that if I wanted to wait, I might even be able to see him briefly tonight.

I would have burst into tears, only I think I'd used them all up on the drive to the hospital. I was probably severely dehydrated from crying.

That gave me the idea of getting a drink from one of the numerous vending machines lining the hallway outside the little waiting room. A non-alcoholic one, maybe, for a change of pace. I assumed they might have some of those.

Three Diet Cokes and four trips to the bathroom later, during one of which I threw up enthusiastically, I was again visited by the nurse, who offered to take me to see Ben. If she was offended by my unsteady gait and the stinking alcoholic nebula that must still have been shrouding me, she didn't show it at all. She even smiled and gave me a little shoulder-hug as she left me at Ben's door. I guess they're used to that kind of thing, anyhow. Drunken assholes like me.

He'd been placed in a fourth-floor private room. I didn't know if Mid-City Medical was one of those municipal hospitals that would sometimes treat indigent patients without charge, or if there would be a mammoth bill to contend with. The way I saw it, Ben was indigent if anybody was. But a hospital might not look at it that way.

In any event, it didn't much matter. I stood ready to pay every penny out of my own pocket. And if I ended up having to dip into the capital of my inheritance, then I'd do that. Whatever it took to make Ben well again, I was going to see it got done.

The nurse said the surgeon had okay'd my staying for up to an hour. The surgery had been successful and aside from a headache from his head injury, Ben ought to be fine, if groggy. He'd just need a couple of days' looking after and rest, then, barring complications, he could even go home. I felt I'd just been handed the best Christmas present I'd ever received, even if Christmas was over a week gone.

Ben was lying down and very pale. A pretty impressive dressing was taped over his head wound. The officers who found him had got the impression of a massive, possibly fatal wound there, but it was really just the fact that the scalp bleeds so readily that made it look that bad.

The leg wound, however, would have been lethal in just a few more minutes, but thanks to the fast action of the two cops, Ben was saved from bleeding to death. One of the officers had instantly applied a makeshift compress – I don't know what, maybe a handkerchief – and held it down while his partner radioed for an ambulance, pronto. Within four minutes Ben was aboard the ambulance receiving care. I made up my mind to find out the names of the two beat officers and thank them in person if I possibly could.

At first Ben didn't even notice I'd entered the room. He looked conscious but his eyes were shut as though he were very, very tired. He surely must have been. A couple of electronic monitors were attached to him and their green LED displays showed blood pressure and heart rhythm.

I touched his shoulder and he opened those beautiful still-bright eyes and looked over and saw me. With the shy, childlike smile that could even yet practically give me cardiac arrest, he immediately took my hand in both of his and once again I felt that uncanny, pervasive sense of utter peace that had filled me when he'd embraced me on Sunday night and taken away all my distress.

It was not my imagination – any more than seeing him save Ricky's life had been. These things went against everything I'd ever assumed, been taught, or even imagined, but I was being forced to conclude that Ben possessed some sort of special ability. Special? That was hardly an adequate descriptor. Miraculous, magical, or at least paranormal, would be more like it.

Yet, though my own firsthand experience was at last telling me this had to be, my mind still stubbornly refused to believe, hoping somehow there would be a rational explanation. Hope, though was fading fast.

Meanwhile, I was more calm now than I'd been anytime since that moment on Sunday night. I was even tolerably sober at last. I hoped he wouldn't let go of me, for if he did I knew I'd break down and be unable to speak, let alone apologize for being everything that a friend should never be, since that newscast that showed me something way beyond ordinary experience was, indisputably, going on.

"Russ," he said. "Man, am I glad to see you. Wow. This is so great! Why don't you pull up a chair and sit down?"

I was surprised at how feeble his voice was. From blood loss plus anesthesia, I guessed. All the heartiness was gone, but the goodness and the sweetness were still plain to hear.

"No," I said, afraid to let go of his hand even long enough to pull the chair over and sit. "Hey, Ben, don't let loose of me yet, okay? I don't understand it, but whenever you touch me it makes me calm, and right now, if you let go, I know I'd shatter into a million pieces and be worthless. Or even more worthless than I am already."

"Oh, Russ, you're not at all worthless. You shouldn't ever think like that. You're priceless. You really are. You just don't fully realize it yet."

Silence.

"Besides," he said, "even if it was only because of the things you've done for me in the past week, you'd still be priceless. Not just to me, but in general. But to me, too – above all. I know you like to make fun of it, and you're tired of hearing it, but I'll never, ever, forget you. Remember that.

"Wow, I'm so glad you got over being mad and came to see me. That's terrific! Thank you."

"Oh, Ben, I was a complete fucking jerk on the phone with you. I should have realized it right away and called back and apologized and tried to find some way to make up for what I'd said. Instead, I got drunk and drugged up for three days. I only sobered up when the police called about finding you. Actually I'm still impaired, but that news brought me out of my stupor enough that I could find my way here."

"You don't need to apologize, Russ. I know things are hard to understand, but they're about to get a lot clearer. Go ahead and sit down. I'll still be able to keep you calm. I promise."

I would have believed anything he told me by now. I pulled the chair up to the bedside and sat down, and, sure enough, I was still just as calm as when he was holding my hand. However, I wanted to touch him, so I took his hand. He didn't object.

I wished I could just hold his body close against mine and never let go. I wanted to throw my shitty soul away and share his.

"You're so good," he said. "There's nobody I'd rather see right now. It's like a dream come true. I was so worried about you!"

"That reminds me," I said, "I think we'd better call your parents and tell them what happened, hadn't we?"

"I've got their number written down." He gestured to a notepad with the hospital logo on it, on the side table. "I had a nurse write it as soon as I woke up after whatever it was they did to me here. But there's no hurry. They wouldn't be able to get here in time anyway."

I felt my heart sink to my shoe soles. My face suddenly went ice cold; all the blood must have drained out. "What do you mean?" I said, and the alarm must have shown in my blanched face as well as in my shaky voice.

"Russ, maybe you better take a drink of water. There's a pitcher there and I think there's a glass, too. Do that, okay?"

I did as he suggested, drinking about a quarter of the glass in one swallow then holding onto the plastic tumbler.

"Okay, Russ. The time has come. _Ta-da!_ " He imitated a fanfare and then laughed. Then he winced and let out a half-stifled cry of pain. I couldn't understand how his leg wound was doing that, but I'm no doctor.

When he was able to speak again, he said, "This is what you've been waiting for. I was hoping it would be later, partly so I could help a little more here, but mainly because I just enjoy being with you so much and wanted to do so many more things with you. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have fun, till you came along. I guess that's selfish, but, hey, I'm not perfect."

I felt incredibly full of foreboding, and I thought I needed some more calming. "Ben, help me now," I said. "I don't like the sound of what you're saying. If it's what I think it is – can you help me accept it, maybe keep me quieted down inside like before?"

"I'll try," said Ben. "There are lots of things I'm not very good at yet, and I'm afraid that's one of them. But yes, I'll do my best. It would work better if I could hold you, but that would be way too hard right now. To tell the truth I'm in awful bad pain, Russ. I'm sorry."

He put his other hand on top of our two conjoined ones, on the crisp white hospital sheet that covered him from the chest down, except for being drawn back to expose where they'd operated on his thigh and then bandaged it up. I immediately felt almost at peace again. I think I was so keyed up that no amount of magical power, if that's what it was – I was willing to believe anything at that point – could have totally relaxed me.

"Russ, first of all, I'm a bodhisattva. Do you understand what that means?"

"Sure, Ben, I know what a bodhisattva is. An awakened, or enlightened, being who purposely puts off entering nirvana so that he or she can stick around and help other beings reach liberation – enlightenment, full awakening, whatever you want to call it. It's part of Buddhist mythology, isn't it? So...you mean you're aspiring to become one of those? Wow, that's some ambition, Ben. You really do like that Steely Dan song, don't you!" I tried to laugh and failed miserably. But he was clearly out of his head, and I felt desperate to humor him, if nothing else.

Ben laughed but had to quickly stop. His eyes went really wide briefly, and I could see it hurt him like hell. He actually had to bite his lip and gather strength for a while.

"Oh, God, Russ, please don't make me laugh again. Yes, I love the song. In fact I said that in the car that night to see if you'd take the hint. You didn't. If you had – well, I was going to go ahead and explain everything. I was feeling so happy that night, being with you, and it was like a silly bet I made with myself. I guess I should have told you anyway. But I thought we'd have a year, two years, even more; anyway lots of time together. I would have spent my life alongside you if I could. I only hope I have enough time now.

"No, Russ, I'm not planning on becoming a bodhisattva. I _am_ a bodhisattva. We're not mythological. We're as real as you – or me. Do you see what that means? Does that clear up some things for you? Some of those mysteries? Maybe all of them?"

"Ben, I think you must have a fever and it's causing you trouble. Do you want me to get a doctor to come in? Maybe they could lower it somehow. There must be drugs to do that."

"No, Russ, I'm not delirious, if that's what you're thinking. There's no fever. I don't feel in tip-top shape, for sure, but I've only got a quarter of an hour or so left to try to get some things across to you, so please, please pay attention and believe what I say. I can't stay in this embodiment much longer."

I didn't know what to think. He didn't _sound_ delirious. Nor did he feel or look feverish. What the hell was going on, then? And by a quarter of an hour, did he mean... No, I couldn't even bring myself to think about that.

"Russ, there are bodhisattvas everywhere. They're all around you – around us – most of the time, only we don't know it. I don't even know it, usually. I recognized Mr. Pham the other night, and he recognized me. And he knew about all this." Ben gestured to his thigh wound and then, oddly, to his chest. "That's why he looked so serious all of a sudden and squeezed my shoulder. It was like saying, 'Hang in there,' only I doubt that he knows that expression. But I noticed he was thinking it in Vietnamese."

He was silent for a moment, choosing his words.

"And...he gave me just a little glimpse of what I was in for. Only I had no idea it was going to be so soon. I thought it might be years away yet. I was wrong. As you can see." He smiled a rueful little smile.

I could see vividly the moment in the restaurant Ben had just described. I still thought Ben was imagining things, though. Sure, his explanation made sense, but that didn't mean it had any basis in reality. This was America, the American Midwest for God's sake, in the twenty-first century. Why was he fantasizing about bodhisattvas? I hoped he wasn't about to bring unicorns or dragons into the conversation. Telepathy? Prescience? Come on. That's bad sci-fi. Sure, he'd read my mind a few times, but... Well, that just didn't count. Did it? I mean...

"Russ, I can tell you still don't get it. Okay. Let's see, what can I... I know!"

He shut his eyes and his face took on the look you might see on a meditator – a practiced one. Concentrated yet totally relaxed and at peace.

And as I watched disbelieving, a light, first soft and gentle, a kind of mild orange in color, began to flutter around Ben's body. Then it grew stronger second by second, with rays shooting out here and there, till after about a quarter of a minute, it had become a dazzling golden aura. The funny thing was that, though it seemed bright enough to blind, it was still comfortable, even inviting, to look at. And Ben looked just as he had before it started, only he was completely enveloped in the resplendent halo.

Then the light gradually faded again and was gone. If you've seen the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the cathedral in Mexico City, or a photo of it – well, that's pretty much what this aura looked like, only many times more vivid and electric looking. Multiply the Northern Lights by a hundred. That's close.

"Well, what do you think?" said Ben, opening his eyes again. He looked kind of like a kid hoping to be praised for playing a piano piece well.

"My God, what can I say! What do you want me to say?" No wonder Ben had asked me to sit down: I felt I was about to faint.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Ben. "Put your head between your knees for a while. That usually helps. God. I'm really, really sorry. I probably shouldn't have done that. Or at least not without warning you first. It's my fault."

"Ben, have I gone crazy or something? Did I see what I think I saw?" It was hard to talk with my head down, even after my practice on the phone with Detective Banning or Benning or something, but I had to find out if I'd slipped over the edge, or if... My God, this couldn't be real, could it?

"No, it's real, Russ," said Ben, apparently reading my mind – again. "Again, I am sorry. I used bad judgment. I need to think twice before I manifest myself that way. Please forgive me! Are you feeling better?"

After a minute or two I raised my head and didn't pass out, so I remained upright. Shaky, conflicted as hell, but upright. I wondered what expressions Ben was seeing on my face.

"Now do you believe me, Russ?" he said. "I don't want to have to do anything more...more dramatic to convince you, but I may be able to if it comes to that. I don't have a whole lot of abilities like that yet, though. And I had to work on that one for what seemed like forever."

"Go on, Ben. I don't know what to think. It feels like my world's turning inside-out. But what did you mean about your 'embodiment' a while ago, and not being able to stay in it?"

"I just meant I need to leave this body behind now. It can't sustain my life anymore after what happened today. It's too damaged. What I'm doing right now is what you usually call dying."

I still didn't want to believe him but he'd said the magic "d" word and I couldn't help myself; I began to sob. "Don't say that, Ben, please. I..."

"Hey, Russ. I know you're having a hard time with it. Believe me, I understand. I've been through it myself. But I don't have time to go into detail. I know you can't help crying now, and I wish I could help you, but there simply isn't time. Go ahead and get it out of your system, but please, _please_ try to pay attention while you're doing it. This is so important."

"I'm listening, Ben." I could hardly speak.

"Do you remember that time you admitted you felt desire, even intense desire, and yet you had no wish at all to satisfy it, to act on it? And I said you'd understand why, pretty soon? Well, this is that 'pretty soon.'"

"I'm listening."

"Russ, when you caught me on the train, when we were riding that awful stretch of tracks, I fell on purpose. I intended for you to catch me that way. I'd planned it all. Not long in advance, just a few moments. That's the way it usually works."

"Okay, why, then?"

"Because we needed to get to know each other, and that was a convenient — and kinda fun — way of introducing ourselves. It worked, didn't it?" He tried to keep from laughing again. "I thought it was pretty clever, if I do say so myself." He was attempting to smile now, but pain seemed to be winning out over everything else.

"Of course it worked. I'll say. It's something I'll never forget. You're telling me it was no accident?"

"Nope. Planned, but on the spur of the moment.

"When you took your place behind me there on the train, I instantly felt terrific energy emanating from you, and I almost hollered for joy, without even seeing you yet. I knew it meant that I was in the presence of somebody very close to liberation, and that I could help you along the way. After all, that's my job. From that moment, my life, this life, was devoted to you, to supporting and helping you, if you'd only accept it. And you did.

"I was so happy. I hadn't got to help anybody in the longest time. I was beginning to be afraid I'd forget how. And now I've done that work, thank goodness. A little bit anyway. I wouldn't want to think I'd been wasting my time here. I do wish we'd had longer to work together, though."

"Wasting your...?"

"Oh, Russ, don't think I haven't enjoyed our times together and knowing you – it's been great, and that's something I won't forget, ever. But all that would have been for nothing if it hadn't helped you along your way at least a little bit."

"What do you mean by 'close to liberation,' then, Ben?" I had my crying a little more under control, but tears were still flowing and my handkerchief was saturated. I pulled a box of tissues on the bedside table closer to me.

"I mean you are going to be there within, oh, maybe four or five more lifetimes! That's really, really close, believe me."

"Four or five – what? You've lost me – I hope."

"It takes too long to explain. But pretty soon, maybe even in your next embodiment, you'll begin to remember lives that came before. Like this one. You'll remember the fun we had together and everything.

"Eventually you'll enjoy remembering but you won't be the least bit attached to your memories. Then one day you'll understand what all those lifetimes were leading up to, without even trying. And finally you'll be a bodhisattva yourself.

"I guess you'll just have to trust me on it, till then. But it is going to happen, I can tell you with certainty.

"Russ, Russ, believe me, there's no turning back now _._ "

It was a lot to take in, especially on top of all the emotional turmoil that had me in its grip. I still felt that one of us had to be nuts, but at the same time, I was getting a funny feeling that... That it just might be true, what he was telling me.

"So, Ben, you're saying that you've been, like, play-acting? And you're not really a recent college graduate whose parents made sacrifices for your education, and you're not really a...a worker in the mail room at Fassing-Kuyper and..."

"Oh, no! Not at all. I am those things, all right; it's not like I'm faking or play-acting. No. It's just like if you were, say, a volunteer at the museum. You'd still be just as much you, and just as much a focus-group guy, and so on. You'd just be a volunteer along with all the other things. Like I just happen to be a bodhisattva along with all my other things.

"It didn't happen overnight, believe me. It won't with you, either. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had taken me several hundred or even thousands of lifetimes to get here. I don't want to make it sound easy. It's not.

"We're ordinary people, that's what's important to know. Nothing special at all. Except for one thing: Over a long, long time – longer than you can begin to imagine, maybe even longer than this current universe has existed – we became attracted to the idea of helping others out of their suffering, even if it meant sacrificing ourselves. Kind of like what my parents did for me, when you think of it. Or the way you felt, down in the waiting room an hour or so ago, when you realized you'd gladly give up your own life to save mine. Russ, that's the bodhisattva spirit, right there. That's what you felt. See?

"Anyway, from that first impulse so long ago, it just, well, kinda got habit-forming, I guess. Till eventually we could have left all this behind, if we chose to, and enjoyed nirvana. Been completely free from all suffering, I mean one hundred percent. Can you imagine what a joy that would be? And there was no reason not to. Lots of beings do choose nirvana, and that's cool, too. No sweat.

"Only we — us bodhisattvas — we decided to put it on hold indefinitely, 'cause we saw so many people in so much pain that...well, actually, we often react the way you just did. Can't help crying. It's just so awful, and so much of it is avoidable... War, and some diseases, and greed and, you know. Lots of things.

"Anyway, we got caught up in helping other people to get free from suffering. That's really all it's about. Does it start to make sense? I mean, it's probably nothing you didn't already know from reading and stuff, anyway."

"Sure, I knew the...theory, I guess you could say. But I assumed it was an allegory, or even just a kind of fairy tale. Like a Buddhist teaching device."

"No, it's real. And it doesn't especially have to do with Buddhism. They just got really stoked on it, and developed the vocabulary, that's all. Well, some other stuff, too, like meditation, but we're really not tied down to any religion or anything. That would be like saying needing to sleep or eat was, I don't know, Chinese or something. It's not that way at all. There are Christian bodhisattvas, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu; atheists, communists, teachers, musicians, actors, doctors, police officers — you name it. We don't discriminate at all. It's just about wanting to help other beings, and that's all it's about.

"Mr. Pham, and me, and Betty the waitress at Davey's – you remember Betty? she's so cool — and dozens, I don't know, surely hundreds in a town this big, probably even thousands. Bodhisattvas. I can't recognize them all; I'm not at that stage yet. Mr. Pham probably can. But it's so hard for him to communicate.

"Anyway. It's nothing special being a bodhisattva. We just want to help eliminate suffering. And we make mistakes along the way, just like you. In this world, it's impossible not to. It's the way the world is.

"But I don't mean to be talking down to you, when I keep saying 'you.' It's just convenient, okay? It's not like you were some little child or a social inferior or something. I don't want to give that impression.

"We're like you except for that goal, to liberate every last being everywhere from suffering. Period.

"Well, we do develop some...uh...powers along the way; it can't be helped. Like that aura business. And I've got to be more careful about that. It so easily looks like showing off, or something scary, and I don't mean it that way at all. And of course, what happened Sunday...

"Getting back to the desire thing, though. If sex had been the best way to help you advance, we would have had a sexual relationship. Hey, no problemo! I would definitely have made it happen! It would have been wonderful, if it could have worked. I found myself imagining what it might be like, and I kind of regretted that that wasn't a good way to go about this. But it wasn't. Not at your stage.

"Russ, you would have got way, way too clingy. You would have become possessive, and then jealous, and then dissatisfied, and — I don't know what all after that. You simply weren't ready to handle it, in other words.

"I know you've had sexual relationships and escapades and stuff. Isn't what I said true? Didn't it always end up causing trouble for you or somebody else?"

I nodded. It had, I couldn't deny that. I'd always assumed that was just the price you had to pay for the pleasure. And now I was starting to see that, well, sure, in a sense, it was. And it hadn't got me anywhere – except unhappy — in the long run.

"Well, that's why you felt desire but not the need, or inclination even, to act on it. You latched onto some of my personality traits right away, and that made me really happy, because I knew from that moment that I could definitely do some good. One result was that you knew instinctively the best way for things to work between you and me: and that meant a non-sexual path. Simple as that. Now do you understand?"

It made sense. Did I understand? I didn't know. I was in a state of shock. "I guess," I said. "I don't know, Ben. I'm very confused right now. That's something I do know."

"It'll get better. It's already starting to, I can tell.

"Russ, you were right, of course: I did bilocate on Sunday at the science museum. I had no choice. It would have just been wrong not to.

"I knew that boy would die in a few seconds if I didn't do something right then. Everybody else was just looking on, like in disbelief, as he tottered there at the edge of the balcony thing. Without really giving it any thought, I manifested myself where I could pull him away from danger. Then I...I don't know if there's a word for it...un-bilocated, I guess. I was just standing there beside you, as I had been all the time.

"Here, I'll show you."

Just then, somebody touched me lightly on the shoulder. I figured the doctor had probably come to check up on Ben. I half turned: and saw Ben _standing_ _behind_ _me_. At the same time I saw him, not even in peripheral vision, but clear as day, still lying there in the bed. Hell, I was still holding his hand! That lasted for maybe two seconds. Then he was gone – from behind me, that is.

"My God, Ben," I said when I was able to speak again. "Okay, I give in. Yes, I do see. And yes, I have to believe what I saw. Either that or I'm plumb crazy, and I really don't think I am. At least I hope not. My God."

"Man, I guess I shouldn't have done that." Ben's voice was getting really faint now. He was even paler than at first. "It hurt like anything to stand up like that. It's a good thing I was also lying down. That took an awful lot of energy. But it was worth it if you can finally accept that part, and that all this is real."

"Ben, I'm trying to accept everything you tell me, because you said I could trust you, and I believe you. I only wish to hell I'd believed you enough before so that I wouldn't have got mad at you. But this is a lot to absorb. You know?"

"I know. It would help if we had more time. But we only have what we have, and that's less than ten minutes now."

I grabbed a handful of tissues. I needed them already.

"Remember, Russ, how in the art museum I stood in front of the statue of that poor Greek boy for so long?"

"I still don't know why. Sure, I remember like it was today." I knew my choked up voice sounded funny, but I couldn't do anything about it. The tears would not stop anymore.

"It was because I saw, through the image, you might say, what happened to that poor young guy. A couple of days after the boy got through posing for that statue, the sculptor went out of his head and...and he killed the boy. Stabbed him. Lots of times. And he didn't die right away, either. Oh, man, it was awful.

"I think the sculptor wanted the boy as his lover, and he was jealous, because the boy already had a lover. Finally he couldn't take it any more, and he, well, he just went crazy and did what he did. Talk about clinging...

"Anyway, that's why it got me down. Seeing all that, and feeling the boy's pain – and the sculptor's, too, and the boy's lover's anguish, and his parents' and his friends' grief... It was all too much. That happens now and then. I don't know what causes it. It's just something we do sometimes; we become aware of things that either happened long ago – like that murder in the bookstore, or the murder of the Greek boy – or, more rarely, that are about to happen. Like when Mr. Pham foresaw this." He gestured toward his bandaged thigh, but also, for whatever reason, toward his chest, again.

He was quiet for several seconds. We were still holding hands, and I could feel his tremble now and then from pain.

"Okay, Russ. It's time to go now. I want you to know I've really enjoyed our friendship and the fun things we did together. And I appreciate so much your help with the phone, and food, and that wonderful warm jacket, and everything. And coming to see me today, that was super. That alone chalked up a lot of merit for you, believe me. I wouldn't be surprised if it saved you at least half a lifetime of work.

"I love you so much, man. And I will continue to, forever, in one form or another. I promise.

"Try not to be all sad. All composite things pass away, you know. That means you, and me, in these forms of ours, and everything we can name, just about. It's not some tragedy. It's just the way things are, that's all.

"Please be good. Hey, if you really want to make me happy..."

"You know I do! Oh, God, Ben, I don't think I can stand this..."

"Yes, you can." He squeezed my hand. "Sure! You can, and you will. And if you really, really want to make me happy: Become like me. Just do that.

"Now I've really got to go. Let's say good-bye. I love you. I won't forget you."

"Good-bye then, Ben. Dear friend."

I couldn't say another word. Now I was sobbing, and loudly too. His voice had become almost inaudible now and I heard pain filling up every syllable. His breathing was so rough and labored that it made speaking nearly impossible. But I could still, just barely, make out what he said.

"It's okay, Russ. It's good to cry sometimes. I do it a lot. Well...things are so sad here, after all; how can anybody not cry now and then?

"Good-bye, Russ. Be good. Help people. And remember, I won't forget you. Ever."

Ben took another breath, but I could see it was so difficult there was no hope of going on.

Then there was a shallow, reedy-sounding exhalation. And his cornflower-blue eyes, though they didn't close, went as blank as a doll's. He was no longer breathing.

How awfully quiet a body becomes when the life it's accustomed to housing suddenly slips out of it.

I held Ben's hand a while longer. It seemed strange that it remained warm, as warm as when he was alive. But it felt so different, so still. I guess we're in constant movement, however subtle, as long as we have life in us.

And I thought those monitors gave off an alarm when somebody died. I guess either they don't, or his were set not to. Well, I was glad not everything was like in the movies.

I found out later, when I paid his hospital bill, that a post-mortem examination revealed that Ben had suffered a godawful internal injury, probably from one single, devastating blow by his assassin, that strangely wasn't even hinted at by the X-rays they took upon admission, and that none of the physicians had suspected.

It wasn't their fault, though. You can't get everything right. Ben knew that, too.

~~~

I made sure Ben's parents knew what happened. I felt awful for them. Ben had admired the sacrifices they made for him; but he also knew that doing that was pushing them more rapidly along the path toward liberation than most of us ever allow ourselves to go, or care to go.

I still had the feeling, deep inside, that the bodhisattva stuff was nothing more than mythology. But my love for Ben was, and is, so strong that purely for his sake, I decided to play along, to humor him, you might say, even though he's not here anymore. I wanted to believe that yes, indeed, he would always remember me, somehow, in some new form I couldn't understand – yet. I didn't really believe that, either. But I tried.

I'm still trying. Theo's been a big help. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I didn't meet Ben's parents when they came to identify their son's body and arrange what had to be done with it. I couldn't face the emotions that would be involved; I was cowardly about it. I knew Ben would have forgiven me. He seemed ready to forgive everything and, for all I knew, everybody. I think that was just part of his way of being. As a bodhisattva, maybe. Maybe just as...Ben.

I knew they sent Ben's body back to Ohio. That's where they had come from.

I continued to feel bad about not meeting them, till finally in early April I called them – I'm glad I saved the number – and asked if I could come visit.

They were happy to hear from me. They'd had a couple of phone calls from Ben when he got his new cell phone, in which he excitedly told them about me, and how glad he was that we we'd become friends. He'd even told them he hoped we could all meet someday.

I flew up to Columbus about a week later. A couple of hours' bus ride took me from Columbus to the small town where Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis lived, and Ben had grown up.

We visited Ben's grave, and I put flowers on it, along with the little Lucite prism he liked so much, which I found in his room a few days after he...left his most recent embodiment. I kept his books, and his parents asked me to go through what things he had at their house, too, and take whatever I wanted. I began to suspect they were bodhisattvas, too. If there really are such beings, that is.

Finally I decided to take a chance on something: I only hoped it wasn't a really foolish thing to do.

In the evening of the last of my three days with the Jarvises, we were sitting out on their patio with tea; it had been a delicious, mild early spring day, with buds seeming to appear from nowhere. By now I'd grown to really like Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis. Actually, that hadn't taken more than my first hour in their company.

I took the plunge.

"You know, sometimes I think Ben was a bodhisattva." I was prepared to laugh and make light of my comment — but not till I saw what reaction it would receive from Ben's parents.

They both smiled — knowingly? I wasn't sure; it was getting well into dusk — and nodded. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised," said his mother, quietly. "Let me warm up that tea for you, Russ."

Theo and I may go up there for Christmas. They called and asked us to just a few days ago. But there I go getting ahead of myself again.

Shit, usually, I still couldn't tell a bodhisattva if one bit me. Maybe Mr. Pham can help with that. It would sure be handy to know how.

Ben was right about a whole lot of things, but especially about one thing: It isn't easy.

You can say that again.

Part Four: How It Began Again

Ben had – disembodied himself – wow, am I getting the lingo down, or not? — just one day after New Year's.

He'd had to spend his Christmas alone, but then also, and needlessly, New Year's as well. If I hadn't been such an asshole, we could easily have been together on New Year's.

In the days after his death, I was getting serious internal injuries myself, from all the kicking I was doing. But I had no intention of stopping.

I guess Ben had walked over to Davey's, when the diner opened again after New Year's, to have some kind of a decent meal, maybe to belatedly celebrate New Year's in the only way he knew how. And maybe to seek Betty's advice about our...falling out.

When I think how he must have missed me and how sad it must have made him, I feel like crawling under a rock and hoping somebody really big steps on it.

On top of it all, for wanting to satisfy that harmless wish not to have two lonely holidays in a row, and no doubt feeling like utter shit because of my hateful actions towards him, he'd got murdered for his pains, right outside the diner's door – actually, just barely around the corner.

Oh, fuck. Ben, Ben, what have I done? I still don't know if I can ever forgive myself. I know you would say, "Yes, you can, and you will!"

But you're a bodhisattva. I'm not.

~~~

Detective Banning was really great. He helped me gain access to Ben's room, where I disposed of his things, giving away what was givable, tossing a few items, and carrying his books home with me.

I hope it doesn't sound too kinky, but I also confiscated his aftershave. Its citrus-y scent will always bring back that very first meeting on the train.

I kind of suspect Banning of being a – you know. Pham could tell. Maybe I'll invite the detective to dinner at Saigon Hideaway someday. Cops like to chow down, at least in movies.

Back at my apartment, all my tears used up for the moment, and not wanting to do a fucking thing, I looked through that book on Zen that Benjamin had kept on his bookshelf, but most of it didn't make sense to me, and the rest of it didn't make sense, either. So much for that. I still have it, though.

Then I leafed through the Roger Tory Peterson book a while. At least I enjoyed the bird paintings, especially the ducks and geese.

I picked up the poetry anthology and it happened to fall open at the same pages I'd read that first night while Ben had showered and put on fresh clothes to go to the diner with me, the diner he'd be murdered near just less than one week later. Rockville: God, how I hate that place.

I wonder if he could have described his assailant or assailants. He died before he could talk to the police. I doubt that he would have helped them much anyway. He'd probably rather forgive his murderer. He'd be more concerned about the karmic burden a murder causes its perpetrator, than about his own life. No, not just probably. I know for certain that's how it would be.

I made up my mind not to cry as I re-read the Wordsworth sonnets, and the first few lines of the Coleridge opium poem. And I succeeded.

Then I shut the book and promptly burst into tears.

F-K did a rare, generous thing and got me off the hook about the overdue red Mitsubishi. Granted, I would have gone scot free anyway, because I'd already decided to buy it, despite the memories attached to it, or maybe in part because of them. The car agency got it fully serviced and checked over for me, and I must say I got a bargain price on the little beauty. As far as I know, it's sitting down in the gated garage right now. At least I hope it is.

Well... Let's see, what else...

I didn't go back to work for a week after Ben's, uh, whatever he'd want me to call it. Surprise again: Fassing-Kuyper granted me compassionate leave! I could hardly believe it. I suspect Tom had something to do with that, bless him. I hope I don't have to end up revising my opinion of the worthless, hard-hearted bastards he has the misfortune to work with, but at this rate I may.

Finally I made it back, glum, sad, down in the mouth, but efficient. That's what they've always liked about me, my efficiency.

That first week back I had a focus group that offered its views on the Murray Plenthnor Museum of Science and Technology's proposed new Benjamin Jarvis Children's Wing. (It's surprising what money can buy: in this case, a fitting name and a forthcoming gala Sunday dedication ceremony with balloons and a band and everything. Even free ice cream, I hear rumored.)

It cheered me somewhat to find that all but one member of the 12-person focus panel was heartily in favor of the project. Fuck the other one, I say.

With what felt like a personal victory under my belt, though of course it was nothing of the kind, just a happy congruence with my own opinion, I headed for the subway that day at 5 p.m.

We'd had snow for the past week, but that afternoon it was suddenly like spring – even though it had not been forecast – and almost all the snowy mess was soon gone, replaced by a watery mess. We were enjoying a little more daylight after five every day now. It was noticeable. It felt good to get on the subway while you could still see faint sunlight.

As usual, the cars were crowded. I was glad they don't have people to bodily cram as many passengers as possible into the cars, as they do in Japan, or so I've read. Mine was as full as usual, but nobody was really inconvenienced. All the straps were taken, and almost all the seats filled.

Some people prefer to stand even when there are seats available. I'm not sure why. I'm one of them, at rush hour. Again, why, I don't know. It just feels cool, urban, I guess. And now it's partly because of Ben and how he got me to catch him that time and then to fall in love with him. I agree, Ben, that was damn clever, I've got to hand it to you.

We were approaching the first big bump. I got ready to brace myself.

In front of me stood a man a half inch shorter than me, bareheaded, with black moderately close-cut hair, in a light tan jacket and carrying a briefcase in his non-strap hand. He smelled great: probably his aftershave.

I didn't get a look at his face till he happened to turn and stare out at the deteriorating tunnel walls at one point, and then I almost fell over, even without a bump, that profile was so damned handsome. I mean, we're talking about _way_ beyond movie-star grade. I was immediately aroused.

He turned so that the back of his lovely head was again facing me. I knew the first bump was only milliseconds away. I was braced.

_Bam_! It had got way worse since the last time I rode the route. It was almost as bad as the Ferguson Bump. What must the next two be like, then? I hoped they hadn't grown as well. This one almost knocked me off my feet, and I was an experienced strap-hanger.

The young man in front of me – I'd say he was about 30; I was 47 – was agile and managed to stay upright. The next bump occurred right on time, and it was about the same as I remembered it. Again my neighbor remained steady, and so did I this time. "Hmm, he's ridden this route before," I thought. "Funny I never saw him." I figured his work schedule had varied this day, was all.

Then it was time for the Ferguson Bump. I held on for dear life, as usual, but when we hit the F. B., something happened that had never happened to me before, nor had I ever seen it happen: my strap snapped. Broke right in two. Due to the complex physics of the Ferguson, I found myself hurtling forward, absolutely helpless. It was not quite one of those moments they talk about when your whole life flashes before your eyes, but it was close enough. I'd say I got about up to my teen years.

Then my flight was stopped as suddenly as it had begun. This happened to coincide with the complete blackout so typical of the Ferguson anomaly. A few seconds later, the lights flickered back on. The usual scurrying for personal possessions scattered on the floor by the jolts was under way, and one passenger up front was sitting spread-eagled in the middle of the aisle, shaking his head in disbelief.

But I was still upright – and in the arms of the dark-haired stranger with the nice smell. And the dreamboat countenance. And where I had boarded the train still pretty glum despite the focus-group "victory," and still sad because of, well, you know why...now I was experiencing a sense of absolute peace. "Calm" or "serene" fail entirely to convey how it felt. It was more like pure bliss, only a very quiet pure bliss. I'd felt it before.

"Gotcha!" said the stranger, with a contagious smile and a twinkle in his eyes that meant he was really enjoying himself. I've seldom seen anybody so much in control, so much obviously master of him- or herself, as this to-die-for guy. And I felt myself already falling hopelessly in love. As well as becoming painfully aroused again.

I know, I know. It's hard to believe. Well, so is bilocation. But at least I'd been through love before. I knew what love felt like. Since meeting Ben, I even knew what deep, undying love felt like. It was something I'd read about and heard about all my life and dismissed as romantic exaggeration. It wasn't.

I didn't feel that kind of love at the moment, however; this was a seven-eighths-carnal, one-eighth-spiritual attraction unlike anything I'd ever been subjected to.

I wanted to rip the guy's clothes off right there in the car and make passionate, messy love to him all the way to the end of the line, and then pay return fare and do it all over again. Yet, at the same time, I fairly revered the guy. There was just something about him, despite that infectious geniality, that commanded respect and, well, awe, actually.

Torn between these two not necessarily opposing, but obviously contrasted emotions of pure lust and profound reverence, I hardly knew which way to turn my thoughts, or my head, or anything else.

It had been approximately one and one-half seconds since that grin and "Gotcha!" that, as it turned out, I would never forget.

"Wow!" I said as the stranger stood me upright again and carefully looked me over. "Is it this bad all over the city, or did I just choose the wrong stretch of tracks?"

"I suspect this is the worst stretch in the entire system," said the not tall, but dark and indisputably handsome stranger. "But I haven't ridden every mile of it, so don't quote me."

"Okay, come clean, you're one of _them_ , aren't you," I said, punching his muscular arm playfully through his jacket sleeve, and giving him a wink.

"Yep, you guessed it," he said. "Name's Theo." We shook hands – left-handedly. "Hey, Russ, you and I are supposed to get off at the Terrapin Heights stop."

"I don't believe it!" I cried. "I _live_ in Terrapin Heights, in Terrapin Tower."

"So do I," said Theo. "What a coincidence."

He yawned. "'scuse me. I was up all night – again. I didn't mean to be rude."

"Hey, man, I know what you mean. I've had plenty of sleepless ones myself, especially of late."

"I know, Russ," said Theo, putting one arm around my shoulder and giving it a brief, gentle squeeze. "And I'm so sorry. I know how much you loved him, and how much Ben loved – I mean loves – you. It was rotten what happened. And him so young...

"He asked me just yesterday evening, in fact, if I'd look after you for a while. If it's okay with you, that is. He spent the rest of the night filling me in on your weaknesses and your strengths while I took notes. Don't get the wrong idea: Your strengths far, far outweigh your negligible weaknesses. You're almost there, buddy boy. Big congrats are in order!"

I wasn't even surprised. How could I be, after all I'd been through since that first ride a couple of weeks ago? Though it seemed like a year or more, now.

"Theo, I'm happy to come under your tutelage. If that's something Ben wants, then I'll do my best. Believe me.

"Something I don't understand, though – you say Ben was talking to you? How can that be?"

Ordinarily I'd get weepy even saying Ben's name, but just standing near Theo had that calming effect that Ben's embrace used to work on me.

"Sorry I was unclear. I don't mean Ben in the corporeal manifestation you associated with him, the one he had to hurriedly leave behind when he was murdered. No. I mean the consciousness that embodied itself in that form, to make the Ben you knew then, and loved, and always will love. He's on the way to finding a new embodiment now. It won't take too long.

"You'll probably never know him in that guise, though; statistically it's so improbable that the odds are vanishingly low. He hopes you'll remember him as he was, and the way you two had good times together, and all that. Without getting too attached to your memories. He knows you can do it, and just from my brief contact with you, I know it too, beyond any doubt.

"You know, bud, Ben was right: You have a force field that just about won't quit. Russ, in a word, you've got what it takes. You don't know how squeaky close you are to liberation. Probably seven or eight lifetimes, max!"

"Hey, Ben estimated four or five! What happened, Theo?"

"Well, there _was_ that unfortunate time that you got so mad at him on the phone and told him you didn't want anything to do with him anymore. Among, er, other things. That was really too bad. I'm sorry to say you racked up a karmic debt that day, quite a sizable karmic debt.

"But, hey, it happens. I've been through the same thing, so has Ben; bodhisattvas aren't made in a day, or in one, or even several, lifetimes. You'll get there yet, just you wait and see. Just try to control your temper, okay?

"But when you slip, don't beat yourself up about it like you did that afternoon. And all of last week. Just try to be accepting, no matter what. That's a big part of the whole deal. Acceptance." He held up his index finger for emphasis.

Theo and I talked, and not just bodhisattva shop-talk, but about our musical tastes, which were remarkably similar, our favorite foods (ditto), our best-loved movies (ditto again) and so on, until before we knew it our train was pulling into the Terrapin Heights Station.

We stepped onto the platform.

I'd never seen any homeless persons in Terrapin Heights; the concept is virtually unknown there. But this evening a little wizened man, resembling a monkey as much as a human, was crouched near the portal. As we approached, he held out a hand. I dug in my pocket and pulled out a twenty and handed it to him. He muttered something I couldn't understand. Then he put his hands together like a little steeple, in front of his heart, and bowed.

"That's the spirit," said Theo, clapping me gently on the back. The escalator was out of service – again. Maintenance in the subway gets worse daily, it seems to me. We had to take the stairs.

Theo had his arm around my shoulders all the way.

Theo lived on the second floor of Terrapin Tower, and of course my apartment was on the fourteenth.

"Care to come up and see the view you'll lust after once you've experienced it?" I said.

"Love to," said Theo, still holding me in his loose but powerfully tranquilizing embrace. I was so used to that kind of continual nearness from associating with Ben, that I didn't give it a thought anymore. If these bodhisattvas want to be that protective, it's fine with me. And I knew now that it was also a mark of genuine affection.

On my big balcony, we sipped Scotch and water – I hadn't noticed before that on that dreadful day I cussed out Ben and hung up on him, I'd done away with a full 3/4 of the bottle – and looked out over the park and the houses nearby; it was dark by now, so we could only see the lights, but it was still pretty. The sky was like black velvet punctuated by tiny diamonds. A half moon crouched huge and amber on the horizon and then drifted slowly, slowly upward as we watched.

It was unseasonably warm. We were in shirt sleeves. Still, it was not warm enough to remain out there for long, so we stepped back indoors and I closed the big glass sliding doors to the balcony. I left the curtains drawn open so we could still see the lovely night sky and its moon, with the lights dimmed in the living room.

I sat in my easy chair with Theo perched on its broad arm, caressing the back of my neck. It felt so good I was afraid I'd go to sleep. We nursed our drinks at an anemic snail's pace as the stereo played Renaissance music, light, tuneful, and graceful. The music conjured up smells of springtime and the sight of its green buds, but also the pangs of young, or even not-so-young, love.

"Russ," said Theo in a near-whisper, cupping my shoulder now as he gently rumpled my hair, "you got any dinner plans?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing, Theo," I said.

We soon found ourselves at a cozy little red-lacquered table in a more than adequate Chinese-American restaurant in the Terrapin Heights Shopping Center. An hour later, we were walking off some of our calories, window-shopping the mall. I discovered that Theo was witty and possessed an impressive store of knowledge about seemingly everything under the sun. Or everything that was suggested by what we saw in the store windows, anyway. His commentary was always interesting, and often thought-provoking.

But he was so damn sexy it was starting to bother me. I figured if he was going to be my mentor, so to speak, or my guardian or whatever I was supposed to call the role he'd agreed with Ben to carry on for him, I'd need to thrash out the sexiness issue, and better sooner than late.

We sat on a bench near a heated pond smack in the middle of the mall, and watched the giant koi swim wearily around and around. Their scales gleamed like armor plate. There were real lotuses in the pond, too.

"Theo," I said. "Did Ben happen to mention the ... uh... issue of ..."

"Sex?" said Theo matter-of-factly. "Oh, yes. He told me about your desire for him, and for that matter about how strongly he felt attracted to you. He was sorry that a physical rapport was just not workable. However..."

"Yes?" It made me sad to think of missing out on wonderful sex with Ben. I _know_ it would have been wonderful. I also know it would have made me miserable. Though not Ben, damn it. It just wasn't fair.

"However, he was impressed by your ability to experience desire without yielding to it; in effect you'd become detached from it. That was good, a big step in the right direction. He suggested that..."

For the first time, Theo sounded embarrassed. I honestly would have thought him immune to embarrassment, so self-assured did he seem. He'd caught me, falling on the train, with the grace and poise of a champion tango dancer. He was like Rudolph Valentino, flawless, virile, replete with self-confidence, emotionally vulnerable yet stable – and yummy as could be.

"Theo, you don't have to go on if it makes you uncomfortable." I patted his knee. I really had no idea what he had been about to say, but I didn't want to cause him any needless distress. I was in love with him, after all; I assumed he knew it and didn't want to hurt me by insisting out loud that we keep things on a platonic basis.

"No, Russ, that's okay. I was just searching for the right words, that's all. Ben suggested that, well, you and I could have a go at the physical stuff, if you wanted to, that is. I don't know if you find me appealing in that way or not. Possibly not; I know I'm not much to look at, and I'm kind of clumsy and talk too much and – "

"My God, Theo, am I hearing you right? Are you insane? You're unbelievably good-looking, graceful as a gazelle, obviously sweet and kind and super-intelligent, and not only that, you're sexy beyond belief, and... I can't imagine you don't see it. How is that possible!"

"No, but really, Russ, I've never felt I amounted to much, I'm serious. Yeah, I know I've reached a certain stage of what would you call it, bodhisattvaship? I'm not sure there's a word for it. Anyway, you know what I mean. Ben says I'm way, way advanced beyond him, but frankly I think he's full of sh– I mean, I think he's mistaken.

"Benjamin seems just so incredibly talented to me, I mean that consciousness stream that manifested itself as – oh, forget it, it's too hard to put into words. Anyhow, besides that, when you were with him, he was young and so cute and ... Anyway, I really truly don't think I'm much, so it won't hurt my feelings or anything if you don't want to ... you know..." He made a two-handed gesture I won't attempt to describe, but I'll bet you've seen it.

"Good grief, Theo," I said. "Who can say if it will work or not? But, not to put too fine a point on it, I'm more than willing to give it the old college try."

He looked astonished and surprised and pleased and hopeful all at the same time. That sudden intake of breath was not feigned.

"You are? Truly? Russ, I can't believe it. You're so dapper and good-looking and smart and sophisticated and – well, I just think you're everything I'm not, that's all.

"You mean you actually find me _appealing_ in addition to loving me?"

I'd taken for granted, based on my almost identical experience with Ben, that Theo could tell I had instantly fallen in love with him; and of course I'd been right. Again, like Ben, I imagine he knew it before I did, even.

"Theo, Theo. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have a complete, well-rounded, mutually fulfilling relationship with you. It would give me all sorts of opportunities to practice non-attachment, too. Wouldn't it?"

"I'd think so, yes. I haven't ever done it that much, but, yes, I'd say it does lend itself to that kind of practice, definitely. It might even prove...challenging."

"Then, Theo – my love – you don't mind if I call you that, do you? Let's do it. If it doesn't work, we can still be friends."

He threw his arms around me, almost knocking me backwards off the bench, and kissed me on the lips, right there in the mall in front of all those koi. And about fifty mostly heterosexual suburban shoppers.

I didn't care. I just kissed him right back, repeatedly.

We spent the night at my place and it almost made me forget some of my sorrow about Ben. To call our experience wonderful is to make a woefully gross understatement. It was terrific. It was more than terrific. It was – transcendental. Yes, that's it. Transcendental.

In the morning, Theo wept for joy.

It seems he'd never been fully accepted, in a loving way, by anybody. I believed him, but it was beyond my understanding how anyone, male, female or anything else, could resist that charm and poise, the gentle yet witty nature, the almost intolerable sexiness. Good grief; what kind of dolts is the world composed of, I wondered, not for the first time. (Remember, I do focus groups.) Maybe people had just found his all-around wonderfulness too intimidating. That could be it.

He insisted on making us breakfast. I let him.

When he broke the eggs to scramble them, I did have to gulp back a few tears because it reminded me of Ben that Sunday night in my kitchen. Apart from that, I was happy, almost as happy as I'd been with Ben. And I suspected that, as Theo and I grew to know each other, I might become every bit as happy. I hadn't thought that possible, not in a million years. Or six or seven lifetimes, whichever came first.

We went downtown to our day jobs together, but not on the subway – in my Mitsubishi. He was as wowed by the little red beauty as Ben had been, and just as enraptured by its music system. He reminded me of Benjamin more all the time, and it was only the morning of our second day.

That night we made love again, over and over and over in one way or another. Eventually it was just holding each other close, but that's love, too. Definitely. Especially when your partner can, just by embracing you, erase all your fears, worries, anger, you name it, and replace them with ineffable peace and joy. I couldn't imagine that I might eventually be able to do that for somebody, too; but if what Ben had told me in the hospital was true, it was a sure thing that I would, even if it took millennia to get it down pat.

As I started to doze off, huddled snug into the warm contours of Theo's sleeping body, and was just raising my left arm to drape it over his chest, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye some kind of glimmer in the dark. At first, I figured it was one of those vitreous floaters that are common as you age. But they're dark. This was definitely light. Then I saw it again.

It was at the very tippy-tip of my little finger. A brief glow like a firefly's tail, only much dimmer and a lot smaller But the same golden light, one I'd seen before.

Then it went out.

But that's okay. You've got to start somewhere.

-The End-

Thanks to Bro. Martin, OSB, who furnished the "pocketknife" example in a conversation up at the abbey many years ago. And to Swami C., who once casually read my mind (I'm not kidding). Above all to David S., the love of my life, who taught me so much about living and dying by his own graceful example. Thanks, sweetheart.

But also to all the other bodhisattvas I've known — without knowing it.

About the author:

Jon has lived in the Midwest USA for longer than most of us can remember. We're talking about decades. Not, however, in the nameless, and fictional, city where this story takes place — the only city in the Midwest with a subway system, by the way.

About his only similarity to Ben is that he has one of those French degrees, too. And it didn't help him get a job, either.

As far as similarity to Russ goes – well, apart from being dapper, sophisticated, intelligent, and witty, there really isn't much.

Okay, he's also clingy.

