There's Something I Want You to Do (8 page)

“We need our solitude. She doesn’t…I don’t know. She doesn’t want to
commit
.” He pronounced the word as if he were holding it at a distance, with a pair of tongs. “And, get this, she says she doesn’t want, or like, children.” The doctor shook his head in disbelief. “Which is all my mother ever wants out of me, those grandchildren. I can’t do it alone. Hey,” Benny said, “speaking of girls, I heard a girl screaming this morning while I was getting dressed.”

“Not in your bedroom, I hope.” Elijah sat up and examined Benny with a kind of doctor-expression. “And?”

“I didn’t do anything until she screamed a second time. Then I ran outside. But there was no one there. Only this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ringlet of red hair.

Elijah examined it. “There’s something I want you to do,” he said. “I want you to get rid of that.”

“Why?”

“You shouldn’t be carrying someone’s hair around in your pocket. It’s like a horror movie. ‘Creepy’ is I think the right word for carrying hair around in that manner.”

“Okay.” Benny put it back in his pocket. “When are Susan and you going to invite me to dinner again? I miss your hospitality. I miss the free meals.”

“Oh, any day now, possibly when we like you again. But that hair is a kind of disincentive.
You
could invite us to dinner, you know. One of those meals? That you cook?
You
could open the door for Elijah and Susan. You could heat something up. You could make a social effort.”

“Soon,” Benny said. He stood up. “Soon. Doctor, I’m on my aerobic walk, and I gotta get my heart rate elevated.”

Elijah gave him a dispirited goodbye wave.

—

Three weeks later, on his way out to his evening stroll, Benny passed two of his friends, the lesbians from down the hall, Donna and Ellie, just outside the building. They referred to themselves alphabetically as “the D and the E,” and tonight they were walking their keeshonds. Engaged in conversation, they waved to him as he crossed the block. He waved back, not wanting to interrupt them. When the two women were talking together, the bond between them—heads turned in a mutual gaze, slightly bowed, the conversation quiet and slow and half-smiling—seemed more intimate than sex. Their friendship, no, their love, resembled…
what? Prayer, or some other category that Benny didn’t currently believe in.

By the time he reached the Washington Avenue Bridge across the Mississippi, he had worked up a light sweat. He planned to cross the river, turn around, and then head back. He would shower before bed and be asleep by midnight. Tonight the joggers and lovers were out in force, along with the shabby old men who held out their hands for money. A panhandle was like a scream: you never knew what was appropriate, how much help to offer, what to do.

Crossing the bridge on the pedestrian level, he counted the number of people on foot. He liked taking inventories; solid figures reassured him. About seven people were out tonight, including one guy with a backpack sprinting in Benny’s direction, two people strolling, and a young woman with a vaguely studenty appearance who stood motionless, leaning against the railing and staring down at the river. The sodium lights gave them all an orange-tan tint. The young woman tapped her fingers along the guardrail, took out a cell phone, and after taking a picture of herself, dropped the phone into the river below. She licked her lips and laughed softly as the phone disappeared into the dark.

Benny stopped. Something was about to happen. As he watched, she gathered herself up and with a quick athletic movement hoisted herself over so that she was standing on the railing’s other side with her arms braced on the metalwork behind her. If she released her arms and leaned forward, she would plunge down into the river. One jogger went past her without noticing what she was doing. What
was
she doing? Benny hurried toward her.

Seeing him out of the corner of her eye, she turned and smirked.

“Stop!” he commanded. “Wait. Don’t!” He wasn’t sure what to say. “What are you doing? Who are you?”

“I’m nobody. Who are you?”

“I’m just Benny,” he said. “That’s dangerous. Please. Why are you doing that?”

“No reason. For fun. A cheap thrill. I’m bungee jumping,” she said. “Only without the bungee. See the cord?” She pointed down to where no cord was visible. “Just
kidding
! It’s
imaginary
! Also, I’ve been feeling real cold behind my eyes,” she said, “so I thought I’d do something exciting to heat myself up.” Her speech style was oddly animated, and she seemed very pretty in a drab sort of way, like an honorable-mention beauty queen who hadn’t taken proper care of herself. Something was off in the grooming department. Her long brown hair fell over her shoulders, and her T-shirt had a corporate logo and the words
JUST DO IT
across the front. Her eyes, when she glanced at Benny, were deep and penetrating. Her feet in sandals displayed toenails polished a bright red, so that under the streetlights they had the appearance of war paint. She gave off a shadowy gleam. “I’ve been feeling kind of temporary lately,” she said. “How about you,
Benny
? You been feeling permanent?”

He reached out for her arm and clasped it. “Yes, I have. So. Please come back,” he said.

“Fuck you doin’?” she said, laughing. “Don’t harass me. Let go. Let go of me or maybe I’ll actually
jump
.” Irony was the new form of chastity and was everywhere these days. You never knew whether people meant what they said or whether it was all a goof.

“No,” Benny said. “I don’t think so. I won’t let go.” To his astonishment, a couple strolled past them without paying them any mind at all. He thought of crying out for help, but noise might panic this woman, startle her, inspiring her to make her move, unless she was playing a late-night prank. After all, she
was
grinning. Dear God, he thought, the perfect incongruity of that grin. He felt a sudden resolve to hold on to her forever if he had to.

“This isn’t a big plan I have,” she said cheerfully. “It’s just a personal happening.” She waited. “Don’t you ever want to get on the other side of the boundary? It’s so exciting over here, so lethal. It looks back at you.” She waited. “So much fun. And against boredom? Boredom,” she said urgently, “must be defeated.”

“You shouldn’t be standing there. It’s a terrible idea.”

“Don’t be like that,” she said, staring down at the river. “Okay, maybe it’s a terrible idea, but it’s
my
idea.” Now she appeared to be sneering. She had a blue barrette in her hair. “Do you think it would take a long time to fall? What would falling feel like?” She tipped her head back. “I think it would feel like being famous. I’d laugh all the way down. I’d sign autographs.”

“No. It would feel like nothing. Then like being ripped apart by water. It’d
really
hurt.” He waited with his hand around her arm. He was quite strong; like everyone else he knew, he went to the gym and kept fit, and just when he had begun to consider how much she weighed and how long he’d be able to hold on to her if she leaped off the ledge and dangled there, he remembered to ask, “What’s your name?”

“I won’t tell you,” she said. “Okay, yes, I will. It’s Desdemona.”

“Thanks.” He moved slightly so that he was behind her, and still holding her arm, he moved his other arm so that it encircled her waist. A car honked at them. “So-called Desdemona,” he said, “please come back to this side. Okay?”

“Um, no? Just leave me alone? Besides, don’t you even want to get on the other side of the railing
with
me? How about some solidarity? Don’t you ever want a thrill? Or a chill? Or a spill? Stop
touching
me!”

“No.”

She laughed. “Such a spoilsport. Such a
square.
” She twisted her head back. “You must be from around here. You smell of the Midwest.”

He held on to her for another minute. Either he was trembling or she was. Finally she shook herself as if possessed by a thought. She turned around and clambered over to where Benny was standing. He released her. His heart was pounding. “Okay, I give up. Would you really have held on to me for good?” she asked. He nodded. “So that if I was dangling, you’d
keep
me? I thought so. You look sturdy. And stubborn. What’s
amazing
is your investment in me, all the coins you dropped in my slot.” She chattered nervously. “I’m such a dope, I really can’t follow through on anything.” She still hugged the railing, though on the pedestrian side, and continued to glance nervously down into the water now and then. “Did you really think I was going to jump? Would I have done that?”

“You threw away your cell phone. Anyway, I can’t predict what you will or won’t do. I don’t know you.”

“My cell phone was old. It was broken. I hated it. People kept calling me and asking me for things.”

“Neverthel
ess,” Benny said.

She twisted her head, a subtle hint of mockery in the movement. “So. It seems that the Samaritan is
not
going to go away. What do you do, Emergency Guy? I mean, Benny?”

“I’m an architect.”

“An architect? Prove it.” She gave him a teasing expression.

“Okay, look over there.” He pointed at the art museum on the other side of the river. “That’s the Weisman Art Museum. Frank Gehry designed it. He’s famous. The exterior, all those bumps and bulges, are stainless-steel sheets fabricated in Kansas City, and where the museum faces the river, the design’s supposed to look like a waterfall and a fish, but personally I don’t think it does. I could tell you more, but that’s enough.”

“All right,” she said. “You know who Frank Gehry is. Guess what? So do I. Anyway, I’ll go home now.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Yes, I will.” He waited. “Otherwise you might come back here.”

“Opportunist.” She seemed to be estimating him, like an insurance adjuster. “If you try anything, I’ll scream like a banshee. I can do that. So nothing weird, okay?”

“You’re talking to me about weird?” he asked.

After walking off the bridge, they turned south into a Somali neighborhood where men sat in erect postures at the sidewalk cafés animatedly debating, not even glancing at the two white people as they went by. A wonderful aroma seemed to be suspended in the unbreathing air, a musky cloud of coffee and chocolate and vanilla apparently imported from sub-Saharan Africa and deposited here in Minneapolis, and the atmosphere made Benny feel both provincial and ready for an adventure. The woman—he couldn’t think of her as Desdemona, a joke name—had a surprisingly long and rapid stride, diving ahead of him. They turned off on a poorly lit side street into a neighborhood near a small Lutheran college, where she stopped in front of a nondescript apartment building on whose third floor, she claimed, she lived. Standing fixedly out on the sidewalk, Benny felt a shock of attraction for her, an eerie electrical charge. The attraction alarmed him. For what possible reason would she interest him? No prior cause ever explained his rogue desires, but this one maybe had to do with grieving a person who was still alive. He didn’t want to leave her, that was all, and he had to think of what to say immediately.

“So, Desdemona, what do you do?” he asked.

“So, okay, it isn’t Desdemona, it’s Sarah, and I don’t do anything important.” She shrugged. He saw that her fingernails had been gnawed at. “I merely take up space. I’m one of those
little
underemployed people that you hear about. You know, one of those
my-noot
service persons. I have many degrees. I work in a day-care center where I look after the munchkins and I play the piano.”

“Well, that’s something. What’s your last name?”

“Lemming. Kinda ironic, isn’t it? What’s yours?”

“Takemitsu.” He braced himself for the moment when she’d say that he didn’t look Japanese. Instead, she scanned his face for a quality she apparently required in a man. A moment later she slipped sideways away from close proximity to him.

“I also do stand-up comedy now and then,” she said. She waited for him to laugh, and he laughed. “See? I made you crack up. That’s my line. Really, Benny…that
is
your name, right?
Benny?
” He nodded. “You didn’t really think I was going to off myself tonight, did you? Like someone in a movie?” Then she spun around, quickly touching him. “The mysteriously self-destructive and glamorous-but-funny lady on the edge of the bridge and of existence itself? And you, the brave macho rescuer? That’s such a male fantasy, isn’t it? Wow, for banal. Hey, are you one of those comic-book heroes? One of the Fantastic Four? Which one are you? Do I get to guess?” Without waiting for an answer, she went into her building, saying neither thank you nor goodbye.