There's Something I Want You to Do

Elijah seemed to droop for a moment. He had a heavy five o’clock shadow and bags under his eyes, and he pretended to ignore his friend. “Fuck you,” he said tiredly. “I’m decompressing. Just came back from rounds at the hospital, and I’m not ready for the homecoming. I’m embittered. See me? An embittered man sits before you. Would you explain to me what got me into doctoring? I can’t remember now.” Benny said nothing. The doctor shook his head. “It’s hard to witness, kids being sick, kids with mitochondrial disorders, kids being brave, et cetera. I feel like Ivan Karamazov or somebody like that. See how fat I’m getting?” He reached inside his coat and snapped his suspenders. “And what about you, Mr. Architect?” Elijah, his spirits visibly lifting at the prospect of irritating his friend, leaned back and finally grinned affectionately at Benny. “Did you design any big-box stores today? In one of those new beautiful Bauhaus strip malls they have now? Fluorescent lights and linoleum to remind us all of our proud humanity? Man, I do love strip malls. Incidentally, you kinda look like a vampire tonight.”

“That’s how you know I’m Asian. All the great vampires are Asian.”

“I’ve noticed. Except you don’t look Asian. You just look like a vampire.”

“Vampires are hot.”

“Benny, you sound like a girl when you say that,” Elijah said, still smiling amiably.

Benny shrugged. “So I sound like a girl. Big deal. Girl vampires have it going on. Anyway, people dig sexual ambiguity. They find it attractive. And Reena likes me.”

“Likes? What about loves? And she doesn’t live here, does she? Your pale vampire complexion hasn’t moved her to move here, I’ve noticed.”

“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.