Dante asks me about the rehab. He’s direct about it, no tiptoeing, which I respect.
“How long are you looking at?” he asks.
“Six to eight weeks. Depends on how things go.”
“Is it the best place?”
“The doctor says it’s the top spinal cord program in the state.”
“Then that’s where you need to be,” Dante says.
At seven forty-five, Benji stands up. He reaches for the cream and Dante watches him do it, his expression shifting to curious as Benji takes my right hand.
Benji does it the same way as always then he lifts the blanket. He wraps his hands around my right foot. I watch his hands on my feet. Dante is in his chair at the foot of the bed, and his face has gone still in a way it wasn’t five minutes ago.
Benji finishes and lowers the blanket and caps the bottle. His cheeks are flushed. Dante doesn’t look away from Benji.
The nurse appears right on schedule. “Sorry. Visiting hours are over.”
Dante stands. He walks to the side of my bed and extends his hand. I take it and his grip is firm. A solid handshake. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a business card and sets it on my nightstand.
“Here’s all my phone numbers,” he says. “If Benji gets into trouble, call me and I’ll bail him out.”
He says it like a joke. I get the feeling it isn’t.
“Good to meet you, Mickey,” he says. He leans closer, and then, quieter, so only I can hear it, “I understand why he comes.”
They both head towards the door. Benji is standing behind Dante, bag on his shoulder. He lifts his hand in the awkward wave and I lift mine back. Our eyes meet over Dante’s shoulder for less than two seconds. His hair is catching the fluorescent light the way it does and I want to tell him to come back. Just for a minute. Just long enough for me to say something I haven’t figured out yet.
Then they’re gone and the door closes.
I’m being transferred any day now, maybe tomorrow, to a city five hours away. The drives will stop. The meals on the edge of this bed will stop. His hands on my feet will stop.
I can still hear their footsteps, Benji’s laugh, getting fainter. I lie here pinned to this mattress, listening to the life I want walk down the hall.
Chapter 20: Benji
Dante doesn’t say anything for the first ten minutes of the drive. That’s how I know it’s coming. Dante doesn’t do silence. When he goes quiet, it means he’s lining up his shots.
“So,” Dante finally says. “Are you ready to talk about him now?”
I let out a tired sigh. “I want to talk about him, Dante. I do. But I can’t. Not right now.” I stare straight ahead at the taillights of the car in front of me.
He shifts in the passenger seat, turning his body toward me with one knee up against the dash. It’s a classic Dante move—total focus.
“Why not now? I saw it, Benji. You don’t need to hide this from me. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“I can’t talk about Mickey right now. The reason is I can’t talk about him without crying, and I’m driving down a dark highway with my best friend in the car. I’ve already put one man in a hospital. I can’t take a chance of crashing this car.”
“Oh, Benji,” he says softly. He reaches over and rests a hand on my shoulder, the weight of it steadying. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything right now. Can I tell you what I saw, though?”
I glance over at him and nod, blinking back the blur in my vision.
“I’ve known you for seven years. I’ve seen you stroll into nightclubs, smile your ‘trouble grin,’ and pick up any man you wanted. Then a week later, you’re bored and onto the next one. In all those years, I’ve never seen you like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way you touched his feet. I watched you rub that cream on him. I’ve never, not once, seen you touch another man like that. And the cream? Did you think I wouldn’t notice the brand?”
