Chapter Text
RANDY
He’d settled comfortably into his routine once he was hired at the Wolf Lounge, which sat just outside the French Quarter. It was a classy joint, like walking into the past. Gold and royal red and dark wood covered every surface that wasn’t glinting with polished crystal.
The weeknight band Randy played for was the closest he’d gotten to organically making friends in his entire life. He wasn’t sure Lisa counted because of the forced proximity of high school, and Benson…was complicated.
The singer, Nelia, was a beautiful twenty year-old with a natural talent for performing. Her voice was incredible, and she’d even done some work in musical theater in her late teens. She was Randy’s biggest inspiration musically these days; the way she talked about her craft was like a drug, fueling Randy’s confidence and drive to keep going, to work harder, to let his heart guide him forward. She had a real way with words, and they bonded over their love of literature despite having wildly different tastes. She adored poetry and feminist non-fiction, and Randy was still as obsessed with historical fiction as he’d been growing up.
Nelia referred to them as Colonist Romance novels–and he couldn’t argue with most of the books being just that. It wasn’t until she forced upon him a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and he had called her the day he finished it to gush that they really began to understand one another, and even three years later, he still has her high school copy on his bookshelf, her name and notes and highlights inside.
And in return, Randy gave her his well-loved hardcover of Cloudsplitter, which was similarly marked up and signed. It was a very important novel for Randy, as he felt a deep connection to the narrator, Owen Brown. It had been the first book he’d read after Benson changed everything, and while Randy’s relationship with his parents was nothing like Owen’s, and Randy’s life was certainly nothing like his either, it was a representation of the struggle for autonomy and freedom as something human and universal and unifying. It made him feel less alone, less alien, less too-small for the world. It made him want to be a bigger, better person. The kind of person who cared, who tried, who did what was right no matter how difficult or scary or painful.
Of course, when Nelia finished it she told him–jokingly in despair–that she thought it was going to be like Wuthering Heights. And so Randy gave her a fresh copy of My Deceitful Dutchess.
Then there was her older brother, Charlie, who was the most relaxed man Randy had ever met. He seemed to be immune to stress, which was something Randy hadn’t known was humanly possible to be before they met. He played bass, keys, and a few brass instruments, as well. He was part of a swing band that played during the Mardi Gras parades, and he was proud to tell anyone who would listen about the time he’d met Sonny Rollins and CeeDee Lamb in the same weekend.
Charlie reminded him of Benson in a lot of ways, which made him nauseous at first, but as he got to know the man, Randy was able to relax with him. Those qualities developed subtleties that made them distinctly Charlie, and the ache in his core all but disappeared over time.
Randy rarely got to hear him play brass, but at least once every few months if he was in Nola during the weekend, he’d stop by the Lodge for Charlie’s personal jazz band’s shows, which was when his talents really shined. He was an expert at improvisation, and his tenor saxophone was cared for with the same gentle passion one might care for an infant, but on stage they might as well have been one singular being. The tenor sax was Charlie’s instrument, in Randy’s mind.
Randy had told him, while the four of them were smoking in the green room, that no one else should ever bother to pick it up. Charlie had teared up and hugged him, and it was the first hug Randy had received in years. When he got home that night, Randy had sobbed into his pillow. He’d had no idea how starved he was for human connection. He’d had no idea that he was capable of being worthy of receiving it.
And then there was Mosi, who Randy was slightly enamored with and mostly intimidated by. Mosi was sweet–that was the best way to sum it up, at least in Randy’s mind. A percussionist with a deep intuition for sound and rhythm, watching him perform was as magical and mesmerizing as stargazing in the wilderness, where light pollution couldn’t smother the stars. A natural wonder, a human body and soul that made the regulars at the Lodge go wild no matter how many times they’d hear the same songs and solos.
Mosi was the first openly queer man that Randy had ever known personally. He was quick-witted, lazy, charming, perpetually flip-flopping between catastrophizing and zen. He was a second-generation Swahili immigrant, worked two jobs to support his younger sister, and shared Randy’s passion for vinyl records. He even owned Nina Simone’s entire discography.
Mosi was also Randy’s first kiss with a man–a New Year’s kiss that only happened because everyone thought Randy knew he was queer, and while he played along in the moment, Randy was privately horrified that everyone knew before he did–though they had a mutual understanding that whatever electricity buzzed between them, neither of them were interested in pursuing it. On Randy’s part because of his inexperience and them working together, and as for Mosi, well, he said it was because he wasn’t looking for a relationship of any kind, but Randy suspected it might have had to do with the fact that Randy was an emotional freakshow and anyone with more observational skills than a pebble in a stream could probably see that.
Randy loved working there, leagues more than any job he’d picked up over the years. While the pay could have been better, it was hard to find anyone in the state of Louisiana in need of a musician, let alone in New Orleans. And as for coworkers, Randy felt certain there was no one on Earth he’d rather be on that stage beside.
Well, maybe there was someone–but that wasn’t ever going to happen.
All in all, he got lucky, at the right place and time, after almost thirty years of pulling his hair out about what the hell he was going to do with his life, he’d found something he could easily see himself doing for the rest of his life. Maybe not always at the Lounge, but wherever he ended up, it was going to be with his guitar.
But Lady Luck couldn’t take all the credit. Ten years had passed, and Randy still found reasons to think of Benson, to feel grateful for what he taught him. Randy knew he never would have sent those college applications without Benson. Never would have took meetings with a counselor just to figure out what the hell he wanted to do with his life. Never would have called Lisa’s home phone from the Yellow Pages three months after he quit Burgers, and later sat with her in his bedroom where she listened to him go on and on about his vinyl collection and how much he loved soul and blues. Never would have had that moment where Lisa asked if he played any instruments and he froze up, felt like the Earth had stopped its rotation around the sun just to give him a breath, to feel the way his heart almost skipped a beat as he remembered.
Remembered his ninth birthday, 1997. Dad had beamed at him from the couch, his mother squeezing her mug of coffee so tight in excitement that her fingers went white. It was a big rectangle box, not too heavy, not too light; and inside was a Harmony 3/4th scale acoustic guitar with honey-color wood and cold, metal strings that sorely needed to be tuned.
Randy had sat there and worked on tuning it for hours, no idea how to figure out what the notes were supposed to be or what they sounded like. They’d never had any instruments in the house before, so he didn’t have a piano to use for reference. And asking for something, that was out of the question. He couldn’t make choices. He couldn’t ask for nice things. If his parents bought him a present, that was mostly fine, but only if it had been their idea, their decision.
So it sat in the living room for months, then Randy’s bedroom, then the crawl space with all the holiday decorations and Dad’s old motorcycle gear.
He’d grabbed Lisa’s hand when he came back to the present and dragged her to the crawl space. The guitar was still in its case, untouched and covered in dust, a few dead spiders clinging to the velvet interior. It needed to be restrung, and the wood was warped from water damage on the bottom, but he hardly noticed any of that as he held it in his hands and grinned.
“You look crazy,” Lisa giggled at him, picking off cobwebs from his hair.
And that had been it; the rest of his life, in his hands. Because Benson had held up a mirror and said, ‘This is what you are. This is how you live. Now what the fuck are you gonna do about that?’
And when Randy had looked in that mirror, he hadn’t had an answer at the time. Now, he did.
His psychologist said years ago that his thoughts about Benson would fade over time, as he healed. He’d been wrong, but that was okay with Randy. The only memories that upset him lost their effect after the thousandth nightmare. The only times he thought of Benson and wished he didn’t were the nights when he wallowed in his loneliness and longed for someone who saw him for what he really was. Because those were the nights he felt the temptation to turn on his computer and search up Benson’s name, find out everything he could about his trial and sentencing, maybe even visit him someday.
He would always take his sleeping pill then, and let it knock him out for the night. It was like an alarm clock telling him he needed to rest–or that was how he treated it, at least. And the desire to look into the man that changed his life had usually faded by morning.
But the urge hit him hard and early one evening at the Wolf Lounge, while he was packing up his acoustic guitar and then digging around in his bag for his smokes on the way out of the back. Just needed to feel closer to Benson, smell him, pretend he was back in that car where nothing mattered except surviving the present moment.
Because real life was hard. Randy had never been ignorant of that–in fact, he felt he’d learned that truth too early, and the fear he felt had shut him down, sucked out his soul, killed him internally.
What he couldn’t have anticipated was how big the world felt when you stopped being small. It used to feel claustrophobic, tall things looking over him, shadows cast long and dark, everything seeping in like a vignette.
But as he played guitar in front of a crowd, as he worked with students in practice rooms, as he went back and forth from the city to his apartment and it was his life, his real adult life? Now it felt like he was alone in a desolate place, starved for connection, starved for closeness.
So he smoked Benson’s cigarettes and felt the worn leather under his skin, smelled blood and gunpowder and grease in the air, heard metal on a car radio. Randy let it close him in that car, enveloping him like water, like sinking to the bottom of a pool and opening his stinging eyes.
But that night after his gig, as he chain-smoked and listened to Fleetwood Mac on the drive home, the unmistakable itch under his skin had seeped in and wasn’t letting go. All his usual remedies were failing him. He was on the verge of trying to solve it via physically clawing it out by the time he made it home, where his last respite was waiting for him.
He had the distinct feeling that his pills weren’t going to cooperate tonight, either. He gripped the wheel tighter, turned up the music, and held the smoke in his lungs.
After getting home and showering off the sweat he’d accumulated under the stage lights, Randy poured himself a mug of tea and curled up in his desk chair. He stared at the monitor while it booted up, the PC fans whirring, the smell of dust wafting up from the floor. His heart was racing by the time he was pulling up a search engine. He paused, watching his hands tremor above the keyboard with a deep frown.
He knew he shouldn’t do it. He should just take his pill, sleep it off.
But that damn itch…
He typed a singular ‘b’ into the bar with a hysteric lurch of movement, and it was like a spark that lit a fuse.
Randy went through the next day in a haze, his thoughts and his insides all twisted up. He couldn’t leave the high school fast enough, hopped in his car and drove. Drove until he was outside of Ms. Beard’s house back in Kutzburg with tears rolling down his face. He didn’t know how long he sat parked there, but it was long enough that Ms. Beard had come out and knocked on the passenger window with an expression of quiet concern.
He unlocked the car and she got in. They hugged awkwardly across the console and Randy laughed tearfully when she noticed the Keroppi charm dangling from his rearview and asked if he was an anime character.
“No, he’s just– a frog,” he said, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Like Hello Kitty?”
“Oh!” she said, chuckling. “I remember Hello Kitty. Okay. So they’re friends?”
Randy contemplated explaining the concept of a brand character, but quickly decided to just nod and smile instead. For everyone’s sake.
Awkward silence sucked the air out of the car like a vacuum. Randy wiped his cheeks and nose with a paper napkin from the console. Ms. Beard was looking out the window with a small, tense smile on her face.
Then she said, “Tessa’s been watching so much anime lately, it must be getting to me.”
Randy sat back in his seat and unbuckled himself when he heard it lock, not wanting to feel trapped. The silence stretched, more uncomfortable now than it would have been before he left for college. He hadn’t seen Ms. Beard since, but they exchanged texts a few times a year with happy birthdays and life updates.
“How is she?” Randy asked, feeling overwhelmed, feeling very grateful for her bid for conversation. Small talk, safe territory.
“She’s great,” Ms. Beard replied, looking back at him with that twinkle in her eye that she got whenever she spoke about her daughter. “Got her first boyfriend, applying to colleges.”
“Yeah?”
Ms. Beard nodded with a proud smile. “Yep. Can’t believe how fast time passes. Feels like she was still in diapers yesterday.”
More silence. Randy bit his cheek.
“Did you want to talk about something, Randy? If I’d known you were stopping by, I would invite you inside, but it’s…”
He hummed, nodding and swallowing thickly, picking at his fingers. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to take up too much of your time… Um. Oh, is this a bad time to talk?”
“Not at all,” she said. “With Tessa working and me getting old, the house is just a pigstye.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Randy said, chuckling nervously.
Ms. Beard laughed. “Tessa just convinced me to get a puppy.”
“That’ll do it.” Randy cringed at his own words, deciding it would probably be best to get it over with if he was already being an idiot about nothing. “Um. Okay, so, it’s just… It’s about, uh. Benson.”
Ms. Beard’s smile faded slightly at that, and it made Randy’s heart rate spike again to see it.
“He’s been out on parole since January.”
“Wow,” she murmured, her eyebrows twitching upward. Randy had expected more of a reaction, but he was also relieved that he wouldn’t need to comfort her when he felt like… He was just so… Whatever he felt like now.
“Yeah, and, um. It’s only a year, so next January…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, throat tacky and air stopped short in his lungs.
In just a few months, Benson would be a free man. Free to go where he pleased, work and live where he pleased.
Talk to whoever he wanted to.
See whoever he wanted to.
Ms. Beard nodded, brows furrowed. Randy stared at the grey strands in her hair to avoid looking her in the eye. “How are you feeling?”
His stomach twisted up at the question. “I don’t really know,” he admitted, shaking his head, laughing weakly under his breath.
But deep down he knew, at least in part, that he was feeling something he shouldn’t have been, even if he didn’t know its name. Something that kept him up at night wanting to rip open his skin. Something that drew him to his computer like a siren’s song. Something that only Ambien could stop him from feeling by bringing him to unconsiousness–until the need to know had overwhelmed even the temptation of long, heavy, dreamless slumber.
And now here he was.
“Randy,” she said, then paused, just looking at him for a moment before asking, “Do you miss him?”
Whatever he meant to reply with was garbled by the lump in his throat, the sudden sting of reemerging tears in his eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked, letting them fall, and wondered if the pain in his chest was what heart attacks felt like. He wondered if that was the name for the feeling he couldn’t understand. Heart attack, heart ache, heart break, something…
He wondered if Ms. Beard would hate him if his answer was yes.
She rubbed soothing circles over his right shoulderblade. “It’s okay, Randy. It’s okay to miss him, hate him, anything. It’s just how you feel. It’s… He was your friend, and he hurt you, and…”
Randy kicked his head back into the headrest, laughing harshly into his palm. “He wasn’t my friend,” he gasped, a desperate confession drawn out by the desire to be understood, seen, exhumed and autopsied. He looked at Ms. Beard from the side of his eye and immediately had to look away again, shame rising like hot welts on his skin at the look on her face. At the fact that he’d lied, and it was a very big, very serious lie. A lie that might have been the biggest piece of evidence allowing a murderer the opportunity for parole.
Ms. Beard’s hand stilled on his back. “What do you mean?”
“I- I barely knew him,” he confessed, his words broken and shaking as they spilled out into the stifled air inside his car. “We worked together for over a year and he barely even said hello.”
“But you– At the trial…?”
“I thought I killed him,” Randy whispered. “I couldn’t– I had to do something! I had to do something for once in my– fucking life. He didn’t deserve to– to sit in a cell and rot. After what– what happened to him, I couldn’t stop th-thinking about what they’d do to him in prison. That I would be the reason that he got– got hurt again. I had to try. I’d already got him shot, and when I heard he was still alive, it just– I had to try.”
And it worked. And that was what kept him above water for years after.
Until the itch started.
Until it wouldn’t stop.
Ms. Beard sighed into the passenger seat. Together they stared at the stormclouds rolling in over the horizon, the lack of a response choking Randy along with the snot dripping down from his sinuses and the spit he kept failing to swallow.
“I’m not happy about this,” she admonished stiffly, looking like she was struggling to find the words she wanted to say, but the blow was softened by her gentle voice. “You perjured yourself, Randy. That’s” –she sucked in a breath– “not okay.”
Randy nodded, too hard and for too long, dizzy and sick to his stomach by the time he could force himself to stop. He felt like a scolded child. In a weird way, it was cathartic, to hear true disappointment in Ms. Beard’s voice. It almost made up for the noxious guilt swirling in his core. It felt like justice, forgiveness for his sin.
“I know,” he shuddered, sucking the air back in after. Then he crumpled into himself and croaked, “Am I a bad person?”
“Of course not, Randy. Oh, you poor thing…”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m so– Sorry.”
“Shh, it’s okay, Randy. This is a big thing. It’s just…” Ms. Beard watched him as he swallowed a sob and hiccuped for his trouble. With a pensive look, she said, “...I really think you should speak to someone. Maybe even have someone to stay with you while you’re going through this.”
Randy didn’t have the energy to laugh anymore. His head throbbed behind his eyes. He wanted to go home and take a couple Ambien and sleep until the weekend was over.
And under all of that: He wanted to see Benson. He missed him. He fucking missed him.
“There’s no one I could–” He cut himself off, knowing if he finished that sentence he’d only fall deeper into his pitiful cries. He bit his lip as he took controlled breaths until he could speak again.
“I’ve been in and out of therapy my whole life,” he said, angrier than he’d meant it, but at least he hadn’t shouted, or sobbed again.
Ms. Beard folded her hands in her lap and let out a heavy breath. “And what did they have to say about this?”
“It, uh…never came up.”
Thoroughly embarrassed from his talk with Ms. Beard, Randy avoided seeing his mom for as long as possible, not wanting to have another round of pathetic tears with a maternal figure in his life. It wasn’t until he was certain she would have finished dinner and that his face looked more normal that he knocked on her front door, his heart pounding in his chest and sweat gathering on his hairline.
She smothered him, as expected, but didn’t force him to eat anything like she used to before The Fight. Instead, she brought him some water and medicine for his headache while he got comfortable on the sofa, and then she sat next to him, teary-eyed herself.
“I missed you,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“I know, mom. I can’t stay, I have a gig tomorrow, but… Just wanted to check in on you, I guess.”
They talked casually for about an hour. It took a lot of effort, but he managed to convince her to let him go.
Before he left, Randy made to stop into his old bedroom to stare at what he’d left behind all those years ago. But when he pushed open the door, the first thing to greet him were two little stuffed animals sitting on his bed by the pillows.
Ms. Beard’s daughter had been going through an I’m-Not-A-Kid-Anymore phase years ago. Tessa wanted to toss everything that made her feel like one, but Ms. Beard had been kind enough to return them when she saw the Crocodile and Giraffe in one of the boxes her daughter had filled.
Randy had bought a pair of overalls meant for Build-A-Bears for the giraffe before he brought them home, to protect his mother’s delicate sensibilities from the felt cock and balls Benson had adorned it with. And it was still dressed, sitting next to the crocodile.
He managed to hold in his millionth bout of sobbing until he got in the car. He set them on the passenger seat and resisted the childish urge to buckle them in.
He’d always been quick to cry, but it had mellowed a great deal since he was in his mid-twenties. He felt like a little kid now, though. Emotions volatile. Sensitive from top to toe.
On the drive home the rain started, the storm clouds meeting him from the opposite direction and pounding against his windshield. He thought about what he’d say to Benson if he did see him again. Had to pull over to dry heave on the side of the road in the wet dark, but the crying stopped after that, at least.
Shivering, heat blasting, soaking the footwell and seat, Randy came to the conclusion that he had no fucking clue what he wanted to say. Didn’t think there was anything to say, not until he’d apologized.
Then maybe they could be friends.
Friends.
Randy stayed behind the wheel outside of his apartment, head on the window while he watched the rain for a long time.
Friends?!
He hurt me.
He killed people.
…But he did it for me.
A week later, Randy parked outside of Benson’s house, the one he’d lived in before everything, the one he’d dragged Randy into, forcing him to put on his too-big clothes. The house he barely remembered except for the way his mother had looked at him, and the way Benson’s hands had felt pressing hard into his throat and collarbone and cheek and jaw.
The idea that he could still be living in their hometown had eaten a hole in his consciousness. The whole drive back to Kutzburg, he thought there was no chance he would even make it down the street, let alone find some latent courage to get off his ass to knock on the door.
But he’d been wrong.
Benson had changed him, after all.
Maybe not enough. Too much. Something.
You came back wrong.
An older woman with plum-colored hair and wire glasses answered his knocking, scowling at him through the screen door. She didn’t look anything like Benson’s mom, but it had been a long time, so he hesitated greeting her.
Then the smell of the house hit him like a slap to the face. The smell of cigarettes, too–Benson’s cigarettes, he assumed, but it was different from the ones he’d been using with a sharply inclining frequency over the last eight or so years. He’d gotten the brand wrong. How did he get the brand wrong?
No, he couldn’t have, they must have been the woman’s cigarettes. Christ, was he at the wrong house?
“Can I fuckin’ help you?”
That snapped him out of his panic. Randy straightened himself up and apologized, inexplicably breathless. “Sorry, I’m just…looking for Benson?”
The woman pulled down on her glasses and squinted at him, leaning forward until her nose was nearly pressed into the mesh. “Aren’t you Benny’s boy?”
Benny’s boy?
Boy? As in, son? Benson has a son?
And she thinks it’s me?
Nausea crashed in his gut like ocean waves on a rocky shore. He swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth and wiped at the cold sweat rapidly forming on his face. “W-What?” he choked out, voice cracking. “No, my– name is Randy Bradley. We, um. We used to work together…?”
“It is you! Hold on.” The woman turned around and shouted, “Benson!”
Benson’s here.
That was what forced him to throw himself at the porch rail and expel his stomach contents off the side.
The woman had kept on screaming into the house, but eventually returned and opened the screen door, stepping through to find him shaking and drooling into the dying grass below, fingernails digging into chipping black paint along the railing.
“You alright?”
Randy turned his face further away from her view, wiping at the tears and spit that felt like they would never stop flowing now that they’d started. “I-I’m okay, sorry, it’s just–”
“Let me get you some water, honey,” she soothed, patting him on the shoulder. She kept talking as she made her way back inside, “Come on in, Randy, I ain’t that rude, now. Y’look like shit. Maybe get you some crackers, too…”
Ears ringing, Randy entered the house like he was breaking in, hands trembling on the door handle, steps light so as not to make a sound. The woman wandered through piles of stuff–cardboard boxes, unplugged appliances, suitcases, furniture.
Benson’s mother and the pull-out couch she had laid on that day were gone. There was hardly anything about the house that looked as he remembered it, and for a long moment he held his breath, wondering if he’d somehow accidentally walked off of the porch and into a different house without realizing.
But the woman reappeared with a glass of water and a plastic sleeve of Saltines held out for him, smiling with half of her mouth.
“Thank you… Um. How– How do you know who I am?”
She seemed almost surprised by his question. “Oh, well, he’d been writing me letters over the years, talks about you quite a lot…” she trailed off with a shrug.
Randy nodded. “What has he said about– about what h-happened?”
“Ah,” she said. “Well, he said you were trying to keep him calm, making sure nobody got hurt, that kinda thing. Said you saved his life.”
While Randy briefly entertained asking her to call emergency services because he was certain his heart was on the brink of exploding, she gasped and flung her glasses on, looking around the living room with a shocked expression on her face that had Randy jumping to glance around too.
“Sorry about the mess!” she lamented. “I didn’t even think– Oh, shit. It’s just that Benny’s been working doubles, saving up for the move, hasn’t had time to get to a storage unit quite yet.”
Goosebumps fluttered over Randy’s body. “Is– He’s leaving?”
The woman nodded and then sighed, glancing around the front room again with a hand on her hip. “Yeah, well, about damn time. Only been complaining about this town since he knew how to cuss. …You know, he had a map of the world as a placemat growing up, and his Ma swore it was the only reason he ate. Had to damn-near force him before then.”
The resurgence of nausea Randy felt then, imagining a young Benson gazing at the earth while he ate dinner, finally forced his stunned body into action. He sipped at the water, waited a moment to make sure he wouldn’t be sick again, then chugged about half the glass.
“I don’t think he’s home,” she told him. “But he’s probably hiding in the cellar if he is. You can check, if you like, just through the kitchen. I’ve got work to do, if that’s alright.”
Randy went for another nod, at a loss for words.
“Oh, damn. Forgot my manners. Name’s Kath, I’m Benny’s aunt.”
Randy stared at her outstretched hand, then tucked the saltines against his chest to be able to shake it. “Oh, um, g-good to meet you.”
It felt like he blinked and Kath was gone. He emptied his hands on the dining table next to the kitchen as he made his way to the back door, his body moving slow and careful, like wading through a swamp.
He’d never been in the kitchen, and it looked nothing like what Randy would have expected, if he had ever thought about what Benson’s kitchen would look like. It felt vitally important that he got to know this house, especially without Benson here to alter his experience of it.
He’s working a double.
He won’t be home before I’m long gone.
When he finally forced himself to the backyard, he stopped at the cellar door and stared at it, listening intently for any signs of Benson down there. When he didn’t hear anything but his own heart pounding and his nervous breathing, he grabbed the handle and pulled, finding it unlocked. Then he knocked before opening it fully, just to be safe, but there was no answer. He took a deep breath and finished the motion, wincing like he expected Benson to be behind it holding a shotgun to his face.
There was no Benson.
Down the stairs and to the right against the wall, there was a collection of cleaning supplies gathered together. He had to move the broom and mop handles to flick the switch, which caused them to topple over onto the floor, a concrete finish speckled and pitted with age. He winced at the sound, eyes squeezed shut, shaking again, but when he finally opened his eyes, no one was down there.
The relief was fleeting, then came the grief.
There was a bed on a thin, metal frame in one corner of the room, a couple feet from the wall at its side. Several massive blankets and a quilt laid on top, and there was a space heater near the foot of it. Empty boxes of beer and a janitorial trash bin full of beer cans, take out, and cigarette boxes and cartons sat on the other side of the stairs, the smell surprisingly minimal, probably from the cold. Still, Randy couldn’t imagine sleeping down here, or spending time here in general without feeling sick eventually.
On the far end of the cellar was a big desk, or table, something that probably belonged in a garage but wasn’t covered with tools. There were a couple of books and magazines piled up on it, though not much else. A radio, a few CDs, a plastic organizer full of paperwork, and a mini propane torch next to a bong shaped like a penis.
He slid the books off one by one. Underneath The Great Santini was what appeared to be a children’s book, In My Corner on the Moon, and under that was Love is a Dog from Hell.
But he didn’t get a chance to linger there as he lifted the last book, revealing the first magazine. He gawked at the cover, gasping softly.
Blueboy in bold, red letters ran across the top. Smaller text along the side read, Cowboy bar, The Well Kept Boy, Uncut: Report. The photo on the cover was of two men, one turned around and being held by another, both of them in their underwear.
He had to sit down in the plastic lawn chair in front of the desk and breathe through the racket in his chest, his stomach. He pressed his hands to his mouth, avoiding making direct eye contact with the man on the cover. Then he realized he was still staring at the picture and flushed head to toe.
Benson’s gay, his mind told him, over and over again.
It seemed inevitable that he would end up in Benson’s actual bedroom, in retrospect.
He felt like a pervert, when he sat on his bed. He could hear Kath clacking on a keyboard in the master bedroom down the hall even with the door mostly closed. It made him feel like he was committing some kind of crime.
He couldn’t resist. His flesh buzzed with curiosity, with the need to be close to Benson.
It wasn’t all that different from the cellar; sparse and tidy, but with the vague quality of a boy’s college dorm. An empty Jack Daniel’s bottle was sitting on the dresser, filled with cigarette buts and ash. The only thing that confirmed that the room was Benson’s was the laundry hamper with a metal band-tee slumped beside it on the floor, and the shelf organizing his cassettes.
After staring at the gap in the door to make sure he wouldn’t be caught, Randy leaned to the side and pressed his face into Benson’s pillow. It was clearly very old, the dull blue case drooping over it, flattened with use. It smelled like him, his sweat and soap and smoke.
Randy became so hard, so quickly that repulsion bloomed from his core, turning his stomach and making his skin burn hot from shame. He knew it was past the appropriate time to leave, couldn’t let Kath see him like this; dripping with sweat and on the verge of tears, dick straining against the zipper of his jeans, in a room he wasn’t invited to enter.
He took something first, without thinking, barely even seeing or breathing–just grabbed it and bolted.
Then he drove until all he could see around him were harvested fields and clouds.
It was so easy to take it that he didn’t even feel guilty for stealing until he got his car parked on a dirt side road and pulled the wadded up undershirt from his jacket pocket.
He pressed it to his face and breathed.
When he palmed his aching cock, he told himself he wouldn’t jerk off in the car.
When he shoved his hand in his boxers, he told himself he’d keep it all covered, at least pretend to have some shred of modesty or dignity.
When he dropped the undershirt and it unfurled, revealing a pair of boxer-briefs tucked inside, he nearly fainted.
He’s definitely going to notice.
He shoved his pants and underwear down, clumsy and frantic like there was a deadline for his orgasm, lifting his hips to get the waistbands to his thighs and cursing when he hit his head on the roof.
He’s going to notice when he’s missing two items of clothing he probably just wore, because they were right on top, you fucking idiot.
He fisted himself so tight it burned with every stroke.
I don’t care. I don’t care. Let him notice. Let him…
“Fuck–!”
I hope he knows it was me. I hope he knows and he comes and finds me and– and– beats me up for it.
Calls me a faggot and breaks my nose.
Randy tilted his head back and draped the boxers over his face, panting through the dark fabric, huffing his scent. The musk of yesterday’s hard work, sour and cold. But his, in full bloom without the stench of fresh cigarette smoke to obscure it.
Shoves his boxers in my mouth.
Presses me up against the wall.
‘This is what you wanted, huh? Fucking freak.’
Chokes me.
Benson. Benson.
“B-Benson–”
Spits on my face when he feels I’m hard.
I won’t even deny it.
‘Filthy, rotten pervert. Sick little boy…’
“Please!”
‘My boy… Randy, you’re my boy.’
Randy came and it was as though the world left him behind in some place that was neither light nor dark, and he thought that if consciousness was able to live beyond the body, that was what it would be like.
BENSON
“Hey, Jen.”
Jennifer set down her pen and smiled up at him. “All set?”
Benson nodded, fingers tapping on the front desk once the receptionist had taken his questionnaire from him.
“Been set since January,” he told her, flashing a grin, and she smiled back.
“Yeah, you’ve been waiting a long time, huh?”
He hummed in the affirmative, turning his head to look out the windows, checking for his cab but not seeing it.
“Ten years,” Benson sighed. “You’d think we’d run out of shit to talk about after two or three…”
That made Jennifer laugh. Benson was good at that; he’d relied on humor to get through most things these days. It was fine. He’d rather have been a fly on the wall, but learned the hard way that flies got swatted eventually.
And the flies that fought back got their privileges taken away. And Benson really liked smoking cigarettes and looking up at the stars, far more than he despised being noticed. More than he loathed the patronizing bullshit Dr. Walsh spewed during their sessions.
But not more than he missed Randy.
“Well, it wasn’t all talking,” Jennifer said, clicking the computer mouse like it had personally offended her. “You got an associate's degree! …And you loved the pottery classes, too, didn’t you?”
He shrugged, picking up one of the pamphlets on the counter just to have something to hold. “Yeah, it was alright. They let me make statues with dicks and vaginas, at least.”
Jennifer laughed again, tossed her sorta-brown hair off her shoulder as she rolled her chair to the table behind her. When she rolled back, she stapled some papers together and handed them over, still warm from the printer.
“For your PO,” she said. “And the referral for the psych in Westwego went through, so you can call and set up the first appointment anytime–just have to make sure you get in before October twentieth.”
“Thanks, Jen. Have a good one!”
Outside, Benson felt more capable of breathing, so of course he lit up a cigarette. Made sure to stand at the far end of the roundabout so nobody could get their panties in a twist from him being too close to the door.
He had only a couple more months before getting on the bus and leaving this bullshit behind. But he was almost there, almost free, or free-ish. And then he could make it right.
Ma’s house was completely fucked, all done up in catalogue bullshit and cleared of most of the junk she’d hoarded for three decades. The wood panels on the walls were bright and shiny from whatever the fuck the cleaners did to get rid of the nicotine stains, but the smell still lingered under the surface of the wood polish and Aunt Kath’s perfume, especially when the AC kicked on.
All the carpets were ripped up and they’d laid these absolute beauties of dark, red-brown wood panels that hardly squeaked. It was the only thing Kath had insisted on against Benson’s wishes, and he was bitter to admit it was worth the money. They’d probably make an extra fifty-thousand just for that.
It didn’t feel like home at all, but it didn’t matter except for Benson’s little feelings, so whatever. They needed to sell the piece of shit to somebody, and if pictures of the house dressed up with fruit-patterned curtains on the kitchen windows and new doorknobs and a clock shaped like a fucking cat made someone want it enough to waste their life in this waste of fucking dirt they called a town, then he wasn’t gonna complain.
He would hate it, though, and he did. Privately.
Benson would be gutting it for the goods–appliances, mostly. He needed all the help he could get; apartments in Westwego were cheap compared to other cities in Louisiana, but that was about where it ended in affordability just about anywhere in the damn country.
Aunt Kath made him dinner while got back to work scavenging. She’d been living there since the arrest, taking care of Ma until she passed, then decided to stay for reasons Benson couldn’t even imagine. Dead fucking dirt and cornfields and smog of a town. Just close enough to voyeur the extravagance of Nola without the income to take a bus there, let alone enjoy it.
Only reason Benson had been sleeping at home since his parole was because he wasn’t able to live anywhere else, because he wasn’t able to fucking drive, because he wasn’t able to do anything without his PO, Paula, signing a fucking permission slip. And despite how hard he was working, she didn’t trust him not to abscond the second he picked up a set of keys. Nevermind the fact he was a model fucking prisoner for ten fucking years.
She was absolutely justified in her suspicion, but that was neither here nor there. He just wanted to drive long enough to get through a few tapes, and if that took him across state lines, well, who gave a shit? Not like it was called the United god damned States or anything!
The moment he got out of the meeting with his PO where she told him he should start looking into finding his own place, he was on his way to the library to use their computers. He wasn’t about to spend a penny on property here once he was free, anyway, so good riddance. To all of it. On January third, he was a fucking ghost; he was never going back to Kutzburg.
He took his father’s medals and a photo album to be packed away, but passed on all the other sentimental crap for Kath to deal with. Hardly anybody left in their bloodline to want it.
After the front room had been stuffed with even more of all the shit he had to box and load up into Kath’s truck to put in storage, he ate beef stew and bread rolls while his aunt talked his ear off about her grandchild–an autistic teenager that was supposed to be some kinda prodigy just because his brain worked a little better than most of his peers. Benson knew things would even out eventually, and he pitied that poor kid for the day he woke up and realized he wasn’t as special as everyone expected him to be.
At least Aunt Kath knew how to cook, kept his mouth busy so he didn’t have to pay more attention than he felt like. Grunts and nods for replies, not context needed.
His PO called sometime after dinner. Benson took a seat on the porch, chain smoking while her voice fizzled and popped through the speaker at him. Apparently the junkyard of a factory he was trying to work at had thought he was a great candidate and wanted an in-person interview, so Paula was trying to get her schedule clear to take him. One fucking day and she was having trouble. Bullshit. Her superiors just hated that a felon had managed to get his shit together before his parole even ended, so they were giving Paula a hard time for actually trying to be helpful. Overwhelming her with busy work and odd hours and excuses of understaffing and budget cuts.
Made him feel giddy, in a way, that he was doing well enough for something like that, though it was a small thing in the shadow of his anger.
“Y’know, Paula, couldn’t you just find somebody else to take me to the interview? Can’t be that demanding a job if you got time to talk to little ol’ me for” –Benson pulled his cellphone away from his ear to look at the call duration– “near half an hour. Surely somebody’s available. What about a cop?”
“Benson, I understand you’re frustrated. I am too! But it’s complicated–”
“Come on, Paula,” he complained. “I know you’re trying. It’s just ridiculous–can’t drive, can’t take the train ‘cause I can’t afford it, can’t take the bus ‘cause it don’t go all the way there. How the fuck am I supposed to get a damn job if I can’t physically get to an interview?”
Paula grumbled but relented, said she’d ask around and let him know.
“Super,” he said, then hung up and stared at the moon, starting on another cigarette and flipping the lighter idly.
He thought about how Ma used to let him sit on the porch while she smoked–if he hadn’t been pissing her off too bad that day. Normally just smoked in the house, but every now and then she’d get in these moods where Benson swore she was like a whole new person. She’d vow to clean the house and stop smoking indoors, scrub the nicotine off the walls and talk about hiring some men to rip up the carpets and fix the water damage and everything. She’d be up all night digging through the bins in her bedroom, garbage cans on the lawn overflowing by sunrise. And she’d still be working herself to the bone, crying silently over Pa’s clothes and Matt’s soccer trophies and Benson’s baby photos. Anything to bring them closer to selling the house and getting the fuck out, she’d promise him, and he believed her every time, until he got old enough to understand that her promises didn’t mean shit.
Within a few days or sometimes weeks, she’d be herself again, quiet and grumpy and slow, but Benson loved sitting out there with her when he had the chance, liked the smell of the air mixing with smoke and the soda Ma was always drinking. She’d talk his ears off sometimes, tell him stories he thought were true at that age.
He could almost see himself living a normal life, those nights.
Not anymore. Even if he did make it out of Kutzburg, any chance of normalcy was taken from him, or maybe had never been there to begin with, from the moment he’d been born. He knew that now, as deep and true as when he figured out Ma was batshit crazy sometimes and he just couldn’t trust anything she said when she got like that.
Aunt Kath leaned on the porch railing and lit up her slims, eyeing him.
“What?” he huffed, freaked out that he was so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed her come outside.
She smiled a little. Only half of her face was moving since the stroke, but Benson thought it suited her. Maybe that was weird, but it really did, at least to him.
“Proud’a you,” Kath said, her deep-Appalachian voice crackling like a fire.
Benson grimaced, his chest feeling wonky. “Fuck off.”
“You don’t have to like it. Just how I feel.”
“Well, you can keep your feelings to yourself.”
“Mhm. I could.” She took a short drag, but held it in. Benson watched the smoke from both of them mix as it floated off on the light breeze. “You get your little attitude from Gramma, y’know. You and your mama.”
He grunted and flicked his lighter.
“She used to spit on folks talked down to her... Fought the girl tried to take Grampa from her in school. Back then, boys didn’t like that kinda girl. Mean and…prideful. But she was a daddy’s girl, his only girl, so she was tough from birth. …Guess Grampa saw somethin’ in her nobody’d ever thought a girl could be. Somethin’ special about that–”
“What’s with the history lesson?”
Kath laughed at him. “I had to guess, I’m not gonna see you again once you’re gone…” She shrugged. “Thought you’d like to know.”
Benson slumped in his chair. “Why would I care what Gramma was like as a kid?”
“‘Cause you do, Benny. You’re just too hard to see it. Gonna regret that someday. …Your Ma did, too.”
Benson closed his eyes, couldn’t handle looking at her. Bad, bad feelings were choking him. Nostalgia, mostly.
“It’s gonna rain tonight,” Kath mumbled pointlessly a while later.
He opened his eyes and she was still looking at him. “Uh-huh.”
She sighed in that old lady way that always pissed Benson off. “You gonna see that boy ‘fore you go?”
Benson’s eyes shot open. “The fuck?”
“See, attitude,” she said, gesturing at him with her cigarette. “Just like Gramma.”
Benson rubbed his face roughly, then leaned into his hands, elbows on his knees. “No, ‘course I’m not gonna see him. Probably got a fuckin’ restraining order the second he found out I got paroled. …Why the fuck would I?”
“The hell should I know? S’why I asked! …Sorry I ain’t omnippet.”
“Omnipotent,” Benson said.
“What?”
“The word’s om-ni-po-tent, not– whatever you said.”
Aunt Kath just stared at him with those freaky, old lady eyes that were somehow always watery and raw.
I gotta get the fuck out of here.
Benson shook his head with a disgusted snarl and crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.
“I’m going to fucking sleep,” he said, the chair scraping on the concrete porch when he stood up too fast. Kath sighed again and he slammed the screen door on his way inside, muttering to himself on the way to the bathroom.
Working register at a discount store was like being paid to contemplate suicide. Working double shifts four days a week, that was hell on earth.
He drank to cope. Lately his manager had been taking him home, and Benson asked him to stop by the liquor store on the way just a week after his doubles started. Would have cleared Kutzburg Liquor Store out of beer if he had the cash. Grabbed a dozen Millers, a cheap bottle of vodka, and a few packs of cigarettes instead. Sixty bucks for some shit he could’ve bought with pocket change when he was a teenager. Made him want to shoot cans in the woods, which he couldn’t ever do again for the rest of his fucking life, which made him want it triple as much.
Sixty god damned dollars for shitty liquor and shitty smokes.
And sure, it wasn’t a necessity to keep his body functioning and clean and whatnot, but it was the only way he’d survive the next three months either way.
If drinking alone in the cellar was the only thing he was allowed to do on parole–and, technically, he wasn’t supposed to, but only because of the meds the psych put him on so he did it anyway–then at least he had that much.
Gratitude was one lesson Dr. Walsh didn’t have to teach him.
He didn’t even bother going inside when he got home. Aunt Kath was usually asleep by nine, but there were worse things in that house than people. Just went around back and straight into the cellar. Flicked on the heater, then the fan he used to blow the fumes out of the cellar door, and finally lit a smoke before he sprawled in bed, beer and vodka at his side like a lover. Closest he’d ever get.
Two beers down and working on a third, he grabbed the top book off of the pile on his desk and took it back to bed with him. Flipped open to the gouged-out middle and grabbed the cigarette carton inside. He tossed the book at his feet and pulled the top of the carton up, dumping its contents into his waiting hand.
Randy–or Mr. Bradley, he supposed that’s what the students he tutored called him–looked good all cleaned up and formal in clothes that actually fit him; in a dress shirt, tie, and with his hair away from his face with some kind of product. His hairline hadn’t suffered much despite being in his thirties now, and his hair wasn’t greasy-looking, so Benson had no idea what he did to get it like that. Hairspray? He couldn’t picture Randy using hairspray because all he saw when he tried was Ma stinking up the bathroom with the fat fucking aerosol cans, teasing it with a comb and then shouting at Benson to leave the bathroom so he wouldn't get it in his eyes. Back when she used to actually leave the fuckin’ house. Back when she wasn’t thin and atrophied and dead behind the eyes.
Didn’t matter. He’d find out all about Randy soon enough.
He was working at a high school in New Orleans, music education, part-time private lessons instructor. That was how Benson found the picture, on the school’s website when he first searched up Randy’s name and it was the only result that wasn’t about the Burgers incident in ‘09. The website had photos of all the staff with little biographies underneath them. Randy’s was just a plain old description of his job and mentioned him graduating university with a master’s in music performance and a minor in music education.
Good boy.
Benson had gone to the CVS the next day and had the portrait printed on the nice, thick, shiny paper; hadn’t even meant to make it cigarette-sized, but it worked out in the end. He snipped off the excess and that was that, his little Randolph memento.
Now he keeps it hidden away in the cellar like a teenager stashing pot because he caught Aunt Kath snooping in his bedroom one too many times. He’d put some nudies out on the bed just to get back at her, hopefully make her stop, but deep down he was just looking for a fight.
Hadn’t used the mags to jerk off since the nineties, hadn’t used anything but his mind since he was thirty-one years old.
But Aunt Kath didn’t care if he jerked it to Playboy or Playgirl. There was no screaming or slurs or anything. She just asked why he never said, was he seeing anybody, normal bullshit personal questions he wasn’t going to answer.
It felt like the world had left him behind. Felt like going to prison had paused time for him, but for everyone else it just kept moving, and he felt that the most acutely when she’d looked straight into his eyes and said she loved him, that his Ma wouldn’t have hated him for it.
Felt that shit in his ribs like a knife, and he’d been wondering ever since why something that was supposed to be good had to hurt so damn much. And why did he feel disappointed that she didn’t care? Wasn’t that the ideal scenario? Love and peace and pride on planet Earth? He should’ve been happy. He should’ve burst into tears and hugged her and bought her a rainbow flag to put up on the fucking porch.
Would Randy care? Benson asked himself as he stared at Randy’s face now, all grown up and smiling pretty.
Then he noticed the chair, tucked in neat under the work table. He didn’t do that. Kath sure as shit didn’t do that; she could hardly do the porch stairs let alone the cellar. Couldn’t even climb into her own truck without a hand.
What the fuck?
With a groan of pain, Benson got up and stomped into the house. Kath was on the phone with her daughter, so he just breezed past her. There were no other cars parked out front except the neighbor’s and Kath’s rotting truck. He started checking out the house, looking in all the rooms.
His bedroom was definitely off, but he couldn’t place it. Something just didn’t feel right, had his hair standing on end. All his cassettes were there, his clothes, his shoes. He didn’t have anything else worth taking that wasn’t sitting in the living room, and Kath would’ve told him if they’d had a break-in–or she’d have called him from the station after shooting the burglar, if she’d been allowed to keep her purse-pistol in the house.
He stared at his bedroom for long enough without answers that he eventually reached a critical point of needing to piss. While he was in there, the thought of a hot shower overrode his suspicion, the endless work aching in his joints and swelling up his feet pushing him over the edge. He cleaned up his facial hair, showered and brushed his teeth, and then went to get dressed for the night. Frowned the whole time, making his head hurt.
He dumped his dirty clothes in the hamper.
He paused.
He picked his dirty clothes back up from the hamper.
He didn’t have the strongest visual memory, but he was pretty damn sure he put his clothes in the hamper last night. Didn’t know where they could be otherwise. He’d gone home, cleaned up, passed out after a beer and a roach. Didn’t even go to the cellar.
He dug around a little, found yesterday’s Dollar General polo and slacks, his socks, but not his undershirt and underwear.
What the actual fuck?
He tugged on some pajama pants as fast as he could and found Kath in the kitchen washing a mug.
“Benny!” she shouted over the water. “That boy Randy came over today lookin’ for you.”
All air and sound evaporated from the room. Benson’s heart pounded rabidly in his chest, and he choked on his own breath, his lungs catching, making him cough as he said, “What the fuck did you just say?”
Kath turned off the water with a huff. “I said, Randy was looking for you.”
“Randy. Today?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When? Wh– Fuck! Why didn’t you call me? What the fuck? What did you say? What did he want?”
“Christ almighty, Benson, what’re you shouting for? You worried somethin’ was gonna happen to me? Skittish little man like that? Thought he was gonna give me one of them Mormon Bibles.” She chuckled to herself and put up the mug, still going on, “Way you talk about him, I’s surprised he wasn’t like one’a them young studs from your dirty magazines.”
The chair was pushed in.
My clothes are missing.
Randy was here.
He felt sick to his stomach. He felt violent.
“Did you let him in?” he asked gravely, squeezing his hands into fists.
“I wasn’t sure if you were working, so I let him check the cellar.”
Benson cracked his neck, blew air out of his nostrils.
“Don’t you look at me like that. You know I can’t do stairs these days–”
He felt like he’d just been vivisected.
“–but he just ran off. Didn’t even say goodbye. He wasn’t feeling well, anyhow, but you’d think–”
Benson punched the cabinet door closest to him with a guttural noise, full-body trembling, and then stared at the deep crack running up the length of it like he might have been able to set it on fire if he looked at it hard enough.
Kath left the kitchen, a quick and silent retreat.
Sometimes Benson wanted to leave himself, too.
Then the unhinged half of the cabinet door peeled away and tumbled to the floor.