Ben Soul
Richard W. George
Copyright 2013 Richard W. George
All rights reserved.
If you want to have a friend read this novel, urge them to buy their own electronic copy. I have set the price low, to make downloading a small strain on the ordinary budget.
The Great Temblor
Ben came to the City on a day when the afternoon fog wrapped the City in a gray blanket. The great towers of the City’s financial district disappeared into the mists, seeming to be topless. Ben thought of them as “topless towers” like those in the Marlowe play. Excitement surged through his weary body. Twenty-five hours on a bus had exhausted his strength, but the approach to the City revived him. Here he hoped to find the freedom to be himself that his home state refused him.
The City bus station was like most bus stations in that era, rundown and covered with pigeon droppings. A surly attendant perched on a wobbly stool inside a kiosk with rust stained windows. Ben approached the attendant. He had a sunken chest, a Prince Valiant soup bowl haircut, and his pale scalp showed through the thinning hair.
“Sir,” Ben said, “can you direct me to the Dancing Pixie Motel?”
“I’m not a sir,” the attendant replied in a surprisingly girlish voice.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said. “Ma’am, can you direct me to the Dancing Pixie Motel?”
“I can.” She pinched her lips together, as though to trap any words that might escape the cage of her teeth.
“Will you, please? Direct me?”
“Go to the street. Turn left. Walk three blocks up the hill. Turn right on Hauser Street. Motel’s in the middle of the block.” She turned away from Ben, dismissing him. He silently repeated her directions to himself, and went to the street. The number of people walking in both directions astonished him. He’d never seen so many people on one block before except during the Christmas shopping rush. Men and women in suits mingled with longhaired people in patched jeans, all hurrying to wherever they had to go. Ben was almost afraid to step into the stream, lest he be trampled trying to get where he wanted.
One blonde young man, walking by, slowed as he saw Ben in the archway to the bus station, and raked him from head to foot with a penetrating glance. Ben blushed to the roots of his brown hair. He felt disheveled, and the blonde’s stare had almost undressed him. The blonde smiled at him. Ben frowned. What should he do now? The blonde shrugged, quickened his pace, and went on by. Ben summoned up his courage with a deep breath and plunged into the human stream. He let it hurry him up the hill to Hauser Street, where he did find his motel.
When he had checked in, Ben went to his room on the fifth floor. He opened the drapes and looked out at the street. Cars clogged the street’s three lanes. Crowds cluttered the sidewalks. Everyone hurried, many with their heads down, as if they feared some sudden weather change might drench them. The noise, though muted by the double-paned window, almost overpowered Ben’s hearing. He closed the drapes against the sound, turned out the lights, and fell asleep, still clothed, on the bed.
In the City Zoo, an old llama lifted her head. She wore her llama appearance for disguise. She was a unicorn with a unique horn. A ripple in the Cosmic Continuum, a new element, had come to the City. Something in it promised future benefit. The unicorn set the information aside in her brain, and went back to grazing and contemplating the twisted and strained rock that underlay the City.
Ben woke up several hours later. He opened the drapes. Light poured into the room, red, blue, and yellow flickering light. The City’s neon night danced before his dazed eyes. He turned on a bedside lamp to look at the folder the motel provided. It listed, among other things, several restaurants. Only one was open all night. Ben consulted the clock. It was ten o’clock, local time. He took a shower, dressed in clean clothes, and went out on the street to find the Languishing Langoustine Burger Palace and Fish Fry. It was not far to go, for which Ben was grateful. The nighttime street was ominous with shadowed doorways and lurid patches of light. It was the Languishing Langoustine sign that was pumping the neon into his room.
The place was not crowded. There were three or four customers, each sitting singly, staring into an unseen emptiness only they could penetrate. None of them paid attention to Ben’s entry. The reek of fried fish grew stronger as he approached the counter. He had thought fish and chips might be a reasonable choice, but the smell quite put him off. He chose, instead, a cheeseburger and fries. He asked for hot tea. The young waitress, Fern Boston according to the nameplate on her register, stared dumbly at him.
“No tea,” she said. “Coffee’s older than I am. Try a cola.”
Ben yielded, and ordered the cola. When he got round to drinking it, it was mostly carbonated water and sugar. One bottle of cola syrup and a barrel of carbonated water must have provided the Languishing Langoustine with many glasses of the concoction. The cheeseburger was poor. Fortunately, Ben’s digestion in his twenties was cast iron. He downed the mess, ate all the greasy fries, swallowed all the carbonated water, and left. He’d have liked to explore the street, but he was uncertain of the neighborhood. He determined daylight would be a better time for checking it all out.
The night clerk looked up at him as he came in. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” Ben said. “I’m just on my way to my room.”
“What number?” The clerk turned to a rack of cup hooks holding keys behind him.
“Five-oh-one,” Ben said. “I’ve got the key.”
“Let me see it.”
Ben stared at the clerk. “Why?”
“So I know you belong here,” the clerk said. “We get a lot of sneak ins, if we don’t watch out. Then they sleep in the halls. Scares our customers.”
Ben took out his key and showed it to the clerk. “Okay,” the clerk said. “Next time you go out, leave the key at the desk. It’s safer that way, and so are you.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” the clerk said.
Ben went upstairs to his room. He went in, undressed, and lay down. Sleep eluded him. The neon crawdad blinked on and off, on and off. The burger and fries he had eaten rambled through the caverns of his abdomen with abandon. Every time he closed his eyes, he got an instant replay of his boss in Denver firing him.
Banks breed assistant vice presidents the way dogs in the dump breed fleas. Joe King, Ben’s boss at Neighborhood National Bank, was no more pompous or asinine than most of his kind. He called Ben into his office. The office lights shone from his balding head. His weak chin was smaller than the knot on his tie.
“One of your colleagues has reported most disturbing information about you, Mr. Soul,” he said to Ben.
“What sort of information?”
“He reports that he saw you, on the recent holiday weekend, in Central City. He observed you entering or leaving the Glory Hole Saloon, not once, but three times.” The Glory Hole Saloon was a gay bar.
“Who is this colleague?” Ben asked.
“I am not at liberty to say.” Joe King’s face was contorted with contempt.
“Did he observe me from inside the Glory Hole, or outside?” Ben asked.
Joe King squeezed his lips together as if he had to resist someone’s spooning bad tasting medicine into his mouth. “I presume outside. This colleague has spoken with Mr. Fuller Grace, our esteemed President. Mr. Grace is most distressed.”
“Why?” Ben asked. “I went to that bar on my own time, and made no comment or otherwise indicated I’m connected with Neighborhood National Bank.”
“That is irrelevant.” Joe King began tapping his desk with his pen. “You are aware, I should think, that the Glory Hole Saloon is a n
otorious gathering place for inverts and other perverts?”
“It is?” Ben said in mock wonder.
“The Neighborhood National Bank family must be above all reproach.” Joe King’s pompous righteousness was so overdone it was almost comic. “Mr. Grace has decided you are not a fit person to work in this bank.”
“He has?”
“Your employment is forthwith terminated.” Joe spat the words out. Ben wondered if Joe was secretly enjoying playing the tough boss. “You will gather your personal items and nothing else, not a pen, not even a paper clip, and leave this establishment,” Joe continued.
Ben stood stunned. “You have one half hour to complete your exit before I must have you forcibly removed. The guard will provide you your severance check as you leave.”
Ben got a month’s severance pay because it was in his contract. He hoped it wounded Mr. Fuller Grace to the quick to have to give him that money. He closed his savings and checking accounts, packed a suitcase, and bought a ticket to the City.
Now, here he was, tossing on a lumpy bed in his briefs, in a motel called the Dancing Pixie, trying to hypnotize himself to sleep with the light from a neon crawdad. Mr. Fuller Grace had ripped open the little cocoon Ben had lived in. As he stared into the flickering night, Ben wondered if he had it in him to soar like a butterfly. Eventually, he slept, dreaming an incoherent dream about dancing kangaroos. The neon