Ben Soul

go.”

  “I understand the grieving process requires its own time for each person. That does not explain why you indicate no expectation that sometime in the future you will re-marry.” Dr. Sicknell’s blue eyes flashed frozen fire.

  “I don’t know that I’ll marry again. This divorce has hurt so much that I’m unwilling to risk another go-round.” Dickon spread his hands on the Doctor’s desk. His fingers streaked the wax as he spread his hands.

  “Nonsense! Your attitude has nothing to do with fear of being hurt. It’s all quite clear in here, Reverend Shayne. You are a candidate for the lockup ward. You have, sir, latent homosexual tendencies!” Dr. Sicknell pounded her wrinkled fist on the desk. More speckles of powder shook loose from the crevices of her jowls and sprinkled themselves across her collar. “I am recommending to the Presbytery that you be enrolled in long-term psychiatric care.”

  Dickon sat stunned. She had penetrated his shields, firing photon torpedoes that they could not keep out. Unaccountably he remembered Larry Ott and Benny Fitz in high school, and the sexual explorations they had made under the bleachers during the interminable football games teen culture had required they attend. Shame reddened his face. He stared at her, shock immobilizing his green eyes.

  Dr. Sicknell watched him for a long moment. “You may go now,” she said. “You know my opinion.”

  “Yes,” Dickon said. “I know your opinion.” He stood, praying his knees would hold him.

  “My office will send you a written copy of your results and my conclusions. It will be a copy of the documents I will send to the Presbytery Ministerial Commission. That’s all.” She waved her hand at him, dismissing him.

  Dickon walked out, fragments of his inner self floating in a miasmic soup within him.

  Minnie Inquires

  Ben was just leaving the mailroom with a stack of mail in his cart when Minnie spoke to him. He looked back at her.

  “So. Where you off to?” she asked him.

  “This is the executive floor mail. It’s high priority.” Ben started out the door again.

  “Not that urgent.” She gestured at his chair. “Sit down for a minute. You’ve got some answers to give old Minnie.”

  Ben chose to surrender to her command with a quizzical “Old Minnie?” response. He knew she prided herself on looking younger than her forty-five years.

  “Don’t get wise. So I watched old movies this weekend. What did you do? Burn oil in the library?” She glared at him with ferocity only she could summon.

  “No.” Ben bit the word off short, and made to rise.

  Minnie forestalled him with a glance. “Well, out with it. You’ve been buzzing like a happy bee in a bed full of flowers. What happened?”

  Ben replied, with all innocence, “I went out, like you told me to.”

  “Where?”

  Ben equivocated. “Just walking, Saturday.”

  Minnie slapped the table in front of her for emphasis. “Walking where? Do I have to get forceps to pull it out of you?”

  “I went walking along the Street. Met a man I knew from the earthquake relief. He knows you, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Len DeLys. He’s the one who sent me to Indigent Aborigine to look for work.”

  “Of course, I know Len. Unattached, a little older. How’s he doing? Did he buy you a drink?”

  Ben grinned. “A couple of them. That was Saturday. He bought me dinner on Sunday, at the Floundering Flatfish.”

  Minnie raised her eyebrows for emphasis. “Oh ho! Expensive place. Good food, too. Lot of cute waiters, if you’re into guys.”

  “Then we went to a concert performance of The Mikado.”

  Minnie shook her head slowly, wonderingly. “Len DeLys and you. Who’d have thought?”

  Ben looked bashfully at his mail cart. “I don’t know what it’ll come to.”

  Minnie put on her wise-old-woman voice. “Enjoy it while it lasts. Better get that mail upstairs, now. The muckety-mucks have to have their letters.”

  “Right,” Ben said. Minnie watched him go, a smile playing hopscotch on her lips.

  For the next two weeks Ben had to handle the mailroom by himself, since Minnie had to fill in at the central reception desk for the receptionist who was on vacation. He didn’t see much of her until he went one day into the lunchroom to eat. She was sitting at a table with a space available across from her.

  Minnie grinned at him. She was decked out in a formal business suit, because she had to keep up the corporate image as the interim receptionist. Ben thought the garb looked uncomfortable on her. He had a brief vision of the suit jumping off Minnie and running away in terror. He thrust it aside.

  “Mind if I join you, Minnie?” he said.

  “No. Sit down. Didn’t you have plans to eat out? Or was that another day?”

  Ben wondered how she knew his plans, and then remembered he had mentioned he might need help for an hour to their boss. “Yeah, but Len called,” Ben explained. “Said he couldn’t make it for lunch, so we’re going to supper together.”

  “Been seeing quite a bit of him, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Minnie said solemnly, “Maybe you’re falling in love with him.”

  Ben frowned. “I don’t know…he’s a lot older than I am.”

  “Only in young queer years. He’s not forty yet. That’s not a lot older than you are.”

  “Almost twelve years. That’s quite a lot. He’s old enough to be my older brother.”

  “In twelve years that won’t mean so much.”

  “What?” Ben spooned his soup into his mouth while Minnie answered him. “I mean, when you’re forty, fifty-two won’t be so far away. And that Len’s a looker, for a man.”

  “I don’t know that he’s interested in me, not in that way.”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “No. I don’t know how.”

  “Open your mouth and let the words roll out. Been to bed with him yet?”

  Ben blushed. “No,” Ben said.

  “Want to?” Minnie chuckled.

  Ben thought for a moment. Then he said, “Yes, but it’s not just sex. I like being with him, and doing things with him, talking to him.”

  “Is there anybody else you’d rather be with?”

  “No. I’ve spent a lot of time with Len. I haven’t been meeting other guys.”

  “Yup. Like I thought. You’re falling in love. Never mind how old he is.”

  “I don’t know, Minnie. You come up with some far-out ideas sometimes.”

  “I’ve been around, Ben. I know some things when I see them. Eat up. You’ve got a bundle of stuff to distribute downstairs, I imagine. I’ve got to go receive people.” She stood, gathering her dirty dishes on her tray. “Just ask, Ben. Len’s a gay man. I’m sure he’s interested ‘that way’ in you.” She marched off, tray borne before her like a platter with a severed head on it. Ben watched her go, smiling ruefully to himself at her commanding him.

  Chance Meeting

  Vanna jumped in startlement as a man sat down beside her on the bus and said, “Well! Hello, Mrs. Shayne!”

  She turned and looked. It was, of all people, Ray Sincaine from the Two Tree church. Vanna disliked him almost as much as Dickon did.

  “Hello, Ray,” she said, as civilly as she could. “Fancy meeting you on this bus line.”

  “How have you been? Coping with the single state?”

  “Yes.” Vanna hurried on to ask a question. She didn’t want to answer any more of Ray’s probing than she had to; anything she said the townsfolk of Two Tree would wildly distort. “How are you, and all the rest of the Two Tree church doing?”

  Ray, easily deceived into believing Vanna really cared about the congregation, began telling her about the new pastor, the increase in Sunday School attendance, and went on to the marryings and buryings in the community. Vanna pretended to listen
while Ray rattled on. She was grateful she seldom rode this bus line; Ray let her know he was regularly consulting a physician in the City whose offices were on the route.

  “You know about Dickon’s new position,” Ray said. Vanna turned her attention to Ray’s talk.

  “No. I haven’t talked to him since the divorce was final.”

  “He’s working in the City, now, you know.” Ray beamed; he always liked to have news his trapped listeners hadn’t heard.

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “He’s helping at a mission for poor people on Lost Lane. And going to the City College. He assists the college chaplain. I thought he’d be good at campus ministry.” Vanna pursed her lips.

  “I suppose he’s still grieving over the divorce?” she asked, smiling a false smile of concern.

  “No, I don’t think so. When I saw him, he said he missed the dog more than he missed you or the congregation.” Malice sparkled in Ray’s eyes. He felt Vanna stiffen with anger beside him.

  “That sounds like something he would say,” she responded through clenched teeth. “Please excuse me, Ray. This is my stop.” He stood to let her exit the seat.

  “Nice to see you,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Ray,” she said as she flashed him an insincere smile and got off the bus. She had an extra three blocks to walk, but she preferred that to any more of Ray Sincaine’s baiting. Vanna was little inclined to introspection, but even she wondered a little bit at how angry she felt on hearing Ray’s news. That Dickon was succeeding at something, however small, infuriated her. She hated him for not being what she wanted in a husband. Quite irrationally, she blamed him for every wrong thing in her own life, not that things