Dark Corners

Still Waters

Benjamin Waters sat at the far end of the counter in Izzy’s Deli on East 74th Street sipping his coffee. The pin-striped fellow to his left asked for the salt and Benjamin pushed it gently in the man’s direction.

“Thanks,” said the suit.

Benjamin didn’t answer. The man looked and smelled like a lawyer. Besides, Benjamin Waters was fully engaged in studying the perfectly pear shaped buttocks on the waitress behind the counter. She was new.

Suzie was usually behind the counter at noon. This one’s name was Nola. Benjamin felt his lips grow dry. He did not moisten them with his tongue, however. Too revealing. Instead he sipped his coffee and used Izzy’s decaf to provide the necessary humidity.

The way Nola moved. The way she moved beneath that sheer yellow uniform. It was obvious how she was making him do it. The way she jiggled forced Benjamin to lean over the counter, grab her hips with both hands, lift her high in the air above his head, and begin biting. Biting through the phony lace apron strings, biting through the yellow polyester, biting through the black knit panties he knew were beneath, biting deep into the creamy pillows of her buttocks, the feral cries coming from his throat, the hot blood drowning the cries, the warm wetness of it running down his chest onto the floor—

“Would you like me to freshen that up?”

The waitress, Nola, was standing before him, coffee pot in hand. Benjamin pulled his mind back from his cannibal feast and glanced up at her. Nola’s lips, touched with the color of ripe peaches, were parted in a smile that revealed a slight overbite.

Benjamin looked down at his cup as he felt the heat rise in his collar. “Please,” he answered.

The heat, he knew, was the last vestige of an alien feeling called embarrassment; a feeling that suspected that others might be able to see what he was thinking, and might catch him thinking it.

He knew no one could see what he was thinking. No one could tell, no one could react, accuse, or punish. He almost had the feeling entirely conquered. Once his victory was complete, he could experience his chosen realities at will, while continuing to travel within the one that contained Izzy’s Deli, East 74th Street, and the Merit Literary Agency where he held down a desk and attempted to sell literature to baboons who were only interested in purchasing “another.” Another Godfather, another Carrie, another Ninja damned turtle rapping Muppet heap of horseshit.

“You’re Benny Waters, aren’t you?”

“Benjamin.” He looked up at her. She was still smiling. “How do you know me?”

“Suzie. She told me all about you.” The outside ends of her eyebrows were turned wickedly up. Her eyes were greenish blue.

“She told you what about me?”

He felt light-headed; his skin tingled. Trapped. She’s got your number, Benjamin Waters. It’s all over for you. Your secrets are everyone else’s idle gossip. The cops are waiting outside the deli door.

Suzie had done some time in Benjamin’s fantasies, although he never before suspected that she suspected. Her suspicions could have only been in the general, he reminded himself. After all, the specifics had been rather lurid, involving at times several partners, and once a well endowed Clydesdale, straight off the beer wagon.

“Suzie said you’re a literary agent.”

“I work for one,” said Benjamin. “The Merit Agency, around the corner.”

Why did her eyes seem to speak a different language? She had knowing eyes. Sherlock Holmes had eyes like that. “It must be interesting work,” she began, but was interrupted by another customer who wanted coffee. As she left, Benjamin glanced down at his watch. It was approaching time for him to end his lunch break. He looked up and allowed his eyes a moment longer to continue their exploration of Nola’s buttocks.

Someone was watching him.

The cop sitting facing him from one of the tiny imitation wrought iron tables near the street window had a face like a shark: white, dead, and full of menace. The officer was looking at him, his thick lips curled into a sneer. “You have to do it with your eyes ‘cause you can’t get one in your hands,” said the patrolman’s look.

Smart said let it go. Whoever listened to smart?

“Why don’t you write a book about it, asshole?” Benjamin shouted across the deli at the cop. Everyone, eyes wide and mouths open, looked first at Benjamin, then at their immediate surroundings to determine who Benjamin had been addressing. The cop, his brow knotting into a storm, rose to his feet and cocked his head as he tucked his thumbs behind his gun belt.

“What did you say?”

“Don’t tell me you’re deaf as well as stupid, you butt ugly blue fuzzed flatfoot asshole you.” Benjamin closed his eyes, put back his head, and laughed at the officer.

“I said it,” he shouted, “I said it, and I’m glad I said it, I tell you! Glad! Glad!” He laughed again.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the officer’s gun was out of its holster, aimed in his direction. The gun jumped, the concussion smacking every eardrum in the room, as it fired.

Benjamin quickly grabbed the lawyer, and using him as a shield, pushed his way toward the enraged cop. He felt the lawyer’s body twitch violently each time one of the officer’s slugs tore into it. When he was a step from the cop, he shoved the lawyer’s lifeless form into the officer and disarmed him.

Once he had the gun in his hands, Benjamin blew the cop away, turned and smoked a customer who attempted to help the officer, and pulped the face of the customer behind the first just for good measure—

“Here’s your check,” interrupted Nola.

“Thanks,” answered Benjamin as he looked to see the amount.

He pulled out three dollars for the tip. He usually left two for Suzie. Nola was different. Special. It was the eyebrows. The mouth. The eyes.

On his way to the cashier, Benjamin passed the patrolman. The cop was half way through a lettuce and tomato sandwich. “Still watching the calories, Tony?” Benjamin asked the cop.

“Yeah. The doc wants fifteen more pounds off by the end of next month. Hey, Benny, how do you stay so skinny?”

“Surgery, seltzer, and celery. And that’s Benjamin.”

Tony the cop laughed. “Yeah, sure. Later.” He went back to his sandwich as Benjamin handed his money and check to Julio and stepped into the chill that was whistling down the street. He pulled up the collar of his coat against the wind and turned the corner. There, huddling for warmth in a doorway was that same damned bum that whined at him for money every time he passed. The same damned army blanket for a coat, the same damned red stocking cap with the holes in it. The bum did it again.

“Hey, buddy. Can you spare a couple of bucks? I’m really hurting. Can ya, buddy? Huh?” The begging in his voice was not matched by the look in his cold gray eyes. The eyes said, I know I got you. I got you right by the guilts. You got a job. I can see you got a job. The world can see you got one and I don’t. The money is mine. I got a right to it. You owe me.

“Owe you? I owe you?” Benjamin stepped into the doorway and faced the derelict. “Here, you son of a bitch.” He reached beneath the bum’s blanket and pulled out a three quarter’s full bottle of muscatel. “Here’s your god, you bug infested piece of shit! Ask it for money! Ask it for a place to sleep!”

The bum grabbed for the bottle. Benjamin took it and shoved it neck first into the derelict’s mouth. He smacked the bottom of the bottle with the heel of his hand, driving it down into the man’s throat. As the bum choked, Benjamin kicked the bum’s legs out from beneath him. Down he fell, smashing his head on the concrete landing, the bottle still caught in his throat, the cheap wine filling his esophagus. Benjamin hauled back his foot and swung the toe of his jack boot at the bum’s chin, shattering the glass as it struck—

“Thanks, Benny,” said the bum as he took the two dollars Benjamin had given him and tucked it away beneath his blanket coat. “Give those publishers hell.”

“Sure, Freddy. Take care of yourself.”

The bum hid his hands beneath his armpits and stamped his feet against the cold as he looked past Benjamin for the next touch of the day.

“And it’s not Benny; it’s Benjamin,” he muttered.

On his way back to his office, Benjamin Waters forced a middle aged matron to eat her own poodle’s feces, followed by the poodle. He left her hanging in a tree by her dog’s rhinestone studded leash. In addition, he tore out the tongue of a loud cabbie, jammed a coin pot up the ass of a bell-ringing Salvation Army sergeant, cut the throat of a pushy flower lady, and had sex with a cover girl model in the back of her maroon limo.

Just before he entered his own building, he decided that he had had enough. He was fed up and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. At that moment the Chrysler Building imploded, sending the entire column of rubble down to the street in a choking cloud of mental dust. Prior evacuation of the building had not been a particular concern of Benjamin’s, since allowing oneself to work in such a structure in effect condoned the thing, compounding the crime.

Before his desk at the agency, Benjamin Waters mentally flipped a coin. Heads he would call his therapist. Tails he would call the next editor on his worksheet. The mental coin, as it always did, came up tails.

The editor was Colin Dean, a dribbling case of arrested mental development who couldn’t tell Voltaire from a voltmeter. Dean might be interested in the new Roger Parish novel, but Benjamin had been warned in advance not to expect anything near what Roger had gotten for his first novel. Times are lean, budgets are tight, and that’s how that song is played.

Benjamin was convinced that Colin Dean had spent his entire perverted youth watching Baretta reruns. And that’s the name of that game.

At Grover Hill, Dean’s secretary put Benjamin on hold. His ear filled with Bobby Darin’s rendition of “Mack the Knife,” Oh the shark bites, with his teeth, dear, scarlet billows, eek, eek, etc.

Benjamin hated being put on hold, particularly when he knew it was only for effect. He could see Colin Dean, that eternal smirk on his pasty face, looking at the telephone as he left his office to gab with someone or to take a leak.

Enough was enough. It wasn’t all games, deals, and hey baby on the telephone. Roger Parish needed to eat, too. His family needed to eat. No one can spend four years writing a book only to get a fifteen thousand dollar advance and expect to live, support a family.

Put Benjamin Waters on hold. He’s only second string at Merit. A little cool down time on hold will set the proper tone for negotiations. You give us the book; we give you squat. Have a nice day.

Benjamin lowered the receiver to his desk, grabbed his coat, and in moments he was on the sidewalk hailing a cab. How long would he have on hold? The last time Colin Dean had kept him there sixteen minutes. The time before it was closer to twenty.

The cab pulled up to the curb before a familiar structure on the row. Throwing a twenty at the cabbie, he rushed into the lobby and took an express elevator to the twenty-first floor, the home of Grover Hill, Ltd. They used Ltd. instead of Inc. because they thought it lent a touch of class to a publishing house keeping itself afloat through cookbooks and soft core porn. Benjamin pushed his way into the lobby and past the receptionist into a door-lined corridor. Reaching a tee, he turned left. He knew the way to Colin Dean’s office, and he marched toward it with the resolve of a professional assassin prepared to risk all to settle a matter of the deepest honor. “I do not purchase regret at such a price!” he cried.

“Hold it!” shouted a voice from behind. He kept marching until he heard the distinctly metallic click of a gun being cocked. He froze, turned slowly, and looked at the security guard advancing upon him, his pistol held in regulation dual, stiff-armed fashion. He had been hired during the Salmon Rushdie scare because Grover Hill had a Middle East cookbook on the stands with a cartoon of a camel on it. In later editions the Middle East became Manhattan and the camel became a couple of home boys munching baklava and collard greens.

“Stay cool, buddy. Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Okay? Just stay cool.” More late night, Hill Street Blues, I-can-talk-him-down, crisis intervention dialog.

“Death to baklava!” Benjamin screamed as he sprang to his left through an open doorway. As he did so the guard’s gun barked, the slug splintering the door frame. In the office there was a middle-aged woman in jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and bifocals sitting at a one of four desks in the office. Her desk was piled with book manuscripts: wrapped, unwrapped, rewrapped. The hopes of countless pitifully naive writers who wanted nothing more out of life than to share their visions, touch a piece of fame, and eat once in awhile. The woman had long stringy brown hair, wide frightened eyes, and incredible body odor. Her feet were up on the desk, and the manuscript she had spread on her lap slid to the floor as she held her hands to her mouth.

Benjamin felt there were some things he should say to her on behalf of the manuscripts and their authors, but they all jammed in his throat at once. How many times had she ditched a promising writer’s career because her stomach was upset, or a cabbie was rude, or her PMS meter was off the scale? How many careers and lives had been trashed because the author’s pages had not contained the politically correct slant, the cause of the moment, the verbal wash-and-wear fad of the hour? There was simply too much to say. Bending over, Benjamin took the dull edged letter opener off her cluttered desk, thrust its point through her left eye and out the back of her head. She hadn’t even had time to scream. Her mouth was open, a single string of drool hanging from her astonished lower lip.

Withdrawing the letter knife from her head, Benjamin whirled and faced the door. Across the hall was the closed door of Colin Dean’s office. His name was on the door’s frosted glass pane.

“I’m coming for you, Dean!” he bellowed. “Do you hear me? I’m coming for you!”

It would be simple. Run, leap across the hall, dive through the glass panel, and take Colin Dean and throw him through his own office window. That accomplished, he could then shout after him, “If you can’t do the time, Colin, don’t do the crime!” After that it wouldn’t matter what happened.

Taking a deep breath, Benjamin braced himself against the dead reader’s desk and—

“Sorry to keep you on hold for so long, Benny.” The sounds of “Mack the Knife” had been replaced by the words of Colin Dean. The editor’s voice was soft and articulate. Benjamin looked at the receiver in his hand as though it had appeared there through magic. He turned and looked around his office: the desk, the filing cabinets, the birch paneled walls. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head as he listened on the phone. Part of him was still across town trying to kill Colin Dean. As he sat in his office he could hear the glass shattering, Dean’s screams as his body hurtled toward the sidewalk.

“If you can’t do the time…”

And Dean was talking in his ear about the Roger Parish manuscript. Grover Hill’s editor was still alive. Despite that, the day turned out rather well. The final figure on the Parish novel came in with a broom strapped to it’s bowsprit. Simple really. Colin Dean kept interpreting Benjamin’s stunned silence as someone who could not believe the crap he was being offered and was about to take a walk. They eventually settled on an amount for Roger’s manuscript that was almost triple the author’s previous advance. In addition, Dean gave Benjamin Waters the biggest compliment an editor can give a literary agent. He said, “You’re getting to be a real pain in the ass, Benny. I won’t be so easy next time.”

After the talk was ended and Benjamin had hung up, he collapsed on his desk in tears. He was listening to the sirens as the crowd on the sidewalk gathered around Colin Dean’s bloody smashed corpse.

“You are the one who asked for this session, Benjamin,” said his therapist. “I had a devil of a time getting hold of someone to cancel to make a hole for you. Now that you’ve got it, what’s the emergency? You’re just going to sit there?”

Don Franklin was tweedy, bookish, and blinked large blue eyes through oversized lenses. He looked like a bass who taught comparative literature at Columbia. His foot twitched impatiently. “Well?”

“Thanks for the support, Don.”

The therapist grimaced, took a deep breath, and nodded as he let it out. “Okay. I’m steamed. This wasn’t the most convenient emergency you’ve ever had. Anyway, I apologize. I know you can’t pick your moments. But I did say they’d get worse if you quit therapy.”

“It takes real class not to say I told you so, Don.”

Don Franklin’s eyebrows went up. “Look, you can either tell me what’s the matter, sit there like a post, call me names, or whatever. You’re going to be billed for the time all the same.”

Benjamin leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and felt the tears well in his eyes. “It’s really getting out of control. It used to be fun. It still is fun a lot of the time. I get to do things, say things, that a lot of people would secretly like to do—”

“No,” interrupted the therapist. “You do not do those things, and you do not say them. It’s all in your head. It’s all fantasy.”

“I hear them. I see them. Hell, I even smell them.”

“No you don’t, Benny. You don’t see them, hear them or smell them.” Benjamin listened in astonishment to the therapist. He couldn’t remember why he had called the idiot in the first place; his superior attitude, his lies, all of his own unresolved issues. The man was being paid to infect his clients with his own disease, and now finally it had come out. Don was totally out of touch with reality.

After all, he had just called Benjamin Waters “Benny.” Everyone in the world knew about that. Benjamin sprang out of the chair, whirled about, and struck Don Franklin in the head with his naked foot. The therapist fell backwards over his chair and scrambled to get to his feet. Again the ball of Benjamin’s calloused foot struck his head, again, and again until Don Franklin’s body was still, the blood from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes pooling on the hardwood floor.

“Benny, are you all right?”

Benjamin lifted his head from his desk, opened his eyes, and looked up to see Alex Merit’s concerned face peering in the door. “I was resting my eyes, Mr. Merit. I guess I have a bit of a headache.” Benjamin decided against calling Don Franklin for an appointment. What would be the point? The man was hopeless.

He tapped his fingers on the papers in front of him. “I just finished talking with Colin Dean at Grover. We have an offer on the new Parish novel.”

“Oh?” Alex Merit pushed his way into the small office and took the papers from Benjamin’s outstretched hand. His florid jowls quivered as his quick eyes scanned the worksheet. “Excellent,” he murmured beneath his breath as his eyebrows went up. “Excellent,” he said out loud. “I’m proud of you, Benny. You’ve done a fine job here. Take your headache and go home, son. You’ve earned yourself the rest of the day off.”

“Thanks, Mr. Merit. I might do that.”

“You’ve been here long enough, Benny. Call me Alex.”

“Only if you call me Benjamin.”

Alex Merit laughed and nodded. “That’s right. Benjamin. Okay, Benjamin.”

After Mr. Merit left his office, Benjamin waited to see if some trailing feather of fantasy might make him a junior partner in the agency or bring the entire building down in flames, but nothing materialized. Anyway, he did have a slight headache, and he felt emotionally drained. Benjamin decided to grab a bite to eat at Izzy’s and head on home.

At the deli he and the waitress Nola were the only occupants. Julio, who usually manned the cash register, was in the back. Benjamin had barely started undressing Nola to take her upon the counter when she placed the hot corned beef on rye in front of him. “Here you go,” she said, her wicked smile hovering beneath those wicked eyebrows. “I made it just the way Suzie said you like it.” She leaned her elbows on the counter as Benjamin lifted the sandwich and took a bite. It was delicious. Better than delicious, it was erotic. As Benjamin chewed, Nola’s full bosom strained against the front of her uniform.

“So, how do you know Suzie?” Benjamin took another bite and mentally sank his head between Nola’s heaving breasts.

“We’ve been roommates for a few weeks.”

Benjamin took a sip of decaf and positioned his sandwich for another bite. “And what’s Suzie been saying about me?”

“She calls you Still Waters. That’s your last name, isn’t it? Waters?”

He nodded.

“She says you never reveal anything about yourself, but your head is smoking every second.”

He shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich. “They can’t put you in jail for what you think.”

Nola nodded, picked up a slice of pickle from Benjamin’s plate, and placed it upon her tongue. As she slowly chewed it she said, “That’s why no one will go to jail for all of the murders that happened in here today.”

“Murders?” Benjamin frowned and studied Nola’s wicked eyes. “All of them?”

“Dozens. One customer was chainsawed to pieces just two stools down from you.”

Benjamin glanced at the gleaming silver stool and returned his gaze to Nola’s eyes. “I bet you had a time cleaning up.”

She lowered her voice. “Of course. We had to lock up the place and remove our uniforms to keep from getting blood all over them.” Her voice came deep and breathy. “I didn’t have time to shower. There’s still some blood on me.”

Benjamin stared at the waitress until he realized he had been chewing the same mouthful for minutes. He swallowed and spoke. “Nola, do you think I might call you some time? Maybe we could go to dinner and take in a movie.”

Nola nodded, her hooded eyes not even blinking as they fixed Benjamin to his stool. “I’m done here in another half hour, Benjamin. How about tonight?”

He sipped his coffee, nodded, and said, “Call me Benny.”