A day of falling temperatures promises to surprise those who have been inside. The weather shocks their systems when they step out. Benjamin will soon be one of those surprised people. However, within the legal firm’s confines, Blackfoot, Arbuckle, and Green, the atmosphere is hot. A rush job must be completed. Benjamin, a lowly file clerk, has no role to play in the drama. Then, in mid-afternoon, Mr. Green calls him into his office.
“Mr. Hamish at CDP, Inc. must have this package in his hands before five o’clock. The courier can’t guarantee they’ll make the deadline,” Mr. Green tells Benjamin. Then he gives him a twenty-dollar bill for cab fare. It’s late; you don’t have to come back to the office.”
Getting off early from work pleases Benjamin. He’ll have more time to study for his Patent Law exam. He’s a part-time student at the uptown campus of the Cardinal University Law School. “I’ll get them there,” he promises.
“I know you will, Benny,” Mr. Green says, using his voice of practiced conviction. Mr. Green always calls him Benny. Benjamin cringes, but he doesn’t mention that he prefers Benjamin. He won’t do anything to jeopardize his good standing. He’s financing his education independently, and since he started law school, making ends meet is more complicated than ever.
Outside, Benjamin doesn’t think twice. He pockets the twenty, needing every penny he can get for next semester’s tuition, and starts on foot to the West Fourteenth Street address even though he is freezing. The necklace he bought for Kathrin set him back far too much. She’s a sweet kid, he thinks, but he won’t allow her to jeopardize his future.
He’s unprepared for the weather: no gloves, no scarf, and no hat. The morning had been mild, but now the wind chill is minus two degrees. He isn’t aware of the number, but he knows he’s cold. He’s never seen it get so frigid in late March. What a day for Mr. Green to ask him to make a hand delivery.
He’s thinking about Kathrin and that damn necklace—how she misinterpreted his gesture and how she always wears it. To her, it is a treasure and a promise. However, he has made no promise. It’s a trinket, a decoration, a string of stones, nothing more. She’s too young, still a dreamy-eyed teen, he thinks. But, she’s so available to him. He’s never had that, but a matter of convenience is no reason to keep a girlfriend.
He starts across the Washington Bridge. The traffic is unusually light, he notices, but then he goes back to his musing about Kathrin. The thought of her sticks to him like a burr to a cotton sleeve.
Suddenly two men jump out of a car, leaving their rusty old Cadillac stranded in the middle of the bridge with its doors wide open. Benjamin stares, dumbfounded. The men don’t say a word but rush him. The first man hits him in the face with his fist and the second man kicks him in the groin with a steel-toed boot. Benjamin’s cell phone falls from his pocket.
He lies on the ground with a bloody nose. The pain in his groin is insufferable. One man, the one with a skullcap, dark pleats of hair sticking out, and with a beak-like nose, reaches to take his wallet. Benjamin doesn’t resist. “What the fuck,” the man says. “Twenty bucks, where’s the rest?”
“That’s all I have,” Benjamin stutters. The words are barbed and painful as they spill from his mouth.
“What’s in the package?” It’s the second man talking. Short hair, no hat, a big gut protrudes from his unbuttoned coat.
“Just legal papers.”
Beak Nose grabs the package and rips it open. He thumbs through the pages and tosses them to the ground. The wind is strong, and the papers fly. “Fucking twenty bucks,” Beak Nose says to the fat man. Then he looks down on Benjamin, “Sorry, man.”
The fat guy kicks Benjamin’s phone into the river, and then, just like that, they’re gone, but look what they’ve done to poor Benjamin. He’s stunned. He’s bleeding from the nose and staggering as he tracks down the windblown papers, struggling against gusts that tease him, allowing him to get his frozen fingers to within an inch of a page before swirling, propelling the page up beyond his grasp. It takes him an hour, but he recovers them all. Somehow, none have flown into the river. They’re soiled, wrinkled, and out of order. He consults his watch. He has ten minutes to get the papers to Mr. Hamish. He runs. There’s a pain in his gut, but he doesn’t stop. He’s made a promise to Mr. Green.
Looking down on the city, as in a Google map view, you can see that Cardinal State University is a mere five blocks west of CDP, Inc., where Benjamin is, at last, handing the envelope of soiled contracts to the receptionist. She wears a button-down blouse with the top two buttons unfastened. Benjamin notes her nametag—Ms. Carrie Simon. She, like Benjamin, is in her early to mid-twenties, an apprentice to the world. She cleans the envelope with facial tissue, taking care not to get her hands dirty. Benjamin glances at her plunging neckline. A mole at the top of her left breast draws his eyes like a magnet.
She looks at his swollen nose. There are specks of frozen blood on his upper lip despite his earlier efforts to wipe it clean with his coat sleeve. Neither comments on the other’s attributes, but she promises to immediately take the papers to Mr. Hamish. Benjamin watches her walk away, wishing he had an excuse to nuzzle up, to lay his frozen head against her breasts, or at least to linger in the warmth of the CDP lobby. However, he has no excuse to stay.
Meanwhile, at the Cardinal State campus, Kathrin has completed her Human Anatomy class and is choosing sandwich ingredients at the Subway Restaurant, located inside the Student Union Building. She ignores the jock behind her, although she knows him, to see at least, from their class just completed. She even knows his name, Trent, but then, everyone does. He’s so big that he’s scary.
They’ve never spoken to each other, but he recognizes her too. He’s never been this close to her. In class, she always chooses a seat near the front, close to the door. He sits in the back, near the windows. Since his girl gave him the boot, he’s on the prowl. He wants someone easy, someone he won’t have to think about later. He likes tall women, and she comes up to his nose, even though he’s over six feet. Her stringy red hair falls to her shoulders. Her cheeks bear light freckles. She’s not a classic beauty, and she’s almost flat-chested, but it never hurts to be friendly, he thinks, so he says hello.
Kathrin’s shoulders tighten. She has a death grip on her tray. Why would he talk to her? She doesn’t know him. He’s an upperclassman, and she’s a freshman. Besides, he’s always talking to that pretty Dawn girl. She stares straight ahead at the plastic-gloved hands making her sandwich. Seconds pass. The Trent boy is expecting an answer.
“No, not lettuce, I want spinach,” she says to the gloved hands behind the glass counter.
“Sorry,” says the short-haired boy who belongs to the hands.
She continues to stare at the hands until they fully assemble the sub. Then she nods and hurries to the register, leaving Trent behind, awaiting his sandwich.
Sitting alone at a table, she looks down so to avoid any eye contact. Trent may or may not be at one of the surrounding tables. She hopes he ordered take out. She fingers the necklace that Benjamin gave her. It’s not a ring, but still, most certainly, a token of affection. She decides to go straight to his place instead of waiting for him to call her.
Benjamin’s place is a room in a row house on a 1,219 square foot lot on Cassandra Street, where Benjamin boards. Shuffle the numbers to 1912, and you have the year of construction. Harvey Everett, the owner, could get papers certifying the building as a century home, but he doesn’t bother. To him, it’s just home.
Fewer than two feet separate the neighboring structures, and every other house shares a walkway to their respective backyards, except that they are not yards. They are patches of brick, maybe six by ten feet. Tall wooden fences separate the neighboring areas. The garbage cans are there, and the odors linger in the confined spaces.
Inside, there’s an aroma of contentment, a taste of home. Nothing feels cramped. Two years ago, Angel, Harvey’s wife, got the idea to let the attic. At first, Harvey was skeptical. As a retired professor at Cardinal State, he’d seen his share of irresponsible students, and he didn’t want one populating his attic. But Angel was adamant. Maybe it had something to do with her not having had children. If she and Harvey had had kids, they might well be of college-age now. Finally, Angel’s argument that with the money they earn, they could afford the vacation to Europe that they’d been craving wins Harvey over.
Benjamin becomes their first tenant. He’s never any trouble, always working or in a class by day, and evenings he spends studying. Angel extends him an open invitation to Friday night dinners. He always attends, and Angel usually brings a plate to his room on other nights. “Benjamin eats up all our profit,” Harvey complains, but it’s just a ruse. He likes the boy. When Benjamin starts seeing Kathrin, he brings her home one evening. Angel invites her for Friday dinners, too.
Benjamin tugs at his collar and starts home. The Everett’s place is eight blocks away, three blocks past the University. He knows the way well because CDC, Inc. is just a block south of his route home. He walks by the corner Shell Station, and then, a little farther along, he passes the blue house, with its bricks painted an aqua color that stands out against the conformity of gray. The air feels even colder now, in his lungs and on his skin. As he passes the Cardinal State campus, his gait slows. He feels dizzy, almost drunk, but, of course, he hasn’t had a drop. A passerby sees him holding his head between the palms of his hands, applying pressure at the temples. She thinks to ask him if he is okay but doesn’t because he looks scary with that blood on his lip and sleeve.
He steps unevenly, almost lopsidedly, as if one side of his body is heavier than the other side is. He falls but picks himself up. His palms prickle with brush burn. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and presses them against the cotton fabric. Near the Cardinal State Campus, he turns into an alley—a shortcut, barely more than a pathway between a row of homes and a controversial site, where the University has torn down a series of homes and is in the process of constructing a dormitory. Most of the neighborhood is against further university expansion, but that does not affect the relentless demolition.
It’s after hours, so the workers are gone. Benjamin stumbles and falls near an idle backhoe. His head is swimming. He crawls into the brush where the wind is partially blocked. He knows he should get up, but he’s comfortable there. “I’ll close my eyes for a second,” he thinks.
It’s past seven o’clock, and the sun has long set. The roast is done and warming in the oven. The aroma reaches the living room, where Harvey’s stomach growls in response, but he waits patiently, his eyes in a book. Angel and Kathrin sit at the kitchen table, sipping cups of tea. Kathrin rings Benjamin on his cell, but it goes to voice mail.
“We’re all waiting for you. Mrs. Everett has dinner ready.”
“He probably forgot to turn his phone on after work,” Angel says.
“I’m worried,” Kathrin says. “He’s always called me if he’s going to be late. I insist on it.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be home any minute,” Angel replies.
“I’m going out to look for him.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asks Angel.
Kathrin doesn’t answer but finds her coat and gloves, tugs her beret over her head.
“Harvey,” Angel calls, “go with Kathrin.”
Harvey looks up from his book, a perplexed look on his face before he silently accesses the situation. Then, he gathers his coat. He doesn’t hold much hope for finding Benjamin, expects that they’ll discover him back at home once their search is exhausted, but the wrinkles in Kathrin’s brow and her watery eyes make him realize that to say so is pointless.
“I’ll call if he shows up here,” Angel says to Kathrin.
Kathrin sucks in her breath and then exhales with a sigh before they start. They walk north on Cassandra Street, the direction to Cardinal State and beyond that, Blackfoot, Arbuckle, and Green’s offices. They pass the blue house. Their pace is staggered, with pauses at each intersection, where Kathrin peers, hoping to see Benjamin’s familiar figure. Sometimes she ventures down these side streets while Harvey tugs his cap further over his ears and waits patiently for her return.
“Not there,” she says after one such detour at the corner of the street with the Shell Station.
They reach the Washington Bridge to downtown. She thinks he must have made it at least this far. Harvey stops and gazes over the long expanse of deck and cable. His toes are numb, and he’s tired. He hasn’t done so much walking since his retirement. Kathrin stops and stares at him as if to say; you can’t seriously be giving up. Instead, she says, “I’ll check the bridge. You wait here.”
Harvey shakes his head. “It’s best to keep moving. I’ll come with you.”
Kathrin is tired and hungry but doesn’t care, giving little thought to the wind biting her cheeks as they cross the bridge. Harvey looks weary. The last thing she needs is for him to have a heart attack, so at the apex of the bridge, after a long stare down the far side, they turn around. Walking slower now, in consideration of Harvey, Kathrin peers down West Fourteenth Street. She notices the CDC building where Benjamin had delivered his package hours ago, but, not knowing he’d been there, the building holds no significance to her.
They’re almost back. Kathrin’s rising feeling of despair is palpable. They reach a street that Harvey recognizes as the University’s location for a new dormitory. “Let’s stop a moment,” he says, with a weak, hoarse voice. Kathrin nods and peers down a pathway to the construction site. She hadn’t noticed it earlier. “I’ll be right back,” she says. Harvey nods, too tired to argue. He leans against the lamppost as Kathrin’s silhouette fades into the darkness.
As Kathrin advances down the path, she checks her phone, but neither Benjamin nor Angel has called. Despite the cold, she is feverish; sweat builds beneath her beret. A feeling of horror overcomes her. If they don’t find him now, he may be gone forever. Then she sees a shoe, its tip pointing skyward, protruding from some bushes. She pushes the brush aside and looks down on Benjamin.
“I’ve found him,” she shouts to Harvey, still leaning on the lamppost.
He reaches her as she bends over Benjamin’s body. Her eyes are wet. “He’s not conscious, but he’s breathing,” she says.
Harvey kneels beside her, verifies her appraisal. She strokes Benjamin’s hair and then removes her beret and places it on Benjamin’s head. Harvey donates his gloves and lays his coat on top of him. He calls 911.
Kathrin is the first thing Benjamin sees when he awakens in the hospital. He has no idea that her determination saved his life. He would learn that later, not from her lips but Harvey’s.
“You’ve got quite a woman there,” Harvey says. “The doctor says you have a concussion and moderate hypothermia. If Kathrin hadn’t been so persistent, you’d surely have frozen to death.”
Benjamin nods. He respects Harvey, and he’s happy to have Kathrin with him. After his discharge, Kathrin sits at his bedside every evening, quietly, as he drifts in and out of sleep. Once, when she too drifts off, she opens her eyes and finds him looking at her with soft, thoughtful eyes. He holds her gaze for a long moment. She reaches out and takes his hand. He’s beholden to me now, she thinks, and she doesn’t care that it’s a selfish thought. I have him, and I’m not letting go.
She cuts classes to spend more time with him. She’s disappointed when he’s well enough to go back to his regular activities, which he does, one week to the day of his misfortune.
He has a meeting with Mr. Green on his first day back at the office.
“We’re sorry for what happened to you,” Mr. Green tells Benjamin, “but the point of the matter is that if you had taken a cab, as instructed, this wouldn’t have happened. You wouldn’t have landed in the hospital, Mr. Hamish wouldn’t have received damaged documents, and you would still have a job. Your negligence could have cost our client millions of dollars.”
Benjamin, who had had his head down, looks up and asks, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’re letting you go. There’s no room in the firm for someone who can’t follow instructions.”
“But I got the package to Mr. Hamish on time, they were readable, and you replaced them with fresh copies the next day.”
Mr. Green shook his head, “Sorry, Benny. You’re young. Let this be a lesson to you.”
Benjamin learns other lessons concerning love, friendship, and loyalty. The Everett’s allow Benjamin to board rent-free. “Until you get back on your feet,” Harvey says. Kathrin sneaks him food from her meal plan. He’d probably starve without her, he thinks. Not really. Angel would have seen to that.
If Kathrin is on shaky ground with Benjamin, she doesn’t realize it. She feels confident in her relationship and proud of saving her man. She is convinced that he appreciates her attention, even when he pretends not to. The odd thing, Benjamin thinks, is that since the hospital, her doting feels endearing. Thoughts of leaving her become less frequent until he wonders why he ever thought that way.
After a time, Benjamin accepts his punishment from Mr. Green as just. He goes to CDC to apologize personally to Mr. Hamish.
He is in Mr. Hamish’s office, sitting opposite him, across a large mahogany desk. He’s wearing his best suit, the one that Kathrin picked out for him. She says it makes him look distinguished.
Mr. Hamish leans back in his chair. “No harm was done, young man. I appreciate that you had the tenacity to get the job done. Not many young people these days would have the gumption you showed after your unfortunate incident.”
“I felt responsible, sir. It’s my job, or was my job, anyway.”
Mr. Hamish raises his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“Mr. Green, let me go. For being irresponsible.”
“I don’t think that’s fair. Do you want me to talk to him?”
“No, sir. It’s his right to fire me.”
With that, Benjamin takes his leave. Carrie Simon smiles at him on the way out. He looks incredible in that suit, she thinks. She wonders what business he has with Mr. Hamish. Perhaps she misjudged him on his first appearance.
Two days later, Mr. Hamish calls and offers Benjamin a job in the CDC legal department. “I can’t pay you as much as the law firm, but we’d love to have you.”
“I’ll take it. Thank you, Mr. Hamish.”
It’s Friday evening, just past closing time at CDC, Inc. Benjamin files the last of his papers and is ready to leave. Carrie Simon is still at her desk.
Benjamin starts to say goodnight, but she interrupts him. “Would you like to take me to a party tonight?” She exudes the confidence of a beautiful woman.
Benjamin stops in mid-stride. Carrie looks incredibly alluring, wearing heels and a short blue dress, and her hair is tied back the way he likes it. He’s been noticing her all day. Their eyes meet, but then his fall.
“I’m sorry I can’t.”
Carrie stuffs a notebook in her drawer. “Oh, that’s okay…short notice.”
“I’ve got dinner with my landlord…and with Kathrin.”
“Kathrin?”
“My girlfriend.” As he says these words—my girlfriend—he realizes he’s never called Kathrin that before, at least not aloud. She had always been just Kathrin as if she were his sister or merely a friend. He wonders when this change took place. Up until this moment, he hadn’t realized he’s committed. He walks out the door with a bounce in his step.
Kathrin takes a moment in front of the china cupboard glass to smooth the front of her shirt and to put right a wayward lock of hair. She apprises the dining room table she just set. Mrs. Everett comes through the doorway and nods. Kathrin places her hands on the chair that will seat Benjamin at dinner and takes a deep, satisfying breath, “All set for our men,” she says.
Short Stories
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