Moondogs (51 page)

“I’m not sure I would have come,” he said. “But thanks.” The waitress returned with their drinks and Benicio took his from her hand before she had a chance to set it down. He took a long sip of the mouthwash-tasting lambanog, holding it in his cheeks before swallowing. “I wanted to tell you something,” he said. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea before the funeral. I did what I did so we could have the service. But I’m giving—I’ve given her half of everything. It wasn’t about the money.”

“Wasn’t it?” Bobby asked. “Then why not give her everything?”

Benicio laughed at this. Then he saw that Bobby wasn’t joking. “Maybe it was a little about the money. But it was also about my dad. Whatever he had with her, he was
my
dad. I wasn’t about to give him up.”

Bobby ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “So you don’t know, then, if Howard is the father of her kid.”

“I don’t,” Benicio said. “But whether he was or not, he treated her wrong. She and the kid will be taken care of. They’re rich now, by most standards. I think it’s worked out as well as it could have.”

Bobby looked down at the table and nodded, seeming to consider this. “You look like shit,” he said.

They shared a moment of quiet, and then they both laughed. “Well, you look great,” Benicio said.

“I know, right?” Bobby sipped his drink and made a face at it. “Word is out among the barboys. Dancer is back.”

“Any pain?”

“Nope. I don’t think so, at least. It’s hard to remember what I felt like before. But I think this is normal.” Bobby shook a cigarette from his pack, lit it and took short drags. “It was a really nice service. I hope it wasn’t weird—Charlie can’t go anywhere without making an entrance.”

“It wasn’t weird,” Benicio said. Looking at Bobby, he found it impossible to keep the article he’d read from springing up in his mind. The conjecture that they’d made Bobby watch as the tops of his dogs’ heads were cracked open with hammers. The evidence that he’d been forced to swallow hunks of their testicles along with shredded campaign posters and kerosene. “Actually, that’s a lie,” he said. “It was very weird. There were four TV crews on the hill. Nothing about it wasn’t weird.”

Bobby smiled. “Well, I hope you don’t blame us. You’re implicated. You brought as much weird along with you as you found here. Or like, forty-sixty at least.” His cigarette wasn’t a quarter done but he crushed it into the ashtray. “Do you know when you’re coming back?”

“No. I mean, I’m not. Not ever. No offense.”

Bobby’s expression turned quizzical. “Well … since this is our last conversation, where’s my incentive not to be offended? I’m good at marching off in a huff. I’ve done that shit before.”

“It’s not the city. It’s who I am here.”

“Who are you here?”

“I’m …” Benicio crossed and uncrossed his legs. He found the sudden edge in Bobby’s voice disconcerting. “It’s like my father. He was a different person, not just here but whenever he left home. A worse person. He cheated on my mother here, years before she died. He had this whole hidden life that he never told us about. I mean, for all I know June really is his kid, and he let June’s mother work out of a filthy goddamn brothel. It could be that June’s not even the only one.”

Bobby leaned back in his chair. “Wow. I see you’re taking this whole consequence-free last conversation thing to heart.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to unload on you.”

“No, it’s fine. But as long as those are the rules—Manila didn’t make your father shitty. People are who they can afford to be. When your father was here he could afford to be Mr. Playboy. Maybe at home he could afford less. That doesn’t mean he was different. And it’s the same with you—you can afford to be Mr. Goddamn Generous. You can afford to spend a fuckload on peace-of-mind, because you’ve got a fuckload to spare. But don’t tell me, or yourself, that leaving will make you better. Whatever you see peeking out right now, whatever it is you don’t like; well I’ve got news for you.
That’s Benicio
.”

Bobby turned halfway around and drew a rectangle in the air with his index finger to signal for the bill. Benicio fumbled in his pocket and placed some cash on the table. They waited in silence. When Benicio spoke his voice was dry and pitchy. “I never said it wasn’t.”

TWO DAYS LATER HE WAS HOME
, unpacking while Alice boiled noodles in the kitchen. He carried his dive bag to the bathroom, filled the tub with cold water and prepared to rinse out the gear he’d only used once. The black velcro and rubber hoses were crusted over with a thin layer of grit that dissolved as he lowered everything under the clear surface. He cleaned the gear the way he’d been taught—purging mouthpieces, keeping the dust-cap tight, filling the BCD with water and shaking it above his head to rinse it from the inside out. He added his wetsuit and fins to the tub, holding them under the surface, submerged to his forearms. Spray from the tap rushed over his fingers and left little bubbles that clung to his arm hair. It reminded him of the dives with the Costa Rican instructor. The way you could be made a beginner again by the current.

Benicio pulled the water-heavy gear from the tub and slung it over the bar above. He ran his hands along the wetsuit legs, squeezing them dry as best he could. He’d owned this same suit for almost ten years and there was hardly a rip or tear in it. He remembered the
long procession of colors and brands that his father had gone through; how he’d torn each new wetsuit with his expanding belly and clumsy bottom-scraping. How the constantly replaced gear gave him a different look on almost every trip. Once, when Benicio was seventeen, he actually lost track of who his father was. It was a gentle drift dive with a hefty tour group from Arkansas. At sixty feet Benicio noticed an outline in the sand—a flounder, big as a loveseat—and grabbed at what he thought was his father’s wrist to point it out. But it was a stranger. She pulled her hand back and shot him beady annoyance through her prescription mask. Benicio swam out ahead of their party and looked back at them. The divers were all big, bright shapes. He couldn’t pick his father out.

He only found him at the end, when they all floated atop a high ridge of coral to decompress before ascent. Howard was hugging the base of a barrel sponge, kicking his feet out now and again to keep himself stationary. Near the base of the sponge was a crust of dead coral, and sprouting from that was a single blue-and-yellow Christmas-tree worm no bigger than a child’s thumb. Howard waved his hand in front of the worm and—
shump!
—it retreated into its hole. He waited, rapt. The worm remerged, its short little tendrils splaying out one by one. He waved his hand and again it shot back inside.

Howard looked up at Benicio with delight. With wonder. He pointed to the worm—which was emerging yet again—and signed
OK
, which meant “not dying” but also “this is good.” Benicio returned the
OK
. The master unsheathed her dive knife and banged it against her tank to get everybody’s attention. She thumbed up at the surface for them to ascend. Howard drifted away from the barrel sponge, but Benicio lingered there for a moment, staring at the tiny animal. He didn’t get what was so special about it. But he sensed, at least, that it
was
special. Then, with a kick, he floated weightlessly away. He looked straight up to keep his airway open. He felt his breath expand. Up above Howard was already near the surface—his arms extended, like they’d been trained, so those above would see him coming.