Moondogs - Alexander Yates [168]
“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