Middle Man

None of them were what you would call communicators, so when Benji emailed Matt and Victor to suggest they meet up for dinner, he knew it was a crapshoot. He hoped the reply would come from Victor because it was Victor he had always been closer to, but often a month passed before Victor wrote back. Matt never weighed in first because he thought Benji and Victor ganged up on him.

It had been three years since their mother died, and staying in touch hadn’t come naturally. Benji didn’t need the aggravation of waiting around for Victor to make up his mind, so he decided if he didn’t hear back right away he’d forget about going down to see them. And after a week of hearing nothing, Benji resigned himself to it. At least he had tried.

A few days after he decided to put the whole thing out of his mind, Benji’s inbox chimed. IM IN, Matt said. Matt’s emails were always written in the subject line, in all caps, with little punctuation. Benji waited a day and then replied all, Is Victor coming? Matt changed the subject line: WHO KNOWS. A second email followed instantly, with a new subject line, ILL GET VICTOR,  followed by a third. WHERE SHOULD WE EAT. Benji said he would come down the following weekend and they could decide then, and bought a train ticket from New York to D.C. He reserved a car and booked a hotel inside the beltway: close enough to their old suburb to be convenient, but not so close he felt trapped.

On Saturday he pushed a red Ford Focus through dense traffic. Broad Street had once been a sleepy main drag, with the usual orderly assortment of sturdy institutions: pharmacy and hardware, post office, a few dentists and doctors, followed by a chunk of glass and aluminum storefronts containing a head shop, a thrift store, a dirty laundromat, a Chinese takeout. Now it was a cobblestone pedestrian mall, festooned with gift shops in a veneer of vaguely colonial brick. The brothers were meeting at a pub called Bangers. Benji found parking on a side street.

When they were small they had been an uneasy triangle. There was Matt, always hurting someone and always in trouble, and there were the two little boys, Benji and Victor. Benji was the middle boy, a year older than Victor. Whenever Matt picked on Victor it was Benji who struck first—weakly, timidly—and he was always surprised by what standing up for his little brother got him: a punch in the chest and the wind knocked out of him. Later Matt bought Benji his first bottle of Boone’s Farm Wine and gave him his first joint, but when Benji tried to do the same for Victor, he was already getting it from his friends. When Benji went to college he left Victor to deal with whatever was happening at home. After graduation he took off for New York, believing that something great was in store for him. Matt and Victor hadn’t gone to college. They were all in their sixties now. Benji still had a way of making it look like he wasn’t worried about where he was headed. At least he was trying, he thought to himself.

He saw Matt and Victor standing in front of Bangers.

“Hey there little brothers!” Matt said as he pushed his dense belly, by way of greeting, first into Benji’s and then Victor’s midsections. His large face was clean-shaven and jowly, and his hair was a wild mass of gray. He was bulky and loud. Victor was the opposite, drawn, driftwood thin, receding. He drove a rusty Bronco with a broken heater and no air-conditioning that smelled like cigarettes and whiskey. Matt, who didn’t have a driver’s license, had convinced Victor to drive an hour out of his way to pick him up.

Benji hugged Matt and then Victor stiffly. “Good to see you,” Victor said. When he spoke his lips barely moved, like words were expensive and should be paid out sparingly. He had a thin ponytail and gray chin whiskers.

The last time they had all been together had been the funeral. Afterwards they’d gone to lunch and it had turned uncomfortably jokey, as if it hurt too much to be any other way. It had reminded Benji of the other funeral—their father’s—when they were all in high school. After the burial they’d come back to the house and someone had told them to go out to the front yard for photographs. They lined up in order of age with their father’s Buick as a backdrop, wearing polyester suits bought for the funeral. Relatives said how handsome they looked. With each plastic click of the Instamatic camera they stiffened and put on false smiles, looking like ill-suited actors in their own home movie—except for the last picture in the sequence, when they all laughed unguardedly in some kind of relief, like an outtake for the closing credits.

Forty years had passed between funerals. Benji thought of how it was true: they had all been handsome then, even if it was just the beauty of youth. How unformed they had been. He was the only one who had gone on to get married, the only one who’d had a family. When his marriage ended in divorce ten years earlier his wife had said to him, like he had never escaped at all, “You’re just like the rest of your family. Cold.”

On the sidewalk in front of Bangers Matt went in for a second round of belly bumps.

“That’s enough—” Victor said. “That’ll do. Knock it off.”

Bangers was a sprawling ersatz Irish pub, gold and green letters outside and sawdust on the floor inside. Competing flat-screen televisions behind a long oak bar beamed different football games. Bartenders with neat haircuts and sleeve garters pulled on rows of wooden tap handles, filling tall glasses with foaming beer. Couples on dates occupied tables for two, and loud, happy families hoisted stouts and lagers, ready for their Saturday night feed. Of everyone there, only the three brothers waiting at the greeter’s stand looked out of place. Matt kept up a steady patter.

“Told you I’d get Victor to come, didn’t I? Nailed his ass.”

Victor smirked. “Who drove who? I’d say I got you here.”

“Who gave who ten bucks for gas?”

“That’s not the argument you think it is.”

Everyone in the restaurant looked young. A tall hostess appeared, about twenty, with long tattooed arms and a stack of large vinyl-sleeved menus clutched to her chest. She peeled off three  and told them they could sit wherever they liked. They found a booth away from the noisy bar, Benji leading the way. He slid into one side of the booth and spread himself out. Victor and Matt were forced to share the other.

“Comfortable?” Victor said to Benji. “Got enough room?”

“Very comfortable,” Benji said, trailing his arm across the top of the backrest. “One of the perks of being older than you.”

“What about me,” Matt said. “I’m older than both of you.”

“You? You’re just—”

“—Screwed,” Victor said.

“—Crammed in the corner,” Benji said. They smiled at each other across the table. The old double-team against Matt still worked.

 “Crammed my ass,” Matt said. “Now where’s that god damn waiter. Hey! MY GOOD MAN. GET A MOVE ON.” A waiter appeared.

Victor sucked in his cheeks and studied the beer list like a monk committing a holy text to memory. Matt unwrapped butter pats and assaulted the bread basket. They could not have been more different from each other, Benji thought. They looked like Jack Sprat and his wife, one lean, one not. Matt had always been volcanic and reckless, embarrassingly so, while Victor from an early age had been hidden and hard to reach, like he was nursing a private hurt that he loved so much he couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t so much that his brothers had changed since boyhood, but that they’d become more themselves, having successfully dismantled the guardrails of conformity that kept most people from veering off into the wilderness. They’d stopped trying to get along with the world. Nor could the two of them, as different as they were from each other, be more unlike Benji, who had worked hard to invent a life for himself.

Victor engaged the waiter in a lengthy consultation about the beer selections before placing his order. Matt ordered a double Irish whiskey, and Benji ordered his usual, a Manhattan on the rocks.

“Maybe I’ll get up there to New York and see you one of these days,” Matt said. Benji knew Matt would never do it.

But maybe Victor would. He thought of all the times he had asked Victor to come visit him. Victor had actually come to New York once, decades ago, and for four nights he and Benji had made a run at the bars of the Lower East Side, and they’d been to every Indian restaurant on East Sixth Street to see who could eat the hottest vindaloo. Every time they’d spoken in the last ten years Benji had extended an invitation. “Come on, think about it—it’ll be fun.”

Victor’s answer was always the same. “Maybe,” he’d say.

Victor lived out in the country like a hermit. Alone there he was free to lavish silence on his vegetable garden, giving the fertile rectangle of earth the attention he withheld from human relations. Benji had once asked if he could visit him there, and Victor said no. Benji could picture him in his garden among his plants, his lean frame bent over as he toiled, one overall strap unhooked, a pint of bourbon in his pocket. He saw him there silhouetted against the sky like a scarecrow, in the rain and the sun and the half-light of dusk, his watery eyes set above gaunt cheekbones and his wooden face turned to some inner weather, rooted in earth, a sinewy vine himself.

“Bolt Bus, right?” Matt was saying. “I might just show up on your doorstep one of these days.”

The appetizers came, a half-dozen deviled eggs that tasted like the inside of a refrigerator. A platter of bangers-in-a-blanket peeked out from their pastry wrappings like a trio of large uncircumcised penises.

Victor picked up one of the penises and waved it at Matt and Benji. “Put it on a stick and it’s almost a corn dog.” He bit into it, chewing slowly. “Not that bad,” he said.

“Remember?” Benji said to him.

When they were children, corn dogs from the deep fryer had been a family favorite. One night at dinnertime Victor, not yet old enough to know better, picked up the biggest, lumpiest corn dog from the serving plate, shouting excitedly, “It looks like Dad’s weenie!” Their mother blushed, and Matt snickered. After a second their father grinned from behind the reflections in his glasses.

“You’re lucky you were cute,” Matt said.

Matt and Benji ordered a second drink. “Don’t be a piker,” Matt said to Victor. “Drink up. Round two!”

“Driving tonight,” Victor said dryly. “Don’t need another DUI.”

Benji had been looking forward to spending some time with Victor alone. Earlier that afternoon he had texted him to suggest they meet for a drink before dinner, just the two of them, but then Matt had made Victor pick him up. They could still meet up for a nightcap later, he thought, if they could get rid of Matt.

 “You got a DUI?” Benji said.

“Only idiots drink and drive,” Matt said. “Everybody knows you should put the bottle down till you get to a red light.”

“You should know about drinking and driving,” Benji said. “You had to bum a ride to Mom’s funeral.”

“That’s my business,” Matt said. “Not yours.”

“I’d say it’s my business,” Victor said, “considering I’m the one you always bum a ride from.”

Matt drained his second drink and waved for another. “You wouldn’t understand. Let it go. Let’s just say I’m counting on you for a ride home.”

“Because you lost your license!”

There was a silence.

“Okay,” Matt said. “Let me tell you a little story.”

The waiter brought Matt’s drink. Matt waited until he left. He lifted the Irish whiskey to his lips and brought the empty glass down with a crack. “Just remember, you asked for it.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Picture this. Let’s say it was about ten years ago. It was a beautiful day, and it was a terrible day—you should have seen it. I’m on 495 minding my business, delivering equipment. A regular work day. Blue sky. Guy in front of me was on a Harley, a real beauty. The guy looks like a pussy. You can picture the type, a showoff. I gun the engine of my work truck—you know, let’s go. Maybe I was high, but I was on lunch break, so everything’s cool. He was probably high too. Tries to pop a wheelie and when he lands the bike jumps. The showoff eats it. He wipes out. I slam on the brakes. 

“Just my luck, there’s a cop behind me. Lights go on. Siren goes on. I throw the dope out the window, but he’s looking at the guy, not at me. Next thing I know he’s at my window. ‘Yes sir, officer,’ I say, ‘I saw the whole thing. It was too much bike for him. I backed off, but it all happened so fast.’

“An ambulance shows up but it’s too late for that so the cop turns to me. ‘Had anything to drink today?’ This kid was still wet behind the ears. He could’ve really fucked me. ‘No, sir,’ I say, and I wasn’t lying. He made me walk the line, touch my nose, the whole nine yards.

“‘Am I in trouble, sir?’ I say. The cop looks a little green around the gills. ‘It’s your lucky day.’ I don’t say a word. He says, ‘Probably hit an oil patch. The subject was probably deceased before you struck him. But I’m going to need your statement.’

“So I give it to him, standing there on 495 with trucks flying past. He wrote it and I signed it. And I swear to god—and this is the truth—I haven’t driven since that day. Maybe because of the guy who died, or maybe just remembering the sound it made when he went under my wheels. Bump-BUMP. So no, you two dimwits, I didn’t lose my license. I just never had the heart to renew it again. Believe it or not, assholes.

“And now I can’t get one without my birth certificate, which disappeared with Mom.”

When Matt finished talking there was silence. Benji and Victor looked at each other.

Victor said, finally, “I’d estimate that’s ninety-nine point nine percent bullshit.”

“Fuck this,” Benji said.

Matt laughed and said, “Think whatever you want, losers. You asked. Waiter! Garçon! Another round!”

Trying to figure if any of Matt’s stories were true was pointless. It was Matt himself that was improbable. He was like an actor overtaken by his character, his all-too-vivid mannerisms standing in for some inner harm, or loss, until they had become lodged there permanently. Matt had also come to see Benji in New York once, back in the eighties. He hitched a ride and showed up banging on Benji’s door at midnight on a Friday. The only thing Benji remembered about the weekend was Matt leaving on Sunday night for Port Authority, to catch a bus home. They walked together to the subway, and as he started to descend the concrete steps at the subway entrance, Matt stopped and turned around and smiled at Benji.

“I guess you’re not so bad, little brother. And New York’s not so bad either,” he said. Then he patted the heavy, hard lump that had hung in the pocket of his army surplus fatigue jacket all weekend long and said, “Guess I didn’t need the persuader after all—my piece—my good luck piece, I call it. I’ve never had to use it, but it’s funny how quick just bringing it out can settle an argument.” And with a self-satisfied laugh, he turned and disappeared into the station.

Seated in the booth at Bangers, Benji struggled to finger his phone from the tight pocket of his jeans, and once it was in his lap he tapped out a text to Victor. Victor showed no sign that he noticed.

When their mother was dying, Benji and Victor had stayed by her bed for a week, sitting in the silence that hung between each weak breath, while Matt had mostly stayed away, held apart by fear—of death, of aging, of losing her. Then, when she was moved to hospice, Benji and Victor had slept at her feet in turns on an air mattress they bought at Walmart. In those days and those hours, the years had fallen away and for a while they were close again, the way they had been as boys.

Benji knew he couldn’t ask Victor why he ignored his texts and voicemails and emails. Victor ignored him for the same reason he ignored everything else. His reclusiveness was almost total. He was the way he was because he had always been that way—he was like a dry field parched for water, always receding, dust curling away in the breeze, always looking like he wanted to cry, if only he had some water. But he had come alive again those weeks when their mother was dying. He had needed Benji then and Benji had needed him, and after she died Benji had hoped that maybe things would change.

Benji’s text to Victor said, Let’s ditch Matt.

Benji ordered another drink and watched his brothers eat. He mechanically finished what was left of his shepherd’s pie, his fork moving food to his mouth. Matt said “Are you going to eat that bread?” and reached across the table to take it. Benji swallowed the last sliver of ice in his glass and said “Let’s get the check. I don’t want dessert.”

“No dessert?” Matt said.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Benji said, kicking Victor’s foot as he slid out of the booth and jerking his head in the universal symbol for follow me.      

They peed side by side with a stranger standing between them. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Benji said, looking straight ahead, the way men do at a urinal.

There was the steady rush of pee against porcelain.

Victor sounded skeptical. “Where?”

“Anywhere. There’s a place across the street. I used to go there when Mom was dying.”

 The stranger stared straight ahead, studying the tiles on the wall.

“But no Matt,” Benji said.

“You going to tell him?”

The bathroom door banged open and Matt came in. “Hey! No hanky-panky in here!” He laughed and slammed the door in the single stall behind him, and once inside he let out a loud sigh, and sat heavily. The stranger shook himself off and zipped his pants, and slunk out the door as quickly as he could.

Benji rinsed his hands and made eye contact with Victor. “You tell him,” he said under his breath. As he left the bathroom he called out over his shoulder, “See you losers outside.”

Outside it was still daylight. They crossed the street. The three of them stood on the sidewalk in front of an ice cream shop, painted in place by the summer light.

Ice cream!” Matt said. “What do you say boys?”

Neither Benji nor Victor moved. Together they looked like a portrait of types: Victor weathered and narrow, with scarecrow shoulders; Matt large and slumped, an exhausted heavyweight; Benji a poached chicken breast in skinny jeans, with a New York haircut. Families, out for a stroll after an early dinner, trailed strings of children like small schools of fish. The families streamed past them into the ice cream shop.

“Dessert! Come on. My treat,” Matt said.

“I’m beat,” Benji said, looking at Victor.

Matt took a step toward the bell that kept ringing every time someone passed through the door. “Get in line or we’ll lose our place!”

“You go ahead if you want to,” Benji said to Victor.

Victor looked toward the store doubtfully and said he didn’t want any ice cream either. “Matt,” he said. “I’m just going to break it to you. I can’t drive you home. It’s already a two hour drive back to Winchester.”

“Oh, no problem little buddy! I’ll take the bus, just like I always do—best way to travel, be among the people! Wouldn’t be the first time. Now come on. About that ice cream.”

Benji said, “Nobody wants ice cream, Matt. Nobody wants to hang around here. We want to go.”

“You mean you want to go. I want ice cream.” Matt leaned forward and said “Boo!” in Benji’s face. He tried to snatch the key to Benji’s rental car out of his hand and missed. He tried again and on the second attempt he succeeded.

Benji grabbed at the key but Matt laughed at him, dangling it in the air in his big hand, out of Benji’s reach.

“Nobody’s going anywhere until we have ice cream. Now get in line, turd.”

“Asshole. Give me my key.” 

“Ice cream first and key after. Or admit it’s you that wants to go, and admit you’re a pussy.”

“You’re goddamn right I want to go. I can’t stand it!” Benji lunged for the key. “Give it to me!”

Matt took a step back and Benji fell forward, and Matt caught him roughly, putting him in a headlock. Benji struggled to escape.

“You’re such a prick,” he said, trying to grab for the key from the headlock.

“Aw, don’t be that way,” Matt said, laughing and rapping his knuckles on Benji’s head. He loosened his grip and stood him up, giving him a pretend punch in the chest.

“Group hug, everybody!” Matt shouted, and yoked his brothers to his large body, one of them under each arm. “Water under the bridge! I don’t care what anybody says, you guys are all right!” He let Benji pry his fingers apart and take the key.

“I’m going to take off,” Benji said with his face still smashed against Matt’s breast, while mouthing “meet me” to Victor. Victor smelled like cigarettes. Benji broke away and headed slowly toward his car. Half a block away, he turned back to look. Matt seemed to tower over Victor, even though their heights were similar. Matt was animated. Victor stood impassively. He hadn’t moved to follow.

Benji disappeared around the corner to wait. There was a time when Victor would have been unable to resist his pull. He rested against the side of a building, bending a knee and putting his foot up flat against the bricks. Periodically he walked back and peered around the corner. Matt and Victor had drifted a little further down the street, toward Victor’s car. The evening grew yellow as the sun started to disappear behind the low buildings.

Benji found an unoccupied outdoor table at a restaurant that wasn’t busy, and texted Victor Meet me here, along with a map link. He ordered a drink. The chair was comfortable. He was tired. He had been to their mother’s grave earlier that day and had lain on the ground next to her. It had been comfortable not to stand, and it felt good to be sitting now. After twenty minutes his phone jumped, vibrating against the metal tabletop.

“Hey,” Benji said. He could hear the highway through the rolled down windows of Victor’s Bronco.

“Good lord,” Victor said, exhaling, “that was eternal.” His voice was serrated by the cell connection. “Sorry brother, I’m already twenty miles down Route 50. I’m going home.”

“Yeah,” Benji said. “I figured.”

Victor didn’t say anything.

Benji said, “It was good to see you though.”

There was a pause, then Victor spoke. “Why don’t I call you some time,” he said. “Be in touch more.”

“Sure. That sounds good. Hey—” Benji said. “I just had an idea. I’m here till tomorrow night. I went to her grave today, it was nice. We could go back together tomorrow, maybe get lunch.”

There was a long silence.

“Let me think about it.” The highway competed with Victor’s voice. “Well. I got to go.”

“All right. See you, then.”

“Yep,” Victor said. “Okay. I don’t need any more points on my license. I’m going to hang up.”

After a few minutes Benji stood up and walked to his rental car. He started the engine and turned on the air conditioning, and sat in the waterfall of white noise. Eventually he took his foot off the brake and coasted slowly along the suburban street. He didn’t turn left the way he might have, to drive past their old house and wonder what it was that had happened there to make them all this way, but instead he turned right and then he turned right again onto Lee Highway, toward his hotel. A block before Bangers he drove past the State Theater, where fifty years earlier Matt had taught him how to sneak into the movies, the two of them reeking of pot, the sleeves of their army surplus jackets stuffed with quart bottles of Coke and giant sandwiches they’d made at home and smuggled into the darkened theater. They ate their way through Easy Rider there, they ate their way through Planet of the Apes, they ate their way through 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In front of the State he saw a bulky figure leaning against the metal signpost at a bus stop. The figure was bent over, slumped really, his wild gray head hanging loose, looking like he had been impaled on the post. As Benji passed, the figure raised his head. Matt.

Benji looked away quickly. Matt hadn’t seen him. Benji almost considered pulling over and giving him a ride, or at least honking and waving. He almost considered. Then he was past him. Slowing the car and turning around would have required making a choice, but to keep going required nothing.