Arthur

Arthur

They say it never rains in Southern California--but man, the December-through-February stuff can send you squealing like a schoolgirl.

This January night being on the mild side, Arthur was allowed out protected only by his little crayola raincoat and rubber boots. He took his favorite shortcut to the mall, where he could glimmer angelically in the antique streetlamps’ glow.

Mild as it was, this was rough weather for Angelenos, so Arthur was pretty much on his own. After hopping a few puddles he huddled in a candy store’s doorway.

To his right squatted a pair of facing benches, adrift in a misty amber pool. A frail figure sat crumpled on one of these benches, and on his lap shivered a soggy old dog, gray and white with a dirty mussed coat. The boy moved doorway to doorway until he stood between benches.

The old man’s head rose, weighed by rain and the years. His tired old eyes fell on the boy.

“Son…what is your name?”

“Arta.”

“R2? R2D2?”

“Artr.”

“Arthur. Do you like animals, Arthur?”

“Yesr.”

“Dogs?”

“Yesr.”

“Do you like this dog, Arthur?”

The animal dazedly lifted its head.

“Yesr.”

“His name, Arthur, is Boy.” The old man gave the animal’s paw a little shake. “Boy, meet Arthur. Arthur, meet Boy.” The hand and paw dropped. “Boy is well along in dog years, son, and has difficulty with many basic functions. Also, he is all but blind and can no longer run. He cannot speak because he had a very bad master long ago, but he is a good dog, capable of giving a caring master as much love as he receives.”

“Yesr.”

The old man sank into his raincoat. “Would you like to give Boy a good home, Arthur? I can no longer care for him.”

The boy watched politely as the dog was gently placed between their feet.

“Yesr.”

“Bless you, son.” The old man’s eyes were pinched barnacles. “Here is Boy’s leash. He must be walked on this leash at all times due to his compromised eyesight. Also, he is unable to follow commands like a much younger animal.”

Arthur obediently clipped the leash onto Boy’s tattered collar. He stood patiently, waiting to be told. The old man squeezed Arthur’s hands meaningfully. “You are very young, and Boy is very old. But nature has a mysterious way of juggling her own checks and balances. All living forms are interconnected, in a manner both ineffable and undeniable. We are torch-bearers of sunlight; child to man, man to beast, beast to field. Sunlight does not pass; it is simply passed along. But not always wisely. One bad person, one small event, can change a life for the worse, and sometimes forever. Never trust your heart over your mind.” He cocked his head. “Too philosophical for you at this stage, son?” The old man smiled warmly. “I too once was young.” He patted the dog’s and Arthur’s heads simultaneously. “You can depend on Boy to never desert you. He is your personal shadow for life, as he was mine.” He coughed delicately, and at last, faint as the drizzle, said, “We must part now, son.”

Arthur slowly walked Boy home. The dog proceeded in an ungainly fashion, stopping several times to whine in confusion. Twice Arthur had to bundle him up for carrying. The animal stank.

Badly.

* * *

The closet door cracked open. A wedge of light expanded until it stabbed the curly gray mass trembling in a milk crate by the water heater. Two tiny eyes peered up fearfully.

“That’s it,” William whispered. “Said some old white man gave it to him. Don’t worry; I made sure he got an earful.”

Jeannie’s brows knit. “The poor thing’s dying. It won’t last the night.”

“I know, Genie. But this has to be done. Breaks my heart.”

She folded her arms. “Breaks your heart. So now I guess it’s my motherly duty to break little Arthur’s.”

“I already made my speech. And if you think my job’s easy, then you don’t know squat about men.”

Arms ran around waists in an exclusive human bond. They looked long and regretfully at the dirty pile of dog. Jeannie nodded and quietly stepped outside, closing the door for privacy’s sake, leaving only a crack.

William removed a length of coiled clothesline from an upper shelf. The dog’s eyes glinted against the strand of light. William looked down. Their eyes remained wed while he looped and knotted one end of the line. He pressed the noose forward and gradually went down on one knee.

“Good boy.”

* * *

“Arthur?”

The head shook beneath the covers.

“Arthur!”

The head shook harder.

Jeannie yanked down the covers. “If you’re going to behave like a child, I’m going to treat you like a child.” She nibbled on his little nose. When that didn’t work she sat up straight. “The dog is too old for a boy, Arthur. Daddy is taking him to a place that gives old animals to old people. That’s the fair thing, for both the dog and for you. We’ll get you the dog you want, honey. That’s a promise, from both me and daddy.”

Arthur pulled the covers back up.

“Sweetheart?”

This time Jeannie peeled gently. “Life doesn’t always work out the way we want. You’ll learn that when you get a little older. But if you’re good to people, and if you treat them the way you’d like them to treat you, you’ll find they’ll always respond in kind.” She kissed him. “That’s a promise.” She kissed him again. “And that’s a guarantee.”

* * *

At what point do we realize our lives are set in stone?

There’s a treadmill of weeks and weekends, a slow parade of faces and names. Those faces become blurs. The names all seem the same, or unpronounceable, or obviously contrived. Youth, priceless youth, burns itself out in unreachable dreams.

We plan, certainly, we muster and micromanage. And somewhere in there we just lose it; we let go without intending, without even realizing.

Maybe it’s marriage. Maybe it’s the job. Calendars grow yellow and dog-eared, pinup girls are replaced by National Parks.

And the rut owns us before we know it.

For a genuinely sweet man like Arthur, that rut’s acceptance does not bring about a psychological crisis. The old shoe has always fit.

Arthur Beyer never had a school crowd; his only friends were hobbies and daydreams. The girls he fell for were being swept off even as he rehearsed his lines.

Somehow he found himself in chemical engineering: a trade that started out loftily enough, only to taper to contracts with soap manufacturers and cat litter companies. The apartment was nice, the condo nicer…but somewhere in there he became implanted.

And he’d watch the bugs driving up Lincoln, their occupants lost in a verbal melee unknowable to a blank smiler like Arthur Beyer, whose butt was made for blues and benches, whose eyes could reflect but never shine. Arthur was an extra in his own lame movie, dining alone, dancing solo. A lackluster fixture everywhere he went; the death of the party.

And so, at some insignificant juncture in his thirty-seventh year, Arthur Beyer simply died in place.

But that’s when he met Angela.

It was a shareholders’ merge at the Marina del Rey Ritz Carlton. Even undistinguished chemists like Arthur were compelled to show; it was on the agenda. These reservations are unbelievably dull, but they’re pretty well catered, and the rooms are nice. After forum and presentation, employees are free to wander the lobby or stand outside on the walk overlooking the yachts. For a homebody like Arthur, it was a blue-moon opportunity to kill another party.

Strange that the insular heart should suffer itself further. People such as Arthur are no good in a crowd; no good at small talk, way out of touch with the lowdown. Stranger still: even wallflowers don’t like each other--there’s no such thing as a growing pocket of bores. Drip by drip, losers enforce their own isolation, smiling emptily at the guffawers and gigglers while nursing their half-raised drinks.

The woman in blue was what another drip labeled a Lounge Lady. Arthur was deeply moved that such women frequent these places out of lonesomeness, especially one so outwardly aggressive with men. This woman circulated with an air of complete confidence--what Arthur recognized as complete desperation. It was a fact, or so he’d been told: the harder they fall, the harder neglected women try.

And she wore her hair natural, just the way he liked; Arthur’d read that this type of allure is exclusive to African-American women too proud to cop out. And she was sleek, with high cheekbones and very little makeup, another big plus in Arthur’s unpublished book.

He wretchedly stared into his glass.

When he looked back up she was smiling like an old friend. Arthur, blushing furiously, took his first real swallow of the evening.

A pocket of unsung crooners formed spontaneously as the pianist broke into Unchained Melody, leaning around the eighty-eight as an ungainly nascent barbershop quartet. One guy was so off-key the rest were forced to dredge harmonically; they’d get him right up to scale and he’d sink like a stone. It was an oddly magical moment, full of sentiment and barely dampened humor.

And a nearing honey-smooth voice was humming right along.

Arthur looked up guiltily. She was prettier than he’d imagined, way prettier than he deserved. It took him a second to realize she was misting: the magic had her, if only for a wobbly pace in time.

“My favorite song,” she hummed.

“Mine too.”

“I’m Angela.”

He might have known. Angel. Are parents prescient?

“Arthur Beyer. I’m, um, can I buy you a drink?”

“They’re on the house, sweetheart. You’re not a party crasher, are you?”

“Oh no! I’m a chemical engineer. Lab man. We just sat for the conference and had to wait in the lobby but it’s okay because it’s really homey but more like home away from home instead of a lobby or lab if you see what I mean.”

She giggled angelically, gripped his forearm below the elbow. Ten thousand electric lunatics scrambled up his arm. Angela began massaging his back between the blades. Arthur almost fainted. “I’ll,” she breathed, “have what you’re having, sugar.”

Arthur ordered a similar. What a turn-on. Ordering a pretty lady a drink and the guys all staring hard.

But almost as soon as the drink was in her hand a voice broke in from behind. “Beyer!” Arthur looked around. “We’re on, Beyer! Get it out, man! Let’s go! No drinks inside.”

Arthur apologized effusively, just as uncomfortable as uncomfortable can be.

Angela saved him. “I promise I’ll call you, honey.” She plucked the magic marker from his coat pocket and handed him her cocktail napkin. An impossible moment: with no other available surface, the angel did the unthinkable--she hiked up her dress, placed a high-heeled foot on a chair’s seat, and offered her thigh for support. With one wrist resting in fishnet heaven, Arthur dazedly scrawled his number.

And the bubble popped. The crush of bodies pressed him backpedaling into the conference room. But their eyes remained wed. And her allure followed him inside, and relentlessly pursued him home.

Arthur waited three interminable days for that damned phone to ring. He had a variety of speeches prepared, and a desk littered with crib sheets. At the first chiming he snatched up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“I’m looking for a certain lab man.”

“Angel! I was just thinking about you.”

“Ditto here, sweetheart. So are we on for tonight?”

“Gee, let me check my schedule. Well what do you know? The whole night free!”

“We won’t need the whole night, lover. I’m back at the Marina R-C. Shall we say ninish?”

“With bells on.”

A smooch in the mouthpiece and the line went dead. Arthur looked at his watch. 7:10. He moved like a small forward: bathroom, wardrobe, hall mirror, car.

Jesus…she’d called him ‘lover’.

Jesus.

‘LOVER!’

He drove like a maniac, then like an automaton. This part, the nerves, hadn’t been included in his fantasy’s master plan. What happened to that suave, loquacious son of a b***h?

Arthur tipped the valet before the man had his keys, and only then realized he was flat out of cash. The credit cards looked good, but a winner flashes the bills in front of a lady. He’d been told that since high school. Unfortunately, he’d been told a lot of things.

He ricocheted through the gift shop with rhinestones in his eyes. Generous, but not flashy. Soon, but not too quick. He licked his lips. Cash first.

Arthur made his way to an outdoors ATM nestled like a cement altar in an ivy niche. Three hundred dollars would be padding enough, for show’s sake. Dinner and tips on the card. Drinks and tips with cash. Promises and prayers on bluff and bravado.

He stopped.

On the sidewalk below the ATM an ugly little bundle of fur was watching him intently. Old memories nagged him; Arthur’s expression scrunched round and round. Finally he whispered incredulously, “Boy?”

The dog whined and hobbled out of sight. Arthur stood confounded till his eyes refocused on the machine. Now Angela’s vision was hovering before him. Humming, beseeching. Instantly he was back in the present. He stepped up to the plate.

Card in the slot: Three-Zero-Zero.

Yes!

Arthur never had a chance to reach the dispenser. He was grabbed from behind and yanked out of the camera’s field. A man wearing dark shades and a watch cap snatched the bills with one hand and stuffed the other in Arthur’s face.

“What did you see?” The fingers made for his sockets.

“My eyes!”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing!”

“You’re damned straight you didn’t see nothing!” A knee caught him directly in the scrotum. The pain was so great…Arthur went right down. He curled up on his side and didn’t budge for five minutes. No one responded to the incident, no one else visited the ATM.

The camera’s red light winked cheerily. As he lay there panting, a scurvy little creature crept up, licked his face, and backed off hurriedly. Arthur hacked and spewed. What had just fouled him? A possum, a baby raccoon? He hauled himself up using the stainless steel shelf below the dispenser. His first instinct was to remove his bank card, illuminated by a pulsing yellow light. The screen thanked him, reminded him to take his receipt, and recommended a number of money-sucking programs tailored specifically for him. Arthur staggered away, using walls and planters for support.

Dear skeptical women: this unique pain is in a category all its own.

Nature, in Her infinite wisdom, has placed man’s chief governors outside the body, where they can dangle like a couple of tender sponge balloons with kick me written all over them. No expletive is remotely adequate, no diagram could begin to…no…no…yet by the time Arthur made it to the hotel’s lobby he was able to feign normality with a few scooted steps at a time…to pause at the magazine rack…to rest a bit on the couch. An ice machine provided cubes and a plastic container. Arthur made his way to the men’s room, eased himself into a stall, and rested for fifteen emasculated minutes before checking his watch--Jesus!

He rushed into the gift shop, where he used his card to buy a dozen pink roses and a box of Swiss chocolates. And suddenly he was drunk with testosterone…frilly merchandise, scented thingamabobs, superficial goop women are supposed to like…and over there: a delicate diamond watch, cutesy cards, individual liqueurs. What if it looked like he was coming on too strong--but…what if he looked like a cheapskate…and how did he suddenly know she was in the lobby, looking for him. His gonadal pain dissolved. Arthur picked up his roses and chocolates, turned autonomically, walked into the lobby.

She was lovelier than he remembered, lovelier than lovely, lovelier than…a black Venus in red, his all-time favorite color: evening dress and heels; gold-sequined purse and black velvet gloves. And she’d done her hair soft-and-wavy, just the way he liked it. The hoop earrings and gaudy violet lipstick were perfect; exactly as he’d have specified.

Angela caught his reflection in the big front window. She gasped and laughed at his gifts, took them into the crook of her left arm, took his waist in her right. She pulled him against her womanness, molded her body to his, kissed him flush on the lips.

Arthur was speechless. No woman had ever…no feeling could be so…you could have wrung out his palms.

“You’re sweet, Artie. So where do you want to do this?”

His voice caught in his throat. “I thought maybe dinner and drinks. The restaurant here’s supposed to be pretty good…live entertainment.”

She giggled, gripping his arm. “You’re cute.”

Arthur froze, and a voice that was not his mumbled, “You’re pretty.”

Her eyes laughed into his.

Something happened and passed.

Arthur found himself leaning in, body and soul caught in a stupefying gravity. His hands floated up her arms. “You’re my dream,” he whispered, cupping her shoulders in his palms. He smelled her all over, trying not to: Arthur was a stranger to his own timeless receptors. For an instant he was swallowed up in that animal fragrance, too deep for the mask of Chanel.

Angela squeezed. “Then let’s never wake.”

Her cell phone rang.

“Damn.”

She plucked the phone from her purse, held it to an ear. Her expression intensified. She dropped the phone back into her purse, pulled out a compact and lipstick. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I really have to run. Something’s come up.”

Arthur’s face fell. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.”

He felt something moist running over his hand and looked down. A line of red numbers now blushed knuckle-to-wrist.

“Call me.” She kissed his cheek and hurriedly made her way through a plain little side door, doing her lips while watching him in her compact’s mirror.

Arthur stood there far too long, gaping at a phone perched on a knee-high table. How desperate would that look--separated for three minutes and already ringing her up like a teenager pestering a heartthrob. But Arthur was desperate. His impotence was closing about him like a fist.

He pushed through the door expecting a secondary reception hall. What he got was a boxlike room: black-on-gold paisley wallpaper, ruby shag carpeting, a facing door blocked by a man perched casually on a padded wood chair, apparently reading a paperback.

“You looking for somebody?”

“A woman,” Arthur tried. “Black, tall, pretty. Red evening dress. She just came in.”

“Who you with?”

“I,” said Arthur uncertainly, “am alone.”

“I can see that. Who sent you?”

“Look, I need to talk to that woman. Her name’s Angela.”

The man slowly shook his head. “Nobody came in that door, pal. Nobody but you and the wind.”

“I was just with her, for goodness’ sake.”

The man stood up. He appeared quite strong. “Do I stutter, punk? Is there crap in your ears?”

Arthur shrank back. “What in the world’s going on in this hotel?” He licked his lips. “Who are you? Who is your employer?”

Something feral burned in the man’s eyes. “Isn’t that what I just asked you?” He reached into his coat’s pocket.

Arthur slipped back into the hallway. After half a minute he pressed his ear against the door. The voice was muffled, but he heard all he needed:

“Guy coming out, probably through the front. Black. Five-ten or eleven. A hundred and eighty-five. Cheap suit…”

Arthur tiptoed through the kitchen to the employees’ parking lot. The aisles were unlit except for occasional lamps under steel cupolas. He zigzagged the rows of parked cars until he came to an open space between ornate benches. There he found himself staring at a dirty old dog watching him right back. After a minute he whispered, unbelievingly, “Boy?”

A hard blow took out his knees.

Two pairs of hands hauled him to his feet; one pair locked his wrists behind his back, the other pulled his face forward. A fist caught him on the jaw. Arthur would have gone straight down if not for those strong cuffing hands. The next punch was in the solar plexus. As he doubled forward his head was yanked right back up. One after the other--crushing blows, well-placed, perfectly timed. This was no mugging; this was a professional, methodical ultimatum. The pauses between crashes to the skull grew longer. Arthur’s chin was raised on a fist for inspection. He imagined he felt a column of air preceding that massive black fist before the wrecking ball and white light threw his entire weight into a half-dead heap. Using one knee at the tailbone, the hard-breather behind him hauled him roughly vertical. Fingers in his hair steadied his head while the column of air whooshed in like a wave. The man behind embraced Arthur in a full nelson, his locked hands pushing the mangled face forward as a shield for his own lest that approaching tsunami take errant aim.

Arthur, quite literally, never saw it coming.

* * *

A male voice picked up: “House.”

Arthur pressed the receiver against his ear.

“You got exactly three seconds. Three…two…one…”

“I’d like to speak to Angela. Please.”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Arthur. Angela knows me. We were about to have dinner when something called her away.” He nursed his fractured jaw with cracked and scabby fingers. “If I could only have a moment, I’m certain we could clear this up.”

“What needs clearing up?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

The voice was redirected. “Angie? Get your a*s over here, baby. You know some guy named Arthur; owes you dinner?” The voice came back. “She don’t know you from nobody, pal.”

“Please.” Arthur squeezed the word out. “Last night. The Marina Ritz Carlton. We were dating. Just the once. Something came up; some kind of emergency. I’d like to offer my condolences and try to make it up to her.”

There was a male-female exchange.

Suddenly his angel’s voice was melting all over him.

“Arthur?”

“Angela!”

“This is the last time I wanna hear your stupid-a*s voice, creep.”

The male voice came back. “You don’t have this number. We never talked. Capiche?” The line went dead.

Arthur cradled that receiver in his hand for the longest time. The hum became a peal, the peal a series of clicks. A canned voice droned on and on. The sequence repeated. And the shadows recast their workaday pall, sucking the billion-and-one Arthur Beyers into that heaving gray mist we all eventually fit by degrees too subtle to fathom.

* * *

From the matching bench he could see the line of headlights spilling down Lincoln, and see the long parallel line of taillights crawling up.

Bugs.

Fire ants on a biochemical roller coaster, soulless things unaware of the big picture, just sucking along. Only in the weest of hours would there be a break in that routine--just as much a part of the pattern as the crush itself. Then, for an exhilarating moment, captured whole during some miscellaneous red light, no lancing beams would bugger that cusp: the intersection capping Lincoln’s bleak incline would remain static. Something systemic would hold its all-polluting breath right along with him. The light would change to green. A blinding double-damn you would roll over the cap, soon followed by another. Then a pair, a pack, a swarm, a stampede. The ants would pour down the slope, antennae waving, and they’d find him, as they did every morning, and they’d tromp him with their sticky rubber feet, reduce his corpse in their cold chromed mandibles, fry his trammeled useless being in their numberless halogen eyes.

* * *

“Arthur?”

His neck muscles kicked.

“Arthur!”

His lids peeled apart. That had to be the voice of sweet Nurse Beatrice.

“Arthur, the wonderful people over at Jefferson Chapel have set up a program to assist our bedridden elderly; you know, so they won’t have to lay around doing nothing all day. But instead of just magazines and puzzles and stuff, they’ve decided the best thing anyone can have is a little company.” Nurse Beatrice turned her head--Arthur could tell by the way her voice changed planes. “Miriam?”

A chorus of squeals rang just outside the room. There was a scuffing of rubber heels, a flutter of skirts.

“Arthur, there’s somebody here I want you to meet.”

Arthur’s rolling head snagged a tube; Nurse Beatrice gently tugged it free. In the crook of her left arm was a shaggy gray pup, nervous as all get-out. It peed a trace down good Beatrice’s elbow, and the girls all laughed. She cupped the little guy in her palm; no bigger’n a tennis ball. Nurse Beatrice sniffed back a sob. “We’re calling him ‘Boy’.” She set him on Arthur’s bulbous belly. The pup swayed like a novice seaman.

Nurse Ruth glided around behind the bed while cradling Arthur’s fallen head in her hands. She tenderly rolled his lolling head aright, wiped the tears from her eyes, bent in to kiss his brow.

Angel.

For a paralyzing moment beast and man faced one another, as awkward as first daters.

Nurse Beatrice gave the dog a little pat on the rump, causing it to slide down onto that wide splayed breast.

The puppy was a fun house image in Arthur’s sunken eyes; a comical thing, all wet nose and sticky grin.

“Oh my God!” Nurse Esther squealed, slapping her palms on her cheeks while hopping about like a schoolgirl. Then all the nurses were hugging in a giddy huddle. Nurse Beatrice gave the pup another bump. All Arthur could see was a crazy convexity of big eyes, shaggy ears, and flaring runny nose. Nurse Miriam popped out a camera while the puppy licked away old Arthur’s salt tears.

The girls all squealed: it was a Kodak moment, a slice of American pie, a Rockwell oil fading to black.

The breather fogged over. Arthur’s eyes rolled back. His chest halted mid-heave.

Nurse Beatrice moved aside for the camera, and, before her voice could break completely, whispered:

“Smile.”