Blow Fly

23

SUNLIGHT ILLUMINATES A SLIVER of Benton's face as he stares out the window.

Silence reigns for a Jong, tense moment. The air seems to shimmer ominously, and Marino rubs his eyes.

"I don't get it." His mouth quivers. "You could be free, go home, be alive again." His voice cracks. "I thought you'd at least thank my ass for going to all the trouble to come here and tell you that maybe Lucy and me ain't ever given up on getting you back…"

"By offering her?" Benton turns around and looks at him. "By offering Kay as bait?"

At last he says her name, but he is so calm, it is as if he has no feelings, and Marino is shocked. He wipes his eyes.

"Bait? What…?"

"Isn't it enough what the bastard has already done to her?" Benton goes on. "He tried to kill her once." He's not talking about Jean-Baptiste. He's talking about Jay Talley.

"He ain't gonna kill her when he's sitting behind bulletproof glass, chatting away on a phone inside a maximum-security prison," Marino says as they continue to talk about two different people.

"You're not listening to me," Benton tells him.

"That's because you're not listening to me," Marino childishly retorts.

Benton turns off the air conditioner and slides up the window. He closes his eyes as a breeze touches his hot cheeks like cool fingers. He smells the burgeoning Earth. For an instant, he remembers being alive with her, and he begins to bleed inside like a hemophiliac.

"Does she know?" he asks.

Marino rubs his face. "Jesus. I'm so sick and tired of my blood pressure shooting up like I'm a damn thermometer."

"Tell me." Benton presses his palms against the window frame, leaning into the fresh air. He turns around and meets Marino's eyes. "Does she know?"

Marino gets his meaning and sighs. "No, hell no. She don't know. She'll never know unless you're the one who tells her. I wouldn't do that to her. Lucy wouldn't do that to her. See"-he angrily pulls himself to his feet-"some of us care too much about her to hurt her like that. Imagine how she'd feel if she knew you're alive and don't care a shit about her anymore."

He walks to the door, shaking with rage and grief. "I thought you might thank me."

"I do thank you. I know you mean well." Benton walks over to him, his calm demeanor uncanny. "I know you don't understand, but maybe someday you will. Good-bye, Pete. I don't ever want to see or hear from you again. Please don't take it personally."

Marino grabs the doorknob and almost yanks it out of the wood. "Good riddance and go fuck yourself. Don't take it personally."

They face each other like two men squaring off in a gun fight, neither wanting to be the first to move, neither really wanting the other to be gone from his life. Benton's hazel eyes are vacant, as if whoever lives behind them has vanished. Marino's pulse measures panic as he realizes that the Benton he knew is gone and nothing will ever bring him back.

And somehow Marino is going to have to tell Lucy. And somehow Marino will have to accept the fact that his dream of rescuing Benton and returning him to Scarpetta will always be a dream, only a dream.

"It don't make sense!" Marino shouts.

Benton touches an index finger to his lips. "Please go, Pete," he quietly says. "It doesn't have to make sense."

Marino hesitates in the dimly lit, stinking landing just beyond apartment 56. "Okay." He fumbles for his cigarettes and spills several on the filthy concrete. "Okay…" He starts to say Benton but catches himself as he squats to pick up the cigarettes, his thick fingers clumsily breaking two of them.

He wipes his eyes with the back of a big hand as Benton looks down at him from the apartment doorway, watching, not offering to help pick up the cigarettes, unable to move.

"Take care, Pete," Benton, the master of masks and self-control, says in a steady, reasonable voice.

Marino looks up with bloodshot eyes from his squatting position on the landing. The seam in the crotch of his wrinkled khakis is slightly ripped, his white briefs peeking through.

He blurts out, "Don't you get it, you can come back!"

"What you don't get is there is no back to go back to," Benton says in a voice so low it is almost inaudible. "I don't want to come back. Now please get the hell out of my life and leave me alone."

He pulls his apartment door shut and flips the dead bolt. Inside, he collapses on the couch and covers his face with his hands while Marino's insistent knocking turns to violent thuds and kicks.

"Yeah, well, enjoy your great life, asshole!" his muffled voice sounds through the door. "I always knew you was cold and don't give a fuck about anybody, including her, you fucking psycho!" The banging and kicking suddenly stop.

Benton holds his breath, straining to hear. The sudden silence is worse than any tantrum. Pete Marino's silence is damning. It is final. His friend's heavy feet scuff down the stairs.

"I am dead," Benton mutters into his hands as he doubles over on the couch.

"No matter what, I am dead. I am Tom. Tom Haviland. Tom Speck Haviland…" His chest heaves and his heart seems to beat out of rhythm. "Born in Greenwich, Connecticut…"

He gets up, crushed by a depression that turns the room dark and the air as thick as oil. He smells Marino's lingering cigarette smoke, and it runs through him like a blade. Moving to the window, he stands to one side of it so he isn't visible from below, and he watches Pete Marino walking slowly away through intermittent shadows and dappled sunlight along uneven cobblestones.

Marino stops to light a Lucky Strike and turns around to stare up at Benton's depressing building until he finds apartment 56. Cheap sheer curtains are caught by a breeze and flutter out the open window like spirits leaving.