BEN WYDER SINGS THE BLUES

By

Angela Lam Turpin

She lies on the Sealy mattress wearing a pink floral dress in the heat of a New Orleans summer. I explain the features. I show her how the remote raises the head, lowers the feet, lowers the head, raises the feet. Her body bends in half. I speak to her in soft low tones, using the voice of Joshua Norman, top-salesman, the same voice that transforms into Ben Wyder when I sing the blues. The woman gazes up at me and asks if the mattress can be delivered. “Yes,” I reply, “for a twenty-five dollar charge we’ll send someone to deliver the mattress and dispose of your old mattress, if you have one to be disposed of.” She laughs. Her smile is contagious. She thinks I care whether or not she buys the mattress, but I don’t care. I don’t have to. I’m Ben Wyder. I sing the blues.
When the woman leaves with her receipt for a new Sealy mattress which will be delivered next Tuesday between the hours of two and four, I stroll into the employees’ lounge and light a cigarette. I sit on the hard vinyl chair and cross my ankle over my knee and stare at the vending machine in the flickering fluorescent light. I hum a few bars of “You Broke My Heart” and forget about everything for a while.
Sammy Nickels, the strapping new salesman from California, saunters into the lounge, drops two quarters into the vending machine, pushes the red button for a meager package of Cheetos, and waits. When the Cheetos refuse to drop, he knees the plastic window and shouts, “Motherfucker!” The Cheetos teeter from side to side, caught in the silver ring, taunting him like a bully on the playground. Sammy raises his fists and lunges at the vending machine, pummeling the plastic window until the Cheetos shake free and tumble down. He shoves his hand into the receptacle and whisks his trophy away. He saunters out of the lounge, munching on a mouthful of crunchy orange cheese foam.
Becky Roberts, the accountant, slips inside and sniffs the coffee, which is four hours old. She wrinkles her nose, dumps the black slime into the sink, rinses the carafe and brews a new pot. While waiting, she rifles through the want ads, always scouting for a better job with better pay, better hours, better benefits, better work environment. I don’t blame her. If it weren’t for Ben Wyder, I’d be looking, too.
By the time my break ends, I have begun to compose a new song on the back of a greasy napkin with my black fine-tip ball-point pen. “Lowering the Sky” is darkly dangerous, rich and sensitive, just the type of song to open a new gig. I tuck the lyrics in my breast pocket along with the pen and stroll out of the lounge. Clarissa Mastopolis, the sales manager, waves and asks, “How’s it going, Josh?” I smile and shrug, not knowing how Joshua Norman feels about anything anymore. Clarissa, polite and noncommittal, walks away without noticing I never answered.

Later that night, in a smoky jazz club downtown, I sing, “The sky is dangerous. Full of diamonds from lost wedding rings. Stones as cold and vacant as the hole you left in me. The sky is lowering, coming down on me. Won’t somebody notice? The sky is lowering, please rescue me.”
I sing in a throaty contralto, working down into a tenor, until my voice goes underneath the skin of the woman sitting nearest the stage. She trembles. I am in her now, moving through her. I am the pulse in her wrist as she grabs her man’s hand and squeezes. I gaze into the liquid light of her eyes and feel the gravitational pull of desire tighten between us.
When the song ends, I shuffle back from the edge of the stage, bow, and release the woman from my hypnotic voice. The audience’s applause ripples over me. I nod my thanks. I’m Ben Wyder. I sing the blues.
After the first set, the band and I take a break. I walk over to the bar, order a gin and tonic, no ice, and lean my elbows against the rail while I wait. The woman from the table nearest the stage surprises me with her presence. She wants my autograph. She wants to know if I have an album. She wants to know if I’ll be her date tomorrow night, if I’m not singing.
I sign her napkin, tell her I’m looking for a record label, and ask her if her husband minds her cheating like this, so openly. She giggles, raising the napkin to her lips, hiding the teeth I imagine must be crooked. “He’s not my husband,” she whispers, and though the tone sounds true, the words are false.
My drink arrives. The bartender waives the fee, knowing I will split my earnings as I always do, down the middle, with him. The gin burns the back of my throat then dissolves swiftly, leaving my tongue alive and crisp. The woman waits, hoping I will say something, indicate some interest in her beauty, but I don’t say anything. I don’t care for her brown curls, her doe eyes, her too visible cleavage. I prefer women with short cropped blond hair, eyeglasses, and small, almost childish, breasts. Studious women. Serious women. Soulful women. I once dated a professor of cultural anthropology at the university where I studied music. I told her to leave her glasses on while we made love. “Glasses are lingerie for the eyes,” I said. She smiled and pressed kisses into the hairs of my chest. “Put that in a song,” she said. I did. “Undressed, But for Your Eyes,” I called it. I only sing it when there’s an attractive woman wearing eyeglasses in a nightclub. Otherwise, I stick to the favorites.
The woman’s husband enters the room, looking for her. I turn my back toward the woman and order another gin and tonic, no ice. The husband says, “Here you are,” with the relief of a lost child, not the strength of a confident man who can handle his wife’s enormous need for comfort from a man she adores. “Pity him almost as much as I pity her,” I hear someone say. I glance over my shoulder. No one is there. The voice came from inside; it’s Joshua Norman talking. A guy I haven’t heard from in five, maybe six, years.
I want to ask him what he’s doing here, in a dive like this, but I don’t have time. The drummer is waving to me. It’s time for the second set.
I sing the same repertoire I have sung for the last three nights at the same club. My voice is strong and my mind is sharp, but there is a draft somewhere between my throat and my stomach, a breezy ache in my heart. I gaze down at the woman near the stage and she is no longer smiling. Her husband holds her hand, but he does not have possession of her heart. She is trying to get him to leave early, take her home, erase her memory of this fruitless evening with a bout of uneventful lovemaking. But he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t have to. She’s his wife. She is the one who should understand him.
Something about the woman’s sorrowful gaze penetrates the smoky armor of the room. I want to leave. But I have three more songs. Two old, one new. I close my eyes, try to regain my balance, but already I feel my feet walking out the door, down the street, beneath the cold, dark sky.
I open my eyes. I am standing on stage, the center of attention, with nothing but a dull pain snaking through me. The woman near the stage is crying. Her husband is staring at his feet, not knowing what to do. From somewhere deep inside, I hear a somewhat familiar voice ask, “What would you like to hear, ma’am?”
She touches her chest with her hand, instantly flattered and ashamed. I nod sweetly to her, no longer Ben Wyder, but Joshua Norman, standing not on the stage but next to her, as if we’re in her living room. She leans forward when I put the microphone to her lips and says, “That first song you sung, about the sky. Sing it again, please.”
I nod and smile. And though I sing it with my eyes opened, my eyes closed, my voice never slithers underground like it did before. I don’t possess her. Instead, a slow burning flame flickers in my heart, and the man I once was, Joshua Norman, smiles.
Ben Wyder stands in the shadows, not quite here, not quite gone.
By the end of the second set, I’m ready to call it a night. But the audience wants an encore. The band hints at one more round of “Blue Jeans and Baby Dolls,” but I want to close with “More Desperate than Average.” We settle on an old favorite, “Every Sunset Is a Goodbye.” The crowd applauds, dreamy and listless, drunk on alcohol and my voice. The woman near the stage is smiling again. My knees tremble like her hands did, that first time, when my voice entered her soul. I sit down on the stool and place the microphone in the stand. Ben Wyder has left the room. Joshua Norman sits on stage, the center of attention. I want to leave, but I have no strength. The woman near the stage has taken it along with all of my goodbyes.

The sales figures are in. Joshua Norman is the top mattress salesman east of the Rockies. I’m going to Cancun. For seven days and six nights. First-class. Paid for by the company.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to lounge around in tropical swim trunks wearing too much sunscreen on a cheerful beach surrounded by beautiful tanned women in bikinis. I want to hunch in the dark in front of a microphone in a smoky dive where ordinary men and women come in to escape the glare of their too bright dreams. I want to feel the rhythm of the jazz band reverberate in my spine, sending a message to my feet and head, via the channel of my heart.
I tell myself it’s only one week. One small, insignificant week out of my life. Clarissa congratulates me in the employees’ lounge, sharing stories of her last trip to Cancun, how the waters were turquoise blue, bluer than my eyes. “Just don’t drink the water,” she warns. “You’ll be sick for weeks. Drink diet Coke, instead.” She winks.
At the nightclub where I’ve been singing, I tell Lonnie, the manager, I will have to cancel six shows. He listens to me, bobbing his head to the invisible beat that bounces through his head. Lonnie’s about fifty, looking more like eighty, with white leathery skin and a puckered mouth from not wearing his dentures all the time like he should. He’s smart with numbers, poor with people, and for that reason alone, he likes me. I warm up the crowds, draw them in like an inviting fire on an impossibly cold night. He’s thinking of what he will do for the next week, what shows he can book, how he can stop me from going. I joke with him, say I’d give him the ticket to Cancun, if it were transferable. But he only smiles and shakes his head. “Too old for the ladies,” he says, although both of us know it isn’t true. Women don’t care about looks; they care about things we can’t see, like the strength of a man’s character, the wisdom of a good song, the comfort of prayer. They aren’t like us, concerned with more transitory things, like a woman’s youth and beauty, the amount of sex in our lives, and the fierce need to be the best at whatever it is we do. Finally, Lonnie looks at me. There are tears in his brown eyes. “Go,” he says. “The break will do you good. Here’s an extra hundred. For drinks. Never can have too much tequila.” He cups my hand, squeezes. His voice is gruff, lost. “We’ll miss you.”
At the airport, I have no one to wish me good-bye, no one to welcome me home. I am Ben Wyder—singer, loner—sitting in first class, flipping through Men’s Health magazine. I read about angina, back care, how to check for prostate cancer. I do not care what people think. I don’t have to. Music takes care of my soul.

Clarissa is right. The water is turquoise blue, bluer than my eyes. At the hotel, I check in as Joshua Norman, top mattress salesman east of the Rockies. I go to my room, unpack, lie down, and stare at the ceiling. The textured white paint stares back at me. I could be anywhere, I think.
At night, after a spectacular sunset that turned the whole sky liquid gold, I migrate from nightclub to nightclub, from Coco Bongo to Fat Tuesday, listening to the amateurs at the karaoke bar singing off tune. I order a tequila, two beers, and a shot of whiskey for starters and take a seat at a booth. I want to be alone. I hate the bright tropical lights around the stage, the paper umbrellas in the drinks, the half-dressed women begging to be taken back to the hotel. I close my eyes and try to shut out the awful singing. I am Ben Wyder, and I want to go home.

By the third night, I no longer go to the nightclubs. I stay in the hotel and drink. I hate the sun, the happiness. I’m starting to feel more and more out of place, more and more like somebody else, somebody less Ben Wyder, but not quite Joshua Norman, either.
In the hotel lobby where I stop to buy a magazine, I spot the most intriguing woman I have ever seen. She stands near the rack of postcards in the gift shop with one knee bent, lithe as a cat, strikingly androgynous, with short blond hair clipped close around the ears. Best of all, she sports perfect gold-rimmed glasses. She bends down to examine a postcard of Isla Mujeres with its white beaches. I feel an ache all out of proportion to her beauty. I follow her to the cash register and softly sing, “Undressed, But for Your Eyes.” She turns around, smiles sweetly, and asks, “Is that something I’ve heard before or something you just made up?”
“Something I wrote a long time ago for a woman like you,” I say.
“What happened to her?”
“She broke my heart. Then ran away.”
“Pity.”
I shrug. “Her loss, not mine.”
The woman in glasses arches an eyebrow. “Tell me more,” she says.
I tell her everything. About my lonely childhood, my tough adolescence, my reinvention of myself as Ben Wyder—singer, loner—and that unlikely salesman who can’t help but close a deal, Joshua Norman. By now, we are sitting at the hotel’s bar. She is drinking a margarita and twirling a string on her blouse with her left hand and offering me a crooked smile, no promises, no threats. I feel confident, secure, and strangely humble. When I ask if I can walk her to her room, she allows me to accompany her up to the seventh floor. At the door, she fits the keycard into the slot but before she can turn the handle, someone else opens the door. A man. With thick, wavy black hair and a mustache. He’s wearing nothing but a terrycloth towel around his expanded waistline. The woman, Glenda, introduces me to her boyfriend, Carlos. “Nothing serious,” she whispers, blowing me a kiss before closing the door.
Nothing serious.
I return to the lobby to buy another drink before heading back to my room. At the bar, I notice a familiar man leaning against the counter. It’s Joshua Norman. He motions for me to come over and sit with him. He looks sad like he needs company. I start to walk over to him, but then I change my mind. I’m not ready to call it a defeat. Just a setback. A minor one, at that. So what if she has a boyfriend? It’s no worse than a husband. And I’ve stolen many women away from their husbands.
I take a seat at the far end of the bar, away from Joshua and his foul-smelling loneliness. I order a scotch, a whiskey, and two beers. I think of Glenda, of her honey-colored skin and her almond shaped eyes dressed up with those perfect gold-rimmed glasses.
Nothing serious.
I nurse my scotch and scan the room, thankful none of the women are wearing glasses.

That night I dream of Glenda wearing a pink teddy. She lies spread-eagle in a queen size bed playing with herself. From the corner of the room, Carlos approaches. He encircles her body with his beefy arms, pulls her close, and glides deep inside. In the middle of their lovemaking, I spring from beneath the covers and grab Glenda’s breast. Carlos gropes for it, but I slap him away. I am a primordial man taking what he wants with brute force, the supernatural power of desire. I am Ben Wyder. I don’t care who gets hurt as long as I get what I want.
In the blistering sunlight, I wake up startled and confused. Joshua Norman shivers in Ben Wyder’s clammy skin. Bleary-eyed, with an army of rocks pounding against my skull, I stagger to the bathroom and throw up. I count the number of days left—three—before I go home. I groan. Somehow I manage to shower, shave, fall into bed, sleep.
By mid-afternoon Ben wakes up refreshed, ready to begin a new adventure. From the brochures on the round table by the window, I circle an interesting tour of the Mayan ruins. While waiting for the tour bus outside the hotel, we see Glenda walking hand in hand with Carlos toward the beach. Joshua follows them. “Wait up!” Ben says.
Joshua pulls Ben close and places a finger over his lips. “You don’t want to alert her,” he whispers. We crouch behind a palm tree, watching, waiting. When Carlos leaves to buy drinks near the cabana, Joshua darts out from behind the palm tree and sloshes through the sand singing, “Undressed, But for Your Eyes.” His voice warbles like a prepubescent teen, not the throaty contralto of Ben Wyder.
Glenda smiles sweetly. “Oh, it’s you. The singer.”
Joshua kneels before her and asks, “Will you marry me?”
“Not now,” she giggles.
“When?”
“Maybe never.”
Carlos turns around and shouts, “Hey, buddy, get away from my gal!”
Joshua stumbles to his feet and scampers through white sand. Ben curses. “You idiot! Why’d you go and ruin it for me? I could have serenaded her tonight. Beneath the stars, from the balcony, for Chrissakes!”
Back at the hotel, I phone Lonnie in New Orleans and tell him about Glenda, leaving out Joshua’s fiasco on the beach. He chuckles. “Ben, my boy, you’re the one who’s good with the ladies, remember? I’m too old to be of any use in that department. Now, ask me about stocks and I’ll tell you. Boy, will I tell you!”
He’s right. I, Ben Wyder, am a heartbreaker. But, here in Cancun, my charm isn’t working. It’s like the bright sun and salty waves have tarnished the luster from my shiny veneer, making me rusty and antiquated. Not to mention Joshua’s sudden appearance. He seems to be around a lot these days.
I check my hair in the mirror. Still a huge shag although I am fast approaching forty. My physique is not bad, a little flabby around the edges, but nothing like Carlos. I have to admit, I’m still a looker. Too bad for those women like Glenda who can’t appreciate a looker. They’re too busy hooked on big, fat, and ugly.
From the looks of the pink and yellow sun dipping into the sea, I guess it’s close to dinner time. I check my wallet and realize, quite sadly, I’ve spent more money on drinks than I should have.
“What are we going to do?” Joshua asks.
Ben folds his wallet and slips it into his back pocket. He grins. “There’s nothing left to do but sing the blues.”

At a nightclub Ben Wyder takes the karaoke stage and belts out the blues. Women flock to him, buy him drinks, invite him to their hotel rooms, but Ben only downs the liquor and walks away. What good would these women be when the only woman he wants is sitting in a booth next to Carlos pretending she does not hear him?
“Are you crazy?” Joshua whispers to Ben. “I haven’t been with a woman in ages, and here’s the cream of the crop waiting to be picked by you.”
At the last minute, after one too many tequila shots, I select a fresh-faced girl from California. Her cocoa butter skin and mango ripe hair arouse a curious hunger I hope to satisfy. But, after we make love on the chaise lounge in her hotel room, I get dressed and leave without a kiss good-bye. Waiting in the elevator, I feel a pang of disappointment. The desire for Glenda hasn’t waned; it’s grown to phenomenal proportions. It’s as if the taste of another woman’s skin has doused the flames of my
desire with gasoline. Walking down the sultry street to my hotel room three blocks away, I compose a song. “She Eats with Matches, Not Chopsticks” will be the opening song for my next gig when I get back to the States.
In the hotel lobby, I spy Glenda in the gift shop purchasing more postcards. I want to walk up to her, nibble her ear, tell her I love her. But she struts away when she sees me with only a half-hearted smile flung in my direction.
I pause, staring at the space her body occupied just moments ago. The distance I have placed between Ben and Joshua these last five years starts to fade until there is no space between Ben and Joshua. It’s just me, and I know it.

Thankfully, the week ends. My return to the mattress store is greeted with hugs and hurrahs from the staff who have missed me.
By mid-morning, a couple enters the store, inquiring about a waterbed. The woman looks familiar, but I don’t know her name. I lead the couple to the back of the showroom and offer them three styles to select from. The man lies down on the first bed and closes his eyes, pretending to sleep. The woman sits down on the edge of the bed and presses her palm against the mattress. Soft waves undulate across the bed, rippling underneath the man who pretends to sleep. The woman looks at me then looks at the mattress then looks at me again. This time she frowns. “Aren’t you the guy at Charlie’s? The one who sings the blues."
For the first time in a long while, I don’t know what to say. The woman shakes her husband’s arm. “Steve, isn’t he the guy from the club? Ben Milder?”
The husband squints at me, then at my name tag. “Says he’s Joshua, not Ben, honey. Sure you’re not thinking of someone else?”
“No, I swear it’s him.” She gazes up at me with rapt attention. “Do you sing?”
I don’t want to disappoint her, but I also don’t want to sing. Not right here, right now, in the back of the showroom. I want to finish my day, change my clothes in the green room, warm up with a few Do-Rey-Mees before breaking into song. So I tell her. The truth.
“You’re right, it’s me. Ben Wyder. By day, I sell mattresses. By night, I sing the blues.”
“Ben, oh, Ben!” The woman clasps her hands and tosses her head back. “I knew it was you! I’ve been dreaming about you every night since you sang that song, ‘Lowering the Sky.’ It’s my absolute favorite of all time. When will you be singing again?”
“Tonight, same time, same place.”
“Oh, did you hear that, Steve? We’re going to have to see Ben sing at Charlie’s again. Do you think we can get a sitter?”
“Why don’t we talk about it later, okay? I thought we were picking out a waterbed.”
When they are gone, I slip into the employees’ lounge for my ten minute break. The broken vending machine has been replaced with a bright, shiny new model with sliding doors stuffed with sandwiches and tomato juice and apples. The hard vinyl chairs have been stacked in a corner and a new couch sits squarely in the center of the room. Even the flickering fluorescent light has been changed.
I hunker down on the arm of the couch and light a cigarette. Sammy saunters into the lounge, drops three quarters into the vending machine, slides the door back, and removes a Washington apple. He hums a few bars to himself. I don’t recognize what he’s singing.
Becky slips inside, already holding a paper cup full of espresso, and leans over to kiss my cheek. “I’m leaving for Worley’s Fabrics in two weeks,” she confides. “As their accounting executive.”
“Congratulations,” I say, extending my hand.
She fluffs my hair and smiles. “I’ll miss you, Josh.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll make better friends.”
By the time my break ends, I realize too much has changed in the week I’ve been gone. It seems like a different place in a different time. Or maybe I’m just a different person.
Back in the showroom, Clarissa winks. “How was Cancun? Meet any beautiful natives?”
I shrug, thinking of Glenda, how she seemed as foreign as the white sand under my bare feet. “I’m not really lucky.”
Clarissa stops. She’s paying attention. She looks up at me and says, slowly, so I can hear her correctly. “You don’t need luck, Josh. You are luck. How else do you think we’ve been able to make all these improvements while you were away? The parent company paid us a huge bonus, thanks to your record-breaking sales.”
Luck, where were you last week? I think, remembering Glenda and how I made a fool of myself on the beach.

That night, I am scheduled to sing at Charlie’s. Two hours before the show, I run the new song by the band, but it doesn’t play right, so we decide to save it for practice next week. We go over the song list and tune our instruments in front of the mikes.
An hour before show time, Lonnie lumbers into the club and smothers me with a big bear hug.
“How’d it go?” he asks. “Any luck with the ladies?”
“All except one. A blonde. She got away.”
“There’s a song for that.”
“I know. We’ll be playing it tonight.”
“I hope you don’t mind starting a bit early,” Lonnie says, lowering his voice. “I had to fire the opening act. Crenshaw and the Crew. A bunch of comedians from the bayou.”
I nudge his arm. “No problem, stranger. I have a lot of soul tonight.”
At eight-thirty, I take center stage and introduce myself as Ben Wyder with the Stalwart Hearts Band. Johnny counts to three and the band starts to play.
“The sky is dangerous,” I sing. “Full of diamonds from lost wedding rings. Stones as cold and vacant as the hole you left in me.”
By the time I’m half-way through the song, the lights dim just enough for me to notice a blonde sauntering up to the bar, with one knee bent, her hair cropped close to her ears. When she turns around, lights reflect from her gold-rimmed glasses.
I tell myself it can’t be her, she’s thousands of miles away, in a tropical beach sipping margaritas with Carlos. Not here in Charlie’s Nightclub in New Orleans. Not listening to me, Ben Wyder, sing.
My palms sweat. Beads of moisture dot my forehead. My voice falters. I can’t remember the words.
The blonde by the bar slithers up toward the stage. All I hear is the blood running in my ears.
I don’t know if I’m singing anymore or not. All I know is that it is her, moving around the occupied tables, walking toward me.
Glenda.
“The sky is lowering, coming down on me. Won’t somebody notice?” My voice breaks into a sultry croon, surprising me with its sweet intensity. “The sky is lowering, please rescue me.”
The rest of the first set blurs into a foggy haze of exhilaration. She’s here! She’s here! I want to dance. I want to scream. I want to stop singing the blues and start singing for me.
At the break, I step down from the stage and approach her. “May I get you something from the bar?” I ask.
“Just a diet Coke, no ice.”
She follows me to the bar where I wave away the gin and tonic, no ice, and order a diet Coke, no ice, and a club soda. I want to remember every look, every word, every breath she takes. When our drinks arrive, I raise my glass.
“To the girl I thought I lost,” I say.
She raises her glass. “You never had me,” she corrects. “I had you.”
She’s right, I think.
Our glasses clink. I sip the club soda and feel the bubbles fizz in the back of my throat. I stare into her gold-rimmed glasses and see Ben and Joshua, one man, reflected back to me.

###

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 04.07.2009

Alle Rechte vorbehalten