43

“Hey, kid, what took you so long?”

“Me! I was waiting for the lawyers to leave, Ben. Gosh, I’ve been sitting out in the lounge there for a couple of hours at least.”

“OK, I’m just teasing you, Tommy; just busting your chops. Hey, I’m sick and I can bust a fellow’s chops at will and blame it on my illness, right? So anyway, come on over here and sit down by the bed. Grab that chair over in the corner; it’s more comfortable than this plastic piece of nonsense they set here for the guests. I told the private duty nurse to take off for a while so we could have some peace and quiet for the talk I promised you we’d have. So—you ready? You bring your note pad along?”

“I don’t need a note pad, Ben. I remember everything you tell me. I can remember every word you’ve said to me practically verbatim for the past two weeks.”

“And I remember most of yours too, Tommy. That’s how much we are in tune.”

“Eddie and I have been celebrating since last night—or this early morning I guess it was—about your agreeing to the operation. Both of us are thrilled.”

“Yeah, well about that—The chair soft enough? You comfortable enough to sit a little while?”

“Yeah, it’s good. Cushy. Warm too, from where the nurse was sitting, I guess.”

“He’s a character; his name is Carlos. You know they work twelve-hour shifts? Which means he’s been here all night. Nice guy. We had a lot of laughs.”

“Uh-huh; it’s a lot easier to laugh now that we know you’re willing to have the procedure done.”

“Right. Well, I was getting ready to tell you about that. Carlos did some stuff for me last night. I sent him out to get me a pen and paper and a couple of envelopes. The thing is, with Carole and Eddie, they’ve been so close to me for so long, it’s hard for me to see them sad the way they’ve been. So what I did, I wrote them letters; long letters, detailed letters; telling them how much they’ve meant to me and how grateful I am for their love and devotion and kindnesses—infinite kindnesses, you know? Not easy to write, as you can probably imagine, but writing it was a whole lot easier than having to tell them to their faces, especially with all the emotion going on.”

“Yes, I can see that, Ben. Both of them were total wrecks until you changed your mind about the surgery. I guess I probably was a little too.”

“I could see you were, Tommy, and I was touched by it, I really was. I think I know how you feel, and I feel the same way about you—I think you know that too, don’t you?”

“I think so, Ben. I think I do.”

“And you understand about me not wanting to spend the morning consoling Carole and Eddie, don’t you?”

“Consoling them? Why would you have to console them now? I mean….”

“You understand where I’m going with this, I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah, but Ben! You said you changed your mind. You told Eddie….”

“I had to tell Eddie that, don’t you understand? Look, I haven’t got much more strength left in me, and there were two main things I wanted to do. One was for us to have our talk—which is good for me; it’s not stressful at all; if anything, it’s restorative—Besides, I promised, and I always keep my promises….

“And the other thing I wanted was…. Look, you asked me something a couple of days ago; you asked me what my major goal in life has always been, my fundamental motivation. Yours was the car business: making autos in America—And I think I’ve got you started doing that; the rest is up to you. But let me ask you something: Do you have a girlfriend? Or have you ever had a girl who was special to you? Someone who was so important to your state of mind that you couldn’t imagine living life without her?”

“I haven’t, Ben. I just haven’t ever met a girl I cared about that much. I know about you, though. Eddie told me all about it, but he said I shouldn’t ever talk about it with you directly. That I shouldn’t ever bring it up.”

“That’s Eddie! Always looking out for his old buddy Ben. I was lucky to have had him as a friend all these years, Tommy, I genuinely was. But as for what he told you, things are different now. Since I saw that picture that Eddie found in his closet, and even more since I met you, I’ve been remembering all of the happy times of my early life, and it’s been helpful—No, more than just helpful—It’s been a godsend to me. You’ve been a very large part of that, Tom; and I’d like to pay you back for it in some small way, so what I want to do today is tell you some of the things you asked me about. Maybe hearing about my happy times in life will help you in finding some of yours—But let’s get this out of the way first. I’m going to ask a favor of you.”

“You can ask me anything Ben, but about the surgery, you’re not really going to cancel it, are you? Now that everything is all prepared?”

“But it isn’t all prepared, Tommy. I told Eddie I’d consider it, and I have considered it, and I came to the conclusion that it’s just not right for me. So what I’m going to ask you to do for me, is keep the envelopes in the bed-stand drawer in your possession, and give them to Carole and Eddie at the appropriate time. Everything I had to say to them is in there, and if the letters are delivered by you, I think they’ll take it better—Easier, I mean—OK?”

“OK, sure, but….”

“No, no ‘but’s. Don’t try to convince me otherwise. My heart is just strong enough to talk to you and meet with my Russian counterpart of Lizzie. I’m supposed to keep calm and unemotional, so if you get me too stirred up, the consequences will be on your head, you understand?”

“I understand, Ben, but….”

“Everything else is done. I talked to the lawyers and signed all the necessary forms. Eddie is my executor, of course, and the trust is in Carole’s name as well as mine, so there shouldn’t be any taxes due. What I’ve instructed Carole to do—and I can’t imagine her not doing it—is this: We have no children, as you know, and because of that, much of our estate on her demise would go by default to the government. As it happens, though, I’m not too enamored of the government and how it spends my money, so what I’ve asked her to do is arrange an adoption. You’ll have to work it out with your mother but….”

“What? You’re telling me that….?’

“If she’s amenable, yes—your mother and Carole both. If they are, our estate eventually would pass entirely to you to put into your company—Or for whatever other sinister purposes you have in mind. As for me, I won’t have a whole lot of interest in what happens to the money by then, whatever you decide to do with it, as long as it doesn’t go to Uncle Sam.

“But listen,” Ben continued, “all this is business, purely business, and I didn’t intend for us to talk about business. What I wanted to do today was answer the question you asked me before—Maybe you forgot by now, but you were interested in my goals and aspirations early on, wasn’t that it?”

“Uh-huh, Ben, that was what I asked you, but….”

“Nope. No more interruptions, Tommy. I’ve got a lot of stuff to say and not much strength or energy left to say it. So just sit back for a while and listen; and when I’m done, if I’ve still got breath in me by then, I’ll answer any questions you can think of—though I seriously doubt that you’ll have all that much to ask. Anyway, here goes:

“My goals and aspirations, huh? That was what you asked me about, wasn’t it? Well, you know I’ve done an awful lot with my life. I’ve achieved more than most men ever even hope to achieve. I’ve accumulated amazing wealth—which hopefully will pass to you one day—I’ve travelled everywhere, done things I never dreamed of doing when I set out to make my fortune in the world. I’ve had my share of fame—or at least of notoriety. I’ve interacted with an incredible number of the royals and ministers and celebrities of the world—Which, by the way, is no big deal, Tommy; most of them are total duds.

“But everything I’ve done and owned and accomplished in my life: I would have traded all of it and more for one more week to spend with Liz. If I could wish anything for you, and have my wish come true someday, it would be for you to find the kind of love I had with her. Notice that I didn’t say for her; I said with her, because the love we shared was so mutual and indistinguishable one from the other that the effect of it was to make two people into one.

“Best way I can describe it to you, Tommy, is to describe the way we met. I was just a kid at the time—barely turned fifteen. Eddie was there; he knows what happened better than anyone other than Liz and me; but he saw it from across the room. He didn’t see what I saw or feel what I felt. I never really told him what happened that night—not in any detail—but I’m going to tell it to you.

“It was at a dance. Some girl had asked me to go, and so I went. You don’t want to hurt a nice girl’s feelings if you have a choice—I used to get asked to parties and dances as an eligible young bachelor in his teens—I’m sure you’re familiar with the phenomenon—Anyway, the girl who asked me was nice, as I said; I liked her, but I liked her more as a buddy than as an object of romance. Besides, I wasn’t particularly interested in romance back then. At sixteen, you’ve got some hormones surging through your veins, but there are lots of inhibitions too; and my inhibitions far outweighed whatever hormones were doing to my head. Basically, what I’m saying, is that the girl was nice and friendly, and I was nice and considerate, and I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her for the world. But the way things happened, I didn’t have any control.

“So we danced a little, and after a while, she started chatting with some of her friends. She was popular and had a lot more friends than I did at the time; and off she went giggling with a few of the girls she knew, and I just stood there alone till Eddie came over to keep me company. He and I were talking for a while, about school, about one of the girls he had his eye on, when I looked across the room—It was a big gymnasium at the school where the dance was—and I saw this amazing pair of eyes. I didn’t even see who the eyes belonged to for several seconds. And then I saw the rest of her. You’ve seen the picture, Tommy; but the picture can’t do justice to the way Lizzie looked in real life. She was—how can I even describe her?—she was dazzling, breathtaking; there aren’t even words for me to tell you how phenomenally, breathtakingly beautiful she was.

“I didn’t think. I mean, at fifteen, you don’t really know how to approach a girl, or what to say, or how to act—You really don’t know much of anything, truthfully. But I wasn’t thinking about that. My mind was blank, and it was like this enormous magnet pulling me straight across the room. I was drawn to her, I mean. I couldn’t help being drawn to her. It was like—it was almost like I got propelled across that fifty-foot space by some force that was irresistible. What I’m saying is—OK, here I am standing and talking with Eddie, and a minute later—Zap!—there I am across the room staring into the gorgeous eyes of this girl, this strange, amazing, incredibly beautiful girl. But the funny part of it was, that when I looked at her, she wasn’t strange at all. It was as if we’d known each other all our lives. I stared at her and she stared at me, probably for a minute, although it felt like a year, and then I put out my hand and touched her cheek. She had this fabulous long blonde slightly wavy hair and I brushed it aside and touched her cheek, this soft, warm, gorgeous cheek. And what she did—God, I can almost feel her do it today—she leaned her cheek onto my fingers—Remember, I’m fifteen years old, and have no idea what the fuck I’m doing—But that didn’t matter. None of what happened was volitional. The two of us just saw each other and bonded, and from that day until the night I lost her, we could never, even for the five-day weeks I had to be in school, stand to be apart.

“So to answer your question about my goals and aspirations, Tommy, Lizzie is the answer to both. Everything else since then has been nothing but a poor, pathetic substitute for what I had and what I lost. For thirty empty years, I’ve missed her every single lonely minute of every single lonely day.”

“God, Ben! That’s a story that’s horrible and wonderful at the same time. I can’t relate to it personally, of course—I’ve never known anybody like your Lizzie—But to hear it coming from you, it’s sad, of course; but the relationship the two of you had sounds amazing.”

“Amazing? Until you experience it for yourself, kid, you can’t even imagine what amazing is. But I wish that for you, Tommy. Maybe one person in a million is lucky enough to find the love of his life; and if a guy finds the love of his life and a girl finds the love of her life, and they just happen to be each other—What is that? One in a trillion? Honestly, it felt like a one in a trillion phenomenon to both of us at the time, and I lived that one in a trillion phenomenon for almost seven years. So you see, Tommy, everything that’s come afterward was merely killing time; and I guess it’s only fair for time to finally get a shot at killing me.”

“I know, Ben—but you won’t reconsider about the surgery? Look, it’s not that I’m unappreciative of all the things you want to do for me—I am appreciative; I’m grateful for everything—But the two of us have bonded almost the way you and that girl once did, haven’t we? I want you around. I need you around. I can’t run a giant company without you. I need you, and Carole needs you, and Eddie needs you, and….”

“And I need a little rest. My batteries are running down, Tommy, and I’ve got a pretty girl I have to meet. And, honestly, I don’t want to turn into compost before I get to see her. Listen to me, kid, you’ll run the company just fine; I know you will. Hey, look what I did starting with nothing. You’re starting off with at least thirty billion in the till—and a whole lot more if our FaceMate buddies ante in. And Eddie is going to be around to help you too. You’re going to make it big, kid, I know you will. I only wish….”

“What, Ben? What do you wish? Is there anything else I can do?”

“Maybe there is—Yeah, maybe there really is. Look, do me a favor, will you, Tommy? That room where you and Eddie were sitting last night? Where is it? Someplace down the hall, right?”

“It’s part of your suite, Ben. Out the door from here, first left. A nice big room with a couple of sofas if your visitors need to sleep.”

“OK, then, great. Do me a favor, Tom, go wait in there. That way I’ll know where to find you when I want to call you back. Will you do that for me?”

“Of course—You need to ask? For you, Ben, I’d do anything.”