Under the Blue Moon by Joan Schweighardt

Author:Joan Schweighardt [Schweighardt, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction
Published: 2023-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

8

Ben

synchronicity

They got a standard queen. The king would have been slightly less money, but the queen had two beds. As soon as they walked in the room and Ben saw the longing with which Derrick was staring at the bed nearest the bathroom, he told him he could have it; Ben would sleep on the floor. Derrick reacted by jumping three inches into the air and then throwing himself hard on the bed. As Ben turned to have a look at the bathroom, he heard Vince tell Derrick to knock it off, but he said it softly, and it didn’t come off as offensive as usual.

The bathroom was to die for; that’s how Ruthie would have put it. It was huge and had a long deep soaking tub, big enough for a man to float in. “First dibs on the tub,” Ben announced over his shoulder.

Vince popped his head into the room immediately. “Wait a minute,” he warned, eyeing the tub. “This is my gig, my—”

“True enough,” Ben said. “But I had a shower yesterday. The tub will still be clean when I climb out. Can you say the same?”

Vince snarled at him, but he could hardly argue. He jutted his chin at the oversized walk-in shower on the other side of the room. “I don’t do baths anyway,” he mumbled. “Baths are for girls and faggots.”

Ben locked himself in, stripped down, turned the faucets on full blast and climbed in. He expected Vince to beat on the door at some point and complain that he was taking too long, but when he turned off the faucets he could hear that they had put the TV on. He heard gunfire and a lot of shouting. He imagined Vince and Derrick were mesmerized and had forgotten all about him, for the moment at least.

He soaked for nearly an hour, until there was no warmth left in the water at all. Back home, he had never taken baths. It had seemed a waste of time, time that could be spent mowing the lawn, raking the leaves, or doing any one of a number of minor (and sometimes not-so-minor) repairs around the house. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so relaxed, both physically—all the tension had gone out of his muscles; he felt like rubber—and mentally. The towel he wrapped himself in afterward was so soft and luxurious that he forgot for a moment that he was a homeless man who would be back to sleeping under an overpass in the middle of the city in no time.

Ben walked out of the bathroom and glanced at the TV. Men in cowboy hats and Clint Eastwood-style ponchos on horses: they were watching a Western. Vince was sitting at the end of his bed, his elbows on his knees, leaning over to be as close as possible to the screen. Derrick was already under the covers in his bed, in his filthy street clothes, his pillows punched up to support his head. Ben made a mental note to suggest he take a shower in the morning.

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