Ben Wyder Sings the Blues - Angela Lam Turpin (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

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