Ben and the Echo

“Ben, will you slow down? I’m hot.” Linda said. She didn’t mean to whine, and granted they’d only been walking for 10 minutes, but Linda was miserable. It was hot and humid. When she wiped her forehead, she thought she had enough sweat to kill an entire colony of fire ants. She should use it to drown the scary insects she saw when she left her house this morning. Fire ants always struck fear into the 6-year-old girl who lived inside her.

“I wonder if ants can drink sweat?” she said. Ben stopped and looked back at his wife. Then he looked at his watch.

“Do you want to go back to the house and change into shorts?” Ben said. There was no irritation in his voice. At 11:00 am it was 85 degrees in Austin, yet Linda had elected to wear sweatpants. Her legs were too white, she needed a tan to hide her cellulite before she wore shorts in public.

“It will take too long,” Linda said. “Uhg. Let’s just keep going.”

Ben and Linda were setting out on the first walk on the first day of their 90-day fitness challenge. Ben’s work, Code Canvass, a computer software development company, was holding the challenge to incentivize employees to get in shape, and live longer, healthier lives. The ultimate unsaid reason was to keep the company’s health care costs down. But it was a good incentive, 100 bucks off your deductible and two free Zumba classes if you completed all the challenges. The Zumba class incentive had been handwritten onto the sheet before it was copied and passed out to the company’s 45 employees. Linda wryly thought of Elizabeth, the wife of Dutch, Ben’s boss. She owned a studio where they offered Zumba classes.

Elizabeth was the kind of person who never made a mistake. She’d been that way since high school. You can’t trust people who can’t admit their mistakes. Self-centered, maybe sociopaths, Linda thought.

“Yes ants drink sweat,” Ben said.

“How do you know that?” Linda said. “Do you just know that?”

“I do,” Ben said.

That was one reason Linda loved Ben, his retention of useless facts was random and vast. They met in college when Ben ordered coffee from Linda at Moments, a café where Linda was a barista.

Elizabeth worked at Moments too. Linda had actually vouched for Elizabeth when she applied. Elizabeth was quickly promoted to floor supervisor, then assistant store manager, then she became a rotating manager when she was a senior in college. There were a lot of whispers about Elizabeth back then, it was weird to call a 21 year old girl/woman who Linda had seen with lettuce stuck in her braces seductive, but everyone could see it. Except Tony. After Elizabeth was promoted and Tony was fired, Elizabeth’s confidence grew even more. She became unbearable. She was the kind of manager who said, “And what did we learn?” to employees who might have messed up a customer’s order twice that month, (even though they might have helped her get her job) and she’d say it loud enough so the people in line heard her, because it wasn’t about helping the work flow, it was about “teaching” everyone in earshot that she, Elizabeth was in charge.

The first day Ben came in for coffee he couldn’t make up his mind at the counter. “What coffee bean do you prefer, dark, medium or light,” Linda said when Ben couldn’t decide, and Linda grew impatient. Ben was trying to prolong their interaction and mulling over his coffee drink was his best strategy.

Ben liked Linda, he thought she was fluffy and bright, her 5’3” body was small and sturdy, and her face was wide open and expectant, her cheek bones sharp and her eyes blue. A Nordic princess, he thought. Blond curls carelessly skimmed her shoulders. On busy mornings sometimes her brow furrowed as she blotted her forehead with a handkerchief.

“They’re coffee seeds. Not beans,” Ben said. “Coffee comes from a coffee fruit.” Ben was looking at the wall of beans behind her as he spoke, almost disinterested in her. Or so she thought. Ben told her later he felt like his face was on fire when he talked to her. She liked his curly brown hair, and his tall, lanky awkwardness. She couldn’t read his dark eyes, until the day he walked in, looked at her, took a breath and said, “Do you want to go to the drive-in movies with me this weekend?” She did. They saw “Scott Pilgrim vs the World” ate Milk duds and popcorn and she moved into his apartment two days later.

Linda majored in business; when she graduated, she decided she wanted to open a restaurant. She got the idea from watching reruns of the TV show “Kitchen Nightmares,” but the closest she got to that dream was managing a restaurant off Sixth Street. The employees were a kick, usually; the hours were long, but she got to leave her problems on the floor every day. Besides, Ben made good money as a computer software engineer, and he didn’t care what she did. Her drive to open a restaurant dissipated and morphed into something completely different. She wanted to make and sell hand-made soaps, “Linda’s Luxe Lather.” She’d started taking them to local Farmer’s Markets three days a week. Sales were good, she hired a high school girl to help her.

She’d always loved using homemade soap, the colors were so vibrant and beautiful, the textures varied, and the scents sensuous and divine. She aimed to provide a small source of luxury and comfort to her customers. About three months ago she quit her restaurant job and began filling their kitchen at home with accoutrements to make organic, homemade soap. She was the most excited about a rose gold soap she was making with real tiny rosebuds suspended in the soap base, and threads of fools gold woven throughout. Last night when Ben saw it, he smiled. She knew she was so lucky Ben was so easy going, some people might think he didn’t care about her, he was so nonchalant that he often seemed removed. But Linda knew it was his deep heart that kept his insides so still. His smile felt like an echo inside her.

Ben got hired at Code Canvass out of college and had risen through the ranks to be Dutch McGraw’s right-hand man. Then 10 years ago Elizabeth incredibly popped into Linda’s life again when she married Dutch McGraw. Wouldn’t you know it. But Linda didn’t care about her anymore, and she only saw her at the yearly Christmas party and at infrequent run ins at the grocery store.

“You ok?” Ben said. He was leaning down looking at Linda. This was her first time exercising in almost a year. It was just walking, but walking two miles, which Ben and Linda committed to do four days a week, was a lot. They decided to wake up an hour earlier and walk together before they began their day. But today was Sunday and Linda had called in sick for the Farmer’s Market, her girl Sarah was working alone today. It was Linda’s first call-off.

Her hips hurt lately; she was gaining weight. Twenty pounds since college. She felt older than her years, she turned 39 last week.

Now, with about a quarter mile left to go, Linda’s hip ached with every step. Her new shoes weren’t working, apparently. It was so hot. Her sweatpants were sticking to her legs.

“I’m ok,” Linda said. “My hip hurts though. Damn it.”

A sky blue convertible Cadillac, top down, rounded Wolf Glen Road, it was Elizabeth. The car floated to a gentle stop next to them. What was she doing in this neck of the woods?

“It’s a beautiful day, are you all on a walk?” Elizabeth said. Her lips spread over her perfect teeth when she smiled, her red lipstick a rare glaring mistake for Sunday morning.

“Elizabeth! Powers of deduction at work again.” Linda said and smiled.

Elizabeth waved her hand at Linda dismissively and turned toward Ben, “Hey handsome!”

“Today is our first day, walking for the fitness challenge. We picked a hot one!” Ben said.

“Linda,” Elizabeth said, turning toward Linda, “You look miserable Do you want a ride?.”

“I could use a ride,” Linda said. Her pride was no match for her hip pain. Ben said he’d walk the rest of the way and Linda crawled into Debbie’s light blue leather front seat. When she got in Debbie’s gaze fixed on her shoes.

Today Linda was wearing her new orthopedic tennis shoes. She’d recently learned one of her legs was ½ inch shorter than the other when she went to the Doctor for her hip and the Doctor said maybe orthopedic shoes would help. He could tell her legs were uneven by looking at her, but this was news to Linda. She was too embarrassed to admit that she didn’t know one leg was shorter than the other. Linda had always noticed one hip was a little higher than the other in the mirror, but she never finished that thought with “my legs must be uneven.”

“Linda! Is one of your legs shorter than the other,” Elizabeth said. “I have never noticed that!”

This was why she’d hesitated to even buy the orthopedic shoes. It was just embarrassing. It made her feel flawed. She hadn’t even told Ben. She got out of the car in front of her house and Elizabeth spoke to her as Linda crossed behind the car to get to her driveway.

“Well, I’m glad I was tooling around your neighborhood!” Elizabeth said. “I’d love to come in and see your rose gold soap some …” Elizabeth stopped and her cheeks burned bright pink. Her back went rigid and she stared at Linda, her mouth open as though she were about to take a bite. Ben rounded the corner and they both turned their faces toward him. Linda saw Ben stop then stiffen, as though he was an animal who sensed danger.

Linda understood as she watched Ben resume walking toward them, that the echo his smile created in her last night didn’t originate in Ben, the echo came from her. It grew within her and it lived within her. It grew beyond her. It steadily poured into every crevice of everything she had ever felt, ever imagined, and had ever known. Linda herself was a reverberation. The echo, the endless nothing, was her.

Linda was now standing slightly behind Elizabeth, who still sat in her car, and noticed a bottle of Windex laying on the back seat. Linda leaned over and grabbed it from the car and walked to the red ant hill she’d noticed this morning where their grass met their sidewalk. She opened the bottle, crouched down, and delicately poured the blue liquid on the ant hill. The ants stopped marching.

She looked at Elizabeth and Ben, who had just arrived. Ben walked over to see what Linda was doing. He saw the many scattered ant corpses.

“Sometimes killing something evil is necessary,” Linda said. She looked up at Ben. “I don’t take life lightly.”

She handed Ben the Windex and walked into the house. She stopped at the open front door, one foot inside and one foot still on their welcome mat, and turned back to Ben, smiled and said, “You coming?”