He serenades me from his suicide ledge while juggling wood paddles with little pink balls, thin rubber bands connecting them. Come inside, Benny, I say then laugh, try not to laugh.
Benny makes a stern face while the pink balls bounce off him—head, shoulders, chest. He was never very good at paddleballs. When he lets the paddles drop, fall twenty feet to the sidewalk, I wait to see if he’ll follow, but instead Benny sets his jaw, moans a smooth base rhythm, parts his lips to sing a sad, twang-sex song like Dwight Yoakam on Elvis--I am a paddlehead, ooh yeah. I am a paddlehead.
Paddlehead
He serenades me from his suicide ledge while juggling wood paddles with little pink balls, thin rubber bands connecting them. Come inside, Benny, I say then laugh, try not to laugh.
Benny makes a stern face while the pink balls bounce off him—head, shoulders, chest. He was never very good at paddleballs. When he lets the paddles drop, fall twenty feet to the sidewalk, I wait to see if he’ll follow, but instead Benny sets his jaw, moans a smooth base rhythm, parts his lips to sing a sad, twang-sex song like Dwight Yoakam on Elvis--I am a paddlehead, ooh yeah. I am a paddlehead.
When Benny sings, you listen or sing with him, so I start melody to his country boy base--Paddlehead, paddlehead, lay down your ball. I open my arms, push my hands through open window space, careful not to reach too far so as not to spook him.
I’m hungry, he says in the twang-sex voice. Make me some brownies, mama.
I’ll make them if you come inside, Benny. You’re scaring me.
You’ll leave if I come inside.
That’s not fair, Benny.
Suicide requests are compulsory, he says. Refuse me and I’ll die. You’ll never forgive yourself.
We sing through the morning and into the afternoon as I feed him brownie bits from a cloth napkin, red and white checkered. We drop chocolate crumbs on passersby then laugh when they look up to see who dropped them, seeing no one because we’ve flattened ourselves against the building, hidden by a three-inch ledge, which makes us laugh even harder because we know they are trying so intently to see from where the brownie bits could have possibly fallen, wondering if it was some child throwing food from a window, a teenager from the roof. Two adults from a ledge? Not probable.
I love you, he says.
Then let me anchor you.
Benny lets me hook bungee cords into the loops of his jeans. I tell him I’ll leave him if he takes them off and so he holds out his arms as I hook more of them then attach them to our wrought iron bed. We make a pact to leave the bungees where they are.
Two days he stays on his ledge with no one but me the wiser, though when I’m not looking, he tries to get others’ attentions. When people call or stop on the sidewalk and point and yell up—Is everything okay?—I run from the kitchen or the bathroom and laugh a hardy laugh, drop egg vessels from the window—I’ve made several of them now and keep them in a bucket. I tell them it’s a science project for physics and that we both are in grad school. The do-gooders go on their way, some nodding, some shaking their heads. As long as they go. Do-gooders would turn Benny’s suicide ledge into a police scene, headline, ten o’clock update, months of hospital intakes, outtakes, insurance deductibles, paperwork. A never-ending run of bedside brownies.
Benny has me and he knows it.
He grins with brownie edged teeth, chocolate running from the corners of his mouth. He sings, I am a paddlehead, ooh yeah.
Benny, come inside.
I bounce and bounce and I take you down.
It’s cold, Benny, and I don’t want to bounce. I’m tired.
He asks me to kiss him, so I kiss him on the cheek but only after he agrees to let me slip an extra bungee into his belt loop.
Caught you looking! he says.
I wasn’t looking.
Yes, you were, you were looking at my package, my gladiator, my zip-it-down taker. You touched it, too.
Benny, I’m tired.
Not nearly enough. Make me more brownies, mama.
When I push him into the air, he falls back, arms wide then swings in and bounces off the building like a pink ball, a brownstone paddle.
I love you, he says. She meant nothing to me. If you leave me, I’ll die.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I pause at the curb to watch him still bouncing, more slowly now, close to the ground. He could unhook himself and jump down to the sidewalk, if he wanted, but he dangles instead, hooked to his bungees, arms outstretched and singing--Paddlehead, paddlehead, ooh yeah, be my paddlehead gal. A woman walks by, and Benny clings to her, his hands and feet wrap around her arm until she swats him off. He springs back against the wall, bounces, covers his face, broken-nosed and bloodied. I park, go to him, pull him down and unhook the bungees one at a time. He clings to my neck.
Benny, you have to stop all of this.
We climb the stairs, wrap ourselves in faux fur blankets and eat brownies in bed until night falls. Then I bungee Benny to the wrought iron bed—it’s the thought of it, it helps him fall to sleep.
I check on him three times a day, now. Bought him a guitar to keep him company. He plays quite well to a tape recorded melody of my voice singing his refrain--Paddlehead, paddlehead, come on home. I am your paddlehead gal.
BIO
Rae Bryant's fiction appears or is soon forthcoming in Blip Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review Online), PANK, Gargoyle Magazine, Annalemma, and Kill Author, among other publications. Selected works have received Honors and Awards in the Lorian Hemingway, Whidbey Writers, and Bartleby Snopes Competitions. “Paddlehead” is a 2010 Sundress Best of Net nominee. Rae is an M.A. writing candidate at Johns Hopkins University and the editor of Moon Milk Review. You can read more at www.raebryant.com.