Michael Urie (29:53)
The Last Words of Benito Piccone. It began in a hailstorm in 1975 when Benito Piccone trotted across Market street with his briefcase gripped overhead, shielding him from both the falling sky and, inadvertently, the oncoming Buick. His legs buckled on the hood, his shoulders smashed a spiderweb into the windshield, and his arms pinwheeled. As all 296 pounds of Benito Peccone spun from the roof, he seized at the air. His briefcase burst into a cartoon flurry of papers. The fabric of his trench coat, suit coat, waistcoat and trousers beat with the flapping of a hundred waiters laying tablecloths. And amid the fireworks flowering in the dark skies of his consciousness, he did not once consider the shameful heft of his body. Weightless for the first time in his life, he torqued into a horrible arc of beauty and landed in darkness. When Benito woke My favorite things from the Sound of Music was playing on the radio. Crisp apple strudel doorbells, sleigh bells, schnitzel with noodles. And he realized that the personal hell to which his immortal soul had been rendered sounded an awful like Austria. But he wasn't dead. Not quite. A smock had replaced the herringbone three piece suit he still wore weekdays, even though two months earlier he had lost his office lottery pool, his temper and his job. In that order. The glossy bracelet on his wrist read St. Francis Memorial. Relief flooded the blue channels of his circulatory system. There was still time. He could still say his last words. Over the years, Benito had paid much thought to his death. He considered himself a philosopher. Others considered him an asshole. When he turned 30, he began a nightly habit of recording his last words on a note in case he expired in his sleep. The end is a ballet without music or dancing. The end is relief. Benito had something, many things in fact, to say about love and sorrow and pride and betrayal and forgiveness and beauty. The problem was that no one was the least bit interested in hearing them, which made his last words a final chance to convert his failures into a wisdom building exercises, a last gasp to save himself from who he was. Who wouldn't want to listen to the final dispatch from a man walking over the edge, whose ears wouldn't perk to hear one's soul's answer to the question mark that punctuates every life? Those who had never paid him a moment's thought would lean in to hear what he had to say as he crossed over. Knowing this, knowing that a good ending can redeem a bad story, Benito had struggled to cram the some self knowledge of his 39 years into a pithy single sentence serving of wisdom that proved once and for all to all his distractors that Benito Piccone did not live in vain. The end is a drizzly evening and I cannot take my umbrella with me, he said in Italian to the reticulated ceiling tiles. Not the most profound last words, but a good deal better than those of other great men. Conrad Hilton Leave the shower curtain outside the tub. That's no Spanish I've ever known. The sentence was pushed through the crooked maze of an east coast accent. It came from the adjacent bed, where a birdish woman propped on a half dozen pancake thin pillows observed him with her head at an inquiring tilt. She had the dazed parlor of a cave dweller dragged into daylight. Had Benito not just uttered his last words, he might have explained that Italian and Spanish were in the same language. But you could spend a lifetime writing what Americans got wrong. He had only moments left. Translucent tubes drew blood from one arm and streamed gray fluid into the other. A bleak epiphany. In the end, he was no more than a transit station for disturbingly opaque liquids. Beneath the gown, bruised continents had risen from his torso. His left leg lay in a splint and a fat foam noose half heartedly strangled him. His abominable organs were as tender as composting produce. What had happened? He could only summon a dream of flying geese. Then a silver Buick, his soul vacuumed into the sky. A nurse entered. Benito turned as much as the beefy foam headlock would allow. You're lucky to be alive, she said in a tone suggesting that she was not. But I'm dying, Benito clarified. He hadn't set out to die that day, but now that it was happening, he received it as the arrival of a long lost uncle he both loved and feared. He had no one on this side of the earth to say goodbye to, no one to write his obituary, no one to attend his funeral but a weak chin landlord who would probably reach into the casket to frisk his pockets for spare change. On the threshold now he looked back and saw that the life he was leaving looked a lot like his apartment. A windowless cube of despair. The oddly worded English emergency instructions alarmed through him. Proceed to the exit as quickly as possible. Please get a pen and paper, benito entreated. You must record my last words. The nurse didn't move. My vitality is seeping from me, he insisted. I see a bright white light. I should move toward it. No. The nurse flicked the wall switch and the ceiling light went. That better? She asked. No, it wasn't. The light at the end of the tunnel may well be a 60 watt incandescent, the nurse said. But it's not the one over your head. But I'm dying, he said. More wish than lament. The worst you got on you is a broken leg, generally non fatal among non equines, she said. But I was hit by a car, he protested. I was in serious collision. I shouldn't be alive in this hospital room. I shouldn't be alive. The next morning, to Benito's disappointment, he woke up. The woman in the adjacent bed stared at him. Were you watching me sleep? He asked. The TV's broken, she said. She introduced herself as Marie. They passed the next two days in quiet conversation. Marie had been an 11 year old orphan, a 19 year old widow, and was presently a 30 year old alcoholic and addict. She had no children and wanted none. After a childhood in Maryland and adolescence in New Jersey, the palm trees lining the Embarcadero never failed to amaze her. She had been picked up on the street the previous evening with alcohol poisoning, and the doctors were taking the opportunity to observe a cardiac condition. Her honesty unsettled Benito, who had suspected that mental well being depended upon a facility for selectively dismissing reality. At one point she asked him what it felt like thrown from the launch pad of a windshield, up into flight. Benito tried to recall the pain, the shock, the pristine panic of the moment. But all he could remember was an eerie weightlessness. Like swimming. Maybe swimming what I imagine swimming feels like. I never learned to swim. Wait, she said. You grew up on an island and you never learned to swim? Benito had already told her that as a boy he immigrated from Lipari, a Barren volcanic island 2 hours by ferry north of Sicily. My mother believed that superstition was the only logic of an irrational world, and learning to swim would invite drowning as certainly as visiting the doctor invites diseases. Her philosophy was that you had to surrender yourself to the Fates by not preparing for any disaster or misfortune, and that by offering your humility and powerlessness to them, they would keep you safe. And you still got hit by a car. In America, the Fates are more impressed with individual accountability. He readjusted his casted leg, but couldn't shake the memory of air, of weightlessness. He always wanted to learn to swim. A couple of times he signed up for lessons at the Procedo Y, and I'd once even gotten as far as the locker room. Do you swim? He asked. In one liquid or another, she said. By the third day, Benito conceded that his broken leg would only kill him if he was pursued by a large predator. The nurse informed the two patients that they would be discharged shortly. Neither had insurance, and they were required to appear at the billing office before departing. When the nurse left, Marie pulled the IV from her hand. She stripped her gown without turning away. Her whole body hung from her clavicles. Benito's shock when had he last seen a woman naked? Fermented to an excitement. When had he last seen a woman naked? That immediately diluted upon realizing that he was so insignificant a sexual being, Marie hadn't even thought to close the curtain between them before undressing. Let's boogie, she said. Benito was unaccustomed to disobeying authority figures in uniform, even a nurse's uniform. He was even less accustomed to receiving invitations to boogie. He grooved on after her. Hurry up, she held open the emergency exit for him. Benito gripped the hand rail and pogoed down on his good foot. Two legs were barely enough to support all of Benito when he was at his best, and he hadn't been at his best since 1954. His one good leg was, as his father had said often of Benito himself, just less than adequate. Marie wrapped his left arm over her shoulder. It seemed profane that she should place her lovely neck in the stockade of his unwashed armpit. At the bottom of the stairwell. She snipped their hospital bracelets with scissors swiped from the nurses station. Shall we? Marie asked, opening the door to a parking lot blotched in gray puddles. They stopped under a tree. The leaves shivered with the breeze, spattering droplets on them. Standing under a tree when it's raining keeps you dry. Standing under a tree when it stopped raining keeps you wet, benito said. That's some real deep shit. Marie rifled through her pocket, searching for bus fare. You got any change? She asked. Where are we going? He asked. He had almost said you instead of we. They had shared a hospital room, but he wasn't sure they were ready to share the intimacy of a personal pronoun. You got any change? She asked, again ignoring his question. His pockets were empty, save for his apartment keys and a cemented wad of partially used tissues, but he patted them anyway. They had no money for a bus and took a taxi instead, hoping Marie's recluse neighbor would spot them the fare. As the taxi turned down Pine, Marie's last word jangled in his head. Change, change, change. A quartet of sharp knocks startled Joseph Lavrov from his nap. Marie, almost certainly. She was his only visitor. He didn't like visitors. The link of casuality between these two facts was as prominent on his horizon as the Golden Gate Bridge. I've brought company, marie announced as he slid away the security chain. The poor man at her side was a flight of stairs away from cardiac arrest. Marie made introductions before borrowing a few dollars to pay the taxi. My leg, benito said. I need to sit. The man locked eyes on Joseph's most prized possession, a rococo Second Empire style dining chair. Joseph has found it in the window of a Heath street consignment shop three months after his petition for political asylum had been cleared. Nothing better embodied how far he'd come from the featureless furniture of his homeland. He had lived for that chair his first year in America, saving one of the four hourly dollars he earned folding fortunes into fresh baked fortune cookies on the first anniversary of his Defection from the Soviet Union. Joseph went to the consignment shop and bought the chair with ones and fives. It was toward this treasured chair that Benito's wide posterior descended. Joseph closed his eyes. At the moment of impact, the chair hardly creaked, every bit the masterpiece the consignment store clerk had called it. Lovely old thing you have here, benito said with a light lilt to his accent that Joseph couldn't identify. Benito, this is what? Spanish? Why does everyone think I'm Spanish? Italian, as in Italy. Ah, yes, Joseph said, snapping his fingers. Of course, of course. With the pizza and the pope, Benito. Like Mussolini, Benito looked like he'd caught passing gas in a packed elevator. Joseph was delighted. I joke, I joke, joseph said. But tell you the truth, your father names you after the dictator, no? He wants you to become a strong leader. Brave man, yat size, big as oranges. Tell the truth. I am right. No, I was born in 1935, Benito said softly. Benito was a very popular name at the time. Joseph clasped his hands together, hardly able to contain himself. Okay, okay. You are named after Mussolini. In Italy this is maybe very good, but not so much in America. Why don't you name yourself a Benjamin or Benny? I considered it, ebenezer said. But your name is your name. I am named Joseph because my father had much respect for Joseph Stalin. Joseph confessed it wasn't the sort of thing he freely admitted, but he felt an instant affinity with this stranger who understood the weight of a tyrannical namesake. They discussed the merits and downsides of their namesakes for several minutes. Joseph surreptitiously peeked at his watch. Looks like Marie got lost on her way back, benito said. Joseph suspected that Marie had taken whatever change was left over from the taxi fare, if she paid the taxi fare at all, and had deposited at the corner liquor store. But he wasn't willing to deprecate his neighbor in front of a man named after Mussolini. So how did you get to America? Benito asked. Have you heard of Vyborg? No. It is at the Finland border. In Vyborg I was a bus driver. I was a very good bus driver. Everyone knew this. So one day the city transport director says, joseph, tomorrow you must drive around lackeys from the Ministry of Ferris Metallurgy. I do not want to do this. I am very uncomfortable driving lackeys. But I say yes. That night I am as frightened as a bird in a briefcase. What if the meetings go bad and they blame the bus driver? I do not sleep at all. In the morning I take a glass of brandy to sharpen my senses. It is no use. I doze off and I wake to a very big crash. Big blonde Vikings everywhere. Three broken road barricades. A mess. Wait. You. You drove into Finland? Benito asked. First into Finland, then into the customs house. Very embarrassing. So I have two choices. Confess that I fell asleep while driving. Important lackeys lose my job, maybe go to jail. Major international embarrassment. Or say I am defecting. Your yogi berra, he advises you. When you see a fork in the road, take it. So I take it. Here I am. Benito appeared genuinely impressed. My mother and me just took a boat to New York. In truth, Joseph had misjudged the military intelligence value of a municipal bus driver and the lifestyle he could expect in the West. He imagined America was filled with mansions and sports cars and fabulous wealth. It was, of course, they just didn't belong to him or anyone he knew. A few minutes later, Marie returned with a brown paper bag in one hand. Joseph's heart dropped a few centimeters. It was a lovely afternoon. The clouds were parting. This was no time to drink oneself to death. But when she opened the bag, all she removed was a white bakery box of pastries looped in barber pole twine. We're both named after dead dictators, benito said, a trace of wonder to his voice. It's important to find your people, marie said, and began distributing napkins. The three met again for pastries the following Wednesday, and then the Wednesday after, and the Wednesday after that. Over time, their Wednesday evenings became a small rise of elevation that their weeks ascended toward and sloped from. In 1977, Joseph tracked down the woman who had purchased the other five dining chairs from the Haight street consignment shop. He bought two chairs from her. They sat in those chairs the week Benito announced he had found work and the week he announced he had been fired. They sat when Joseph announced he had skin cancer, and they sat in the waiting room when dark hailstones of malignant tissue was removed. In autumn 1978, Marie believed she had bottomed out when she pawned her father's silver pocket watch containing in its glass display the only image of her mother she had ever seen. You think you are the precious snowflake, joseph told her, a heaviness to his voice that didn't suit his second language. But you are just water. It took Marie all of 1979, 1980, and 1981 to string together a month of sobriety. On December 13, 1982, the anniversary of her first year sober, Benito and Joseph gave her the pocket watch they bought back from the pawn shop. Marie opened it. The hazy photograph of her mother stared back. But it was not her mother's love she felt in that room. I didn't believe I was deserving of this, she said, unable to meet their eyes. It's just a watch, benito said. She looked to the two men perched on chairs fit for beheaded French aristocrats. I don't mean the watch, she said. Together they went to movies all night, diners, and once, in the balmy breezes of May 1988, to Reno, where they played penny slots and drank free fountain cola from plastic cups. In 1990, Marie taught Benito, at the age of 55, to swim while Joseph heckled from the bleachers. The cancer that had been removed from Joseph's arms reappeared in 1999 and had already colonized bone, blood, and brain before it was discovered he died in the St. Francis cancer ward two months later. Benito and Marie were just arriving as he left. His last word was hello. For an extra $800, the gravedigger buried him upright and uncasketed, enthroned in his favorite chair. Benito spent his mornings walking aimlessly through neighborhoods that seemed to get younger, richer, and whiter by the year. Youth, he believed, was a disorder generally cured by time. Regarding the latter two, he was open to suggestions. The year, decade, century, millennium all turned over with a swipe of a second hand. He was 65 years old and had never used a computer. He was 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, and he had still never used a computer. Wasn't life supposed to have a progression, building towards something? Wasn't there a measurement beyond years to account for his time on Earth? He didn't know, and that not knowing felt sunken in him, like the footprints of something certain that had fled long ago. On april morning in 2015, Benito and Marie went to Pier 39 and watched sluggish sea lions spill into the water, their slick heads domed in sunlight. What time is it? Marie asked. Benito glanced to his watch but couldn't speak. Invisible boulders pressed against his ribs. He raised a hand. The earth peeled away. Blue sky everywhere. He was on his back now. Marie kneeled over him. She was pounding at his chest. He couldn't breathe. He must speak. He must say his final words. He'd been waiting his whole life for the opportunity. When he tried to speak, he found that her lips had sealed his. She was blowing air into his lungs. She was trying to breathe for him. It was such a strange and unexpected sensation. He forgot whatever words he might have said it nearly brought him back. Don't go, don't go, don't go, she pleaded. In all his years, he hadn't imagined that the last words of his life would be spoken by someone else. He hadn't imagined he would die so loved. All around, Japanese tourists flash photos of the white haired woman holding the dead man on that otherwise fine April day.
