Abba, Faltskog Listing 47: “Dancing Queen,” day 3.
En route from the airport.
Benny said, apropos of nothing, “The bridge is the most important part of a song, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, me trying to drive in all that traffic and us late, as usual. “That’s all I think about when I’m hearing music-those important bridges.”
“No, really.” Benny looked at me, earphones firmly covering his ears, eyes dark and kind of surprised. It was a weird look. Benny never has much to say, but when he does the company higher-ups told me I was supposed to take notice, try to figure out how he does what he does.
The light turned green. I drove us onto North Temple, downtown Salt Lake not so far off now. “Bridges in songs have something to do with extinct plants?” I asked.
“It’s all in the music,” he said, looking back at the street and sitting very, very still.
“Messages about plants are in the music?” I asked.
But he was gone, back in that trance he’d been in since LA. Besides, we were minutes from our first stop. He always gets so nervous just before we start work. “What if we find something?” he’d asked me once, and I’d said, “Isn’t that the point?”
He started rubbing his sweaty hands up and down his pant legs. I could hear the tinny melody out of his earphones. It was “Dancing Queen” week. Benny’d set his player on endless repeat, and he listened to “Dancing Queen” over and over again on the plane, in the car, in the offices we went to, during meals, in bed with the earphones on his head. That’s all he’d listen to for one week. Then he’d change to a different Abba song on Sunday. When he’d gone through every Abba song ever recorded, he’d start over.
“Check in,” Benny said.
“What?”
“The Marriott.”
I slammed brakes, did a U-turn, did like he’d asked. That was my job, even if we were late. Benny had to use the toilet, and he would not use toilets in the offices we visited.
I carried the bags up to our rooms-no bellhop needed, thank you. What’s a personal assistant for if not to lug your luggage around? I called Utah Power and Light to tell them we were still coming. Then I waited for Benny in the lobby. My mind kept playing “Dancing Queen” over and over. “It’s all in the music,” Benny’d said, but I failed to understand how anybody, Benny included, could find directions in fifty-year-old Abba songs to the whereabouts of plants extinct in the wild.
Benny tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s close enough that we can walk,” he said. “Take these.”
He handed me his briefcase and a stack of World Botanics pamphlets and motioned to the door. I always had to lead the way. Benny wouldn’t walk with me. He walked behind me, four or five steps back, Abba blasting in his ears. It was no use trying to get him to do differently. I gave the car keys to the hotel car people so they could park the rental, and off we went.
Utah Power and Light was a first visit. We’d do a get-acquainted sweep of the cubicles and offices, then come back the next day for a detailed study. Oh sure, after Benny’d found theRhapis excelsa in a technical writer’s cubicle in the Trans-america Pyramid, everybody with a plant in a pot had hoped to be the one with the cancer cure. But most African violets are just African violets. They aren’t going to cure anything. Still, the hopeful had driven college botany professors around the world nuts with their pots of begonias and canary ivy and sword ferns.
But they were out there. Plants extinct in the wild had been kept alive in the oddest places, including cubicles in office buildings. Benny’d found more than his share. Even I take “Extract ofRhapis excelsa ” treatment one week each year like everybody else. Who wants a heart attack? Who doesn’t feel better with his arteries unclogged? People used to go jogging just to feel that good.
The people at UP amp;L were thrilled to see us-hey, Benny was their chance at millions. A lady from HR led us around office after cubicle after break room. Benny walked along behind the lady and me. It wasDieffenbachia maculata afterFicus benjamina afterCycus revoluta. Even I could tell nobody was getting rich here. But up on the sixth floor, I turned around and Benny wasn’t behind us. He was back staring at aNemanthus gregarius on a bookshelf in a cubicle just inside the door.
I walked up to him. “It’s just goldfish vine,” I said.
The girl in the cubicle looked like she wanted to pick up her keyboard and kill me with it.
“Benny,” I said, “we got a bunch more territory to cover. Let’s move it.”
He put his hands in his pockets and followed along behind me, but after about five minutes he was gone again. We found him back at theNemanthus gregarius. I took a second look at the plant. It looked like nothing more thanNemanthus gregarius to me. Polly, the girl in the cubicle, was doing a little dance in her chair in time to the muffled “Dancing Queen” out of Benny’s earphones. Mama mia, she felt like money, money, money.
I made arrangements with HR for us to come back the next day and start our detailed study. The company CEO came down to shake our hands when we left. Last we saw of Polly that day was her watering theNemanthus gregarius.
Abba, Faltskog Listing 47: “Dancing Queen,” day 3. Dinner.
The thing about Benny is, he never moves around in time to the music. I mean, he can sit there listening to “Dancing Queen” over and over again and stare straight ahead, hands folded in his lap. He never moves his shoulders. He never taps his toes. He never sways his hips. Watching him, you’d think “Dancing Queen” was some Bach cantata.
I ordered dinner for us in the hotel coffee shop. Benny always makes me order for him, but god forbid it’s not a medium-rare hamburger and fries. We sat there eating in silence, the only sound between us the muffled dancing queen having the time of her life. I thought maybe I’d try a little conversation.
“Hamburger OK?” I asked.
Benny nodded.
“Want a refill on the Coke?”
He picked up his glass and sucked up the last of the Coke, but shook his head no.
I took a bite of my burger, chewed it, looked at Benny. “You got any goals?” I asked him.
Benny looked at me then. He didn’t say a word. He stopped chewing and just stared.
“I mean, what do you want to do with your life? You want a wife? Kids? A trip to the moon? We fly around together, city after city, studying all these plants, and I don’t think I even know you.”
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I have goals,” he said.
“Well, like what?”
“I haven’t told anybody. I’ll need some time to think about it before I answer you. I’m not sure I want to tell anybody, no offense.”
Jeez, Benny, take a chance on me why don’t you, I thought. We went back to eating our burgers. I knew the higher-ups would want me to follow the lead Benny had dropped when we were driving in from the airport, so I tried. “Tell me about bridges,” I said. “Why are they important in songs?”
Benny wouldn’t say another word. We finished eating, and I carried Benny’s things up to his room for him. At the door he turned around and looked at me. “Bridges take you to a new place,” he said. “But they also show you the way back to where you once were.”
He closed the door.
I didn’t turn on any music in my room. It was nice to have it a little quiet for a change. I wrote my reports and e-mailed them off, then went out for a drink. I nursed it along, wondering where we stood on the bridges.
Abba, Faltskog Listing 47: “Dancing Queen,” day 4. UP amp;L offices.
World Botanics sends Benny only to companies that meet its criteria. First, they have to have occupied the same building for fifty years or more. You’d be surprised how few companies in America have done that. But if a company has moved around a lot, chances are its plants have not gone with it. Second, it’s nice if the company has had international ties, but even that isn’t necessary. Lots of people somehow failed to tell customs about the cuttings or the little packets of seeds in their pockets after vacations abroad. If a company’s employees had
