Catching Out by Lee Benoit

Sister City is a fictional mill town on the east coast of the United States. A growing number of my stories are set there.

Gutterpunk romance, anyone? "Catching Out" is part of the Blind Dates Taste Test, and is the story of lonely photographer Ab, vagabond Mole, and their very unlikely love. Ab is ready to take on a new relationship, so his family and friends set him up on a slew of blind dates. When he meets Mole, he sees a whole new life opening up. Can Ab find the courage to go for it?     Buy the ebook

REVIEWS "One of the nicest things about Catching out is the way it resolutely avoids the clichés, and allows the characters to remain true to themselves and their choices, while still being transformed by their relationship and the feelings they have for each other. ...Highly recommended." Ann Somerville, Uniquely Pleasurable   "I marvel at what Benoit does in less than twenty pages. Benoit creates an interesting and lovable cast of characters, shows Ab's discoveries about himself and a world he didn't know much about, develops a touching relationship between Ab and the complex Mole, showcases a talent for beautiful and lyrical prose, and manages to simultaneously depict the irrepressibility of the human spirit and the hardship of poverty and homelessness." Dakota Flint, Rainbow Reviews   "Benoit's transcendental tale carries a profound message, unpretentious and powerful in its sincerity. It's a rare quality of writing, and just like Mole, filled with intriguing hidden depths." Angusdevotee   4 Nymphs from Literary Nymphs

Here is how the story begins:

Well, that was worse than I expected, Ab thought to himself as he watched his date drive away.  He considered going back inside the restored railway station where they’d met for a low-pressure after-work drink, but didn’t really want to revisit the scene of his disappointment.  The sun was setting and the summer evening was soft and inviting.  He wandered away from the station and its studiously hip eateries and boutiques, away from the parking lot, toward the little park by the tracks.  He knew he’d never use the number on the fancy vellum card in his hand, so he crumpled it as he went, the small pain of the thick edges digging into his palm curiously satisfying.  There was a bench, a new thing made to look old with glossy iron uprights and a smooth wooden seat.  He sat.

“Hey, friend, got a light?”

“I don’t smoke,” Ab answered reflexively as he turned his head away from the sunset.  He looked up to see who’d spoken and instantly wished he had his camera.  The man standing there holding out a hand-rolled cigarette with a hopeful air was nothing like the glossy metrosexuals he photographed all day.  He was even less like the buttoned down “straight-acting professionals” his brother and friends seemed to think were perfect for him.  This guy was about Ab’s age, wearing a vest over work pants that had been patched with what looked like duct tape.  Spiky ends of tattoos teased from the grimy collar and cuffs of his tattered thermal undershirt.

The man smiled.  “No worries, friend.”  He lifted a few dusty-looking dreadlocks and tucked the cig behind his ear.

“I’m Mole.  Mind if I sit a spell?” 

A big square hand hovered, ready to shake, just outside Ab’s personal space.  His mother would have gasped and fluttered over being offered such a dirty, cracked-nailed hand, but Ab didn’t hesitate.  He gave his name, along with his firmest, hail-fellow-well-met handshake, and slid over a few inches in invitation.  Mole sat with a sigh and stretched long legs out before him.  They sat quietly, watching the sun set over the old rail yard and the refurbished mills that hemmed it in, Mole apparently disinclined to speak, Ab completely at a loss for anything to say.

“You’re not here to catch a train,” Mole said finally.

Ab waved at the tracks.  “There haven’t been passenger trains through here since I was a kid.”

Mole smiled as if Ab had missed the point.  “Cargo comes through at night, after the beautiful people have finished their beautiful meals.”  Ab squelched a spike of defensiveness -- was Mole lumping him in with those vapid pleasure-seekers?  But Mole kept talking.  “You look suited to being in there, but you’re out here.  Why?”

“I was,” Ab began.  “In there, I mean.  Blind date.”  He smiled ruefully, sure someone as accustomed to the edge as Mole seemed to be would have no use for blind dates and trendy restaurants.  “Guess I didn’t want to go right home, after.”

“Not a match?”

“I don’t smoke, remember?”  Immediately, Ab wanted to suck his words back.  Usually only Ephraim got his quirky sense of humor.  He kept it under wraps with most people, to avoid awkward explanations and confirmations of his social ineptitude.  He couldn’t have explained why his silly word-play came so naturally in his present company.

Before he could worry himself into a stammering apology, Mole laughed, open and warm, a sound Ab wanted to hear again the moment it stopped.

“Nah, not a match,” he conceded.

“Why not?”  Mole seemed genuinely curious, not just making polite conversation, not just waiting for his turn to talk about himself.

“He was...kinda full of himself.”  Ab watched closely for Mole’s reaction to the male pronoun, but there was neither widening nor narrowing of eyes, no pursing of lips or tensing of fists.

“Maybe he was just nervous, trying to impress you?” Mole offered generously.

Ab rolled his eyes, remembering his dinner with a business acquaintance of Ephraim’s.  “He was too busy telling me about his stock options and new car and how he managed to cash in on the sub-prime mortgage crunch.  There was no room for anything else.”

“Full of himself,” Mole agreed.

Ab shrugged.  “I don’t know what my brother was thinking, setting us up.  What really turned me off was his reaction to my job.”

“Didn’t approve?  Thought his was bigger and better and shinier?”  Mole’s eyes glinted with amusement in the slanting sunset light.

“Approved all wrong,” Ab said after a moment’s thought.  He hadn’t really thought at the time about why he was so bothered, but Mole looking at him with expectantly raised eyebrows made him want to find the words.  “I told him I was a photographer and where I work and he got all dirty-old-man about the models.”

“Jealous,” Mole pronounced and Ab felt absurdly vindicated.

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, until the sunset light gave way to full dusk.

“Well, friend, we’d best push off, scare up that light,” Mole said, his voice gentle, almost reverent.

We?  Ab glanced about; there was no one else around.  Just his luck to have spent one of the more pleasant half-hours in recent memory with a delusional crazy man.  Or did Mole intend “we” to suggest Ab should leave with him?  Ab wasn’t ready for that, but he stood anyway and looked at Mole, daring to ask, “We?”

Mole smiled and opened his vest to show the inner pocket.  Whiskers, a pink nose, and bright black eyes twitched at him.

Ab laughed, relieved and disappointed and surprised all at once.  “Let me guess: Ratty?”

Mole beamed proudly, as if Ab were a clever little boy.  “Can’t have Mole without Ratty.”

Ab beamed back.  “Wind in the Willows was the best book ever.”

“You know it,” he said with a grin, and sauntered away.

Ab resisted the urge to call him back.

© Lee Benoit

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