T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

After a moment of silence, he peeked out. Wages stood there in his hunting hat and yellow ducky boxer shorts, holding a pint bottle of whiskey with a crazy straw in it, peeking through the blinds. He had the tiniest spare tire growing. Bethany’s cooking.

Achilles asked, “Are you horsesleeping?”

“No, I was just thinking about some of the rooming houses I’ve seen.” As he described them, they sounded like halfway houses. “Maybe we should stick to B&Bs.”

“We called them under hotels.”

“No we didn’t. That’s a different section of the phone book. I work in the hospitality industry now.”

“You work. Exactly. Man, go to bed before Bethany comes in and gives me crosshairs.”

Wages straightened up and waved the bottle, sloshing whiskey on his feet. “No one tells me what to do.”

“I know, dude. I’m just saying, she’ll be in here like ‘Kyyylllle? A-sheel?’ dragging our names the way women drag names out.”

“Ma ma sa, ma ma sa, ma ma ma coo sa.” That was Wages’s version of blah blah blah. He removed the straw and drained his bottle. “I know you just want to detonate your heat seeker. Go ahead. Just don’t look at pictures of my wife while you do it. If you do, leave five dollars on the table.” He raised the bottle in a toast, and shuffled down the hall.

Achilles’s hands slipped back into his shorts. Of course he wanted to detonate the heat seeker. It would be light soon, and whacking off during the day was desperate and adolescent. If he did it now, he’d forget about it by morning. Achilles wriggled his shorts down and conjured Ines again. The gummy smile, the deep shadow of cleavage, but he couldn’t hold the image. He kept envisioning the boardinghouses Wages had described, and imagined Troy inside some ratty home in the Tremé district. He thought of Ines, then Troy. He wondered if they would like each other, and knew she would like Troy more.

Ines was his most exciting fantasy since high school, when a Japanese exchange student transferred in for one semester. She was slim and porcelain and had such a small mouth he wondered how she ate. He constantly imagined himself with her. Jacking off was easy with people he didn’t know. With women he knew it was different. That’s why he never fantasized in earnest about Bethany. It was like trying to put a spell on them or reach into their dreams. He would imagine them just so, arranging it so they were looking him in the eye when he came. Then they belonged to him. It had worked with Aiko. He imagined her thin purple lips making cooing sounds. On their first date, he discovered that they did. They were quite a couple, the only black and the only Asian in the twelfth grade together. (There’d been one other black kid in his grade for one year, but he lived with his grandmother, brought his lunch, and talked like the rest of them from the city. So, he didn’t count.) Someone had called Achilles and Aiko the United Nations. Achilles didn’t remember who said that, but he should have punched him. He thought it funny at the time. Aiko deserved better.

So did Ines, so earnest. Ines pressing her tits together like a pin-up girl. Ines shaking her ass like a popcorn pot. Ines, reaching back and spreading her cheeks like a porn star, sighing when he enters her, and how he loves to enter, watching the look of surprise on her face. He wanted to lick her from navel to nookie, make her crow and caw, flap her arms and fly off the bed with delight. He wanted to bend her over, crack her cheeks, wedge his nose into the arch with the asshole for the keystone, and feel her fat ass like a velvet vise clenching his cheeks as she came. He would. Yes. He would.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, ACHILLES DIVIDED HIS TIME BETWEEN DRIVING the neighborhood where he’d gotten into the fight and doing the heavy lifting at St. Jude. It was difficult to say which was more frustrating. Since the screening, Ines had taken to calling him Mr. Conroy. Mr. Conroy, can you help Dudley move these books? Mr. Conroy, would you mind assisting Mabel with the heavy pots? Mr. Conroy do you have time to help Mabel sort these clothes ? But Mr. Conroy would not be broken. He had nothing if not endurance, and the patience of a sniper to boot. Besides, she said Mr. Conroy with such a smile.

The neighborhood where he’d had the fight was a different matter. There, they actually stopped smiling when he showed up, like he was a teacher entering the room carrying final exams. Old women waved him off with a shake of the head, kids ran away, teenagers ignored him. He even tried dressing in a hoodie and Army surplus fatigues. The response was the same. Achilles didn’t understand what about his demeanor led anyone to think that he was a cop, but the third time he was accused of being one, it occurred to him to call Morse.

Wages advised him against contacting the detective, explaining that if anything happened to the residents of the boardinghouse, the police would blame Achilles. “I hate to pull the wings off your fly, but these motherfuckers are dirtier than dealers. They’ll shoot you in the back and sprinkle crunch on you. They’ll run you over, and call it suicide by cop. They’ll pressure you for cash, then arrest you for trying to bribe a public official. You aren’t from here. Avoid them. In New Orleans, people go into crime so they’ll have some protection from the police.”

“All cops aren’t dirty,” said Achilles.

Wages shook his head, “That’s what I always liked about you, Brother. You rock that suburban optimism.”

When he arrived at the police station, Achilles was surprised to hear Morse tell him the same thing. Achilles had barely started telling him about the camelback when the detective raised his hands and mouthed Not here! as he offered to take Achilles to lunch at the Bluebird Diner next door to the station. In a back booth, Morse explained that it was best to stay away from a scenario involving arson, a corpse, and a one-eyed man. “I don’t doubt they had it coming, but …”

“I didn’t start that fire,” said Achilles.

“I’m not saying you did—” Morse paused while the bottom-heavy waitress took their orders. Judging by their banter, she knew Morse and liked him. Morse stared wistfully as she walked away.

“I should have never divorced her. Anyway, kid, the first piece of advice is never order a chicken salad sandwich in a place that serves real food. Would you ask for a massage when offered a blowjob?”

Achilles nodded his understanding. That’s why the waitress at Seaton’s always looked funny when he ordered. Morse called his ex back over to the table and, arm around her waist, changed Achilles’s order.

“Eat well. No one’s here for the weather. New Orleans has traditions, like red beans and rice on Mondays, always.” Morse explained that Mondays were washdays, so a slow-cooking meal left time to do the wash. The beans could stay on the pot all day, simmering, seasoned with the leftover ham or sausage from Sunday night’s dinner.

When the food came, Morse attacked it like a soldier who’d been marching all day. He applied Tabasco until red pools formed at the edges of the plate, licked his fingers like chicken bones, and sopped up sauce with scraps of bread. Achilles felt comfortable to do the same, except for the hot sauce. The vinegary smell burned his nostrils. Achilles also declined to wipe his plate with the bread, which his father had always described as countrified.

While they ate, Morse explained that Achilles needed to keep a low profile. “When it’s gang related, one guy kills another, killer goes to jail. Two birds.”

It made sense. Let the troublemakers fight among themselves, and clean up the mess after the fact. It wasn’t too different from Afghanistan, in theory. What was unusual was the patience with which Morse explained himself. In the past, Achilles had twice been pulled over by cops who were irritated that he didn’t immediately hang his hands out of the window and drop the keys. His opinion was solicited whenever Ramirez made a slow-jam CD for his girlfriend, who was black. He’d been expected to know where the good soul food restaurants were that time they visited DC. Morse was different. He spoke as if Achilles had no idea what was going on in the city, and the more Morse talked, the more Achilles believed him. Morse’s point was simple: