T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

To avoid appearing as if he was holding back, Achilles forced himself to meet her gaze, staring directly into those amber eyes. If, at that moment, she asked him the wrong question, he would give her the right answer. He would tell her everything. “Like what? What do you want to know?”

Ines twirled a dread and hummed. “Why do you walk like that?”

Achilles swallowed, eyes big. Where to start? Ines placed her hand over his mouth. “Don’t be mad. I’m just joking. What’s your favorite superpower?”

Achilles whispered, “Flight.” They’d already had this conversation, but unlike the frustration he felt repeating himself to Janice, this felt comfortable and familiar, their shared history a source of pride.

“Right, because invisibility isn’t a superpower. I asked you this already. I was stoned then too. What about not sleeping or not eating for the rest of your life?”

Achilles bit back the answer to her earlier question.

“Well?” asked Ines. “Food or sleep? What goes?”

“That’s no contest,” said Achilles. “You can’t do anything while you’re sleeping, and while you’re sleeping you don’t know you’re sleeping, so drop the sleeping. No one spends that much time eating anyway.”

“What about dreams?”

“I don’t remember them anyway.”

“Good answer. In Nola, people spend a lot of time eating. But I agree with you. I hate people who say they’d give up eating, like that means anything but that they’re stupid. I’m always like, ‘If you can give up eating, you have no big-picture view of life.’ Next question. What would you do if you were invisible and didn’t sleep?”

Sometimes when he was drunk, his mind was so clear it surprised him. This was one of those moments, and he was surprised to have it stoned. Without hesitating, he said, “I’d be a bra. I’d sneak around and hold your breasts up for you.” As soon as he said it, everything he’d thought about moments of drunken clarity faded. Whenever he drank too much or got stoned, stupid shit buzzed around in his head and slipped out of his mouth. Buzzed. Buzzed like drunk. Buzzed like bees. Like bees in a hive, his words flying out. The image made him laugh. Like bees in a hive, except the bees were his words and they bit him as well as the people around him. Why couldn’t he have thoughts like this all the time? He laughed again. Ines was staring at him. How much time had passed since he’d made that comment? Had he said it, or only thought it? What were they talking about anyway?

“You finally laughed. Bzzz. Bzzz.” She made antennae with her fingers. “Shh!” She cupped her ear. “Bzzzz! Bzzzz!”

He laughed again, and she laughed with him, and she buzzed and he laughed harder for that and he could tell that somehow she liked this comment about her tits, even if he had only said it to himself. It occurred to him that maybe Ines was like his friends who got political when they were stoned. Because she was political all the time, this was her chance to be silly.

She sprawled out in a lawn chair, her legs splayed out, the toga hiked to midthigh. She fingered the hem on the sheet, running it between two fingers as if checking for defects before waving it, softly slapping it against her leg. “Huh!” she said, smoothing it out, looking surprised to find herself wearing a sheet. “You know who hosted my first toga party?”

Achilles shrugged, not wanting to hear a story about frat boys and keg parties.

“My mom. She suggested it instead of a bikini beach theme. She said togas were classy because they were classical.” Ines stared at Achilles. “Didn’t she think about how much easier it is to fuck when people are only wearing sheets? Fuuuuck! Or did she?”

Achilles didn’t know what she was thinking, but picturing Mrs. Delesseppes killed his buzz faster than falling from the roof would have.

What did Ines’s mother think? Janice’s mom had been welcoming, but her brothers less so, once smashing in his windshield, slashing the tires, and writing, on the side of his car, I’LL CUT YOUR ZIGGER DICK OFF. Achilles had been pissed. He’d spent a lot of time and money on that car. Stop whining, said his father, Men eat anger and save it for later. They use it on the field. Achilles did precisely that, taking Janice’s older brother’s spot on the varsity team. That was an unusual situation. Race had never really mattered when he was growing up, but this was the South, and before meeting her, he’d been worried that Ines’s mom might not like him because he was black. Now that he had met her, he still wasn’t so sure. One drill sergeant had always made him repeat himself. Merriweather sometimes teased him until he cursed, them mimicked his curses. Janice had once claimed to have better rhythm. She did. So did Ines.

Shaniqua, Tyrene, Laquisha, Amina, Diamond, Jazzmyne, Aunt Jemima. Black women. Like that plump bird at Kikkin Chikkin. Tough, determined, hard to crack. Attitude and flak. Loud. He flirted with them in gas stations and supermarkets. He’d smile at them, even ones with tattoos. They’d smile back, eventually. Black women. More bark than bite. Necks popping, gum chomping. They heard his suburban accent and thought Achilles smart or brainy or trying to act white. Black girls. Enigmas. He hadn’t met a single one throughout all twelve years of school. He’d slept with Wexler’s sister Naomi that time in Atlanta, but he was drunk and on leave, and she lived there. He’d never really known one, not really. Sure, he knew Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son, the mother on Good Times, Florence on The Jeffersons, and that lesbian in the Color Purple. But only from Naomi did he discover that BAP was as disparaging as chickenhead . Black women. Mysterious and powerful. The only one he had even eaten with, outside the military, had been Ines’s friend Margaret, and now, apparently, Ines, who was so smart and classy.

Apparently? Yes, apparently, because only now did it occur to him to wonder why Mrs. Delesseppes had said varied relations, and not black relations? What did that mean?

“What?” asked Ines as she stood to shake the sleep from her limbs, which usually reminded him of a sprinter approaching the starting line, but this evening brought to mind a charismatic about to catch the Spirit.

In fact, thought Achilles, in the South, was there even a difference between being black and having black in you?

Another huge cheer erupted from the street. Apartment windows slid up, car doors flung open, people yelled into the air. Horns. Noisemakers. Aerosol horns. People poured out of the sports bar screaming, a tangled mass of faces painted purple and gold, their pounding feet audible, a rapturous hoard barking themselves hoarse. The Saints had won. The game was over.

They were ecstatic, as he had felt about the buzzing, the bees, and the breasts. He remembered that when they were little, Troy was afraid of bees, always running to Achilles to shoo them away, always relying on his big brother to protect him. Yes, always relying on Achilles, older, bigger, darker. Ines sashayed over. Whistling, she said, “The flak jacket, babe, the flak jacket.”

What did she mean?

THEY WERE IN A WADI IN LAI’PUR WHEN A SOLDIER THREE PACES BEHIND, shoulders swaying like he was on a boat as he listened to his MP3 player, tripped and fell, his shadow shrinking so naturally, so casually, that had it not been for the rifle reports — and they heard reports all the time — Achilles would have thought him clumsy, or another victim of heat exhaustion, or that he had merely stopped to adjust his laces. Dust flew as the new recruits scrambled for cover, firing to the four winds, some aiming, some on their backs shooting wildly over their heads, throwing bullets like salt after birds, and Achilles saw that fallen soldier nearby, one of his buddies lying over him, shielding him, the tiny white headphones still in his ears. As Achilles watched those fluttering brown eyes — the same color as his — close for what was certainly the last time, he called for Troy, who yelled that he was O.K., and thought, Why are they shooting at us? Even as he steadied his rifle and aimed at the far ridge, his limbs were alternately tingling then numb, his ass clenched so tight it hurt, and he was struck by the fear that he’d never, ever, ever, shit again, a sensation he felt when Morse called, nearly dropping the phone as the detective asked to speak to Troy.