T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

“Check him in?”

“Look around. It’s not a vacation destination.”

“Who says he needs to be checked in? Who says he’s got the crush?” asked Achilles, pounding the joist closest to him. A cloud of pink insulation drifted between them.

Wexler pointed at him. “You just did.”

“You’re twisting shit. How can you know what my brother needs?”

Wexler raised his arms in surrender. “It might be more complicated is all I’m saying. I’ll do whatever you need, but there’s one thing I wanted to tell you earlier. I’m born again.”

“Again?” asked Achilles. “What went wrong the first time?” An ambulance crawled by, the siren loud and frantic.

When the sound died down, Wexler said, “You know you’re not the funny one.”

Achilles raised his arms in a gesture of surrender.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Wexler clapped his hands together, interlacing his fingers. As he spoke, his hands shook slightly, like he was praying. He said, “I want to help. I will help. But it’s just that I can’t do any more crazy shit.”

“Who said crazy shit?” asked Achilles, knowing that Wexler was referring to the boardinghouse fight, which had grown in Wages’s imagination. “I don’t even have a gun.” Noting Wexler’s disbelief, Achilles added, “Really.”

“Okay. It’s just that I don’t want to make it a situation where force is the answer. This isn’t a battle of wills.”

So this was the new and improved Wexler: all fore, not enough head. Whatever happened to “react or die”? What kind of pussy shit were they learning in PTSD counseling? Was the same thing happening to Wages? This was worse than that Zulu hoodoo. They used to say people didn’t need shrinks; people needed friends. For Christ’s fucking sake, was Wexler really reborn? They used to say, “My M16 is my G-O-D.” Achilles was the only veteran among Ines’s friends, the wild one, Brick they sometimes called him, a name he wore with more pride and bravado than he’d ever felt on duty. His military swagger set in. Achilles put a finger to his temple and said, “Every fucking thing is a battle of wills.”

Wexler said, “This shit gets in the brain. Crunch affects people on an animal level. It’s like possession. Think The Exorcist or Night of the Living Dead. They get like zombies. Believe me. Most people can’t even quit cigarettes.”

Achilles raised his hand to silence Wexler. Achilles wasn’t naïve. Maybe Troy had the crush. Maybe he’d gotten flushed into some bad shit hanging around with his black family. But that was only a possibility, and Achilles wasn’t going to treat the probable like the definite. He knew Wexler would back him if ever push came to gun, but said, “It’s cool.”

“Brrrlll.” Wexler blew air across his lips, as if to brush off Achilles’s remark, shook his head, gave Achilles the finger, looked flustered, said “Fuck,” and crossed himself.

Achilles shot the finger back, as he used to during PT when Wexler would glide by grinning, his stride as smooth as a moonwalk. “How’d he ever outrun you?”

Wexler snapped his head back, as if dodging a live wire. “He had a head start. Fuck man. I called you.”

Achilles felt awkward. He was being a complete dick to the friend who’d called him, put him up, taken him to where Troy could be found, a friend who was a brother in his own right. But Wexler owed them. Troy had saved his life, and, after Jackson died, Troy had soothed Wexler. It was Troy who pried Wexler — kicking, screaming, biting — off Merriweather. In fact, Troy had calmed Wexler first, like Wexler was his brother. Achilles didn’t hold that against Wexler, nor did he resent all the other times it seemed Troy was more concerned with Wexler, nor did he resent Wexler’s obvious attachment to his brother, but for some reason Wexler’s almost matronly caution was always Achilles’s trigger, or was it just that whenever he was around Wexler he felt like yelling “bring the thunder,” screaming “drop the money shot,” throwing rocks, blowing chunks, drinking whiskey with a crazy straw, and shooting himself in the head with the tequila pistol?

The orange Hummer drove by again.

Wexler laughed. “That’s who I need to be praying for.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s the HZIC around here, runs the Bricks. Knows all and everybody, got his finger in everything: drugs, hookers, dogfights, numbers, welfare, daycare.”

Prayer? Whatever. But what if Wexler was right about Troy being on crunch? Did it even matter? Everything would collapse when he found Troy. Telling Ines had seemed easier when he thought there wasn’t any chance of finding him. But how to speak of the living? He tried to push that thought out of his head, but it only reminded him that he’d promised to call, no matter the time. He stepped into the dormer farthest from Wexler and dialed.

A rush, a tingle in his neck, when she answered. He adjusted his pants, excited by the sound of her husky morning voice, needles and all, as she mildly admonished him for taking so long to call. While he was driving, Tropical Depression Twelve had been upgraded to Tropical Storm Katrina. She said she might be joining him in Atlanta, then assured him she was only joking. Her family hadn’t even evacuated during Betsy. “We can always go to our place in Lake Charles,” she said. “Hell, we didn’t even leave for the Battle of New Orleans. But that’s all right. How are you? How’s your friend’s family? The name was Kevin Wexler, right? In the rush to get you on the road, I forgot to get the address.”

He looked at Kevin Wexler, who stood in the opposite dormer, probably listening to traffic and dreaming about visiting some other country, unarmed. “Baby, I’ll call back about that. I just wanted to let you know that I made it.”

“Okay. I love you,” said Ines.

“Think fast,” said Achilles, unconsciously extending his index finger like the barrel of a gun.

“Okay, Mr. Cool.” Ines laughed as she hung up.

Achilles joined his friend in the dormer and tried to follow his gaze. Water dripped from the ceiling, collecting on a skewed window ledge in a star-shaped puddle that swelled until one single drop slipped over the side, taking the rest with it, then more water collected, forming another star-shaped puddle. Under the only working streetlamp, the sidewalk was a stage awaiting a performer. But it was intermission, the slice of morning when the crunchers were already in, and the workers weren’t yet out. Cars hummed through puddles. Downtown, a succession of streetlights went out, one after the other, as if extinguished by the wind. A hazy orange aura lay on the horizon, as if the distant trees had burst into flames and a fire was headed across the city, straight into them.

Achilles and Ines had visited Atlanta for Sammy the Stargazer’s birthday. Sammy had prominent front teeth and the stubborn stance of a spoiled kid. Achilles and Ines bought tickets to Six Flags over Georgia; the amusement park seemed a good choice for a fifth grader. But the surprise was on them: Sammy, who attended a fancy boarding school in the suburbs, wanted to be an astronomer, and demanded, truly demanded — teary-eyed as he proclaimed his adult status — a trip to the planetarium at the Fernbank Science Museum. “It’s my birthday after all!” Ines said Sammy was granted latitude because of his condition . Achilles asked her to repeat it three times, finally giving up because all he could make out was that Sammy had “ass-burger” (which sounded like something Merriweather would say, until it dawned on Achilles that maybe he’d been molested — at which point he kept his distance). Achilles was pissed. The tickets weren’t cheap, and he’d been looking forward to a few rounds on the Cyclone roller coaster. Instead, he found himself at a museum enduring an animated dramatization of the Big Bang, complete with celebrity voices.