T. Johnson: Hold It 'Til It Hurts

The Wages who answered the door, though, had filled out a lot. The bright blue walleyes, avian nose, and squat, broad forehead were all there, but closer together. His face was puffy, and his cheeks bowled out like he was holding his breath. He looked bigger all around, like the adult version of himself. Christ, he was even wearing a black suit and had his red hair in a ponytail. It was like seeing someone who had rehabbed or recently returned from the hospital. They might not be any happier, but they were always heavier, the cheeks filled out, the stomach softened by rich food and a sedentary lifestyle. He looked sickly, pallid. Wages was the first one he’d seen since they’d returned, and it took a moment for Achilles to realize that Wages was simply rehydrated and he wasn’t sickly pale; he’d just lost the Afghani-tan.

All anxiety faded, and Achilles wheezed as his friend lifted him off his feet in a bone-crushing bear hug and spun him into the house, which smelled of garlic and fresh-baked bread. The Delfonics wafted out of the speakers.

Achilles fingered Wages’s lapels.

“Who died, right? I know,” said Wages, quickly adding, “Shit, sorry man.”

“It’s cool,” said Achilles twice, wanting to let it pass. “You do look like you’re going to a funeral.”

“You’re looking at the new head of security. I got the poker pit at Carousel Casino. Now I chill out in the monitor room and tell the other losers who to scope.” He checked his watch. “Can’t be late my first day as boss. I was about to leave a note for you.” He handed Achilles a big manila envelope the same size as the blue one in the bottom of Achilles’s bag. “Here’re the keys and a map.” He looked at his watch and bit his lip, which meant he was counting. Pushing Achilles toward the door, Wages said, “All right, I’ve got just enough time to give you the bird’s-eye.”

When they turned to leave, Achilles pointed at two sabers in the umbrella stand next to the door. “What’s up with that?”

“She’s not allowed to answer the door without a weapon in arm’s reach. This is New Orleans,” said Wages. “I want her to use a gun, but you know how women get about that. This is just as good because there’s hella chance anyone can take a sword away from her. I hardly can.”

Achilles had forgotten Bethany was a fencer. A photo of Wages and Bethany at a beach hung on the wall next to the door. She had round eyes and pert lips, and her face was prettier than he remembered. He’d only seen her in wallet-sized photos, and the one thing he recalled was that she had chocolate nipples even though she was also redheaded. The beach photo was flanked by pictures of Wages and Bethany with their parents. Wages had entered a land where Achilles would never follow. He couldn’t see himself living like this, with a woman, let alone with his motley family on display: two black kids adopted and raised by white parents, charity cases like those bobble-head African orphans on late-night television. Both the fact of it and the withholding shamed him.

Wages tapped the photo of them standing in the surf. “She keeps this up to remind her of what she’s working for.”

Wages was stepping into the road before Achilles remembered that they didn’t need to maintain strategic distance. He jogged to catch up. They crossed the street toward the school, slipped through a gap in the barbed-wire fence, and climbed up the permanent fire escape to the roof, which offered an unobstructed view of downtown and the surrounding one- and two-story houses, a spotter’s wet dream. By the time they reached the third set of stairs, Achilles’s shirt was stuck to his back. Troy wouldn’t want to be here long.

Wages, whose temples barely glistened, ran two fingers along his forehead and slung off the sweat. “Can you feel it? We’re right in the center of all this water.” He pointed toward the tall buildings downtown. “The river’s in front. The lake’s behind. Water above and below. Don’t it feel great? The air’s alive.”

Achilles felt it and didn’t like it. When he’d opened the door at his last refueling point, the thick air had poured into the car like waves over a breaker and ridden shotgun the rest of the way to New Orleans. The air-conditioning in his father’s old truck wasn’t strong enough for the South, the only place he’d been that gave literal meaning to the phrase “in the soup.” The sun had been down for hours, but the tar roof was still sticky underfoot.

It made sense that Wages liked it. Achilles had hated the desert, the air so dry it grated, gnawed at you like an animal sniffing out blood. He said it was proof there was no Mother Nature, only motherfucking nature, and none of it gave a damn about man. Achilles had liked the valley where they spent their last months and thought the spartan simplicity beautiful. He’d been loath to leave the drifting dunes and ragged rocky brows. True, it was unforgiving, but that was what he liked about it. No guardrails, no seat belts, and no airbags. If the whole world were like that, he and his friends would be kings.

Wages unfolded a tourist map across the top of an air conditioner, pointing as he talked. “This X is the church. That’s downtown straight ahead where you see the cell towers and the JAX sign. That’s the French Quarter, the center of the city, and also known as the Vieux Carré. The church is to the left, Uptown is to the right. None of it is more than a few clicks from here.” He gestured toward downtown. “A little more to the left, where it gets dark, that’s the church where I saw Troy. It’s called St. Augustine. It’s in the Tremé district.”

Downtown, straight ahead of them, cell towers blinked their silent warning like fireworks in slow motion — pop … pop … pop. A sign winked JAX. Uptown looked like a continuation of Wages’s neighborhood, just another stop upstream on the same river of streetlights. But where the X supposedly was, the Tremé, there was no light to be seen, save for one neon cross that shone cobalt blue. First their father’s funeral and now this: Troy vanished into the night, as if finding his birth mother were more important than his duty to the woman who had raised them.

The clickity-clack of unsteady heels sounded below. A woman in a tight red dress staggered down the street, her hips pistoning up and down as if she was riding a bike uphill. Two teenage boys swimming in baggy jeans sniffed ten feet behind her, giggling and elbowing each other. The woman turned to face them. “I told you that’s all you gon’ get, unless you little fuckers pay. Everyone knows you pay me, don’t play me. So give it up or stop snorting after me, you little Vienna Sausage motherfuckers.”

“I got your banana fucker right here, bee-yitch!” the taller one yelled. “We don’t need your prune ass anyway!”

“Yeah, that’s right, bee-yatch,” said the other.

Wages quietly chuckled, like he didn’t want to be heard. “Not much milk left in those bags, but Lorenzo would still like them. Remember how Merri called him Manual Dingo? Remember Merri and Jacki always arguing like a married couple?”

Merri was Merriweather and Jacki was Jackson, and Achilles remembered. Twice the squad stopped at a brothel on the edge of Jalalabad, once on the way into town and once on the way out. At the first visit, Jackson was pissed to learn that none of the women would give him a blowjob. He had promised his girlfriend he would remain a virgin, and a BJ was only foreplay, as the former president had proven. During the second visit, Merriweather suggested anal, which Jackson found repulsive, even after Merriweather explained, “Like the dirty virgins say, anal ain’t really fucking. Think of it like a blowjob. Think of it sideways, like the ass is a little mouth with big lips.”