PART 2. LATE FALL 2004
CHAPTER 8
“BRING A FRIEND TO THE SCREENING,” SAID INES. “YOU’LL SEE MY NEW Orleans.” Did she think he needed medical attention? She said she wanted to thank him for his help over the past couple of weeks, but upon hearing screening, Achilles thought triglycerides, blood pressure cuffs, lipid tests. He imagined helping Mabel and Dudley — Ines’s two longtime volunteers — escort the old and infirm to a mobile medical clinic and knew Wages wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon doing that. Good thing Achilles agreed, because a couple days later he and Ines were on the St. Charles streetcar entering an area of town previously known to him by name only — Uptown.
With the wooden seats, manually operated curtain, wheeled popcorn machine, marble floor, and gilded marquee, it was like no theater he’d seen before. The feature starred an Icelandic band singing in a make-believe language, and included interviews with several eccentrically attired, dour musicians with thick accents. The film ended with one of their music videos. In it, a boy dressed like a soldier and carrying a drum marched across somber tidal flats, traversed black shale dunes, scaled ragged gorges, and hiked through tawny fields of waist-high grasses, picking up other kids along the way until a troop of them followed him, clinging to his heels like ticks, the whole gaggle in costumes. Some wore bear masks, some rabbit ears. Trailing the group was a little boy in a nutcracker outfit like the one Troy wore every Christmas, between the ages of six and nine. He surrendered it only after the pants ripped in half, but he cried about it and wore the hat for two more years. At the end of the video, the drummer boy led a charge up a steep, grassy hill that gradually tapered into a narrow spur. The audience could see that the promontory ended at a bluff hundreds of feet above the sea. The kids could not.
Knowing it was silly to worry about a video, Achilles nevertheless found himself looking away, and noticed the other audience members were rapt. He wanted to yell, to ask if they thought this brave. Ines, who had been wringing her fingers, started clapping. The drummer boy had gone over the edge. The other kids followed, flinging themselves from the cliff and flying into space, blue and wide. They took air for water, fanning legs and arms like swimmers, banking to the beckoning clouds, the winds teasing their hair, at ease in the palm of the sky. The boy in the nutcracker suit hesitated at the edge. Finally he stepped off the cliff into the ether. The camera cut back to the flying drummer boy, and the video ended without revealing what happened to the child in the nutcracker suit. Achilles tried to recall the final, swift image. Had he kicked at the air? Looked down? Floundered? Frustrated, Achilles didn’t applaud when the lights came on.
Achilles’s motto was Look both ways before crossing a one-way street. While waiting at a crosswalk, stand on the side of the light pole opposite the flow of traffic. Avoid crowded elevators. Back into parking spaces. At traffic stops, maintain a distance of half a vehicle from the car ahead. Drive with one hand on the seatbelt button. Never wear open-toed shoes, in case you need to run or fight. Always wear a belt because it quadruples as a tourniquet or maul or lariat or garrote.
The list exhausted and frightened him. This fear was heightened by the presence of Ines and her smile, and her tall, good-looking friend who stood beside them in the theater lobby, and all the fine-looking, smiling people crowded around them, blissfully unaware of what price the rest of the world paid for their conveniences. Sharp creases, wind-resistant hair, perfect makeup, gold bangles. Hushed tones, subdued nods, polite laughter. They all looked so happy. The polished wood floors, the colossal chandelier suspended from gilded chains, the etched box-office glass. Even the building looked happy, as if the ticket was worth more than the price of admission.
Running through his list, Achilles doubted he would ever be happy because he couldn’t stop holding his breath. Even that was cynicism. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he was thinking about without being cynical about it. The army taught him to hope for the best but expect the worst. Yet how he yearned to join those kids.
Looking at him, Ines’s smile flattened, then rebounded, her own eyes starting to glisten. She placed one hand on each side of his face and gently drew her thumbs under his eyes. The overhead lamps reflected in the wells of tears along her bottom lids, making her eyes bright and lively bowls of light, framed by thick eyelashes long as pine needles, brown at the base and blonde at the tip. He’d thought them light brown, but they were amber irises, brass in the center and honey around the edges, speckled with pearl and peach and his reflection, really just the outline of his face, set in shadow by the chandelier glowing behind his head like he was on fire.
After the screening, they went to lunch with Ines’s tall friend Margaret, who reminded Achilles of someone he knew long ago. She sighed frequently as if awaiting a train long overdue, and had a tiny, upturned nose much too small for her long face. Her skin was deep brown, and her large teeth perfect. She stood very straight, back and neck in one long, unyielding line. Ines and Margaret met with a gasp and an “Ooh girl” in the theater lobby, supposedly surprised by their good fortune. Achilles thought it extremely unfair that he would have to take the friend test before they’d even had sex.
They ate at Minette’s, a small restaurant in the French Quarter. Along one side of the dining room ran a bar behind which men in black rubber aprons told jokes while serving beer and oysters, shucked just that minute, to the patrons lucky enough to sit there. Ines chose a table next to the window. While they waited to order, Margaret mentioned how much she liked the movie, as well as the videos that played before and after it.
Ines hadn’t enjoyed the video, describing it as another example of “rich people indulging obsessions.”
“You say that with such envy,” said Margaret. “Has Achilles seen the servant show, the old I-hire-folks-who-look-like-you? Vaudeville isn’t it, Achilles?”
“I guess,” he said.
“This was his first trip uptown,” snapped Ines.
The businessman at the next table cleared his throat as he slipped his blue credit card back into his wallet. Margaret sighed. She had a man’s voice and was too dark for Achilles’s taste but, understandably, men noticed her. Her height alone set her apart, and her skin looked downright edible. It was easy to imagine her in a National Geographic centerfold, saucers in her ears, a dozen rings on her neck, and a plate in her tongue. She wouldn’t be able to talk so much.
They continued the discussion of the films. The opening short had featured animated birds. Achilles hadn’t liked it. Margaret loved it. Ines called it a second-rate remake of Othello, with an eagle as Iago, but a raven as Othello. “How can the modern retelling actually compound the racism? It’s worse than Hopkins or Olivier tromping around with bootblack on their faces, mincing and waxing apoplectic when they hear of Desdemona’s infidelity. So whipped, so afraid someone else has hoed their little field, tarnished their virginal porcelain saint. I root for Iago every time.”
Was this what they learned in college? Achilles saw no comparison between the animated short and the game he had often played at home with Troy. Piecing together the story, he put his money on the Moor.
The waiter took their order, fawning over Margaret, who ignored his smiles and clumsy attempt to open her napkin for her without grazing her breasts. Asked if anything else was needed, she pointed to her fork with her whole hand, letting her fingers drop like she was showing off a fresh manicure. “Clean cutlery is always appreciated.”