The waiter groaned apologetically and snatched up the fork with two fingers, holding it away from his body as if it were contaminated. Achilles took his elbows off the table. Margaret continued the conversation.
“Iago! I heard that,” she said. That little turned-up nose made her look like a black person trying to act white. That was who she reminded him of, the rich blonde girls at the mall dragging their heels behind their parents, whining and grousing, attracting attention they claimed to detest, the cheerleaders wearing miniskirts and high boots and complaining about the stares.
“At Spelman I had a professor who abhorred that play and M.O.V. The only person hated more than that old black ram is the Jew. The Jew can convert, while neither the Moor nor his progeny can ever change their stripes. The message is obvious: Black must destroy itself to save society. The Moor must be sacrificed to his own black hell as punishment for lusting after the white essence.”
“Crunch!” they both said.
“Achilles, what do you think?” asked Margaret.
He was thinking that Margaret was crazy but remembered enough of Wages’s speech to say, “It’s what everyone wants for Christmas.”
Ines winked at Margaret. Margaret nodded solemnly. He expected a sigh; instead she slapped the table. “That’s it exactly. Drugs and money have become religion. It’s no accident that the very thing that kills us is what we most crave.”
“Crunch,” they said.
“So you liked it, Achilles?” asked Margaret.
He pictured the little boy at the cliff’s edge, then Troy perched on the rail of the water tower they loved to climb. “I’d rather know the ending.”
“Hmmph.” Margaret.
“The little kid jumped, but it looked like he couldn’t fly.”
“That’s precious, though in movies, as in life, things work out for cute white kids.”
Margaret’s portabello mushroom arrived, and Achilles’s red beans, and Ines’s prime rib.
“But is it dead yet, Inesha?” asked Margaret.
Ines took a big bite, working it from one cheek to the other like an oversized gumball. Margaret waggled her fork. “Bitch, they have better manners at the Playboy Mansion.”
“I’ve seen you eat corn on the cob. You couldn’t get a job in porn,” said Ines, blowing out her cheek like a baseball player.
Over the few weeks at the shelters, he’d seen Ines drink beer from the bottle, sometimes holding it up to her ear to listen to the fizz, eat wings with her fingers, and drown her eggs in ketchup. But he’d never witnessed her carnivorous fever. His concern about her bleeding heart liberalism and dreadlocks, his suspicions that her progressive tendencies were an ill-fitting suit hiding a spare tire of guilt and consumption, and his certainty that her charity was a front were all drowned out by the sound of her chewing healthy chunks carved from the slab of beef dominating the table with its cool, gray marbled edge and oily moat of blood and butter. She made a point of chewing with her mouth open, as she later explained, only to irritate Margaret.
Margaret had other things on her mind, constantly asking Achilles where he had served and what he had seen there. He shared where he had been but politely declined to offer details. “Some things shouldn’t be glamorized, and to talk about them does that.” He’d learned that in the civilian transition class.
Margaret stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. Sucking her teeth, she pointed at Achilles with her fork and said, “Rugged. I like that. Siblings? Or are you an only child like Spiney-Iney here?”
Achilles had been trying to formulate a better critique of the movie. Expecting any question but that, he said, “I have a brother.”
Ines cocked her head. “You never mentioned that. Are you close?”
“We served together.”
“Really?” asked Ines.
“That’s allowed?” asked Margaret.
“One unit in Iraq had three brothers.”
“What’s he do?” asked Margaret.
“Not too much,” Achilles shrugged.
“He’s been off active duty less than a month,” said Ines, smiling.
“Where is he now?” asked Margaret.
“Our father just passed, so he’s doing some things at home.”
Margaret pointed her fork at Achilles and Ines as if to say they belonged together. She became less combative, and after lunch they parted with hugs. Margaret gave Ines a look that said, We’ll talk later, and Achilles’s hand an extra squeeze. “Sorry about your father.”
When Margaret was out of sight, Ines said, “Ignore her. She’s the only person I know pessimistic enough to call Monet’s garden a breeding ground for mosquitoes. She’s bougie bougie. Every time I see her I need a drink.”
“Where’s the bar?”
“Sorry, back to work.” She apologized again for Margaret, making Achilles wonder if he had missed something important, if Ines was slumming, or if he had just blown a blind date. It wasn’t the first time someone had hooked him up with a woman on the basis of race alone. Should he have asked for her number?
“I can help with the work.”
She studied his face. “You really took a beating, huh? Okay. Only one. And only because you’ve been so helpful. And only because it was just Veteran’s Day. Yesterday.”
Achilles shrugged. Veteran’s Day was for old people, but if was worth a drink, so be it.
She chose a tourist trap atop Jax Brewery, a restaurant decorated with paintings of housekeepers in mammy head wraps, life-sized inflatable alligators wearing wrap-around mirrored glasses, and a waiter who introduced himself as “Samuel Clemens, your captain on this here steamboat.” The appetizers were priced as entrees, the coffee as cocktails. At least they had a corner booth with a good view. The blinking Jax sign he had only seen from a distance with Wages now hovered overhead like a halo. One window offered a view of the streets below, and the other the river, black and shiny like wet obsidian, the waves looking sharp and still.
He hadn’t felt this excited about Janice; maybe she had been too easy. On their first date they ate fried rice in the food court and snuck into Terminator 2. The week before, they’d kissed under the bleachers, and the night before screwed at the Ass Station, the abandoned gas station out on the old county road. Maybe it was because Ines was worldlier. Before ordering her coffee, she confirmed that she liked the brand they used, and requested special milk and Baileys on the side, and not that well substitute, Carolans. Janice was happier than a frog in a swamp whenever a diner had little white thimbles of cream and, after each meal, stuffed a handful into her purse. Janice had flags and pandas and fireworks painted on her long nails. Ines had natural nails with a strip of white across the tips, simple and glamorous at the same time.
She leaned forward, her breasts momentarily resting on the table, heavy, real snake charmers. A Spiderman pendant lounged in her cleavage. Lucky devil! God, she was so beautiful. Chivalry had its perks. After opening the door to the stairway, he’d remained two paces behind her to ensure a better view. What could be more pleasurable than watching a fine woman walk uphill, a little bit of shake in every step? Maybe Merriweather was right about the steroids in chicken giving white girls big asses. A thick cotton T-shirt, faded denim jeans, dreadlocks, freckles, a head wrap — the classic rich hippy, the prototypical freaky white girl, except her clothes fit like she’d been poured into them. Ines: white woman with a black woman’s ass. As Merriweather would have said, she had puddin’ in her pop, enough Jell-O to make Bill Cosby blush.