“I knew you were different, but not that much.” She winked. “Why aren’t there any Walmarts in Afghanistan?” she asked, adding a sneer certainly meant to make him think she believed what she was saying, but that he recognized as her disgust at the joke.
“Because there’s a Target on every corner.” Achilles snorted, unsuccessful in his attempt to hold back his laughter. “But I’m laughing at you, not the joke.”
“Of course,” said Ines. She finished her coffee and motioned for the check.
“You were serious about only one?”
Ines stared at him for a moment before saying, “I should probably see the other guys.”
Achilles nodded. “It’s nothing, really.”
He insisted on walking Ines to her car — a beat-up Carmen Ghia. Before getting into her car, she reached out and touched the scratch under his eye. “So who’s your brother, Odysseus?”
Waiting for his answer, she buckled in and when she turned back to him, the moon was in her eyes and he knew that he was the soldier who’d saved her life, noble and august, tall and true, and part of him rejoiced that Troy wasn’t there to take that away. He said, “It was this or Hercules.”
Ines said, “I guess it’s no different than Biblical names, or us naming kids after famous Americans. How many Abraham Leroy Lincolns and George Washington Johnsons do you know?”
Achilles shrugged. He knew none.
“Exactly. Too many to count,” said Ines, starting her engine. The car rattled like it was going to take flight, or disintegrate. The body was mottled with primer and rust, the original yellow faded to the color of earwax and the left taillight covered with an oversized bandage. It was the kind of beater rich kids tooled around in on weekdays, the kind of car a poor person would actually fix.
“When can I see you again?”
“I have a boyfriend, Achilles. As I said, I only wanted to thank you for your help and share a different side of Nola. I’ll be seeing you.”
“Do you have Margaret’s number?”
“Of course.” She scowled and drove off.
Back at Wages’s he tossed and turned, albeit dressed. That feeling he first had when Wexler ran into the minefield, which subsided after his discharge, was stronger than ever in New Orleans. A kind of paranoia, it was the suspicion that his life was irreparably damaged, that everything he touched was scarred and singed. His grandfather always said, “Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash.” After a few weeks in Kabul, Achilles knew he was writing checks that other people’s asses were cashing.
It was like the book they read in middle school about the big dumb guy who pet rabbits to death because he didn’t know his own strength, or understand his place in the world. When Achilles first read it, the book meant little to him, but he thought about the story during every leave and wondered how he and his friends would fit into the world now that they knew what they were capable of doing. Wages was at the casino. Wexler worked construction. Merriweather was looking for a part-time job with kids. No purpose. Unlike Ines.
Ines. The taut pull of the T-shirt across her chest, the gentle curve of her belly, the shake when she walked. Those glossy heart-shaped lips, kissing question marks. His dick in those lips, a kind of Cupid. His groin felt heavy as his cock thickened. He saw Ines bent over the sofa, ass poked up, cheeks blossomed out, looking back in shock as he rammed into her, biting the pillow to keep from screaming. He would pause for a minute and let her savor the sensation of being impaled by his meat sword. Then withdraw, and return so slowly she’d wonder if it’d ever stop coming, like a long train easing into a tunnel. She’d look back at him with that face that said she worshipped him.
Just as Achilles began kneading his dick, Wages came stomping down the hall. “Have you tried calling boardinghouses?”
Achilles couldn’t see the bottle but heard sloshing liquid. He pulled the covers over his head.
“He has to be staying somewhere. Let’s get oscar-mike, Connie.”
Hearing his army nickname, Achilles perked up. His hand to his ear like a phone, he said, in a bad British accent, “Conroy’s room please.”
“I’m serious and you’re doing a bad Slurpee slinger impression.”
As his erection subsided, Achilles admitted it wasn’t a bad idea. This was the time Troy would most likely be in. Over the next hour, they called every hotel to no avail. Achilles experienced the same intense disappointment he’d known at the green camelback. Wages also looked forlorn, like it was his damned brother missing.
“We tried.” Why was he consoling Wages just because Wages had to be in charge of everything? It was four a.m. Bethany would be home any minute, see him getting drunk only hours before his shift, and give Achilles the stink eye. Hadn’t she known he liked to drink when they married? Everyone else knew. He didn’t cause trouble, but he had a high capacity for high octane, as he put it. Achilles cocooned himself in the sheet and dove onto the couch. “Good night!”
After a moment of silence, he peeked out. Wages stood there in his hunting hat and yellow ducky boxer shorts, holding a pint bottle of whiskey with a crazy straw in it, peeking through the blinds. He had the tiniest spare tire growing. Bethany’s cooking.
Achilles asked, “Are you horsesleeping?”
“No, I was just thinking about some of the rooming houses I’ve seen.” As he described them, they sounded like halfway houses. “Maybe we should stick to B&Bs.”
“We called them under hotels.”
“No we didn’t. That’s a different section of the phone book. I work in the hospitality industry now.”
“You work. Exactly. Man, go to bed before Bethany comes in and gives me crosshairs.”
Wages straightened up and waved the bottle, sloshing whiskey on his feet. “No one tells me what to do.”
“I know, dude. I’m just saying, she’ll be in here like ‘Kyyylllle? A-sheel?’ dragging our names the way women drag names out.”
“Ma ma sa, ma ma sa, ma ma ma coo sa.” That was Wages’s version of blah blah blah. He removed the straw and drained his bottle. “I know you just want to detonate your heat seeker. Go ahead. Just don’t look at pictures of my wife while you do it. If you do, leave five dollars on the table.” He raised the bottle in a toast, and shuffled down the hall.
Achilles’s hands slipped back into his shorts. Of course he wanted to detonate the heat seeker. It would be light soon, and whacking off during the day was desperate and adolescent. If he did it now, he’d forget about it by morning. Achilles wriggled his shorts down and conjured Ines again. The gummy smile, the deep shadow of cleavage, but he couldn’t hold the image. He kept envisioning the boardinghouses Wages had described, and imagined Troy inside some ratty home in the Tremé district. He thought of Ines, then Troy. He wondered if they would like each other, and knew she would like Troy more.
Ines was his most exciting fantasy since high school, when a Japanese exchange student transferred in for one semester. She was slim and porcelain and had such a small mouth he wondered how she ate. He constantly imagined himself with her. Jacking off was easy with people he didn’t know. With women he knew it was different. That’s why he never fantasized in earnest about Bethany. It was like trying to put a spell on them or reach into their dreams. He would imagine them just so, arranging it so they were looking him in the eye when he came. Then they belonged to him. It had worked with Aiko. He imagined her thin purple lips making cooing sounds. On their first date, he discovered that they did. They were quite a couple, the only black and the only Asian in the twelfth grade together. (There’d been one other black kid in his grade for one year, but he lived with his grandmother, brought his lunch, and talked like the rest of them from the city. So, he didn’t count.) Someone had called Achilles and Aiko the United Nations. Achilles didn’t remember who said that, but he should have punched him. He thought it funny at the time. Aiko deserved better.