He could smell her — nutmeg, which was also the color of her skin, and his. A first for him. She’d thought him freaky because he couldn’t stop staring down when they had sex, his eyes drawn to the immeasurable symmetrical shadow pulsing between them. Then, doing the William Tell trick, he’d shot Chief in the leg, grazed him really. He was reckless during the few days the squad spent in Atlanta on the break between earning their silver wings and Goddamnistan. He had learned to live without food or sleep or water or fear and felt a certain power, as if he had fingers of fire. He’d expected the feeling of invincibility — the other Achilles — to last until he reached the FOB, but it began to fade in that kitchen as Naomi pushed the placemats aside to tend to Chief, his breathing worried, his black eyes spinning wildly, as if looking for a reason. When she’d poured peroxide on his leg, his claws on the healthy front paw had tapped the kitchen table, click, click, click.
That same sound he heard now, sitting at the same table as Wexler fiddled with the matching glass salt and pepper shakers, sliding them from hand to hand, clacking them on the table as he explained to Achilles how he had seen Troy near the lunch bucket across from his jobsite, and how he had called Troy and chased Troy and lost Troy in an overgrown alley that cut between a row of abandoned homes and a large housing project called the Bricks. But surely it would be different when Troy saw Achilles. It would be different when he saw his brother. “When he sees you, it’ll all be over,” said Wexler.
“Yeah,” said Achilles. It would all be over, whatever that meant. He pressed for details. How did his brother look? What was he wearing? Had he lost weight? Or teeth? Wexler had only seen him from a distance, and remembered little. There were no more details, other than the map Wexler had made.
That Troy had run from Wexler forced Achilles to face a possibility that had been bugging him. What if Troy was avoiding Achilles? Vowing to be smarter this time, he cautiously unfolded the map, as if afraid of what might pour out, as if to damage it would spill the truth, or ruin his luck, when he was so close. Across the top of the page, block letters spelled out OLD 4th WARD. There was a T circled where Troy had been spotted, and an S where Wexler worked and, near the middle of the map, an area highlighted and labeled THE BRICKS.
Wexler said, “I made up the spare bedroom, but you can only stay until Sunday night, when she gets back.” He said it quickly. Though his face was visibly relaxed, he started clacking the shakers again. Click, click, click.
Achilles nodded. He couldn’t be in Atlanta any longer than Sunday. He had work Monday morning. Today was only Wednesday. That gave him long enough, he hoped. Boudreaux probably wouldn’t mind if Achilles took another day off, but he didn’t want to ask for any more favors, not after the DUI, which had roused Boudreaux’s ire because he’d repeatedly warned Achilles off that stretch of road.
“I think she’s still mad,” offered Wexler.
“I apologized,” said Achilles with the same air of exasperated finality as his original apology. He seldom openly expressed regret, so when he did, he felt that it was beyond mere atonement; his shouldering the blame and burden should be accepted as the final word, the final fistful of dirt on a grave to which no one should ever return, and of which no one should ever speak. Besides, he’d been assured that Chief was well trained, and could remain still for long periods. There would be nothing between them now anyway. In recent photos, Naomi wore an Afro. Wexler said she’d gone granola, but that was too much. She’d never get a job with that hair.
“There’s something else you should know.” Wexler paused.
When Wexler still hadn’t said anything a minute later, Achilles said, “I know you’re gay. And Naomi is your cross-dressing boyfriend.”
Wexler laughed weakly. “Yeah, I turned faggity after you sucked me off.”
They fell silent, gay jokes falling flat when there were only two of them.
“Going to any groups?” Wexler asked this like he was talking about a playoff game.
“You?” asked Achilles.
“I go to PTSD sometimes, but ain’t no crazier than when I went in. Speaking of crazy, Merri’s going to run a marathon and the VA got him a thing he can run on and he’s not talking about exploding melons anymore. I guess you’ve seen little Wages.”
Achilles was glad to hear that Merriweather was moving on with his life, that he had stopped picturing everyone who crossed him as dead, their heads burst open like melons, an image borrowed from Day of the Jackal, a French film in which the assassin used large fruit for target practice: “Blow the seeds out,” Merri would say. He deserved to be happy. In a world so hungry, a world that took so much, a man deserved something good in exchange for a foot. As for Wages, Achilles hadn’t seen him since that time at the casino a few months back. Little Kyle he’d seen only once, shortly after they brought him home. Whenever Wages called, Achilles claimed busy. Achilles suspected that Wages still thought the Bethany incident was the reason for their parting. Achilles wanted to tell him otherwise, but to bring it up would only reinforce Wages’s suspicions. That, or they’d have to start hanging out again, and Achilles just didn’t see how to make that happen. If Wages was in the room, Troy was in the room, then they all were, and then Achilles would have to introduce them all to Ines.
Wexler flashed a photo of Wages’s son, insisting it was the cutest baby he’d ever seen. Achilles agreed. He didn’t know exactly what babies were supposed to look like, only that they shouldn’t resemble the crushed infants he often saw when accompanying Ines to clinics: glazed in sweat, distended eyes, urgent, yurling cries, persistent twitching, even in sleep their tiny limbs flailing as if drowning.
On the drive to his jobsite, Wexler explained that several roads had been recently renamed after flowers to lure suburbanites into town. Achilles ran his fingers across the map, memorizing the terrain. He’d never seen the Fourth Ward, but he’d been with Ines enough to know exactly what it looked like. The corner store stocks tawny-tipped lettuce and lottery tickets. Near the front doors sit two barrels of ice, one filled with malt liquor named after animals and weapons, the other filled with syrupy drinks in little plastic jugs with foil tops, drinks with names like Red Jungle Punch, Yellow Jungle Punch, and Green Jungle Punch. When you buy a pack of cigarettes — they sell singles as well — they won’t give you matches. But they do sell several types of lighters, which is important, because at the counter they have a display case stocked with screens, pushers, and straight glass pipes: everything needed to pretend to satisfy your crush—pretend—because they will tell you the pipes are novelty items. They also trade in insults: Learn English! No, you learn English! As they toss your change on the counter, the mouth sometimes says, “Thank you.” The eyes often say, Dirty motherfucker. Half of the stores are run by Koreans, the other half by men who resemble, at first glance, those he was sent a quarter-way around the world to kill.
Outside the store, squat houses mired in moats of wrinkled concrete rimmed with crabgrass, stripped of copper and wire. Potholes are de facto speed bumps, large enough to swallow tricycle tires, but that doesn’t keep children out of the road. Streetlights are shot out. The neighborhood is bordered by a cemetery, a factory (possibly abandoned), a waste treatment plant, and railroad tracks or a highway. And indeed that was the Old Fourth Ward, except there was no waste treatment plant and there were two highways — the Connector and Freedom Parkway — so that the neighborhood was both bordered and bisected by high-traffic roads impassable by pedestrians. It looked like the Tremé District in New Orleans, or DC, or inner-city Baltimore.