The orange Hummer drove by again.
Wexler laughed. “That’s who I need to be praying for.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s the HZIC around here, runs the Bricks. Knows all and everybody, got his finger in everything: drugs, hookers, dogfights, numbers, welfare, daycare.”
Prayer? Whatever. But what if Wexler was right about Troy being on crunch? Did it even matter? Everything would collapse when he found Troy. Telling Ines had seemed easier when he thought there wasn’t any chance of finding him. But how to speak of the living? He tried to push that thought out of his head, but it only reminded him that he’d promised to call, no matter the time. He stepped into the dormer farthest from Wexler and dialed.
A rush, a tingle in his neck, when she answered. He adjusted his pants, excited by the sound of her husky morning voice, needles and all, as she mildly admonished him for taking so long to call. While he was driving, Tropical Depression Twelve had been upgraded to Tropical Storm Katrina. She said she might be joining him in Atlanta, then assured him she was only joking. Her family hadn’t even evacuated during Betsy. “We can always go to our place in Lake Charles,” she said. “Hell, we didn’t even leave for the Battle of New Orleans. But that’s all right. How are you? How’s your friend’s family? The name was Kevin Wexler, right? In the rush to get you on the road, I forgot to get the address.”
He looked at Kevin Wexler, who stood in the opposite dormer, probably listening to traffic and dreaming about visiting some other country, unarmed. “Baby, I’ll call back about that. I just wanted to let you know that I made it.”
“Okay. I love you,” said Ines.
“Think fast,” said Achilles, unconsciously extending his index finger like the barrel of a gun.
“Okay, Mr. Cool.” Ines laughed as she hung up.
Achilles joined his friend in the dormer and tried to follow his gaze. Water dripped from the ceiling, collecting on a skewed window ledge in a star-shaped puddle that swelled until one single drop slipped over the side, taking the rest with it, then more water collected, forming another star-shaped puddle. Under the only working streetlamp, the sidewalk was a stage awaiting a performer. But it was intermission, the slice of morning when the crunchers were already in, and the workers weren’t yet out. Cars hummed through puddles. Downtown, a succession of streetlights went out, one after the other, as if extinguished by the wind. A hazy orange aura lay on the horizon, as if the distant trees had burst into flames and a fire was headed across the city, straight into them.
Achilles and Ines had visited Atlanta for Sammy the Stargazer’s birthday. Sammy had prominent front teeth and the stubborn stance of a spoiled kid. Achilles and Ines bought tickets to Six Flags over Georgia; the amusement park seemed a good choice for a fifth grader. But the surprise was on them: Sammy, who attended a fancy boarding school in the suburbs, wanted to be an astronomer, and demanded, truly demanded — teary-eyed as he proclaimed his adult status — a trip to the planetarium at the Fernbank Science Museum. “It’s my birthday after all!” Ines said Sammy was granted latitude because of his condition. Achilles asked her to repeat it three times, finally giving up because all he could make out was that Sammy had “ass-burger” (which sounded like something Merriweather would say, until it dawned on Achilles that maybe he’d been molested — at which point he kept his distance). Achilles was pissed. The tickets weren’t cheap, and he’d been looking forward to a few rounds on the Cyclone roller coaster. Instead, he found himself at a museum enduring an animated dramatization of the Big Bang, complete with celebrity voices.
The Fernbank lecturer, wearing socks with sandals and smelling of patchouli, compared the Big Bang to conception, calling it, “Another explosive genesis, but driven by enzymes. A flash of light is emitted at conception, a burst that is far too bright to be explained by chemistry. Boom! There we are. And so our body is created in a big bang, like the universe. Likewise, it starts to cool and contract in old age.” He lowered his voice, as if delivering a pickup line. “In this vast universe, there are solar systems, and in these solar systems there is us, and in us, there are additional solar systems. We are each interconnected beings of light.” Achilles noticed, not for the first time, how Ines perked up when she was intellectually stimulated, as if aroused. His anxiety that he would never be an intellectual was cooled by the fact that he felt equally moved, being in that moment entranced by the possibility that all was as it was meant to be.
At the same time, the Fernbank lecture had left him spooked, much in the same way it chilled him to hear Ines, stoned, hold forth on water and earth as living things. If the world were alive, it would be a mirror reflecting him at every turn, and he simply couldn’t abide that. He didn’t like the thought of a living being that large and always in motion, and breathing, and watching, for surely it would see him and know what he worked so hard not to think about, surely it would harrow his secrets and kindle his fears. If the world were alive, wouldn’t that be like a parent who knew your every move? Wouldn’t thoughts be weapons? Wouldn’t that make karma real? Wouldn’t there be danger in his joke, “Everyone wants what they deserve. Me, I’m hoping not to get it.”
In retrospect, it had been a good time. Like she had with New Orleans, Ines breathed life into Atlanta. During that trip, they’d visited the Coca-Cola Museum, eaten prime rib at Bones, strolled Phipps Plaza’s marble halls. Now he was stepping over beer bottles and dog shit. Armed with Wexler’s map, Achilles noted the new street names, which definitely didn’t match the neighborhood. Medgar Evers was surrounded by Carnation Avenue, Gladiola Street, and Peace Lily Way. Achilles corrected the map as he circled the block. If a house appeared abandoned, he went inside. If not, he knocked. It took over ninety minutes to do all thirty-five houses on the first block. There were sixty-five more blocks, not to mention the old paper plant and the abandoned cotton mill. He wouldn’t be even halfway finished before Sunday, when he had to leave. He battled his discouragement by trying to stick to the plan and treat it like a road march — one foot after the other, orderly, insistent. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that when he was on one side of the block, Troy was on the opposite side, that they were like the blades of a propeller, and he soon found himself backtracking and making figure eights via the grassy alleys, like a gambler who thinks that one more time around and the wheel will pay.
Alleys fed even narrower side streets that poured into broad thoroughfares like Auburn Avenue, which was once the African American Main Street, according to Wexler. The decline appeared irreversible, like New Orleans’s own Tremé District, which Ines had explained was the oldest black neighborhood in America (and St. Augustine the oldest black parish). The Fourth Ward felt different because at least commuters passed through this neighborhood, whereas in the Tremé, you either lived there or you were lost. In both cities, old men spoke and young men stared. But Atlanta had more black history on display, the neighborhood dotted with plaques memorializing bygone glory. One minute he was in a Section Eight complex, the next he was on a path identified as Freedom Walk. For a time it seemed the only businesses were pawnshops, churches, and funeral homes. Then came King’s tomb and torch. Achilles detoured from his path, venturing into the paved courtyard surrounding the tomb. A group of schoolchildren held hands, heads bowed before the eternal flame. Catty-corner from the MLK center, a row of burned-out homes, and across the street a statue of Gandhi. A few blocks later he was facing a six-foot-tall cast of John Wesley Dobbs’s head. The plaque read: “Give us the 3 Bs — the buck, the ballot, and the book.” Behind the sculpture, winos slept in the shadow of a replica of a slave castle wall. As he passed the winos, one spoke: “What’s up, young blood?”