The blood drained from Wexler’s face.
“You know it is,” said Achilles, feeling betrayed by both Troy and Wexler. And Wages. And Merriweather. And Jackson. Next Wexler would tell that story about footprints in the sand. They were all in it, which explained why Wages lied about Merriweather’s kid. They were all having a good laugh about Achilles. Troy assuming his avuncular tone when they all met up at zero-dark-thirty for a final gear check, Troy’s grin a silent signal saying, Here we go again, Achilles out to prove himself, like a parent overseeing a child’s first attempt to climb a slide. That casual shrug he always offered as a last word now an indictment. He saw it again: Jackson strapped to the roof, Wexler groaning like the time he had dysentery in Gardiz and hiding his face under Troy’s protective wing, Troy with his arm around Wexler like they’re at a horror movie. Is that why Wexler and Wages were so eager to help him find his brother? Did they feel sorry for him? Was that why Wages offered his couch for as long as needed? What they thought was shame was merely prudence. Troy couldn’t understand; his name was at least normal. Did they think they could understand what it’s like to have the teachers treat him better only after meeting his parents but the basic training cohort eye him curiously for that same reason? Well they were wrong, all of them. Achilles didn’t need anyone’s pity. In fact, he needed no one.
Achilles stood in the window studying the night sky, the river of dancing light flowing down Peachtree Avenue and the waxing moon so low he could hang his coat on it. He was in a hotel room with a beautiful woman — for whom he hadn’t paid — who said she loved him. He beckoned Ines to the window, put one calloused finger to her cheek, as Sammy had earlier that day at the planetarium, and said, “Your freckles do look like stars.”
She laughed. “Don’t make fun. He’s just a child expressing his feelings. You know that’s not easy to do.” She winked and turned away.
The quarter moon resembled a smug, cockeyed grin. Arrested by the traffic signal, the river of dancing lights was only the usual drunken gridlock that appeared every Saturday night in a big city. He jerked the drapes together, pulling so hard that one end of the curtain rod popped off the mount. She said nothing as he rehung it. After Ines fell asleep, he studied her face, her cheeks flushed with Cabernet. Was that a dipper in her right cheek, and Orion in the left? Or was it the other way around? In Goddamnistan, he always watched the stars to make sure they weren’t moving.
The museum lecturer had said the stars were lights from the past, sometimes dead before you saw them because of the time it took light to travel through space. Incomprehensible distances. That thought seized him, and he was gripped by the same panic that strangled him awake his first nights at the FOB, when screaming mortars, stars very much alive, pounded the earth. Pushed by the same terror he felt at the edge of that minefield when he stepped outside himself — which he surely did, he saw it happen as clearly as if he were watching his own shadow step off on its own accord — he started for the window to check the sky for some sign, some reassurance. Still unsettled, he wanted to wake Ines and rock her back to sleep, run his finger from her brow to the tip of her nose, give the constellations new names, but he knew the one thing you never tell a woman is that you need her, and that you’re scared to lose her, especially if it’s true. So he’d just quietly slipped under the bedspread and pulled the sheet over both of their heads, locking her into his pillow fort, inhaling the scent of her shampoo.
Still, he told himself that he wasn’t afraid to lose her. He had lost more and lived through worse. But whenever he imagined life without her, his joints hurt as if grating against shrapnel, as if ground against glass, as he felt now, alone in Atlanta.
After Wexler’s hissy fit, Achilles decided to spend the night at the hotel. When he returned, the line at the check-in counter extended out the door. Almost everyone waiting in line was from the Gulf Coast, and complaining loudly about price gouging and the trip. The drive, usually seven hours, had taken them fifteen, even with contraflow. His mom called to ensure he wasn’t trapped in New Orleans. The call was brief, and no one mentioned Troy. They’d long stopped using his name. Would it be the same with Ines, or even easier because no one knew her? Sitting alone now in that hotel in Atlanta, thinking back to the last time they’d been in a hotel, he thought maybe it was cowardly not to admit one’s feelings. In the room, he dragged his feet on the carpet, opened and shut a few drawers. Dust rose when he slapped the pillows. He jumped up and down on the bed and rolled around in the covers. It was his first time being alone since moving in with Ines. His first time alone, ever.
New Orleans was on every channel. “Tropical Storm” had been dropped. The cyclone tearing across the Caribbean was known by one name: Katrina. The governor of Louisiana declared a state of emergency, and Mississippi was planning a massive evacuation. A couple days before, he’d sent Ines a text message with the hotel’s address, but that was the last time he was able to get through, or receive a response. He tried calling Ines every few minutes. All circuits busy.
An argument erupted in the parking lot. The motel must have filled up. Every parking space was taken. People streamed from their cars to their rooms, some setting up for car camping while others appeared to be negotiating side deals. From the window, Achilles watched the panicked travelers with a smirk. They could easily pitch a tent in the strip of grass and trees that ran between the motel and the highway. If he hadn’t been waiting for Ines, he would. He’d travel light. Curl up in a branch. Tuck away in the attic of one of those abandoned buildings down where Wexler worked. If it wasn’t for Ines, he’d do a lot of things differently, starting with laying five fingers across Keller’s face the next time he said, Fuck yo couch, zigga.
But there was Ines, and if he had told her the truth, she’d be in Atlanta, safe. If he didn’t hear from her by morning, he would go to New Orleans, contraflow or not, walking if needed. He would tell her he loved her, introduce her to his mother, give up drinking. Catch the garter at every wedding.
In his bag he found a bottle of rum he’d bought earlier and one of Ines’s elastic ponytail scrunchies. A few long hairs were tangled in it, and when he held it up, they caught the light, turning a mix of purple and peach. He held it to his nose, and his thoughts slowed and his breathing grew deep and steady. All circuits busy.
It was the last Friday of the month, upside-down day, the night they would have had breakfast for dinner, turned the AC as low as possible, and snuggled under the comforter, pretending it was winter. He longed for Ines’s soft snore, her purr his metronome, lulling him asleep with a rhythm steady enough to set his heart by. Deeper in his rucksack, he found his original map of New Orleans, complete with Wages’s legend. There was the X where the church was located, and a circle representing a one-mile radius. Outside the circle sat the Garden District, Uptown, and Esplanade Ridge. Like distant planets, he had known them in name only until he met Ines. He ran his finger across the city until he found their street and, in case anyone should ever see it, drew an asterisk instead of a heart. And to think, when she had first called and mentioned the possibility of leaving the city, he’d felt as if she was crowding him. All circuits busy.
CHAPTER 16
HE WASN’T SUPERSTITIOUS, BUT HE WANTED TO BELIEVE THAT HIS CHILDISH wagers paid off. If he made the traffic light without accelerating, if he had correct change, if he reached the automatic door before it closed, Ines was okay, and soon enough, she was at the door, chewing gum, which she did only on road trips, and wearing her driving outfit: a sundress and no underwear.