On Archimedes Street (11 page)

D
OMINIC
WAS
on them like a rash. He would never leave them alone, always wheedling, always
there
. Frenchy was desperate to put the moves on Manny, but he could hardly picture Manny letting himself get blown by his son’s friend while his son hung around. And blown is just what Manny wanted to get, Frenchy was now certain, and that knowledge gave him courage. Frenchy had caught Manny once or twice glancing down the front of his pants. Also, Frenchy had found the magazine again, and another one, stowed behind the router. Once, while Manny had gone into the living quarters of the shotgun double to get soft drinks, Frenchy had repositioned a magazine so a corner of it poked out from behind its hiding place. Manny had noticed, Frenchy was sure, because the next time he looked, it was fully hidden behind the router.

It’s our secret signal.

So, Frenchy was momentarily taken aback when, for once, Dominic wasn’t waiting for him in the shop to hijack his work hours and lure him into shooting some hoops or one of those wanking sessions Frenchy now found so juvenile and dispiriting.

“Hey, Mr. T! Where’s Dominic?”

“Oh, he’s spending the night with my sister and nephew.”

Mr. T had a sister? Dominic had a cousin? Even in his excitement at the news that they were finally alone, Frenchy spared a thought for Dominic’s cousin. That boy, if old enough to shoot, would get wanked tonight.

“We’re alone?” Frenchy asked, just to make sure.

“Well, yeah.”

“Finally alone?”

“What do you mean, ‘finally alone’?”

In answer, Frenchy flew to the router, withdrew a magazine, and flew right back to Manny, trembling. “This is what I mean,” he said, waving the magazine. Manny reddened in surprise and embarrassment at being caught out by this kid, but Frenchy approached relentlessly and touched Manny’s chest possessively. Manny, backing away, tripped over the shop vacuum and sprawled on the floor, legs spread. This was exactly as Frenchy had pictured it, beat off to it, every night.

His nose and mouth were on Manny’s crotch in a second, and he mouthed Manny’s cock through the fabric of his grubby khaki shorts.

The scent made him dizzy. It was delicious, indescribable, all man, all dick. He swooned into the hardening cock, delirious. He reached to get one hand under the cuff of the shorts.

But Manny squirmed and then bolted, as if from an electric shock.

“Shit! What are you doing?” Manny scrambled to a standing position, throwing off skinny boy limbs like so many pick-up sticks.

“What? I know you’re gay. I am too.
Please
. I beat off to you every night. Please let me blow you. I
know
you want it too.”

“Frenchy, this isn’t right.” Manny could hardly process this unexpected development.

“No one has to know I’m blowing you. No one will find out. Just…
please
.”

“Frenchy! You’re fourteen!”

“I’m seventeen!” Frenchy cried in need.

“Seventeen?” asked Manny, suddenly thrown off guard.

“I lost two years and a half to leukemia.”

Leukemia? What the hell?

“You’re a kid, Frenchy!”

“I’m not a kid!” Frenchy protested desperately. “I know all about nausea, I know all about patience, I know all about chemo, I know all about not knowing whether you’ll live or not. I know all about wanting and waiting and hoping.
Please
!”

Manny’s heart broke in his chest. “Fourteen or seventeen, it’s still not right, Frenchy,” he said softly. “It’s taking advantage. You’re too young to know what you want, and you’ll blame and hate me for it later.”

“I know what I want!” screamed Frenchy in frustration. Then he picked up the magazine and thumbed through it. “It’s because I’m skinny and ugly, isn’t it? You want someone like
him
.” Frenchy thrust the magazine, open to a spread showing a muscle builder, toward Manny.

“Frenchy….”

“Shit! How could I have been so
stupid
?” He threw the magazine on the floor. Then Frenchy felt the tears welling, and the tears made him furious. He thought he had exposed himself totally, but now the tears taught him what it felt like to be completely naked.

Manny, in agony, could think only to repeat Frenchy’s name. “Frenchy, Frenchy….”

They registered the doorbell and turned from each other at the same time. Whoever it was, they were ringing the bell of the shotgun next door, where Manny and Dominic lived. The tension hung between them, and they waited wordlessly for the shop bell to ring. Each welcomed the respite.

An automaton, Manny answered the bell.

“Good afternoon,” said the earnest young woman. She wore some funny sandals Manny had never seen before. In her hands was a basket of stuffed toy animals. Polar bears. “My name is Gaia. I’m with ‘Tomorrow Delayed,’” she said, sliding the sandaled foot onto the threshold. “Do you have any idea of what will happen to Southern Louisiana if global warming goes unchecked?” she asked urgently.

“Erm,” said Manny. Frenchy glowered at them both through tear-rimmed lashes.

“You don’t burn your trash, do you? You know about particulates, right? And though it’s criminal that Gretna has no recycling center, if you gather your bottles, cans, and paper…,” the earnest woman continued, but Manny and Frenchy heard just one of every ten words. When she finished her spiel, Manny woodenly agreed to buy a stuffed polar bear toy, whose twenty-dollar cost would go toward global warming research. The refrigerator magnets—in the shape of a black foot—were gratis. They reminded Manny to watch his carbon footprint.

As he closed the door on their visitor, he tentatively offered the polar bear to Frenchy. “Here, Frenchy,” he said. “A bolar pear.”

Manny always did this. He said things like “drew scriver” and “hack jammer.” Frenchy loved when he did this. But this time, it tore at his guts. Accepting the toy without thinking, he swam for the door. Tears dimmed his view, but he could make out Dutch in his ridiculous baby-blue car tooling down Archimedes Street. He thought he’d hated Dutch, but suddenly the sight of Dutch was familiar and comforting. He ran out into the street.

“Dutch! Dutch!” Frenchy flagged him down, and Dutch slammed on the brakes. “Dutch! Please take me home!”

An agitated Manny watched this scene. That handsome Abbott boy lived down the street. That’s where home was, right? Would Frenchy throw himself at Dutch’s pecker like he had at Manny’s? Was the kid that cock crazy? Dutch was so handsome, Frenchy wouldn’t be able to resist. And what did he know about Dutch? Would he take advantage?

Manny roiled. Poor Frenchy. It all came together in his mind. Leukemia, and years off school. That accounted for Frenchy’s strange mixture of inexperience and maturity.

If Dutch touches Frenchy,
I’ll break every bone in Dutch’s body.

D
UTCH
STEERED
the sports car while a copiously weeping Frenchy rode shotgun. Somewhere over the bridge to New Orleans, Frenchy finally lost his tears of rage and humiliation. Dutch had the tact to say nothing.

As he pulled into the Saint-Paix pile next to his own house, Dutch offered consolation at last. “Frenchy, you and I have it made. Whatever it is, it’s gonna go away.”

Frenchy wouldn’t look directly at Dutch. “Thanks for the ride, Dutch.”

He headed for his garçonnière. Maman had given him this private apartment in the family home when he first came home from the hospital. “You’re a true man, now,” she had said.

But tonight, Paule Saint-Paix happened to be looking out when she beheld the unexpected sight of Dutch Abbott driving into the porte cochere. Frenchy was headed for his garçonnière when he saw his mother out of the corner of his eye.

Paule Saint-Paix worriedly surveyed her son’s tear-streaked face and the stuffed toy he held. “Dolls, Frenchy?” she asked. Frenchy had hated the stuffed animals he’d received from the masked and robed well-wishers and doting nurses as he lay in the chemo ward. He was not a baby to be playing with stuffed animals!

Frenchy turned from the entrance to his garçonnière and strode into his mother’s house.

“It’s not a doll. It’s a bolar pear.”

He hurled the stuffed animal into the fireplace of his mother’s front parlor, unconsciously displaying the very throwing arm he’d mastered under Manny’s tutelage. “Burn it. Make sure it releases lots of particulates and greenhouse gases.”

“Bolar pear?” Paule Saint-Paix frowned her incomprehension.

“Maman,” he said, ignoring her question, “I would like three things.”

“Yes?”

“First, a psychiatrist.”

Paule processed this assertion with silent delight.

“Second, a personal trainer.” Frenchy vowed to become the muscle-bound zero of Manny’s dreams. He understood it all now. He was a string bean. Manny didn’t want a string bean. And once he wasn’t a string bean, well… he’d have to see. Revenge was looking good about now.

“Yes—Lily, Fifi, Mimi, Gigi. I’ll ask Say-Say Abbott for her number,” said his mother.

“And last—a tutor. I’m in the same class as fucking fourteen-year-olds!” he said in exasperation. “Get me out!”

“Very well,” said Maman. “As you say. But no need to be vulgar, Leo.”

Paule didn’t know why she reverted to Frenchy’s real name, but it just seemed right at that moment. And although the vulgarity offended her, and she would not ordinarily have tolerated it, she let it go.

Chapter 15

E
SCALONIA
L
OTTE
LaNasa, widow of Raymond, sat behind register one of her grocery, conflicted. It was an alien emotion, an emotion from the discredited planet Pluto. She frowned as she gazed at the jar she kept perpetually at the register stand: “For the upkeep of the Cabrini Shrine in Chicago.” She always primed the pump at the beginning of the day by placing a five-dollar bill in it. Of course, the godless people in the neighborhood mostly ignored the jar, dropping in a quarter only now and again. That is, until the Abbott boy had moved into Rita’s.

Raymond LaNasa had been devout. He’d asked “Lonia”—how Lotte wished somebody still called her that!—to pin the scapular on his hospital gown, which exposed his cancer-wasted butt, as he lay dying of metastasized melanoma. Ten long years ago. Not that the scapular had done any good; Raymond had died anyway. But he’d gotten so upset at his Lonia when she’d voiced the hope that the scapular would save him. Agitated, Raymond had said, “Lonia, this is not an amulet for my protection. This is a testament to my faith and a reminder to live my life in emulation of the Savior.” And then he’d kissed the scapular, thereby trimming five hundred days from his time spent in Purgatory, an indulgence granted by Pope Benedict XV about the time of World War I. Raymond had prayed, “Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

Really, Raymond had been a pill sometimes. How could it be wrong, thought Lotte, to hope for protection and pray for nondeath? And just what had he done, that he spent all that time kissing the scapular to get time off in Purgatory? Raymond had been handsome, Lotte now mused, somewhat like the dark Abbott boy, but not as tall. Surely there hadn’t been another woman, had there? Lotte shook her head to dismiss the unwelcome thought. Raymond was gone, pure and simple. She was left with the grocery. And the fund for the shrine of Mother Cabrini.

How surprised they would be, when she, an obscure Louisiana widow, left the shrine nearly half a million dollars! She’d scrimped; she’d reserved the insurance money. And then the jar.

It had started innocently enough, six years ago. That Twardowski boy had been in the store. Lotte was sure Dominic was light-fingered. She tracked him with a relentless eye as she gave the stranger her change. A strange purchase—a jar of olives and a bunch of beets, Lotte noticed, still clocking Dominic loitering near the candy. She pitied the man, woman, or child who would have to eat whatever this woman was contemplating making. After handing over the change, Lotte realized she had mistakenly given the stranger a five instead of a ten. Stupid woman! She should have counted her change. Lotte called after the woman, too late. She was already out the door and down the street.

Lotte had never shortchanged anyone before. The money wasn’t hers!

And then inspiration struck. She deposited the five that was not hers in the Mother Cabrini Shrine jar. And that was how it had started.

That night, as she lay in her too-big double bed processing what had happened that day, it came to her. She could educate the public and benefit the Cabrini shrine at the same time. People were foolish! They should always count their change!
God knows the world is full of unscrupulous, godless people, ready to take the unsuspecting to the cleaners.

Her mission crystallized in her mind. She would sound the alarm that predators were everywhere. If people were too dimwitted or lazy to realize they were being cheated, then they needed a lesson! With smug satisfaction, she realized she was just the teacher to impart this lesson. After all, it wasn’t as if Lotte was enriching herself. They would learn their lesson while serving a worthy cause.

How Lotte wished she could visit the Columbus Hospital in Chicago where Mother Cabrini had died! But—no, that would be selfish. The airfare would go instead to the upkeep of the shrine.

Indecision had first crept in when the dark Abbott boy had jingled the grocery-door bell. A new customer, renting the shotgun next to that heathen woman, Rita Simmons. Lotte hated Rita. Why, she regularly entertained that black man, Doodie. And counted her change.

The Abbott boy had picked up a quart of premium lump crabmeat, a quart of unwashed oysters, and a half pint of heavy cream. Nice to be rich! But, then, her profit margin was good. The Vietnamese she bought from at a discounted rate picked over the crab so attentively that there wasn’t a single shell fragment in the tub. Lotte defied even Galantine’s restaurant to produce such high-quality, succulent crabmeat. Naturally, she tried her luck with this new customer and shortchanged him by five dollars. The way he spent money, he’d never miss it.