On Archimedes Street (17 page)

“And then you will go to him, and he will take you, looming above you, beautiful and strong. At first it will hurt, but he will kiss away your tears, and then the fire will begin in your loins, and he will thrust, and thrust, and thrust, inflaming you, making you want to beg for his member in you, and finally he will spill in you while crying your name! Bliss! Bliss!” Dr. Gupta had closed her eyes and seemed to be in a semitrance. Frenchy felt the flush on his skin.

Most definitely a quack. He was never coming back.

“So that’s that. You are a well-adjusted homosexual man with a nonissue.”

“But—”

“No buts. There’s nothing more to say on the subject.”

Frenchy got up to leave.

“Wait. That’s all there is to say on
that
subject.” Dr. Gupta grabbed Frenchy’s intake form and studied it. “You lost your father at twelve. You were diagnosed with leukemia shortly thereafter. Tell me about that.”

“There’s not much to say.”

“Do you miss your father? Do you ever worry that you will have a recurrence? How would you feel if your mother remarried, perhaps giving you a half brother or sister?”

And that’s when their sessions really began.

Chapter 24

E
VER
SINCE
the fainting and sniffing episode, Flip was walking on eggshells around Dutch. He wasn’t sleeping well. He’d lie awake listening for the sounds Dutch made in his room as he played out, in his head, sexual fantasies of blowing Dutch, of licking and mouthing him. When they were together, he weighed every word before it came out of his mouth. Afraid of proximity, he kept his distance. He was drowning in longing. As they sat together in front of the TV, as they played games, as they bent over their assignments, Flip regarded him covertly in awe. Stunning shoulder span. Tree-trunk thighs. Narrow waist, round ass, muscled abs. Monster bulge in his pants. That skin! How hot could one man be, no matter how much of a show-off he was? Mostly, Flip remained silent. And he made sure Dutch never flopped his giant pedicured feet in his lap.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Flabbott? You’re stumbling around like a zombie with big old bags under your eyes. Porter! Porter! This way! Over here! And your stunting—let me tell you, you are so totally not on your game!”

“I guess I have a lot on my mind. Sorry, Dutch.”

“A lot on your mind? Like maybe the times tables?
Puh-leeze
! Gimme a break.”

“Sorry, Dutch.”

“Sorry, Dutch. Sorry, Dutch. Sorry is right! Your ass is sorry as hell! You’re just no fun anymore. What the fuck is eating you?”

“I don’t know. Sorry.”

“As if you had anything to worry about,” Dutch fulminated. The fainting episode weighed heavily on his mind, and this new, unfamiliar, and deferent Flip did nothing to assuage his fears.

“Shit! I can’t believe I passed out! How am I ever gonna be a surgeon, if I faint at the sight of a drop of blood? Shit! Shit!”

“Maybe it will pass. Maybe you can train yourself, get used to the sight of blood.”

Dutch blanched. “You mean, like get a lancet, and keep sticking myself until I get used to it?” Just the thought left him a little lightheaded. “Don’t think I can do that, I really don’t.”

Flip wanted to take Dutch in his arms, tell him everything was going to be all right. Then maybe press one thigh between Dutch’s thighs and rub it and grind it against him. Would Dutch get hard, if he did that? Most probably he’d get punched and left without a roommate.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Dutch.”

“Don’t know what to tell me? It’s not like
your
future just up and evaporated in front of your eyes.”

Flip averted his gaze. “Sorry, Dutch. But aren’t you exaggerating just a little? Your whole future? C’mon.”

“Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry! Why did I ever think hooking up with you in godforsaken Gretna was a good idea? Look—I’m going to get some air.” Dutch pulled out his cell and punched a button. “Googs? Feel like hanging out? It’s like a morgue over here.”

Flip didn’t hear Googs’s answer. But Dutch was up and out of the house in ten minutes.

“Don’t wait up!” he shot at Flip.

Flip welcomed and grieved Dutch’s absence at the same time. He entered Dutch’s room, picked up his pillow, buried his face in it, and inhaled the essence of Dutch. As he lay in Dutch’s bed and fingered his penis, a thought struck him. He straightened out the sheets so there would be no evidence. Then Flip went into the bathroom and from there into his own room.

A L
A
Lyonnaise had never before made pickups and deliveries on the West Bank. But this was Say-Say Abbott on the horn, making the request. And they couldn’t risk alienating her. She and Paule Saint-Paix were thick as thieves. Where Paule Saint-Paix and Say-Say Abbott went, the rest of New Orleans society followed. So Hortense, the proprietor, had agreed to pick up and launder the Abbott boys’ clothes and return them. Say-Say Abbott had smiled into the telephone. A small, first step toward getting her boy back under her roof. It was nonsense for him to be renting some hovel when he had such a large, well-appointed home waiting for him! And his friend Flip was more than welcome too. Say-Say was rattling around in the huge house. It felt so empty now….

“
Bee
-a-trice! A nuisance!” Hortense told her pickup-and-delivery woman. “We have a West Bank client.”

“How many times I got to tell you? It’s Be-
ahh
-trice, Miz Whore-
tense
.”

“
Orr
-tonce,” the boss, corrected.

“Be-
aah
-trice,” the employee, reminded her.

As she steered the pink A La Lyonnaise van toward the on-ramp to the Greater New Orleans Bridge, Beatrice did not share her employer’s assessment of the situation. This was not a nuisance. It was a nice, long ride—the traffic often backed up on the bridge. And if it didn’t, she could always pretend that it had and do her grocery shopping on company time. The job was okay, really. It covered the rent, and Loo-loot’s violin lessons. Loo-loot was smart as a whip, for sure. She had great hopes. But what in the world was she going to do with that no-good Dennis? She feared he was hanging out with the wrong crowd, and sooner or later that meant drugs.

D
UTCH
HAD
crashed at Googs’s dorm in New Orleans. Flip was pissing him off lately. He was turning into a wimp. The West Bank gig wasn’t panning out like he’d imagined. Dutch was glad when, returning to the Gretna shotgun, he found Flip already gone.

He was gathering his books when he heard the bell ring.

“Be-
ahh
-trice!” Visits from pink A La Lyonnaise vans had regularly punctuated his childhood. “What are you doing here?”

“Miz Say-Say say we pick up your laundry.” A La Lyonnaise, the most exclusive French laundry in the city, was no stranger to the Egyptian cotton, eight-hundred-thread-count sheets Dutch had taken without asking from his parents’ home in the Garden District.

That wily Say-Say!
Dutch recognized this as a ploy to tug him back home, or, if that failed, a reminder of how easy life would be under Say-Say’s benevolent sway. Dutch felt a fleeting pang of love for his mother. But he got over it immediately.

“Shit! I’ll be late for class!”

“Jes’ get the sheets. We lay one out flat and pile everythin’ else on top. Won’t take but a minute.”

Dutch raced into his bedroom and stripped the bed. “Here! Lay this out.” He tossed a sheet to Beatrice. Dutch directed her to the bathroom hamper containing his Turner and Aston custom-made shirts, Flip’s bargain-basement shirts, their jeans and khakis, and their underclothes. “Just dump it onto the sheet.” Dutch tore into Flip’s bedroom and started pulling the sheets off the bed. Habbott really had a thing about tardiness, and she ridiculed latecomers publicly.
Hurry!
he told himself. He reached for a pillow and shucked it out of its case. He reached for the next.

And then he paused.

“Holy shit!” Dutch let out a low whistle.

Chapter 25

“C
AN
YOU
remind us, Mimi, of the somatic reflexes we tested last session?”

“We tested the patellar, Achilles, crossed-extensor, plantar, corneal, and gag reflexes.”

“Yes, correct, Mimi,” said Honoria, impressed. She looked at Mimi with new eyes.

During Mimi’s response, Dutch had entered the class stealthily and slid onto the bench next to Flip.

“Nice of you to join us, Dutch. As a reward, you get to categorize the reflexes Mimi just named.”

“Patellar, Achilles, crossed-extensor, and plantar—spinal. Corneal and gag—cranial nerve.”

“Yes.” Honoria would not tolerate tardiness, even from Dutch. “Everyone take out a sheet of paper and define these terms:
efferent impulse
,
afferent impulse
,
agonist muscle
, and
antagonist muscle
. This little pop quiz comes courtesy of Pieter ‘Dutch’ Abbott.”

The class groaned but complied. Mimi, Googs, and several others glared at Dutch. As she collected the papers, which she would later toss in the recycling bin, Honoria addressed the class. “Today we’ll be testing not the somatic but the autonomic reflexes, in particular, the pupillary, ciliospinal, and salivary reflexes. Then we’ll test reaction times for some basic and acquired reflexes….”

Dutch seemed more full of himself than usual, Flip noticed as they did the exercises. God, look at that huge box he was sporting, bulging out at the front of his shorts! Some part of Flip really hated Dutch for that. Dutch maintained a wolfish grin as he leaned into his face, to measure and record the diameter of the pupil of Flip’s left eye. Flip shielded his right eye by holding his hand vertically between eye and nose. Dutch leaned in again and shone a flashlight into the pupil. Flip could feel Dutch’s breath on his face as he measured again.

“Contralateral response,” Dutch hummed and sang under his breath as he recorded the measurements. “Ipsilateral response, la la la.” Dutch kept on grinning like the Big Bad Wolf in front of the Little Pig.

The testing of the ciliospinal reflex called for the two to measure each other’s pupils before and after gently stroking the hairs on the left side of the neck. Flip leaned into Dutch as he measured. Dutch flashed that evil grin. He could smell licorice toothpaste on Dutch’s breath. Flip moved behind him and brushed his fingers over Dutch’s nape, softly caressing just the tips of the hairs on that thick alabaster column. When he next leaned in to measure the pupil diameter, he saw a huge pool of jet-black ringed in a narrow band of light gray. Dutch seemed to be in a trance, grin gone. Flip leaned in closer to measure that black circle. “Haw!” Dutch lunged toward Flip, the grin returned, and Flip dropped the metric ruler.

“You intend to record your findings?” Dutch asked a flustered Flip.

“Oh, go soak your head in a bucket.”

But when Dutch in his turn stroked the back of Flip’s neck, Flip felt all the blood in his body drain away and go directly to his cock. He just dimly perceived Dutch leaning in to measure. He was glad the room was darkened for the exercise.

Honoria yanked on a lowered window shade, which sprang up with a loud whir and snap. Several students, including Flip, jerked in their seats. The room was suddenly flooded in light. Dutch kept up his smug, tuneless humming, grinning insolently at Flip. Flip shifted uneasily as Dutch looked down with amusement at Flip’s lap.

“We don’t require relative darkness for the testing of acquired reflexes. Here is what you are to do next. One of the partners—the subject—will hold out a hand and extend the thumb and index finger. The tester will hold a ruler three centimeters above the outstretched hand and let it drop. The goal is for the subject to grasp the ruler as it passes between thumb and index finger. Repeat this five times and record the number at the subject’s fingertips. On the board”—Honoria gestured—“you will see a formula for converting distance to time. This will allow you to determine the reaction time, in seconds, for each trial. Then reverse roles and perform the test again.”

Dutch was a natural. Even at the first try, he grasped the ruler pretty far down. When his turn came, Flip was a little distracted by Dutch’s looming proximity, and the ruler clattered to the floor. But he got better in the subsequent trials.

“Now,” Honoria said, “perform the test one last time. This time the tester will say a simple word as he or she releases the ruler. The subject should respond with an associated word. For instance, the tester might say ‘day’ upon the release of the ruler, and the subject might say ‘night’ when attempting to grasp the ruler as it falls. Record distances and convert to time again, then formulate hypotheses about 1) the effect of repeated trials on performance, and 2) the effect of distraction on performance.”

But as the students began the word-association part of the exercise, Honoria had to interrupt. “Don’t shout the word so that everyone can hear! Say it softly near the subject’s ear. You’re adding to the distraction and introducing a confounding variable.”

“Cold,” whispered Flip in Dutch’s ear.

“Hot,” Dutch whispered back. He managed to grab the ruler, but in the middle. Flip recorded the number.

“Bad.”

“Good.” Dutch grabbed lower that time, and at each subsequent trial.

When it was Flip’s turn, Dutch positioned himself and poised the ruler above Flip’s hand. He leaned his face in close to Flip’s ear. Flip could smell Dutch so close. He felt a little disoriented.

“Dick-licker,” whispered Dutch.

The ruler clattered to the floor.

“Ass-kisser.”

Again the clatter. Honoria looked up worriedly.

“Ball-sniffer.”

Dutch stooped to pick up the ruler again.

In a hiss: “Dutch, cut it out!”

Dutch positioned the ruler. “Cocksucker,” he whispered, as it dropped.

Flip jumped out of his seat and hurriedly stuffed his books and gear into his backpack. He headed for his bike and pedaled away as fast as his legs could pump.