On Archimedes Street (38 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I
mean
that my brother Théophile has found his valet very satisfactory for forty years now. He holds him in the same high esteem that my uncle Gustave held his chauffeur.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

Achille was deflated. There went his theory of a half brother or half uncle, born on the wrong side of the blanket, begetting this blond interloper.

“But… but….” Achille fell back on his father’s parochialism. “But isn’t that a
sin
?”

“Never
did
understand it. A nasty, hairy thing with a wrinkled sac below? The
ugliest
thing God ever created. Gives me the willies! But at least
they
had the decency to pick a partner and stick to that partner. Unlike
some
people I could name.”

Had Achille looked in the mirror opposite his walnut partner’s desk, he would have seen a lemon sucker.

“Achille! You know what this means, don’t you?”

Achille’s mind was reeling. “Er….”

“Wake up! It means that Dutch won’t have a son to pass the inheritance to! What is Say-Say now? Forty-two?”

“Er….”

“By my calculations, you have six years tops to get sons on her.”

“Er….”

“Cover her every night. A beautiful woman. A saint! How she puts up with your shenanigans I
never
will know.”

“Er….”

“And make sure to plant boys in her! Only one odd duck per generation, so no worries there. Don’t plant any girl, no. Get some more beautiful boys. The Abbott women, though sweet, were always lantern-jawed. Only weasels will marry them, for their money.”

“Poppa….”

“Apply it assiduously, every night! And keep it in your pants otherwise!”

Achille hung up in disgust.

Félix hung up in satisfaction.

The infuriating aspect of all this, Achille admitted to himself, was that Paule Saint-Paix had been right.
Once again! Damn her eyes!

E
D
’
S
LAST
stop before Elwood drove him to the airport was LaNasa’s. He was glad to see Lotte was at register one. She looked at him sharply, with suspicion in her eyes. This was her hated cousin’s flunky, and he had nothing in his hands to ring up.

“Mrs. LaNasa.”

“Yes?” She was frosty.

He reached for his wallet and withdrew ten bills. “Here’s a thousand dollars for your Mother Cabrini Shrine jar. She led me here and blessed me in ways I can’t tell you. I prayed to her when I was at my lowest, and she has worked a miracle through me. Please accept this from me in gratitude.”

Lotte reached for the intercom mike, which crackled a curt command. “Armida, take regista one!”

Ed followed Lotte up the stairs to her apartment above LaNasa’s, past the sign proclaiming that it had kept the ‘green’ in greengrocer since 1937. Lotte looked back at him—yes, a nice-looking man, but too young. She was consumed by a thrilling curiosity. “You want some coffee? I make us a nice cuppa coffee.”

“That would be nice.”

Lotte busied herself boiling water, then fitting the two enameled filters, one concave and one convex, into the top portion of the cafetière. She positioned the convex filter and spooned the coffee onto it. Then she placed the concave filter above the coffee and started spooning boiling water, tablespoon by tablespoon, onto the top filter. As the coffee dripped slowly through, she put on a pan of milk to warm. “Tell me all about it, sugah,” she said, as she placed the steaming cups on the kitchen table. “Sugah, sugah?” she asked, offering the sugar bowl. Ed nodded, and she returned the nod in approval.
Never trust a man who doesn’t take sugar.

Ed took a sip. It was the most delicious coffee he’d ever tasted. “I have to come back, if only for the coffee.”

Lotte smirked in self-satisfaction. “Now. ’Bout dis Mother Cabrini thing….”

“The details—they’re unimportant….”

Lotte thought otherwise but let him continue.

“Let’s just say that I came here broke, desperate, hunted, or so I thought. I prayed to Mother Cabrini. She led me to a place where there was a portrait of Mother Cabrini.”

“My cuzzin’s place? Yeah, I seen dat pitcher of her, in his MeeMaw’s room.”

“And then I saw your Mother Cabrini Shrine jar. At first, I could just put in a quarter or two.”

Lotte clucked her approval.

“But then, she worked a miracle. I turned a life around. I turned my
own
life around. And, in a way, I owe it all to you. Your Cabrini jar reminded me every time I came in here.”

Lotte sighed her pious satisfaction. “You know,” she whispered conspiratorially, “I have almos’ a half a million dollars to donate to the Columbus Hospital room shrine where she die.”

Ed frowned. “Oh, Mrs. LaNasa. The hospital was torn down.”

“Tore down!”

“Yes, in 2002. But they preserved what they could and opened a shrine near the spot.”

“The hospital she built, where she die, tore down!”

“But there’s still a shrine there, and one in New York, where the body is entombed, and in Rome, where her heart was taken, and one in Golden, Colorado, where she started—”

“Not the same! Tore down!” The hospital room itself loomed large in Lotte’s personal iconography. She held the room in which Raymond died in similar superstitious awe. The day he died, she struggled to open a window of the hospital room where he lay, to let his soul fly out, but to no avail. No window would budge—they were hermetically sealed after they installed the climate-control system. She tossed and turned all night, finally in her own bed after three nights of the deathwatch. She couldn’t sleep, thinking of his soul trapped there, beating itself against the panes, like the panicked bird that had flown into the house the week before. Lotte, recognizing the bird as the sure harbinger of death, had wept as she finally trapped it in a bath towel and set it free. So, yes, God had sent the bird to prepare her, and she was resigned.

But she could not resign herself to the prospect of Raymond’s soul wandering the sterile, disinfected halls of the hospital, unable to fly to heaven. So she returned the next day, entering the room like a fugitive. The room was empty and the bed was stripped. “Raymon’,” she whispered in the empty room. “Follow me, come wit’ me. I take you to the light.” She realized she was inviting strange stares as she led his spirit down the hall, constantly whispering, “Dis way, dis way.” She stopped at the elevator bank and reconsidered. She feared the soul would shy away from the automatic doors and the windowless, claustrophobic cabin. So she headed for the emergency exit sign and the stairs, ushering the soul down flight by flight. She raced for the front entrance and stubbornly stood on the mat, so the stuttering automatic doors would be frustrated in their effort to close. And she felt him fly out in gratitude.

“I shoulda went when I had the chance, before it tore down,” she lamented to Ed. She faced him, her eyes brimming with tears. “But I din’t wanna spend the air fare, wanted to give alla it to the shrine.”

“Go see one of the shrines. Let’s look at them online, decide where you want to go.” Ed was moved.

“Not the same. Not the same.” She was disconsolate. “Tore down!”

They’ll never get my half million dollars. What am I ever going to do with it?

Chapter 51

F
LIP
LOOKED
at the two envelopes from Harvard, one fat and one thin. The thin one was his. He knew what it would say. He was right. “Thank you for your application to Harvard Medical School….” He left the letter open next to the fat envelope addressed to Dutch, so he could read the news for himself. He’d done the best he could. Well, except for that A minus in Bible as Literature. Perhaps that had done him in. Maybe he just wasn’t good enough for Harvard. He had a fat envelope from LSU Medical School, and really, he didn’t mind staying where he was, except that Dutch would not be there.

He felt melancholy and wistful. Their time together was coming to an end. They would graduate this year, and then, no more Dutch. He’d gotten used to the asshole. Well, let’s face it, the sex had never been better. Dutch bottomed with relish now and topped as vigorously as ever, but now he prepared Flip for fucking with enthusiastic tonguing. They knew each other’s bodies by heart and had perfected the art of giving maximum pleasure to the other. Too bad. And he was so funny, so generous. And not that cruel, really, once you understood his sense of humor.

He was already nostalgic for what had not yet ended, and he took his nostalgia to the Coffee Grinder, where he sat with a latte and his cell, idly swiping through the many pictures of Dutch. He dragged the blond crotch shot to the Trash icon. Some other housecleaning was seriously overdue; he was running out of space. He swiped through the stunting snaps. A lot of them were blurry, because, after all, they were in motion. He got rid of those. He kept most of the San Francisco shots, though. That had been a wild time.

One photo in particular made him smile. He was shirtless, smiling at whomever they had sweet-talked into taking the picture. Dutch was at his side, one hand behind Flip’s head, with two fingers up in the rabbit-eared sign of the cuckold. He wore the T-shirt with the legend “Ask me about my vow of silence,” the one he’d worn the day they’d met. At either side of them were two resplendent drag queens. Coco Van, in black and white and with an enormous plumed hat, flanked Flip. At Dutch’s side, in a rhinestoned mohawk and leopard-print unitard, was Burma Chavez. They’d ground against each other on a crowded dance floor later that night and had the most memorable sex to date. Never very inhibited to begin with, Dutch had shouted his dirty pillow talk at the top of his lungs, something they could not do in Rita’s shotgun double.

As Flip swiped, he grew increasingly melancholy and wistful. He lingered over the snap of them having lunch in the Art Nouveau splendor of Esplanade, with the panoramic Bay Bridge as backdrop. That led to a reminiscence of the plot of
Pride and Pre-juice,
Bigley and Racy, Rod and Dick, and the look on Ted’s face as he accepted the spunky napkin. Then, to his shock, he felt his eyes welling up. This was so strange! He hadn’t cried since he was eleven. And he wasn’t about to begin now. He squared his shoulders and frowned into his latte, and the tears dried at their source.

D
OMINIC
NEEDED
cash. He wanted to buy Rosalie some perfume, to surprise her. He’d gotten to second base with her, finally, and he hoped the perfume would advance his cause: his desperate need to get laid. His dad had just recently slipped him sixty dollars, but somehow that was nearly gone. And he knew Manny would get on his tiresome hobbyhorse about him getting a job, or doing some work around the shop, if he asked for more. So, the solution was evident. His dad usually kept extra cash in his workshop desk, for small expenditures and to tip delivery people. He’d never miss two or three twenties. Dominic jimmied the drawer lock expertly, a skill he’d perfected in fifth grade. Aha! An envelope of twenties. He peeled three off and stuffed the bills in his pocket.

Then something arrested his eye. What was
this
? He picked up the photo curiously. Could that be
Frenchy
all buffed? Oh, yeah, it was Frenchy, all right—he remembered fingering that jumbo cock. But what was his dad doing with a naked photo of
Frenchy
? Dominic was confused. He knew all about the gay porn his dad beat off to, of course. Disgusting. He was too old for that; he’d be thirty-three soon. Almost forty! Then he grew ruminative.

W
AILIN
’ E
LWOOD
took the direct approach. Indeed, he knew no other. “Dis here for you.” He held out the bottle of bourbon to Manny.

Doofus was assuming the downward dog position in front of Larceny, an invitation to play. Larceny lunged and the chase began. “Cut it out, Lawsony!” Instant obedience from both dogs. Larceny let his ear be licked instead.

Manny accepted the bottle. “Er—thanks, Elwood, I guess. What brings this on?”

“Figger we could have a shot or two togedder. Get to know each udder bettah.”

“Elwood, we’ve known each other since fourth grade, and we’ve lived across the street from each other since forever.”

“Dat we have. An’ by the way, t’anks for bein’ nice to me back den, when dey all laughin’ at me. ’Cept you an’ some udders.”

“Elwood, what’s this all about?”

“I tell ya. We livin’ acrosst the street from each udder all dese years, both livin’ like monks. What a waste! I figger no woman want me—’shame to be seen wit’ me. Well, ’cept wunst or twice, when some woman ’lone in the house an’ I come cut the tree. Dey ax me in for a ice tea and keep lookin’ at where my dick is in my pants. But dey all marry, an’ jes’ use me for my dick. Look the udder way when dey seen me on the street. I figger I ugly.”

“Ugly! You’re not ugly.”

“Dat what Special Ed say too. He say I a Greek god, say I got the dick of death. An’ he suck it, an’ I get useta gettin’ it reg’lar, you know?”

What? Really?
Manny felt a frisson of possibility. “No, I don’t know. Where is this going, Elwood?”

“You a nice-lookin’ man too. An’ of course you like cock—did eben way back when, when we was in school.” Manny, thunderstruck, didn’t bother to reply.

“Now Special Ed gone, an’ it wasn’t woikin’ out anyways. I horny alla the time. What the use of us jackin’ off ’lone in our shotguns, not fifty feet from each udder, when you could be suckin’ on it, an’ I could be doin’ things to you too? Could be eben at the same time. An’ den fuckin’ it. You got a pretty ass.”

Manny was speechless. He’d fantasized about Elwood off and on over the years, but this was unexpected, to say the least. And as for finesse—well, it was Elwood, after all.

“Here, lessee what your cock got to say.”

He grabbed Manny’s hand and brought it to the crotch of his pants.