On Archimedes Street (8 page)

But, as they ate their po’boys, Frenchy couldn’t figure out how to make the move on Dominic. Maybe he could say, “I saw the magazine, Dominic.” One possibility. Maybe he should start nudging him under the table or maybe put his hand on Dominic’s cock. Now? In the dark movie theater! Better. But he was so nervous he didn’t think he could pull it off.

“Dominic, do you think your dad would mind if I spent the night?” he finally asked.

“Cool! He won’t mind. Let’s watch videos all night!”

Frenchy waited until they got back to call Maman. He never brought his cell to Archimedes Street. Dominic didn’t have one, and neither did most of the kids at school. Frenchy didn’t want to stand out in any way.

Everything was cool. Manny reassured Maman and gave her his number. And she knew Dutch was right next door.

“Your mom has a charming French accent,” said Manny, looking at Frenchy speculatively. He had not expected that. Had he been projecting his own childhood onto Frenchy?

“Dominic, help me get dinner ready. Frenchy, will you go to Miz LaNasa’s on the corner and see if she has any french bread left? Get the short loaves if they still have them. Two. No, three. One long loaf if that’s all she has.” Manny gave Frenchy a twenty-dollar bill. “And count the change. That LaNasa is a terrible cheat.”

“Yes, sir.”

Frenchy slipped out of the house. During the movie, his mind had whirred and whirred. He had registered nothing but a bunch of disjointed explosions and car chases. But sitting stiffly next to Dominic, he had conceived his plan. At some point, even video-crazy Dominic would need sleep. Frenchy would spoon him, keeping his cock well away so Dominic wouldn’t feel the hard-on. Then he would reach around and cup Dominic’s balls. When Dominic finally relaxed and stiffened into the touch, he would lean down and take it in his mouth, like in the magazine.

He was shimmering with nerves. Could he bring himself to really do that? Before going to buy the bread, he decided to fortify his courage by viewing again the things he now knew Dominic would like to do. He sneaked through the unlatched back door of the workshop and made for the cubby behind the router.

The magazine was gone.

And, Frenchy realized, Dominic hadn’t been out of his sight since eleven o’clock that morning.

Chapter 10

E
D
HAD
inadvertently slimed Elwood’s okra on the Friday afternoon before Elwood’s “slime” set at the Saturday farmers’ market. By the time they knocked off for the day the following Friday, Ed was in a state of quaking, advanced rut. All that week, he had felt Elwood’s eyes on him as Ed worked hauling branches and feeding the chipper. Twice he had caught Elwood giving him a concentrated, calculated stare as Ed climbed one of those funny slope-edged tree ladders. And did Elwood always do that much nut relocation? Seemed that whenever he looked, Elwood was moving his balls around in his pants, shifting them this way and that. Suggestively? Hard to say, Ed thought. It was hard to sort out his wishes from reality.

Every night, Ed waited nervously, hoping this was the night for his gumbo to get slimed. And every night, if Elwood retired first, Ed had to go through Elwood’s bedroom to get to MeeMaw’s old room, temporarily Ed’s, the caboose in the train of rooms. By a quirk of fate, MeeMaw’s room held two reproduced photographs showing the oval face, full lips, and soulful eyes of Mother Cabrini. When he first saw them, Ed felt he had been led to that room through her intercession. But now he gazed at her image in turmoil, having another recently viewed image permanently implanted in his visual memory bank. Elwood
would
sleep in the raw, of course (to torment him?), and Ed, passing through, tried to glue his gaze to the door of MeeMaw’s old room. Except for the past two nights, when he’d shot hot, short glances at Elwood, invitingly sprawled, one leg straight and the other askew, long cock on thigh, and balls puddled on the sheet. Was that a soft hard, or was he just big?

And now Elwood stood in the kitchen, just out of the shower, towel around his waist, and about to write in his green journal. A drop of water clung like a diamond stud to his ear. Ed fought the urge to catch it on his tongue as it fell and then capture the entire ear in his mouth. Elwood flung himself in his overstuffed chair and picked up the notebook and pen. One leg went over the arm of the chair, and Ed could make out one furred ball under the towel.
What a fucking cock tease!

“I can’t take it anymore.” Ed strode to where Elwood slumped in concentration, tore the notebook from his hand, and ripped out a page from the back. Elwood, hit smack between the eyes, looked at Ed with astonishment. Then Ed plucked the pen from Elwood’s hand and sat at the kitchen table to write. “Please let me”—he winced internally at the words taking shape under the pen—“suck you. I’ll do anything you want.” He flared in shame.
I can’t write that. Jesus. What am I doing?
Furious at himself, he balled up the page and plucked out another from Elwood’s journal. “Please let me,” he wrote.
Yes, better.
They could back out of that one pretending they both weren’t wise.

“I need this job, and I know I’m going to regret this,” he said to Elwood as he handed him the note. He didn’t even fold over the paper to hide from himself.

Elwood looked at the note with the beginning of a frown. Ed studied his face, waiting for the first flicker of interest or fury or amusement or smugness or disgust to quicken across it.

Elwood maintained the frown, with something like resignation in his eyes. “Lawd. Look. How ’bout a drink? I needa drink. You drink whiskey?” But before Ed could answer, Elwood said, “Nah. Shit. We bin stuck in dis house too long. You like Chinese? Let’s go get Chinese.” He was out of the room and back in under a minute. Black jeans accentuated his big box and taut, round ass. The scruffy boots—and the shapely feet inside them—were innocent of socks, Ed knew. A blindingly white tee, not too tight, set off Elwood’s dark, tanned arms and brightened the white blaze in his chestnut hair. Ed had never seen him look so hot. “C’mon.” Elwood jingled keys, and Ed followed, in a state between panic and elation.

Elwood was quiet on the drive. Ed broke the silence: “You saw the note?”

“Yeah, I seen the note.”

“Well?”

“Well, we gotta talk.”

At least there would be talk, thought Ed. About what?

His dick was shot off.
Ed remembered a hunk he’d once met with this very secret.
Idiot. He’s been flaunting his dick the whole goddamn week until I’m drooling.

He can’t spring a hard.
Idiot again.
Ed flashed on the morning wood he’d seen poling up a thin sheet that first week.

He has HIV.
Ed cast his eyes sideways. You can look healthy and have HIV. Hell, you can
be
healthy and have HIV. And though Ed preferred bareback, condoms it would be. In the silence of the pickup cab, Elwood’s freshly washed scent filled Ed’s nose. Elwood smelled like the steam rising from a shirt as the iron hissed over it, totally clean yet intimate and pungent. He wanted to sink his nose into the source of that scent.

Ed noticed with uneasiness that they were going over the Greater New Orleans Bridge into Orleans Parish, but certainly Officer Ratto wasn’t likely to pull Elwood over for any reason. And Elwood kept driving forever, it seemed. “Where in the hell is this place?” Ed asked finally. They’d been driving in silence for twenty minutes.

“We almos’ dere.”

And when Elwood pulled into the lot of a small strip mall, Ed realized why he had chosen this place. Floodlights illuminated two Chinese characters and below them the giant red letters of the restaurant’s name:
Fatt Soon
. Ed grinned and then chuckled. Obviously Elwood had a hidden whimsical side he was only now revealing. “Love the name.”

“Yeah,” said Elwood glumly.

Once inside, Ed realized they were the only non-Asian customers. The place was packed. A whiteboard with Chinese characters announced the specials, each with an extremely affordable price preceded by a dollar sign. “Must be authentic and good,” said Ed. “How did you find out about it?”

“Yeah. I like it. Jes’ stumble on it.” After they were seated, Elwood motioned to a waiter, gesturing with curled hands, thumbs to index fingers, mimicking the holding of a menu. The waiter looked at Elwood strangely, shrugged, and brought two menus to the table. Elwood grabbed for the menus and held them. Then he looked significantly at Ed. After a long pause, he handed him one.

“Why doncha order for us?”

Ed studied the menu. Every dish was described in Chinese characters.

“This is all in Chinese. How am I supposed to read this?”

Elwood held Ed’s gaze fiercely for fifteen seconds or so. Then, in a hiss: “Welcome to my worl’.”

Chapter 11

“T
HE
OLFACTORY
epithelium is an area of about five centimeters square at the root of the nasal cavity. It has specialized receptor cells surrounded by nonsensory supporting cells. These specialized cells take what form?” Silence. “Anyone?”

Mimi glanced away, hoping not to be called on. “Dutch?”

Dutch was drumming the bench with a pipette and pumping his knee under the workbench, in motion as usual. “Bipolar neurons.”

“Yes, correct, as always, Dutch,” said Honoria.

Flip fought to contain his annoyance. Dutch had barely glanced at the physiology textbook last night and instead pored over the Bible needlessly, in Flip’s opinion, in preparation for Sister Immaculata’s Bible as Literature class.

“Information from the nose travels through the first cranial nerve and olfactory bulb to the olfactory cortex in the cerebrum,” droned Honoria, to the intense boredom of her students. She was losing the class, she knew. Time to get them to sit up.

“The sense of smell,” she continued, “is the most primitive and least understood of the special senses. It is paramount among the lower species, except for birds. Pheromones guide much insect behavior. It is the main sense for most mammals, which use smell to detect sexual partners, food, and predators.

“Most humans are unaware of how greatly they are influenced subconsciously by smell. In one study of forty subjects, 100 percent were able to identify their dogs by smell alone. In another, 100 percent of the respondents were able to identify their sexual partners when asked to smell garments worn by them. In a third, people were asked to rate scent collected from the apocrine glands—can anyone tell me where the apocrine glands are located?”

Silence again.

“Dutch?”

“Everywhere on the skin except the lips and the glans penis.”

“Yes,” Honoria said, “but the glans penis has its own secretion.” Mimi looked annoyed. “At any rate, apocrine glands secrete a unique sexual scent, especially present in the armpit and groin, most strongly detected around the anus in the male and the pudendum in the female.” She had the full attention of the class now.

“In one study, apocrine secretions from the perianal area of the male were collected and presented to female subjects….” The class was rapt. Mimi looked disgusted, and Googs Pizzalotta, star quarterback for the Redemptorist Rams, gave her an asinine leer.

“The female subjects invariably identified as most pleasant the male scent that was most unlike their own scent. The same held true for male subjects presented with apocrine secretions collected near the pudendum of females. Can anyone tell me why this should be so? Flip?”

A muscle in Flip’s jaw had been working visibly all through this exposition. “Genetic diversity?” he hazarded.

“Exactly. It’s in the interest of the species to have a highly variable genetic pool, so people are attracted to those with an unfamiliar scent because that dissimilarity in scent signals that the smellees are least like the smellers genetically. Without variability, any population is more subject to extinction. Remember the Irish potato famine, where a single fungus wiped out the entire food supply of the poor, because the plantings were monocultural?”

The class was lost.

“At any rate,” Honoria continued, “if you want to find your true love, my advice to you is not to use deodorant. Let your true love sniff you out.”

Stunned silence.

“Interestingly”—Honoria was enjoying the reception her words were receiving—“the opposite is true of homosexual subjects.” The class shifted uneasily. “Homosexual men, when presented with swabs of the perianal scent of other males, preferred the scent that was most similar to their own.”

The class writhed in discomfort.

“Yes. Well. We have abundant historical evidence of the primacy of the sense of smell in the human experience. First, in the arena of sexual attraction, we have the evidence of Napoleon, who wrote to Josephine, ‘Je viens, ne lavez pas,’ which means…. Mimi?”

“I’m coming, don’t wash,” hissed a pissed-off Mimi.

“Exactly,” said Honoria.

“The other way around,” snorted Dutch to Flip. “Don’t wash, and then I’ll come. Haw! Haw! Haw!” Dutch worked his knee up and down, as always. Flip worked his jaw some more.

“And there is also an intimate association between the olfactory apparatus and the emotions,” continued Honoria. “A scent from long ago can evoke a distant memory, bringing a past experience into sharp, present focus. Does anyone know about Proust and the madeleine?”

Silence. Honoria explained how the taste of a cookie had telescoped Proust into his childhood.

“So, olfaction has the power to summon emotion and the past in immediate, urgent ways that no other sense can rival. What role, Googs,” said Honoria, “does the sense of smell play in the sense of taste?’

Googs, the dumbest in the class, said, “A big role?”

“A preeminent role,” said Honoria. “The taste buds,” she continued, “are specific receptors for the sense of taste and are widely but not uniformly distributed in the oral cavity. Most are located in the papillae, peg-like projections of the mucosae, on the dorsal surface of the tongue….”