On Archimedes Street (9 page)

A
FTER
CLASS
,
Dutch and Flip were both headed for Sister Immaculata’s Bible as Literature class. “Wait up,” said Flip. “Gotta take a leak.” In the men’s room, he pulled out his dick, peeled it back, and splashed vigorously into the porcelain. He shook off and then rubbed his cockhead with two fingers and brought them up to his nose. Nothing. Just the faint smell of uncut dick, washed a few hours ago. Then he looked around and, finding himself alone, reached back into his shorts. With vague apprehension, he drew a finger over his perineum, behind his balls. Hesitantly, he brought the finger to his nose. He’d never smelled himself in this way before.

He gave a tentative sniff.

Dutch. I smell like a diminished Dutch.
The muscle at his jaw twitched again.

“Shit,” he said. “God damn it to hell.”

Chapter 12

E
D
LOOKED
down at the Chinese menu with the dawn of recognition. He brought his gaze up to Elwood’s eyes, steely and grim.

“You mean…?”

“Yeah, dat’s right. I can’t read. Can’t do sums eeder or any of dat stuff wit’ numbers.”

Ed was stunned, almost spluttering. Then suddenly everything clicked into place. The way Elwood never looked at street signs but stopped to ask for directions when they were on the way to jobs in an unfamiliar neighborhood. His confusion over right and left. The strictly-over-the-telephone way he conducted the business. The growing pile of unopened bills and trash mail. The way he paid for everything with a debit card. And then he remembered the note. Oh, God, the “Please let me” note! Then slowly Ed began to chuckle, finally giving in to a belly laugh, throwing his head back and roaring.

“You sunnabitch!” Elwood stood up abruptly, sending his chair flying. He grabbed Ed by the front of his shirt, hauled him to a standing position, and drew back his fist. A gaggle of clucking waiters descended on them, jabbering in Chinese and making little circular gestures with their hands. The blow caught Ed on the cheekbone and sent him sprawling into the arms of the waiters, who hustled him to the front door and shoved him out. Elwood stood rigidly, panting in rage. The waiters gave him a wide berth as he strode out to find Ed and finish pounding him into the pavement. He approached with a menacing glower on his face.

Ed didn’t try to defend himself. He crossed his arms over his face and said, “Don’t hit me, Elwood. You got it all wrong! I wasn’t laughing at you.”

“Hell you wasn’t. Jes’ like in school. Dumb Elwood. Teachers puttin’ me in front the class, pokin’ fun. ‘El-woood,’” he whined in a high voice, “‘you mean to tell the class you can’t eben read dis little woid? It an animal you fine ’roun’ the house,’ an’ den I say ‘dog,’ but it was ‘cat,’ an’ the whole class laughin’ an’ laughin’. Every goddam day!”

Ed dropped his hands, leaving his face unprotected. “She did that to you, humiliated you like that in front of the class?”

Elwood glared, but something in Ed’s eyes stopped his fists.

“Jesus, Elwood. I am
so
sorry. That woman doesn’t deserve the name teacher. It was
she
, Elwood, not you, who was stupid. Ignorant fucking sadist should be in jail. You are the least stupid person I have ever met. Don’t you realize how many obstacles you’ve overcome on your own, how expertly you navigate the world even with the odds stacked so heavily against you?”

Elwood glared at him suspiciously. “Den why you laugh?”

“Because,” said Ed, “God is a fucking joker, or maybe Mother Cabrini is. Did you ever wonder, Elwood, what job I had before I took this one?”

“Yeah. I wondah, but none of my bid’ness,” he said guardedly.

“I’m a teacher, Elwood. I’m an expert at teaching people just like you to read and write. A special ed teacher, Elwood. A disgraced one,” he finished.

Elwood’s face lost some of its tautness. He regarded Ed at length. “C’mon let’s go home,” he said. They got in the truck and drove, again in silence, until Elwood asked, “Disgrace? How disgrace?”

Ed grimaced. “There was this girl I was teaching. Came on to me. Said that if I didn’t fuck her, she’d say that I tried to. Well, I didn’t touch her, but she accused me. I was fired. I can’t ever teach again. My family threw me out.” He didn’t add that he’d skipped town before charges were pressed. He was probably on some sexual offender registry or fugitive list.

“You still livin’ wit’ your fambly, a growed man like you?”

“You lived with your MeeMaw,” said Ed defensively.

“Well, yeah. ’Cuz she needed takin’ care of.” And then he sighed and admitted honestly, “An’ ’cuz she took care of me—payin’ bills an’ takin’ care of taxes, an’ everythin’ dat need readin’ an’ writin’ an’ sums.” He drove pensively. “So—dey actual
b’lieve
the goil who say you fuck her?”

“Fuck you, Elwood. Yes, they believed her!”

“Dat crazy. You don’t like little-goil pussy. Anyone can see dat. No little-boy Vye-eena saus’ge needer. You want growed-man cock. But I can see dat little goil likin’ you. So pretty and wit’ all dem gym muscles. An’ poily teeth.” Elwood grinned at him.

“How did you…? You lied! You read the note!”

“Yeah, I read the note—in your eyes. Bet dat note you write dis afternoon say ‘Give it to me. I want it bad.’ Din’t it?”

Abashed, Ed looked at the floorboard of the pickup, and they were silent until they got to Archimedes Street. Once inside, Elwood said, “We din’t eat. I make us some eggs an’ rice. Go put some ice on dat shinah you gonna have tomorra.”

Ed sat with a bag of frozen green peas pressed high on his right cheek as Elwood boiled the rice and fried the eggs. All the while, Elwood talked furiously, the long-repressed stream of worries finally breaking over the dam. “You don’t know how it bin. I worry dey gonna shut off the ’lectric. Don’t know where the bills is or when to pay dem. Checks pilin’ up. Don’t know how much I got in the bank, eben. You gotta help me, Special Ed.”

Ed groaned inwardly. He would be “Special Ed” from now on, he knew with certainty. These people were nickname crazy. It would be useless to object.

“I’ll help you, Wailin’ Elwood.”

After dinner, Ed first went through the mail, discarding junk and making a neat pile of bills and cards of condolence. Elwood showed him where MeeMaw filed receipts, and he went through the bankbooks. Elwood hovered over him nervously, jiggling constantly.

“How do you know I won’t lie about things and steal from you?”

“Jes’ know. Doodie, see?—at the hawdware? He nebber cheat me. Give me back the right change, I know. LaNasa at the grocery?—she rob me blind if I let her, eben dough she my cuzzin! Can you credit dat? My own cuzzin! You not a cheat. Jes’ a cocksucker.”

Ed looked at Elwood with something between irritation and shame, which his cock didn’t share. The word
cocksucker
had begun to wake it up. “Elwood, you amaze me. You’re an observation machine. Nothing escapes your notice. You should teach a course on compensating for deficits.”

“Cut the compensatin’ crapola. What the story is?”

“You’re in good shape, Elwood. Hell, you’re almost rich. You can afford to pay me $25.00 an hour, even. And you have no seriously overdue bills. We can deposit these checks Monday.”

Elwood sighed his relief. “You’ll stay, woncha, Special Ed? Stay an’ help me. Help wit’ the taxes, an’ the estate, an’ everythin’….”

“Yes, I’ll stay. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. But please calm down, Elwood. You’re a nervous wreck. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Elwood did calm some, but then a look of alarm came over his face as he dragged out another feared eventuality. “You won’t tell nobody?”

“Elwood, there’s no shame in not knowing how to read. People would have helped you.”

“
No
! Don’t tell nobody! No shame? You jes’ don’t know. You have no fuckin’ ideer. Shame day an’ night. Shame all my life.”

“Okay! Okay! I won’t tell anyone, and I’ll help. Just relax!”

“Okay den.” Elwood got up and went into his room. He came back into the kitchen in only his underwear. Ed gulped at the broad white chest, the tanned, muscled arms, and the chestnut treasure trail disappearing into the top of his briefs.

“Okay,” said Elwood. He sat in his overstuffed chair, threw his head back, and let his knees flop to either side. “Go for it. Done wash it jes’ now. Knock yo’self out.”

Ed saw that Elwood was not hard and said so. “Dat’s ’cuz you ain’t suckin’ it yet.”

Ed, dying to sink his head into the fly of those briefs, said, “Elwood, I’m not a whore.”

“Seems to me the ho’ is me, spreadin’ my knees for your mouf so dat you’ll stay.”

“I’ll stay without that. I like you, Elwood. Actually, I admire you. You don’t have to do that.”

Elwood, looking a little relieved, got up, grabbed Ed in a bear hug, and ruffled his hair. “T’anks, Special Ed. I like you too.” He drew a finger across Ed’s cheek, where the shiner was just beginning to bloom. “Sorry ’bout dat.”

“That’s okay. But I do have some conditions, Elwood.” Elwood’s face stiffened at the words. “I want an uninterrupted hour of your time every night, five days a week. Is it a deal?”

“What for?” asked Elwood suspiciously.

“You’ll see. Okay?”

Elwood agreed reluctantly. “And Elwood—what in the hell is in the green notebook?”

Elwood beamed proudly as he handed it over. Ed leafed through the pages, each filled with many iterations of the signature “Elwood Robichoux,” memorized by rote and rendered in a stiff, childish hand. “MeeMaw tol’ me ’bout dat ‘X: [his mark]’ signature shit. Wasn’t havin’ it. You fill out the checks, Special Ed, and I sign dem.”

“Good. The first check you can sign right now. My pay for two weeks. But I’ll make it out to ‘Cash,’ if you don’t mind, and you can cash it at the bank and give me the bills.”

Elwood, grinning, said, “Go ’head. You desoive it. I trust you.”

The next morning, Elwood played at the Saturday farmers’ market as usual. His set seemed unusually inspired and long, about twenty minutes, with fewer dissonances than customary. And the words, when they finally came, were so bizarre and unexpected that the crowd ate them up. They became the watchword for the day among the people browsing the arts and crafts tents and pawing the vegetables in their stands.

“I like the fack dat—”

“
I like the fack dat
” in call-and-response.

“You not a ho’!”

“
You not a ho’
!”

He kept repeating that phrase to the increasing appreciation of the crowd. And then finally, and only once, “I like the fack dat—I not a ho’!”

“
I not a ho’
!” echoed the crowd.

Chapter 13

F
RENCHY
,
SUITED
up in Dominic’s ridiculous astronaut pajamas, lay next to Dominic in Dominic’s bed, watching yet another movie he looked at but didn’t see. There was an alien and a machine-man in interminable combat. Dominic, in equally infantile cowboy pajamas, had turned the volume up so loud that Manny had yelled from his bedroom, which was separated from Dominic’s by the kitchen, “Keep it down! Do I have to come in there?”

The magazine had to be Manny’s, thought Frenchy. There was no other reasonable explanation. Manny worked alone in his shop, and Dominic had been with Frenchy all that day, so Dominic hadn’t moved it. So, sometime today, Frenchy deduced, Manny had taken the magazine. Manny had probably jacked off to it in his bedroom while he and Dominic were at the movies. An image of Manny in that act jumped into his brain. He would be golden down there just like everywhere else on his body. Frenchy pictured the spunk spurting out from a pink dickhead, spilling over the beautiful square hand grasping the cock, and dripping into the gold curls below. Frenchy felt his own cock blooden into semibloom under the knit fabric printed over with astronauts.

Frenchy kept remembering the times Manny had held him, moved him like a puppet when teaching him how to throw a baseball and football. And he remembered that day when Manny taught him and Dominic how to slide into base. The base had slid out from beneath Frenchy’s foot and skidded away, and he had automatically tried to get up and put his foot on it. Manny had been there, almost on top of him, restraining him in place. “No!” Manny had said. “When the base slides out from under you, stay where you are.
Don’t chase the base
!” Frenchy had felt the force of the man pinning him in place, smelled him in the afternoon sun. He was getting harder just remembering. Manny must want him. Why not? Frenchy knew Manny must like men—why else the magazine?—and Frenchy figured real flesh was better than any magazine. But he now faced the same problem he thought he had been facing with Dominic.
How?
How did he let Manny know that he knew? That he wanted it? He could hardly ask for a sleepover in Manny’s bed. Then how could he release into the air what lay under the bulge he found so compelling?

I found this. Who do you suppose is reading this?
No! That was too much like the time he had pointed out to his seventh-grade teacher that it was
protein
, not
protien
. She had thanked him stiffly, and the whole class looked at him like the smug show-off he had been.

Maybe the footsie thing or pressure on Manny’s leg as he worked. He couldn’t see himself doing that. He might have had the courage with Dominic, but with the godlike, handsome Manny?
How?
He heard Dominic say something that didn’t register.
There had to be some way to bring this off.

“Frenchy!” Dominic whispered. “Well, how about it?”

Frenchy had been lost in his fevered train of thought. “How about what?” he whispered back.

“About this.” Dominic groped his own cock. In a hushed tone: “Well, do you wanna?”

“Wanna what?”

“Mess around,” whispered Dominic with a goofy leer.

Only then did Frenchy register that Dominic was groping himself. To his shock, Dominic brought Dominic’s hand to Frenchy’s cock and guided Frenchy’s hand to his own. They lay side by side, their arms crossed in an
X
. Frenchy crash-landed from his reverie.