Hold It 'Til It Hurts Read online

  Ines hadn’t enjoyed the video, describing it as another example of “rich people indulging obsessions.”

  “You say that with such envy,” said Margaret. “Has Achilles seen the servant show, the old I-hire-folks-who-look-like-you? Vaudeville isn’t it, Achilles?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “This was his first trip uptown,” snapped Ines.

  The businessman at the next table cleared his throat as he slipped his blue credit card back into his wallet. Margaret sighed. She had a man’s voice and was too dark for Achilles’s taste but, understandably, men noticed her. Her height alone set her apart, and her skin looked downright edible. It was easy to imagine her in a National Geographic centerfold, saucers in her ears, a dozen rings on her neck, and a plate in her tongue. She wouldn’t be able to talk so much.

  They continued the discussion of the films. The opening short had featured animated birds. Achilles hadn’t liked it. Margaret loved it. Ines called it a second-rate remake of Othello, with an eagle as Iago, but a raven as Othello. “How can the modern retelling actually compound the racism? It’s worse than Hopkins or Olivier tromping around with bootblack on their faces, mincing and waxing apoplectic when they hear of Desdemona’s infidelity. So whipped, so afraid someone else has hoed their little field, tarnished their virginal porcelain saint. I root for Iago every time.”

  Was this what they learned in college? Achilles saw no comparison between the animated short and the game he had often played at home with Troy. Piecing together the story, he put his money on the Moor.

  The waiter took their order, fawning over Margaret, who ignored his smiles and clumsy attempt to open her napkin for her without grazing her breasts. Asked if anything else was needed, she pointed to her fork with her whole hand, letting her fingers drop like she was showing off a fresh manicure. “Clean cutlery is always appreciated.”

  The waiter groaned apologetically and snatched up the fork with two fingers, holding it away from his body as if it were contaminated. Achilles took his elbows off the table. Margaret continued the conversation.

  “Iago! I heard that,” she said. That little turned-up nose made her look like a black person trying to act white. That was who she reminded him of, the rich blonde girls at the mall dragging their heels behind their parents, whining and grousing, attracting attention they claimed to detest, the cheerleaders wearing miniskirts and high boots and complaining about the stares.

  “At Spelman I had a professor who abhorred that play and M.O.V. The only person hated more than that old black ram is the Jew. The Jew can convert, while neither the Moor nor his progeny can ever change their stripes. The message is obvious: Black must destroy itself to save society. The Moor must be sacrificed to his own black hell as punishment for lusting after the white essence.”

  “Crunch!” they both said.

  “Achilles, what do you think?” asked Margaret.

  He was thinking that Margaret was crazy but remembered enough of Wages’s speech to say, “It’s what everyone wants for Christmas.”

  Ines winked at Margaret. Margaret nodded solemnly. He expected a sigh; instead she slapped the table. “That’s it exactly. Drugs and money have become religion. It’s no accident that the very thing that kills us is what we most crave.”

  “Crunch,” they said.

  “So you liked it, Achilles?” asked Margaret.

  He pictured the little boy at the cliff’s edge, then Troy perched on the rail of the water tower they loved to climb. “I’d rather know the ending.”

  “Hmmph.” Margaret.

  “The little kid jumped, but it looked like he couldn’t fly.”

  “That’s precious, though in movies, as in life, things work out for cute white kids.”

  Margaret’s portabello mushroom arrived, and Achilles’s red beans, and Ines’s prime rib.

  “But is it dead yet, Inesha?” asked Margaret.

  Ines took a big bite, working it from one cheek to the other like an oversized gumball. Margaret waggled her fork. “Bitch, they have better manners at the Playboy Mansion.”

  “I’ve seen you eat corn on the cob. You couldn’t get a job in porn,” said Ines, blowing out her cheek like a baseball player.

  Over the few weeks at the shelters, he’d seen Ines drink beer from the bottle, sometimes holding it up to her ear to listen to the fizz, eat wings with her fingers, and drown her eggs in ketchup. But he’d never witnessed her carnivorous fever. His concern about her bleeding heart liberalism and dreadlocks, his suspicions that her progressive tendencies were an ill-fitting suit hiding a spare tire of guilt and consumption, and his certainty that her charity was a front were all drowned out by the sound of her chewing healthy chunks carved from the slab of beef dominating the table with its cool, gray marbled edge and oily moat of blood and butter. She made a point of chewing with her mouth open, as she later explained, only to irritate Margaret.

  Margaret had other things on her mind, constantly asking Achilles where he had served and what he had seen there. He shared where he had been but politely declined to offer details. “Some things shouldn’t be glamorized, and to talk about them does that.” He’d learned that in the civilian transition class.

  Margaret stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. Sucking her teeth, she pointed at Achilles with her fork and said, “Rugged. I like that. Siblings? Or are you an only child like Spiney-Iney here?”

  Achilles had been trying to formulate a better critique of the movie. Expecting any question but that, he said, “I have a brother.”

  Ines cocked her head. “You never mentioned that. Are you close?”

  “We served together.”

  “Really?” asked Ines.

  “That’s allowed?” asked Margaret.

  “One unit in Iraq had three brothers.”

  “What’s he do?” asked Margaret.

  “Not too much,” Achilles shrugged.

  “He’s been off active duty less than a month,” said Ines, smiling.

  “Where is he now?” asked Margaret.

  “Our father just passed, so he’s doing some things at home.”

  Margaret pointed her fork at Achilles and Ines as if to say they belonged together. She became less combative, and after lunch they parted with hugs. Margaret gave Ines a look that said, We’ll talk later, and Achilles’s hand an extra squeeze. “Sorry about your father.”

  When Margaret was out of sight, Ines said, “Ignore her. She’s the only person I know pessimistic enough to call Monet’s garden a breeding ground for mosquitoes. She’s bougie bougie. Every time I see her I need a drink.”

  “Where’s the bar?”

  “Sorry, back to work.” She apologized again for Margaret, making Achilles wonder if he had missed something important, if Ines was slumming, or if he had just blown a blind date. It wasn’t the first time someone had hooked him up with a woman on the basis of race alone. Should he have asked for her number?

  “I can help with the work.”

  She studied his face. “You really took a beating, huh? Okay. Only one. And only because you’ve been so helpful. And only because it was just Veteran’s Day. Yesterday.”

  Achilles shrugged. Veteran’s Day was for old people, but if was worth a drink, so be it.

  She chose a tourist trap atop Jax Brewery, a restaurant decorated with paintings of housekeepers in mammy head wraps, life-sized inflatable alligators wearing wrap-around mirrored glasses, and a waiter who introduced himself as “Samuel Clemens, your captain on this here steamboat.” The appetizers were priced as entrees, the coffee as cocktails. At least they had a corner booth with a good view. The blinking Jax sign he had only seen from a distance with Wages now hovered overhead like a halo. One window offered a view of the streets below, and the other the river, black and shiny like wet obsidian, the waves looking sharp and still.

  He hadn’t felt this excited about Janice; maybe she had been too easy. On their first date they ate fried rice in the food court and snuc
k into Terminator 2. The week before, they’d kissed under the bleachers, and the night before screwed at the Ass Station, the abandoned gas station out on the old county road. Maybe it was because Ines was worldlier. Before ordering her coffee, she confirmed that she liked the brand they used, and requested special milk and Baileys on the side, and not that well substitute, Carolans. Janice was happier than a frog in a swamp whenever a diner had little white thimbles of cream and, after each meal, stuffed a handful into her purse. Janice had flags and pandas and fireworks painted on her long nails. Ines had natural nails with a strip of white across the tips, simple and glamorous at the same time.

  She leaned forward, her breasts momentarily resting on the table, heavy, real snake charmers. A Spiderman pendant lounged in her cleavage. Lucky devil! God, she was so beautiful. Chivalry had its perks. After opening the door to the stairway, he’d remained two paces behind her to ensure a better view. What could be more pleasurable than watching a fine woman walk uphill, a little bit of shake in every step? Maybe Merriweather was right about the steroids in chicken giving white girls big asses. A thick cotton T-shirt, faded denim jeans, dreadlocks, freckles, a head wrap—the classic rich hippy, the prototypical freaky white girl, except her clothes fit like she’d been poured into them. Ines: white woman with a black woman’s ass. As Merriweather would have said, she had puddin’ in her pop, enough Jell-O to make Bill Cosby blush.

  “Guys don’t take their friends here.” She gestured toward the windows. “Views are considered romantic.” He had passed the first test, so he kept quiet about how much guys appreciated a view if it provided a clear shot.

  “No, Wages doesn’t take me to any fancy joints.”

  She smiled. “You even go by last names on the outside?”

  “Outside? You make it sound like prison.”

  “It is if you’re a woman, and can’t even go to funerals. American women are like a third sex. We have a little more freedom, but it’s still demeaning. Did you know that one in seven Afghan women—”

  “Die in childbirth.” Achilles finished her sentence, adding that he’d once been posted to Rabia Balkhi, the renovated women’s hospital, after hardliners tried to disrupt the construction.

  She nodded, then continued anyway, explaining that Afghan women had to buy their own medical supplies—sutures, drugs, everything—before surgery. “I spent a year as a gender advisor with an NGO.”

  Achilles said nothing, even though he knew how the system worked over there, and that men had to buy their own shit too. Achilles decided not to ask what a gender advisor did. He pointed at her pendant. “You like Spiderman?”

  “A gift from my cousin Sammy. His favorite superpower is webcasting. I told him he could learn that in school these days, but he didn’t get it.”

  Achilles offered a half grin. “I don’t know much about technology.”

  She asked, “What’s your favorite superpower?”

  “America.”

  “Hmmph! Mine is invisibility.”

  “That’s not a superpower. I learned that in the army.”

  “Is that why you joined, to get superpowers?” she asked.

  “Is that why you volunteered?” asked Achilles.

  “No. I wanted to be like all the other kids in my school. If I’d been a man, I’d have been that soldier who carried me out of the minefield.” She winked at him. “Selfless, like in the movies where you’re leaning over a terribly wounded soldier, gripping his bloody hand, and he says, ‘Go on without me, save yourself.’”

  It wasn’t like that at all. Most guys begged for help. Their biggest fear, once assured they would survive, was being left behind. Remembering Jackson’s face, Achilles reached for the cigarette he usually carried behind his ear. He smoked less than two a week, but kept one on hand to stave off tears.

  “He put your life at risk.”

  “He could see my footprints. He had a metal detector.”

  “It’s just dangerous.”

  “That surprise you?” Ines was beaming, eyes bright and perky as she told him about her soldier’s name, unit, and uniform. “He touched his hat—just like in a Western—and said, ‘eleven-bang-bang at your service, ma’am.’” The chances were slim, but did Achilles recognize him?

  He didn’t, and wouldn’t have admitted otherwise. He hadn’t come this far all for her to applaud another Troy, whom he could easily imagine tipping his pot top like a magician. Were this a movie, Achilles would walk out. He disliked films anyway, especially porn, preferring doing to watching. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window and his stomach turned. His eyes were still bloodshot, chin scabbing over, face abraded. What was he thinking? That was probably why the old white couple sitting nearby kept looking at them.

  Achilles’s father used to tell him that lots of women would like him, Lots and lots of women, he always said with a wink. But Achilles hadn’t been lucky that way. No one as hot as Ines signed his yearbook. He wasn’t as bold as Troy or as smooth as Merriweather.

  Ines’s coffee and Achilles’s tequila arrived. She moved with precision, holding her teaspoon above her cup and pouring sugar into it until it overflowed, counting to three before dumping the teaspoon into the cup. The coffee on the saucer she poured back into the cup. She licked her spoon and set it squarely on a napkin, then bent forward, her breasts kissing, to nose the cup, inhaling deeply before taking a sip. A pale peach quarter moon remained on the rim of the cup. Did it taste chalky? Sweet? Like those wax lips, one bite and your mouth was flooded with sugar?

  Entranced by these ruminations, he lost track of the conversation for a moment, but his wavering attention refocused when she said, again without a hint of jest or irony, “You know how most white people are.”

  “Yeah, I know how they get.” Achilles smiled, sitting up, sticking out his chest, flexing his arms.

  She smiled back.

  Soon enough she was talking about demographics, and how it should be illegal for recruiters to target inner cities where it was impossible for black kids to turn down the temptation of recruitment bonuses that exceeded their annual minimum wage, Mickey D’s salary. That’s what surprised Achilles about most white people: they constantly bitched about the world, even shit that didn’t concern them. He let her talk without interruption, camouflaged in her awe, preferring her take on the war, her sense of the heroic and, as she put it, “tragic role of the soldier who needs a job, but not as a hit man. Right?”

  “Of course,” he said, wanting to use Merriweather’s line—Do you have any black in you?—so she could say no, and he could ask, Do you want some? Was she the demure type who wanted to be ravaged or the aggressive mare who wanted you to don spurs and slap her ass? Did she say shit like, “Give me that black dick, give it to me Daddy”? Did she shave her pussy? What did it smell like? Did she swallow? Do anal? Had she been with a black guy before? Weren’t most people in New Orleans Catholic? Did that make her a dirty virgin? He’d slip his thumb in when she came. He’d always wanted to do that. Yes. He’d slip his thumb into her ass on the first go-round, just to let her know he’s a cave dweller. A spelunker (another word he learned from the Germans in the next camp). No, he wouldn’t buck being her soup-kitchen commando. Besides, Merriweather always said, “When a woman kings you, wear the crown.”

  And he felt like a king, until she mentioned having noticed his fondness for certain jokes. Did he know more?

  She must have overheard him swapping jokes with the volunteers at St. Jude. Achilles knew he should remain stone-faced, but being alone with her made him so giddy—yes, giddy—that he rambled off a list. What do you call a cleric on fire? Why shouldn’t civilians carry guns? Why do blacks prefer the air force? How do you get an Afghan to take a bath? How many Kurds fit in a phone booth? What do you call a thousand Iraqis at the bottom of the ocean? How does an Afghan practice safe sex?

  “He marks the camels that kick,” said Ines.

  “What’s Afghanistan’s national bird?” asked Achilles.
<
br />   “Duck,” said Ines.

  “What do you throw a drowning Afghan?” asked Achilles.

  “His wife and kids,” said Ines. “Yadda, yadda, and what do you call an Afghan cleric?

  “Holy shit,” said Achilles. “You know them all.”

  She nodded. “And they’re not funny, unless you have a soldier’s sense of humor.”

  Ines slapped the table, spreading her long thin fingers as if to keep it from floating away. “Well?” She slapped the table again. “Are they funny?”

  Of course they were. Did he have a soldier’s sense of humor? Yes. They put the fun in funeral. They laughed when heads scalped by shrapnel were dubbed sundaes, or when tossing grenades became known as blowing kisses, while throwing up became known as tossing a grenade. They laughed in the hospital when Merriweather screwed on his roommate’s foot, the one that looked like a giant ice cream scoop, and said “Transformer, motherfuckers. Take me to Baskin Robbins.” When you were mad enough to punch a baby, there was little to do but laugh until the blood left your feet. But this was the interview, so he gave the interview answer: “Of course they’re not funny.”

  “I knew you were different, but not that much.” She winked. “Why aren’t there any Walmarts in Afghanistan?” she asked, adding a sneer certainly meant to make him think she believed what she was saying, but that he recognized as her disgust at the joke.

  “Because there’s a Target on every corner.” Achilles snorted, unsuccessful in his attempt to hold back his laughter. “But I’m laughing at you, not the joke.”

  “Of course,” said Ines. She finished her coffee and motioned for the check.

  “You were serious about only one?”

  Ines stared at him for a moment before saying, “I should probably see the other guys.”

  Achilles nodded. “It’s nothing, really.”

  He insisted on walking Ines to her car—a beat-up Carmen Ghia. Before getting into her car, she reached out and touched the scratch under his eye. “So who’s your brother, Odysseus?”