Hold It 'Til It Hurts by T. Geronimo Johnson

Author:T. Geronimo Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-56689-310-7
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2012-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

PART 3

SUMMER 2005

CHAPTER 13

FOR OVER SIX MONTHS, ACHILLES HEARD NO NEWS OF TROY. THEN, LATE one evening, while in bed with Ines watching a home decorating show, he answered his cell phone to hear Kevin Wexler say, without even a hello, “I saw Troy.”

Hearing Wexler’s voice, he went out onto the balcony, which stretched across the length of the condo and overlooked the Mississippi. Once outside, with both French doors safely shut behind him, he asked, “Are you still in Atlanta?”

“Yes.”

“At your sister’s?” asked Achilles.

“Yes.”

“You sure?” asked Achilles.

“When I called his name, he ran.”

Achilles snapped his phone shut just as Ines turned on the bedroom light, something he constantly asked her not to do when the heavy drapes were open. One night, he’d even marched her down to the street below their balcony to prove how much a burglar, or rapist, or any other psychopath would see through those sheer curtains she so adored. He stressed that any criminal of opportunity recessed in the darkness could see them, case the condo, or take a potshot. Achilles shook his head as she crossed the room, the hem of her T-shirt caught in her underwear. He moved to the dark end of the balcony.

A bellowing air horn drew his attention to the Mississippi. He heard the waters shouldering their banks, but what he could see of the river under the full moon was nearly flat, a field of shallow black bowls with silver brims. He leaned against the rail and ran his fingers across the balusters while a black tugboat with a shiny hull and one broad, chalky stripe glided by, the dark water betraying little hint of its passing, only a few silver rims of water wriggling into ribbons. The tug was headed toward Algiers, the twinkling lamps across the river. In the moonlight, the coiled chain on the aft deck was a glistening black wreath and the anchor at the rear of the boat a wink of light. Achilles spun on his heels and went back into the condo, past the waist-high vases of dried larkspur and emerald hydrangeas in the living room, past Ines’s favorite print, a life-size rendering of Kali, and stopped at the bedroom. Everything was as he’d left it. The light was off. Ines was in bed looking at television, and even Ricky, the stuffed koala, stood balanced between her feet. Achilles pointed to the phone in his hand as if it were a witness and began, “A guy from my unit … a funeral.”

“Oh no. Who?” asked Ines, turning down the volume on the TV.

He thought about it for a moment before answering, “Kevin Wexler.”

“Were you close? What was he like?” asked Ines.

“He was fine. I told you. We don’t have a pack of secrets about some crazy mission where we slaughtered a village of retarded babies or something and ran around with their heads on pitchforks. We don’t know all the secrets the news doesn’t tell you or the government keeps away from you.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Ines, turning the volume back up.

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