On Archimedes Street (2 page)

At one viewing, a gasping, wheezing Rita had sputtered, “Oh, please. I’m dying. Divine.” Tears of mirth ringed her eyes. “Bringing,” she had said, “a whole new meaning to the term
pussy-whipped
! Ahahahahah! Hahahahah!”

Grinning at the memory, Honoria stood to eject the DVD of
Ray’s Fine Meats
. “Why do you suppose we enjoy this so much, Rita? Is it just voyeurism?”

Rita harrumphed. “Well of
course
it’s voyeurism.
And
exploitation.” Then, ruminatively: “But what I think I really enjoy is watching a man submit to another, with pleasure, taking his pleasure from the top yet knowing that he, too, could top. I get a feeling of power seeing that.”

“Power, how?” asked Honoria.

“Well, no matter how much pleasure we take in a good fuck—and certainly God knows I did—the act between a man and a woman is predictable and essentially submissive for the woman, even if the woman rides the man. God, Harold loved me to ride him!”

Honoria tried to suppress the image that jumped unbidden into her mind’s eye. She felt the beginning of a blush heat her face.

Rita continued, “Of course, I guess a dominatrix is not submissive, but where’s the pleasure in that?”

Honoria inwardly considered that some would consider it pleasure indeed.

“And I suppose I could have strapped one on and ridden him,” Rita mused.

“Ogorita! Really!” Honoria knew that her primness elicited this frank talk, which she relished.

“But then, again, where’s the thrill in that? I’m small and Harold was so big. I couldn’t have hoisted those meaty thighs. And a dildo doesn’t have nerve endings. I wouldn’t have felt what the top feels. It’s not like I could have fucked him with my—well, you know.”

“Oh!” This time Honoria really blushed. “No need to be crude, dear.”

“Crude-schmude, you priss-pot.” She paused, lost in thoughts of the long-dead Harold.

After a long silence, Rita finally ventured, “So. How’s the new crop?”

Honoria didn’t pretend she didn’t know what her friend meant. “The girls get shinier every year. Artificially white, ghostly teeth. The boys get cuter and more milk-fed, impossibly tall.”

“Tall?” Harold had been tall. Rita liked tall. “Any standouts?”

“Two,” Honoria replied.

“Tell.”

“They’re perfect. Oh, I would love to see a movie of them.”

“Oh?”

“Blond and dark. First the dark. He’s the really incredible one. Think Rock Hudson, blurred onto the young Warren Beatty. Lopsided grin. Soft black curls and gray eyes. Six five at least. Moves like a leopard, a dancer. Inhabits those muscles like he’s been at home in them for a long time. Always jiggling, always in motion.”

“Endowment?”

Honoria paused to reflect, casting eyes to one side and up. She’d rehearsed this sentence especially for Rita. “I think he’s packing serious meat.”

“Honoria!” said Rita, rapt. “Make that ‘packing heavy meat’ and it would be worthy of
Beowulf
!”

“No, Rita, this meat is more than heavy. It’s
serious
. I saw it flopping around in his pants like a big catfish.”

“Honoria, you devil! And the blond?”

“Think Redford, but not so teddy-bearish or boyish. Think Viking. All lines and planes and burnish, with a little bit of Alan Ladd vulnerability. Eyes either green or blue. Green, I’m hoping. Six-three slab of granite.”

“Honoria, you are waxing lyrical over these two boys! But…. Alan Ladd…? You’re dating yourself, dear. Five six, I think he was. Cute.”

Honoria snickered.

“Blondie endowment?”

“Standard issue, I’d say. Strictly Model A. No trouser trout in evidence.”

Rita savored “trouser trout” for a while. “As good a kenning as ‘whale road’ for ‘sea’ or ‘sea steed’ for ‘ship.’ I believe my influence is making itself felt. I’ll have you teaching Anglo-Saxon yet. So—the dark is the top and the blond is the at-first resistant and then pliant bottom?”

“Something like that. But maybe Blondie will want payback. After all, it’s not the meat; it’s the motion.”

“Trite but true,” replied Rita. “And how do you intend to bring this about, you slutty old procuress?”

“Well, they’re both in my Anatomy and Physiology Lab. I think I’ll make them benchmates. It’s a start.”

“And how do you propose to accomplish that?”

“I’m instituting a new system this year. Benchmates assigned alphabetically.”

Rita arched an inquisitive eyebrow.

“You see, they’re both named Abbott.”

“Honoria Leonora Abbott, this is beginning to sound incestuous!”

“Yes,” Honoria said with a smile. “But Abbott is a common name. Case in point: the New Orleans Abbotts, of Councilman Achille Abbott fame. Actually, I believe the dark one is Achille Abbott’s son.”

“No! Really?”

“I
think
so.”

“Watch yourself with Councilman Abbott. He’s as slick as a greased dick.”

“Pish! I’m not scared of him.”

“I’m not kidding, Honoria! You don’t want to be messing around with Achille Abbott. But—Achille Abbott aside, how do you know there won’t be a late-registering ‘Abadie’ to upset your Abbott-Abbott applecart?”

“Rita, you are hateful.” Still, Honoria pondered this possible impediment. “Ogorita Simmons, I don’t believe there’s such a surname as ‘Abadie.’ You made that up, out of spite.” Still, she looked a little uneasy.

“And how do you even know they’ll be into each other?”

“Well, they’re not now, I’m guessing. I don’t think they’re even aware of each other. Blondie is a transfer student from Ohio, and they registered on different days. But. I have my ways. It would be a shame if Blondie didn’t get to experience that serious meat.”

“Heavy meat.”

“Rita, sometimes you need some Latin spice on your Anglo-Saxon ‘mete,’ which—yes, you’ve told me often enough—means ‘food.’ God, imagine Mighty Meat force-feeding Blondie!”

“Twisted, that’s what you are. It’s why I like you. But speaking of, if not
serious
, at least available meat….”

“Yes?”

“What is your boyfriend Bernie packing?”

Honoria drew herself up regally. “In the first place, Rita, women of a certain age don’t have
boyfriends
. They have
escorts
. In the second place, Bernie’s size—which, by the way, is halfway between six and seven inches, given a liberal dose of Viagra—is none of your damn business and nothing I would
ever
divulge. And in the
third
place, the location of an attractive bulge in a man’s trousers shifts as he ages, moving from his crotch to his right hip pocket, where the wallet is usually kept.” Honoria flashed a gold bracelet.

Rita grunted her satisfaction with this reply. A silence ensued, and finally Rita ventured, “
Under the Big Top
or Schubert?”

“Oh, Schubert, I think,” said Honoria. “I think we’ve had quite enough postmenopausal heat for one day.”

“Hmmph,” concurred Rita.

Chapter 1

F
LIP
NOTICED
the bicycle first, with irritation. A bright-orange fixed-gear BMX, just like his own, with pegs projecting from the center of the wheels, where the spokes met, on both sides. The man on it was describing perfect circles, first pedaling backward and then forward, moving in slow motion. He lifted his butt off the seat, glided to a slow stop, and stood on the pedals, balancing without moving. Flip understood how difficult this stationary balancing was, especially for such a tall person. He watched for about thirty seconds before he started clocking the man. How long could he keep it up?

The first wobble, according to Flip’s watch, was about a minute and a half later. The man, wearing a T-shirt with the legend “Ask me about my vow of silence,” pedaled into the wobble and started the slow backward circling again. He intoned a mantra in a low baritone as he pedaled: “Uhm uhm
bwah
, uhm uhm
bwah
, uhm uhm
bwah
bwah
.” And then he executed, in succession, the elementary moves Flip recognized as the one-footer and the one-hander, all the while keeping up the uhm-
bwah
chant in several variations.

For the one-footer, the man reared the bike up and took his dominant foot—the right, Flip noticed—off the pedal and kicked it to the side. The cranks rotated downward as the foot came off, and he shoved his foot back onto the pedal just before landing. “Uhm uhm
bwah
,” he grunted low. For the one-hander, he pulled up on the bars until the BMX was nearly vertical and the bars were in his lap. Then he took off a hand, keeping the bars straight. “Uhm uhm
bwah
bwah
” again. The man knew he had an audience of one at seven in the morning, in the deserted Redemptorist University quad, on the first Monday of classes. Flip had the feeling the tall man was showing off just for him.

For the first time since arriving in New Orleans, Flip felt the comfort of the familiar. Everything seemed so strange in the city—the way people talked, the food, the air that clung to his skin like a wet rag. In fact, the only thing New Orleans had in common with Columbus was that both cities were as flat as a countertop. Both perfect for flatland-style stunting, whose finer points Flip now intended to demonstrate for this show-off with nothing to show. The desire for one-upmanship, a fierce spirit of competitiveness, felt like old friends too.

Flip pedaled toward the man. Just before reaching him, he put both feet on the front pegs, leaned his long frame forward, and grasped the rear tire so the handlebars just skimmed the ground. The man looking on raised his eyebrows and frowned. The frown turned into wide-eyed astonishment as Flip gyrated on the pegs to face the rear tire and simultaneously raised the front one, never letting both tires hit the ground at the same time. Flip gave the man a shit-eating grin. Then he put paid on the stunt. Keeping his right foot on the peg, he used the left to scuff the rear tire. Flip twirled to the front, brought both tires down, and slid to a stop.

“Oh, most impressive,” sneered the dark-haired man.

“Just the basics,” said Flip. “First the hitchhiker. Then the dump truck.” He grinned insolently. “Standard stunts.” He was pissing the guy off big-time and loving it.

“Well,” said the dark-haired man. “Let me show you how the hitchhiker and the dump truck should
really
be done.” And then he did. Flip kept a straight face, but, as he watched the dark-haired guy, he was pissed. Totally pissed. The guy had the moves.

Then: “Nice bike.” The dark-haired man jutted his chin at Flip’s identical orange BMX. They both grimaced in annoyance. “Go figure the odds,” he said.

“Flip,” said Flip, extending his hand.

“Dutch. Well met in Padua,” the man drawled in a refined uptown New Orleans accent as he accepted the handshake.

“Well met in Padua? What the hell does that mean?” Flip was clearly a Yankee, Dutch registered.

“It means ‘’Sup, dawg,’ in whatever patois they prattle where you hail from.”

“Patois?”

“You could look it up. Haw! Haw! Haw!”

What an asshole.

“Well, gotta run. Later.”

“No, wait. Don’t be such a touchy Thomas. Nobody else around here stunts.”

“Maybe not. No skin off my nose. See you later!” For some reason, the encounter left Flip feeling better, even though he’d been bested. New Orleans was suddenly a little bit less daunting. There was someone else who was into stunting.

T
HAT
AFTERNOON
,
at the change of class, Flip noticed Dutch’s orange BMX locked up next to his in the bike rack. He decided to wait for five minutes to see whether Dutch would show up. He soon saw a tall figure emerging from the Liberal Arts Building.

“Dutch!” he called.

“That’s my name; don’t wear it out. Figured I’d see you here. Locked her up next to yours. They look good together, huh?”

Flip couldn’t really say why he liked that. But—what the hell—why not? It wasn’t as if he had a shitload of friends in New Orleans, and, well—the guy was into stunting. That counted for something, anyway.

“Hanging out at Lib Arts, are you? What are you taking?”

“Analytic Philosophy,” Flip answered. “Seemed okay. I liked the professor, I think.”

“What? Peiser? Don’t let old man Peiser pull the wool over your eyes. Do you know the word
draconian
? Well, of course you don’t. Haw! Haw! Haw! You could look it up.”

“Maybe I don’t need to look it up, fuckwad.”

“Oooh. Too easy, eh? Then maybe I’ll just have to kick it up a notch. Lutulence.” He stared pointedly at Flip’s muddy sneakers. “Always a bad thing.”

“Well, I’ll tell you a good thing—beating your ludicrous, lutulent ass at stunting.”

“Haw! Haw! Haw! As if. Never underrate vocabulary building. Anyway, about Peiser. Took that class last year. First session you think it’s going to be a no-brainer, but he gets mean soon enough. Just doesn’t want to scare you off too soon, during the grace period when you can drop the class for another. About session four, he shows his true sadist colors.”

“Uh-oh. Are you serious, here, Dutch?”

“As serious as ice cream and cake is to a centenarian. You could look it—”

“Oh, please, get over yourself. Really, Peiser is that bad?”

“In a word—yes.”

“Where were you when I was choosing my coursework?”

“I was right here, waiting for you to ask. I mean, really, I was right here, waiting for you to ask.”

“What?”
Is this guy coming on to me?

“Drop that class, and I mean
now
. You must be new here, or else you would have shied away from Peiser.”

“Yeah. Transferred from a small college in Ohio you never heard of, so don’t ask.”

“Whoa,” whistled Dutch. “Are you in culture shock, or what?”

“Always wanted to live here. Not like any other city.” Flip kept his homesick reservations to himself.

“Well, that goes without saying. Any more classes today?” Dutch gave Flip a crooked, engaging smile as they unlocked their bikes. Flip considered it suspiciously, not totally off his guard.