On Archimedes Street (20 page)

Elwood seemed puzzled. “What you want?”

Ed drew off the dick with a gasp. “I have what I want. Now take what
you
want. Take it, Elwood. It’s yours. You won’t hurt me.”

“You sure?”

Ed, back on the cock, nodded around it.

Elwood proved to be the piston type. No slow withdrawal, no circling, just a punishing, rapid pumping that he kept up for several minutes. Ed lost himself in that pumping, opening for Elwood. His dick rubbed painfully against the fabric of his briefs. The friction, and the musky scent of Elwood, was bringing him close.

“Fuck! Here it come!” Elwood withdrew his reddened, saliva-slick cock and began to palm it.

“No. Not yet. I want to taste all of you. You’re fucking
delicious
. Why don’t you get in your chair and scooch your ass down, so that I can get to your balls?”

Elwood didn’t seem too happy about delaying his gratification, but he complied.

“Here, throw one leg over the arm of the chair.” Then Ed went to work on Elwood’s balls, first mouthing and then sucking and humming them.

“Fuck!
Fuck
!”

He tried, but he couldn’t get them both in his mouth at once. Elwood had bull balls. But when he licked the taint and started moving upward, Elwood tightened.

“You don’t actual
b’lieve
you gonna fuck me?”

Ed came up for air. “Nah. I’m a bottom. But if you want… later… you can do it to me. If you want, that is.”

“Den why you goin’ dere?”

“Because I want to. Don’t you want me to, Elwood? You taste so
good
. I want to taste all of you. You
deserve
to be kissed.”

Elwood gave Ed a salacious smile. He scooched his ass farther off the seat and brought his leg higher on the arm of the overstuffed chair. “Knock yo’self out.”

Elwood smelled disappointingly of soap. A surprise, considering the pungency of his dick. His reaction to Ed’s tongue circling him and jabbing into him was, however, not disappointing in the least. “Shit! Piss! Fuck!
Fuck
!”

Elwood pushed Ed away and sprang to his feet. “I wanna sit on yo’ face. Can I sit on yo’ face?”

“Hell, yeah.”

Then Elwood did just that, laying Ed out on the floor, then crouching above him and moving his balls, and then his ass, over Ed’s mouth. Ed let his tongue lap whatever Elwood slid over it. The crease between the balls and thigh seemed especially sensitive. “Shit! Time for the dick ag’in. Jes’ can’t wait no longer, Special Ed. Do dat stuff you did befo’, when you took it in yo’ mouf.”

Ed raised his head from the floor and maneuvered Elwood’s hips so his straining cock was directly in front of Ed’s face. He let the saliva pool in his mouth and opened into an O. Elwood shifted to position his dick in the hothouse. When Ed closed around it, the pistoning again. “Shit! Fuck! Piss!
Fuck
!” Ed would have laughed, remembering one lesson in particular. But he couldn’t. His mouth was full of pistoning dick.

Ed drew off. “Here, stand up,” he gasped. Then Ed knelt before Elwood and moved Elwood’s hands to his head again. “Take it. It’s all yours.
Use
it.” He bobbed on the dick, encouraging Elwood to let go.

Elwood did let go, pistoning like crazy. “Here it come. Comin’ soon. O Lawd! Lawd!” He tried to pull off, but Ed grabbed his ass and restrained him in place.

“You can’t wan’ it in yo’ mouf!”

Ed nodded. He moved his head back to accept it on his tongue. Elwood thrust one more time all the way back to the throat, and then moved it back into Ed’s mouth. His cockhead was painfully sensitive.

“Fuuucckkk!
Yeah
!” yelled Elwood, as the well erupted.

The well water, when it came, was not water at all, but coagulated strings of something so chewy and bitter that Ed had to push it out with his tongue and let it dribble from the corners of his mouth. The well, it was evident, had not been drunk from for a
very
long time. But that tongue movement had Elwood straining up on the balls of his feet and clenching his jaw as he continued to gush wordlessly. Now it was thinner and salty, and sweetly pulsed. Ed swallowed. It filled his mouth. He could still smell Elwood’s dick where he’d rubbed it on the upper lip.

Ed shot in his pants. And he’d never had the chance to take them off.

Elwood collapsed on his chair and lay still. Ed moved with him, never letting the cock escape his mouth. Elwood’s nerves were finally gone. He felt sated. He felt
fine, fine, fine
.

Ed waited a while, keeping his mouth on the head until the dick softened. Then he moved his mouth off it and sat up. “Looks like I need a change of underwear,” he told Elwood. Then he stood, stepped out of his pants, shucked his briefs, and wiped off his dick and groin. He leaned over to pick up their discarded clothes. While doing so, he made sure to show off his bubble butt to Elwood. He’d been told it was a work of art.

A brief silence ensued. “You get the books, woncha, Special Ed? The cur-ric-ulum. An’ I can have more lessons, right?”

“You can
fucking
have,” Special Ed said, “whatever you
fucking
want.”

Chapter 28

“H
OLD
THEM
up! Keep them up!”

Mimi was killing him. Currently, she had him sitting on the floor, back and ass flush against the wall, and legs straight out in front of him. He held his arms flat against the wall, perpendicular to his torso. The forearms were also perpendicular, but to the arms, hands pointing to the ceiling. He imagined that he looked like a sitting, human goalpost.

It had seemed simple enough, assuming this position. But after five minutes, his arms were trembling with fatigue. And this was the conclusion of a ninety-minute yoga session that left him light-headed with exertion. Holding the poses was so much harder than it looked.

Irritatingly, Mimi was doing yoga crunches with practiced ease as she oversaw his session. She made a V out of her body as she balanced on the front of her butt in boat pose, her legs stiff and high, her arms straight out. Frenchy had done this pose earlier, but not to Mimi’s satisfaction. “Legs higher! You’re leaning backward! Balance on your tush, not your tailbone! Arms straight out from the shoulders!”

Then Mimi seesawed into the V as easily as she would have stirred an iced tea. Frenchy let his arms come forward a half an inch from the wall.

“Flat against the wall!” She crunched up into the V and then down again. She fucking had eyes in the back of her head. Frenchy grimaced with exertion.

At last, Mimi signaled the end of the session.

“Okay. Relax.”

Finally.

“Assume Savasana.”

The corpse pose was Frenchy’s favorite. All he had to do was lie down on the floor and think of nothing. Trouble was, it was hard to think of nothing.

“Feel your fingers,” said Mimi, in a low, hypnotic voice. “Let every finger go. Let every finger relax completely.” To the exhausted Frenchy, Mimi’s voice was a soporific, sending him into a boneless trance.

“Let go of your forearms. Feel them sink into the floor. Now, release your upper arms. Let them melt into the earth. Say in your mind, ‘This body will be a corpse.’” Frenchy felt that his body was sinking half an inch into the wooden floor. “Feel your toes….”

It was fine when Mimi was speaking. He could melt. He could see the light behind his closed eyelids. It was when she stopped talking that the trouble began.

“Think of nothing, think of nothing,” he said in his mind. Then he tried to feel his fingers and toes melting again. But stuff just popped up.

Manny. Did Manny wonder about him, what he was doing? He remembered the smell of Manny under his grubby shorts for those few seconds that he had buried his face in Manny’s crotch. Frenchy’s cock started to respond to the memory. No, no. Not good for Savasana, and not good for Mimi to see his boner.

He tried counting. “One, two….” But counting was not nothing; counting was something—an absurd, meaningless something, but something nonetheless. “Magical thinking,” his history tutor had called it. Then he thought of the tutor and the way he always stared at the front of the trousers Frenchy wore.

Maybe he wasn’t so ugly after all.

Mental counting again. “One, two, three, four, five, six….”

After five minutes, Mimi said, “Roll over onto your right side and sit.”

He did. He felt so tired.

“Namasté.” Mimi, in the full-lotus pose, put her palms together in front of her chest and bowed.

Frenchy scrambled into half-lotus. Full-lotus was achievable, but still painful. “Namasté,” he parroted, and bowed back.

There were always a few moments of silence after Namasté. Frenchy waited them out. He had something on his mind. Finally, he slung his towel over his shoulders, stood, and complained, “My arms! We need to work on my biceps. And I want a six-pack.”

“Your arms are fine. And, if anything, you want to work on your triceps, not your biceps. That’s what the wall exercise was all about. Also—get this straight—you do not want a six-pack. You want the
ghost
of a six-pack, the muscles just barely visible under the skin. Actually, you’re easy, Frenchy. Shoulders already there from birth. Arms are easy, but go easy. Arms are like tits. Believe me, you don’t want a triple D.”

She looked Frenchy over critically. “Good arch on the foot. Thank God. There’s nothing I can do to work around flat feet. Calves, Frenchy, calves. That’s where we’re going. You weren’t born to develop calves easily. We’ll do something about that. So forget about the arms. You’ve got to be in
proportion
, Frenchy. You don’t want to look trapped in your muscles, all out of proportion. And you especially don’t want to have stick legs and balloon arms. You’ll look like a parody.”

Frenchy considered. Indeed, he’d begged Mimi to let him use all the muscle-building machines, but she had refused. Except for one. With a ton of weight on his shoulders, she’d told him to lift up on tiptoes. He’d had calf cramps that night and many nights after.

She’d also nixed the spiky haircut he wanted. “Nah. Silky hair like yours? Go fifties with it, but a little longer.”

“Bye, Mimi. Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow, Frenchman.” Mimi knew where her bread was buttered.

Mimi was every day. Math and violin, with his tutors, twice a week. Science—Maman had managed a course in chemistry at Redemptorist—once a week only. The English and history tutors were easy. Quite obviously those old queens were in love with him. Plus, English and history were a snap. For once, Frenchy didn’t have to hide his brights so he wouldn’t stand out.

Once in his garçonnière, Frenchy entered his bathroom and shrugged off his yoga clothes before getting in the shower. He reached for the towel. And then he saw himself in the mirror. He stilled, not believing what he was seeing. Well, the calves did need just a little bit of work—Mimi was right—but… he could see it. He could see the beginnings of what he was going to look like.

“Maman,” he whispered. But Maman was not there, and, on second thought, of course he didn’t want her to be there. “Dr. Gupta,” he said, but he didn’t want to think about Dr. Gupta just now. “Manny….” But no—not Manny, definitely not Manny.

“Papa,” he finally settled on it.

“Papa, I’ll never be blond like you. And Papa, I know I’m short.”

Frenchy took another look.

“But, Papa… I’m handsome.”

Frenchy assessed himself in the mirror. Where there used to be sticks, now there were the beginnings of rounded muscle. He looked at his arms, his butt, turned to view himself in profile.

“Papa. I’m good-looking,” Frenchy repeated, in wonder.

Chapter 29

T
HEY
WERE
doing the beef tongues. It was an arduous dish. First, the tongues had to be poached slowly for three hours in simmering water, then cooled in their stock and peeled. Fortunately, that part was done. Peeling the thick membrane off the tongue was tedious and time-consuming. Her hair, and Armida’s, exuded a faint stench of poached tongue.

Now came the braising in the tomato sauce. Armida was using a slim, hollow, sharp tube to lard the tongues with skinny cylinders of Italian Parmesan, bored out of a huge wheel, imported at great expense.
Well
, thought Lotte,
you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
And she could make a Parmesan-rind soup afterward. She’d just stumbled on that recipe in an old cookbook of her grandmother’s. Lotte frowned in irritation at the thought of all those Parmesan rinds she had discarded as trash in the past. The new white-bean-and-Parmesan-rind soup would fly out of the grocery, even at ten dollars per pint. Maybe she could get twelve?
Time to get New Orleans over red beans.
White beans and Parmesan rind. Yes.

She shuddered at the thought of domestic Parmesan. Lotte worked busily, cutting slits into the Parmesan-laden tongues and inserting pieces of small green picholine olives into the slits.

Now they had to braise the huge tongues—a small beef tongue lacked flavor, a lesson she had drilled into Armida—in the tomato sauce. Armida had already sautéed the diced onions in virgin olive oil, and the seeded and peeled tomatoes rested in a stainless steel bowl. The oregano and thyme were stemmed and chopped. The garlic was minced. She could safely leave the rest to Armida.

“¡Dios mio, qué asco!” said Armida. Lotte didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she understood the tenor of the remark. The thing about tongue? After all the poaching and larding and braising, you couldn’t even stomach the thought of it. That’s why Lotte froze the tongue she reserved for herself, to enjoy a month later.

She left it to Armida to finish. Yes, she was paying the Cuban sixty dollars an hour, unheard of. But a bargain, and Lotte knew from a bargain. She could trust Armida with the entire grocery, if she needed to, and with the oversight of the other employees. With plenty left over for Mother Cabrini.