The Ambidextrist. Peter Rock
feels the tattoo, rubbing beneath his clothes; he hopes the ink is dry, and the blood, that they won’t stain his underwear. He follows Darnay across the road, onto the wide sidewalk in front of the museum, the wide stone steps. Terrell pretends not to notice the man sitting there; he tries to keep walking smooth and easy; he holds the keys in his fist, tight on their string around his neck, so they won’t make a sound. It’s the man he met in the museum, the week before, the one who started the whole idea of testing your friends. The man sits twenty feet up the steps with his shirt off, wearing dark glasses that hide his eyes. It’s impossible to say where he’s looking. If he sees Terrell, he doesn’t do anything about it.
The boys take the path around the side, past the statue with shells for eyes, beyond the steps, beyond where the man can see. Terrell looks back, once. No one is following. He feels his friends around him. They hardly speak as they head down toward Boathouse Row, where the white boys from the private schools are practicing for the crew season.
“This way,” Darnay says, as if they should have known to turn. He’s the only one who knows where they’re going.
They cross Kelly Drive and follow a smaller road, into Fairmount Park, trees on every side. Terrell is nervous, and he doesn’t have to do a thing. Not today, he doesn’t. He can’t think of what he’d want to be the champion of, and that bothers him. Swan walks to one side; he doesn’t look nervous, but he doesn’t seem excited, either. He was the only one who would admit he hadn’t done it before—no one doubted Darnay, and no one believed John, but they only needed one person for the test, anyway.
Walking faster in the sun, they take their time through the shadows. Single file, then abreast, still not speaking. They all wear unlaced hightops, and they hardly lift their feet, sliding them to keep their shoes on. The four of them move with a slithering sound.
“It’s simple,” John says. “You just stick it in and move around some.”
“I’ll remember that,” Swan says, and they all laugh, not sure why.
“Your test is next,” Terrell says to John. “Don’t forget that.”
A car rolls by, moving slowly, its windows tinted black. Old mansions show through spaces in the trees and are hidden again. They see baseball fields, the reservoir, basketball courts.
“Play some hoops later, probably,” John says, shooting an imaginary ball. He has a court on his driveway, but his mother doesn’t like them to play there. She always watches, frowning, from the kitchen window.
“How far we going?” John says.
“She gave me directions,” Darnay says. He leads them off the road, onto a narrow path, under the trees. Single-file, the boys kick bottles and cans from underfoot.
“People always finding dead bodies in here,” Terrell says.
Heat is caught in the bushes, thick in the leaves. Swan sneezes, then sneezes again. Bugs wheel around Terrell’s head, mosquitoes fill his ears.
“Who is she?” John says. “What’s her name?”
“You don’t know her,” Darnay says. “She’s older than us, friend of my cousin. Name’s Lakeesha.” He stops walking, then, and turns around. He points at Swan. “You go wait by that dead tree. On this side so we can see you. She’ll come.”
“Good luck,” Terrell says, and no one laughs like he expected. Their faces are serious.
The three of them watch Swan walk away, and then they climb into the branches of trees—Darnay in one, Terrell and John in another—so they’ll have a good view and won’t be seen. Terrell hears a car, far away. There’s no one around. The palm of his hand smells like metal, from holding the keys. Below, Swan does not look in their direction; he just stands in a spot of sunlight, waiting; he doesn’t sit down or lean against the tree. Clouds slide by, close overhead; the shadows they cast are no cooler than the sun. Swan didn’t ask why they had to watch, since that was both obvious and complicated. He looks smaller now than he does up close. More like a boy. Terrell thinks he must look that way, himself, from a distance.
She comes from the other direction. Lakeesha. Wearing a baseball cap—it’s too far to tell what team—and she’s at least as tall as Swan. She says something to him, and he says something back. Turning a circle, she tries to tell if anyone is around; she doesn’t see them. She’s wearing a backpack that looks like a teddy bear, its legs and arms sticking out.
Without warning, Swan starts taking off his clothes. His shoes and socks, his jersey, his shorts and his underwear. He’s standing there naked next to the girl and all she’s done is taken off her backpack and put it on the ground. The black ink blotches Swan’s hip. His ribs show. His dick is pointing at the trees, the sky.
Terrell thought they might have kissed or something, but there’s nothing like that. The girl pushes her shorts down; there’s a flash of white underwear inside them. She steps out of the shorts, then sits down on them. She doesn’t take off her shirt, her hat, or her sandals. When Swan sits down next to her, she touches his elbow and brings him around until he’s kneeling, facing her. Leaning back, using the backpack as a pillow, she pulls Swan down on top of her.
Terrell doesn’t wish he was in Swan’s place, though he no longer fears someone will come down the path, no longer worries about his balance. He does not wish he was anywhere else but here. Mosquitoes land on his legs, his face, and he does not slap at them. He can hear nothing but John’s breathing, and his own. The branch cuts his legs; when he shifts his weight, leaves quiver. He sits still again. Behind him, pale and motionless, John hisses to move left, that he can’t see. Close by, Darnay just smiles, his teeth still faintly blue.
It’s too far to see much—only the smooth skin running down from her waist, over her hips, the thin curve of her thigh. Her hands are down between their legs, and Swan’s are on either side of her, holding his chest above hers. His head is turned the other direction—away from her, away from the trees. His bare ass rises up in the air. The girl slaps at it and says something, her mouth close to his ear. She bends her knees, sandals flat on the ground, and his ass comes up again. His legs are stretched out, the light soles of his feet showing. Her hat falls off, her arms stretched lazily to the side; she seems to laugh as she helps Swan again, as they struggle together.
When they’re done, they sit next to, not facing, each other. Their mouths are not moving. Swan puts his shoes on barefoot, his socks in his hand. Lakeesha stands and pulls up her shorts in one quick motion. The teddy bear is already on her back. She walks away from Swan as he starts for the trees, stumbling, his shirt halfway over his head.
At the pharmaceutical companies, sometimes the drugs are tested on animals first, and other times those tests are simultaneous. At a place like that, they don’t know what a person is—not that most of the subjects give them much to think about. It changes you, Scott knows, wears you down. They can search you at any time, and you’re never allowed to leave when you want, no visitors, surrounded by drunks and addicts who purge their systems to get in, people who then binge away thousands of dollars in just a few weeks. In the trials, you can only use the payphones—some say all calls are listened to, recorded—and you can get kicked out, no pay, for even touching another phone. People turn on each other for nothing at all; first there’s the slither as someone takes off his belt, and then the slaps and the cries and the air whipped all around. Anyone who tells or complains will be found later, on the outside, where there are no orderlies.
Scott had been willing to put up with all this—and there were always clean sheets, actual mattresses, and hot showers, not to mention the money—until his last trial, which was over a month back. That was where he got crossed.
They’d been testing some kind of cold medicine. He’d gone in with Oliver, an acquaintance he’d met down next to the