On Archimedes Street by Jefferson Parrish

foot”—he grabbed and moved Frenchy’s foot—“perpendicular into Dominic, the target. Close your hips”—Manny maneuvered—“and line everything up.”
    Manny took over Frenchy like a puppet, and Frenchy willed his hardening cock down.
    “Now twist your wrist to keep everything as vertical as possible when you let her zing !”
    Frenchy leaned back into his wood-, soap-, and man-scented instructor. And let her zing .
    “Yow!” cried Dominic. The force of the ball twisted his gloved hand.
    “Good one, Frenchy!” said the man.
    Frenchy, half-hard but going down, pressed back farther into Manny, a grin splitting his face.
    “Will you show me with a football sometime?”
    “You got it,” said the man.

Chapter 7
     
     
    O N S ATURDAY morning, Ed waited at the Gretna farmers’ market for Elwood to do his set. A tethered Larceny sat at his feet. People milled around the stalls selling “arts and crafts,” Gretna style. Ed had been bemused by the crocheted dolls in antebellum dresses meant to slip over toilet paper rolls, as if the toilet paper were a teapot needing a warming cozy. Other people haggled at the vegetable stands, groaning under produce from Frenchman’s Bend, just down the river. Most sat in folding chairs, listening to the Saturday morning music.
    Ed winced and stretched in his folding chair. Five days on the job, and his muscles were crying out. And not only his muscles. All that week, Elwood had given his brusque, monosyllabic orders, and Ed had done as he was told, shimmying up trees and ladders like a monkey, repressing his fear of heights, desperate to keep his tenuous hold on the trees and on this very odd job.
    No question that the tree man was an artist. He’d stand absorbed and motionless for five minutes or more before an overgrown tree or bush, waiting to go into action. Then he’d make quick and precise cuts, and flick the lopped branches away carelessly, leaving behind a miraculously lacy and well-shaped form. Sometimes you couldn’t even tell when Elwood had trimmed a tree, so balanced and natural were the cuts. And he was a good teacher too.
    “Where woodja make the cut?”
    “There. And there?”
    “Not bad. Yeah, dere. But a little highah here. Right dere. Dis here kinda tree? You wanna make it look like a fountain.”
    But the real problem was that the man himself was a work of art. Too disoriented and panicked the first two days to notice much of anything, Ed had finally stopped to take a good look at his employer. He was a tree man, all right. Though just six feet tall, he seemed as tall, graceful, and muscle-gnarled as an oak. For three days now, Ed had watched him covertly among the trees. It wasn’t just that Elwood had taken him in—rescued him, really—and fed him. He would have fallen for that lithe, sinewy body, that heart-shaped face, anywhere. Beautiful chestnut hair and goatee, with a snow-white blaze near the left temple. Deeply tanned arms and neck, with ivory-white skin where the shirt protected it. And—he’d finally realized—eyes of nearly the same color, but not quite. One golden hazel, the other a muddy green-brown.
    He wouldn’t be letting his mind run along this track if he hadn’t been picking up signals. The man went nowhere. They’d usually knock off around two or three, then go home and shower. Elwood would sometimes stay in the nude, with just a towel wrapped around him, flashing cock and balls while he wrote in that green notebook of his. Did straight men do this around each other? And he’d often finger his cock idly through the fabric of his sweatpants as he made them dinner. A good cook. But, then, that meant nothing. All the famous chefs were straight, right?
    Ed reminded himself of his situation. Too much was on the line here. Can’t go there.
    The band currently playing wasn’t helping keep Ed’s libido at bay. They were tight and good, and the vocalist kept singing about black drawers and about legs being in the east and