Greek Revival: Chapter 3

III.

Ari moved through the week on autopilot. After much consideration, they had put the ring back under the coatrack in as close to its original position as they could manage, and every time they left or came home they would bend down and touch it. Each time they stooped to lay a finger on the ring, they felt like an idiot, and each time their finger touched the iron, they felt like an acolyte of something large and dangerous, and each time they stood up they felt like an idiot again. But they kept doing it.

It was a slow week at the bakery. Late July had brought a heat wave that felt more like a heat wall. Being outside for more than a few minutes was exhausting. Indoors was hardly better. Air conditioning systems were, in the buildings lucky enough to possess them, straining against the heat day and night. Box fans and tubs of ice were working even harder for fewer results. The river was full of families with their children in arm floaties, college students skinny-dipping when nobody was looking, and retirees cooling their feet. Nobody seemed able to even think about eating a hot, fresh, savory pie, much less able to drag themself out into the heat to get to Full English and buy one. Virgil was still busy at the counter making iced teas for sweaty women fanning themselves with their broad-brimmed hats, like something out of Gone With The Wind, but Ari, Greg, and Teddy worked slowly. Teddy and Greg shot the shit while Ari carefully minced a whole head of garlic one clove at a time. Virgil took his lunch break and Greg took over for him at the counter, flashing his customer service smile at the people who wanted tea. Ari stood, elbows-deep in the dish pit, scrubbing a pot while Teddy cut butter into flour for pie dough and made Ari quiz him on the capitals of the fifty states.

“For trivia night tomorrow,” Teddy said when Greg asked. “This team calling themselves the Jeopards – like leopards, but also like the show Jeopardy! – keeps destroying us.”

“That’s stupid,” Greg said.

“What, their name?”

Greg snorted. “Among other things.”

“This is why I like Reverse Engineering better,” Teddy said, leaning over the counter and poking Ari with the tip of a rolling pin. “They didn’t even ask why I wanted a capital quiz.”

Ari hadn’t even thought to ask. They glanced down at the pot and noticed it was clean and they had, instead of washing it, been rubbing the spot on their index finger where the iron ring had sat.

“You hear that, Greg?” Ari said, forcing themself to move the pot to the drying rack and start in on the silverware. “I’m Teddy’s favorite.”

“Virgil’s Teddy’s favorite,” Greg said.

“Well, I’m beating you, anyway.”

When Ari emerged from the kitchen for their lunch break, Greg was, as usual, smoking on the back steps. The two made eye contact.

“Those things’ll kill you,” Ari and Greg said in unison.

Greg laughed. “So I’ve been told,” he said.

“Hey. Can I ask you something?”

Greg took a long drag of his cigarette and sat up straight. His Adam’s apple bobbed and crinkles formed around his eyes. “Sure,” he said, sounding more serious than Ari had ever heard. “Whatever you want.”

“When you’ve been buying those –” Ari gestured to the Panda cigarette in his hand. “– have you ever run into a really weird dude? With sunglasses and bleached blond hair?”

Greg’s seriousness ran off his face like water, and he rolled his eyes. “Why, got a crush?”

“No way. A guy who looked like that pulled a knife on me in the alley behind Nanjing the other day.”

Greg’s mouth fell open. “Jesus fuck, Ari! Are you okay? Did you get stabbed? Are you safe? Do you need somewhere to stay? I’ve only got a studio but the building’s got a really great security system and I’m totally fine with the couch if you’d rather –”

“I’m fine, Greg. He didn’t stab me. He seemed kinda out of it more than actively malicious. He was just in the alley by Nanjing and seemed like he was waiting around there, so I just wondered if you’d ever seen him.”

“Did you report him?”

“Who would I report him to?”

“I dunno, the town council or something? The owners of Nanjing?”

Ari shook their head. “I was a little busy running away.”

Greg paused and said, “Out of it how? Other than pulling a knife on people.”

“He was talking about all sorts of wild stuff. Invisible people with –”

Ari’s chest tightened. When they were seven years old, they’d been rushed to the hospital on Christmas Eve with a debilitating bout of bronchitis. They had coughed themself hoarse and for days afterward, trying to take a deep breath made their lungs feel locked up, like they were caught in a trap. Their chest felt the same way now. Ari couldn’t breathe in or out. Their mouth was open, halfway through their next word, which was supposed to be “iron,” but no sound was escaping their mouth. Their arms and legs were still.

“Ari?” Greg waved a hand in front of their face. “Quit fucking around. Ari?”

Something akin to a noise emerged from Ari. They wondered if they’d pass out. They could hold their breath for a while, but only if they knew ahead of time that they’d have to be holding it. They didn’t feel any shorter of breath than they had before, but they also couldn’t breathe. Their panic was reaching a fever pitch.

Ari’s chest relaxed, and they gasped and pulled a deep breath into their lungs, getting primarily Greg’s cigarette smoke. Ari coughed, and Greg slapped them on the back. The seriousness had taken up residence on his face again.

Ari couldn’t blame him. What the heck was that?

“Look, Ari. Are you okay?”

“I mean, now I am, yeah –”

“No, fucking hell, like – are you actually okay?”

“Um.” Ari rubbed the back of their neck. Am I going to sound nuts if I tell him about the ring? Am I gonna be able to breathe if I try?

After a moment, they heaved a deep sigh and said, “No, not really. I did get a knife pulled on me the other day. But even – I’ve been so stressed lately. I’m convinced somebody was in my apartment while I wasn’t there but I can’t prove it. I should be paying way more attention to my grad school applications but I haven’t been able to sit down and write them. I feel like I’m driving myself crazy.”

Greg hadn’t finished his cigarette, but he dropped it on the ground and crushed it under his boot anyway. He put both hands on Ari’s shoulders and looked them in the eyes.

“Stay with me for a bit. Seriously.”

“What?”

“I think your apartment might have a gas leak.”

“Again, what?”

Greg stepped back. “It happened to a buddy of mine in high school. He felt like he was crazy. He was seeing things, hearing things. He felt like shit. Turns out his whole family felt like shit and the tubes on their oven had come loose, so the whole house was full of low-level carbon monoxide. They got the oven fixed and aired the house out and everything went back to normal.”

Everything can be explained. That’s what science is. There’s science behind everything that’s happening. Weird visions, moving coatracks, creepy rings, my chest freezing up – I’m not even in my apartment right now, does that count? – it must count, it’s not like carbon monoxide just vanishes from your body when you leave – so that must be what’s going on. It’s science. There’s an explanation. And back to normal sounds really, really nice.

“That’s… thanks, Greg. I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes,” he replied. “Call your landlord, tell him to check your place for a leak, tell him you’ll be staying with me ‘til then.”

“This is a big favor.”

He smiled wryly. “It’s about a tenth of the hassle that hiring a new assistant baker would be if you dropped dead. I’m sure Teddy’s worried about my ass by now, but please think about it, okay? If you get home and you still feel like this, pack a bag and call me. I mean it. I’ll pick you up.”

“I have a car.”

“Let me pick you up. If you’re all fucked up I don’t want you driving.”

“If you’re sure. Thanks, Greg. Seriously.”

“No problem.” His smile widened, and he nudged Ari’s shoulder on his way back up the stairs. “Carbon monoxide’ll kill you, y’know.”

Sure enough, Ari felt uneasy in their apartment. The discolored half-moons under the feet of the coatrack stared at them like eyes with drooping eyelids. Anytime they heard a noise, whether it was the fridge clicking or the toilet filling, they jumped, feeling their stomach drop and their adrenaline rise, waiting for the snake to sink its teeth into them. Ari opened their windows, texted their landlord, texted Greg, and retrieved their small grey suitcase from beneath their bed. They unzipped it and inserted two button-down shirts, two pairs of shorts, three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear, and an extra undershirt. They aligned all of these within the suitcase, lining up the corners of the folded clothing and tucking the socks and underwear into the gaps along the edges. Then, from the bathroom, they retrieved their toothbrush and toothpaste, their deodorant, and their contact lens case. These they carefully sealed in a plastic zip-top bag and placed in the front pocket of the suitcase.

Their phone buzzed. Greg was parked outside.

Ari stared at the coatrack on their way out, resisting the urge to bend down and touch the ring. After a moment, they bent down anyway, feeling like an idiot. And picked it up. Feeling like an idiot.

It’s stupid, it’s obviously stupid, but if I take it I can prove to myself that it’s nothing. Because if nothing weird happens, and I have it, then it’s just a gas leak. This is the scientific method.

Ari didn’t quite believe that this was the scientific method, but they did believe that the scientific method was important, and that was going to have to be good enough. They slipped the ring into their pocket and left their apartment.

Greg had changed out of his work clothes, and Ari almost did a double take when he waved at them from the driver’s seat of a bright orange coupe. They didn’t think they’d ever seen his hair out of a hair net before, but now it floated free around his face like a dark cloud. He wore a pink t-shirt emblazoned with the words IT BE LIKE THAT and a pair of black jeans. Ari slid into the passenger seat and tucked their suitcase between their feet.

“Thank you again,” they said.

Greg waved his hand and started the car. “Don’t even. You let your landlord know?”

“Yeah, he said he’d check it out tonight. I should hear back in the morning.”

“If you don’t, you can sue.”

“Can I?”

Greg shrugged as he pulled the car out of Ari’s driveway. “I don’t fuckin’ know, man. But if you can’t, that’s on the legal system, not on me.”

The two of them drove in silence for a few minutes. Greg’s apartment was beside the bridge, almost exactly halfway between Ari’s place and the bakery. Ari had passed the building dozens of times but never noted it other than as a specimen of that ‘grey box with randomly-placed colorful plastic panels’ style of architecture that had been popping up recently. Greg had to punch in a code to gain access to the building and another to use the elevator up to his apartment, which was on the fifth floor. It was even smaller than Ari’s, with a full bed and a couch squished side-by-side along one wall, a desk against the second, a kitchenette taking up the third, and the door to the outside world, as well as a bathroom door and a closet door, on the fourth. It was messy. Blankets and t-shirts and socks sprawled over the couch; the desk was piled with books; the two square feet of counter space in the kitchenette were completely obscured by bowls and cups and silverware, but Ari couldn’t tell whether that was a function of Greg’s cleaning habits or just the fact that the apartment contained too many objects for its size. Either way, the mess made them itch, but they kept their mouth shut.

“It’s not much,” Greg said, “but it’s a hell of a lot better than getting poisoned. Put your stuff anywhere. Can I get you anything? Coffee? A snack? Have you eaten dinner? I’ve got some leftover barbecue in the fridge, or we could always order something.” He stood in the doorway as Ari placed their suitcase next to the couch. The self-assurance, the wry smile, the air of wisdom or jadedness or both beyond his years that Ari had become used to at work had all evaporated, and now Greg scuffed the carpet with the toe of his boot and pushed his hands deep into his pockets, looking very young.

“Um, no, I actually haven’t had dinner.”

“Oh, great! I mean – shit – alright, let’s get some food in you. Tacos sound okay?”

“What about your leftover barbecue?”

Greg was already pulling his phone out and dialing a number, shoulders squaring and chin lifting now that he had a purpose for his hands outside his pockets. “Nah, I’m not gonna make you eat my leftovers, I realized right after I said it that that would be rude. Besides, this is a celebratory fuckin’ occasion! The night I rescued Ari Tan from their gas leak!”

“Rescued is a strong word,” they replied, and sank down onto Greg’s couch to let him sort out the food arrangements. Although it was still a few hours until sunset, let alone bedtime, Ari felt exhaustion creeping into their bones, pulling their arms and legs downward, sucking them further into the comfort of the soft, overstuffed cushions of Greg’s couch. It seemed to Ari that they hadn’t been awake, really awake, in a long, long time. Ari thought of squinting into the orange sun that beat down over their graduation from the college, cooking them and their fellow seniors in their black polyester robes, and of hugging and hand-shaking their favorite professors goodbye and swearing to stay in touch and having the unpleasant feeling, as they clutched their diploma so hard it began to wrinkle in the heat, of having just woken up from a wonderful dream and wishing more than anything that they could go back to sleep.

I should reach out to some of my old professors, Ari thought, as they heard Greg, although he seemed very far away, letting them know that he was just popping out to pick up the food and he’d be back in fifteen minutes. They know all about burnout. They can help me deal with this whole grad school thing. I bet Dr. Pryor will be thrilled that I’m finally applying. And applying myself, ha-ha.

Ari sank further into the couch, feeling as though they were beginning a gentle descent through a great soft cloud, and as their head lolled back and sleep overtook them they realized the iron ring was situated not in their pocket but firmly on their index finger.

Huh, when did I –

And Ari was asleep.

They knew that they were asleep, or that they felt asleep, which made it much more strange that they could see the man with the robe and the staff and the snake standing in front of them in Greg’s cramped apartment. The whole room smelled like lilies. When Ari saw the snake, and when they saw the snake seeing them, they tensed up and willed themself to wake up, but they’d never gotten the hang of the whole lucid dreaming thing and they remained where they were, staring at the snake. It didn’t lunge this time, though. It stuck out its tongue at Ari, lazily, as if it were teasing them, and curled itself tighter around the staff.

“Ouk ei Gilbert Applewhite,” the man observed mildly.

“What? Wait, Gilbert Applewhite – why do I know that name?”

The man leaned over and peered intently at Ari. When he spoke again, it was in a language they had never heard, full of tonal lifts and depressions. He aspirated several of his consonants with breath that seemed to come not just from the back of his throat but deep in his stomach.

It took Ari several seconds to realize they did, in fact, know the language. They’d just never heard Ancient Greek spoken properly.

The man said something about Ari being destroyed, or possibly killed, and if Ari’s grammar knowledge was still functional in this bizarre dream, he had put it in the middle voice, which in context maybe meant something more like Ari destroying themself, which wasn’t much more reassuring than the alternative possibilities. Then something else about pain in their body and he gestured first at Ari’s neck, and then his own.

“Are you – are you gonna hurt me? Was that you threatening to cut my head off? Because if there’s an option I’d like for you to please not cut my head off.”

The man cocked his head.

Ari racked their brain for the right words. Their working knowledge of written Greek was about as good, they thought, as any high-achieving Classics undergraduate’s could be, but generally speaking, dead language courses weren’t big on oral exams. “Um. Me apokteineis? -teneis? The future is -teneis, right?”

The man laughed and approached Ari, who tried to scramble up off the couch, or at least find something with which to defend themself, but it felt as though they were moving through molasses. Their limbs were heavy and useless. The snake’s tongue flickered in and out of its mouth.

“Ouk se apokteno. Se iasomai. Eimi Asklepios.”

“Holy crap. Did I hear you right? Asclepius? Like god-of-healing Asclepius? Or just someone else named Asclepius?”

The man didn’t respond. He extended the staff towards Ari, and the snake unspooled itself, writhing towards them. Ari held up their ineffectual, heavy hands in an attempt at self-defense, but the snake curled itself around their shoulders like a scarf. As the cool belly of the snake grazed their neck and shoulders, the tightness and pain of the stress they’d gotten used to carrying evaporated as if they’d just had an intense massage. Ari’s head felt like it was floating above their body, like a puck on an air hockey table.

“Soi xaritas deido,” Ari sighed.

The man – or rather, the god Asclepius, apparently, at least if Ari hadn’t misheard – looked concerned. After a moment, Ari realized what they’d said.

“Didomi! Soi xaritas didomi. I’m not afraid of thanks. That was dumb. Sorry.”

The man nodded at Ari’s correction, although it wasn’t clear whether he’d understood their apology. In fairness, Ari didn’t understand why they were apologizing, so they were probably even.

The snake finished its half-circuit around Ari’s shoulders and extended itself back towards the man, who offered it the staff. It curled up around it and settled back into place, its tongue flicking in and out at intervals.

“Pou eisi Gilbert Applewhite?”

“Um. Ouk oida. I don’t even know who he is. Or – I mean his name sounds familiar as all get-out, but I don’t remember why. And I actually don’t know where he is. Why do you – shoot, how do I say this – uh, ti erotas? Or maybe, uh… epi to erotas? That’s why do you ask, right? Or would it be epi tou…”

Dr. Pryor would kill me if he heard how bad I am at this, Ari thought.

But the man seemed to understand. He gestured to the iron ring on Ari’s finger and said some more words that Ari struggled to catch. The implication, however, seemed to be that the ring belonged to Gilbert Applewhite, and the man was wondering why Ari had the ring and, relatedly, where Gilbert had gone.

“I really don’t know. Ouk oida.”

The man seemed about to say something else, but before he could, the snake opened its mouth, displaying its fangs, which shone with the same cruel sparkle as the knife Ari had stared down just days earlier – had that really only happened this week? Out of the snake’s mouth came a familiar voice.

“Ari,” said Greg, or the snake mimicking Greg. “Ari. Wake up. I’ve got sustenance.”

Ari nearly hit Greg in the face. They had been trying to lift a hand, to reach out toward the man and try to ask him more questions, but they were expecting their arm to feel heavy again. As they woke up, however, it moved like an arm normally did, which meant Ari whipped it up with too much speed and force into the air in front of them, which was now occupied not by a strange dream-man and his dream-snake but by the very real Greg clutching a very real (and very delicious-smelling) plastic bag. He got out of the way just in time.

“Oh – shoot, sorry.”

“Damn, Ari, d’you punch your alarm clock every morning, too?” Greg asked, offering them his free hand to pull them up from the couch. After a moment’s hesitation, Ari took it. Greg’s hand was warm and solid and real.

As they stood up, Ari realized their neck felt like it had in the dream. Like somehow sleeping in what should have been a horribly un-ergonomic position on Greg’s old couch had undone the years of kinks in their muscles.

“Weird dreams. Which is extra weird, because I never dream. But I think I really needed that nap,” they said. “I feel a lot better.”

“Glad I could provide. Or that my couch could. Anyway.”

Greg turned his attention to the kitchenette and began rummaging through the dishes until he found a pair of clean glasses. When his back was turned, Ari quickly slipped the ring off and jammed it back into their pocket.

Maybe that just means there’s still carbon monoxide in me. Or it was just a weird dream that has nothing to do with carbon monoxide. But I don’t remember putting that ring on, and I don’t understand why I’m not carrying all my tension in my neck anymore.

“Weird question,” they said aloud, and Greg glanced at them over his shoulder. “Does the name Gilbert Applewhite ring any bells for you?”

“Nope. Why?”

“Dunno. I think I saw it in a newspaper or something and I’m trying to remember who the heck he is.”

“Beer?” Greg asked, indicating his own glass, which was about half head and poured directly from a tall can of fancy craft beer. Ari couldn’t help but smile.

“Why am I not surprised that you’re a beer snob?”

“Not my fault that all the cheap stuff tastes like piss. You want some or not?”

Ari had never really developed the taste buds for beer in college despite its constant availability, but then again, that had been what Greg referred to as the cheap stuff. “Just a little bit,” they replied.

Greg emptied what remained in the can into a second glass, pouring it down the side so Ari received significantly fewer bubbles. The beer in the glass was darker than Ari was used to, a rich amber, and when Greg handed it to them, along with a Styrofoam container of tacos al pastor, Ari caught the scent of oranges rising out of the glass. They took a swig as they sank back down into the couch. Greg didn’t have a table.

“This stuff is pretty good, actually,” they said.

“I’ve got more in the fridge if you want it.” Greg moved to sit down beside them on the couch, then hesitated, casting his eyes around as if waiting for some kind of sign. “Can I…”

“It’s your couch.”

“Right.” Greg eased himself down next to them.

The two ate in silence. The tacos tasted as good as they smelled, and Ari savored each tiny chunk of marinated pork and each sweet, sharp burst of onion as they devoured their dinner. They finished their beer halfway through the second taco and Greg got up and poured them more, most of another can, without being asked. He used the rest of the can to top up his own drink.

“So after this,” Greg said as Ari was wiping the last drops of al pastor marinade from the corners of their mouth, “do you want to take a walk down along the river, or watch a movie, or some shit like that?”

Ari assessed the situation. They felt loose and fizzy from the orange-scented beer and full and sleepy from the food. The sun would be setting soon. It would be beautiful over the river if the two of them went out for a walk to see it. And some mindless, junk-food entertainment sounded wonderful. They’d intended to revise a few of their diversity statements for the more progressively-oriented schools to which they were applying, but that could wait, couldn’t it? Then again, Greg’s eyes were wide and he was leaning forward towards Ari and they found themself unable to tell whether this nervous, homemaking Greg, much like the confident, bossy work Greg, was flirting with them.

“Are you flirting with me?” Ari asked. Greg’s eyebrows shot up, and Ari cleared their throat. “I actually didn’t mean to say that. Sorry. I was just thinking it. Because I’m really bad at telling. When people are. You know.”

“Do you want me to be?”

“Uh.” Ari considered, weighing the factors of Greg. Cute. Three or four years younger. Co-worker. Smoker. Knight-in-shining-armor fantasies. Did actually save them from potential illness and/or death. Based on that response, probably flirting with them.

“You don’t need to answer that,” Greg said as Ari stared blankly at him. “Dumb fuckin’ question. Shouldn’t have asked it. Let’s watch a movie or something and forget we both just had that interaction.”

“Can we go for a walk, actually? I want to catch the sunset.”

Even though the sun was beginning to dip below the treeline and the air temperature had cooled to something a human being might be able to experience comfortably for several minutes at a time, the river was still full of people. Adult people, mostly; all the kids had long since gone home with their parents, but the high schoolers were still leaping from rocks or tree branches, the college students were still having chicken fights near the banks, and the twenty- and thirty-somethings were still passing joints around with their feet swishing in the water. Ari and Greg walked past these people, ambling along a path carved into the riverbank by thousands of feet over hundreds of years, until they found a quieter spot. The trees were denser here. The river ran deeper, and the precipitous edge of the riverbank was marked with a large chunk of sparkling granite. The pines and maples formed almost a perfect ring around a dusty, pebbled clearing covered in pine needles. The last of the day’s sunlight filtered down, greenish-gold. Ari and Greg walked through the clearing, getting as close to the river as they could, and sat on the edge of the steep bank with their legs dangling down towards the water. The sounds of the people carried across the water so well it sounded as if Greg and Ari were caught in the middle of a chicken fight.

As Ari sat down, they noticed that the chunk of granite was engraved. A set of coordinates above a name: Lookout Point. They nudged Greg and read the inscription.

“Lookout Point,” he repeated.

“Look out.”

They lapsed into silence for another minute. The sun dipped lower toward the treeline.

“Did you hear Virgil’s leaving?” Greg asked.

“What? No, since when?”

“He mentioned it in passing when I came back in from lunch today. Apparently he got a contract with some agency down in Boston to take his modeling thing full-time. He leaves in two weeks.”

“Did I even know he modeled?”

“I dunno, did you?”

“I guess it’s not surprising. He’s got those cheekbones.”

Greg laid back, leaning on his elbows and staring up at the sky. “Wonder if they’ll make him dye his hair back to its natural color.”

“Oh, yeah, what even is his natural color?”

“Hell if I know. When I met him, it was this screaming neon orange. A few days later I walk in and bam, purple.”

“Do you ever wish you were somewhere else?” Ari asked, mimicking Greg’s pose. The sunset had begun in earnest now, and the sky above the trees was just as screaming orange as Virgil’s hair used to be.

“Not at the moment,” Greg said. “River, sunset, cool co-worker… this is pretty ideal.”

“I mean other than Full English,” Ari said. “You’ve been working there since you were just a kid. Do you ever think about moving on?”

“Not really. Teddy’s a good guy, and if I stick around long enough I’ll probably be able to take over for him someday. I like using my hands. Free food at the end of every shift. I get to boss you around. What’s not to love? Besides, if I tried to go anywhere else it’d be so fuckin’, I dunno, uncertain. I like that Full English is steady. I like that I know what’s coming.”

“Okay, but what if you knew where else you were going? Like a magic portal to your guaranteed dream job opened up next to the dumpsters. You wouldn’t go through it?”

Greg laughed. “Definitely not. That sounds like such a trap. I don’t trust that shit. You’d go through it?”

“In a heartbeat. If only to find out what my dream job actually is.”

“Thought it was, like, fancy tenured professor in a tweed suit. With a pipe and a home library of antique books.”

“I feel like that’s more of a dream lifestyle.”

“Professor is a job.”

The clouds skidding across the horizon were purple now, and the rest of the sky was turning a sweet pink. “I guess,” Ari said, “but in that case I know where the magic portal to my dream job is. It’s six more years of school, at least, and fighting for my life against a bunch of other PhDs with the same dream job and barely feeding myself on the adjunct circuit for years. And maybe then I get to go through the portal. But maybe I don’t.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Well, yeah, it is. A lot of stuff is depressing about being a grown-up. But I guess the tenure thing is maybe extra depressing. Even though there’s all these cool young people coming into the field and doing super innovative research and thinking about stuff in all these weird new ways, the only people with job security are the same old white guys they’ve always been. It’s like they just hand the magic portal from old white guy to old white guy.”

Greg turned to Ari and raised an eyebrow. “And you’re telling me you’d still rather do all that than stay on at Full English?”

“Yeah – I mean, no, not really, but… it’s my only chance at going through the magic portal, you know? I just want someone to hand the portal to me instead of another old white guy. And I don’t think there’s some kind of secret way to get that to happen other than a couple decades of busting my butt for it.”

“Be cool if there was, though,” Greg said. “A secret way.”

“No kidding.”

The sun had dipped entirely below the horizon, and though the tops of the trees still glowed pink, the woods were dusky and the water of the river was dark. Ari pushed themself up and stood, dusting off their shorts. Greg pushed himself up, too, but did so more vigorously than Ari had, and he stumbled as his heels skidded towards the steep riverbank. His arms pinwheeled as he tried and failed to get his balance on the loose dirt beneath him. Ari’s arm shot out and grabbed him almost before Ari’s brain understood what was happening, and Greg righted himself with a deep sigh.

“Guess we’re even,” he said. “Rescue for rescue.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Man, maybe that’s why it’s called Lookout Point, though, huh? Look out.”

“There ought to be a fence there or something,” Ari said.

“Or they could just put up a sign next to the rock. No idiots,” Greg replied with a self-deprecating grin that glimmered in the last of the twilight.

“In that case we should both probably get out of here before they put the sign up.”

Ari was grateful that Greg didn’t make a whole song and dance out of who was going to sleep where. It seemed that Ari’s flirting question had been enough to shock Greg into normalcy. While Ari used the bathroom and brushed their teeth, Greg laid out an extra set of sheets and a pillow on the couch and laid down on it, allowing for no argument that Ari wouldn’t take his bed from him or that Ari was the guest and he insisted. For an hour or so, the two of them laid in silence, Ari deleting and re-writing their diversity statement line by line and Greg reading a battered volume of manga with a long title that Ari couldn’t decipher. When Ari ran out of ways to explain why they were totally, definitely revolutionary and cool for being a queer classicist of color – as if the Spartan military hadn’t been just as queer, as if the Lydians and Phrygians hadn’t been just as Asian – they searched the name Gilbert Applewhite.

The top search results were all heartfelt obituaries for a beloved local jazz musician from Baton Rouge, which didn’t ring any bells for Ari. They clicked through the obituaries anyway to see if there were relatives they might have known, but to no avail. Several results down, though, was an item in a student paper about a different Gilbert Applewhite, one who had, at the time the piece was published in 2011, just accepted a new tenure-track position in the Classics department at St. Julian’s College.

That makes a lot more sense than the jazz guy.

Ari redirected their search to Google Scholar instead and came up with dozens of hits. Gilbert Applewhite’s PhD dissertation was at the top of the list. For Ari’s entire senior year of college, Gilbert’s dissertation had been one of seventy-two tabs open on their laptop, all of which they’d used to finish their thesis. His name was on the first page of their bibliography. A History and Reconstruction of Greek Mithraic Cult Activity had informed a lot of Ari’s thinking, and they had used it several times to justify their assumption that Euripides probably knew at least a few things about the way mystery cults operated. Gilbert Applewhite had lived on their computer for several months of their life. Ari felt a loud sigh of relief escape them.

“You good?” Greg asked, glancing over his shoulder at them.

“Yeah. Finally remembered who that Gilbert Applewhite guy is. I used his dissertation in my thesis.”

“Oh, nice. I hate it when there’s something on the tip of my tongue but I can’t quite get it.”

“Anyway, I think it’s bedtime for me, if that’s okay?”

Greg nodded and, in a motion so quick and violent that Ari felt their heart quicken as it had when they saw the guy and his knife, Greg threw his book across the room at the light switch by the door. The book made contact, and the room was plunged into darkness.

“Sorry,” Greg said from the void. “It’s easier than getting up.”

Well that explains some of the mess, anyway.

“Good aim,” Ari replied. “Sleep well.”

“G’night. Sweet dreams.”

Knowing I probably absorbed his name through osmosis makes dreaming about him a lot less scary, Ari thought as they stared up at where they imagined Greg’s ceiling probably was, somewhere on the other side of the darkness. Still doesn’t explain the sudden relaxation, but maybe I shouldn’t be looking that particular gift horse in the mouth. I feel like I can safely say that this was all just some weird but ultimately totally explicable stuff that happened to me. Caused by carbon monoxide and also stress.

On Greg’s bedside table, Ari’s phone buzzed, and they reached over to turn it to silent mode. But the text on the screen was from their landlord. He’d been to their apartment and checked it thoroughly for any sign of a leak. In fact, he’d investigated all the apartments in the old farmhouse, just to be safe. It was completely fine. No leaks. If Ari wanted to be certain, they were welcome to pick up a carbon monoxide alarm from the store and he’d reimburse them for half the cost – never mind that the apartment should have had one in the first place, Ari thought – but there was no cause for concern.

Okay, so just weird but ultimately totally explicable stuff caused by stress. And not carbon monoxide.

Greg was snoring faintly. His nose whistled when he breathed out.

Eff it.

Using their phone screen for light so as not to wake Greg, Ari padded across the floor to their suitcase, rummaged around in their neatly folded dirty laundry, and pulled the ring from the pocket of their shorts. That same smell of lilies wafted faintly from the ring, and in the dark, without being able to focus on those random Greek letters or how the ring got into their apartment, Ari realized for the first time how strange it was for an iron ring to smell strongly of lilies, particularly after being left on the floor for some days and then carried around in their pocket.

They slipped the ring onto their index finger and said a silent, joking (maybe half-joking, but they didn’t want to think about that) prayer to Asclepius and his snake. Give me another dream. This time explaining what the heck is going on with this ring.

Ari crawled back into bed and was asleep seconds after their head touched the pillow.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.