Greek Revival: Chapter 4

IV.

Ari opened their eyes and saw a group of about a dozen men in a study. The tall, elegant shelves were lined with books and the floor was paneled in dark wood. Moonlight shone in through the window, illuminating the faces of some of the men, although several more were concealed in the shadows. Ari guessed the youngest was in his late thirties and the eldest was certainly pushing eighty, but most of them were solidly middle-aged. They were all well-dressed and stuffy-looking, greying elegantly around the temples, rocking pocket squares and wingtips. One of them wore a tweed suit and a coffee-colored waistcoat that Ari could swear they recognized, but his face was blurry and indistinct. Most of the faces were. All of the men were clustered around a large desk, atop which sat an urn made of red clay and etched with simple geometric designs. Ari, seemingly invisible to the men, leaned over and saw that the urn was half full of a thin, clear liquid that smelled so cloyingly sweet they almost choked. The youngest man, whose face, unlike the others’, was clear and bright, had a sharp, narrow chin and blond hair that was beginning to thin on the crown of his head. He opened a cardboard box Ari hadn’t noticed before and removed a small lizard, dangling it by its tail.

Ari watched, open-mouthed, as the man lowered the lizard into the urn. The lizard struggled and splashed but couldn’t escape up the urn’s tall, slick sides. None of the men tried to save the lizard. They watched it intently. Hungrily, maybe. After a few minutes of desperate panic, the lizard sank deeper into the urn, drowned. The eldest man held out one of his age-spotted hands, and into it the other men began piling iron rings identical to the one on Ari’s finger. There was one ring for each man, and once he had them all, the eldest plunged the rings into the urn. He swirled them around in the liquid before letting them sink to the bottom. Then, he picked up the urn and carried it to the window. He lifted the urn so the light from the night sky shone on it.

Behind him, one of the many indistinct men – the one in the waistcoat – tilted his head and murmured, “To the left a bit, Doctor. It’s not quite lined up with Polaris yet.”

The old man nodded but said nothing. He moved the urn to the left a bit.

The urn began to glow. Ari heard the liquid inside sloshing violently, though the old man was holding the vessel steady. At once, the men all broke into a deep, droning chant. It was Greek, and though it began with several nonsense syllables, Ari soon caught the name Asclepius. The men repeated the chant seven times, and by the end Ari understood it.

“Send me the true Asclepius. Do not send a lying demon. Send me the true god.”

After the seventh repetition, the glowing and sloshing stopped, and the old man returned the urn to the desk. He held out his hand, and the young blond man handed him a pair of long iron tongs, the kind that might be used to turn wood in a fire. The man plunged the tongs into the urn and pulled out the rings one by one, laying each on the desk in turn. When the urn was empty, he handed it to the young man. As the urn changed hands, Ari peeked in and saw that the liquid, and the lizard, had disappeared entirely. The young man pulled a tiny pouch from his pocket and emptied its contents, which looked like a few beige pebbles, into the bottom of the urn. From another pocket, he pulled a pair of larger rocks. He struck them together, and a spark dropped into the urn. Ari heard the pebbles catch on fire and smelled frankincense, which mingled with the scent of lilies.

Each man picked up a ring from the desk and waved each ring in turn through the white smoke that curled from the mouth of the urn. They began to chant again.

“Oaeiaps oais lysiphtha, lord Asclepius, appear!” They said it over and over. The urn began to billow out more and more white smoke until the whole room was thick with it and the scent of lilies was overwhelming, choking. One by one, Ari watched the men’s eyes close. They collapsed to the floor, fast asleep, in quick succession. Ari glanced down at the iron ring on their own finger and felt their eyelids begin to droop.

Ari forced their eyes open, breathing hard. They were back in Greg’s apartment, in Greg’s bed.

There was a snake curled up on their chest.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Ari muttered. The snake didn’t seem fazed by their discomfort and wriggled itself around, settling into an even more relaxed position, which also happened to be a position that weighed even more heavily on Ari’s lungs. The snake opened its mouth in a massive yawn, displaying all of its teeth and practically turning its face inside-out, and the sound of Greg’s whistling snore emerged from its mouth as it did so.

“Nun oidas,” said a voice at Ari’s feet. They squinted through the darkness and saw the outline of the man. He glowed faintly at the edges, and his garment – a chiton, Ari supposed – swirled around him as if in a faint breeze.

“The youngest guy – ho neanies – that was Gilbert Applewhite?”

The man nodded.

“And you – you’re actually Asclepius? Like, the god of medicine? Ei su ho theos Asklepios?”

He nodded again.

“Okay. Cool. Yeah, alright. This is normal. Um, okay, operating under the assumption that you’re how my subconscious has chosen to tell me things and not an actual magic deity, why is me having Gilbert’s ring so important? And who were those other guys?”

Asclepius moved closer, staring blankly at Ari. Even the snake seemed confused. Ari sighed and held up a finger as they attempted to translate their thoughts into Greek. It just figures that even my dreams are making me do Greek drills.

“Okay. Here. Ho kyklos Gilbertou – I’m just gonna assume his name declines normally and move on – megistos estin. Right? Yes? It’s important?”

Asclepius nodded. He explained, gesturing frequently at the ring, that it was important because it called him. All the men’s rings called him.

“And who were those guys? Poioi eisin hoi andres?”

Asclepius’ nose scrunched up, and he shrugged. “Pi Gamma Mu,” he answered.

“What – you mean like the honor society?”

He squinted at Ari, seemed to decide that whatever they were saying, it was probably incorrect, and shook his head. “Magoi. Pharmakeis.”

Magicians. Sorcerers.

Or pharmacists, Ari supposed, but given the presence of drowned lizards and moonlight chanting, Ari was leaning towards sorcery.

“You can’t be serious. Magoi? Like, they actually think they’re doing magic?”

Asclepius nodded gravely.

“And I’m supposed to trust you, even though I’m dreaming? Even though this isn’t real? Houtos ouk aletheios estin?”

Asclepius shook his head. “Estin aletheios.” It’s real.

“I don’t believe you.”

The snake, which Ari had believed to be asleep until that moment, flashed its mouth open. Ari caught half a glimpse of its long, white fangs before it sank them, hard, into their forearm. They shrieked in pain, and the snake let go.

“Holy crap! Was that really necessary?”

The snake flicked its tongue out at them and settled back to sleep on their chest. Their arm was marked with four punctures, perfectly round, two on top, two on the bottom. Ari rubbed the area and groaned at the pain.

“Great. Thanks,” they grumbled. “So let’s just say magic is real. That means if I wasn’t wearing this ring, I wouldn’t be getting bitten by your effing snake, I wouldn’t even be seeing you – oh, shoot, is that an optative? I’m not even gonna try to put together an optative right now – ouk ekho ton kyklon, ouk se blepo?”

Asclepius nodded. “Ho kyklos me kalei.”

“Cool. Great. So if I just –”

Ari pulled the ring off their finger and opened their eyes, although they were sure they’d already been open. They were still in Greg’s apartment, in Greg’s bed. There was no snake on their chest. No god at the foot of the bed. Greg’s snoring was definitely coming from Greg this time. The ring was heavy and cool in the palm of their hand. It smelled just like the liquid in the urn, albeit much fainter. And Ari’s arm hurt.

They reached out for their phone and used its screen to illuminate their forearm. Four round puncture wounds. Two on each side of their forearm. They weren’t bleeding. They didn’t look fresh. There was nothing in the bed that could have bored four holes into Ari, and certainly nothing that could have done so without causing some bleeding. The wounds had just appeared there. Like magic.

Ari didn’t usually dream. When they were younger, they’d get small snatches of scenes or noises that dissipated quickly, and they’d almost never remember them when they woke up. When they’d hit college, they’d begun staying up late and waking up early, and by the time senior year came around and they were in crunch time for their thesis, Ari slept only when their body forced them to, head on the desk beside their laptop or curled up in a booth at the dining hall. Those had been thick, black, empty sleeps, and even after they’d finished their thesis and graduated and moved on, they couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a dream. And they had never, they were sure, had a dream this vivid, and certainly not one they’d remembered for more than a few seconds after waking up, and certainly not one that had literally bitten them. It couldn’t be blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning. The last time they’d been this stressed, they’d dreamed less, not more, and they hadn’t ended up with mystery holes in their arm. The only parts of their life that had changed in any way were the mysterious appearance of the ring and the relocation of the coatrack.

And the guy.

I don’t think there’s any explaining that bite, Ari thought. Or if there is, I don’t know how to do it without believing in magic. Or believing that there’s something seriously wrong with me. But… iron rings and magic and Greek. I feel like at this point I’d have to be an idiot not to consider the fact that everything the guy mentioned started happening to me. Which means either he’s causing it or he’s right. And either way, that means I need to find him again.

Ari put the ring back in their suitcase so there was no chance of it ending up on their finger again and sank into a determined, dark, dreamless sleep.

***

Ari rose around the same time as the sun did, bandaged their arm, and hid the bandages under a long-sleeved button-down. They killed time by working halfheartedly on their diversity statements. When Greg woke up, almost an hour later, they told him about their landlord’s message and asked him to bring them home.

“What about work?” Greg asked with the wide-eyed confusion of someone who had never in his life considered not going to work.

“I’ll text Teddy. If it’s not a gas leak, I need to go to a doctor and figure out what’s wrong with me,” Ari lied, “and I’d rather do that today than have a breakdown in the walk-in, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Fair enough.”

Greg made small talk as he drove Ari home, wondering aloud what Teddy’s bizarre new baking project of the day would be and complaining about how annoying it was to find a doctor in Full English’s pitiful health insurance network. Soon, he pulled into Ari’s driveway. They climbed out of the passenger seat and pulled their suitcase from the footwell.

“Thank you again, Greg. For everything. I think this is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Greg raised an eyebrow. “People oughta do more nice things for you, then. See you tomorrow.”

When they entered their apartment, Ari noticed right away that the coatrack was back in its usual spot. That, at least, could be explained by their landlord moving it. After all, their kitchen was in disarray and it was obvious he hadn’t bothered to tidy up after tearing the place apart looking for leaks. There was no reason he would have moved the coatrack in particular, since Ari could be fairly certain there were no gas lines running through the wall that separated their bedroom from the rest of the apartment, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Although they’d only been gone for a night, and although they still felt a sense of unease that someone had been here without their permission, the little apartment felt warm and expansive after Greg’s cramped grey studio, and the mess in the kitchen gave Ari a proper cleaning project. They quickly unzipped their suitcase and put everything inside it back into its rightful place – toiletries in the bathroom, dirty laundry in the laundry basket, suitcase (still containing the ring) under the bed – before rolling up their sleeves and tackling the kitchen.

As they stacked dishes and rearranged their positions in the cupboards, Ari considered how to orchestrate another meeting with the guy. Nanjing was likely their best bet, although Ari didn’t particularly like the idea of loitering around in the alley where he’d almost stabbed them. If he was smart, he also wouldn’t be loitering around in the alley where he’d almost stabbed them. Returning to the scene of the crime was one of the dumbest mistakes a would-be mugger could make. But they couldn’t just wander around the neighborhood and hope to run into him eventually. They’d gone to college in Poole for four years and lived in this particular neighborhood for another two, and they’d never seen him before a few months ago. And three sightings in three months wasn’t a great hit rate when they were hoping to find him in the next twelve hours.

They decided to begin with the places they’d seen him before – Turner’s, the park, Nanjing Marketplace – and ask around. If anyone knew him or had seen him recently, great. If not, they could re-assess. Maybe by the time they’d made the rounds, they thought, the realization of how absurd this quest was, on every possible level, would kick in and they’d go back to their normal life and act as though this week never happened.

Ari pulled a disinfecting wipe from the container beside the sink and wiped down the counters and the stovetop, folding the wipe in half with each new surface to ensure that they weren’t spreading dirt from one to the other. When they were finished, they threw away the wipe and washed their hands. The kitchen was right again. Everything was in its place. They still had to sweep the rest of the floors, but that, at least, could wait until evening. For now, Ari grabbed their keys and drove themself to Paige Turner’s Books and Beverages.

It was packed when they walked in. They had woken up early at Greg’s, but by now they were squarely in the middle of the breakfast rush. The line for the counter stretched almost onto the sidewalk, and Ari had to squeeze close to the person ahead of them to prevent the door from hitting them as it closed. They pinned their snake-bitten arm to their side so it wouldn’t be jostled by the other people in line. The pain from the morning had faded to a dull throb, just enough that Ari couldn’t forget it was there.

They hadn’t intended to purchase anything from the café, but the smell of warm biscuits and tangy goat cheese and rich coffee was intoxicating, and they realized they hadn’t, in fact, eaten breakfast at Greg’s. Ari kept their place in line and scanned the café area for the guy.

He wasn’t there, as far as they could tell, although many other people were. The counter and the small tables were all full of people reading, doing crosswords, and sipping a dizzying variety of caffeinated beverages. Ari leaned over to keep an eye on the counter as people picked up their food, but none of those people was the guy.

Ari was so focused on their observations that they took too large a step forward and bumped into the person ahead of them in line.

“Oh, sorry,” they mumbled.

The man in front of them turned around and beamed. “Ariste! What a wonderful coincidence!”

Ari couldn’t keep an identical grin from spreading across their face. “As always, Dr. Pryor, just Ari is fine. It’s good to see you, professor.”

Doctor Edward Hamish Pryor, PhD, was tall and willowy, with a glint in his small green eyes and a pair of round spectacles that he kept on a gold chain around his neck. His face was etched with deep lines, and though most of his hair had been gone for decades, he retained a stately grey ring around the temples and the back of his head that gave him the air of a Franciscan friar, and in fact he had studied to become a Catholic priest for a few years before switching to the secular pursuit of Greek and Latin. Now he was the chair of the college’s Classics department, and he looked every inch the tenured professor. Rain or shine, hot or cold, he always wore a suit, complete with complementary waistcoat and shiny black shoes. Today the suit was a pale, overcast grey and the vest was eggplant purple.

“I thought you’d have a class now,” Ari said. “Or are you letting people sleep in because it’s the summer session?”

When they had studied with Dr. Pryor, he had preferred to hold his courses first thing in the morning. When young minds are freshest, he’d insisted, although Ari, who had regularly stayed up almost until sunrise studying for his notoriously difficult exams, begged to differ.

“Alas, the college in their infinite wisdom did away with the eight o’clock slot last year,” he sighed. “Something about mental health, I’m told, although I don’t see how a new schedule will fix anything. Several of my colleagues and I objected to the change – if they’re really so concerned about their students’ brains, they ought to preserve morning classes and spend their time and resources on making the undergraduate dormitories slightly less abysmal – but I’m afraid we were overruled. My first class isn’t until nine-thirty, if you can believe that.”

“Nine-thirty? But all those young minds must be so dull by then.”

Dr. Pryor nodded sagely, and Ari giggled. The line inched forward.

“So, if I may ask, what brings you to Turner’s? I thought you’d be at that bakery of yours.”

Dr. Pryor’s pronunciation of bakery dripped with disdain, but Ari tried not to take offense. “I’m looking for someone,” they answered. Dr. Pryor raised an eyebrow, and they scrambled for a convincing lie that didn’t involve magic or muggings. “Last time I was here we walked away with each other’s laptops. I left his with the employees but he hasn’t returned mine yet, so I’m trying to find him.”

“How frustrating. But does this mean you’ve left that job?”

“No, I just have the day off today.” Dr. Pryor grimaced. “But,” Ari continued, searching his eyes for a spark of approval, “I’ll only be there for another six months or so. I’m finally applying to PhD programs, so with any luck, at this time next year I’ll be jetting across the pond to Oxford or Cambridge or somewhere equally stuffy and impressive-sounding.”

Dr. Pryor’s wrinkled face split into a wide, proud smile. “Oh, thank goodness. We were all beginning to worry about you, Ariste. But everything in its own time, of course. I should never have doubted you’d go on to do great things. We’ll make a proper Greek man out of you yet.”

The woman in front of Dr. Pryor paid for her order and moved to wait at the counter. He glanced over his shoulder at the cashier, who was motioning him forward.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve got to get straight back to campus after this, but we must catch up in an atmosphere that’s not quite so… rowdy. Why don’t you come by the new house for dinner? Say, next Tuesday?”

“Sir,” said the cashier, “please step up to the counter so I can take your order.”

“Send me an email,” Dr. Pryor said, pronouncing email with the same disdain as bakery, “and I’ll give you the details and the address.”

“Have a good breakfast, professor.”

Ari tapped out an email to the professor while they waited behind him. They listened as Dr. Pryor ordered a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich and an Irish Breakfast tea, hot. Ari grew up thinking tea was gross. They’d become a coffee drinker in high school; during an all-nighter studying for the PSATs, they’d swiped one of their mother’s jars of overnight cold brew and never looked back. But Dr. Pryor’s office contained, in addition to hundreds of leather-bound commentaries on Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics and the Sophists, an electric kettle and a small rack of different types of tea. Ari had first visited his office during the fall semester of their sophomore year. Dr. Pryor had been assigned to them as their major advisor before they’d even taken a class with him.

His door had been open, but Ari had knocked on the frame anyway. “Um, Dr. Pryor?”

He had glanced up from the large volume open on his desk. “Yes, come in. Who might you be?”

“Ari Tan. I think I have an appointment.”

A flash of surprise had crossed his face, and he’d said, “Ah, the famous Ari Tan. I admit I was expecting a young man. Well, no matter. May I offer you some tea?”

Ari had been too nervous to refuse. The professor offered Ari several different types, and, not wanting to admit they had no idea what the difference was between ceylon and oolong, they had picked the one with the most fun name, which was Red Rose Rooibos.

“A fine choice,” the professor had said, putting the kettle on to heat up and rummaging around in a drawer of his fine mahogany desk until he came up with a pair of plain white teacups. “Rooibos technically isn’t a tea at all, you know; it contains no tea leaves, only the African rooibos bush. Nor is it caffeinated. I, however, find it too delicious to quibble, don’t you?”

When Ari sipped their tea a few minutes later, they found that they agreed. The rooibos was sweet, spicy, delicately floral, and it tasted nothing like the powdered tea mix that had lived in the back of Ari’s mother’s coffee cabinet. Ari had had to restrain themself from drinking the whole cup at once.

“So,” Dr. Pryor had said in between delicate sips of his own cup of rooibos, “your professors have told me to expect great things from you.”

“Oh. Um, that’s very kind of them.”

Dr. Pryor shook his head. “They aren’t just being polite. I don’t recall another student in the past decade getting above 90 percent on one of Professor Martineau’s introductory Greek exams, much less all of them.”

“Wow. Uh.”

“What do you plan to do with that brain of yours?”

Ari took another sip of their tea. “I was hoping to be an archaeologist, I think? I don’t know. I’ve always had a thing for learning about old architectural styles, and it would be so cool to go out and discover new stuff.”

Dr. Pryor pursed his lips. “Archaeology,” he said flatly. “Are you certain?”

“Well, no, I guess not. I mean, I’m only nineteen, and –”

“Very good. There’s time yet for you, then. I fear your linguistic talents would only be squandered in the field. All that dust and hot sun. As I say, I’ve been told you’re a brilliant student, and that you’ll go on to do great things, Miss… ter… Ari… I’m sorry, what would you like to be called? In a formal sense.”

“Ideally? Doctor.”

Dr. Pryor leaned back in his chair and laughed, a bubbling, warm laugh that made Ari feel much the same way as the rooibos had. “I believe that’s still a few years off,” he said, “but I’m sure you’ll get there someday.”

“In that case, I think Mister is fine. It’s a lot better than Miss, anyway.”

“Wonderful. Just like a proper Greek man. You’ll go on to do great things, Mister Ari Tan.”

Now, at the counter, Ari stepped up to face the cashier and ordered a dirty chai latte and a bagel with dill cream cheese. As they waited for the card reader to accept their PIN, Ari turned to the cashier.

“Hey, I’m looking for a guy I met here a while back. Tall, white, dyed blond hair, always wears sunglasses, has some of the weirdest fashion sense I’ve ever seen. We’ve spoken all of once but it was a really interesting conversation and I want to talk to him again. Plus he accidentally stole my laptop. Has he been in lately?”

The cashier cocked her head. “I think I know who you’re talking about. Does he sometimes wear a big Indiana Jones hat?”

“Yes! That’s him!”

“He used to come in all the time. He would tip extra so we would make him off-menu drinks with a bunch of booze. But I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.” She gestured at the mob of people waiting behind Ari. “Guess we scared him off.”

“Do you know his name?”

The cashier frowned. “You said he has your laptop?”

“Yeah, and I have his. Sorry, I wouldn’t ask normally, but…”

She nodded briskly. “He always paid with cash, so it wouldn’t be in the system. Maybe ask Flora? She’s got a good memory, and she used to make his drinks a lot.” The card reader beeped, and Ari took back their card and thanked the cashier. They loitered by the counter, waiting for both their food and Flora to appear. Flora was first, with black hair tied up in a bun, her name tag pinned neatly to her breast pocket, balancing several plates of avocado toast on both arms.

“Hey, sorry,” Ari said, waving her down after she distributed the toast. “The cashier told me to ask you about the guy with the sunglasses and the Indiana Jones hat who used to come in here all the time. Do you know his name?”

Flora pressed her lips together. To Ari’s immense gratitude, she didn’t ask why they wanted to know. It was only a matter of time, they figured, before someone asked why they didn’t have the alleged laptop with them now.

“I definitely know it,” Flora said. “One time I was out on the patio for my lunch break, and I was reading the Iliad and he came up and talked to me about it. This would’ve been, like, late May, early June? He seemed really disappointed that I was reading it in English – I guess he must be like a huge Greek geek or something – but he introduced himself anyway. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Dimitri? D-d-d… I know it starts with a D… Damian! His name was Damian.”

“Thank you so much,” Ari gushed. “Damian. No last name?”

“God, you know, I think he said what it was but I have no idea now. It was something long and Italian, I think. Like – like Calamari, or something. But obviously it wasn’t Calamari.”

“That’s so helpful.”

Flora laughed. “You don’t have to say that. Anything else I can do for you?”

“No, that’s it. I really appreciate it. Thank you.”

Ari ate their bagel in a few huge bites and took their iced chai to go. The guy had a name! Damian Something-Long-And-Italian, which wasn’t exactly census-record-worthy, but it was still something. And the apparent interest in Greek confirmed that it was definitely the same guy.

The apparent interest in Greek, Ari realized, meant that they and Damian might have a mutual acquaintance.

Ari raced away from Turner’s in the direction of campus. The Classics building was a small but dignified blue clapboard house near the southeast corner of the quad. It looked more like a beachside cottage than an academic building, but inside it was all wood panels and bookshelves and chalkboards older than most of the professors. Ari caught up with Dr. Pryor just as he was pulling open the front door of the building.

“Dr. Pryor,” they called, and he turned around.

“Is everything alright?” he asked mildly, sipping his tea as he looked Ari up and down.

“Yes, yeah, I’m good, I just – I think I might’ve figured out who the guy is.”

“The one with your laptop?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yeah, him. Did you ever have a student – this would’ve been, I don’t know, ten, maybe fifteen years ago, unless I’m totally wrong about how old he is – named Damian? With a long Italian last name? Damian Calamari, or… Cavatappi, or Cascatelli, or something?”

“Pardon me?”

Ari explained about Flora and the Iliad and their suspicion that anyone visibly disappointed in someone for reading Homer in English was likely a former student of Dr. Pryor. The professor lowered his tea. He placed a finger on his chin and stared at Ari as he considered. Ari watched his sharp green eyes, which stared straight through them. Ari had years of practice withstanding Dr. Pryor’s intense gaze, but they hadn’t been subjected to it in a while and struggled to stay quiet, to meet his eyes and hold their chin aloft. Dr. Pryor was famed for his uncanny gift for telling when his students were lying – about having done their readings, about having gotten plenty of sleep last night, about wanting to change their major to computer science of their own free will rather than their parents’ insistence – but Ari had discovered that most of his gift was just in staring at people until they broke down and gave themselves away by saying something to diffuse the tension. Ari had gotten very good at not breaking down.

“You know,” he said after several long moments, “I don’t believe I did.”

“Oh. Well, thank you anyway, professor.”

Ari turned to walk away. After they had made it three slow paces, they heard Dr. Pryor say, “One of my best students did have a brother named Damian, I believe, although unfortunately my student’s greatness did not run in the family. This would have been, oh, twelve years ago now?”

Ari carefully straightened their spine and didn’t turn all the way around. If they did, Dr. Pryor would see every muscle of their body vibrating with excitement, and Ari didn’t think they could stand up to two lie-detector gazes in a row. “Do you happen to remember that student’s last name?” they called back over their shoulder.

“Cappelletti,” Dr. Pryor replied. “I believe his name was Nico Cappelletti.”

“Thank you again,” Ari said. They heard the door to the Classics building shut with a thunk as they walked away. Their excitement was so great that it took Ari the entire walk back to Turner’s before they thought not about what Dr. Pryor had said, but about how he had said it. Judging by his tone, Dr. Pryor considered Nico and Damian Cappelletti at least as bad as, if not much, much worse than, bakeries and emails.

Dang, Ari thought, I wonder if Nico is as stabby as his brother.

They threw away the remains of their latte in a trash can outside Turner’s and drove themself back home. Their apartment, they noted with satisfaction, was just as they’d left it. Ari pulled out their laptop and looked up Damian Cappelletti.

After a few misspellings – mixing up vowels, not enough L’s – Ari found him. Or rather they found his contributions to both the college’s lacrosse team and its hippie socialist newspaper. He had graduated from the college twelve years ago with a major in economics and a minor in poetry and had promptly dropped off the grid. His final article in the hippie paper, a send-off to the seniors, had announced his plans to live on a zucchini-farming, goat-milking commune in rural Vermont. After that, there was no sign of Damian Cappelletti on the Internet for almost ten years. After scrolling through a few irrelevant pages, though, Ari found a Windsor County eviction notice, dated two years ago, that mentioned Damian Cappelletti’s name along with several others. Evidently the commune had gone under. There was no record of where he had gone afterward, though, no mention of what he was doing or where he was now. Ari even checked the program and photo album for the ten-year reunion of his college class, but his name and face were absent. The eviction notice was the last piece of information about Damian that Ari could find on the Internet.

Ari flipped through the photos again, willing them to be different, but the smiling faces of thirty-somethings posing with glasses of wine and novelty hats remained stubbornly Damian-free. Ari let out a short sigh of frustration.

“You’re being unnecessarily mysterious,” Ari said to the computer, which did not care.

Ari clicked back to their search results and paged through them again. A few links below the eviction notice was a page of military service records. In the preview text beneath the link, a name caught Ari’s eye, and they clicked on the page. Damian might be unnecessarily mysterious, but maybe his brother wasn’t.

Nico Cappelletti was, in fact, an open book compared to his brother. He had graduated with honors the year before Damian, majored in classics, minored in linguistics, gotten his Master’s degree in ancient philosophy, and moved straight on to a prestigious graduate program. One of the ones Ari was supposed to be applying to right now, they realized, and kept searching so they wouldn’t have to think about it. Just over five years into his six-year PhD program, Nico Cappelletti had enlisted with the United States Marine Corps and had, as far as Ari could tell, never gone back to school. He had served three tours of duty with the Marines and had worked his way up to the rank of Staff Sergeant. After his first tour of duty, Nico Cappelletti had gotten married to a woman named Penny who he’d met while working on his PhD. There were pictures from his wedding on the photographer’s portfolio website. Nico was even taller and broader than his tall, broad brother, although they bore no other resemblance to each other from what Ari remembered about the guy. Nico had mousy blond-brown hair cropped close to his skull and a face that was more freckle than skin. He had kind eyes, and he was smiling mischievously at Penny, a tiny, dark-skinned woman with a big, toothy smile, as he literally swept her off her feet. The two of them stood in an archway decked out with dozens of rainbow roses, looking like yin and yang: Nico in an ink-black suit that hugged his shoulders, Penny in a flowing white jumpsuit with pearls woven into her cornrows. They looked like they were sharing a private joke that the rest of the world wasn’t in on yet. They radiated joy.

After his second tour of duty, Nico and Penny had bought a little house together in downtown Poole, New Hampshire. After his third tour of duty, which had ended just months ago, Nico had been discharged, and he and Penny had gotten divorced.

Ari glanced at the deed to Nico’s home, scanning for the address, and actually gasped aloud (and felt embarrassed that they had gasped aloud, and then felt silly for feeling embarrassed) when they found it. It was around the corner from their apartment. Not even a minute’s walk away. It was a small white house, one and a half stories, and Ari had passed it hundreds if not thousands of times. They’d walked by it on their way into town, driven past it on their way back from work, even passed it in the back of Pete Ticknor’s car when they were afraid to walk home alone. Ari slammed their laptop shut and realized they were bouncing up and down on the loveseat.

Why am I so excited about this? Ari thought. It’s objectively a bad idea. I’m probably going to get stabbed for real this time, unless the arm bite counts as a stabbing, in which case I’m probably going to get stabbed again. I have so many more things – more real, more urgent, more important – that I should be worrying about.

Although they knew the ring was in their suitcase and their suitcase was under their bed and their bedroom door was shut, Ari swore they caught the scent of lilies. Their arm throbbed. They pushed up their sleeve and unwrapped the bandage. There were the four holes. Two on either side. This is real, Asclepius had said. As they stared at their arm, the scent of lilies got stronger.

In defiance or acceptance of the scent, Ari wasn’t sure, they stood up, placed their laptop under the cushion of the loveseat to deter any would-be thieves who might decide breaking into their apartment once wasn’t enough, and retrieved the ring from the suitcase under their bed. They almost slid it onto their finger before they stopped themself, ring hovering less than an inch from their fingertip. Ari jammed it deep into the pocket of their shorts instead. Then, they grabbed their keys, put on their shoes, and locked the door to their apartment behind them.

Eff it. Let’s see if Nico Cappelletti knows where his brother is.

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