Greek Revival: Chapter 8

VIII.

Once they knew what to search for, Ari found the Papyri everywhere. There were multiple different translations available on sketchy Wiccan blogs and niche digital classics journals. Unlike Ari’s rough, brute-force translation, these published, academic renderings couched the spells in introductions, footnotes, and frequent reminders about poetry and metaphorical language.

“They think it’s not real,” Ari said, skimming a full page of footnotes in one of the online journals.

“Or,” Damian retorted, “they know it is and want to make sure nobody else finds out.”

“But someone must have, right?” Ari clicked back through their history until they landed on one of the Wiccan blogs. “Like, this person thinks they’re doing actual magic with candles and crystals and stuff. What if they figured out the Papyri really work?”

Damian leaned in closer and squinted at the screen. “I don’t think they did. There’s no fuckin’ way their website would be this ugly if they could do real magic.”

“There’s definitely not a spell for web design in here.”

“You don’t know that! If they had magic god visions, they could have future-seeing spells. And if they could see the future –”

“I think you’re right,” Ari said, scrolling through the blog. “Not about the web design. About them not figuring it out. The only spells they seem interested in are the love spells. And – here, look, they link to their Facebook.” Ari pulled up the Wiccan’s Facebook page. Relationship status: single.

“Well if Modern Witch Ursula’s doing real love spells, why the hell aren’t they working?”

Ari clicked back and forth between the many versions of the Papyri that the Internet had to offer. Although the translations and their contexts varied wildly, there was one constant among them. They were all translations. Ari tried several more searches: original text, Greek text, full Ancient Greek version. Nothing popped up. Only more translations.

“I think the problem is that she’s doing them in English,” Ari said.

“You think?”

“I do think. Look, everything Nico wrote was in Greek. He even transliterated his name into Greek. Gilbert did the same thing when he did – whatever he was trying to do – when I was in his office. He’d written Riley Elliott’s name in Greek. All the chanting from my ring dream was Greek, Asclepius only speaks Greek, Hermes can understand English but only ever spoke to me in Greek… honestly, I think I’d be more surprised if this magic actually did work in English.”

“Huh.” Damian tilted his head back and forth, his ponytail bobbing, and furrowed his eyebrows. Ari realized that his chin was barely an inch above their shoulder, that but for the couch between them they’d be in that classic, hug-from-behind high school prom photo pose. They stared harder at their laptop to avoid looking over at Damian.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said finally. “D’you think that’s why I haven’t been able to find Nico yet? I’ve been doing it in English?”

“Maybe? Or maybe the guys who have Nico are just really good at covering their tracks. Or both.”

In their back pocket, Ari’s phone let out a high, bubbly trill, startling them both and sending the birds into a tizzy. Ari fumbled behind them, pulling the phone halfway out and poking at its buttons until the alarm was silenced.

“Shoot,” they said, “I completely lost track of time. I promised my professor I’d get dinner with him tonight.”

“But we just figured this shit out! Can’t you reschedule?”

Ari was already standing up, closing their laptop, looking around for their bag. “I really can’t,” they said. “Dr. Pryor is… a lot, I guess, but I don’t want to let him down. I can’t let him down. But this dinner might be a good thing, right? I can try to slip the Papyri into conversation, see what he knows about them.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow after work. In the meantime, would you keep looking around to try to find a Greek version of the text online? Maybe whoever is keeping this under wraps missed something. And either way, start reading through the English version and see if anything sticks out to you. Anything that could have been used to make Nico disappear.”

“Right.” Ari was halfway out the door, but Damian called after them, “Wait. What did you say your professor’s name was?”

“Dr. Pryor.”

“Why does that sound familiar?”

“I dunno. Maybe I’ve mentioned him before? Or maybe Nico talked about him? That’s how I found out who you were, is from Dr. Pryor. Nico was his student back in college.”

“Huh. Yeah, I guess. Good luck with dinner.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Dr. Pryor’s house was on the other side of town from Ari’s apartment, through campus, past Paige Turner’s, and into the mazelike series of curving dead ends and cul-de-sacs that made up the wealthiest neighborhood in Poole. Ari’s phone struggled to navigate, seemingly unable to tell what was a street and what was an ornamental pathway around a man-made pond, so they relied on driving painfully slowly and sticking their head out the window to squint at the numbers on the mailboxes as they rolled by. Each home in the neighborhood strove quietly but insistently to be the most tasteful, the most pleasant, the most obviously old-money. There were cream-and-brown Tudors, one or two Queen Anne Victorians in greens and pinks, a few oversized faux-rustic cabins with gigantic glass picture windows, and several august brick colonial houses with historical landmark plaques beside the front doors. Everyone had a flower garden, or a copse of fruit trees, or a hyper-green lawn with grass buzzed to exactly one inch high. Any given property was perfect, seamless, probably worth well over a million dollars, but the effect of them all together was ugly and jarring. It wasn’t that mismatched houses couldn’t be beautiful but that these particular mismatched houses were all competing with each other to be the most beautiful. The excess of taste dragged the whole neighborhood down.

Ari thought of their own neighborhood, mostly subdivided farmhouses and bungalows snuggled up together, painted every color of the rainbow, with kids’ chalk drawings on the sidewalks and bikes leaning against the front stoops. Their side of town, Ari thought with some satisfaction, at least looked like it all belonged together. It looked like a party rather than a chilly, tense family reunion.

They caught sight of Dr. Pryor’s mailbox up ahead and made a wide arc into the driveway, which was paved in smooth red bricks and led to a stately white box of a house with cornices running along the edges of the roof, glossy black shutters, and a columned entryway surrounding the door, also painted a smooth black.

Of course he lives in a Greek revival house, Ari thought, grinning to themself as they turned off the engine.

There was no doorbell, but there was a heavy iron knocker on the front door. It was shaped like a gorgon’s head, with snakes for hair and the twisted iron ring between the sharp teeth of its open mouth. Ari lifted the ring and let it drop, and then again, and heard the two deep thunks resonate throughout the house. After a moment, muffled voices inside, first a woman’s, and then a man’s. The second resolved itself into the tail end of a sentence as it approached the door.

“...get it, you just keep stirring.” The door opened, and Dr. Pryor smiled beatifically down at Ari. He was dressed casually, which for him meant dress pants, a burgundy tie, a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and black velvet house slippers. His glasses dangled, as usual, from their sparkling gold chain. Ari raised their eyebrows.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you without a jacket, professor,” they said.

“A man has the right to comfort in his own home, Ariste,” he said, and the note of reproach in his voice was good-natured. He waved them in and held the door open for them. “Please, come in. We’re a shoes-off household, if you don’t mind. The floors are red oak and I am doing my very best not to scuff them unless absolutely necessary.”

“I appreciate that your idea of comfort is a tie.”

“Ah, but no jacket, as you pointed out.”

Ari slipped their boots off in the entryway, which opened into a huge curving staircase up to the second level. On either side of the door were large ferns in huge clay pots decorated to look like Attic red-figure pottery. Ari leaned closer as they slipped their shoes into a wooden rack against the wall. The painting was well-done: they looked shockingly authentic, with just the right amount of flaking and fading to have been unearthed from some dig site in the Mediterranean.

“This way, please,” Dr. Pryor said, and Ari straightened up and followed him to the right side of the staircase, deeper into the house. They passed through a high-ceilinged library painted a dusty grey-blue, and Ari tried and failed not to ogle the thousands of antique books, the baby grand piano, the plush armchairs, and the ornate wooden desk covered in books and papers as the professor led them onward. The library looked familiar, tickling the back of Ari’s brain, but then again, every room Dr. Pryor occupied seemed to take on some of this same antique academic sheen.

But still, I feel like I’ve seen it before somehow – holy crap, look at those books.

“I’d love to borrow some of these sometime,” Ari said, lingering by a shelf of commentaries on Euripides, all of which evidently predated the Civil War.

“Of course. Any of my books are your books, Ariste, at least temporarily. In fact, if you’d like to take one of those commentaries with you this evening, you’re welcome to – I trust that you’re still interested in the Bacchae?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. I built most of my personal statements around it.”

“Wonderful. I’d recommend the Clement of Alexandria – fascinating, the way he quotes Euripides. I’d be happy to give you the full tour after dinner,” he said, holding open another heavy wooden door for them, “but my lady has already set out the appetizers and I wouldn’t want anything to get cold.”

Ooh, he’s got a lady, Ari thought. That’s a new one. How weird would it be for me to ask about her? Not that weird, probably, considering I’m not his student anymore. Or very weird, probably, considering I was his student for four years. Average them out? Somewhat weird? Somewhat weird still isn’t great. Probably better not to ask.

The dining room held a heavy wooden table, so deeply brown it was almost black, with delicately carved legs and straight-backed chairs with matching carvings and brocade cushions the color of blood. The table had already been set with neat white china, shining silverware, and tall cups – one for wine, one for water – made of bubbled blue glass. The water glasses were already full, but the wine glasses awaited the bottle of deep, dark Bordeaux that sat nearby, still corked, on the table. The walls were sage green, and there was another, closed, door adjacent to the one Ari stepped through. The smell of something herbed and buttery emanated from this second door, and Ari stopped to breathe it in.

“Have a seat,” Dr. Pryor said, moving easily around Ari and pulling out a chair for them, facing the door to what must have been the kitchen and at the right hand of the table’s head. In contrast to the stiffness and poise with which he carried himself on campus, he padded around the house like a tiger, fluid and quiet. Although Ari had joked about his tie, it was obvious that he was, in fact, supremely comfortable here.

“When did you move in?” Ari asked, scooting their chair towards the table as Dr. Pryor took his own seat at the head. “I think I remember you calling this the new house.”

“I closed on the place in March, and we moved in at the beginning of April, although I feel I’ve only just gotten the atmosphere to my liking. The houses provided by the college for professors to live in are perfectly adequate, of course, but they lack a certain amount of character and awareness of their own history. The oldest professorial residences have been here almost since the college was founded, but even those have been refitted with stainless steel kitchen appliances and factory-made furniture. One can personalize a certain amount, of course, but there’s only so much to be done when the couch constantly needs to be put back together. I would prefer never to look at an allen wrench again, to be frank. Every piece of furniture in this house was made to last. It all originates before the turn of the 20th century. Common era, I mean, although you can imagine how thrilled I’d be to discover a piece of furniture from the Old Assyrian empire at Christie’s.”

He’d love Saint Julian’s, Ari thought.

“Well, it’s all really cool,” Ari said. “I feel like I could see this place in one of those old house magazines.”

Dr. Pryor smiled. “Were it not for the fact that I dislike magazines, you might. You’ll enjoy the kitchen, I suspect – remind me, Ariste, you like to cook, yes?”

“Yeah, although of the traditional domestic tasks I’d say cleaning is more my style. It’s a nice stress reliever, which I kind of always need, if I’m honest.”

“And have you been stressed lately?” He brought his spectacles up to his nose and peered at Ari through them, gaze steady, waiting to detect any lie or deflection. Ari smiled and stared back. Giving nothing away under Dr. Pryor’s watchful eyes was almost a game after so many years of practice.

“Of course I am,” they said. “Planning the next six years of my life when I’m not even sure which institution will want me for them is terrifying. Not to mention all the years after that. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently a PhD in the classics and a job in academia isn’t exactly a ticket to financial security these days.”

“Isn’t it?” Dr. Pryor said dryly. “I hadn’t the slightest idea.”

Ari giggled. “Yeah, apparently bouncing from adjunct position to adjunct position and getting paid a few thousand bucks a semester just isn’t what it used to be.”

“Well, but obviously, you needn’t worry about that.”

“Needn’t I? There’s, like, a bunch of people trying to get PhDs and not that many tenure-track jobs left.”

Dr. Pryor furrowed his eyebrows, looking at Ari like they’d just claimed there were a bunch of people living on Jupiter. He opened his mouth to reply, but a bell tinkled in the next room, and his expression transformed itself into an indulgent smile. He stood.

“Ah, dinner is ready. Excuse me for just a moment.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Not at all, but thank you, Ariste.”

He slipped through the door, letting it close too quickly for Ari to appreciate what was surely a kitchen with as much curated vintage charm as the rest of the house. Ari fidgeted in their seat, toying with their silverware, looking around at the perfect sage-colored walls, and listening to a pair of low voices from the next room. Dishes clinked together and some appliance’s door opened and shut, obscuring the words, but Ari heard Dr. Pryor say something with a smile in his voice and a woman laughing, a sweet, bird-like titter that reminded Ari of the ibises, in response.

The door to the kitchen swung open again, and Dr. Pryor entered, carrying a large tray. “Thank you, Penelope, darling,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Penelope?” Ari asked. Like the Odyssey, they added in their head. Although hopefully not, actually, because she had it so rough. Odysseus, whatever else he may have been, was a terrible husband.

“My lady is both a delight and an impressive cook.” He placed the tray on the table and indicated each dish in turn. “Kreatopita – that’s a Greek meat pie, of course – and dolmades stuffed with rice and pine nuts, and zucchini fritters with tzatziki, and of course a selection of cheese and olives. You do like olives, don’t you, Ariste?”

“Yeah.” Ari hadn’t tasted olives for the first time until college. Their mother had hated olives, had spit out the first one she tried as a little girl visiting Spain from the Philippines, and had refused to touch them ever since. Ari had almost done the same thing with their first olive, but their companions – wealthier and, Ari had suspected, more cultured than them – all seemed to enjoy them, passing around the jar of fancy green olives, stuffed with feta and garlic, that someone’s parents had sent up to the college until there was nothing left but brine swishing around the empty glass jar and Ari had developed a taste for olives.

Those people, their next-door and down-the-hall neighbors from freshman year, had given Ari a taste for lots of things. Clothes that they felt good about themself in, for one, and Pride parades, for another. Ari had applied to the freshmen-only queer special interest floor without telling their mother. Soon, they’d found themself surrounded by over a dozen people with hair dyed every color of the rainbow and piercings that would have made the nuns at Ari’s high school faint. Many of them had been out and proud since they were young teenagers. There were a few who, like Ari, had made one or two abortive attempts at a real coming-out in high school and had either been kicked out of their homes or kicked back into the closet, but most of these people had applied to live together with their parents’ knowledge and even permission. These were, by and large, people who came from white PFLAG homes in Vermont and Massachusetts. Most of them were gay, or lesbian, or bisexual, and there had been a few trans men and a pair of trans women named, hilariously, Emerald and Jade. But of the fifteen or so freshmen who lived on the floor, Ari had been the only ‘none of the above.’ Consequently, several of the others had taken Ari up as a pet project. They offered advice and snacks and only-occasionally-invasive questions. A few of them took to setting Ari up on dates with friends-of-friends that always ended with awkward, fizzling attempts at sex followed by long, even more awkward estrangements. Once Ari had moved off the queer floor sophomore year, they’d fallen out of contact with most of those people, or as out of contact as they could fall when the population of queer people at the school was so vanishingly small, and had let their social life be dictated by their Greek classmates instead.

In the Classics department, they’d found themself to be, surprisingly, much less of a curiosity than they had been among their queer peers. The first time they corrected a classmate who called them a girl – a delicate, serious, brown-skinned boy named Tristan who had a tendency to relate every conversation back to whatever book he was reading at the moment – he had squinted at them for a moment, nodded once, and said, “That makes more sense. Thank you. Just like Attis, right?”

It had taken Ari a moment to remember the myth in question, but then they’d laughed. “I mean, not quite like Attis, but if Cybele wants to help me transition, I’m not gonna say no.”

Despite how much more at home they felt outside the community designed to make them feel at home, they retained fond memories of their freshman floormates – the thrift store trips, the late nights watching Drag Race with varying degrees of ironic detachment, the trip down to Boston at the very end of freshman year to cover themselves in glitter and march in the Pride parade. And, of course, the olives.

“Good,” Dr. Pryor said, holding out a hand for Ari’s plate. “You’ll have a helping of everything, then. Would you pour the wine while I serve?”

“Sure.” Ari picked up the corkscrew that laid near the edge of the tray and, after a moment of struggle, uncorked the Bordeaux with a satisfying pop. They poured until the liquid, more blood-red than real blood, hit the halfway point of Dr. Pryor’s glass, then poured a smaller serving for themself, mindful of the fact that they’d have to drive home and debrief with Damian after dinner. Dr. Pryor placed a thick wedge of the pie, its phyllo crust shattering like glass, on Ari’s plate alongside a few stuffed grape leaves, a pair of green-and-gold discs of fried zucchini, and a small pile of olives and cheese that oozed shiny olive oil across the plate.

“Thank you,” Ari said, and when Dr. Pryor was distracted serving himself, they quickly scooted the olives and cheese to the edge of the plate and spooned up the stray oil before it could get to the rest of their meal.

They ate mostly in silence. Occasionally Dr. Pryor would quote some philosopher or other on the nature of food and pleasure or the problems associated with wine consumption, and Ari would try to pinpoint whose Greek had just emerged from Dr. Pryor’s mouth, but Ari was glad for the relative lack of conversation. The food was impeccable. The pie was rich, deep, thick, buttery. It contrasted perfectly with the salty, vegetal flavor of the grape leaves and the bittersweet crunch of the zucchini and the squeaky, creamy feta. Ari took their time with each bite.

“More wine?” Dr. Pryor asked as Ari neared the end of their meal. He’d had a second glass to wash down his first already, but Ari was still nursing their first pour.

“No, thank you. Gotta drive home and everything,” they said.

“How prudent of you.” He paused, steepled his fingers over his empty plate. “You’re a very prudent young person in general, Ariste, a rare trait in men of your generation.”

“Is it?”

“To your extent? Yes, very much so. I understand why you might be nervous or hesitant about the prospect of a PhD in a shrinking field and an uncertain future in academia. I’m sure you’re concerned that you’ll never be part of that coveted inner circle, that you’ll be passed over in favor of those with more… ah, history, to put it delicately… in the discipline.”

“I mean, yeah. Yeah, I am pretty concerned about all that.”

“You need not be,” he said. “Of course, it would be improper of me to promise you anything in particular, but I assure you, you’re a very special student, Ariste. Your admission is all but guaranteed. I have done my best to make certain of that. You need not worry about being another Nico Cappelletti.”

Ari’s final bite of kreatopita stuck in their throat. They felt their eyes widen and they began to cough, hacking up lungfuls of air until they were finally able to swallow the meat pie. They had a bitter aftertaste on the back of their tongue as if they’d just vomited. Their phone buzzed insistently in their pocket – once, twice, three times – but they ignored it while they caught their breath.

“Excuse me?” they said when they eventually finished coughing.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine. Another Nico Cappelletti?”

Dr. Pryor raised his eyebrows, looking bemused. “Well, of course. It really was unfortunate that he was passed over, but by the time the circumstances of his birth came to light, irreversible decisions had already been made. You, however, are a different case. I shouldn’t say too much until you’re officially accepted to the graduate school of your choosing, but I assure you, you need not worry. You’ll be a proper Greek man someday very soon.”

“The circumstances of… you know what happened to Nico?”

“Of course I do. I thought you knew.” The bemusement crept from his face into his voice. “Wasn’t that why you asked me about him, in your roundabout way?”

“I mean, I – I know about him, but I didn’t realize that – what – passed over?”

“For admission,” Dr. Pryor said patiently.

“But I thought he got into grad school.”

“I – goodness me, Ariste, I believe I’m as confused as you are. I really thought you knew about Mr. Cappelletti. Perhaps we ought to table this discussion until a more appropriate time.”

“No, wait, I want to know –”

The door to the kitchen opened. A tiny, dark-skinned woman stood in the doorway, carrying a plate of golden fried dough balls dripping in honey and pistachios. Instead of cornrows, the woman’s hair had been swept back into an elaborate bun with a waterfall of curls over her brow and temples that reminded Ari of the awful hairstyles that decorated busts of Roman women from the Flavian period. Instead of a flowing white jumpsuit, she wore a pink floral sundress and an apron decorated with a pattern of tiny whisks and spatulas. Instead of grinning like she was in on the world’s best inside joke, she smiled politely, bobbed her head, and made a brief moment of eye contact with Ari before turning her adoring gaze on Dr. Pryor.

“I know you said to leave the loukoumades, Eddie,” she said, “but I just had to meet your guest. Don’t be too mad?”

“Of course not, Penelope,” he replied, standing up to take the platter of fried dough from her. “This is my former student, Ari Tan. Ariste, this is Penelope, whose skills in the kitchen we’ve been enjoying all night.”

“So nice to meet you,” Ari choked out, staring at the face they’d seen in wedding photos. It felt like years ago that they’d looked up Nico Cappelletti’s name. It had hardly been weeks.

What the heck is Penny doing in Dr. Pryor’s house?

Unless –

No. No way.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” Ari asked. “I need – I’m – is there a restroom? Please?”

“Of course,” Dr. Pryor said. “Penelope can show you the way.”

Ari followed Penny through the door into the kitchen. She hummed softly to herself.

“Are you okay?” Ari hissed as soon as the door swung shut.

“Me? Of course! Why, is something wrong?” As Penny led them further into the kitchen, Ari found themself face to face with a wooden carving hanging on the wall.

“Do you like it?” Penny asked, following Ari’s gaze. “It’s not my style, I’ll admit, but Eddie insists on having it up. It does tie the whole room together, though, doesn’t it?”

An eye surrounded by Greek letters and syllables.

And sure enough, there, to Ari’s right, was the back door. It led out into a sprawling green lawn dotted with maples. Damian had been here. Damian’s eye had exploded here.

To Dr. Pryor and Penny’s credit, the kitchen was sparkling clean.

“Just through this hall,” Penny said, and Ari, dumbstruck, followed her.

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