A novel
PROLOGUE
It could have been anyone. Who knows when fate’s chance knock will disturb your rest? Or when you’ll be that someone, that other guy—the one walking across the bridge when it collapses, the one flattened by a meteor? It could have been anyone, understand that. The next time, it might be you.
My coming was announced one evening just before supper when my half brother-to-be was seized by a fit after emptying his fourteenth cup of wine. As he lay on the floor writhing and foaming, the assembled family watching expectantly for his pronouncement, he turned a crooked finger on my mother, the woman carrying me eight months so far, and howled in hideous laughter: “A plague, a fire within you. Death to us all. Like a snake, cunning and sly, he comes, a smile his venom. The city invested, a people destroyed. Troy one flame.” He stopped, his mouth too choked with vomit to continue. There was absolute silence. He’d gone too far this time; he’d aimed his finger at the queen.
“My dear Aesacus,” Hecuba, my mother, addressed my half brother-to-be, lisping his name slightly in parody of his slurred speech. “When the enemy is marching on our gate, will you ride out to face him armed with prophesies? Will you slay him with your spittle?”
My mother never loved the children of my father’s first wife and saw to it that they didn’t live long enough to procreate, or even finish high school.
Over the next month the debates waxed and waned as to what Aesacus’ outburst might portend, but since I was the only one with a cheat sheet, no conclusions were reached and speculation finally quieted in anticipation of my arrival.
I came one night, in the middle of a storm. My mother lay in fever, delirious, and the doctors were afraid she might die. Her labor had begun and it was painful and long, and toward the end she had visions. Though she and my father had never discussed it, the horror of Aesacus’ words had festered in her thoughts.
She saw me arise from her groin in flames and hover high above her, a dragon eyeing its prey. And there, all red and gold, like the ornaments soldiers weld to their shields, I doubled, so that the one became two, the two, four. Again and again I multiplied, until the room became crowded, then pressured with my burning; and still it wasn’t enough. I burst through the walls, filling the city with fire.
My mother screamed, a horrible scream. If she’d been auditioning beside Fay Wray, Fay Wray would have been out of a job.
That shriek cracked every window in the palace. It rattled my bones and loosened my grip. I wasn’t ready to leave the royal womb. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I knew what dismal yarn the Fates had allotted me: it was off to the orphanage for this boy and a life of Wonder Bread and Spam. Who would push to the front of the line for that? But my mother’s contractions had reached the tipping point and there was no holding things back.
My mother screamed as they dragged me from her body, and screamed and screamed, until the entire household was awakened. She wanted some Demerol and wasn’t going to shut up until she got some. She screamed at the horror of her dream, and at the horror of what I must be.
I fooled her there.
My father picked me up. I smiled at him and cooed.
I was no howling brat red from the womb. And I wasn’t one of those pink-skinned little charmers, all fat and cuddly. No, I was a beautiful baby, right from the start: my face lean but not adult-looking; my cheeks imbued with a worldly hue, a natural reddish tan, as from wind and wholesome outdoor work. Standing beside me in a welcoming line, Hugh Grant would have taken one peek at my mug and fallen to pouting.
My father presented me to my mother, hoping my beauty would silence her screams.
She turned away.
The gods only know what she thought I looked like (I could no longer divine her thoughts now that I was sprung), but I suppose she was thinking that on Halloween they wouldn’t have to buy me a costume.
At last, she turned toward me. And when she saw how cute I was, she cried.
I smiled, and even though she was my mother and knew, or hoped to know, my tricks, she was won by that smile. No parent, however dour of temperament, can remain untouched by the selfless smile of a child, a smile of trusting love untainted by desire or artifice. My smile had all the love in it I could muster.
There was no reason why, after generations of mortal couplings had thinned the divine ichor in my veins, I should be so good-looking, just as there was no reason for me to be cursed; but in my smile was a bit of magic. No woman could resist that grin. It was at once sincere and innocent, mysterious and promising. That smile satisfied whatever needs a woman had. I was her Adonis. I didn’t even need to borrow his renown. I was her Paris, the handsomest man who’d ever lived.
“I will speak with the king,” my mother declared, dismissing the assembled servants with a glance, before returning her attention to me.
I looked away. Her calmness scared me.
It wasn’t my fault I was intended as the instrument of Troy’s destruction. I didn’t put myself forward for that role. Who would? Who would want to join Mrs. O’Leary’s cow on a list of the world’s greatest catastrophes? And maybe things would turn out differently? A guy could hope!
“It’s as Aesacus predicted,” my mother told my father gravely, once the chamber had been cleared. “He, despite his beauty, or perhaps because of it, will be the city’s ruin. All will be destroyed, all will perish because of him.”
Not me! I would have shouted, if my youthful throat could have formed the words. It must have been someone else my brother was referring to—Jonah!
I started to cry.
It wasn’t fair! I’d never done ill, had never caused harm. I was barely an hour old!
I cried and cried, a great wailing that demanded attention, a cry that threatened not to be consoled. I didn’t want to believe my fate had already been decided. I had hoped to be a hero, and maybe one day king (at the very least, an NFL quarterback). Her words took all my hope. It was ordained: my short life would end in ruin.
I turned toward my mother and let out a shriek. I was hungry. I wanted to be fed. And I wanted my chance. It wasn’t fair that I should have no chance in life, that I should have to live without hope. How would you have felt, if it had been you? I cried and cried.
“What should we do with him?” my father asked. He glanced at me, and then at the window. A few short steps would solve the problem.
“Kill him,” my mother judged. “One life is nothing in the face of such destruction.”
My own mother wanted me dead! My mother! Could anyone ever born have been more pitiable? I hadn’t even gotten my first meal. She hadn’t even given me a hug. I cried and cried.
She cried, too. Her first pregnancy was about to come to nothing. Less than nothing. The gods punished parricides, and the courts. If my parents murdered me, no jury would acquit them.
“He’s so young,” my father said. “There must be another way.”
Little was the godhood left in Zeus’ line as far as Priam. It wasn’t my ingratiating smile that had softened my father’s heart, that sober administrator; he was reluctant to throw away, in a single moment, all he had labored for over years. I didn’t blame him. He was as innocent as I was, yet another’s doom, mine, had become his own.
My parents argued back and forth about my fate, my mother insisting I be slain, my father demurring until, with a bargainer’s tenacity, he wore her down, convinced her they could assure my death without participating in the execution.
“We’ll abandon him on Ida’s wild flanks,” my father said. “There, he’ll be devoured by the beasts.”
He pronounced sentence in his merchant’s voice. He would have fifty sons; the loss of one was only two percent, not even that if daughters were added in. He didn’t speak of the gods’ will; he wasn’t concerned I might survive. Had he known I would live to trouble Troy’s fair halls he might have been more assiduous in his duty. He, conspiring bookkeeper, didn’t anticipate that another’s kindness would undermine his plan.
“Do as you wish,” my mother finally said. She was exhausted from the birth and couldn’t fight on. When she fell asleep, her rest was troubled by nightmares, but I no longer knew what they were.
I turned toward my father and smiled.
He looked down at me and smiled back, then patted me the way he patted his fatted oxen standing ready for the knife. He went to find a messenger.
That distant smile hurt me. I was his son. Even if he was determined to have me killed, he could have loved me for the few hours I had left. It would have been a modest enough investment.
*
I didn’t die as planned on Ida. I lived to see adulthood and Troy’s ruin.
The story is as old as time: whenever someone else is asked to do a task the urgency to get it done fades, until, distant from the reason, the question “Why?” is asked.
My father summoned Agelaus, his chief herdsman, and commanded him to carry me to Mount Ida and leave me there. My father didn’t explain his wish; he didn’t relate Aesacus’ prophesy of doom. Thus was I borne safely away from those who knew the why and wished me dead because of it.
Let me tell you about this Agelaus. He was a man content with his world. Each day he roamed the mountain pastures checking the herds. Sun or rain, it didn’t matter to him; he loved all the mountain’s moods and was an expert at predicting them. And if he found a ewe missing, lost on Ida’s vast slopes, he searched it out, not because he wanted to save the king a bit of gold, but because it grieved him to think the poor creature maybe trapped and prey for beasts. He was kind and gentle, as warmhearted as Priam was cold. One summer night, when I was still a boy, I saved his life, my only heroic deed.
Under my father’s watchful eye, Agelaus wrapped me in a blanket and carried me away. It was just dawn. The storm had ended, and the rain had stopped, and as Agelaus walked the many miles to Ida, the wind cleared the sky of clouds and the sun appeared. He turned me in his arms, so I wouldn’t be facing the sun, and drew an edge of the blanket over my cheek, so I wouldn’t get burned (my father hadn’t thought to pack sun screen; or maybe he’d judged that would have been an unnecessary expense).
I shifted in my blanket, and smiled up at Agelaus.
He stared back, entranced.
I gurgled, and a tear came to his eye.
Poor man! Long years alone with the herds and never a son. What woman can understand the need a man has to sire a son, the continuation of his line? Agelaus didn’t have one and he felt the lack. And there I was, so casually cast aside by Priam, like a dinner jacket he’d worn once. Why would Agelaus turn his back on what the gods had offered?
He stopped where he was, at the edge of the forest below his home. He set me down, as he’d been ordered. But unlike lying tales others tell to explain my survival, the truth is he never left me there, but sat and watched, my guardian and protector, fending off the beasts with his knife, nursing me with goat’s milk when I cried. I survived, and Agelaus had a story to tell, but never did, except to me one night long ago. By then I knew him, and knew it wasn’t my smile that seduced him that day, but his own goodness that rejected a command he couldn’t obey.
He and his wife raised me as their own. They loved me and I grew well. The hardy food produced a healthy baby (a Gerber’s baby!) and then a sturdy child. I ran and played and worked with the other boys, and the years passed slowly, peacefully. I was content to tend the herd. I liked my life. It seemed to me, in those days, my life promised as much happiness as anyone’s.
Then in my adolescence something happened: I became extremely good-looking.
The shepherd girls noticed, and soon their ardor made my life exciting. They brought me gifts, and took turns guarding my flock so I could take turns with them.
Each year I grew more handsome, and each year more women sought me out, for the tale of my beauty had spread. The attention made me callous, as abundance does. I wanted nothing more than a different girl each night; they wanted nothing more than me. I wasn’t proud of my behavior; but I was pretty pleased to be living Hugh Hefner’s life. Show me the man who would have walked away from that!
Finally, Agelaus spoke to me. He was disgusted. I was acting like some prince I wasn’t.
He chose the wrong word.
It was his own drunken confession that, years before, brought the family secret to light. I was returning from the day’s pasturing, when I heard shouts coming from our hut. I hurried to the door and found a band of men assaulting Agelaus and his wife. I exploded, and for a moment the violence of my arch-sire Zeus was in me and my fury was terrible. I battered the thieves with my crook, and chased and killed the slowest afoot, a grisly bruiser only slightly smaller than T. Rex. When he fell, the rage left me and I was myself again. But I was shaking. I’d just killed a man. And I was scared. I didn’t know I had the strength of a god inside me. It’s a terrifying thing to think there are aspects of yourself so buried they’re beyond the knowledge of your own mind.
Agelaus walked with me that evening beneath the myriad stars, his arm around my shoulders, his eyes on the path ahead. He had a wine skin with him and slowly we emptied it, father and son sharing time together. He didn’t speak. We had no need of words. The night was perfect as it was.
Oh, had he not spoken, but left the time quiet. There was a harmony among the elements that evening and we were a part of it. Woe to the storyteller who feels compelled to fill every silence with tales. That night, Agelaus told a story that changed my life.
“It was a long time ago he summoned me,” he began, his words curiously clear in the chill air. He stopped at the edge of the meadow and I stopped next to him. Deer had come out to browse; and in the trees around us, owls had begun their nightly cantillation. “He had an infant he wanted to get rid of, the gods only know why, but he gave it to me.” He would never learn the answer to that question.
He sat down on the grass and I curled up in his lap, my back against his chest. I didn’t really fit anymore, but he didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped his long arms around me to keep me warm. Nobody’s arms were ever that strong!
“I took the child. He’d ordered me to abandon it where it would be devoured by beasts. When I reached this place, I set it down. It was an inquisitive child. Every movement caught its eye; every texture had to be explored.” He pushed his hand through the grass, as I had done so long ago. I’d been looking for bugs to squash, not exactly Hercules, but for an infant I was precocious.
“How quickly the days go by sometimes. I sat here under Ida’s snows, the sky a crystal blue behind the sun, white fire at night, and time seemed frozen. Day after day slid by and my heart was content. When the child was hungry, I fed it. At night, we lay together beneath a skin. And so it was a week before I breathed. I breathed, and the cold cut my mind like a knife; and in that frigid air you clung to me, and I knew I loved you, knew I couldn’t abandon you. I brought you home and raised you as my son. But you see, you’re really Priam’s son, Zeus’ progeny.”
They were the wrong words and I didn’t want to hear them. I’d just been pink-slipped by my own family.
“You’re my father!” I shouted, trembling with betrayal. The stars spun crazily on the axis of the heavens and I threw up all over him.
“Truly,” Agelaus said, “I am your father. But Priam is your sire.”
I clutched him, crying and shaking, and he held me in his arms and comforted me. But it was like a hug good-bye. He wasn’t my father, not really. After this, I would only see our differences.
“We all need to know our past,” Agelaus said, “else we cannot find our future. Nothing need change.”
He spoke, but the words were meaningless. Everything must change. With knowledge the world is always different. Hand a person a mirror, and the next day he’s out buying a comb.
So when Agelaus chided me for acting like a prince, I smiled. I was a prince.
In that grin, Agelaus saw what he’d been trying to close his eyes to for twenty years: I wasn’t kind, or noble, or generous. Why would I be? I wasn’t his son. I was Priam’s son. My birth father was the sort of person who would sell his own dog if he thought he was coming out ahead on the deal.
“Agelaus!” I cried.
He wouldn’t look at me, but stood staring at the ground, his shoulders slumped.
He couldn’t hide his disappointment. I’d grown up to be a crumb. That wasn’t his fault; he’d been all a father could be—he was a paradigm of worthiness! I was the one who’d fallen short.
I reached out and caught his arms (my father’s arms!), trying to comfort him, as he’d once comforted me.
His face was wan. His cheeks, hollow and cut by lines. Beneath my fingers, his arms felt like lollipop sticks.
When had that happened? When had he grown old, Agelaus the brave, who had stood against a king to save me, my father and a man I’d thought immortal?
I tried to recall when I last looked at him. I remembered his hand on my head, tousling my hair as I struggled to keep up with him on the mountain paths. I remembered his shy smile when he surprised me with a handful of the mushrooms I liked to eat. And when the grass was waist high in the meadows, we used to wrestle, rolling wildly down the slopes. There were rocks there, and the rusted wrecks of mortars, but we never hit them; he was always looking out.
Oh, how could I have hurt this man, whose majesty was like a cliff? I had never meant to challenge him so harshly. I didn’t mean to ruin his hope (I didn’t set out to be a crumb!). I wanted us back together under the starry sky. I wanted a chance to make things right. But most of all, I wanted a story with a different ending, a happy ending. He probably wanted that, too. I started to shake him.
“Agelaus!” I cried. “Forgive me.”
I tried to embrace him, but he pulled away and started off down the mountain, picking his way past the boulders and tussocks of grass, where once he would have made his way by leaps and bounds. If he still loved me, he no longer liked me.
I wouldn’t be welcome around the house anymore. He wouldn’t want to see me on holidays. Troy was where I belonged. I was Priam’s son.
*
The storm came out of nowhere, a roiling wall of black and yellow clouds that rushed in from the west then plummeted like fighter jets zeroing in on a target. I was high on Ida’s shoulder, just at the snow’s edge. I’d been sitting on an outcropping of ledge, trying to decide what to do with myself. Now, I knew: I had to run. I turned and fled.
Lightning tore at the ground, flinging up chunks of earth that could have sodded a football field. A cataclysmic rumbling transformed the meadow into soup.
I lowered my head and ran faster. What I needed was a new pair of Nikes.
But even that wouldn’t have saved me. The Flash himself wouldn’t have been able to outrun that storm. The gods were in those clouds—goddesses! They would have caught me if I’d had a week’s head start.
An explosion at my heels flung me forward twenty feet.
A rock the size of a fish tank slammed my shoulders and knocked me to my knees.
I wrapped my arms around my head and curled up in a ball. Maybe these goddesses were simply passing through and thought they’d take a pot shot at a shepherd? I could understand the temptation. As a youth, I’d dispatched my share of mailboxes.
The goddesses laughed and circled in closer, like lions eyeing a lamb.
They weren’t passing through. I was the mailbox. I’d been bad, and now I would be punished.
I closed my eyes and offered Zeus a prayer. I wasn’t bad, not really, not deep down. I would make amends. I would apologize to Agelaus, and in the future do the things he asked. I would mean it before I told a woman that I loved her.
The goddesses laughed again. They knew I would never keep that promise and didn’t really care. They were there because I was a rake.
“Paris!” they cried.
I covered my ears. I didn’t want to answer their summons. I knew what happened to men who became embroiled in the gods’ affairs. I would spend the rest of eternity as a constellation, or the next few minutes as Purina dog chow.
I began to burrow into the mud, like a worm fleeing jays. I might as well have tried to stop the sun by holding up a hand.
“Paris!” the goddesses cried again, catching hold of my arms and hoisting me to my feet. My hands were pulled down. My eyes, forced open.
I nearly fainted. They’d left the clouds behind and now they stood before me naked, three visions of perfection.
I’d stroked the flanks of a hundred different women in my short life, but even the most lovely wouldn’t have drawn a glance beside these goddesses. Their bodies glowed, as if heated oil had been rubbed into their skin, like the women on Bay Watch. Their waists were narrow enough to circle with one arm. Gravity had never laid its avaricious hand upon their breasts. I was in love with those breasts. I could have spent a month running my lips around the full and luscious curves, and another month polishing their nipples with my tongue. I’d been deprived as a child.
They laughed. My penis had lifted the bottom of my tunic, so that it looked as if I’d pitched a circus tent.
“Paris!” the goddesses cried, and I was transfixed, their servant. If they’d declared they had to have a lemon-custard and anchovy pizza, I would have been off to Pizza Hut that second to fetch one. These goddesses had a party planned, and I was the birthday boy. Before I headed home, they would load my arms with presents.
The Queen of Heaven and mother of the gods led them, flawless Hera. She took a step toward me and suddenly I was standing on Troy’s tallest tower, a golden crown on my head, a golden scepter in my hand. From that height I could see Rhodes, and Constantinople and the Black Sea lands, and they were mine to rule. I commanded a fleet of tanks, and an army that stretched to the horizon. I had wives and mistresses and cable TV, and a storeroom filled with Pop-Tarts and champagne. And this dominion wasn’t only mine for a day. I would rule until my hair turned white and touched my ankles.
“Paris!” Athena called.
I turned. The Goddess of Wisdom stood before me, the Goddess of War, her muscled shoulders broad and chiseled, her gray eyes fierce. She would extend her powers and make them mine. She would set her palm against my forehead and I would become a badass, too. In battle, Achilles would see me coming and shit his pants; whole armies would turn and run. I would be a warrior, like her, unafraid to walk the narrowest alleys in Cairo. And I would be wise, like her: it wouldn’t even cross my mind to do such a stupid thing. I would be a counselor, a sage, honored and respected by all. I felt so proud, I grew an inch.
“Paris!” the last goddess called.
I turned again. Aphrodite wasn’t half a step away, close enough that her perfume filled the air between us like a drug. This time, it was my penis that grew an inch. I breathed in her scent and the storm around me disappeared, the mountain, the other goddesses. I wanted her and nothing else. I looked into her ocean eyes, and there I saw a woman, a dancer, my sister-cousin Helen of the line of Zeus, and no woman born on earth was ever lovelier. This woman would look at me and fall in love, and I would fall in love with her. With her by my side, the tedium of the days would disappear; every moment would be a wonder. At least, that was the advertisement.
But who pays attention to ads? And compared to these goddesses, my cousin seemed a ghost.
“Paris!” they cried, circling me.
I was smiling so broadly, it was a miracle my teeth didn’t fall out.
These goddesses were smiling, too. It wasn’t every day they happened on such a simpleton.
Aphrodite held out her hand. An apple sat in her palm, a golden apple polished to the luster of a mirror. As I stared, I saw it was inscribed: For the Fairest!
They wanted me to choose. They’d come to a ladies’ man to pick the loveliest, and for my efforts I’d be rewarded with a prize. But only one prize. I wouldn’t be going home with all their gifts after all. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed.
I looked them over again. This was no easy decision. Should I name the blond the fairest, or the one with the palest skin? Or should I pick the one who was most just?
Who could make that choice, and who would want to? However I decided, the other two would hate me forever. I’d be sipping my champagne through a split lip.
I should have feigned madness, or put out my eyes. I should have told them I liked men (I wasn’t averse to the thought). But, you see, I wanted to choose. I wanted what they were offering. A guy doesn’t get that many opportunities in life. I wasn’t going to walk away from this one.
I’d spent the last twenty years shuffling sheep from pasture to pasture. I survived on milk and stale bread and food stamps. Now, I would have it all: a private jet, a villa on the Cote d’Azur, a pair of socks for each day of the week. I would sleep in a room that was heated, and wake to the smell of coffee and croissants. Servants would wash my feet before I went to bed; with a little prompting, they would lick between my toes. It was Hera’s gift I wanted. I was a prince. I was only claiming what should have been mine in the first place.
I reached out and grasped the apple, a flame in my hand, and in her heart the Goddess of Love knew my choice and knew she hadn’t won, and she was wroth. This once she would claim a victory over the other two.
She set her hand on my arm, and as I turned, startled at the touch, she leaned forward and kissed me on my lips. If my penis had been a balloon, it would have popped.
I was a pretty boy. Women fought each other for the chance to lick me up and down. But even their most ardent embraces seemed chaste compared to that kiss. And that kiss was just the start. That luscious wet coupling was only a hint of what was to come.
I smiled and handed Aphrodite the apple. I’d never slept with a goddess before.
The other two goddesses shrieked in protest. Kissing wasn’t allowed; she’d broken the rules. But the Goddess of Love had hold of the prize, and there was no taking things back.
The storm exploded as Hera and Athena vanished.
The whirling winds only swept the grass (the air around me wasn’t even stirred). Aphrodite saw to that.
She lifted the apple. It flashed like a meteor in her hand, then seemed to melt as she pressed it against her chest, leaving a trail of gold across her breasts. With her other hand she caught hold of my penis and pulled me to the ground.
I was too eager. She was too beautiful, too sexy, too wicked. Her lipstick was too red. Her waist too narrow. Her thighs too hot. She was too wet.
I entered her and came at once, a fourteen-year-old again. Except, I wasn’t fourteen. I was twenty and a stud. I was used to my partners thrashing under my thrusts. I was used to seeing their backs arched in ecstasy. But not this time.
The Goddess let out a laugh. She couldn’t help herself, and I couldn’t blame her. My effort had been so brief it could have served as an interval for an atomic clock. The handsomest man who’d ever lived wasn’t a stud; he was a dud.
“It doesn’t matter,” she offered.
But of course it mattered. I’d planned to lord this over my friends for the rest of my life. I’d given up a fleet of tanks and a lifetime supply of Pop-Tarts for the chance to sleep with this goddess. Could a guy have made a stupider choice?
I closed my eyes.
The Goddess patted me on the back. It was my fate to make stupid choices. I was a mortal.
My penis began to soften. In another moment, it would slip out and we would be done. This goddess would vanish, too. It wouldn’t matter that future lovers would groan under my thrusts. Looking down at those women, this failure would be what I remembered. I would lose interest right in the middle of things.
The Goddess wrapped her arms around my back and drew me in and hugged me, and when I didn’t respond, she nudged my cheek with her nose.
I turned.
She was smiling; and her eyes were full of mischief. I was twenty and hale. I could rally for a second round, and maybe even a third. That was just the start.
She lifted her chin, and I pressed my lips to hers and was hard again before I’d drawn a breath.
This time things went better. I was no novice, now. And now the edge was off; I could do my part with gusto.
I pressed down slowly, knocking at the door. I pressed down hard. I knew what a woman liked. I’d made a hundred women scream, and not by pinching their butts. Before the end, I’d have this goddess screaming, too. Her eyes would be rolling back in her head.
I leaned forward and licked her nipples. Later, I would bite them.
The taste of apple made me hot and filled me with an ancient strength. When I came, my stream was like a flooding river.
I wasn’t out a second, when the Goddess pressed her fingers to my lips. It started me again. I looked down, amazed to see my penis grinning back, and even more amazed at my length and girth. Could it grow at my age? Would it keep growing? I’d make the Guinness Book of World Records! What pride I took in the manful thing. Aphrodite spread her legs and grabbed me fiercely.
Each time I slipped out soft, the Goddess touched me again and I entered hard, each time more deeply. No porn star ever performed like this. I was indefatigable—Zeus’ progeny!
I pushed my hands up her waist and along her ribs, marveling at the smoothness of her skin and its sheen. The odor of the sea came off her.
I pressed a little harder, curious to see if I could discover more. I squeezed until I felt the bones began to shift under my fingers.
Aphrodite twisted, and as we slid over each other, our limbs in knots, I discerned, faintly, another odor: the smell of old sweat. This goddess didn’t bathe. The odors of all her lovers lay on her; they were a part of her, an incorporation of her flesh. When we were finished, I would be an entry, too.
She smiled and locked her legs around my bloated swelling. That extra pressure was all it took.
I came, an ejaculation that went on so long my testicles began to cramp. I yelped and pulled away. I was starting to feel bruised.
I stared at her, all wet with our sweat and love, still squirming. She hadn’t screamed yet (I’d screamed). I might never make her scream. She was a goddess, and I was little more than a boy. I didn’t have the skill to make her scream.
She reached for me again.
I caught her hand.
She lifted her other hand.
I caught that, too. I’d had enough.
But I was fooling myself if I thought that was the end of it. This was the House of Horrors and I wasn’t the one running the ride.
The Goddess slipped one leg across my back, wrapped her other leg around my hips, and slowly drew me down. Our lips touched, and then our tongues—hers went on and on. It slipped past my tongue and filled my mouth, and for a moment I understood what it felt like to be the woman and I liked it.
I started to swell at the thought, darkly, painfully. I swelled and swelled, until my penis was a horrible purple, the veins and feeding arteries as thick as worms. My limbs went limp trying to nourish the monstrous thing.
I stared at myself with dismay. Would it never tire? Didn’t it know when enough was enough? It was as long as my forearm and as thick as my fist. Aphrodite smiled and helped me get it off the ground.
At last the fit was tight. The Goddess groaned as I entered her, and groaned again as I pushed it in as far as it would go. I rammed that bruised tissue into her for what I hoped would be the last time. I pushed and pushed, until my muscles began to tremble, and finally the Goddess shuddered and let out a cry.
I laughed I was so relieved. I could go home now. And I could tell my friends. I really was a stud: I’d made a goddess come.
And then her muscles locked on me, like a pair of grindstones on a flake of corn. Her screams were nothing compared to mine.
I tried to pull away. I’d changed my mind (I didn’t want to sleep with a goddess after all! I’d made a mistake). But the pressure of her muscles, and my awful size, held me.
She came again under my frenzied thrusts.
*
The wind caught me as I fell, light as ancient leaves. I passed through clouds, then rock and soil, down into the earth, that ancient memory.
It was Cronus, Zeus’ sire, who, smiling, hefted the chunk of glossy rock, examining its polish. Haftless he grasped it, an obsidian scythe with an edge so keen thoughts fell to either side. Mother Earth had fused that rock over eons, melting it again and again, pressing it into itself until it was too dense to hold any light. With one blow she cleaved that perfect crescent from the cliff and gave it to her son so he could cut his siblings from their bonds. Instead, he used that lethal knife on his father.
I stood in darkness so profound it might have been midnight at the bottom of a gorge.
The god moved and night followed, yet the meadow’s grass went undisturbed. Flowers closed. Birds grew still. The sun was extinguished, revealing the stars. In that deathly stillness, Cronus crept up on his naked father and castrated him, flinging the severed organs into the sea. So was this goddess born, leaping from the bloody foam.
The Goddess came, and with each convulsion her life’s story was revealed: everything she’d ever seen or heard or smelled or touched, I knew. I understood the ecstasy a woman felt at orgasm, as if warmed wine were flowing through her veins, as if a thousand tongues were licking every nerve. I perceived the pain of childbirth, a sundering of the flesh that only men who have had their limbs ripped off by horses know. And there was more—the Goddess’ visions of the future were laid bare!
There, again, I saw my sister-cousin Helen, no shadow now, no ghost of goddesses, but a woman with burning flesh and eyes lit with desire. She would set her hand on my lips, the hand she kept buried in her robe, and the fragrance of it would make me fevered. Her breath on my neck would make me swoon.
I saw us locked like dogs in the shadow of Sparta’s hills, her hips arched hard against me, and she was screaming. I saw her naked on her back in the bottom of a boat. She would abandon her husband and family and sail the seas with me for half a year, until the winds carried us to Troy. There, I would be welcomed as the long-lost prince returned.
I shrieked. I’d seen too much—my entire life! Every step, every meal! It was as if I’d been handed a videotape of all eternity. Nothing would be a surprise again. Every breath of air would be stale.
I grabbed at the Goddess, but she was gone. The hill was empty; the sky, clear. It would be clear for the next two days, then cloudy for a week, then sunny, then rain. I knew each drop that would strike my face. I’d seen the day on which I would die.
In the north, the towers of Troy stood watch above the plain. I would pass them on my way to the sea, and Helen. I would sneak onto the wharf at Sigeum, after the moon had dropped beneath the hills, and steal a boat. When I returned, I would be a man in love.
One
Helen! dark hair flying, dark eyes bright as moonstones as she sprints down Sparta’s meadows, a smile on her face, her eyes alight, blue gown hoisted to her hip, her free hand cradling mine. She can’t believe she’s doing what she’s doing—abandoning her friends and family to run off with a stranger, a man whose name she doesn’t even know.
But what do names matter? I love her—she sees it in my eyes! And she loves me! A blind man couldn’t help but notice. We’re a pair of kids who just can’t get enough of each other.
She stops beneath an ancient oak so we can catch our breath, so she can finally take a decent look at me.
The air is clear and still. The morning dew clings to the grass. The sun’s long rays cut the hills like knives. About us, the oak’s dark leaves form a bower, a refuge from the world.
“Who are you?” she asks.
Her smile broadens to a grin (an explosion of delight!), then just as quickly fades. But not because she’s disappointed. I’m beautiful—too beautiful! My curly hair. My dimpled chin. The faded tattoo of a lamb along my shoulder.
“Are you a god?” she breathes.
Her eyes are wide and filled with wonder, as if she’d woken to a dream. Who else but a god could have left her so befuddled, or inspired such a precipitous flight?
Until it happens, no one understands how magnificent and overwhelming love is: a once-in-a-lifetime flood, and reason and logic are the insufficient dams left to check the rush.
She reaches out and sets her fingers on my lips. “You’re warm!”
She half expected me to be a dream.
Her touch is like a drug. It sets my flesh on fire. If I were metal, I would melt. I’d be a puddle at her feet lapping at her toes.
Each part of her is a miracle: the polish of her skin, the slender curve of her waist, the astonishing fullness of her lips. If she asked, I’d swim the English Channel for her; I’d go shoe shopping with her at the mall, an outing I would never be able to explain to my friends. But I wouldn’t care. I’d have an extra hour with her.
“Three days ago, I dreamt of you,” she says.
She slides her fingers to my cheek, then back again across my lips. Then suddenly, she’s blushing. We weren’t playing mini golf in her dream.
Her fingers sliding back and forth across my lips, as if my lips are a mystery she can’t fathom. Yesterday, her world made sense. Today, she’s skipping down the meadow with a man she met at happy hour, her birth control forgotten in her room.
She’s staring at the bottom of my tunic. It’s bouncing up and down, like a child waiting for an ice cream.
I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her in against me.
“Speak!” she commands.
Her breaths are faint—they barely lift her blouse, a gossamer wrapping of wool.
But I can’t speak. I’m transfixed. And even if I could speak, what would I say? A poet would have trouble finding words to flatter her.
I part her robe, so I can see her breasts. They’re a miracle, too. And the hollow of her stomach. And the line of her thigh.
She smiles and lifts a shoulder, and the robe slides down her arm. A wiggle, and it’s at her feet.
She steps out of it. My bride, my love.
No artist ever had a model like her. She’s the most beautiful woman who’s ever lived.
Her smile grows a little wider. She’s wondering what I’m waiting for. She’s naked, and I’m just standing there, my mouth agape. We don’t have all day. The sun is on the march. In a moment, the minute hand will tip the hour and alarms will sound.
I’m out of my clothes more quickly than a man set upon by ants.
The French aren’t prouder of the Eiffel Tower; the English, of Big Ben. On a menu, I’d be super-sized. Her eyes go wide. She rolled the dice and came up lucky.
She sets her hand on my penis and slides it down the incredible length, grinning when it leaps. It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m the fireworks. The moment her tongue touches mine, I’ll go off like a Roman candle.
I catch her wrist. A helping hand isn’t what I had in mind when I set out from Troy.
She grabs hold of my penis with her other hand, her grin a little wicked. A helping hand isn’t what she has in mind. She drags me to the ground and crawls over me.
Lean Sparta. I can count her ribs (they’re like the sweep of an eagle’s wings!). Her stomach muscles are as smooth as river rocks. Her thighs, hot as clay pots that have been sitting in the sun.
I run my thumbs along her stomach, and she lets out a gasp.
I push my palms across her breasts, and her eyes roll back in her head. This won’t be a war, like with Aphrodite. One kiss and we’ll both be ready to hit the road again.
My touch will never fail to stir her. Whatever magic seized my heart, seized hers, too.
Her eyes are locked on mine. Slowly, she leans forward, her long hair circling my face. It’s time for that first kiss, and so much more.
As her lips touch mine, I breathe in her scent and know I’ll never love another woman.
A hundred kisses.
A thousand kisses! My cheeks and neck as wet as shore rocks from her kisses.
Her kisses silencing my cry as her fingers guide me into her, warm home. Deep inside, her muscles twitch, then twitch again. She takes a breath and screams.
In the branches over us, a jay screams back.
I run my hands up her arms, and she screams. I press my lips to her breasts, and she screams. When I catch hold of her hips, she leaps like a harpooned fish.
“I knew it would be like this,” she says, wiggling down and down until I’m all the way inside.
The pleasure is suddenly more than I can bear.
I lift her off and turn her around, catch her muscled bottom from behind.
This is how I saw us coupling in the Goddess’ mind. It’s why I ran all the way to Sigeum, and up the road to Sparta.
Her dancer’s back is arched. Her eyes are closed. She saw this, too; it’s what she dreamt.
I wrap my arms around her narrow waist and slowly draw her in, inch by inch, foot by foot. She starts to shiver, and then to shake. I do, too.
She’s smiling. This is what she wants. I’m who she wants.
She arches hard against me, and I drop my son inside her womb. Rich Sparta’s fields falling to the sea, my boat, the distant ports.
A shadow turns the field blue, our bower dark. I hug her and we sleep.
And all around, the rocking meadow grass, the keening breeze, the silent padding of predators, dread dreams outside the Goddess’ spell: a palace in the clouds; chariots sweeping from the bronze-hinged gate. The queen seduced. The king betrayed. Menelaus.
*
We run, through freshly-plowed fields, young wheat, budding forests, the sound of horns echoing off the hills.
Her husband’s men have fanned out through the woods and meadows. They’ve climbed the tallest trees to gain a vantage. They have infrared detectors and dogs.
“We’ll make for the river,” she decides, dragging me through a laurel thicket, then onto a deer path. “The water will confound the dogs.”
I look up. The mountain peaks are white.
“There’s snow on the hills,” I say. The river will be freezing.
“Our love will keep us warm,” she promises, pressing me against a tree to show me what she means.
Her lips are on my neck. Her hands are under my tunic. No woman was ever this bold, this desirable.
Her ministrations take ten seconds.
She laughs and grabs my hand, and we’re off again.
*
Chunks of ice are floating down the river. The waves are barely within the banks. A minute in that water, and we’ll need more than our love to stay warm. A fifth of Johnnie Walker wouldn’t do the trick.
Helen slips off her gown, takes my hand, and draws me into the snow-fed stream.
My feet go numb, and then my legs. And then the current has us.
Icy Helen, the rush of water hurrying her down the polished chutes of rock.
Purple Helen, resting for a moment on the stones at the tail of a pool, so the sun can warm her. She’s on her back, her long hair spiraling in the spume—a water nymph caught napping! A prize for the taking, if a man were bold enough and reckless enough to dare. A prize that could be won, that had been won, by me. I’m the luckiest man alive.
I kneel in front of her, as I might before the altar of a god. My head is bowed, in reverence, but also because I’m staring at the hollows of her thighs. I’m ready to perform my obeisance (my offering is in my hand! an astounding feat, considering the miles we’ve run and the number of times we’ve stopped and how cold the water is).
Helen beckons me closer. The gods are feeling receptive today. My prayers are about to be answered.
Along the banks, willows stare down, like acolytes, their drooping branches a screen, the languid leaves a score of tongues on her thighs and belly.
One by one, I push the leaves out of the way so my kisses can take their place.
*
Her gown is stained and torn. Her fingers, bruised from scrambling over rocks. In three days, I’ve turned a queen into a vagabond.
She doesn’t care. Those things don’t matter.
“I want to spend my life with you,” she declares.
She lifts her eyes, and I fall under her spell. That’s why I can’t speak.
Gently, she touches her lips to mine.
She’s lying in my arms, her head on my chest. We’re curled up on a bit of sand, beneath a rock that juts out over the river. We’re waiting for the dogs to pass or find us.
“Where are you from?” she asks. She barely exhales as she mouths the words.
She wants to know everything: what time I wake; my favorite foods; whether I own bunny slippers. Her husband’s men are closing in. If we don’t own up to our secrets now, we might not have the chance.
“I sailed from Troy,” I say.
Fabled Troy. A city that’s practically a myth, like Babylon. They have their gardens; we have our towers.
“Are the streets really paved with gold?” she asks. A bit of nonsense, she’s thinking.
But then, here I am: a god walking the earth.
A strand of hair has fallen across her brow. I brush it back in place. “The streets are paved with stone,” I say. “But we have gold in our markets, enough to pave the streets of every city on earth. And rouge, and gems, and spices. Anything you’ve ever dreamed of!” All a person had to have was an American Express card.
I want her to be entranced. We would have a life in Troy, and a future. We would be safe.
But first, we have to make it to the coast.
She leaps to her feet, pulling me along. The dogs have caught our scent; their barking has grown fierce.
“Into the water!” she hisses.
We slip into the stream and splash along for a hundred yards, finally dragging ourselves out the other side. Once the men hunting us realize we’re jumping from bank to bank, they’ll put dogs on both sides of the river.
“This way!” she calls, starting down another trail.
We’re headed for the bay. If we can make it out to sea, we might be able to get away.
“We’ll need a boat!” She starts to run, her leaps carrying her over rocks and fallen branches. “We’ll have to steal one.”
“I have a boat,” I reply, sprinting to keep up.
She glances back, surprised. I didn’t mention that before. “You sailed those seas alone?”
“It took twelve days.”
“The sea!” she cries.
Far off, the sea, burning, golden water.
She takes my hand and we fly down the hill, following the icy Eurotas to the sea.
We race them to the sea, to the reedy cove where my shallow-bellied barque is hidden. Beyond the dunes and breakers, the water stretches on and on: to Crete, and Egypt, and distant Madagascar. A journey that could take a lifetime. But with Helen in my arms, why would I care?
I wade into the reeds and free the boat. But as I start to push it toward the bay, the wind picks up and rips it from my hands. A moment later, it’s on the beach.
“We’ll swim!” Helen cries, rushing past.
Three steps, and she’s in water to her waist. Another step, and she’s in over her head.
I stare. But it’s a long time before she surfaces, and the moment she does, a wave drags her under again.
She’s thinking the gods will rescue us, that they’ll turn us into flying fish to speed our passage. But why would the gods do that? They don’t want us in Madagascar.
The gods aren’t going to pluck her from the waves (they don’t even know she’s drowning!). It’s four o’clock. They’re mixing cocktails, and getting ready to watch Judge Judy.
I strip off my tunic and dive in after her. The current has caught her and she’s going down.
The gods help those who help themselves. I stole a boat; they sent a wind. I needed Helen, and Eros shot her full of arrows. And as a joke, he shot me, too. I can’t let her drown. She’s the very air I breathe.
I reach into the water and catch her hair and haul her out, lay her crying on the beach.
Her teeth are chattering. Her limbs, all chilled.
I rub her dry.
She stares at me, silent. She’s wondering how I came to be in Sparta, and how it is my smile swept her so completely off her feet, a coincidence that would make anyone suspicious.
“Who are you?” she asks.
I have some explaining to do.
But how can I tell her she was promised as a gift? What sort of person is all right with the idea of accepting another person as a gift? Once she learns I went along with that, it’ll be adios, amigo.
I sold my soul to win this woman, a prize I have no right to (she’s someone else’s woman). I needed her. I was a shepherd, a nobody. If I’d showed up at Troy’s gate only holding my birth certificate, my father would have laughed. But with Helen on my arm, he, and everyone else, would have to pay attention.
A tear slides down my cheek. Once she hears it all, she’ll hate me. I hate myself. I didn’t think a woman could win my heart, not after all the women I’d known. I blew whatever chance I might have had with her before we even met.
She sets a finger on my face and brushes away the tear. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she says. She thinks I’m crying because she almost drowned.
“You could have died.”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
A consequence of being in love. She acted impetuously. She took a leap—that’s what love is: a leap of faith. Now, it’s my turn.
I have to tell her everything: that I saw her dancing in the Goddess’ mind, that I knew she would run off with me.
But as I’m about to confess my sins and ask her forgiveness, she sets a finger on my lips. She doesn’t care how I came to be in Sparta; she’s not interested in the mystery of my smile; she doesn’t want to know what I did last summer. It’s what I do from now on that will be the proof of my love.
“It’s enough that we’re together,” she says.
A day together, or a week or month, is all that lovers get.
It’s not too late for me to make things right. If I prize our love above all else, we’ll have a future together.
I lean forward and kiss her.
We’ve made love morning, noon and night for three days, against the boles of trees, on river rocks, behind the local Starbucks. But that hasn’t been enough. Ten times a day wouldn’t be enough.
My hands are on her knees.
She grabs hold of them and pulls them up her thighs. She wants what I want.
By the time we fall asleep, the evening stars have disappeared.
*
At dawn a wind rises, sweeping cool air down the hill.
We jump to our feet. The earth is trembling, and looking up the valley, we take it for an earthquake. But then the smell of horses reaches us and the clamor of armor. Chariots are racing down the meadows, the drivers whipping their steeds, the archers already drawing their bows. We slept too long. Menelaus’ lookouts, at their posts at first light, spotted us on the beach.
We leap into the surf and grab hold of the ropes that steady the mast and begin to pull. But the sea has fallen and the bow is stuck.
“Get in!” Helen cries, hauling on the line that lifts the sail.
I fling myself over the rail as the wind catches the cloth, and all at once we’re free and scudding south.
The shouts and arrows fall behind us.