Running Read online

  He picked up the chair with me sitting in it and turned it around so my back was facing him, slammed it down.

  The knife was sharp on one side and serrated into arcing waves on the other. He ran his fingers through my hair to undo some knots. “For fuck’s sake,” he said genially, “has this rat’s nest never seen a comb?”

  “Been a while since I made it to the beauty parlor,” I said.

  He let the knife slip so I could feel it. “The mouth on you,” he said. “You don’t learn.”

  Then I felt him gently lifting pieces of my hair, a sharp pull against my scalp, heard the blade’s whisper and fine dark clumps fell to the floor.

  “I know there’s something,” I said, keeping my voice low and soothing. “Declan, I know there’s something I’m missing. Maybe there’s something you’re missing too.”

  “Who are you?” he whispered, his mouth right against my ear.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Who are you now?” More hair than I thought I had fell around me. “Who?” he asked again. “Why did you leave?”

  The tip of the blade paused, rested just behind my ear for a moment.

  His paranoia was thick in the room, but it would pass. These things go away, they end.

  “I was traveling,” I said, making my voice easier still, reminding him how it was. “I went to Istanbul. Went to the Galilee.”

  “Who are you?” Declan asked again.

  I relaxed my shoulders. “Bridey Sullivan.”

  “Why is your name Sullivan? So I’ll like you? Why did you pick that name?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Holleran.”

  “Where you from?”

  “The United States.”

  “Who am I?” he asked, like I’d forgotten.

  “I don’t know you,” I said.

  “What’s my name?” he asked.

  “You never told me.” I closed my eyes.

  “What do I look like?”

  I said, “I never saw you.”

  “Where do I live?”

  “How could I know? I don’t know you.”

  He pulled my head over the back of the chair, made me look up into his face.

  “I don’t know you,” I said again.

  “No,” he said. “But you know what I’ve done.”

  The person he didn’t look up on those mornings while sitting in his office listening to Joy Division was Murat Christensen. Whether out of guilt or fear or self-preservation, he never typed Murat’s name.

  Milo did not know Murat well, but he had thought about him nearly every day for decades. A Danish Arab kid studying the Greeks, he said he was staying at Olympos for so long because it was halfway between sites he was researching, but Milo got the sense he liked it there; that it was an adventure; one that could seem rugged, staying among the poor, befriending petty thieves, getting to know a gritty part of town. It should have been an adventure with very low stakes. Murat wanted to be with the people, or just wanted to save some money, while he studied. While he rigorously documented a dead world, soberly took notes on the Bacchanal. This, Milo thought, was why Jasper hated him and why ultimately he may have been deserving of hate.

  Murat should never have come around that day to give Bridey The Clouds.

  “Quite a place for scholars up here,” he had said in that genial singsong lilt, and the words made Jasper wince. Milo passed Murat the bottle and he sipped, held it out skeptically, gave it back saying “No,” then turned to Bridey. “I’m going to Delphi tomorrow, if you’d like to come.”

  “Making a pilgrimage to the oracle, then?” Jasper said. A new cut on his face, the price of a poorly timed joke, had begun to scab, and he scratched it absently.

  “In a sense. Bridey said you had wanted to see Mount Parnassus. Maybe we could all go.”

  This was the second time he’d asked if they’d like to go to the ruins. The first time they’d had a late night—or a night that hadn’t ended and then Jasper said they’d have to get on the bus to do it and soon after that everyone was asleep.

  Murat said, “What do you think, Bridey?”

  “Oh, it’s just Bridey now, is it?” Jasper said. “We don’t know how to appreciate these things.”

  Murat looked at him impassively. Jasper’s shirt was sweat stained; he was wearing a pair of cutoff dress pants and filthy tube socks with holes in their blackened toes.

  Bridey was already paging through The Clouds, ignoring them.

  “Maybe you’d like to stay here with us,” Jasper said to Murat. “We also inhale vapors and engage in impressive physical feats.”

  When Murat started to reply, Jasper began whistling.

  Murat shut his mouth. Jasper nodded at him, jabbed a finger in his direction, stopped the song long enough to say, “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Tomorrow’s good,” Bridey said, not bothering to look up.

  “You really should come,” Murat said to Jasper. His voice was kind, his expression turned to startled sadness.

  Jasper laughed. “Oh, you feel bad for me now?”

  Bridey put down the book.

  “What th’fuck is all this?” Milo asked.

  “He’s whistling the Delphic Hymns,” Murat said admiringly, but the softness of his expression had gone as fast as it had come. “Apparently he doesn’t remember the words.”

  “Where’d you learn that?” Bridey asked.

  “Where didn’t you learn it?” Jasper asked her.

  “I’m leaving at seven in the morning,” Murat said. “As much as I’d like to stay here with Pythia and inhale vapors. We can meet in the lobby.”

  He shut the door behind him, leaving Jasper seething.

  “Why does he do that?”

  “What?” Bridey asked.

  Jasper went to the sink, slid the bar of soap over his teeth, rubbed them with a finger, as if he could make himself look more respectable after the fact.

  “Use the toothbrush,” Milo told him.

  “Where is the toothbrush?” His lips were white with foam. Bridey picked it up from the edge of the sink and handed it to him. Milo watched Jasper’s image in the mirror as he slicked back his hair. Elegant high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, dimples beside his mouth, strong chin, perfect teeth.

  Jasper spit into the sink, rinsed his mouth, lit a cigarette.

  The air in the room felt tight and Milo took a long pull on the Metaxa. Bridey walked out to the balcony, looked down over the traffic and the roofs of buildings, the light of day changing as the particulate filth and exhaust moved through it. Milo watched her standing there, staring over the haze at the sprawl of low white buildings, terraced awnings. The clock on Larissis station hung in the smoggy middle distance; vast plains of concrete and metal and the constant flow of traffic spread to the horizon.

  “We’re not enough for her,” Jasper said loudly. He began heading for the balcony but Milo pulled him away from the door.

  This drifting madness was one thing at home in their room. But out on the street, over at Drinks Time, it became something else. The beating that was coming was obvious hours before it was handed out. This was not the kind of freedom Milo was interested in. Their place was collecting more things. More books, piles of garbage from the flea market, that awful rug. The more Jasper drank, the more visits they got from Declan, the more cuts on Jasper’s face.

  “Com’ed,” Milo said. “Look at me. It’s fine. We’re fine.”

  Jasper put his school blazer on over his T-shirt, ran a hand through his sweaty hair. Milo pulled him close until there was a small slip of space between them. “What does it matter if they go to Delphi?” Milo asked. “What does it matter? We can all leave tomorrow if we want. We can go right now.”

  For one crush
ing instant Milo felt he would do anything so they could all stay together.

  “I’m going to push her off the balcony,” Jasper said.

  “Nah, nah, nah, com’ed. You’re not that hot for her and you know it.”

  “What does he think he is? Some kind of classics scholar?”

  “Yeah,” Milo said. “That’s what he is.”

  “Then why’s he living here?” His words were urgent now.

  “Why’s he here, yeah?” Milo said, uncapping a pint of Fix Hellas. “Why is he?”

  Jasper took the bottle from him and drank in contrite silence.

  “I would leave,” he said finally. “I would. But can you think of anywhere that’s actually better?”

  * * *

  Milo said these words out loud to himself from the discomfort of his office while he fished in his desk drawer for a pack of cigarettes. Navas came in nearly an hour later, just after he finished searching for Bridey and before he’d started writing.

  “In the cold,” she said. “On the corner of Seventh and A.”

  He sat up to face her, give her his attention. “Oh, good, this one’s not in dactylic hexameter. Good, good.”

  “No, psycho! I’m not reciting a poem. That’s where I saw you sleeping,” she said. “Near some junkie with a pit bull.”

  “Why do they all have dogs now?” Milo asked her.

  “Why you sleeping in the park? If it’s ’cause I’m staying at your apartment I’ll move out.”

  “Com’ed, Navas, y’racist. You see a black man sleeping in the park an’ you assume it’s me, like.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “A black man with your face wearing the jacket you’re wearing right now. That’s not a thing you do in the city, Professor. Someone’s gonna come along and fuck your shit right up. Some cop or some drunk investment banker coming home late at night is gonna kill you for fun.”

  He smiled. “And y’ve no faith in my abilities to fight, either.”

  “It is a bad idea to sleep in the park,” she enunciated.

  “Duly noted, Ms. Navas.”

  Navas blew smoke out the window, smirked to herself, put on a low, thick voice: “What’s up with The Holy Sonnets, yo? I think he just puts those things in there ’cause they rhyme.”

  “You’re never going to let that boy live it down, are you?”

  “No,” she said. “He’s a jackass. But I was thinking about The Holy Sonnets. Donne’s contradictory down to the syllable sometimes; there’s so much to pull apart. I do find it harder to read than Spenser, and it’s, like, all sexy, right?”

  “And funnier,” Milo said.

  “I know. Right? You know, before he became a priest, his brother died in prison of the fucking plague?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why you didn’t tell any of us that?”

  Milo shrugged. “Happened such a long time ago . . .”

  This made her laugh.

  She looked over at his computer and he watched her read Bridey’s name again. He’d been watching her read over his shoulder all month.

  “You going to come to class today?” she asked him.

  The last thing in the world he was going to do was stand in that classroom with those people.

  “What’s Jorge up to?” Milo asked. “He have any fights coming up?”

  “You want to at least tell me what we should be reading?” she said. “So I can tell them?”

  “You know, if you wanted to stay at your mother’s ever, Jorge could stay in my apartment. I mean, if you still aren’t getting along.”

  She looked like she was studying his face to get the description right.

  “No,” Milo said. “To answer your question, I’m not coming to class. I’m working.”

  She glanced at the computer screen again. “Who’s Bridey Sullivan?” she asked.

  I walked back to Olympos as the sky was getting light, an orange glow shining against the quiet buildings.

  Dimitri, the overnight receptionist, was at the desk drinking coffee, eating finikia, and reading the newspaper. This was the first I’d seen him since returning to the city. His look of disgust was so immediate, I reached up to touch my scraped head, but it seemed the expression was meant for all of me.

  “What you’re here for?” Dimitri said. “I thought he went to meet you.”

  “Who?” I said.

  He opened a drawer in the reception desk and sifted around in it. “The runner’s key is gone. You must have it.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Who was meeting me somewhere?”

  He kept eating, didn’t answer. Dimitri was younger than Sterious but not by much. In the early morning light his skin looked gray and doughy, and he breathed heavily.

  “Milo?” I tried again. “Did you mean Milo?”

  The sounds of traffic were picking up outside. He turned a page of the paper.

  “Dimitri,” I said, “do you know? Did he leave an address?”

  He pointed a finger at me and swung it forward twice, as if banishing a dog from the room.

  * * *

  On the top floor I saw my key dangling in the lock, the door open a crack. I pushed it gently and crept inside, shutting it and locking it behind me. Then took off my boots and lay down, thinking of Delphi.

  * * *

  I had waited for Murat in the dark on the cracked granite steps. The early tide of traffic hushed past—glowing headlights streaking through the dim blue calm of morning. The air was warm and still. He came down in hiking boots, a light backpack. Smiled when he saw me and we headed out, not talking, stopped to buy water and a loaf of bread on the way to the station.

  The bus to Delphi was an hour late in leaving. We dozed and woke and saw Athens drift past our window, whitewashed, graffitied, people just beginning to come out onto streets and squares. We rode through the industrial outskirts, past factories and warehouses and windowless concrete sprawl. Sunburned yellow hills dotted with olive trees rose in the distance. And then we were on the highway watching the groves and pines slip by. I watched the landscape and Murat flipped through a small field notebook as we rolled through smaller towns and onto a narrow switchback road, climbing precariously into the mountains, the peaks of Mount Parnassus, blue and white and enveloped in an ethereal haze. Down in the hollow yellow valley narrow cedars rose and low broad olive trees spread their branches and the smell of pine was vibrant in the heat of morning.

  * * *

  The bus dropped us off at a newsstand in a tiny town across from an overlook and a modern white hotel built into the side of the mountain.

  We sat on the stone wall above the deep valley, ate the loaf of bread, and drank the water, gazing out from the top of the sharp slope at the sea in the distance. Birds were flying below us, diving down into the mist.

  When we were done eating, we headed farther up the hill. Sun glared bright on the massive white stones and the gravel paths that snaked through the site. Signs carved in marble at the bottom of each treasury and temple and altar read Ascent Is Not Allowed. Numbered and cataloged chunks of columns and massive stone slabs lay side by side all along the way and the place had a haunted crowded emptiness; a long-dead city in the hollow and wooded hillside, the constant flow of tourists passing through, climbing the steps and walking with their cameras inside the ruin to stand before an ivy-covered stone, home to an absent oracle. A ceaseless drift of voyeurs, still traveling from distant cities to walk the stadium steps, to see the field of low golden flowers that now grew there; to walk through an empty theater, the spectator’s seats eroded, covered with lichen; to stand before the remaining pillars of Apollo’s temple and to be a supplicant of nothing, to dream of the dead and of how beautiful their own cities would look once everyone was gone.

  Murat wrote in his notebook. I stood close enough to smell him and it made me thi
nk of fire. Not the smell of something burning but the smell of the flame itself, pure, elemental. I loved that he had not found any reason so far to talk about what we were seeing.

  The gravel path ended at the stadium and we walked into a wood, heading up a slope tangled with roots and stones. We found a dirt trail blanketed with pine needles and cedar fans, and followed it deeper into the trees. If I’d been alone, I would have missed the entrance to the cave, sheltered as it was by pines and so low to the ground.

  The air inside was close and dank and the temperature cool. Murat set his pack on the ground, took out the bottle of water, and drank. Handed it to me.

  “This has got to be the place where they talked to muses,” I said.

  “That’s it exactly.” He turned, looked as he had on the train that first day. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s not a secret,” I said. “They used knucklebones, prophesy by knucklebones,” I said. “It was like gambling. The rich people down there at the oracle. The poor people up here in the cave. You know this.”

  “How old are you, Bridey?” he asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  “How did you know about the caves and The Clouds? Did you come to Greece to study about these things? Were you in school?”

  “I came to Greece because I ran out of money,” I said.

  Everything about Murat radiated a kind of health I’d never known. I took a step closer to him to be near it.

  “I knew you would want to see this place,” he said.

  “You were right.”

  I walked closer, and when he didn’t step back I touched him. Put my arms around him. His breath was impossibly clean, no liquor or smoke, but a kind of mineral bite. When I kissed him he tasted like the smell of stones.

  “Let’s not do that,” he said turning away. The side of his face twitched. I slid my fingers along his body and hooked them into the belt loops of his shorts, pulled him to me. I could conceive of no better spot than this to be alone with him.

  “C’mon, Bridey, stop it.”

  He tried to walk away but I tripped him, and when he staggered forward I shoved him hard and fast to the ground. He got up, kneeling, blood on the heels of his palms where he’d tried to break his fall. I kicked him in the chest, then threw my weight against him.