For the next month things continued pretty much that same way. Swimming; work with Roland on Chopin, Poulenc and Schubert; ancient Egypt. Danilo and I talked often after class; once he took me down to the catacombs again, to show me a few things he had discussed in his lecture.
Except for the fact there were no classes, weekends weren’t much different. I practiced on my keyboard instead of the grands at the fine arts building; I read about Egypt instead of hearing Danilo’s lectures.
And most nights I dreamed; most nights it was about Danilo. Well, about Danilo and me.
There were times I felt like I didn’t have a life independent of all that. I complained about it to Justin once.
“That’s your life, Jamie. It’s the one you chose.”
I hadn’t realized it, but he was right. “It’s going to seem really strange when the fall semester starts, and I have to take other classes.”
“Poor Jamie, his life is turning ordinary.”
“Poor Justin, he got the crap kicked out of him by his roommate for being a smartass.”
* * *
The student union at West Penn is a reconverted hotel from the belle époque, a huge, ornate building I loved. Afternoons when class was over, and weekends after swim practice I used to sit and relax there, in one of the large rooms that were filled with sofas and plush chairs. Now and then I’d nap.
Late one Friday as I was nodding off there, I heard Danilo’s voice.
“Men always look sweeter asleep.”
I opened my eyes and gaped at him a bit surprised. I hadn’t seen him anywhere but the museum. “Danilo. Hi.”
He smiled. “Maybe it’s the innocence. Or the illusion of it.”
He was in shorts, a tight tank top and sneakers. I had never seen him dressed so casually before. His body was lean, smooth and muscular, even better than I’d imagined. His legs were just perfect. I couldn’t help thinking he had the body of a king from one of the old Egyptian carvings. But in the light, there he looked older than he had; if I hadn’t known better, I’d have taken him for a man in his fifties.
I started to tell him he had seen me asleep before. But I caught myself; that had only been in my dreams. I yawned and sat up. “I’m sorry you’re seeing me this way.”
“It’s all right, Jamie. As I said, you look… ” He broke off, made a vague gesture with his right hand and smiled. “I wanted to give you the news right away. The paperwork came through. You are my assistant.”
It took a moment to register. It seemed like I’d been waiting forever. “That’s great. I can finally see those sub-basements.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but I was genuinely curious.
“Not yet. You’re not to go lower than I’ve taken you.” His voice was stern. “Do you understand that?”
“I was only making a joke, Danilo.”
“It is not amusing.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re to go to the student employment office and sign something or other. You begin Monday.”
“Sure. I’ll go right now.”
He sat down next to me. “No, let it wait for a while. Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Then let me buy you lunch, to celebrate.”
Ten minutes later we were at a local eatery, waiting for take-out. Then we walked across the Panther Hollow Bridge to that same park where Tim and I had gone, that first night.
It was a brilliant summer day, floods of sunlight, a few wispy white clouds. The park was in full flower, a riot of color. There were sunbathers and people running. Danilo looked at the near-naked guys and smiled a lot. “Do you run, Jamie?”
I told him no.
“I do. It’s the best exercise for me. I find I can think more clearly when I’m running.”
“Like the pharaohs.” He had told us that that ancient kings always celebrated their jubilees by running the perimeter of a symbolic course that represented their realm.
He seemed pleased that I remembered. “You’re learning.”
I knew the park was popular with a lot of students and faculty, but I hadn’t been there since that night with Tim. The memories weren’t pleasant. But that day, with Danilo…
We sat on the grass and ate. He asked me about my life before college.
“There’s not a lot to tell. It was always boring.”
“Bore me, then.”
I laughed. “Ebensburg, Pennsylvania. Half dried-up farmland, half played-out coal mines. Lots of rusting machinery everywhere, tractors, mining equipment… Not the kind of place where things like Chopin count for much.”
“Chopin,” he said with mock-sternness, “counts everywhere.”
I laughed. “I think I was a really naïve kid. Or maybe inexperienced would be the word. Or callow, or trusting… ”
“Was that unusual there?”
“Not exactly unusual. But not really something you’d want to be. There were kids like me, and there were predators.”
“There always are.”
I shrugged. “I was different. In a lot of ways. Too many, I guess. I was a target.”
“Frederick the Great used to say that if he hadn’t been the son of a king, he would have been tormented to death by the other boys.”
“Frederick and I would understand each other, then.”
“More than you think. He was one of us, too.”
I looked at him, not sure what to say.
“And he always added that surviving that was what made him a good ruler.”
He had used that turn of phrase about “one of us” before. That first time I thought I knew what he meant. Now I wasn’t so certain. “You’re an Egyptologist. What do you know about Frederick the Great?”
“I know a lot of history. A lot.” It might have been my romantic imagination, but I thought he sounded terribly sad when he said that.
“I used to spend time in the Ebensburg Public Library. As often as not, I was the only one there. It didn’t help my image.”
“Did they have the kind of book you wanted to read?”
I shook my head. “Once I got online, I started finding things.”
“There’s more for you to discover, Jamie.”
“I know it, believe me.” Still again I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. “There are things I’m anxious to learn about.”
“Such as?”
I lowered my voice and looked away from him. It was time to be bold with him, I decided. I had made the first move with Tim, way back when. But with Danilo it was different. I actually found myself stammering. “The… the K-kissing Kings.”
Danilo looked straight into my eyes. For a moment I couldn’t read his expression. Then he smiled. “I think you already know about that. Something about it, at least.”
“Not nearly as much as I want to.”
We had finished eating. He stood up. “It’s getting late. I have a department meeting at four.” It was the last thing I wanted him to say. Not then. Not after what I’d—“Why don’t you walk me to my office?”
I must have broken out in the largest grin. “Yes, boss.”
The day was so gorgeous there were people everywhere, jogging, playing volleyball, basking in the sun. There were pairs of lovers holding hands… I swear, the only one I saw was Danilo. We crossed the bridge back to the campus. Friends, acquaintances, said hello to one or the other of us. Us. It was the first time I thought of Danilo and had the word us come into my mind. Us.
At his office he invited me in and closed the door. “We don’t want Feld interrupting us.”
“Not now, no.”
“There’s an empty office down the hall. It’ll be yours. It’s small, but—”
“I don’t need much room.”
“I’ll have to get you the keys.”
There was an awkward silence. That wasn’t what we wanted to be talking about, not either of us.
“What do you know about the Kissing Kings, Jamie?”
I told him I had seen the engraving in a book on his desk. I told him what I thought it meant.
“There is more to it than just that.”
“What could there be?”
“You couldn’t read their names.”
“No. I’m not good with hieroglyphs yet, but I—”
“Suppose I told you the two men in the engraving are father and son?”
I didn’t know how to react. “I—they—”
“Are you shocked?”
“No. Not at all. I mean, I’ve never had a father. I’ve never known how I’d… I don’t know.”
“And they are pharaohs, co-regents.”
“I would have guessed that.”
“And they knew secret things, not just their love for one another, but deeper secrets.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“The secrets are there for you, Jamie, if you want them.” He touched my hair the way he always did.
“I want them. You know I want them.”
He put his arms around me, and we kissed.
And I had never been kissed before, not like that. I swear I felt all his energy rush into me, and it exhilarated me. I’d almost say it made me high.
For the longest time we sat there in each other’s arms, kissing, fondling. I could have stayed forever.
There was a knock on the door. We pulled apart and arranged our hair and clothes. It was one of the girls in my class, one of the ones who had a crush on him.
“Come in.”
The door opened. “Excuse me, professor. I didn’t know you had someone in here.” She smiled at him, ignored me.
“It’s all right, Jane. What can I do for you?”
“Well… ” She had not stopped smiling at him. “I wanted to discuss my research paper with you. I have a topic I like, and—”
“After class on Monday, all right? I’m afraid Jamie here has a prior claim to my time this afternoon.”
She looked at me dismissively. That geeky boy from the music department. “Oh. Well, I’ve found some interesting things about the Sphinx, and I—”
“Monday, Jane.” He smiled at her and made his voice firm. “Please.”
Suddenly her smile was gone. Her moment with the dreamy prof would have to wait. “Well, I’m not sure I can make it Monday.”
“Some other time, then.”
“But, I—”
“I’m sorry, Jane. But Jamie was here first.”
She finally gave up and left, looking more than slightly unhappy.
For a moment we stared at each other without talking. Then we broke out laughing.
“We really have to be careful, Danilo. She could spread a lot of scandal.”
“She won’t.”
“You’ll have to charm her next week.”
“I will. I don’t have many gifts, but that one I do know how to use. My wife used to tell me—”
“Wife?” It hit me like a sucker-punch.
He realized how it had affected me, and he spoke slowly, deliberately. “Wife, yes. My family expected it. She’s been dead for a long time.”
“Oh.” I was still reeling from the revelation. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was an arranged thing. You know, the Old World.”
I laughed again. “I know Ebensburg. The same kind of thing goes on there, pretty much. Only nobody ever acknowledges it. They just let you know what’s expected of you, keeping up appearances and—” I shrugged.
I wanted, more than anything else in the world at that moment, to ask him if he had loved her. But, of course, there was no way I could.
Still, he knew what I was thinking. Very softly he said, “No, Jamie, you don’t have to ask. I didn’t.”
I played dumb. “Didn’t what?”
“I didn’t love her.” He shifted his weight and looked out the window. “I told you it was strictly a family thing, all arranged for me. I would never have…” He glanced at me and smiled a shy smile, then looked quickly away. “When I… when I made myself unavailable to her, she married my brother. Then she… It was all a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry, Danilo, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Yes, you did. And it’s all right.” With that gesture that had become so familiar by now, he touched my hair, ran his fingers through it. “You are such a beautiful man.”
In that moment I was so happy I could have cried. Instead I forced myself to say, “Danilo, we can’t be doing this. You know how the university feels about faculty-student affairs.”
Instantly he was himself again, confident and in control. “They won’t do anything to us, Jamie. Not even if they find out about us, which I doubt they will.” He looked directly at me. “I promise you that.”
I gestured vaguely at the office door. “Jane… ”
“She saw what she wanted to see, a rival student, nothing more.”
“She’s not dumb. And she’s not the only one.”
“Believe me, Jamie, they’ll never understand what’s happening between us. There’s no way they could.”
The smartass in me wanted to ask him, all right then, what is happening between us? But I kept my mouth shut for once. I touched his hand. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am.”
“Thinking about it makes me a bit afraid.”
“Don’t be. You—we—are more important than you can imagine yet. And more powerful.”
“Try telling that to the dean.”
He took me by the front of my shirt and pulled me to him. And we kissed again.
Nothing else mattered, not my academic standing, not Tim, nothing. I actually found myself shaking. “Danilo, make love to me.”
He stood up and took a step away from me. “Not yet, Jamie. Not till the time is right.”
I wanted him so badly. “I’d do anything to have you here and now. I’d kill to feel you inside me.”
Again, he pulled me to himself and kissed me. I felt his hands exploring my body. I touched his. My palm pressed his naked thigh.
Then it was over. The time was getting late. “I have that department meeting. It started five minutes ago. I should get to it.” He picked up his briefcase. “I’ll see you in class Monday. All right?”
“Can’t I see you tonight?”
“I have plans, I’m afraid. Soon, soon enough, we’ll have all the time in the world together.” He kissed me, lightly this time. “Believe me.” And he was gone.
There in his office, once he left, I felt more alone than I think I ever had. I started collecting my things, started to go. Then I decided I had to see it again. The Kissing Kings. I sorted through a few books on his desk looking for that one.
It didn’t take me long. They were exactly as I remembered them. Lean bodies, muscular legs, full lips; I tried to convince myself they looked like Danilo and me, but that was absurd.
I needed to get over to the fine arts building. There was a passage in one of the Chopin polonaises I wanted to work on, an exuberant piece of music that caught my mood at that moment. I had always focused on the darker Chopin. Now… There had to be music he wrote when he was in love. I’d find it, and I’d know it when I found it.
Another book on the desk caught my eye. Thick, heavy, oversized, obviously an old book and I thought probably a rare one. Gilt-edged pages. Embossed gold letters on the leather binding. It was The Book of the Dead. I knew nothing about it except that it was a collection of spells for the dead, for the afterlife. But it was such a beautiful volume that I found myself opening it and thumbing through it.
It was a bilingual edition. On the left pages were the hieroglyphs, on the right an English translation. The title page said the translation was by a man called Flinders Petrie and carried the date 1878. It had to be worth a fortune. Danilo had told me there were valuable things in the department, but an antique book like this… I didn’t expect it.
A purple silk bookmark hung out of the bottom of the volume. I carefully turned to the page. Hieroglyphs, most of them indecipherable to me, and opposite to them were the words in English. “In the eyes, in the heart, in the genitals resides the power and the vitality. In them is the force of the magick. In those organs of the ones sacrificed is the secret to life unending.”
It didn’t seem to make sense. In a very small typeface, there was a footnote to the English version. “According to many ancient religions, the bodily organs of those sacrificed carry enormous magical power. Cf. Lucan, Civil Wars, vi. 540-8 and Apuleius, Golden Ass, iii. 17. F.P.”
This cleared it up not at all. I’d have to ask Danilo about it.
* * *
Instead of the polonaises, I worked on the waltzes. They had always seemed lightweight to me, trivial even. That day they fit my mood perfectly.
Except… Why wouldn’t he let me see him till after the weekend? I was terrified there might be someone else. Why did I keep finding men who had wives, or who used to?
I needed him. I needed… I didn’t know what I needed. On a mad impulse I left a note for Justin, packed a few things and headed downtown to the bus station. “Ebensburg, please. Round trip.”
The Greyhound traveled slowly, more so than I would have liked. It seemed to stop at every town and wide spot in the road, Salt Lick, Pennsylvania; Gas Pit, Pennsylvania; 84, Pennsylvania… By the time we reached Ebensburg it was after dark. I found a pay phone and dialed Millie’s number.
“Jamie.” She sounded tired. “You decided to come home after all.”
“Just for the weekend, Mil, just for a visit.”
“Oh.”
“I’m at the bus station. Can you come and pick me up?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I stepped out of the station to wait. It was nearly 11 p.m.. A large moon lit Main Street. Small town, narrow streets, streetlights so old they might qualify as antiques. There weren’t many people in sight; they tended to go to bed early. It had been nearly a year since I had seen it.
Half an hour later Millie showed up in her battered old station wagon. She honked the horn as she pulled up, and I jumped in. I leaned over to kiss her cheek and she pulled away from me. So much for homecoming.
We chatted as she drove to the farm. I asked about her other kids. The younger ones were fine. When I asked about the oldest, Bobby, she changed the subject. Her husband Harry was, she said, “still Harry.” He and I had never much liked each other.
“Everybody expected to see you at Tim’s wedding.”
Oh. “I couldn’t come. Late finals.” I hoped the lie would be convincing enough for her to drop the subject.
“We all knew what close friends you were when you were in school. Everyone was so happy he was getting married.”
“To tell you the truth, Millie, we’re not as close as we were. He didn’t even invite me.”
She looked me up and down, as if to say, well, what did you expect?
I kept talking. “How’s Coach Harrison?”
“Not well. He had a stroke last month. The day after the wedding, in fact.”
“That’s too bad.” I hoped she couldn’t see me smiling in the dark car.
“What happened between you and Tim?”
“Nothing.” I said it firmly. “Nothing happened at all. I think he just decided he had outgrown me, that’s all.”
“That’s all?”
I made an exaggerated shrug. “We never really had that much in common. Can you imagine him at a Chopin recital?”
“I can’t imagine anyone at a Chopin recital.” She meant it.
When we reached the farm it was dark, no lights in the windows. Farmers go to be early, get up early, work long days. I had gotten so used to living in a city it seemed strange to me.
Bobby and I had always shared a bedroom. I told her I’d be careful not to wake him.
She stiffened. “Bobby’s in jail.”
It didn’t surprise me.
“He was caught selling drugs. A lot of them. You’ll have the room to yourself.”
“Is he okay?”
“That’s why we were hoping you’d come home for the summer to help. I don’t want to talk about it.” She was pretty clearly resentful.
I headed to the room. Moonlight filled it, so I didn’t need a light. The bed wasn’t set up. She had stacked some linens on it. I made it quickly, got undressed and tried to sleep.
Danilo. Could he find me here? I wondered. Will he come to me here?
When I finally slept my dreams were of a falcon-headed man. Lean muscular body, beautiful body. But the falcon was eating raw flesh. Blood dripped from its mouth. Welcome back, Jamie.
In the morning Harry said hello, then ignored me. Their two other kids were a lot younger. They regarded me as a curiosity. After breakfast I offered to wash the dishes.
The farm was dry. I could see how parched the earth was. Harry spent the morning irrigating the fields. Corn, wheat, none of it as high as it should have been. Living in the city, I had barely noticed there was a drought.
Lunch was huge. Harry ignored me. I was eating his food and not helping on his farm. I did the dishes again, Millie went off to run errands, the kids played in the backyard. I went into the family room where the spinet was kept. It was badly out of tune; no one had touched it since I left. How had I ever lived there?
In the afternoon I sat on the back porch. There were hawks circling in the sky over the cornfield.
Finally, in the evening I found Millie in a friendlier mood. Her favorite TV program was pre-empted for a baseball game; I was the next-best amusement.
“Mil?”
“Hm?”
“What was my father like?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
Unexpected question. “He was my father.”
“You were never curious about him before.”
I shrugged. “I am now. Tell me about him.”
She obviously didn’t want to.
“Please.”
“Well… ” I could tell she was reluctant to talk about him. “What do you remember about him?”
“Practically nothing. I wouldn’t recognize him if you showed me a picture.”
She got up and went to a drawer in the desk. There seemed to be a stack of old photos. She thumbed through them and found the one she wanted. “Here.”
It was a stranger. A short, thick man, mustached, wearing an ill-fitting suit. I looked from the photo to her. In a thousand years I would never have guessed he was my father. “This is him?”
She nodded.
“I don’t remember him at all.”
She got another picture. “Here. This is your mother.”
A plain girl in a plain dress. She looked sad. I couldn’t have recognized her, either.
“Why do you want to know about them, Jamie?”
I didn’t quite know, myself. “They’re my parents.”
“You never showed any interest before.”
She was right. I didn’t know why.
“Your father was a preacher. He had a little church down the valley. When he made your mother pregnant, he blamed her for tempting him. And I guess it really was her fault for not being on the pill.”
“Did they love each other?” Absurd question.
“How can you ever know who loves who?” She said it pointedly. I wasn’t sure why. But then she pressed on. “When Tim was here for the wedding, he told people things about you. Shameful things.”
I went numb. One more betrayal. I had loved him. Why?
“I don’t think it would be good for you to come back here anymore, Jamie. Harry doesn’t—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
“Please do. Take whatever of your things you want. I’ll sell the rest.”
I didn’t want to let her know this hurt. But I couldn’t keep it inside. “You can burn them for all I care.”
That night I needed Danilo. Of all nights, that was the one I needed him to be there with me, if only in dreams. But I couldn’t sleep. I even remember saying a short prayer to Horus, the god with the head of a falcon. Doing it made me feel a bit foolish.
I had never had a home. That was so clear to me now. I had merely had a place to live, which is not the same thing at all. But when I closed my eyes and conjured up an image of Danilo I thought, yes, my home is there, in him. What will I do if he doesn’t love me as much as I do him?
First thing in the morning, before breakfast, I packed all my things and Millie drove me back to the bus station. She was quiet; her face was stone. Everything that needed to be said between us had been said, and there was an end to it.
Waiting for the bus I got myself a fast-food breakfast. There were hawks circling above the town. I stood and watched them for a while. Graceful, beautiful, predatory creatures. A few people I knew saw me waiting there. None of them friendly, most ignored me completely.
When the bus came, I got a window seat so I could see the last of my hometown. Then I slept for the rest of the trip.
* * *
At the station back in Pittsburgh I got off the bus, yawned and stretched. It was 11 a.m.. Then I noticed the headline on the newspaper in the vending machine: THREE MORE CORPSES FOUND ON WEST PENN CAMPUS.
Three.
When I got home it was just after noon and the apartment was empty.
“Justin?”
Bubastis came up to me, happy to see me. I picked her up and she licked the tip of my nose.
“Jus?”
He wasn’t in. There was no food in the cat’s dish, and no water for her either. It wasn’t like Justin to ignore her. I fed her, gave her some water.
Suddenly I had an awful feeling. A shot of panic went through me. Could he have been one of the three? He couldn’t be, it couldn’t have happened to him.
Quickly, I turned on the TV and tuned to the local news channel. The story was just coming on. “Only one of the victims has been identified,” the reporter said. “He is Timothy Johanssen, a swimmer on the west Penn Team.”
It was so completely unexpected. I sat and stared at the television, not knowing what to feel or what to think.
I don’t believe love dies. It changes into something else. I had loved Tim so deeply, so much, even to the point of following him to the college he chose. It had turned ugly, or he had. But underneath what I felt for him was still that substrate of love. I suppose on some small level I had never stopped hoping that things between us might… But I was being foolish. I knew that. Tim had been what he had been and hoping otherwise had no point.
Almost without thinking I turned on my keyboard. Chopin, inevitably Chopin. I had never imagined I might actually play the funeral march for the death of someone I had loved. All the things that could have existed between us but never did and never would… I put all of them into what I was playing. The rest of the sonata didn’t matter; I played the funeral march again and again.
After God knew how long I felt a hand on my shoulder. I kept playing. “Danilo.”
“No, Jamie, it’s me.” I took my hands off the keys and looked. It was Justin.
“Jus!” I got to my feet and put my arms around him and kissed him. “Oh God, Jus, it’s so good to see you.”
He let me get it out of my system, then took a step away from me. “You were only gone one night. I can’t wait to see how you greet me after a vacation.”
“I thought… I thought you might be one of the new victims.”
He seemed slightly astonished. “I’m fine, Jamie. Why would you think that?”
“Paranoia, I guess. I seem to be losing everything that matters to me. Home wasn’t exactly… well, it wasn’t exactly homey.” I told him about my brief unhappy visit.
“Oh. I’m sorry, Jamie. You deserve better. Of all people, you deserve better.”
“Thanks.” I wanted to add, it’s nice that someone cares about me, but it would have been too corny. “And then the news about Tim. I mean, it’s not like I loved him anymore, but still… ”
“What news?”
He hadn’t heard. I told him.
“Oh. Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
I couldn’t say anything.
“I have a bottle of wine. Should I open it?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Stop thanking me. We look out for each other, remember?” He went into the kitchen and got the corkscrew. “If you hadn’t been there for me when Grant… ” He cut himself short. The word about Tim was bringing up unpleasant things.
He poured large tumblers of wine for us. We sat on the couch, close together, and got drunk. Neither of us was much of a drinker. At one point I got up and tried to play some more, but my fingers wouldn’t respond. When I went back to the couch Justin kissed me, like a brother not a lover.
I closed my eyes and thought of Danilo.
* * *
That night I sat at my bedroom window and watched the moon and the stars, exactly like the silly romantic I tried so hard not to be and thought of all the things I had been feeling, all those emotions in so short a time.
The last of Ebensburg; I knew I would never go back again.
The last of Tim; I knew… hell, I didn’t know what I knew about Tim and me. I knew there had not been an end to it, not a neat, simple one, and I wasn’t certain it was over even yet.
Justin. No one had ever cared about me before, not the way he seemed to.
And all of it was connected somehow to Danilo. My future was with him, I knew it, I was determined to make it so. If there was such a thing as love, what I felt for him was that thing. I wanted to see him again. Yes, Monday I’d go to class, but Monday was a million years away.
It even occurred to me fleetingly that somehow, in some way I didn’t understand yet, he was involved with the deaths and the disappearances, involved with what happened to Tim. But that was nonsense, it had to be—literally, it made no sense.
And I remember having another fugitive thought: that even if it was true, I didn’t care.
Danilo was to be mine.