Chapter 35
HE OF THE WILD REVELS
By the time Theo’d walked up six stories to Apartment J, the sitar music blaring through the door drowned out his panting. He went to knock, but the door swung open at his first touch. Currents of booze and pot and incense and sex wafted toward him.
“Hello?” he said, raising his voice over the din.
Dimly visible through the clouds of smoke, a young man reclined on a battered leopard-print couch with a naked woman slumped against each shoulder. He wore a loosely tied silk robe that did little to hide his expansive, hair-covered body, puffy with the effects of lassitude and drink. At Theo’s greeting, he looked up groggily, his dark eyes bloodshot.
Theo cleared his throat. “HEY, DENNIS, IT’S ME!”
Dennis pushed himself off the couch and stood, swaying slightly. The two women—undergrads from the look of them—slumped in place, their chins resting on their chests.
“Hey, dude… come in, come in. What’s up?” Theo’s old roommate slurred. Theo couldn’t really hear the words, but he got the gist.
“Well, I know it’s been a long time—” he shouted.
“Whatever, dude, it hasn’t been that long, has it?”
Theo shifted his weight uncomfortably and shouted back, “Well, yes, it’s been ten years.”
“That’s nothing, bro. You want something to drink?” Dennis moved slowly over to a well-stocked bar in the corner.
“It’s two in the afternoon. I think I’m okay!” Dennis always brought out his most priggish side. Theo felt like he’d never left grad school. If he wanted to get any help, however, this time he’d have to resist hiding in the bathroom when Dennis tried to lure him into vice.
“Still got a stick up your ass, Schultz?” Dennis gave him a familiar, disappointed frown. “Loosen up, it won’t kill you.”
“Okay, but just one. Maybe a beer?” he said hopefully.
“I got my own special brew,” Dennis demurred, handing Theo a Goya Peach Nectar bottle filled with something that looked distinctly unlike juice. The smell wafted toward him, sickeningly sweet, like fruit gone bad.
“You know, I’m a professor up at Columbia now so I’ve got to stay sober to teach class later today,” Theo shouted over the music as he gazed suspiciously into the bottle in his hand, aware of just how lame he sounded. At least Dennis didn’t seem to remember it was Sunday.
“Way to go, Theo.” While Dennis spoke, Theo walked over to the stereo and turned the volume down just enough so he could hear and be heard. “I’m impressed. You must have finally learned to play the game, kiss the right asses, huh?” Dennis continued. There was no malice in his voice, but his apathy made the words sting all the more. “Just like good old Nate Balinski. Tenures and titles, while I’ve got tits and ass. Still think you made the right choice? You let Nate know anytime he wants to party again, he should come on by. I miss that little shit-kicker.”
This really was just like old times. Dennis always did like Nathan best. Theo hid his ire with a tentative sip of the brown liquid. The drink was like honey fire. Delicious and warming and stinging all at once. Some of his frustration melted away.
Dennis fell back on the couch. He draped a naked woman over his lap so Theo would have a place to sit down.
“Look,” Theo began, trying to sit very straight so he didn’t accidentally stare at the woman’s breasts or legs or any other part of her that was bared before him. “I just thought maybe you could help me with a little problem.”
“You need uppers? Downers?”
“Not that kind of problem.” He reached into his satchel for his laptop. “See, I know you’re an expert on neo-pagan Greek cults…”
“You mean fraternities?”
“Uh, no. I was thinking more like Dionysian throwbacks. Specifically, the Eleusinian Mysteries. Maybe you can take a look at this outline I’ve made of the ritual. Then let me know if any of the local pagan groups might possibly be mixed up in the gang that murdered the SNL actress last night.”
“What the fuck, dude? You trying to get me kicked out of grad school?” Dennis didn’t sound particularly angry at the thought, just amused. He took a big swig from his own jar of brew and then a long puff on a joint.
“Nothing could get you kicked out,” Theo couldn’t help retorting. “Certainly you’ve slept with enough students and gotten enough minors drunk, but NYU still lets you stay.”
“That’s because they need me, dude.” True, Dennis was the most gifted scholar of Ancient Greek and Latin whom Theo’d ever met. He seemed to have extraordinary insights into the ancient mind. No program could bear to let him go, even though he was easily the most profligate grad student in history.
Theo downed another swallow. It tasted good. Really good. He’d forgotten just how delicious Dennis’s concoctions were. “So you don’t know anything?” he asked again, less urgently this time. His laptop slipped out of his hands.
“Look, bro, I don’t get out of the house much. When I do, yeah, I sometimes go for some retreats upstate. We do some singing, a little drumming, a lot of dancing. You know. Some shrooms. Some weed. All totally natural, see. No gory shit.”
The sitar music came to an abrupt halt. Only the soft snores of one of the passed-out women broke the sudden silence. Dennis looked up in surprise. Selene stood stiffly before the stereo, her arms crossed.
“No gory stuff? Are you sure about that, Dennis?”
“Who’re you?”
Theo made a feeble effort to rise. “This is my friend Sel—”
“Celia,” Selene interrupted, glaring from beneath the low brim of her baseball cap. “Really, Dennis? No drunken rages? No tearing limb from limb? I’d think a guy like you might be into that.”
“I don’t know who you think I am, sweetheart, but—”
“I know exactly who you are.”
“I doubt that.” Dennis smiled. He retrieved a remote control from under a pile of old pizza boxes and turned the music back on. He cranked the volume and leaned back, eyes closed.
Theo felt the wailing music vibrating deep in his bones like some seismic event. He took another swig of the liquor. He nodded in time to the music, and the motion made the world slip a little before his eyes. The woman on Dennis’s lap opened her eyes a slit. Huge pupils. Like she wanted to take in every bit of light.
“You’re in my sunbeam,” she murmured, and slid off Dennis’s lap to stretch herself, catlike, over Theo’s. He had a distinct impression that this wasn’t what he wanted—her limbs were too round, her hands too soft, her hair too blond and too long. Then she arched her back and purred, and he no longer cared that she wasn’t the woman he sought, only that she might give him what he needed. The sun lit the strands of her honey-colored hair into fire, but it felt like cool water on his fingers. One of his hands slid down her spine, stroking every knob like keys on a piano. He could almost hear the music radiating through her skin. Could see it pouring off her in waves of color.
A drum joined the sitar, a rolling, vibrating, liquid drum, speeding the blood in his veins. Now he was playing the woman like an instrument, his hands fluttering and patting and pounding on her ribs, her thighs, her ass.
“Schultz!”
Theo squinted through the haze of smoke and lust. Someone was calling him. Celia? Who was she? Had he come in with her? Surely not. No woman so beautiful could be with him. He beckoned her onto the couch. There was room for one more.
The woman with the honey hair had flipped onto her back and was slowly pulling off his blazer, then pushing up the shirt underneath. Her tongue followed her fingers, tracing a wet line from stomach to chest. He groaned and wove his fingers once more into her hair, pushing her face more firmly against him. He was shirtless now, and her breasts pressed against his stomach. Dimly, he heard a door slam shut. Celia was gone. He forgot her in an instant.
On the other end of the couch, Dennis lay entangled with the other woman. Theo took another swallow of liquor, then poured a splash in the cup of the woman’s collarbone and licked it clean, the salt and sweat only intensifying the flavor.
Dizzy, he poured the rest of the drink onto the crotch of his own pants. The woman lapped greedily at the twill. After lying beside Selene last night, unable to do more than hold her, the woman’s tongue felt like the promise of manna to a starving man. Theo was pounding her back again, playing his song. He felt his voice, unused since seventh-grade choir practice, rising up to join the sitar’s melody. He closed his eyes as the woman began to tear at his pants. “There’s a button…” he began halfheartedly. Some small part of him remembered he’d bought these pants at Macy’s and they were his only khakis left without stains and maybe he shouldn’t let them be ripped apart, but then that little spark of reason was extinguished in a wave of ecstasy as her tongue found his flesh.
Then he was flying. Literally flying. He opened his eyes and the ground was spinning beneath him. His feet were off the ground. He spread his arms wide and watched the world pass by.
Then he watched it come rushing toward him. Too fast, too fast! he thought just before he slammed into the ground.
Selene had to resist kicking Theo while he was down. He looked so pitiful lying on the sidewalk where she’d dumped him. She contented herself with prodding his bare rib cage with the toe of her boot until he rolled over onto his back.
“Wake up, you idiot.”
He cracked his eyelids. His pupils were still dilated, his eyes unfocused. He threw an arm across his face and groaned in the sunlight.
“You’ll survive. You just had too much to drink.”
She’d almost left him. She’d made it about two blocks before turning around. If their roles were reversed, she realized, Theo never would’ve abandoned her, no matter how furious he was. And if she hadn’t rescued him, who knows how long it would’ve taken him to escape the apartment? Bacchanals could go on for days. She was shocked he’d ever made it through grad school at all with “Dennis” for a roommate. It gave her new respect for Theo’s strength of character—a respect currently challenged by the fact that his fly was open, revealing bright orange underwear and an unmistakable bulge that filled her with equal parts anger and… something else she’d rather not name.
Theo finally sat up. He peered at her, still shielding his eyes, and then rubbed his face so hard she was afraid he’d tear it off. “Did I? Holy Roman Empire…”
Now she knew he’d truly lost it.
He retched a little. “I know better than to drink his shit…”
She refused to help him up. A goddess expects proper homage from her worshipers, and it took all her willpower not to accuse him of betraying her with the woman upstairs. He heaved himself onto all fours then finally lurched to his feet, swaying slightly. “I didn’t think you were coming,” he managed.
“I got your text.” It’d been too good to be true. A Bacchic expert named Dennis Boivin? The God of Wine was as predictable as the rest of the immortals. “Dennis” meant “servant of Dionysus.” “Boivin” was derived from Old French, meaning “Wine Drinker.” His presence in New York City wasn’t actually that surprising—many of the gods wound up in large metropolises, drawn to the aura of power they projected.
Theo patted his bare chest distractedly. “My shirt?”
She shrugged and lifted one disdainful brow.
“And oh, God, my pants.” He zipped his fly, but the button at the top came off in his hands. A huge wet stain spread from his crotch. “That’s not what it looks—I don’t think—it was just that girl—”
“Schultz. Stop talking. If you’re going to let some woman put her mouth all over you, that’s your business. It’s clear that’s what you really want—you don’t need to be ashamed of it.” She spoke with careful insouciance, hoping he couldn’t hear the anger lying just beneath the surface.
“What?” He blinked and shook his head as if trying to clear it. “No, that’s not what I want. She’s not what I want.”
She snorted, trying not to fixate on the implication of his words. “You certainly weren’t pushing her away.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“Only because you’re wasting time.” She glared at him, silently commanding him not to push her further.
But whatever power of compulsion she’d summoned beneath the waterfall had faded in the light of day. “Last night—” he began.
“No.” She held up a hand. “Don’t.”
Theo frowned at her. The expression looked out of place on his features. She wondered if her own face looked so sour when she scowled. No wonder men were afraid of her.
“The hierophant’s not going to wait for you to explain yourself and neither am I,” she went on before he could protest. “We need to keep moving.”
He gestured to his damp pants. “Well, I can’t walk around like this.”
“It’s the East Village. No one will notice.”
That wasn’t precisely true. They’d already gotten their fair share of stares from tourists and eye-rolling from locals.
“Please? Come on, the shirt I can do without.” From the appreciative stare of a passing Goth girl, Selene guessed he was right. “But the pants. I look like a homeless runaway.”
“You fit right into the neighborhood.”
“I’ll have to go buy something.” He reached into his back pocket. Then into his front pocket. Then, frantic, into his back again. “My wallet. I think it fell out.”
“More likely, Dennis stole it.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“No?” Selene sighed. Even gods weren’t immune from the needs of the almighty dollar. Dionysus could easily make a fortune selling his wine or his drugs, but he’d never had any common sense. She’d warned her father not to let him onto Olympus, but Zeus had been as enthralled by his liquors as everyone else. If it weren’t for stony-eyed Athena, who insisted Dionysus not serve his drinks to the gods, they might all have fallen into a stupor for the next three millennia. Now it seemed “Dennis” was a petty criminal, a New Age acolyte, an eternal grad student, and possibly her twin’s accomplice. She wouldn’t know for sure until she went back and confronted him—as one child of Zeus to another.
“Oh no. It’s not just my wallet. I left my bag up there. My computer, everything. I didn’t even realize—”
“It’s not safe. I’ll do it.”
“You can barely stand up straight. And I’m not stupid enough to drink anything.” In no mood to be swayed by his concern for her, she left him there, shivering and shirtless. Served him right. Still, she could hear his teeth chattering from halfway down the block. Sighing, Selene dropped her backpack, yanked her belt from around her slim hips, and pulled off her flannel shirt. She tossed them both to Theo, picked up her pack, and marched back to Dennis’s building in her tank top.