Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:11:07 +0200 From: Julian Obedient Subject: Under the Sun Paris had been rainy and chilly through the end of July, unseasonably so. It made Jonas irritable. At least, Jonas blamed the weather for his mood, although the way Martin had behaved the last time they saw each other undoubtedly had been far more perplexing to him than the weather. But he refused to let it affect him. He did not want to think about it. Inviting Robert over without telling him! After they had already made plans for a quiet dinner together! And then proposing a threesome, and then becoming miffed when Jonas demurred, and then saying if he did not want to join in he could just watch! And then he began slowly to undress Robert. And Robert just stood there posing like a Greek statue, posing like he was Adonis, letting Martin worship him! Jonas did not care to see it. He pulled himself away before he smashed all of Martin's little hand-painted nineteenth-century porcelain figurines that he was so proud of. It was late. Jonas was looking for a congenial place to have a drink where pretty boys hung out, but the bars on the rue des Archives were overflowing with older men who broadcast only ugly desperation, and it took away his appetite. His story on corruption in the Greek cement industry had appeared in the paper the day before yesterday and this morning he had finally heard from Helmut Larz, the German-born kingpin of the Greek cement industry. Jonas had been trying without success to get hold of Larz for a week before he went to press with his story. He had even held back some information because he did not want to use it without first giving Larz the chance to confirm, deny, or rebut it. But it was only afterwards that Larz chose to respond. You don't have a very good understanding of how we do business, Larz said in a tone that was smooth and lay halfway between ingratiation and threat. What did I miss? Jonas said casually. So much, my friend, more than I can tell you over the phone. And your point of view! Entirely wrong. Not at all the way to understand anything. Why don't you come to Greece. I will be free for a few weeks in August. We can meet for a drink and a friendly exchange of ideas. It was not a bad idea. Jonas wanted to get out of Paris. He had already been thinking of August in Greece. Undoubtedly, there was more to the story, that he knew, and he would see hoe Larz reacted to what he thought he knew, but he doubted he would get much from Larz. But that was ok. Once he had spoken to Larz, he could write without the risk of having overlooked something. When he left for the Cyclades, his editor at the Herald Tribune, Josh Tillbury, said it was global warming that was responsible for the lousy weather in Paris. Jonas said it was just the weather. Weather could be nasty, just like people. That was not news. Right, Tillbury said. Remember that when you see Helmut Larz. Jonas landed in Athens. It was hot. The sun baked the air. He was wearing the wrong clothes. He was sweating before he could get into a taxi. He went straight to the bank next door to the stock exchange and stowed his briefcase with all the papers relating to the Cement business in a lock box. If he had it right, Larz was the prime mover in a mortgage scheme, comparable to the sub-prime scam in the United States, operating throughout the Cyclades. It looked like Larz was in cahoots with certain Greek investment banks to push unsecured high-interest loans onto small-time contractors that would start them building all over the islands and then securitize those mortgages and sell them at a profit. He had it made from both sides. He sold cement to the builders and mortgages to the bankers. On the morning of the day after his arrival, Jonas was aroused from a heavy sleep, at six a.m., by the bedside phone and the old man at the desk telling him a boat was waiting for him at the port. Larz had insisted, and Jonas consented, secure in his faith that he could not e bought, that the attention would not color his view of the issues. He would meet with Helmut Larz in Naxos and see what that yielded, showing his hand only as much as he needed to in order to get a reaction, before he put everything behind him for a few weeks of sun, swimming, and maybe some good luck. Feeling an uneasiness that showed itself by a steady hissing in his ears and a general torpor, Jonas thanked the old desk clerk and said he'd be down in ten minutes. He said he wanted a double Greek coffee sent up to his room, sweet. Just as he came out of the shower there was a knock on the door and a boy, in a sleeveless t shirt that flattered his slender slightly-muscled arms, no older than fifteen, whom he had not seen the night before, came in with his coffee and a small tray holding the coffee and a basket of bread and a jar of honey. The boy put the tray on the bedside table, looked at Jonas fresh out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around him with eager, laughing eyes. Jonas gave him a euro. The boy left him alone. Jonas drank his coffee, got into a pair of jeans, flip-flops and a pink t shirt, and went down to the dock. He arrived in Naxos with a surprisingly bad headache and a bad taste in his mouth. Unlike the usual pleasure he took in speeding over the water in an open boat, this time, he felt sick, and the wind was harsh and made his body ache. He had read about Larz and thought he knew what to expect. In person the man was worse than his press. He was handsome, rugged, tall, seductive, self-assured and commanding. He was actually rather alluring. His hair was thick and sandy blonde. His eyes were blue enough to be violet. He held himself gracefully, but gave the impression of a tightly coiled spring. He was a very violent man who had it all under control. He had mastered himself and was assured enough to believe that he could and should master everybody else. He was a man who would not take being crossed lightly. Jonas did not want to admit it but he felt the man was attractive. He was a man with the manner of a man who was accustomed to getting his way. He bullied the waiters and cab drivers but his manner of aggression was flirtatious. He was a man of easy pride who was comfortable with his capacity to buy and sell his competitors and who knew they could never touch him. A fashionably punk young man whom he referred to as Rory travelled with him. He looked at Larz with bottomless admiration and smiled at everything he said, when that was appropriate and looked grave when that was called for. His lips were soft and thick. His blue eyes shone with pure and worshipful blankness. He seldom spoke and then only in monosyllables. He was the model of deferential obedience. When he left the table to get a pack of cigarettes for Larz, Jonas noticed that he carried a pistol strapped to his belt over his right hip. Yes, Larz said, noticing that Jonas had noticed the pistol. He's a good shot. Dead aim. I bet, Jonas said. You would not lose, Larz responded. But you did not come here to speak about Rory, did you? he said, as that young man rejoined them. Although he is attractive, Larz said squeezing his hand as he offered his master a box of Karelias. I will tell you a little about myself that might be useful when you think about what you are going to write. I am, in fact, Larz said during their lunch in Naxos over grilled octopus, artichoke hearts in a yogurt sauce and slices of baked red peppers and feta, the Cement King. Like every king before me, I live well. He raised Rory's hand to his lips. Why ought I not to arrange matters to suit what benefits me when that always proves to be to the good of everyone else? The Greeks did not overrate Democracy. That was not their mistake. I suggest you read Aristotle if you don't believe me. Certainly Plato was not guilty of such naiveté. It was only those who mythologized a certain, very short, phase of Greek history, who mythologized and distorted it, who did that. I am a benevolent despot, no? Nothing to be ashamed of or to hide! Have you noticed the amount of new construction throughout the country, or have you not yet had a chance to? That is my cement being turned into homes, villas, villages, and cities. I give people work and make it possible for them to enjoy the fruits of their labor. He passed his left hand with a swipe over the perfect skull of his boy. It was covered only with a five o'clock shadow of his black hair. Rory smiled with contentment. If he had had a tail, Jonas thought, it would be wagging. Such amour propre would have been ludicrous except for the fact that Larz was a formidable man and he did control the Greek cement industry. That much was out in the open. And the Greek cement industry, as anyone who has travelled through that country and seen its splendid, dazzling white structures can tell you, is a mighty industry. Jonas, nevertheless remained unshaken in his understanding that Larz had corrupted an entire industry as well as several government bureaucracies and the country's banking system in his ascension to power. Beside that, he worried that the sort of development that Larz was behind was destroying the country, the essential ecology of the landscapes of Greece as well as its financial wealth and the lives of individuals. That ecological mumbo-jumbo, Larz said laughing, is a piece of utopian fiction that dissatisfied hippies who have not been able to say good-bye to the sixties and their lost youth still cherish. It is a sad phenomenon, but hardly one worth noticing. As for those who are afraid when the free market is allowed to play itself out, they are only showing the weakness of those who are constitutionally inferior. Jonas nodded and bided his time. Men like this could not be toppled, he had learned. He would send in his story and Tilbury would print it, but nothing would change. You had to wait for them to undo themselves. That's what tragedy was about. And the Greeks had invented it. One day Larz would overreach, and all one could hope for was to live long enough to see that happen. Anafi is a small island in the southern Cyclades, nearer to Santorini than it is to Naxos, but sticking to a policy he had followed since the only time he had been on Santorini, Jonas chose Naxos for his meeting with Larz. While Naxos had its faults, Santorini represented everything Larz stood for and that Jonas could not abide. The best thing a travel agent could possibly tell you about Santorini, Jonas had often said, was to avoid it, especially its central city. Fira was a glittering whore and you had to spend a lot of money before she would even begin to open up to you. And even then, you might not want to know her if you had any taste. Jonas first saw Axel Miller on the beach at Anafi. What was he? An American college kid who knew he was hot and teased without pleasing? Jonas knew the kind and was angry that he found himself almost exclusively attracted to that type. It was a type that had always dismissed him. It was a black secret of his: he was attracted to people who excluded him and then he got hurt and angry when they did, and then he swallowed it. A psychologist friend to whom he had once confessed it said that was why he had become an investigative reporter. Jonas wanted to break the kid; the moment that he saw him, he wanted to break him down, to make him get over himself. Hew did not experience this as an angry response to the kid but as the excitement of attraction. Axel, indeed, was a beauty, only the way a lithe-muscled, rich kid, a thick-haired, golden-skinned guy with simultaneously soft and rugged good looks in a skimpy black bikini could be. Jonas wanted to own him, to possess him and keep him until he was ready for something else, to teach him that he could be mastered, that he could be had, that he could be excluded and dismissed. Let him learn that nothing ever lasts. Nothing ever does. But who can tell for sure? Jonas swam out to where he saw Axel's graceful form riding the sea and swam alongside him when he reached him. Axel understood that the swimmer beside him wanted to swim with him, and he did not mind. He was not the boy Jonas took him for. He had seen Jonas on the beach, too, but had been too shy, not too arrogant, to approach him. But in time he would have sidled up to him and with soft eyes felt him out. They swam together, beside each other in the crystalline blue sea for maybe half an hour, their chests breasting the waves, their arms, like water mills, propelling them through the undulant sea by the power they generated, each finding a reserve of strength greater than usual churned up by the other's presence. The water was the medium in which their spirits mixed and dissolved. Hey, Jonas said, the first time either of them spoke, as they trod side by side, with swim-braced strides, vigorously walking up the lightly-sloping sandy beach called Kleissidi, the beach of golden sands that emerged from the blue Aegean Sea. Hey, Axel said back, his questioning eyes gleaming as brightly as his teeth in the radiance of his smile. You're a good swimmer, Jonas said, making no secret that he was admiring the boy's body. He folded his arm around Axel's shoulders. Let's have a drink together. Axel did not pull away. You're a great swimmer, he said, as unable to keep his eyes off Jonas as Jonas was unable to take his away from Axel. And you have a body that shows it, he said snuggling closer so that they walked with one gait. Under fern-like salt-palm leaves that kept out the three o'clock sun, they sat facing each other, sipping icy lemon vodkas laced with champagne. This is wonderful, Axel said, delighted. Have you been here long? Jonas asked, reaching over the table and covering the young man's hand with his own. Axel could feel in it the tremble of a current he had never felt before. Their eyes were locked on each others'. The intensity was overwhelming. No, he said. I am spending the summer going from one island to another. It is the last gift of my youth. After this my father says I am on my own. What does your father do? Investment banker. And you will follow in his footsteps? No, Axel smiled and shook his head. I am not sure what I want to do but I don't want to do that. So I'm on my own. Have you ever been fucked? Jonas said, turning on a dime, but with a gentleness that belied the question's audacity and made it seem like a natural continuation of the conversation they were having. I'm a virgin, Axel said, casting down his green brown eyes. Stay here with me, Jonas said. Ok, the boy said, grinning. I want you to stay with me. Yes, the boy affirmed. Here? Here, unless I decide to go someplace else. It frightens me, Axel said. Jonas felt himself thrill in response to this confession. You're beautiful, Jonas said, unlike anyone I have ever met before, and innocent. I want to take you to bed and drive you crazy. Would you like that? Maybe I would, Axel said, grim determination lurking in his open laugh. Away from the beach, the island quickly became hilly. The hills were steep. Axel sat on the back of Jonas' rented motorbike as it negotiated the twisting roads that rose above the sea. The villa Jonas rented was the last on a dirt path. From the terrace you could see a panorama of the Aegean all the way to the horizon. Above, the path became a mountain trail and branched out, turning and splitting upwards, it seemed, into the round endless crystal blue sky. They showered the sand and salt off, each washing the other. They stood on the terrace covered only by the white towels knotted around their waists. I have some stuff I got in Athens. Have you ever been stoned? Jonas said, opening a leather pouch. No, Axel said. But I'd like to try. I want to get you completely off balance. I want you to forget who you are. I want the only thing that you know for certain is that you belong to me. As Axel inhaled, Jonas pinched his nipples. Before he could exhale Jonas grabbed his mouth with his and drew the pot smoke that had mixed with the boy's breath into his lungs, held it there, and then gave it back to him. He could feel both of them getting dizzy by the way they swayed in each others' arms. Jonas pushed Axel backward through the sliding door into the room and with one more push made him tumble backwards on the bed. They laughed with nervous anticipation, laughed, lunged, and clawed at each other. They tore off their towels and pressed their bodies together. The hardness of Jonas's cock met the hardness of Axel's. With a fist wrapped around his tall, hard cock Jonas pulled Axel upward, arcing him like a bridge, drawing his hips up from the bed, exposing him to penetration. With the spit of his fingers he greased the hole by which he would enter him. Axel gasped and cried yes repeatedly as Jonas pushed himself into the boy and pulled out and moistened him with the ooze of anticipation. Jonas gloried in his submission and felt like his lord as he brought him nearer to oblivion and obliteration until he broke to pieces in him and felt him shatter as if he were inside him. They slept and the falling sun was burning orange on the western horizon, sinking into the water at the end of the world when they awoke. In that crepuscular light they saw each other glimmering and embraced once more. I'm hungry, Axel said afterwards. They went down to Margarita's by the beach. They ate Greek salad, tomatoes and cucumbers, onions, olives, capers, and feta cheese. They ate tzaziki. They ate red peppers stuffed with rice and rice rolled in grape leaves. They ate octopus and squid in vinegar. They ate figs and watermelon and yougurt with honey laced throughout. Stellios watched them as they ate, Stellios, the one whose love shone like a star through his broken and hungry heart. *** Like so many of those Greek beauties who have youth and no future, Stellios came to the small port of Anafi with its golden beach and sumptuous caves to look at the boats and the sea and the silhouettes of distant islands and the tourists who had the money to come and go as they pleased. He envied them and could not say whether he hated or loved them. He could not tell if he wanted to serve them or to rob them. Jonas saw that he was looking at them, saw him from the corner of his eye, felt as if he were taking their picture with an invisible camera and later would not be able to stop looking at it. What are you looking at? Axel said. Look, Jonas said in response, indicating the sun-burnished boy with the slightest movement of his chin and eyes. Do you think he knows how beautiful he is? The boy stretched his bronzed body carelessly like a cat in the moonlight as if he sensed that they were looking at him. He felt a surge of desire rush through him, desire unlike what he knew when he was with the men who cruised the waterfront and paid him to blow them. He would approach them -- he knew it -- not now, but soon. It was his fate, his moira. He recognized it when he saw it. He was waiting for something: a father, a brother; for something to be his, for someone to devote himself to who would love him for his devotion, for someone to give him a world, for someone unlike his mother. You, she said, too many times. You, the burden of my life. You, the curse your father left me. Greek men, all foul sons of Odysseus. They charm us, marry us, trick us into bearing their children. But once they have us locked in their homes, they abandon us for their greatest love, their love of adventure, their search for death on the sea. Yes, they leave us for the sea, for the inevitable loins of the sea, just as you will soon, the sooner the better. Other times she said to him, What do you know? What do you know of the way I suffer? A boy like you, tall, strong, well knit, the mirror of your father? Why are you not your father? Why do you not come in the tenebrous night and hold me in your muscled arms and dispel the gloom from my murky soul as he did once, before you were born, when I was still young and he desired me, before the fat of childbirth clung to me? He ran from her in terror, as from a cracked mirror. He was old enough to live by himself. Money was not a problem. There were many men who came and went daily, and it was not difficult to see what they wanted or to learn just how much they were willing to pay for it. He learned quickly how to please them and how to get the most out of them. He entered into their desire and made them dance the shivering dance they had only been able heretofore to dream of. He wandered the streets and alleys around the waterfront in Athens, hung out in the bars, cafés, and tavernas, prowled the streets below the Acropolis. He stowed away on a boat from Pireaus to Anafi and slept in a cave by the sea on the beach. One night after he listened to a sad college professor from America tell him that no one in his town really knew who he was, he lay on the sand thinking of the two he had seen in the taverna. He could not sleep because of envy. He put on his thin trousers and his too-small t shirt and went barefoot on his rock-hardened soles. He climbed up to the Chora. It was late. The tourists were gone. >From the height he saw the lights shine amber in the distance across the distance of the black Aegean. The door to the chapel at the height of the village was open. The chapel was empty and only a small flame burned in the center of the sandy repository that held the lighted candles. He lit a candle and placed it in the sand before the icon but did not cross himself. Emptiness tearing in his heart like hunger drove him down to the port again. In the morning he would find a boat to take him back to Athens. He was in Piraeus by noon. Soon he regretted it. Athens was hot and dirty and crowded with foreigners who clogged the streets. The streets were lined with cheap souvenir shops stuffed with mass produced, hand-made alabaster figurines of ancient Greeks, philosophers and gods. At the end of August, Jonas returned to Athens with Axel. Jonas was unexpectedly moody. It perplexed Axel. He had expected the summer to last forever. One evening they walked through the Plaka, returning from the Acropolis. Axel could feel Jonas's irritation. Will you tell me what is troubling you? he said. Nothing is troubling me. Why won't you trust me? Why do you insist when I said there was nothing? Why must you make yourself the center of everything? I don't know anything about you, but I have known you more intimately than I have ever known anyone. Axel was going back to New York. He was to finish his last year at Columbia. And now I am going back to New York and I know I will lose you, he said. I don't want to. I want to have you...you, not just the memory of you. You can't hold on to things. You need to learn that. I feel like you are gone already. I want some tangible mark on me that once I was yours, Axel said. When they passed a shop that did body piercing, he said, A ring through my nipple. But only one, to mark the incompleteness I feel. Jonas looked at him, incoherently confused, angry with himself but loathe to admit it. In front of a hotel, at the corner of Cherefondos and Adrianou, Stellios saw them and approached them, asking if they wanted to buy pot. His English was better than you would expect. I watched a lot of television, he said, on satellite, explaining his idiomatic proficiency. Where are you staying? he said. Here, Jonas said, indicating a small house with a roof garden across the square from the hotel. You were in Anafi, he continued. I saw you watching us there. Do you live in Athens? I don't live anywhere. You must come from someplace. You are Greek? I ran away. >From where? Ithaki. Where do you stay? Nowhere. Where do you sleep? Last night I slept in that garden, he said, pointing over the fence to the site of an ancient excavation beside an old church that took up the square. What do you do when it gets cold? Axel said. What do you suggest? I suggest you sleep with us tonight. My name is Stellios, he said. They all shook hands. His palms were soft and dry. His fingers were graceful and long. Jonas felt his electricity. It was maddening. He knew what would happen. He saw it like a preformed vision. It came to him whole, like Athena from the brain of Zeus. It was cruel, but it drew him on like an irresistible impulse. Axel did not know what it really meant to be marked. It was nothing so simple as having your nipple pierced with a tiny silver barbell. Being marked for the rest of his life, not just marked, but broken meant making some part of him become unavailable ever again to anyone the way that he had been available to Jonas. Love is a fierce and jealous god. Love was not about the body. It had to do with something essential and immutable. He would pith the spirit that had shimmered in his flesh and make him available to adulthood, but never again to the kind of love that would torment his memory. Love meant following a god who has abandoned you. *** Axel dreamed that he was alone on a beach unable to rise from the sand or find a way out of the sun, as an oppressive heat burned him. When he finally awoke with a sudden start, the bed that the three of them had slept in was empty but for him. No one was in the room. He stepped out onto the small balcony that overlooks the garden in the church square, and he saw them, as Jonas intended him to. Jonas held the bare-chested, long-muscled, bronzed boy, Stellios, in his arms and pressed him close and lost himself kissing his full mouth, crushing his young lips. The idea of the treachery enflamed Jonas's passion and enhanced Stellios's desirability exponentially. They shivered with the excitement of volatile desire. For Jonas, desire had become the knife to use to cut his mark on Axel. The pain he knew he was causing him cut into himself as well, branding him with excruciating excitement as he vibrated with the knowledge that this moment of betrayal would always be with Axel. He knew it would always stay with him, too, that desire was a knife that separated lovers as much as a force that drew them together. There was nothing he could do about it but yield. Innocent of complicity in Jonas's plot, Stellios was pilloried by the force of a passion he could only attribute to the power of a sexual divinity inhabiting his ravisher. Afterwards, when the three sat in a square drinking coffee, Axel could not speak. He dropped his eyes in shame as if he had been the one who had violated their bond. Back where they were staying, when it was time for him to go and a cab was waiting to take him to the airport, he stammered stupidly thanking their host, an old friend of Jonas', for his hospitality. I'll take the cab by myself, he told Jonas with studied determination. But Jonas had not finished with him and insisted that the three of them go to the airport so that he might get a proper send-off. If I'd known, Jonas said with indignation, this is the way you would be, I never would have sought you out to begin with. Don't make everything we shared lose its meaning. It was a body blow and Axel was silent, his mind turned inside out because it seemed to him that what Jonas was saying was a hideous distortion of how things were. But was it? He had not betrayed their special meaning. Had he? How? Was there something wrong with him? Was he being unreasonable? Was this a matter of reason at all? Axel stood at the gate looking at Jonas and Stellios through the glass partition and through the tears he was fighting to prevent. Ostensibly there to see him off, they were not waving to him or even looking in his direction but gazing into each other's eyes with such hot desire that they were repeatedly drawn together in shameful kisses, as if they were the parting lovers. Axel was in despair. How had such recent bliss become such grave misery? Boarding was called, and an invisible wake, an after image of their happy sea travel on the Aegean, grew between him and the lovers who absorbed each other, oblivious of the airport. Stellios was too far gone in the rapture Jonas had spun around him to be aware of the role he had been cast in, how he was being used. He was hardly aware that anyone else existed, not just Axel. But after the plane was gone and they had taken a cab back to the Plaka, Jonas thought of Axel who was gone now, beautiful Axel. He pulled himself away from Stellios and turned on him, pushed him away and scoffed at him saying, You are only a whore. I hope I am a good whore, Stellios said, without irony, unsure of himself and of what was happening, only wanting to please, trying to keep his balance. And all you want from me is money to spend, food to eat, and a place to sleep, Jonas said with an unexpected and tangled mixture of anger, contempt, and sadness. You don't know what love is. You only know appetite. You sell yourself and you would betray me in a moment. No, Stellios recoiled. It is not like that, not with you. Jonas said, You don't take my money? I don't want your money, he said. I want you. He was unable to believe that Jonas could not see that he had given him his soul. You are stupid if you think anything else. Jonas was stunned as if he had been slapped, but he could not relent. You know how to play your part very well, don't you? Aren't you taking my money when you live with me, sleep in my bed, eat the food I buy? Stellios felt the wind knocked out of his chest. Do you want me to sleep in the street again? Do you want to? If you tell me to, I will. Until you find somebody else to sell yourself to. Stellios said nothing. His knees buckled and he dropped to a crouch right there on the street and began to cry. It excited Jonas. He lifted the boy up, as if roughly but with a hidden tenderness that Stellios could feel. But until that happens, he said, you have nowhere to go. Putting his arm around the defeated boy's shoulders, he drew him to his chest. The scales of misery fell and Stellios surrendered like the swell of the tide ebbing back into the sea. *** As the airliner touched ground in New York and the cabin burst into applause, Axel knew he had been had. He felt that what had happened had taken the future away from him by shrouding it eternally in his past. His backpack hung heavy upon his shoulders as he followed the crowd to the customs check. He did not have to wait at the baggage carousel because everything he had was in his knapsack. A scar of anger had formed in his belly and he could not help picking at the scab with the edges of his thoughts. A cab would have been nice, but he was no longer a rich boy. It was a rainy New York morning, so different from the sunshine skies and the blue Aegean he no longer was a part of. Given where his heart was, everything was just as it ought to be. He took the subway to Sheridan Square. Before he could account for it, a transformation occurred. He fell in love with New York -- it was a melancholy love, as all real love is, because he knew that love, to be love, needed to know loss -- and he was in love with New Yorkers, with the plumbers and pipe-fitters who sat across from him on the C train joking about their boss, their job, and their frustrations, their money fixes, and their girlfriends' demands; he was in love with their native sangfroid. Getting off the train at Hoyt-Schemmerhorn, a lanky black guy with kinky gray hair looked at him. Don't worry; you gonna get through it, he said. Thanks, Axel said, wondering how in the world the guy knew he was troubled, and if he really was going to get through it. Gray September rain met him at Sheridan Square, but the winding Village streets shone with their proper melancholy, reflecting the streaks of street lights, green and red and yellow, reflected in them and lulled him a little into contentment. His attic room in an old brownstone off Hudson Street was just as he had left it, barely furnished with a bed, books, a desk, and the twenty pound weights under the radiator. It was good to be back home and comforting to see the rain streaking down the slope of the skylight. He was roused the next morning by an insistent banging on his door. Through the keyhole he saw three cops and opened the door in his black briefs, which he had slept in. In the fog of waking, he was instructed to put some clothes on and go with them. What's going on? he said. Get dressed, one of the cops said tonelessly. We'll ask the questions. He wondered at how well they'd got their parts down and he knew better than to disobey. The police station was clean, cold, with cinderblock walls painted lime green and mustard yellow. They showed him pictures of Jonas and pictures of him with him. There he was with Jonas on the beach and there he was sitting with him in a backstreet taverna in Athens. He remembered that they had been arguing about the design of a silver chain they had seen and whether it would look good around his neck after his tan had faded. What is all this about? he asked. That's what we want you to tell us. Tell you what? Axel said. What you know about this man. Axel looked at them without saying anything. We were friends. We were in Greece together this summer. He was shot outside The Bank of Athens yesterday morning and was DOA when they got him to the hospital. What can you tell us about him? What are you talking about? He was shot as he was entering the bank. Do you know why he might have been there? Axel went insensate. He said nothing for a beat. I didn't know. What? Axel looked at the blankly. What didn't you know? That he was killed. You were involved with him. I knew him for less than a month, Axel said, realizing how short a time he had taken for a lifetime. A week ago he would have been gripped by the grief that accompanies loss. Now, it was by a meaningless confusion. The loss had already occurred. Now a mysterious finality was stamped upon it that ruled out any chance for resolution. Don't worry, the police said, misunderstanding his silence. You are not a suspect. You were over the Atlantic when it happened. We wondered if you might know what he was doing at the bank, why someone would want to kill him. I knew him, Axel said, without really knowing anything about him. You don't know what he was doing at the bank. No, Axel said. It was absurd. What do people generally do at the bank? He wanted to say but knew better to keep his smartmouth closed. He wandered home in a daze, fingering the barbell piercing his nipple through his t shirt, twisting it to make himself feel it pinch him. In Athens the police were holding Stellios. He slumped in his cell crying after the beating. But he had nothing to say. He knew nothing. He was not even near the bank when Jonas was shot. He had no political affiliation, no record, and he was not a member of any group. He was a boy who hung out on beaches and turned tricks. The dead journalist had befriended and abandoned him. It was an old story. He had not even known he wrote for a newspaper. He was in the garden outside the Acropolis at the time the gun was fired. He got twenty euros for jerking off an English sailor. He told them that. They beat him and held him over night and then let him go. They had nothing. Before they released him, an older officer who had not been present the night before spoke to him. The body was a temple, he said. It was in man's nature to give himself to one particular woman. He was young enough to turn his life around. He gave him the card of a religious counselor. Father Dimitrios was a Greek Orthodox priest who had a degree in psychology from the University of Athens. Stelios took the card. He would have laughed in their faces, but he knew better, and his ribs hurt when he breathed, no less when he laughed. Athens was hot and he plunged into its busy center. He looked around at the bustle of the outdoor markets and wandered over to the vicinity of Sophocles Street, hoping to score some pot. Night was falling but he did not linger there. The streets were not what they had been a year ago. There were groups of police on every corner hanging around and checking papers. The trade in dope and contraband was broken up. He took the metro at Omonoia, evading ticket control, changed at Syntagma, and got out at Monastriaki. The noise and the lights of the square made him dizzy and he felt faint. That's a pretty shiner you've got there, a lithely muscled German, probably in his middle thirties, in khaki shorts and a pale blue tennis shirt, spotting him, said in English. It looks good on you, he added, facing him and gripping Stellios' shoulder in his strong palm. Stellios looked at him without speaking. It really does, the German said, ingratiatingly. It doesn't feel good. It's not supposed to, the German said and winked. Buy you a coffee? Sure, Stelios said, why not? Werner Marcus was an archeologist who was going to Crete, to work at a site not far from Heraklion. But I have another week in Athens before I have to be there, he said. Do you live on the street? Sometimes, Stelios said. When I don't have any money. Like now, Werner Marcus said. Like now, Stelios said. What are you going to Heraklion for? To work at a Minoan site that's being reconstructed. Stelios shook his head. We have too much past, he said. It's a great past, an amazing heritage. I live on the streets, Stelios said. Don't talk about my heritage when I have no future. Moved by this unexpected demotic eloquence Marcus dropped his eyes. I'm sorry, he said. Then he added, as if by way of explanation or excuse, They are two different things. To you, Stelios retorted. To you. I will have to go back to Paris in November, Marcus said. You aren't French. No, I am German. But you live in Paris. I live in Paris. I have never been to Paris, Stelios said. Would you like to go there? Marcus asked. I like to go everywhere, Stellios said. It would have made sense for Axel to remove the tiny barbell piercing from his nipple. It could seem morbid to have a dead man's token piercing him. But it became a token of living strength for him, and showing it off whenever he could became a matter of pride. In his last year at Columbia, he joined the swimming team. What is that, his father gasped when he met him after a swimming meet and they ate lunch in a falafel place near Columbia, that you have stuck in your nipple? Do you like it? Axel said. I hate it, Miller said looking at his son with cold disdain. It's barbaric. There isn't much about me that you do like, is there? Axel said, not with animus but as if stating a fact just realized. As I understand it, that goes both ways, his father retorted, having been trained never to let someone he was talking to get the better of him. You mean my declining to become an investment banker? Axel said, as if it were a subject they had beaten to death already and that his father could not let go of. It's your choice, Mr. Miller said with the unrelenting finality of someone who puts his faith in tough love and does not really believe at all in anyone else's right to choose . Yes, it is, Axel said, not allowing himself to be intimidated. But I'm not going to support it, his father countered. Or you as long as you adhere to it. You made that clear, Axel responded, defusing any bang the threat might hope to have . And you made it clear that that did not matter to you, his father said, reminding him that he was making his bed and would have to sleep in it. It depends what you mean, Axel said, his clarity not undermined. What are you trying to say? his father said, getting irritated, although it seemed entirely clear to Axel. I'm not trying to say anything, he answered with the softest emphasis on trying. If by support you mean your love and your good will, he explained, I'd rather have them than not. As for your money, I won't live a bought life. I want the life I can earn for myself. You were always good with high-sounding words and keeping aloof, Miller said, unable to hold back the rush of his anger. But life is not about words, he said, masking his wrath as experience. It's about what you do. And you do not know what you want to do. You only know what you don't want to do. And you don't earn a damn thing by doing nothing. Axel said nothing. In fact, he seemed to be staring off into space. Are you listening? I know what you're saying, he said calmly. You've said it before, and that's how things are right now. I've made a choice and I'm willing to take the consequences. Well, they are beginning right now his father said, standing up. I've got to get back to the office. With contempt, as if getting rid of a hooker, he tossed ten dollars on the table and walked out of the restaurant. It was sunny outside and through the plate glass window, Axel saw him at the curb hailing a cab, an impressive figure his father departing, a handsome man, lean at fifty, with hair graying at the temples, today dressed casually in a soft olive green corduroy jacket over a creamy oatmeal colored cashmere crew neck sweater and a pair of well-fitting faded dungarees, proving once again perversely, Axel thought, that you cannot judge a book by it cover. A taxi stopped for him, no sooner than he had stretched out his hand to signal for one. Cigarette, the fellow Axel had been looking at when he seemed to be staring out into space said, approaching his table with a pack outstretched. Although there was a late October coolness in the air, he wore only a chest-hugging black t shirt that flattered his ropey upper arms, a pair of tight jeans that fit like skin and a pair of soft leather shoes that flattered his bare ankles. Thanks, Axel said. I don't smoke. I need to quit, the young man said. Axel had seen him around the city, but they had never met. It looked like you needed one, the young man said, sitting down in the seat his father had vacated. He looked a bit old for you. Axel laughed. He's my father. Happy families are all alike. Janos, the young man said, extending his hand. Axel, Axel said, taking it. The leaves on the ginkgo trees in Morningside Park were turning yellow. The boys walked carelessly as the light began to fade. I've coasted, Axel said, all my short life. Or really, I have not even coasted. I stayed still and everything I could want seemed to present itself without my doing anything. And everything was always just as I wanted it. Until last summer! So maybe this is a gift. What is it exactly that your father does? Janos said, torn between that question and What happened last summer? Well, Axel said, winding it up to let a narrative of atrocities roll out, he has begun to securitize life insurance cash-ins. Huh? Janos said. You don't know what that is? Axel said. I go to Julliard. I'm a dance major, remember. My father buys life insurance policies from people who want to cash them in before they die. He gives them a settlement, say four hundred thousand on a million dollar policy. Then he breaks the debt up into bonds and debentures and sells it to speculators. Like with the sub-prime mortgages. Exactly. Isn't that looking for trouble? Yes, Axel said. He gets off on it. But it's not what I want to do. Why not? There's big money in it. It's socially destructive; it's not making anything real. What do you want to do? I'm not sure, Axel said. I think I want to write. And that's making something real? I have stories to tell that reflect the real world and investigate the nature of reality. I want to turn intangible things concrete using the medium of words. You do it with motion when you dance. Have you ever seen me dance? I'd like to. I'd like you to go home with me, Janos said, smiling and putting his arm around this new-found beauty. I'd like to, Axel said, feeling Janos's electricity surge through him. They took the subway when once Axel would have thought nothing of going in a taxi down to Sheridan Square. I have a roommate, Janos said as he turned the key and led Axel into an apartment larger than he expected in a tall building with windows from floor to ceiling stretching out over one entire wall and giving a magnificent view of the Hudson. I could never afford this on my own. Even so, Axel said. My father died before he could find out enough about me to strike me from his will. Look at the river. The Hudson was undulating and throwing off sparks of silver in the leaden night. The young men kissed and a warm current of desire spread through their limbs. I know you don't smoke tobacco, Janos said. But what about pot? Axel looked lost suddenly. What's the matter? Nothing, he said. Just a memory. Yes, I've smoked it a few times...in Greece. Janos held back from further inquiry and said only, Would you like to smoke some with me now? Sure, Axel said. But first why don't you take off your shirt and let me look at you. Do you like what you see? Very much Axel said, grasping the sides of his gleaming chest and pressing his lips to Janos's. But Janos pulled away before oblivion overtook them. Now you he said. Axel's sun-bronzed, swim-toned chest gleamed like the gods of Greece proud after centuries, towering in the new Acropolis museum. Janos gazed in lost admiration, a slave to his devotion. It was not they by themselves who drew them together but the force of craving that had overtaken them. I can't stop looking at you, Janos said. Don't, Axel answered, sliding his fingers and palms over the magnificently muscled dancer's lean chest. In the morning, Janos did not recognize the boy he had taken home with him last evening and loved. He awoke as he felt the wave of sobs coming from the body next to him, but not touching his, completely withdrawn, estranged. Fearfully he put his hand upon the small of Axel's back and felt an immediate shudder of withdrawal, pushing him away, so different from the magnetic field of the night before that had drawn him in. I did not know it would hurt so much. Janos misunderstood him. I'm sorry, he said. For what? Axel said, almost with spite. I tried to be gentle, Janos said. And then Axel understood and began to laugh through his tears and rising on all fours took Janos in his arms. I don't mean that. I mean I did not think that the feeling of renewal would be so painfully connected to a sense of betrayal. I don't know what you are saying, Janos said as he returned Axel's embrace and turned them on their sides so that they lay in an embrace facing each other. His tenderness made Alex's entire frame shudder and he buried his forehead in the curve where Janos' neck and shoulders met and wept as Janos comforted him. But I am sorry that you hurt. Alex squeezed his teeth together at the pain, and then without his will, they released themselves and the ache was expelled, and he held Janos tightly and began to laugh and kiss him and take him by his beautiful masculinity and to draw the hardness of desire from deep within him and surrendered himself again. Janos understood without understanding. He became the pliant instrument of their mutual pleasure. Entering his lover, he found him among the dark reaches of a reddening night where thighs and garters lured the senses to ecstasy and the leaping torsos of maddened dancers wild within their discipline hurled themselves in an apotheosis of the dance toward the mercury lamps that swirled like stars within the galaxy called the Milky Way. The often unbearable heat of the relentless August sun had abated, but the days were still hot. Work had resumed at the archeological site at Malia, not far from Heraklion. Marcus had taken a room for himself and Stellios. He had taken the boy with him from Athens and gotten him hired as a non-professional apprentice to help with the new digging. Much of the site was already exposed and had been reconstructedm but on the periphery, the digging and piling up of ancient stones continued. From a platform above the completed site of excavation, one could walk around the ancient outline below and see the remnants of what had been a city. The sun was setting toward the west and its blaze spread a gauzy glow over the Sea of Crete along the circumference of the horizon. Stellios had been gently combing the red clay with a rubber-tipped dibble and with his fingers, in chamois gloves, clawed into the shape of a dibble, searching for ancient fragments, artifacts of a defunct world. His knees were red with the clay he crawled through and streaks of the ancient earth were smeared over his torso and his face like cuts and scars. >From time to time he looked up and watched Marcus, wearing only cut away blue jeans and high work boots cuffed by heavy grey socks, stretching his wonderful frame as he puzzled over the assembly of some unearthed shards or climbed carefully conveying some precious discoveries up from the trenches of the ancient town lying below his work table on the platform above it. The glaze of sweat made his torso gleam as if it had been oiled for exhibition. Now that the light was falling it was becoming impossible to work. Everyone but Marcus and Stellios had left the site. Look there, Marcus said, one arm around the boy's shoulders, their sides pressing and sticking together, glued by their sweat, the other outstretched over the historic remnant, pointing to a preserved fragment of a paled white tile floor on which a swirling geometric pattern of faded red and blue could be discerned. They climbed down the wooden ladder into the antique world and crouched by the edge of that ancient floor under the weakening daylight. What had it been? Stellios asked turning his head and catching Marcus's eyes prying him open. Marcus did not answer but kissed him savagely and pressed him to the primitive earth beside the artifact and conquered him. Stellios' breathing was frantic. He pulled at the breath drawn up from the depths of his master. It plunged into his own lungs and belly. He was swooning in obedience to Marcus's demand. Marcus pinned his arms above his head and devoured Stellios, surveying his outstretched torso like a landscape, exploring his mounds and hollows, discovering the treasures of his molten flesh. Stellios yielded to his excavation, laying open for him his maze of ancient streets. With their gods to couple them, Minoan boys flung themselves in dance through those antique streets in dazzled celebration. [When you write, please put story name in subject slot. Thanks.]