The God in Flight

by Laura Argiri

  “No—because I don’t tell him,” said Simion, who would have paid twenty dollars in that minute for simple silence. Feeling as he did, talking about the most ordinary matters took painful, grinding mental effort; talking about life in Haliburton was worse than anything else in the world but life in Haliburton.

  “Do you blame yourself for it, this death? Is that it? People have strange thoughts about the deaths of those they love, I’ve heard—”

  “Andy, I will be grateful to you all my life if you’ll stop picking at me now,” said Simion. He turned onto his side and pressed the heel of his right hand into his sore forehead, the left into the muscles of his stomach. “You’ve been lovely to me, now don’t nag until I snap at you and make myself feel even worse than I already do. I’m tired, and I feel strange. I want to be quiet. It’s a choice of two things: Either I get to be quiet and get myself off to sleep, or I puke my guts again.”

  “All right, then,” said Andrew, feeling helpless. “I’ll be quiet, but I’m going to wait with you. For him.”

  When he heard Doriskos’s step in the lower hall, Andrew steeled himself to go down and warned him of his presence by speaking to him from the top stair: “Professor Klionarios.”

  Doriskos searched for the speaker in the shadows, and Andrew was struck with the wide, almost wild frightened look he had for the few seconds it took to hold up a lamp and to connect voice with person—rather more than skitty. A child who really believes in vampires, thought Andrew. Who’s sure in his heart that Loup-Garou’s coming for him someday.

  “Steady on, it’s all right—it’s me. Your ex-favorite model.”

  “Oh…Carpallon. You alarmed me. When the house is empty, I’m…easy to unnerve. Simion invited you home?”

  Probably making a little mental check that he locked his secret room up, thought Andy. “Not exactly,” he said. “I need to speak with you.” Then he heard Simion’s voice, muffled, from the golden room… “That’s quite all right, Andy. I’ll tell him the whole charming tale. Dori!”

  “Excuse me, please,” said Doriskos, hearing the urgency of Simion’s tone. “Maybe you could let yourself out. I should go up now.”

  Simion told an abridged version of the afternoon’s events to the worried Doriskos, then said he’d like to sleep awhile. When he woke, Doriskos gave him chicken soup with an egg whisked into it, and hot chocolate, and crackers, and willow-bark tea for his headache, which was probably mostly due to hunger. Simion’s eyes had looked inflamed around the edges, the tender rims, after he’d been sick during the brandy episode; it had made him look as though he’d been crying. They’d never looked as bad as they did now, though. He looked as if he’d been sick and cried, hard, for a long time. And Doriskos was alarmed by his queer listlessness and his unfocused look, neither usual for him.

  “Oh, I have to do my reading and my math examples…and my head’s bad. Where’d I put my books?” Simion ran his hand through his hair, a distraught gesture he used more often these days. “Oh, I’m going to get behind, I’ll flunk, I’ll positively flunk.”

  “You won’t. You can wake up early and do it all then. I think we should just go to bed early, get some rest.”

  “I already am in bed early, and you never go to bed early, and if you were to, you wouldn’t go to sleep,” Simion pointed out.

  “Some quiet will do us both good, even if we don’t sleep,” Doriskos said, stepping out of his slippers to get into the citron wood bed. He found the brush and brushed Simion’s hair and rubbed his back, and Simion slowly relaxed and enjoyed this little celebration of affection. Doriskos was reassured when Simion insinuated himself onto his lap, a delicious but for once not incendiary lap-load.

  “So, that’s all that happened?” he asked with careful casualness, after a while.

  “Yes, I tell you. It’s all right. No one but Andy saw me, but if they did, they’d just think I’d been drinking,” said Simion, with a yawn. It struck Doriskos that he regarded these difficulties of his as some sort of dirty secret; he would much prefer people to think he’d been drinking than to guess that some nervous trouble or ancient fear periodically bent him double and squeezed him dry. “Better now.”

  “You hadn’t been.”

  “What?”

  “Drinking.”

  “Not this time.” A not-quite-real yawn; he didn’t want to discuss it. “I’d say I learnt my lesson about drinking, now-and-forever and world-without-end, but that’s probably a lie. I’ll likely half-kill myself several more times before I learn to stop while I’m ahead. My father’s a drunk, and I’m beginning to understand what he sees in it. Still, this time I hadn’t been.”

  “I’m very worried about you, you know. There’s a reason for anything this—”

  “Disgusting?”

  “Extreme. Painful. Those ulcers of yours, suppose they’re bleeding on the sly all this while?”

  “You aren’t by any chance trying to worry me?” asked Simion, forcing a very irritated smile—keeping his temper against the grain. “I have these spells every now and again,” he said.

  Doriskos wondered what he was considering the spell: the fragmented focus, the formidable vomiting, which? Clarification was not offered. He was convinced that Simion had no idea how disconnected he seemed, how frighteningly pale and vague. When someone so tenaciously attached to the actual world lost his grip to this extent, however briefly, it meant something bad, that much was clear; it meant danger and crucial sickness. His own fugues were drifting, natural, and almost pleasant, despite Stratton-Truro’s horror at them; he knew he was dealing with the opposite here. He didn’t know how.

  I want to protect you, but can I? thought Doriskos. From your fellows, from yourself, from what you remember and won’t tell me. From me and all I don’t know. And how does one do that?

  Waking up early and feeling absence beside him, Doriskos went downstairs in the morning. But the lost was found soon enough: Simion was sitting at the kitchen table doing schoolwork. He had built himself a good fire and lit a candle and was fortifying himself with the modern magic of analytical geometry there in the predawn dark.

  Perhaps, it was possible, a slow recovery might have set in but for Kiril. Unmalicious Kiril, who certainly meant no harm, was thinking of getting married. He eventually had to discuss this with Doriskos, who remarked wearily that his timing was not of the best but gave him a leave of absence to go to New York and settle matters with his inamorata’s father. Kiril laid in groceries and clean shirts, then packed up his best clothes and got on the train to New York. Within the week, Simion would do the same, and without Kiril to caution him of the perilousness of his actions, or to buffer him from the response.

  But the true author of this turn of fate was Andrew, though Andrew intended no harm to anyone. He was simply doing what he thought best for Simion, and pleasurable for himself. During this phase of the winter, Andrew spent much of his time contriving distractions for his friend. He knew what Doriskos was doing for Simion, and that it wasn’t helping—tiptoeing around him, making trays of invalid food for him, whispering, catching his sorrow like a cold and passing it back to him like one. It would have probably done Simion more good to be made to sand the floors, muck out a mile of stalls, memorize a Shakespeare play, or carry out just about any concrete, exhausting, mind-draining piece of work with a definite beginning and end, but Klionarios would not know that. Distraction, good and heavy and constant distraction, was what was called for here. A change of scene, a weekend in New York, Andrew suggested. Not standing on taste, he talked with the persuasion of an advertising man about the things that might have some chance of breaking through the lethal chill of his friend’s melancholy—swank tailoring establishments, purveyors of knit silk underwear that did not disturb the line of sleek evening clothing, warehouses containing miles of Oriental carpets, hotels where harpists and pianists entertained you while you ate. Gaslight and bathtubs with gold taps. The opera house and Adelina Patti. Central Park and the handsome horses
that could be rented for a ride through it. Bookstores, dozens of them! Famous courtesans! It occurred to him more than twice that he was endowing the place with glamour just one inch short of perjury; Paris might have deserved this kind of buildup—but he would have to make do with what was accessible by train and rely on his romancer’s tongue to gild it. However, he did eventually get Simion’s attention. It turned out to be the rug warehouses that did the trick. Simion, who loved both buying and getting presents, wanted to outdo himself on Doriskos’s birthday to thank him for his ceaseless and undemanding attention this fall.

  “A rug. Do you suppose I could afford one—a runner for those cold stairs, or a round Aubusson for the parlor? I don’t know what such things cost.”

  “I think you could buy several and have money left over for the next five years. And New York’s just the place to shop for a special present. How old is he?” Andrew could not resist asking.

  “Thirty-two on February 19. Peculiar his having a birthday in such a commonplace, workaday month as February. It’s all rain and slop in February in Athens, probably not a whole lot unlike the Virginia piedmont. He should have been born at the end of July at the height of the heat and the flowers.”

  “I’ll wager that there are no flowers in Greece in July,” said Andrew. Simion, who loved both summer and Doriskos, paid him no mind.

  “D’you think he’ll mind my going? If I were he, I’d want a vacation from me. I would be so glad to get shed of me that I’d go out and get drunk to celebrate.”

  “Well, he lived without your company for three decades. It won’t hurt him to live without it for three more days,” said Andrew, holding back anything more acerbic. “You know it’s term-break soon, we’ve got a three-day weekend coming up after exams, and there’s no work to do. It’s the ideal time to go to New York. And we could get His Doriship the most superb present.”

  “I’d also like to get him a big fishbowl and some of those goggle-eyed goldfish they show in Japanese prints,” said Simion, kindled by the idea of birthday presents. “I think they’re awfully homely, but he thinks they’re interestingly grotesque. D’you think I might be able to get some down there?”

  “I’m practically sure,” said Andrew, who really had no idea—he had never given a thought to goggle-eyed Japanese goldfish in all his life. Strategically, he let the whole subject drop while Simion was still mulling it over with a musing smile on his lips. “It’s astonishing,” thought Andrew, “how easy it is to get him to do things. At least sometimes.” What was most astonishing was that the simplest, unsubtlest lures were often the ones that worked best! Offer Simion some clever blandishment, and he would give you a withering stare and balk like a mule; however, an unequivocal carrot on an unequivocal stick…

  Andrew’s own actions in this regard sometimes astonished him too—even before he had fully convinced Simion to accompany him, he wired the Remington Hotel and reserved, of all things, its bridal suite. And Simion, without being asked again, said nervously the next day that yes, he thought he’d like to take that trip after all. He had not touched the money willed to him until then except for Lincoln’s funeral arrangements, but he finally wrote a cheque. His attitude toward this action seemed one of pleasurable and titillated guilt; in unguarded moments, finally, he was beginning to show a bit of cheer. The whole business had the feel of an escapade, a mildly naughty rebellion—Boys will be boys.

  They left on Friday afternoon, after Simion had finished bothering his teachers for his test scores. Those scores, as Andy noted with annoyance, were phenomenal—they included a perfect score on a geometry exam upon which he himself had earned a 70, even after studying. However, the grades put Simion in a celebratory mood in which he did not grudge himself a reward. He hurried to pack his things. In his free moments during the day, he’d composed a note to explain himself to Doriskos. Andrew read this note, which was propped against the downstairs hall lamp, usually the first one Doriskos lit when coming home to a dark house. In that small and silken handwriting: Dori, I think a change of scene would do me good and help me stop moping and acting ghastly. I am going to New York for the long weekend and ought to be back Monday. Make yourself a big pot of panang curry without me to make faces while you eat it, and don’t worry about me. I am sorry to be a pain in the part one sits down on, a mope, and a bore, and I won’t be forever. Love and interesting kisses like those in French novels. S.

  Andrew read this twice and three times and felt himself suffuse with annoyance while Simion crammed evening clothes into a valise and abstracted Doriskos’s best pearl studs and scent bottle upstairs. There was a blue-and-white vase next to the lamp. Nothing in it. Andrew’s hand reached out, almost of its own volition; he rolled the note up into a little cylinder and slid it gently down the throat of the vase. No one could say he’d stolen or destroyed it.

  “Just about time he stopped patting you and pouring oil on these much-flaunted nerves of yours. You and your sad-hound eyes weary me. Aggravating, moon-brained man!” Andrew thought, with more fervor than was his wont. Simion, who checked items off little checklists written only in his swift mind, had already checked off the note: written, put in place. He didn’t look for it again before they left. It remained where Andrew had put it.

  “I decided not to get married after all,” said Andrew to the dignified clerk at the Remington, who had asked solicitously about the young Mrs. Carpallon. “So I brought my young school-friend down instead.” He smiled very beautifully, brazening it out.

  Dubiously: “Well, sir, you don’t appear terribly grieved.”

  “I’m not, I’m not.”

  “What wickedness is this, Andy?” asked Simion in the lift. “Are you up to something even worse than what I know about for sure?”

  “Not in the least. The bridal suite is always the nicest suite in any hotel.”

  “Well, why do we particularly need it? I bet it costs the bloody earth. We’re going to be shopping and seeing the city rather than lounging about a hotel anyhow.”

  “My treat.” It’ll be all white and cream and coral, it’ll cost me half this term’s allowance, and it’ll be worth every penny, because you’ll love it once you get there, thought Andrew. He was right; once behind the heavy doors of the suite, Simion went about fingering its handsome surfaces of glass and gilt and satin, visibly pleased.

  “Gas jets…”

  “D’you know,” said Andrew, “that they’ve had silly twits from the provinces blow these things out at night and asphyxiate themselves? Serious. S’true.”

  “Well, now I know what to do in case I don’t like whatever you’ve got in mind,” was the teasing but tart reply. It was a little shock to Andrew, but he reminded himself how little it really meant. “Hungry and fussy, that’s all,” he thought. He detected a mood and expression balanced right between pleasure and peril; he could either coax Simion out of it with a few light words and have him charming and delightful until he tired irrevocably in the evening, or, if his humoring efforts fell short, endure four hours of the snarkiness of which his friend was master.

  “Come, let’s dress for dinner. I’m not going to repeat my mistake in taking you to Galatoire’s with the New York equivalent, don’t worry.” On the contrary, he had a highly begilt and beflowered French place that served dull and impeccable food all picked out.

  “Galatoire’s,” Simion remembered, with an exaggerated shudder. “That place with the fish cooked in gunpowder, and that soup made of pepper and wash water and gophers?” But he smiled, more genuinely teasing.

  “Snit, snit, snit. That was gumbo filé, snob. Now, take off your horns and put on your tails, Andy’s going to show you New York.”

  The doorman got them a cab, and Andy gave the driver the address as if he were accustomed to doing this every weekend. Actually, he had a slight acquaintance with the environs of the opera house in Astor Place and was nearly as much a foreigner to the rest of New York as was his guest. He had studied guidebooks and street maps all week so th
at he could at least pretend to know where he was. Plenty of cab money and a confident manner, though, turned out to be an effective substitute for knowledge.

  Simion started out with eyelids at half-mast, but the sleep went from his eyes as the cab progressed through the gaslit streets; he had never seen anyplace so richly full of brilliant light at nighttime. He sat up and looked out the windows, more and more frankly enthralled and pleased by the handsome broughams, the handsome horses, the lit windows of expensive shops. In the restaurant, he took in the baroque surfaces of ormolu and rose and read through the French menu with a smile of young surprise forming on his face. Looking happy after so long—perhaps because he had noticed himself in one of the many mirrors and noted that he was a picture in his swallowtail coat and slim trousers and evening pumps, and looked exactly as if he belonged here. Perhaps he was happy because he could do the adult and cosmopolitan thing of handling that long French menu competently. But at least, if only for the moment, he was genuinely pleased. And his smile when it came would be the first real one that Andrew had seen him offer since last summer.

  “Andy,” said Simion, and leaned forward with a look that one might have fallen into like a lake.

  (And what, Andy thought in the pause, will you say? That you love me? Let’s take the next boat to Dover, the next steamer from Dover to Calais, and the next train to Paris, since we both speak French and will fit in fine? Let’s elope? Oh, let’s.)