by Aiden James
“Hmmm.” He sat down and lit his pipe, and then waited for the pungent cherry almond scent to waft toward me.
No doubt, he enjoyed seeing my face flush from rising indignation fed by my impatience. It’s a trait that women have often told me sets off my handsomeness. Something about my blue eyes becoming sapphire chips of icy fire. I believe it’s the quality that once made the fairer gender compare me to Errol Flynn back in the 1920s and more recently Pierce Brosnan. Not to mention my infectious charm and toned physique have never hurt my allure to women or men.
“Okay...where is this place?”
“It’s in Iran, in a very small town not far from the Caspian Sea, near Tabriz and the Russian border,” I explained. “Getting there will be a little tricky, but we can use our clearances to make the trip with minimal resistance from Tehran.”
“So, you want me to come along with you on this wild goose chase?” He snickered again, but this time he frowned. “Without considering that I might be very busy? I’ve got preparations for next fall’s session to take care of. My syllabus is due before the Fourth of July holiday begins.”
“It’s early June, son, which means you’ll still have a week or two by the time we get back to wrap that up.” My mood immediately lifted. If it had been a definite ‘no go’, he would’ve said so already. “Besides, I can help you get your fall plan together like I did the last time, in case you end up being pressed for time.”
“Humph! You nearly cost me my post as a result of that fiasco, I might add!” He pointed his pipe at me as if it were a small Derringer.
My son looked adorable right then, dressed in his bathrobe and house slippers while trying to muster some sort of malice at me. I couldn’t help picturing him as a young boy, pointing a popgun at me Christmas morning when he was five.
“And you underestimated my influence on the Dean and Chancellor’s office.” I chuckled at both his harmless accusation and irritated appearance. “Do you really believe they would be so bold as to bite a hand that feeds them, again?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Hard to tell if he saw the situation from my point of view, or realized it would do no good to argue with his dear old dad. But I worried he might be getting tired again. I needed to get to the point of this visit quickly.
“I’m submitting a vacation request for two weeks, beginning this Friday.” I lowered my tone to reinforce my seriousness. “I would really like for you to come along, since you are more skilled in Arabic and Persian dialects than I am these days—at least with the modern ones. You can leave the Hebrew to me.” I added an assuring smile to sell this, to close the deal.
“Oh joy,” he said, feigning dread. But the impish twinkle in his eyes told me otherwise. Alistair had accompanied me on finding the latest eleven pieces of silver, which made us both hopeful that the quest to find the remaining nine could still happen in his lifetime. “But, are you sure we can’t just wait until there is a more opportune time to pursue this? You haven’t been given a ‘feel’ for someplace closer, say like up in Nantucket or inside the Gateway Arch of St. Louis?” He laughed, weakly.
“No, son, I believe the two we found here in the states last year are it for this continent.” I rose to my feet in confidence that what I sought to achieve was indeed a success. Alistair would join me on my latest quest. “Even so, I do hope this new one turns out as easy as finding a rare shekel in a pawn shop like the one in Mobile, Alabama or that we meet up with another collector like the guy in Missoula, Montana.”
“That guy almost cleaned out your U.S. bank account,” said Alistair, rising to his feet to show me the door. For a moment, I worried the excitement I saw dancing in his eyes would keep him from going back to sleep after I left. “I wonder what would happen if the Iranian government finds out about this and acts as unscrupulous as Mr. Ivan Sutter from Montana.”
“Hopefully, they would be smarter and more worried about the consequences for their immortal souls.” I hoped this didn’t come across as pious and insensitive. News about Mr. Sutter’s sudden passing from a terrible accident after I paid his thirteen-point-five million-dollar price tag for that particular coin has made us both reconsider the gravity of what we’re dealing with. It’s vitally important to keep our own souls unsullied and consciences clean.
If nothing else, living for two thousand years has taught me this: Greed will never be tolerated by the Almighty. I sometimes worry that my own haste to gather the last coins might be perceived in a less than flattering light. After all, it took nearly nineteen hundred years to find the first eleven coins, and a mere thirty to recover the last ten. I just pray my eagerness as of late to complete the arduous task will be seen more as humble expectance that my Lord will return soon....
I sure as hell don’t wish to be left behind permanently the next time He’s here.
Chapter 3
The following morning I got started a little later than usual. Wednesday. I took it as a day to avoid rush hour madness to get to my job. Not that my cohorts at the National Museum of Natural History aren’t a little perturbed when I’m absent. But I learned awhile back that with an approved psychological exam, I could actually qualify for some extra time off every two weeks.
Thank Goodness for FMLA!
I can already hear the groans out there.... Yes, I make a respectable living and have millions tucked away. That alone should disqualify me from participating in this exceptional government program—one that actually benefits the powerless majority of American workers who suffer from an array of chronic maladies. It’s intended only for people with certifiable afflictions. Right?
Well, I pay taxes too. And, according to ninety-nine percent of the psychiatrists I’ve known during the past one hundred years, I do suffer from a serious delusion. After all, I claim to be the real Judas Iscariot.
I’m sure if I hadn’t waited until I was fully vested at the Smithsonian, with more than a decade’s worth of solid employment history, I’d have been thrown out on the street after first telling Dr. Norman Sturgeon who I am. Really, it was more me wanting to get it off my chest with someone not too close to me—like my son. Or, share it with someone who wouldn’t laugh out loud before I finished telling the summary of my two thousand year existence. And, get this... it was the good doctor himself who recommended I file for FMLA coverage, since his prognosis was for ‘extensive, long-term treatment’.
Fortunately for me, my honed silver-tongue allowed me to manipulate the initial analysis to where he agreed that, a) I present no immediate physical danger to myself or to others, and b) Bi-weekly counseling sessions should be sufficient, since my dominant persona of ‘William Barrow’ shows no outward signs of crumbling. Even better was the eventual hand-off of my file to Dr. Sturgeon’s lovely assistant, Dr. Evelyn Rose.
Not that I’m a practicing philanderer, but I still enjoy healthy flirtations now and then. In truth, I’ve spent many centuries chasing tail and having a great deal of fun doing it. The boastful celebrity ‘tell-alls’ that give absurd numbers of sexual conquests pale terribly in comparison to the wanton escapades I’ve tallied during my stay on planet earth. And, in fairness, perhaps I would still be a devoted hedonist when it comes to my relations with both women and men. But that all changed when I met Beatrice.
Only those who have met their soul mate—or at least one of their eternal companions, since we all have several—will relate to what I tell you next, I’m sure. Once our eyes met in that rundown Glasgow pub, where the charged air around us forced a meeting destined from before her birth, my ideas of what sex and love entailed were changed forever. No one has touched my heart since—at least nothing with the pull that Beatrice has.
Still, it doesn’t stop me from taking an occasional look at the ‘menu’, so to speak.
That’s where Dr. Rose comes in.
“I thought you might have forgotten your appointment today,” she said, chuckling to herself as she closed her office door behind us. “Usually, you’re here ten m
inutes before nine, so I became a little worried when nine o’clock arrived and ‘no William’.”
I always wait for her to move around the desk to her preferred high-back leather chair before I take my seat upon the plush sofa across from her. I like to watch her walk, though I’ve ceased to mentally undress the fairer sex in their presence. Better to save those images until later on, for when I’m alone with nothing else to do....
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” I smiled smugly as I took my usual seat, toward the far left end of the sofa and the farthest distance from her. A much better view, my dears.
Her red form-fitting dress lingered in my mind while I considered if such attire best suited her loose crimson curls resting upon her shoulders or not. It drew my gaze back up from her ample bosom. Unfortunately, her bright green eyes were watching me. The expression on her face made me think she followed the flow of every silent descriptive word that had just passed through my decadent mind.... Ah, damn!
“So, are you making any progress with the assignment I gave you in our last session?” She smiled coyly.
“Well, it depends,” I told her, pausing to look around the room, as if gathering my thoughts.
I like the room’s décor. Always have...and I’m not talking about the expensive cherry executive desk, or the matching Chippendale shelves filled with all kinds of books detailing every theorem and behavioral treatment model thought up and proposed as fact since the dawn of the twentieth century. Such rubbish—the books, I mean—at least for the most part. But I do like the row of personal photographs she keeps on the front edge of the desk, closest to where I like to sit.
“It depends on what?” she prodded, gently, as if afraid I might clam up. Sometimes I do that...no sense in being an easy cure for her, and watch my FMLA coverage and visits with the sexy doc dissolve before my very eyes. “Did you follow the exercises, the ones where you recited the positive affirmations?”
“What, that I am William Barrow?” I was unable to stifle a slight snicker. I suddenly noticed that one of the pictures had recently been changed. Instead of the one featuring her smiling face next to a young blonde male’s handsome mug, there was now a photo featuring only her in a low-cut cocktail dress. I immediately felt a surge of joy, since apparently the good-looking kid was no longer in the picture. Literally. “Sure, Dr. Rose...that was easy.”
Down boy...she thinks you’re nuts, remember?
“And, you followed that with the other half of the assignment...yes?”
“Well, the second part wasn’t quite so easy.” I shifted in my seat and prepared for the lovely scowl I knew was forthcoming.
“And why not?” A touch of disappointment laced her delivery.
I briefly entertained the fantasy she actually liked me, and perhaps hoped I’d come to my senses and enthusiastically proclaim I’m not really Judas in the flesh. Maybe I could replace the missing man in her life. But....
“Because I am Judas Iscariot.” I felt a strange mixture of pride and sorrow. Pride for my unwavering devotion to the truth about myself, and sorrow in regard to the certain deathblow my lurid fantasies involving Dr. Evelyn Rose would endure. “And I so hate pretending to be something I’m not. I can tolerate being William Barrow as long as it isn’t permanent. No matter what persona I take on in any given century, at the end of the day I’m still the man who betrayed Christ.”
Priceless. The look of surprise, disappointment, and scorn upon her face. Not the first time I’ve elicited such a response from a beautiful woman by confessing who I am. But definitely the first time the female had a PHD attached to her name.
“William...oh, dear William what am I going to do with you?” She didn’t deliver this in a loving tone that would normally fit the words. “You’re simply going to have to give this up. It will do you no good to go on believing this fantasy.”
She stood up from her desk and walked over to the window behind her, shaking her head while frowning. One more opportunity to study the subtle lines along the back of her stockings and hope she didn’t notice my lingering gaze upon her derriere.
“I can’t. No more than you can pretend to be someone you’re not.”
“So, you expect us all to believe that you are truly immortal. The only one of your kind?” She snickered and moved back to her chair, pulling open the top drawer to her desk.
“No,” I said. I was a little irritated with her smugness. She looked up suddenly, as either my reply or the sharpness in my tone caught her by surprise. “I mean, yes, I am immortal...but no, I’m not the only one.”
How’s that for opening a can of worms? I’m sure her honest curiosity hidden behind that elite psychiatrist façade would match the questions everyone else has about my statement. It’s the truth...there are others, though we are more different than alike in terms of what makes us eternal wanderers across the globe. Not just things like vampires—which I understand are all the rage in modern literature, movies, games, etc. I was once considered the Prince of such beings. I assure you that assertion is a load of bull. I don’t drink blood—never have—and I’m very much alive. I’m your typical warm-blooded male, but a bit older than what you’re used to seeing.
“So, what, you’re buddies with Dracula, I take it? Or maybe you and Elvis have become pals since he supposedly faked his death!” She laughed and sat back in her chair, holding a manila folder with what I assumed is the summary of my case history. “Better yet, maybe you and Comte St. Germaine have been globetrotting the past few centuries together!”
“Actually, he prefers his solitude.” I kept a keen eye on her facial movements to help me discern a motive behind her flippant response to my latest affirmation of my immortality. Maybe this was a brief foray on her part, to try and trip me up by delving into a different theoretic discipline—perhaps more Rogerian or Skinnerian than her usual approach? “He hasn’t traveled in plain view for nearly two centuries, and the last time he and I shared an extensive trip across any continent was right after the Crusades, in 1292, when I convinced him to come with me to Madrid to watch the burning of a Moorish monument.”
A little flutter in her eyes, although more than likely an indication that I had just impressed her with the technical depth of my immortal fantasy. No doubt she still thinks I’m under the spell of a serious delusion.
“So you’re stating that Comte St. Germaine is even older than what Voltaire asserted back in the late eighteenth century?”
Such disbelief in her tone...but fascination in the eyes.
“Why, yes, that is exactly the truth,” I confirmed, though unsure how much I wanted to serve her. Suffice it to say there are enough fun facts inside this head of mine to keep a good party rolling for hours on end. “He and his brother, Racco, are older than I am. I first ran into the Germaine brothers in Damascus back in the early third century A.D. We recognized each other when we crossed paths again in Constantinople in the mid fourth century, realizing by then that we were all afflicted with the same status. Although, as alchemists their immortality was on purpose while mine is simply a curse. Their names were different back then, and after the brothers had a falling out around the sixth century, I haven’t seen either one very often.”
An awkward moment of silence followed. She looked down at the file until she was ready to address me again.
“You need help, William.” She pursed her lips seductively while she tapped them with the soft eraser on her pencil. “Much more help than I can give you.”
“I am immortal, doc.”
“I know you think that.”
“I can’t die.” I watched her facial expression as it tightened, and then searched for a fissure in her façade.
“I know you think that,” she repeated. My psychiatrist was on professional lockdown. I feared our session would be cut short at any moment.
“I have been hung, stabbed, shot, and drawn-n’-quartered. I’ve been beheaded and disemboweled, and have even faced the dreaded iron maiden,” I said, hoping to st
orm her secured fortress. “If that weren’t enough, I’ve been trampled under the hooves of a thousand horses and burned alive at the stake—twice. But I don’t die, Dr. Rose. Ever.”
“Yes, I know.” She closed the manila folder and laid it on top of her desk. Then she entered something into her laptop laid open next to where she set the file. “As you’ve mentioned before, you black out at the exact moment of each ‘death’ and then magically awaken somewhere else. No wounds, no pain. Nothing.”
“Yes, exactly!”
“And you always look the same.” A slight grin tugged on the upper corners of her lips. “Same scars, same old moles, same dark hair. Everything, including your blue eyes, remains the same.”
“Yes.”
“When you wake up, you do so as if from a deep sleep...sometimes days later. Sometimes weeks, or even longer. Didn’t you once state that one time several years had passed?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling my irritation grow. Maybe I would cut short our visit myself. “Glad to see you’ve been taking such copious notes, doc.”
She nodded thoughtfully, which gave me a moment to reflect on a few of my death/rebirth instances. One of the worst deaths took place in England, back in 1454. Branded unfairly as a heretic, I had just procured silver piece number six. My sentence was severe, and I was to be stretched on a rack and strangled repeatedly to the point of death and brought back to full consciousness. Then, in the Tower of London’s courtyard, I was to be disemboweled and beheaded.
Having gone through all of these tortures before, I really looked forward to getting to do them all at once! All sarcasm aside, the experience was far worse than I could have ever anticipated, forced to clutch the silver coin between my buttocks. I thought for sure I would lose it before my essence’s transportation elsewhere took place. Fortunately, I died before the executioner had finished cranking out my small intestine.