The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  Her case had first been brought before a Herculean court by Iusta’s mother, Petronia Vitalis, a freed woman who had belonged to Gaius Petronius Stephanus and his wife, Calatoria Vimidis. Vitalis had bought her freedom sometime in the early sixties, but she and her daughter, Iusta, had continued living with the household, the girl being brought up “like a daughter” to Petronius and Calatoria. The living situation was apparently harmonious until Calatoria had her own children, at which time Calatoria and Vitalis began to argue. Vitalis decided to leave the household, taking her daughter with her. The Petronii, however, were not ready to relinquish Iusta and claimed that she belonged to them. Vitalis sued for Iusta’s freedom on the basis that Iusta had been born after she had bought her own freedom, and therefore was born free.

  Vitalis won her case. She was required to pay back the Petronius household the expenses incurred in Iusta’s upbringing, which she was able to do because she had, since her own manumission, made a good living raising and selling oysters. This was my favorite part of the story. I always imagined Calatoria’s face when her former slave counted out the gold coins necessary to redeem her child’s liberty—and the happiness of mother and daughter leaving that house of slavery together.

  The rest of the story wasn’t so uplifting. Sometime around AD 77 or 78 both Gaius Petronius and Petronia Vitalis died. Calatoria, newly widowed, decided to sue for the restitution of her property—Iusta, who she claimed was her slave because Iusta had been born before her mother’s manumission. If she won her suit the money that Vitalis had left to her daughter would become Calatoria’s property. According to the court records a slave of Calatoria’s, named Telesforus, testified that Iusta had been born after Vitalis’s manumission. The courts, however, remained undecided and postponed the decision. Most scholars assumed that the case was still undecided in AD 79, when Herculaneum was destroyed, but if Iusta really had been in the Petronius household at the time of the eruption, perhaps the case had gone against her.

  I’m surprised at how much this saddens me. After all, if she died in the eruption, what difference does it make if she died a free woman or a slave? Yet it does. I’ve always wanted to believe that Iusta died a free woman—or better, that she won her case and then escaped Herculaneum before the eruption, leaving the grasping Calatoria behind, buried under sixty-five feet of volcanic stone.

  “You’ve romanticized your subject,” Elgin had commented on the first draft of my thesis, in which I argued that Vitalis and Iusta represented early feminists. “And overidentified with them.”

  The remark had stung more than it should have. I had told Elgin about my childhood, my strict German-Catholic grandparents, who probably thought they were doing their best by me but who treated me as if I were a time bomb that at any moment might destroy all our lives just like your mother had. That had been the refrain I grew up with—just like your mother—whenever I slept too late, ate too many sweets, or giggled in church. I had told Elgin how I had waited and waited for my mother to come back and reclaim me, living for her short visits, and how even after she died I’d dream it had been a lie made up by my grandparents to keep us apart. Someday she’d appear, reformed into a proper mother with a good job and a house, and prove to my grandmother that people like us could turn out okay.

  “Admit it,” Elgin said to me at that thesis conference, “when you describe Vitalis paying off Calatoria you see your mother shoving it to your mean old grandmother, and the little girl—”

  “Okay, I get it,” I had said to him, taking back the draft. “I’ll have a rewrite for you by next week.”

  I’d been careful in my next draft to stick to the facts, which Elgin had approved.

  But even though Elgin had criticized my romantic notions about Petronia Iusta, he wasn’t above using them to lure me to Italy. Or maybe he enjoyed seeing those romantic notions dashed by the fact that Iusta was still Calatoria’s slave. I find, though, that all that matters less to me than gaining another glimpse of her. For that I might travel as far as Italy—even if it means putting up with Elgin all summer.

  Forgetting my fatigue from mowing the lawn and with a mind remarkably cleansed of the effects of OxyContin and Shiner Bock, I reread my thesis and all my notes on the case of Petronia Iusta. I’m so engrossed that I don’t hear M’Lou return from Whole Foods or notice her standing in the doorway until a sound like glass wind chimes makes me look up. She’s got the two empty Shiner Bocks hooked onto her fingers and she’s knocking them together like castanets.

  “Please tell me an enterprising teenager came by and was willing to trade lawn work for a couple of beers,” she says, tilting her chin toward the mown stubble outside the study window. “Because I know you’re not stupid enough to mix alcohol and codeine and then operate heavy machinery.”

  “I only had one—after mowing—and you know my lawnmower is a manual.”

  M’Lou shakes her head and sits down on the edge of my desk. She picks up my hand and turns it over, pressing her thumb to the underside of my wrist.

  “I’m not dead yet, M’Lou. I’ve still got a pulse…”

  “Shush,” she orders. “Hm…a little fast. Something’s gotten you riled up. Who drank the second beer?”

  There’s no point lying to M’Lou; she caught me every time I tried it from the time I hid my third-grade report card to the night I told her I was at my girlfriend’s house while I was really meeting my boyfriend at the Lonestar Motel. So I tell her about Elgin’s visit and the lost Phineas Aulus book, Iusta’s appearance in it, and Elgin’s invitation to join the Papyrus Project.

  “Did you say yes?”

  “No,” I tell her, “I said I’d think about it. And I am—” I add defiantly. I know she’s not crazy about Elgin, but she gives me a long level look and a curt nod.

  “It might be the best thing—” Oddly it’s the same thing she said to me when she’d tracked me and Billy Rackem down at the Lonestar. “—if it’ll keep you from brooding.”

  “I don’t brood.”

  “I’ve had brood hens less broody than you,” she shoots back. “But you’ve got to promise you’ll take care of yourself. Eat right and sleep enough. Where would you be staying? Some fleabag pensione?”

  “Nah—that’s the best part. The excavation of the Villa della Notte is being funded by John Lyros—”

  “The software billionaire?”

  “The same. Before he made his fortune in computer software he was a classics major here at UT. He’s such a fanatic that he’s had a replica of the Villa della Notte built on the Island of Capri, a half hour’s boatride from the original villa at Herculaneum. Elgin says he’s installed a state-of-the-art multispectral imaging lab and now he’s invited the whole staff of the Papyrus Project—in other words, Elgin, me, Agnes Hancock, and some tech guy from England—to stay on Capri. So I’d be living in luxury at a villa, soaking in a replica of a real Roman bath, and eating plenty of fresh tomatoes and mozzarella. What more could you want?”

  “For Elgin Lawrence not to be there. That man draws trouble to himself like stink draws flies.”

  I shrug. “That may be true, but how likely is it that someone’s going to try to shoot him twice in one year?” I say. “I mean, what are the odds?”

  I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the question I so flippantly posed to M’Lou. What were the odds? It was a question that Ely would have taken literally. I lie awake trying to figure out what the variables would be in such an equation. How many pretty young graduate students has Elgin Lawrence flirted with? How many of them had boyfriends who were mentally unbalanced? Of those mentally unbalanced boyfriends, how many had access to firearms? This being Texas the answer was: most of them. For each variable I imagine Ely writing a letter on a chalkboard: x, y, or z. I can see each letter glowing starkly white against the black and then each letter acquires a halo that flames red in the darkness. I startle fully awake, sniffing the air for smoke. Outside the moonlight has turned my lawn into a scorched landscape.
My lungs feel like they’re on fire.

  I get up to get a glass of cold water from the kitchen but instead find myself standing in my study staring at the faintly glowing symbols that Ely had painted on the walls. When I realize that I’m looking for an equation that would make some sense out of the shooting and predict the future, I go back to my room. It’s a long time, though, before I can fall back to sleep.

  When I wake up the next morning I still feel unsure about whether I should go to Italy with Elgin. Even the fact that that’s how I’m thinking of it—with Elgin—sets off alarm bells in my head. I decide to do a little research on the Papyrus Project, to at least pretend that my decision will be based on its strengths and weaknesses. I start off by Googling John Lyros.

  I’ve heard his name bandied about in the Classics Department because he’d been considered one of the most promising Ph.D. candidates before he dropped out in the early eighties, moved to Fremont, California, and invented an encryption program that had made him a millionaire. He’d used the money to found a software company, Lyrik, whose operating system, Lyrik 2.0, made him a billionaire before his thirtieth birthday. He’d gotten an early start. According to his bio he entered college, commuting from his Greek-American family’s home in Astoria, Queens, to City College in Manhattan, at sixteen. He’d graduated with a double major in Greek and math and, after taking a year off to go hiking in the Himalayas—“in order to find myself,” he mentions impishly in one interview—Lyros entered the Ph.D. program at UT at twenty-one. The picture of him hiking in the Himalayas shows a curly-headed brunet with wide-spaced eyes the same lilac color as the sky above the snowcapped peaks in the background. Instead of finishing the Ph.D., he’d dropped out and within three years was running a multimillion-dollar software company. Another clipping, ten years later, announced the sale of Lyrik for an amount undisclosed but rumored to be in the billions. A photo shows him with shorter hair, the lilac eyes hidden behind square dark-framed glasses. At that point his CV goes blank for about five years. Another trek in the Himalayas, I wonder? When he resurfaces, it’s to announce the establishment of the John Lyros Institute, a foundation intended to aid research in ancient history, philosophy, art, and archaeology. The picture on the Institute’s homepage shows a man who looks like he’s been whittled down by the elements. His curly locks are gone, shaved to reveal a smooth, elegant cranium. His nose looks as if it had been broken at some point and reset carelessly, leaving a bump that makes him look like a predatory hawk. His eyes are an even more intense violet, as if they had absorbed all the color of all the mountains he’d scaled and all the seas he’d crossed in his travels.

  I scroll through the projects that the institute has funded in the last five years: archaeological digs in Greece—in Samos, Delphi, Eleusis, Cape Sounion—and also in the Southwest—the preservation of a Pueblo village in southwest Colorado, a dig in New Mexico—and, most recently, the excavation of the Villa della Notte in Herculaneum.

  After an hour spent trolling the Internet for references to John Lyros, I begin to feel like a cyber-stalker and decide to go ahead and e-mail the man. I tell him that Elgin Lawrence has invited me to be part of the team and ask him to tell me a little bit more about the project. And then, because I’m not sure it’s a good idea to live in such close proximity to Elgin Lawrence all summer, I ask him for a recommendation for a hotel in Naples. So that I can work closer to the site, I write.

  I send off the e-mail and then check my in-box, which turns out to be a mistake. I’ve got hundreds of messages—from students, colleagues, and administrators. I scroll through the lot of them, checking to see if any look urgent. I decide that none of them do. Perhaps my definition of urgent has changed since Dale Henry burst into the dean’s conference room and killed two of my colleagues. With a pang I notice that a number of the messages concern the memorial service for Odette, which I’ve missed, and a scholarship being started in her name. I check “keep as new” next to those and delete the rest.

  I’m just signing off when an Instant Message box opens on the screen displaying an icon of Brad Pitt as Achilles next to a speech bubble that reads: Salve! from LatinLover66. It takes me a minute to remember that this is Agnes’s screen name. Before I can reply she adds another line: “Please say you’re coming to Italy!” and adds a smiley face emoticon. I can almost hear her breathless inflection.

  I type a reply, telling her that I’m still making up my mind, but as usual I’m slow for the pace of instant messaging and before I can finish Agnes has added three more lines of persuasion. “I feel a little nervous being the only girl there,” she writes, and then adds, “Isn’t it cool the Villa della Notte turns out to be where Petronia Iusta lived!” and then, “Which reminds me, I still have those Phineas Aulus books you lent me. I can drop them off anytime…”

  I look up on my shelf and realize she’s right. I’d lent her my three volumes of Athenian Nights two months ago when she started researching her project on mystery rites. I really ought to reread them before going to Italy…if I’m going.

  I start a reply, but another line from Agnes pops up. “I mean, I’m really just hanging around until it’s time to go.”

  Poor Agnes, I think, she sounds so forlorn. It must have been hard for her to come back to campus after the shooting. In fact, I’m surprised she’s done it at all. I would have thought she’d stay in Sweetwater until it was time to leave for Italy. I wonder if she came back to prove to herself she could.

  Suddenly I feel like a coward, hiding in my house two miles away from campus while little Agnes Hancock from Sweetwater, who watched her ex-boyfriend shoot himself, braves the campus. I click on the reply box and write: “I was just going out for a walk. I’ll drop by to pick them up.” And then, before I can change my mind, I grab my keys and go.

  I know where Agnes lives because I’ve seen her get off the shuttle and walk up her front walk many times. It’s a large old yellow Victorian that, if the number of bicycles sprawled on the front lawn is any indication, houses about a dozen students. A young man with sun-streaked blond hair greets me at the door wearing skimpy cutoff shorts and no shirt. He eyes me warily when I ask for Agnes.

  “Are you one of her professors?”

  “Yes, I’m Dr. Chase.”

  “Do you have ID?”

  “Sam Tyler!” Agnes’s voice calls from upstairs. “Would you please lighten up on the security detail?” Agnes appears on the stairs wearing UT sweats and a voluminous sweatshirt that dwarf her tiny frame. UT’s burnt orange isn’t a flattering color for anyone, but Agnes could have pulled it off a month ago. Now it accentuates her pallor and the dark rings under her eyes. Her once glossy blond hair is done up in two lank braids, one of which she’s nervously snaking around her fingers.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll be down here in the living room.” Sam squints at me as if memorizing my face for later identification in a lineup and then retreats to a large messy room just off the foyer and sprawls on a couch. Although he picks up a remote and turns on the TV, his eyes stay glued to us until we turn to head up the stairs.

  Agnes rolls her eyes at me. “You’d better come up to my room,” she says. “Or the boys will be hovering all over us.”

  As I follow her upstairs I see what she means. On each floor of the four-story house doors open and scruffy heads peer out, accompanied by blasting rock music and the smell of gym socks, stale beer, and corn chips.

  “Are you the only girl in the house?” I ask when we reach the top floor and I’ve caught my breath from the steep climb.

  “Yeah, I know it’s weird. I was in a sorority up until the beginning of this year, but then I kind of fell out with some of the girls…well, you know how girls can be…”

  I nod even though Agnes can’t see me. I can well imagine that Agnes’s looks might have attracted enmity from her sorority sisters.

  “It was too late to get housing in the dorms, so Sam said I should move in here. I’ve known him since high school and he’s always been like a
big brother to me.” Agnes opens the door and waves me into a small room. Every inch of the walls is covered with photos of young people—in prom dresses and tuxes, or bathing suits and floppy hats under beach umbrellas, or huddled together in front of historic monuments. “The guys have all been really great,” Agnes says, sitting down on her bed, which is covered with a Little Mermaid quilt. “Especially Sam. When I moved in he had put up all these pictures.”

  “It’s sweet,” I say, taking the desk chair. The only other chair in the room is a bean bag that looks as if it might swallow me whole. “You need friends in times like these.” I wince at the triteness of the sentiment, but Agnes is nodding eagerly as though I’ve said something terribly original. “It’s made the biggest difference. I don’t know if I could have come back otherwise. I was so afraid that everyone would blame me for what happened. My friends all warned me not to get involved with Dale from the beginning.”

  When she talks about her friends, her eyes rove over the pictures on the walls and I find myself doing the same. I recognize Sam in a number of them—often with his arm around Agnes, the two of them mugging for the camera—but there’s not a single one with Dale Henry. Then I notice that Agnes’s hair is shorter in the pictures—chin-length in some, or just grazing her shoulders—and that she’s about fifteen pounds heavier. Not fat, certainly, but she has the plumpness of a freshman who’s indulged in a few too many late-night pizzas and starchy cafeteria fare. When I look closer I notice that a banner behind one of the huddled groups reads “Sophomore Spring Fling.” These pictures are all several years old. Like the Little Mermaid quilt, they seem like relics from a happier, more innocent past.