The Blood of Kings

by John Michael Curlovich

  “I can’t imagine anyone at a Chopin recital.” She meant it.

  When we reached the farm it was dark, no lights in the windows. Farmers go to be early, get up early, work long days. I had gotten so used to living in a city it seemed strange to me.

  Bobby and I had always shared a bedroom. I told her I’d be careful not to wake him.

  She stiffened. “Bobby’s in jail.”

  It didn’t surprise me.

  “He was caught selling drugs. A lot of them. You’ll have the room to yourself.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “That’s why we were hoping you’d come home for the summer to help. I don’t want to talk about it.” She was pretty clearly resentful.

  I headed to the room. Moonlight filled it, so I didn’t need a light. The bed wasn’t set up. She had stacked some linens on it. I made it quickly, got undressed and tried to sleep.

  Danilo. Could he find me here? I wondered. Will he come to me here?

  When I finally slept my dreams were of a falcon-headed man. Lean muscular body, beautiful body. But the falcon was eating raw flesh. Blood dripped from its mouth. Welcome back, Jamie.

  In the morning Harry said hello, then ignored me. Their two other kids were a lot younger. They regarded me as a curiosity. After breakfast I offered to wash the dishes.

  The farm was dry. I could see how parched the earth was. Harry spent the morning irrigating the fields. Corn, wheat, none of it as high as it should have been. Living in the city, I had barely noticed there was a drought.

  Lunch was huge. Harry ignored me. I was eating his food and not helping on his farm. I did the dishes again, Millie went off to run errands, the kids played in the backyard. I went into the family room where the spinet was kept. It was badly out of tune; no one had touched it since I left. How had I ever lived there?

  In the afternoon I sat on the back porch. There were hawks circling in the sky over the cornfield.

  Finally, in the evening I found Millie in a friendlier mood. Her favorite TV program was pre-empted for a baseball game; I was the next-best amusement.

  “Mil?”

  “Hm?”

  “What was my father like?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  Unexpected question. “He was my father.”

  “You were never curious about him before.”

  I shrugged. “I am now. Tell me about him.”

  She obviously didn’t want to.

  “Please.”

  “Well… ” I could tell she was reluctant to talk about him. “What do you remember about him?”

  “Practically nothing. I wouldn’t recognize him if you showed me a picture.”

  She got up and went to a drawer in the desk. There seemed to be a stack of old photos. She thumbed through them and found the one she wanted. “Here.”

  It was a stranger. A short, thick man, mustached, wearing an ill-fitting suit. I looked from the photo to her. In a thousand years I would never have guessed he was my father. “This is him?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t remember him at all.”

  She got another picture. “Here. This is your mother.”

  A plain girl in a plain dress. She looked sad. I couldn’t have recognized her, either.

  “Why do you want to know about them, Jamie?”

  I didn’t quite know, myself. “They’re my parents.”

  “You never showed any interest before.”

  She was right. I didn’t know why.

  “Your father was a preacher. He had a little church down the valley. When he made your mother pregnant, he blamed her for tempting him. And I guess it really was her fault for not being on the pill.”

  “Did they love each other?” Absurd question.

  “How can you ever know who loves who?” She said it pointedly. I wasn’t sure why. But then she pressed on. “When Tim was here for the wedding, he told people things about you. Shameful things.”

  I went numb. One more betrayal. I had loved him. Why?

  “I don’t think it would be good for you to come back here anymore, Jamie. Harry doesn’t—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Please do. Take whatever of your things you want. I’ll sell the rest.”

  I didn’t want to let her know this hurt. But I couldn’t keep it inside. “You can burn them for all I care.”

  That night I needed Danilo. Of all nights, that was the one I needed him to be there with me, if only in dreams. But I couldn’t sleep. I even remember saying a short prayer to Horus, the god with the head of a falcon. Doing it made me feel a bit foolish.

  I had never had a home. That was so clear to me now. I had merely had a place to live, which is not the same thing at all. But when I closed my eyes and conjured up an image of Danilo I thought, yes, my home is there, in him. What will I do if he doesn’t love me as much as I do him?

  First thing in the morning, before breakfast, I packed all my things and Millie drove me back to the bus station. She was quiet; her face was stone. Everything that needed to be said between us had been said, and there was an end to it.

  Waiting for the bus I got myself a fast-food breakfast. There were hawks circling above the town. I stood and watched them for a while. Graceful, beautiful, predatory creatures. A few people I knew saw me waiting there. None of them friendly, most ignored me completely.

  When the bus came, I got a window seat so I could see the last of my hometown. Then I slept for the rest of the trip.

  * * *

  At the station back in Pittsburgh I got off the bus, yawned and stretched. It was 11 a.m.. Then I noticed the headline on the newspaper in the vending machine: THREE MORE CORPSES FOUND ON WEST PENN CAMPUS.

  Three.

  When I got home it was just after noon and the apartment was empty.

  “Justin?”

  Bubastis came up to me, happy to see me. I picked her up and she licked the tip of my nose.

  “Jus?”

  He wasn’t in. There was no food in the cat’s dish, and no water for her either. It wasn’t like Justin to ignore her. I fed her, gave her some water.

  Suddenly I had an awful feeling. A shot of panic went through me. Could he have been one of the three? He couldn’t be, it couldn’t have happened to him.

  Quickly, I turned on the TV and tuned to the local news channel. The story was just coming on. “Only one of the victims has been identified,” the reporter said. “He is Timothy Johanssen, a swimmer on the west Penn Team.”

  It was so completely unexpected. I sat and stared at the television, not knowing what to feel or what to think.

  I don’t believe love dies. It changes into something else. I had loved Tim so deeply, so much, even to the point of following him to the college he chose. It had turned ugly, or he had. But underneath what I felt for him was still that substrate of love. I suppose on some small level I had never stopped hoping that things between us might… But I was being foolish. I knew that. Tim had been what he had been and hoping otherwise had no point.

  Almost without thinking I turned on my keyboard. Chopin, inevitably Chopin. I had never imagined I might actually play the funeral march for the death of someone I had loved. All the things that could have existed between us but never did and never would… I put all of them into what I was playing. The rest of the sonata didn’t matter; I played the funeral march again and again.

  After God knew how long I felt a hand on my shoulder. I kept playing. “Danilo.”

  “No, Jamie, it’s me.” I took my hands off the keys and looked. It was Justin.

  “Jus!” I got to my feet and put my arms around him and kissed him. “Oh God, Jus, it’s so good to see you.”

  He let me get it out of my system, then took a step away from me. “You were only gone one night. I can’t wait to see how you greet me after a vacation.”

  “I thought… I thought you might be one of the new victims.”

  He seemed sligh
tly astonished. “I’m fine, Jamie. Why would you think that?”

  “Paranoia, I guess. I seem to be losing everything that matters to me. Home wasn’t exactly… well, it wasn’t exactly homey.” I told him about my brief unhappy visit.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Jamie. You deserve better. Of all people, you deserve better.”

  “Thanks.” I wanted to add, it’s nice that someone cares about me, but it would have been too corny. “And then the news about Tim. I mean, it’s not like I loved him anymore, but still… ”

  “What news?”

  He hadn’t heard. I told him.

  “Oh. Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  “I have a bottle of wine. Should I open it?”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Stop thanking me. We look out for each other, remember?” He went into the kitchen and got the corkscrew. “If you hadn’t been there for me when Grant… ” He cut himself short. The word about Tim was bringing up unpleasant things.

  He poured large tumblers of wine for us. We sat on the couch, close together, and got drunk. Neither of us was much of a drinker. At one point I got up and tried to play some more, but my fingers wouldn’t respond. When I went back to the couch Justin kissed me, like a brother not a lover.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Danilo.

  * * *

  That night I sat at my bedroom window and watched the moon and the stars, exactly like the silly romantic I tried so hard not to be and thought of all the things I had been feeling, all those emotions in so short a time.

  The last of Ebensburg; I knew I would never go back again.

  The last of Tim; I knew… hell, I didn’t know what I knew about Tim and me. I knew there had not been an end to it, not a neat, simple one, and I wasn’t certain it was over even yet.

  Justin. No one had ever cared about me before, not the way he seemed to.

  And all of it was connected somehow to Danilo. My future was with him, I knew it, I was determined to make it so. If there was such a thing as love, what I felt for him was that thing. I wanted to see him again. Yes, Monday I’d go to class, but Monday was a million years away.

  It even occurred to me fleetingly that somehow, in some way I didn’t understand yet, he was involved with the deaths and the disappearances, involved with what happened to Tim. But that was nonsense, it had to be—literally, it made no sense.

  And I remember having another fugitive thought: that even if it was true, I didn’t care.

  Danilo was to be mine.

  Chapter Five

  Scarabs, dozens of scarabs.

  A whole pile of them on my desk.

  All the scarabs in the world.

  Being Danilo’s assistant wasn’t quite what I expected. I spent hours doing exactly what he told me I’d be doing—cataloging drawers full, rooms full of artifacts. I actually saw him far less often than I’d hoped. When I did, I was working, or he was. Our only time together was at night, and he often had things to do.

  But when we were together it was wonderful. It was love. I kept asking myself if it was only because I had never had a father that I was attracted to an older man. And I’m certain that was part of it. But there was more. Danilo understood me in ways no one else ever had, not even Roland. And he was always gentle with me.

  Justin used to tease me about having a daddy. “You only want to collect his insurance money.”

  “Danilo,” I told him jokingly, “is never going to die.”

  “No, he’ll just get older and older, till he falls apart like the monster at the end of one of those old movies of yours.”

  When they finally met, he changed his tune. Danilo and I were at dinner one night. Justin came in with his new boyfriend. When he saw the handsome man I was with, his eyes widened. His boyfriend was a center on the basketball team, Greg Wilton. He was clearly upset that Jus wanted to join us—it was perfectly obvious why.

  Danilo was all charm as he invited them to sit at our table. “Justin. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Jamie talks about you all the time.”

  “Really?” He seemed surprised.

  “He says your housekeeping is even worse than his own.”

  Greg had a good laugh. Danilo offered to treat everyone, and the two of them ordered heaps of food. I was a bit embarrassed.

  We made small talk till our orders came, the summer, the term, what courses they were taking. Greg didn’t strike me as all that bright. At one point I suggested he should try a remedial reading course. Jocks. Justin shot me a dirty glance.

  “So, why,” Justin asked Danilo, “ancient Egypt?”

  Danilo smiled and shrugged. “Everything about it has always intrigued me. Fantastic civilization. I think they knew how to live.”

  Greg chimed in. “Isn’t it all, you know, really gloomy?”

  “These people used to sing greetings to the sun every morning. They painted all their buildings in the most vibrant colors.”

  “I only think of mummies and shit.” Greg wasn’t exactly making a good impression. “I mean, you know, they’re all dead now. Like, who cares?”

  Danilo put on his most engaging smile. “Ancient Egyptian civilization flourished, unchanged in its essentials, for more than 3,000 years. And here we are, two millennia after its decline, still discussing it. Do you think that will be true of America?”

  Greg didn’t like the sound of this; I could tell he was having trouble digesting it. I decided to get between them. “So, are things are getting serious between you two?” They had been dating for nearly a month.

  Greg looked around, mildly alarmed. “Not so loud.”

  “We don’t want people to know.” Justin mirrored him. “You know how people talk.”

  “Having dinner like this is good.” Greg had not stopped looking over his shoulder. “I mean, you know, the four of us. This way nobody’ll know.”

  Finally, Danilo spoke up. “‘Know’?” he asked coyly. “Know what?”

  “You know.” Greg looked around still again. “About us.”

  “What about you?”

  “About us being—” Suddenly he caught himself. It had finally dawned on him that Danilo was playing with him. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “The guys on the team wouldn’t…” He smiled weakly.

  “So, it is their fault you’re ashamed of yourself?”

  I quickly steered the talk into more neutral ground.

  That night Justin was home alone. “Where’s Greg?”

  “Not here. Your boyfriend freaked him.” He made a sour face. “Talking like that.”

  This surprised me. Coming from Greg, it seemed natural. I had never imagined Justin might be quite so… circumspect. “What do you mean? Talking like what?”

  “Jamie, Greg and I both have scholarships. So do you. You know what the administration’s like. If we want to go into the pros, we have to—”

  “Why?”

  “Because… because… I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.”

  “You told me once you wished the world could know about you and Grant.”

  “Grant’s dead. We made sure nobody ever knew. Not for certain.”

  “Even so, that’s what you said.”

  “Things change. Grant would have agreed with Greg, and so do I.”

  That was that. He went to his room and stayed there for a while.

  When he came out, he was in a brighter mood. He told me, “You said Danilo was older. I was expecting a guy in his sixties with a limp and a cane.”

  I shrugged. “I told you how good-looking he is.”

  “He can’t be more than 30. Jamie, he’s gorgeous.”

  “It was pretty clear you thought so.”

  “Was it?”

  “Even Greg picked up on it, if you can imagine.”

  “Greg’s not dumb.”

  “Oh, like, I mean, you know, for sure.”

  “Bitch.”

  I actu
ally didn’t know how old Danilo was. It never seemed important enough to ask. There were times when he seemed to be in his forties or fifties; other times he seemed hardly ten years older than me. Tricks of the light. Anyway, Justin acted more than a little bit jealous, which pleased me. He pouted and pretended to read a magazine. Then finally he asked me point-blank, “Are you in love with him, Jamie?”

  I didn’t want to say yes. Love seemed so corny to me. “Are you in love with Greg?”

  “Greg’s my age.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “Well, what I really want to ask is, is he in love with you?”

  “He hasn’t said so, not in words. But I’ve never said so to him, either.”

  “Aha.”

  I was starting to feel irritable. “There has to be a downside, doesn’t there? He talks to me like I’m an important part of his life, Jus. He talks about what we’ll do in the future. And about all the things he’ll show me. I want that.”

  “All Greg talks about is hoops.”

  I couldn’t resist. “He’s your age.”

  * * *

  The summer term was a short one; class sessions lasted three hours instead of the usual one. Finals were coming; papers were due. I had been Danilo’s assistant for nearly a month, and I was learning. And everything about ancient Egypt had begun to fascinate me, as it did him. The style, the way they expressed themselves, it all felt… I don’t know… right, in some way.

  So even though my job was drudgery, I enjoyed it because I was learning. There had been papyri to organize, fragile things I had to handle very carefully; amulets to categorize; and now these scarabs. I had to sort them, measure them, classify them according to what they were made of, limestone, faience, lapis lazuli… And I had to make sketches of what was inscribed on them. It dawned on me, working on them, that a month before I had never even heard of faience and lapis lazuli. The thought pleased me.

  Sketching wasn’t easy for me. I had never had any artistic training. The first few times, Danilo stood over me, helping me get the hang of it. Most of the hieroglyphs and symbols could be made with a few simple pen strokes. At one point I was having trouble getting one right, the figure of an owl. Danilo put his hand on top of mine and guided it. As always when we touched it felt wonderful. I took hold of his t-shirt and pulled him toward me and kissed him.