Gods of Aberdeen

by Micah Nathan

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Ellen asked gently. She pushed her hair behind her ears.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Sure. Sure you are,” she smiled, not unkindly, and sipped her coffee again. “And you’re Art’s friend. I understand.”

  She glanced at her sweater, picking something off it. “I know he was going to buy a book,” she said flatly. Her eyes met mine. “It has something to do with his alchemy project. He wouldn’t give me any specifics but I know he’s spending a lot of money on it. I don’t care, really. I just wish he wasn’t so secretive about the whole thing.”

  She sighed. “He called me, you know, from London. He told me how sick George was, and how he’s bored and tired of walking around the city by himself, and could I please come early. And so I did. I love London. Art took me to Mantra, that new Chef Burke place.” She stopped, aware that such references were entirely lost on me. “Anyway, over dinner he started talking about the Philosopher’s Stone, and immortality, and the usual. You know how he gets when he’s obsessing about something.”

  I did. Very well.

  “And then he tells me he’s going to test the formula on himself one of these days, because that’s the only way he’ll know for sure. Now, cats I can understand, but humans are an entirely different story.”

  Ellen half-covered her mouth. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “He already told me about the cats,” I said.

  “And you’re okay with it? It doesn’t freak you out?”

  “It did,” I said. “But then I figured Dr. Cade must know, and if it’s okay with him…”

  “Professor Cade?” She shook her head. “If he knew he’d send Art to a psychiatrist.”

  Ellen stirred her coffee. “So are you involved in it now?”

  “No,” I said. I was too embarrassed to admit otherwise. “I don’t believe any of it.”

  Ellen didn’t seem to have heard me. “I should’ve known,” she said. “I told him over dinner that I thought this entire alchemy thing was a waste of time. And I’m not the only person who thinks so—Howie’s come to his senses and wants nothing to do with it. The only reason he got involved in the first place was because he needed something to keep his mind occupied. You know how much Howie drinks, but you probably don’t know why.”

  “Alcoholism comes to mind,” I said.

  Ellen smiled. “Sure there’s that…But he also drinks because there’s nothing else for him to do. Look at the poor guy—he’s a city mouse stuck in the country. And as for Dan…he just follows whatever Art says.” She said this with a hint of reproach. “I think there’s more than just a friendly attraction there. You want to know the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She laughed, throat pulsing, her eyes glistening. Razor-edged beauty drawing blood with a quick slice. I honestly would not mind, I thought darkly, if Art died in a car crash.

  “This stays between us.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Not that I care in the least what a person’s sexuality is, but I think Dan might be…confused. You know?”

  I nodded.

  “Art’s a flirt,” Ellen said. “Men, women, he doesn’t discriminate, as long as the attention remains focused on him. If Dan had any propensities in that direction to begin with, I’m sure some of the strange things…”

  She faded off. “Some of it’s silly,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Hanging out in the woods behind Dr. Cade’s house, the three of them carrying candles and chanting. Alchemy is mixed up with the occult—why do you think the Church eventually banned it? Magic circles and spirit-summoning and, sometimes, even human sacrifice.” When she saw my look of horror she immediately put her hand on mine. “Art’s not crazy. Please. He’s more into the academic approach. Do you know he and Dan took cuneiform last semester so they could perform some sort of Babylonian rite on Halloween?”

  “I remember that,” I said. “They told me they were all going to a costume party.”

  “Consider yourself lucky you didn’t go,” said Ellen. “Most thaumaturgic rites are sexual in nature. I wrote a paper my freshman year,” she smiled, “about the homosexual undertones of orgiastic religious observance. Semen as the main ingredient in any kind of spiritual passage and so on…”

  “I had no idea,” I said. “I didn’t think Art or Howie was into—”

  “Oh, they’re not gay,” she said sternly. “Not at all. In fact, Howie’s a genuine homophobe. And Art’s a typical medievalist, terrified of women. When I say ‘sexual,’ I mean nothing more than a circle jerk into a cup. But I’m sure Dan didn’t mind.”

  The images were all very sordid, and very unsettling. My housemates had previously aligned themselves into simple categories: the smart one, the drunk one, the young one. What next, I thought. Dr. Cade keeps a harem of chained virgins in the basement?

  The crowd at Campus Bean had thinned out and a few students remained, scattered about the room, sitting at the small round tables, hunched over their books.

  “And then there’s you,” Ellen said playfully, crossing her legs. “Art’s always thought you were a bit of a puzzle. The orphan-genius. Quiet and brooding, sitting in his bedroom all day and night like a little monk. That’s how he described you, you know. We all thought you were putting us on. The poor kid from the projects. Howie suspected you were a pathological liar.”

  “Why would I make up a past I’m embarrassed of?” I said. “If anything I would’ve concocted some story about, I don’t know…my dad winning the Nobel Prize in physics.”

  “That’s just it—you think your past is so terrible.” Ellen narrowed her eyes. “Do you know how envious Howie and Art are of you? It’s true. They like to think of themselves as survivors, the ascetic ideal and everything. Art still clings to this bizarre notion that the proletariat are somehow more noble than the rest of us. It’s very Christian of him. Though he’d go crazy if I ever said that to his face. And Howie—he portrays his dad as some turn-of-the-century robber baron. Right. His dad fell into the family money. Their money is as old as it comes. We’re the nouveaux riches, my family and I. But you don’t have a history, really. You’re making it up as you go along.”

  Ellen glanced into her coffee cup and pushed it away. My mind raced as I tried to organize everything she’d just told me. Everything she’d revealed had been followed by a quiet voice of recognition in my mind: Ah, yes. I guess I should have been disturbed by what she’d said, but I still saw it all—the alchemy, the experiments—as nothing more than a formidable intellectual puzzle Art wanted desperately to solve. And he wanted to solve it not because he believed it—how could he?—but because it was so daunting, because its answers had eluded so many for so long. Sure it was all very strange but how was any of it more surreal (or unreal) than my life had been thus far?

  “I forgot how we got on this topic,” Ellen said, reaching into her handbag. She pulled out a tube of lipstick and dabbed her lips.

  “Your argument with Art,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t call it an argument.” She clicked her purse shut. “I just finally told him I thought this alchemy business had gone too far, and he got angry, and I stayed in London and he came back and got you.”

  “Art’s a very intense person,” she continued, smiling. “He goes through these phases sometimes. It gives him an outlet for all the stuff running around in his brain. He’s really quite brilliant, you know. He always needs something to work on.”

  Ellen looked at her watch and then started to button her coat.

  “Would you like to come over for some dinner?” she said, her tone indicating she didn’t care one way or the other. “I can’t promise a full-course meal like Dr. Cade, but there’s this terrific Chinese place a block down from my apartment.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, and then I tried to convince myself that I was really only interested in dinner.

  I rode in Ellen’s car for the first time, an old Saab, British racing green with a faded tan interior. Masculin
e looks but somehow fitting, smelling of lotion and perfume, very clean and mature, a grown-up car. A spiral notebook lay on the backseat, a balled-up piece of paper stuck out from the ashtray. Ellen apologized for the mess.

  Her apartment was the top floor of a three-story Victorian home on Posey Street, a small, one-way lane on the eastern tip of Fairwich. East Fairwich was strictly residential, and wealthy, from what I understood; it was where the college president lived, along with several professors and the mayor of Fairwich. Ellen’s landlord was a retired Aberdeen art professor, some famous painter who had supposedly donated his salary every year to the Connecticut Fine Arts Museum and made a fortune selling oil paintings. He let her live there for reduced rent on the condition that she was to help tend his garden. For two years she’d been there, and had never once seen his garden (the backyard was a heavily treed plot), and had only seen him four or five times.

  I expected a modern décor—sparse, expensive furniture, some artwork, maybe a rug with funky geometric designs. I was right about everything except the rug. Her hardwood floor gleamed under small track lights (“I just got it polished last month,” she said), and true to form, she had a few modern pieces hanging on the walls: Lichtenstein and Gauguin, a small Dali. She had a portrait of herself above the fireplace, an abstract painting with severe lines and slashes, but the artist had pared down her features perfectly—two strokes for her jaw, an elongated comma for her nose. Translucent hair cascading down her neck like a silken waterfall. A wet shade of green filled her almond-shaped eyes, the brightest and richest color in the entire painting.

  “That’s very good,” I said, staring up at it. Ellen threw her coat over the back of her couch.

  “Howie did it,” she said. “Last year.”

  I looked at her. “Howie did this?”

  She nodded. “That’s what I said.”

  “That’s cool,” I said.

  Ellen eyed me warily.

  “Is there something you’d like to ask me?” she said.

  “Not at all,” I said. Actually, I wanted to ask her why Howie had painted her portrait. And whether Art knew. But of course I said nothing, and I looked around the rest of her apartment. The living room led into a small galley kitchen, with a hallway beyond that.

  Ellen walked into the kitchen. “Would you care for something to drink?” she said. “I have some Chardonnay…” She opened the refrigerator. “Orange juice, cranberry juice, soda water…”

  I told her some tap water would be fine, and instead she opened a bottle of spring water and poured me a glass, her shoes clicking across the floor as she handed it to me. Just a minute, she said, and she disappeared into the hallway while I sat on the couch, all the way to one side, sipping my water and gazing around the room. My watch read 4:30. I tapped out some random song on my knee. I set my glass down on the coffee table and inspected an old scab on my wrist. A magazine sat on the table, some French fashion publication, with a pouty model on the cover wearing thin strips of clothing around her waist and breasts.

  Ellen walked into the living room, barefoot, wearing jeans and a loose cable-knit sweater, and holding a glass of wine. She sat across from me, in a sand-colored leather chair. Her bare feet gleamed white and soft, thin ankles, bluish veins snaking over bone.

  “I had to get out of my work clothes…I only worked a half shift today,” she said, tousling her hair with one hand. “You know, I’ve never seen you at Campus Bean before.”

  “I don’t spend much time there,” I said.

  “Yeah, the coffee isn’t so good.” She sounded as if that was the reason I didn’t go. “But it’s a nice change of place—every other coffeehouse in town usually has someone I work with, and outside the office I want nothing to do with bankers. They’re worse than academics, if you can believe it. Lecherous, uptight middle-aged men. You wouldn’t believe how they ogle me.” She shuddered.

  Oh yes I would, I thought.

  “Tell me more about where you grew up,” Ellen said, drawing in her legs and tucking them under her body. She sipped her wine, cradling the glass in her hands, stroking the stem, staring at me. “Not that nasty city place, but your childhood. Where was it? Somewhere out West?”

  “West Falls, Minnesota,” I said, and launched into my little tale.

  We ended up ordering from Han’s Kitchen and sitting across from each other on the floor, my back against the couch, hers against the chair, eating pork fried rice and moo goo gai pan straight from their little white boxes. We finished the bottle of Chardonnay and Ellen made martinis, but I found the taste unbearable and mine remained twice-sipped, sitting on the coffee table while Ellen poured herself a second.

  She was fantastic company, a wonderful conversationalist, an impressive scholar in her own right, telling me about French literature, modern art, and her favorite topic: old movies, specifically from the ’30s and ’40s, the type of films I’ve always associated with beautiful women with sleepy eyes, men in fedoras, and the bad guys holding their guns at waist level. Ellen loved photography and sculptures, and after a few requests she got her portfolio from her room and showed me the photos. They were stunning black and whites, pictures of snowy trees at dusk, a lone dog skulking around the corner of a concrete building, an old woman resting on a bench. There was even a picture of Howie, lying in his bed, asleep, mouth half-open, pillow on his chest. Ellen quickly turned the page, like she’d forgotten that photo was in there.

  She told me about her cousin Lucinda, a famous photographer who had apprenticed under Helen Levitt and whose work was seen regularly in Le Monde. Lucinda killed herself, Ellen told me, an overdose of Percodan, and she had taken a final photo of herself, lying on the hardwood floor of her Greenwich Village apartment, mouth open, eyes fading, arm looming toward the lens as its hand prepared for that final click. Ellen said she had the photo in a shoebox in her closet, but she hadn’t looked at it in years because it gave her nightmares.

  “This is Lawrence, my father,” said Ellen, pointing to a picture of a tall, handsome man standing shirtless on a beach, the distant outlines of waterfront homes all along the shore. “Five years ago at our house in San Francisco.” Her father looked like the successful hand surgeon he was: self-confident, relaxed, a light tan, and a thick head of black hair. Her mother, Rebecca, was in the next photo, and for a brief moment I thought it was Ellen, until I noticed the wrinkles and the darker hair. Her mom was a beauty, regal in the way she smiled at the camera, completely at ease with having her photo taken. Ellen had her mother’s mouth and eyes, but her mother had a high forehead, giving her the look of some European model.

  “Your mom is beautiful,” I said.

  Ellen laughed. “She is beautiful, and she lets you know it. Miss Tennessee.” Ellen said it with a heavy Southern accent, and laughed again. “She still has the ribbon hanging in her closet.”

  We were kneeling side by side, portfolio opened in front of us, Chinese-food boxes scattered about. Ellen had her head cocked to one side in the most astounding way—for a second she was a sculpture in profile, frozen, every line and curve of her face deepened and enhanced. The upward tilt of her lips, the dip and swell of her chin. And her hair, as before, as it always was, fine silk, smooth strands, brushing against her ears, curling behind, tumbling down her neck. I felt powerful and daring, a confident sleepiness to my actions and thoughts. I swallowed hard and took a long, deep breath.

  And I kissed her. I balanced her chin on the tips of my fingers and I turned her lips to mine and I kissed them.

  She pulled away gently and stared at me. Her mouth had been unresponsive. My hand trailed down to her black sweater, thick cotton soft against my skin.

  “What was that?” she said. Her breath smelled of sweet wine.

  I drew in again but she pulled away.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” she said.

  I was speechless. I cannot describe adequately the scope of my longing for her, only that it was so overwhelming I felt as if it could snap my m
ind in two.

  “I love you,” I confessed.

  “No, you don’t,” said Ellen. She smiled sympathetically.

  It was not the response I had expected. Maybe a laugh, or a flattered smile, or even, in my most disconnected fantasies, a passionate embrace. But not refusal. It broke my trance, and I stood up.

  “I think I should go,” I said.

  Ellen laughed. Her laughter was many things at that moment, some real, others imagined: cruel, amused, pitying. “My goodness, relax,” she said, leaning back against the chair. “You haven’t even finished your fried rice.” She peered into the box and fished around in it with her chopsticks.

  I spotted my coat, on the rack, and rushed over to it. “It’s late,” I said. “And I’m totally humiliated.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Eric. Come on…Look, if you’re not going to stay, let me at least give you a ride home.” She made to get up but I turned to her and fumbled my house keys, dropping them on the hardwood floor.

  “Just don’t do anything,” I said, harsher than I would have liked. I thrust my keys into my pants pocket and yanked open the front door, and I looked back, in some desperate attempt to convince myself that she’d been right, that I didn’t love her, that in fact, maybe I’d hated her for what she’d done to Art, and for what she’d done to me.

  She was standing there, in the living room, barefoot, arms crossed, her head cocked to one side. A lock of hair had fallen across her forehead. Her green eyes studied me. Her jeans were set low on her hips and her sweater was bunched up at the bottom, revealing a glimpse of white skin and the half circle of her navel.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and then I hurried out and slammed the door.

  Chapter 2

  I took a cab back to the house, and I almost flew into a panic as the taxi pulled into Dr. Cade’s driveway. I was suddenly convinced Art would be able to smell Ellen on my hands, and that he’d beat me senseless or, worse, maybe reveal my betrayal to Professor Cade, who would then banish me from the house, and send me back to my dorm room. My emotions ranged from self-loathing to ecstasy, pitching and rolling like a ship in a storm. I had lost self-control; that was harder to accept than anything.