The Neon God

by Ben D'Alessio

  “So…”

  “But my uncle was made ruler of death for a reason. Even the beauty of Orpheus’s song could not stop him from putting a condition on the request. He made Orpheus promise that he would not look back at his wife as they ascended to Earth from the darkness.”

  “…”

  “Of course, dear Orpheus obliged and controlled his urges, no matter how painful they were, as the deep black of the Underworld faded gray. But then he stepped into the warmth of daylight…”

  Zibby gripped the plastic armrests to keep from falling out of her chair as air pounded in and out of her nose.

  “And turned to look at his bride.” Dio stared off; his eyes glossed over and eventually met Zibby’s, whose were equally wet. “She was still blanketed in the graying dark, her body barely touched by the sun before she vanished back to the Underworld, never to walk among the living again.”

  “Jesus, man.” Zibby wiped away a tear, then another. “Why couldn’t he just do it all over again? Play the same song and everything?”

  “My uncle prohibited it. He recalled Charon and left Orpheus stranded on the banks of the River Styx.”

  Zibby

  Zibby hadn’t cried since the night of Ryan’s misguided text message, and even then, it was alone and hidden, during the breaks in the day when her roommate had class or in the shade of an oak tree in Audubon Park. But now Zibby was coming apart at the seams, unfettered tears streaming down her cheeks in her backyard, in front of a man she pulled off the street who had either walked this earth— and occupied a heavenly space above it—for thousands of years or was a complete psychopath; there was no in between.

  She pulled a tissue from her back pocket and blotted her eyes, then wiped her nose and pictured the beautiful woman vanishing like a series of dominoes—her outstretched arm the last part to disintegrate, turning to dust in her lover’s hands. It was poetry.

  Dio cleared his throat and continued the recounting of his friend’s demise. “My sweet Orpheus never returned home and wandered the countryside and the lonely forests with nothing but his lyre. He played, now and then, to the unexpected audiences of the sly stoats and brown bears and monk seals, sunbathing on the Black Sea beaches.”

  “These feral women killed him, didn’t they?”

  He nodded his head, unblinkingly envisioning the scene as if he were a GI reliving the carnage of Omaha Beach. “He wouldn’t play.” Again came the tears, Zibby joining him.

  “Why not?” she asked, wiping her runny nose with the back of her hand.

  “He wouldn’t play,” Dio repeated. “All he had to do was sing and their fury would have ended.”

  “Why didn’t you sing, then? Where were you?”

  “They tore him apart.”

  “Dio…”

  “The Muses found his head on their shores…”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?!” She was standing over him now. He curled up in her shadow like a child.

  “…and brought it to me that day.”

  Zibby, catching her breath, her hands balled-up fists, stepped over the beautiful stranger and grabbed a bottle of wine sitting in the shade.

  “We buried him there, at Leivithra.”

  She marched across the backyard and into the house, letting the back door slam and recoil until it snapped shut.

  Dio spoke to himself as if Zibby were still seated in front of him. “I still visit him, once in a while, and listen to the nightingales sing in his absence.”

  Dio

  Dio reached for a bottle of his vintage sitting on the floor, without taking his eyes off the book’s first page. The intricate pattern of purples and blues on the front cover had grabbed his attention, and he snatched the novel from the pile of paperbacks in the far corner. He had already plopped down on the weathered couch when he read the title, The Bastard of Istanbul, and was feeling his wine too deep behind the eyes to put it back and grab another. He read through the first few pages before Zibby opened the door to the trailer.

  “Hey, uh…” she started, but stopped herself when she envisioned the rouging face of Professor LaSalle staring back at her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve stormed off like that. I think the wine had something to do with it. I usually don’t get that emotional.”

  Dio didn’t look up.

  “I thought about it and I don’t know if what you’re telling me is just bullshit or code or some sort of allegory, but I’m not here to judge or anything. You don’t have to tell me what’s true or what’s…”

  “I haven’t lied to you.” He dropped the book open on his bare chest.

  “Well maybe not lied, exactly, but…” “Everything I have told you is true.”

  “…”

  “…”

  “Oh, I love that one. Elif Shafak is a total badass. She got arrested for writing that.”

  “I am enjoying it. Even though riots would erupt throughout the Greek islands if they heard I was reading a book written by a Turk.” He picked it up off his chest and started to read.

  “You ever gonna tell me how you grew those vines?” Zibby looked out the window at the neat rows of grapevines, each one heavy with plump bushels ready to be plucked.

  “We have discussed this topic already. You do not wish to believe in my powers, so I do not wish to explain them,” he said, returning to the novel.

  Zibby walked to the kitchenette and pulled a stemless wine glass from the shelf, opened the fridge, and poured herself a glass of cold, cheap pinot noir, a taste she had developed in college.

  Zibby

  He’s sticking with this Greek god spiel, huh? A beautiful and mentally deranged illusionist? There has to be a story here.

  Zibby placed her glass of wine on top of a pile of used books, one of the many piles that dotted the studio trailer like the spires that punctured the Istanbul sky.

  The slight wobble of the books grabbed Dio’s attention, whose eyes widened when he saw his hostess drinking red elixir.

  “Pharaoh! You’re not ready to drink that!”

  “I have my own wine, thank you very much.” She smirked when she picked the glass back up and bit the rim. A heat had come over her, and she sauntered over to the end of the couch where Dio rested his feet.

  “That won’t matter. My mere presence around the vine causes even the most tame women to jettison their inhibitions. Take heed,” he said, returning to the novel.

  Starting at his exposed ankle, Zibby ran her hand up his leg, stopping at his thigh when he failed to react.

  “This book is stippled with underlines and highlights and these trite notes in the margins,” Dio started, his face hidden behind the cover. “Is all of the papyrus in this city adulterated with these markings, as if it had been in the hands of a fatigued Capuchin monk?”

  “Where did you learn to talk like that?” Zibby sat back in her chair, confused, derailed.

  “My accent and syntax is the culmination of years spent wandering the anglophone nations of Gaia’s Earth.”

  “You mean years spent ‘evading Hera’s wrath’?” Zibby said, rubbing her temples.

  Dio put the book back down on his bare chest and sat up on his elbows. “Pharaoh, listen, I am quite aware of your advances and find you beautiful. I’ve compared you to the woman who seduced both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and find you equally as sharp. She is not recognized for her ruling acumen nearly as much as she deserves. For two reasons I cannot knock over these piles of books and take you atop the marked papyrus. First, you are under the spell of wine, and as I have already mentioned, the vine combined with my presence makes women’s desires uncontrollable.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” But Zibby still felt the heat in her face, chest, and shorts. “This isn’t even your wine,” she said, going along with his logic.

  “That does not matter. Yes, indulging in my own vintage…”

  “Can you stop referring to it like that? Just say ‘my wine.’”

  “All right, then. Drinking my wine enhanc
es the Maenadic fury tenfold and brings on the symptoms twice as fast, but even the most sour, dense, or dull Phoenician swill will bring about the same effects in due time.”

  “Listen, like I said, I got this from the fridge, not from your hoodoo vineyard you somehow managed to sprout in my backyard overnight. If you’re admitting to slipping X or acid or some other type of drug into women’s drinks, that’s fucked up, and you need to get out before…”

  “Drugged?! Ha! I assure you, I am the one in need of Asclepius’s analgesics after the Maenads are through with me.”

  “So you do have sex with them?”

  “The Nymphs taught me the delicacies of a woman’s body at a young age and had me practice on them every day.” Zibby took a sip of her wine and crossed her legs. “The Maenads begged me to pleasure them when I descended from Mt. Olympus. Even after…”

  “…Even after what?”

  Dio’s bottom lip began to quiver. He stopped looking Zibby in the eyes, his own eyes hopping from one book title to another, scattered across the floor: Beloved, A Tale of Two Cities, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

  “Have you read all of these books?”

  “Yeah, I mean, most of ’em. What were you gonna say? You didn’t fin…”

  “Are they all previously occupied?”

  “You mean used? Well, yeah, my bookstore specializes in that. I get to hold on to a bunch of the ones we have multiple copies of. But I prefer used books anyway. Not like overly used, weathered ones, but already broken in. New books make me anxious, like they’re sitting on my bookshelf with their eyebrows arched, saying, like, ‘All right, get on with it already.’ But hey, stop trying to change the subject. What were you gonna say?”

  He took a breath, then a sip, and a tear streaked down his cheek. “On those occasions I had to descend from Olympus and walk the earth, the Maenads would insist I pleasure each and every one of them until their bodies convulsed and they could not walk and chant their songs.”

  “Oh, poor you!”

  “I was in love!” He finally let out, practically cutting her off.

  “I’m…I’m sorry.” She stumbled over the words. Dio pulled his knees to his chest. “I didn’t think…I mean, you said you had a son, but then you went on about Ari…Ariadne, was that her name?” His forehead rested between his knees, one hand holding the other wrist. “Whatever it was, you were going on about her suicide and cutting out the baby, and it was all just so much, I didn’t want to ask.”

  “Not her.”

  “Who?”

  “Aphrodite.”

  “Aphrodite?”

  “Aphrodite is the mother of my son Priapus. That unfortunate, homely creature she gave birth to. Hera had a hand in that, too, I assure you. But Aphrodite only used me to infuriate Apollo. We were never in love.”

  “Honestly, dude, I can’t keep track here. But you have a son and you’re just wandering around New Orleans?”

  “Priapus is fine. Yes, to gaze upon his face turns the stomach, but he is equipped with an enormous, virile member, and oftentimes travels with Zeus on his orgiastic excursions. I haven’t seen my son since they left for Sweden,” said Dio, attempting to calculate in his head how long ago that had actually been.

  “So you loved…Apollo?” Zibby pictured the radiant, golden god adorning the cover of the picture book in the bookstore, the same one she had in her room as a child. But everyone knew the God of the Sun; even those unfamiliar with the family trees of Greek mythology would be able to name Apollo along with Zeus and Poseidon.

  “Apollo?! I would strike Apollo with my thyrsus if he were not the golden child of Olympus!” Dio launched from the couch and began to pace across the studio, his fingers running through his black hair.

  “So…that’s not sexual?” Zibby asked, genuinely confused.

  “No! My brothers and sisters and the worshippers on Earth believe Apollo is master of light, commander of the sun, but I promise there is a darkness within him, a hole more pitch than the deepest basins of Tartarus.”

  Dio finally fell back on the couch, his forearm flung over his eyes and forehead so only his mouth and chin were visible. “Apollo is so perfect that the Romans did not even change his name.” He took a deep breath through his nose and let it pass out his mouth. “He was jealous of us, I swear it. But Hera, she didn’t believe a word of it.”

  “Oh, you mean the woman who tried to kill you on several occasions conspired against you? Shocking.”

  Dio moved his arm from over his eyes and shot a look at Zibby. She realized that even though his stories were impractical and that his mental issues were more severe than she had imagined, they likely had allegorical significance.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Apollo plucked Adonis straight from my bedchamber, my beautiful Adonis—I have not seen him since he left me.”

  Realizing that she was not equipped to occupy the role of Sigmund Freud, Zibby thought up a plan to excite her guest. “Hey! I have an idea.” She sat up in her seat. “Southern Decadence is this weekend. I typically avoid Bourbon Street like the plague, but Decadence is actually a gay old time. You can really let your freak flag fly. Trust me, if you’re gay, you’re gonna love it.”

  “Gay, gay, gay. The sexuality of Earth has become so binary. Even in Greece, where men and women used to spend nights swapping in and out of each other’s bedchambers under the spell of my…my wine, even there, the sexual fluidity has dried up. I blame the priests and the Orthodoxy! I knew their messiah, and trust me, there is a reason the Bible does not mention Jesus in his twenties.”

  “Well, hey, I’ve had to get over a guy before too. And trust me, nothing feels better than having a tourist down in the Quarter ogle over the idea of getting with a local. Even if you don’t hop in bed with ’em. To be desired is a damn good feeling.”

  “‘To be desired.’ Please. I inspired the greatest poets and playwrights of Greece, who wrote their best work in devotion to my graces and performed such work in the hearth of my theater.”

  “Don’t be so modest…”

  “Euripides himself wrote eleven plays concerning my legacy! But they were lost when those jackals sacked the great library of Alexandria.”

  “Listen, if you want to go to Decadence, it’s this weekend. I’d be happy to take you down there.”

  “I’ll show this city decadence,” Dio said before turning over on his side, facing away from Zibby, who picked up her glass of pinot noir and left the trailer.

  Across South Carrollton Avenue, in the neighborhood of East Carrollton, sat a quaint, mustard-yellow grocery store tucked into residential Adams Street. It served the greatest po’ boy in New Orleans—an impressive, though subjective, feat.

  Brian Pham and his two older brothers ran the grocery; their father “supervised” from his office in the back. Brian was dunking loads of shrimp into the deep fryer when Zibby walked in. The eldest, Trang, didn’t look up from his phone, but reached out to turn the notch a tick higher on a fan that sat on the counter, blowing more hot air in his face.

  “Wuttup, Pham?!” Zibby shouted, raising her arms and imitating the jovial baritone voice of Mz. Champagne on her hit song “Crescent City Fam.”

  “Hey Zibbs,” said Brian, wiping his hands on his apron and resting his elbows on the counter. “How’s lawyering comin’?”

  “Ya know we actually have a class called Lawyering?”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, it’s what they used to call Legal Writing. Thought you’d find that funny.”

  “Don’t say that too loud. My parents’ve been on my ass about taking the LSAT. They said Trang and Minh can run the business and that we need a lawyer in the family.” Zibby and Brian both looked over at Trang, who hocked a loogie straight into the garbage can. “I know you just started, but what do you think so far? Totally suck or what?”

  Zibby had managed to evade Professor LaSalle’s Socratic assault for the remainder of the week, but that first day, although o
verall a successful venture, had been a harrowing experience. “Mr. Romano” hadn’t shown up for class the rest of the week. Rumor had it he was locked away with his arms tied across his abdomen in a padded room in some hospital up in New Hampshire. Really he had just switched to the other Criminal Law section with Professor Fontaina.

  “It’s a…it’s—it’s pretty okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “It’s very okay. It really all depends on the class and professor.”

  Brian lifted the shrimp out of the oil and tossed them on the tabletop. He grabbed a piece of crunchy French bread and sliced it vertically down the center. “Oh yeah? What kind of law do you want to go into, anyway?”

  “Honestly, I’ve got this guy staying with me…”

  “Staying with you? Whadya mean?”

  “In the trailer.”

  “Like an Airbnb? You’re a cog in the gentrification machine of this city!” he shouted, barely able to hold in the laugher. “Not in my backyard!”

  “But he’s not just some tourist. I can’t figure out where he’s from. The guy has some serious issues.”

  “What kind of issues?” Brian added lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise to the sandwich.

  “So…he calls himself Dionysus. Like, the Greek God of Wine.”

  “So he’s a nutcase?”

  “He’s not schizo or whatever, at least I don’t think he is, but he tells these stories that are clearly his way of expressing some sort of mental and…or physical abuse. Oh, and he’s an illusionist. He has to be.”

  “Like David Blaine shit?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Get this, he grew grapevines in my backyard and turned them into wine. In like a day.”

  “Real wine? That’s not possible. Unless he like, 3-D printed it or something. Soon, everything will be 3-D printed. There will be no more need for…for anything.” He dunked another batch of shrimp. “Maybe he’s the next Nicola Tesla.”