By Qohelet
"You ok?" he asked, his brow furrowed with concern.
"Yeah. But I need to ask you something." I still couldn’t believe what I’d read. "How do you spell your name?"
"Iota, omicron, lambda, alpha, omicron, sigma." I-O-L-A-O-S.
"Can I see that coin again?" I reached out in his direction.
"You never gave it back to me. Is it in your trousers?"
Duh! It was in the pocket of my jeans. I pulled it out and looked again at the inscription. Five Dinariai. A man’s face. I stifled a yawn, and looked at my watch. It was after eleven. I think maybe tomorrow a visit to a coin dealer might be in order. Right before I go have my head examined.
Sighing, I looked back at the daybed, where he lay on his side, head propped on his hand, looking intently at me. Woof! "Iolaus, I’m tired."
He grinned that grin.
"I have to get up early tomorrow. I want to take this to a coin dealer." I held up the five-dinar piece. "That’s somebody who buys and sells old coins."
"But that’s not an old coin," he answered, "I just picked it up—" His eyes unfocused for a moment. "Three thousand years ago." Suddenly he looked very vulnerable and a little frightened. "If I’m not nuts, and you’re not nuts, how did I get here?"
"I don’t know. There’s nothing more we can find out tonight, though. Let’s get some sleep." I handed him an afghan to cover up with. "Here, it can get cold here at night."
His eyes started to twinkle again. "Uh, isn’t it a little late for this?"
Duh again. No kidding. "Oh the hell with it. C’mon." I checked the door to make sure it was locked, then beckoned him back to the bedroom with me. "And wipe that grin off your face. I’m going to sleep."
Under his breath, I heard him mutter, "The road to Tartarus is paved with good intentions."
I left the T-shirt on, but pulled off my jeans and climbed under the covers with my back toward him. My cat had already taken possession of the hollow between the pillows, so when Iolaus lay down and turned toward me, he got a face full of short black fur.
"Uh, is this cat necessary?" he asked, sputtering.
I laughed. "He was here before you, and I expect he’ll still be here after you’re gone."
"Yeah, but I’m more fun." He reached around me and began to tease the base of my neck with his fingertips. Slowly he tracked them up and around my ear, flicking the lobe gently and circling the hollow in slow strokes.
I reached up and grabbed his hand firmly, then scooted back against him and anchored his arm around my waist. "Sleep!" I said, feeling him against my back. He was naked again. I smiled, hoping he didn’t see, feeling his manhood stir slightly under the touch of my butt.
Feeling overly confined between our heads and the wall, the cat got up and paraded indignantly to the foot of the bed, where he curled up and went to sleep. So did we.
I woke up out of a beautiful dream. A handsome, passionate man was making languorous, gentle love to me, nibbling my ears, caressing my breasts, stroking my thighs. As we connected in an intense kiss, the fog in my brain started to dissipate. This is no dream. I reached up and ran my hand through his golden hair, then down his back to the gentle curve of his waist. We rolled over together, until he was looking up at me as I sat up, resting on my knees and calves over his swollen cock, a sword in search of a sheath. He reached up toward me, but I grabbed his hands in mine and pushed, holding him down against the mattress as I lowered myself onto his throbbing rod.
His face was beautiful, transfixed and radiant, hungry and yearning with breathless anticipation. I bent down and kissed him hard, feeling his breath coming in gasps as I moved up and down on him. I shifted a bit so that his phallus could stroke my joy-button and joined him on the climb. My body responded quickly and I couldn’t suppress a growl as the waves of pleasure went through me.
As soon as I had relaxed a bit, his arm flew up to my shoulders and before I could react he had thrown me over and I was looking up at him. His eyes were blue pools with black depths boring into me as I gasped with surprise. Shifting his weight, he began to thrust in and out of me with tantalizing slowness, rubbing the head of his cock against my nubbin with each pass. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears as he bent to suckle one breast, then the other. I reached up and pulled his face to mine as he stiffened and filled me with seed.
Momentary panic filled my head as I thought of the box of rubbers in the bedside table, but he had scarcely recovered from his own ecstasy when he was wending his lazy way down my body, kissing and nibbling until he came to the thatch between my legs. I stopped thinking about much of anything. Ducking so that my thighs were over his shoulders, he drank deep of our mingled juices and lapped enthusiastically at my love bud until I couldn’t help but cry out with pleasure. I grabbed his hair and ground his face into my cleft, growling low as ecstasy shook me to the bone.
Both of us were breathless as he pushed himself back up on the pillows next to my face and rolled over on his side toward me. "Good morning," he smiled, his face moist with our combined wetness. He wiped his face with his free hand.
I grabbed the moist hand and licked it clean. "Breakfast of champions," I muttered. He looked puzzled. Then the phone rang. I reached over and grabbed the receiver. "Hello?"
He looked at me quizzically. "Who are you talking to?"
I put a finger to my lips: "Shush!"
"Sheesh," my friend Kate said. "I haven’t said anything yet!"
"Not you, hon. I’ve got company."
"That’s just what I was about to ask. Don’t go away. I’ll be right over. And don’t send him away either." She hung up.
"Who were you talking to?"
"A friend from across town."
"You can talk to people over long distances? Through that?" He pointed at the phone.
"Yep. People have been able to do that for almost a hundred years now." I rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. "She’s on her way over; we’d better get cleaned up."
This time I was in and out of the shower before he could stir. As he stepped in to the tub, I asked, "Want some breakfast?"
"Sure."
A quick check of the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets yielded some fresh bread, a block of cheese and some eggs. I scrambled the eggs with a bit of cheese and warmed up the bread in the microwave.
"Wow, that was fast," he said, rubbing his hair with a towel.
"Will you put some clothes on??" I asked with a bit of irritation. "My friend will be here any minute."
"Ok, sorry." He walked back toward the bedroom and returned a minute or two later in his leather pants and the T-shirt I had given him. "What about you?"
I looked down and realized I was naked too. Laughing and blushing at the same time, I sprinted into the bedroom and pulled a baggy shirt down off a hanger. Just as I was sitting down to eat, the doorbell rang and I buzzed Kate through. She rapped on the door.
Iolaus stood up as I went to the door and opened it. Kate hugged me, then gasped quietly as she looked over my shoulder and saw him. "Great Goddess," she whispered.
"What?" I asked.
"He’s here."
"Who is?"
"The favorite of Artemis. She told me I’d find him here."
"Did I hear you say Artemis?" Iolaus asked, walking out from the dining room. "Hi," he continued, extending his hand to Kate; "I’m Iolaus."
She shook his hand and pulled slowly away.
"Did you say something about Artemis?" he asked. "I could have sworn I heard…."
"You heard right. I have the honor to be her Priestess."
Iolaus looked at me wide-eyed. "Well at least one thing hasn’t changed."
"That’s not really true," I answered. "Now there are many religions in the world, and the gods of Greece are little venerated."
"Most of them deserved little veneration," he responded. "Now Artemis, there’s a different story."
Kate touched my hand as if to ask me to let her talk. "Iolaus, I have a message for you from Artemis."
"OK," he said, as if this sort of thing happened every day. "But why didn’t she bring it herself?"
"She doesn’t appear much in this world," Kate said. "These days, people talking to invisible creatures on the street get locked up in the nuthouse."
Iolaus turned his eyes toward me. "You must have thought—"
"Never mind what I thought," I replied. "Listen to what Kate has to say."
Kate went on. "The Lady says she sent you here for your protection. You were about to get caught in a battle between several Olympians, and she didn’t want any harm to come to you over something you weren’t involved in. She says she will bring you home when it’s safe."
"Did she say when that might be?" Iolaus lowered his head and looked out from under a furrowed brow.
"No. And the whole issue of time is fluid anyway; she can transport you back and forth as she sees fit. You’re just to sit tight, at least until tomorrow." Kate sighed. "That’s the message."
I shook my head. "Kate, are you trying to tell me that … that this really is the charioteer of Hercules? As in THE Hercules? As in, old when the war with Troy was fought?"
"Hey, we weren’t that old!" Iolaus protested.
Kate nodded. "Yep, he’s the real McCoy. Express-mailed by Artemis from umpty-ump BC. And you, you lucky girl, you get to ride herd on him to make sure he doesn’t get lost before he can get home."
"Oh goody." I was having fantasies of trying to control an energetic four-year-old in a candy store.
Kate chuckled. "Earlier you didn’t sound like you’d complain."
"Yeah, well," I responded, "he does seem to have his uses." I reached over and pushed his hair out of his eyes, and he caught my hand and kissed it.
"Oh ho!!" said Kate. "Looks like Artemis gave you safety and a reward, favored one!"
"She’s always been very good to me," Iolaus answered.
"Want some breakfast?" I interrupted. "We were about to eat—"
"No, I’ve got to go to work," she said. "You two enjoy, and I’ll be in touch if I get any more news flashes."
Iolaus and I walked her to the door. When she had left, I sank stunned to the floor.
"Hey, are you all right?" He reached a hand down to help me up.
"I don’t know … you may live in a world where gods and goddesses intervene in miraculous ways, but I sure as hell don’t. I don’t know which is nuttier, the idea that you’re from ancient Greece, or that you were sent here by some goddess to hide from a firefight." I shook my head, hard, and stumbled to my feet.
I felt numb, beginning to doubt my own rationality. Gently, he took my hand and led me back into the kitchen. "Eat your breakfast," he said; "you’ll think straighter with some food in your system."
Of course breakfast was stone cold by that time, so I put it in the microwave to warm. Mercifully, he didn’t ask me to explain the nuker.
I called in sick to work after breakfast and tried to think what to do next. Iolaus was having great fun looking through my books and playing with the kitchen gadgets. He really is like a kid in a toy store! I guess he had picked up how much he was irritating me with all the questions, so he let me sit in silence while my mind was whirring away.
It was all too much. The only way to cope was to refuse to think about it. I started to make a list of things that needed to be done that day, lunatic Greek or no lunatic Greek. About ten minutes later, he sat back down at the table with me.
"Janie, what if I’m stuck here?"
"What?" I was off woolgathering, but his question yanked me back. "Stuck here?"
"Yeah. What if I can’t get home? How will I live?" His face was sad but passive, as if he were just beginning to understand his situation.
"Artemis wouldn’t just leave you here, would she?" I didn’t know what to say.
"I don’t think so. But what if it’s never safe for me to go back? Why did she bring me here, instead of, a month in the future when the dust had died? Why three thousand years?" He looked genuinely worried and confused.
"I don’t know, Iolaus. Maybe it was just reflex, and she didn’t care much where you landed as long as it was away from the danger." Yeah, that sounds good.
"I hope that’s it." He stood up and walked toward the door. "I’ve got to get out of here. Want to take a walk?"
"Nah, when I get the urge to exercise I usually lie down until it passes." I grinned.
"Well there’s that too," he said, winking.
"Tell you what, no matter how long you’re stuck here, you’re going to need something to wear. Let’s go get you some clothes, ok?" I got up and grabbed my wallet and we both headed for the car. Two hours later we had several bundles of purchases: two pairs of jeans, a half dozen shirts, some T-shirts, socks, shoes, a coat.
Underwear had been a bit of a challenge. He wasn’t clear on why one wore briefs, but found the front panel useful. He was beautiful to watch; it was plain that he had no shame about his body or its functions, just matter-of-fact acceptance. He would have paraded around the store in his underwear demonstrating its features to all and sundry if I had let him. Our last acquisition was a pair of suspenders. "If I go back, I’m taking these with me. They’d make a great weapon!"
I took him to a Greek restaurant for lunch, and he was in hog heaven. He managed to talk to the owner in what passed for Greek, although the owner didn’t always understand him, nor did he always understand the owner. But he piled our plates high with God knows what and we ate and drank and laughed until late afternoon.
He tried to get me to drink ouzo, but it smells like turpentine to me, so I declined. After about half a bottle, though, he began to get silly, dancing on the table and singing at the top of his lungs. I got up and grabbed his arm. "C’mon, Caruso. I have some errands to do."
He waved at the restaurateur as we left and giggled in my ear. "Where to now?"
"Let’s go see something beautiful," I answered.
The sun goes down early this time of year, so I drove him out to the Berkeley marina to watch the sunset. As the ouzo wore off, he became more subdued and seemed to turn inward, his brow furrowed with concern. He must be worrying about being stuck here.
"Iolaus?"
"Yeah?"
"It’ll be OK. You’ll get home."
"Yeah, sure. Things always manage to work out." He got out of the car and walked down closer to the water. I grabbed his coat, knowing how cold the marina could be, and followed him. He stood at the breakwater in his flimsy T-shirt and vest, hugging himself and rubbing his upper arms. I caught up with him and put the coat around his shoulders. Not sure what to say, I just slipped my arm around his waist and put my head on his shoulder. He’ll talk when he’s ready.
The sunset was breathtaking, but I’m not sure it even registered with him. We stood there for an hour, him looking out over the bay, tears streaming down his face. It broke my heart; he looked as if he had just lost everything important to him, and in a way I guess he had.
I had to break the silence. "It would be really hard for me to be torn away from everything I know."
He said nothing, only nodded.
"Did you have a family?"
"My mother and stepfather," he answered, "and Hercules is like a brother. I love him more than my life."
"That would be incredibly painful to leave, especially when you have no chance to prepare."
He nodded again. "I know that Artemis did this to protect me, but …." He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand and put on a stiff upper lip. "Did you say you had errands to do?"
"Yeah, but they can wait. I’m worried about you." The little guy was beginning to weasel his way under my skin.
"You’ve been so kind to me. I don’t know what I can do to repay you, or why you have treated me so well." He shook his head and the tousled blond hair flew.
"At first, I felt sorry for you. Then I thought you were cute. Then I thought you were a fantastic lay. Now? I don’t know." I didn’t dare tell him how I really felt, that I was falling for the stray that followed me home.
I could hear the ring of my cell phone through the open window of the car, and pulled myself away from him to run back up and grab it. It was Kate.
"It’s time," she said.
"Time for what?" I asked.
"Time to send him home." My heart stopped, then dove down to my ankles. "NO!"
"Afraid so."
Iolaus came rushing up to where I stood. "What’s the matter?"
I handed him the phone and began to cry. At first, he didn’t know what to do, until he heard Kate saying "Hello? Hello?"
He put it up to his ear. "Hi Kate."
I didn’t hear her end of the conversation, and his end as pretty much a series of noncommittal grunts. He handed me the phone to turn off; I was still crying too hard to talk.
"I have to go," he said. "Where’s Golden Gate Park?"
"It’s across that bridge," I answered, pointing to the Bay Bridge in the distance.
I wiped my eyes and waved him into the car. We drove over the bridge in silence, until I found somewhere to park. "You are being watched over by a Goddess," I said. "There are never any parking places in the City.
Kate was waiting for us in a grove of trees. We walked deep into the park, past the couples having sex and the addicts smoking or shooting up and the shifty-eyed gangsters making deals with one another. Just another night in the park. God, I hate this place. When we reached a relatively safe, secluded spot she stopped. Taking a candle out of her bag, she lit it and placed it on the ground. She sprinkled some incense into the flame; it crackled as it burned. The wind came up, but somehow the candle stayed lit.
I looked at Iolaus, who seemed pretty nonchalant about the ceremony being conducted in front of him. I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Then there was a mighty thunderclap, the wind turned into a gale, and a door seemed to open up between the trees.
"Is that it?" I asked Kate, shouting over the wind.
"Yes," she answered. "Hurry, it won’t hold for long."
I turned to Iolaus. "I guess this is goodbye."
He nodded in silence.
"I need to say something before you go." I couldn’t let him get away without telling him how I felt.
"What?" He was starting to walk away toward the door.
"I love you." I felt like I was screaming upwind and the words had blown back into my face.
"What??" He cupped his ear with his hand.
"I SAID I LOVE YOU!"
He stopped walking and reached out for my hand. "Come with me."
"What?" I didn’t believe my ears.
"I SAID, COME WITH ME!" The wind was raging and the door seemed to shimmer in the shadows.
"BUT…" I shook my head.
"BUT NOTHING!" he shouted. He took a step back toward me, and spoke directly in my ear. "All my life I’ve wondered if I’d ever find a woman who didn’t think of me as the little guy who follows Hercules around. I found one. Come with me?"
He didn’t have to ask me twice. I threw my car keys to Kate and we jumped through the door, together. "You can return the new clothes in the back seat of the car!"