Sparta (44 page)

The Scythians were nomadic warriors around the time of the classical Greeks. The art showed Greek influence, but it also influenced the Greeks. When the rulers died, their wives, servants, and horses were required to follow them into the grave, so the gravesites were extraordinary caches of ceremonial treasure.

“I love these things,” Claire murmured, leaning over the case. “I love the idea that treasure has to be portable. Tiny and valuable. These are so beautiful.”

A gold plaque showed a battle scene between a horseman and two foot soldiers. The rider sat on a plunging animal with a smooth curved neck and powerful haunches. On either side of him was a foot soldier carrying a short sword and a round shield. They looked familiar: they looked Greek. Conrad felt an odd twinge of something like homesickness.

He had wanted to see this, but he couldn't focus on it. He wanted to start the conversation.

“I kind of love the fact that the women wore these things, things that represented all the wealth,” Claire said. “They were the bearers of wealth.”

“Men carried the shields and daggers,” Conrad said.

“Oh, men had all the power.” Claire waved her hand. “That's a given. But women had a part in it. I'm always interested to see what that part was.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. It was distracting, the array of glittering gold, the heavy brilliance of the medium, the confidence and intricacy of the execution. And the warriors reminded him of all the stories he knew. But he was here only for conversation. He was waiting for it. The Dutch couple were lingering, absorbed by the plaques, the battle scenes. Conrad willed Claire to move along.
Go,
he told her.
Go.

She straightened and looked around. At the far end of the room were larger cases holding larger ceremonial objects. In the center was a pitcher in the shape of a swan or some kind of bird. On either side were round platters, their surfaces carved and chased. Everywhere the cases glittered with gold and energy, the ancient residue of a long-vanished empire.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Claire moved toward the swan pitcher. The Dutch woman said something to her husband, and he straightened. The couple turned toward the swan pitcher; Conrad could feel their intention mirroring his. He moved next to Claire and took her elbow, stopping her in her tracks. The guard at the doorway coughed, raising his hand to his mouth.

“Claire,” he said, and she turned to face him.

“I want to talk,” he said.

She waited, her face open.

This was like rolling a boulder down the mountain. Once he'd said it, he couldn't take it back, couldn't slow it down, couldn't steer it. It would be out of his hands.

“I don't know how to say this,” he said.

She shook her head.

He took a breath. “Okay. I want to keep on seeing you.”

Claire nodded.

“Okay. But what about this other guy?”

“What other guy?” she asked.

“The Wall Street one,” he said. “Whoever he is.”

She shook her head. “What about him?”

“Okay, that's not what I meant to say.” He paused. He was screwing this up.

“What is it?”

“Look. If you want to quit this, I don't blame you.” His voice sounded suddenly loud. The ceiling was very high, and the blank white walls threw back the sound. The guard glanced at him, then away.

Claire frowned. “I didn't say I wanted to quit.”

“I mean the sex,” Conrad said. Also not what he'd meant to say.

“Forget the Wall Street guy,” Claire said. “I'm not really seeing him.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I said,” Claire said. “I'm seeing you. Not him. I don't sleep with him. Okay? He's a friend. I don't sleep with him.”

“Or me,” Conrad said.

Claire shook her head impatiently.

“Well?” he asked, angry.

“What do you want me to say? I don't sleep with him,” she said.

He waited.

“I told you, I don't care about the sex,” she said.

“But I don't believe that,” Conrad said.

Claire shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe sex isn't the center of everything.”

“Maybe it's pretty close, though,” Conrad said. “Maybe it's really important.”

Claire looked away from him, and her mouth turned down. Her face crumpled, her cheeks tightened. She was crying, tears spilling down her cheeks. To his horror, she gave a sob.

“Don't do this to me, Con,” she said. “It's bad enough without you acting like this.”

“Shit,” Conrad said. “I love you.”

“Yes,” Claire said. She closed her eyes. “Don't do this to me.”

Conrad put his arms around her. “God, I'm sorry, Claire,” he said. “Stop crying, please stop crying. I don't know what to do.”

“Just stop it,” Claire said into his chest. “Just stop.”

Stop what?
he wondered.
Stop telling her he loved her, stop seeing her, stop being impotent?

“We'll just go on like this until you get better,” she said. “Just stop talking about it. Stop talking about it. I can't stand it.
Don't talk about it.
”

Beyond her the Dutch couple stood in front of the swan, speaking quietly. Conrad held her close, rocking her slightly.

“Shhh,” he said into her hair. “Shh, shh.”

But he didn't know what he'd accomplished, after all that.

*   *   *

Toward the end of October, Conrad gave up running. The light came later and later. He didn't like running in the dark, and he didn't like setting out when the city was already in full daily gear, noisy, crowded, ordinary.

He was keeping to the rest of his schedule, though. Every day he spent two hours on the GMAT and two hours on his econ course. It was getting easier to understand the problems, he thought. His brain was beginning to focus, to enter into the strict rhythms of logic. But the headache had not gone away. The headache might have been getting worse. As soon as he opened a book, he could feel the headache approach, hovering, ready to set up its horrid factory. Sometimes he was able to last for two hours without it interfering. Sometimes the hammering was too bad for him to continue and he had to close the book and put his hands over his eyes. When the headache came on, it was more than pain: something happened to his mind; he couldn't think in a straight line.

The nights were getting worse. He woke often, and now the nights seemed endless. The dreams kept coming. Olivera whispered, asking if he was going to die. Sometimes Olivera whispered,
You lied to me, LT.
Before Conrad could answer, Olivera's hand became some soft, gummy substance he couldn't bear to touch or even look at. Then shame flooded through the dream like ink in water, dark clouds blossoming slowly.

To stave off both the insomnia and the nightmares, Conrad took to staying up later and later. Long after Jenny had gone to bed, he lay stretched out on his sofa, drinking beer and watching TV. He held the remote control device like a scepter, clicking impatiently from channel to channel, flipping through old movies, game shows, talk shows. He kept the sound turned low so it wouldn't disturb Jenny. To get to sleep, he drank, sometimes rum but mostly beer. He started each evening with a six-pack sitting on the floor beside the sofa. When it got late enough, he felt his eyelids drifting heavily down, his head dropping forward, his mind sliding off the edge of consciousness. At once he clicked off the TV and the light and lay down, bunching the pillow under his head and stretching out across the thin mattress. He closed his eyes, ready to sink into sleep.

Within moments, the darkness and somnolence had receded to some distant place. His eyes were wide open and his heart rate rapid. It was as though a switch had been turned on. Slowly his muscles began to clench, and he found himself lying on the mattress, his whole body completely tense: his stomach, his fingers, his neck, all taut, anticipatory. The night was another country. Lying in the darkness, willing himself to sleep, finding himself with clenched muscles and careening mind, thoughts came to him that weren't present in the daytime.

Tools, process, opportunity.
The words appeared, crisp and factual, like a phrase from a training manual. He didn't know where it came from, but he knew what it meant.

*   *   *

Sometimes he lay awake until dawn seeped around the edges of the shades. When he saw the first light, some internal line of tension snapped. It was as though he'd been on night guard duty and his shift was over. He'd been relieved, and after that he could sink into a confused sleep for an hour or so. He was on a shitty rotation, since he never got anything but night duty. He could have used all that red-alert adrenaline during the daytime, but it seemed he was wired for night and alarmed against sleep. Only in the mornings could he drop off, though not for long. When he woke, he was heavy with exhaustion, like a sack filled with sand.

One morning, after finally drifting off to semi-sleep, he heard Jenny stirring. He was still half asleep; he heard her as though she were on another planet. He heard her door opening, water sounds in the bathroom. He fell asleep. Later he heard her come out into the living room. She stumbled, and then there was a thud, and the musical clunk of something skittering on the bare floor. It would be a beer bottle, one of his.
Shit,
he thought. He kept his eyes closed.

“Shit, Con,” Jenny said. He heard her pick up the bottle and walk into the kitchen, heard the clink as she tossed it into the bin. He lay still, his eyes shut. Jenny got breakfast noisily and kind of slammed the door on her way out, to make her point.

Okay, I get it.

Conrad sat up and leaned back against the sofa, legs spread, sheets tangled. The air smelled close and sour: that was him. His eyes felt heavy. He was tired and wired. He had class that afternoon, he had to get up. He rubbed his face hard with both hands, as though he could pummel his mind into activity.

He fixed himself cereal and went back to the sofa to read email. This was still a good moment, sometimes the best of the day. Hearing from his men made him feel good. When he wrote back, they couldn't see him sitting in his underwear on his sister's foldout bed. They pictured him in his cammies and Kevlar, in combat crouch, running down a street, under fire.

Anderson had written again:

So, LT, I don't know if I can go on with this job. I mean I know I can do it, but I don't know if I can make it. Do you ever have the feeling that people are all looking at you because you're a vet? I have that feeling all the time. Not that Im a psyhco I don't mean that but I get a funny feeling and I know I'm right. Fuck em. Maybe its differnet in New York. I don't know, its not getting any easier I thought it would be by now. My parents think I should stick it out they dn't know what its like. What do you think, LT? Best, Anderson.

Conrad wrote back:

Hey Anderson. I can't know what's happening at work for you, but I think you should look around before you quit. See what else is out there first. Are there chances for advancement within the company? Maybe if you stick out this first part it will get better. To be honest, I think it's hard for all of us to come back home. My advice is to hang in there. It's hard, I know, but I promise you it will get better. Charlie Mike. How are your hands? Are they still giving you problems? I've started taking a course at Columbia, and studying for the GMAT test in December. It's finally getting cooler here, a relief. I think about the sandbox, and I don't miss 120 degree heat. Semper Fi, Farrell.

Turner checked in again.

So we had an intervention, with Abbott, not the girlfriend, who's called Dail, by the way. That's how she spells it. (Not her stage name. Her stage name is Angel Cake.) Anyway Abbott says she's his girlfriend, and he can't tell her she can't come over. He got upset about it. We said she can come over but she can't lie on the sofa and she can't be in the kitchen. She can't hang out in the kitchen. She can get coffee but then she has to go upstairs to his room and wait for him there. She can't hang out anywhere but his room. He was pissed. He said you're acting like she's a housepet! Williams and I didn't dare (dair) look at each other. Well?

Conrad answered:

I think you're missing a bet here. You should befriend her. This may be your only chance to get to know a stripper. It's knowledge you might need sometime. You could ask her to teach you her moves, that might come in handy. Widen your experience, Turner.

Ollie wrote about school:

Hey Con: Things are pretty good. Some kid in my dorm set fire to his room at 2:00 in the morning. I don't know how he did it, there are a lot of rumors going around, all related to drugs, big surprise. Anyway the fire was a real scene, firemen in hats and boots dragging big hoses up and down the halls. We all had to go out in our underwear and stand on the lawn. We stood under Sean's window and yelled, Jump! Jump! Of course he wasn't still up there, he was down on the lawn with us. Nothing was damaged, it was just a fire in the sink, it turned out, but he;s in trouble. That's all for today, when you coming up? Yah, Ollie.

Conrad wrote him back:

Watched football all weekend, did you see the Cowboys' game? They put the wrong guy in at the half, I can tell you that. About the fire, you college kids are really something. I may have to warn you about rowdiness. NYC is quiet by comparison though someone drove a taxi into one of the trees outside our building. A lot of honking and yelling and all the dogs on the block began to bark. The cabbie was Russian and he started swearing, or at least it sounded like swearing. No one could tell what he was saying but it sounded pretty ferocious. When the policemen showed up they yelled at each other in two languages. You couldn't tell who was winning until the policeman pulled out cuffs and then the Russian shut up. School here is going well. Yah, C.