By Jove (8 page)

“Not so fast, Theo,” the professor cautioned.

“What?” Both Theo and Grant stared at him. Then Grant laughed.

“It isn’t,” he said, shaking his head. “It can’t be.”

“It is, my friends. Your students tied one another. I couldn’t quite believe it myself, but I did the math twice. You make a fine teaching team.”

Theo laughed as well. “And I was looking forward to your taking me to the University Club, too,” she said to Grant.

“You think I wasn’t looking forward to the same thing?” he demanded.

“Wait, wait!” Laughing, Dr. Waterman held up one hand. “In view of your excellent work with the first-year Latin students—and to thank you for giving me a year off from them—I would like for both of you to be my guests at dinner on Saturday at the club. Will honor be satisfied?”

“Well—” Grant began, looking sideways at her.

She reached a foot out and stepped lightly on his toes. “We’d be delighted, Dr. Waterman. Thank you very much.”

In the hallway Grant still chuckled and shook his head. She pulled him toward the end of the hall, her amusement gone. Dr. Waterman’s invitation to dinner was very nice, but she hadn’t really thought until now about how much she had looked forward to an excuse for a potentially romantic evening alone with Grant. Any time alone with him, come to think of it, where the only interruptions would be by impersonal waitstaff.

Their few quiet moments alone together over the last weeks had always been spoiled by the arrival of someone wanting to chat, generally someone like Dr. Herman or Dr. Forge-Smythe who couldn’t be given a polite brush-off, and it was getting on her nerves. But she didn’t want to invite him to her dreary room in Graves, which was as romantic as a newsstand. And he hadn’t invited her to his apartment off-campus, despite her hopeful hints.

“C’mon, comedian,” she said, smiling unwillingly at his hilarity.

“Why, Theo. Don’t you think it’s funny?” They started down the stairs.

“Yes, but—”

“But what?”

“But this.” At the stairwell landing she pulled him into a corner, slipped her arms around him and pulled his face down to hers.

His hands moved to her waist, and he made a small sound in his throat as their lips met. Ah, finally—

With a jerk of his head, Grant suddenly broke the kiss and turned his face away.

She nearly cried out in disappointment. “Grant,” she said in a small voice.

“I’m sorry, Theo,” he said tonelessly.

A chill ran down her back. “Didn’t you like it? Don’t you want me to kiss you?”

His grip tightened. “Yes, I do! I do but—”

“But what?” She pulled away and looked into his face. All traces of laughter were gone from it. “I’m with you almost every day, and no five minutes of it go by without my wanting to reach out to stroke your hair, or hold your hand, or feel your arms around me.” Her mouth felt dry, and she swallowed.

“I never thought I would be an object of desire,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “My body—I’m damaged goods, remember.”

She pulled him back to face her. “You’re not
just
the object of my desire. Bodies are just tools, another way for me to tell you that I love you.” She stopped and closed her eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that. Not yet.

“You love me?” he whispered incredulously. “Me?”

“No, that bust of Octavian over there. I might have a better chance of getting him to kiss me back,” she retorted, disentangling her arms from him and wrapping them around herself. This wasn’t going at all as she’d planned. “Yes, I love you. I wouldn’t be so desperate for a simple kiss if I didn’t. I’ve spent the last months talking and laughing and working with someone more wonderful than I’d ever dreamed of meeting. How could I not fall in love with you?” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Theo—”

“I thought you were starting to feel it too. Sometimes I see you look at me, and there’s something in your eyes that makes me think—” She broke off. A memory of intense eyes washed through her then, not gray but turquoise blue. She shook her head to clear it. “Maybe I’ve imagined it. Maybe it’s just been wishful thinking on my part.” She edged away from him. Shrieks of laughter from the Great Room below grated on her ears.

“I love you too, Theo. I think.”

That stopped her. “What?”

Grant stood outlined in light from the high stairwell windows. His hands clenched, but his voice was steady. His eyes were steady, too, as he met hers. “I said, I love you. Maybe I should say it to Octavian. His ears might work better.” A faint dimple appeared in one corner of his mouth, and he put his arms around her again. She leaned her head on his shoulder, feeling like she had inhaled a full teaspoon of Dr. Waterman’s fish flakes.

“I do feel those things that you describe. If I stare at you, it’s because I have so many things I long to do and say but don’t know how to. Oh, Theo, if you only knew—”

“Then tell me. You don’t have to be afraid of me.” She reached up to stroke his hair.

A slight laugh shook him. “Courage is not something I generally have a problem with.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not as brilliant as you think I am. I guess I’m not progressing in my humanities studies like I should, even though I have the best teacher I could hope for. I’m trying to be more human, really I am.” His voice reached for flippant but missed.

“Grant, why haven’t you ever been in love? Why don’t you know how to respond, even though you say that you love me?” She touched his face.

“I can’t explain it to you yet. Not in terms that I think you’d understand.”

“Try me. I’m a bright girl.”

“That’s not what I meant. I don’t think I can explain it because I can’t find the words. Be patient, Theo. I hate to keep asking that of you, but I must. Someday I’ll be able to tell you.” He kissed her hand again, then held her away to look at her with a wry smile. “I must be getting a little better, if I was able to tell you that I love you. But wouldn’t it all be easier if we could be like him over there”—he nodded toward the marble bust— “and just live a life of the mind, and
know
that we loved each other?”

She shook her head. “You’re being a Vulcan again. True love is of the mind, yes, when it comes down to it. But we need our bodies and senses as well as our minds to express it. It’s just the way we are.” She pulled him close again, ran her hands up and down his back, then leaned forward and nibbled his earlobe. He shivered and his arms tightened around her.

“See? Didn’t that feel good? Could Octavian over there feel that love, without having flesh? Could words alone do that? Love is physical as well as in the mind. Listen to yourself. Listen to what your body tells you.” She bent and softly kissed his neck.

“Flesh is weak,” he persisted though his eyes had closed in enjoyment. “It can betray us. It can lie.”

“It can also tell the truth. And words can lie and betray as well as flesh can. There are no guarantees. Hoping is human, remember? So is taking chances. There’s no reason to hope if you don’t.” Her lips moved against the skin of his throat as she spoke, and she felt his hands start to move on her.

A crash from below, followed by more shrieks of laughter, startled them apart.

“That didn’t sound good,” Grant said. He let go of her and turned toward the stairs. Theo sighed and followed him.

In the Great Room a swarm of undergrads, some already draped in bedsheet togas, tugged furniture this way and that. Most of the floor space had been emptied for dancing, but a few of the second-year Latin students who had actually been paying attention in class were trying to arrange the room’s couches into something approximating a Roman triclinium, or dining room, for the refreshments. Grant hurried over to them.

“No, no, couches only on three sides of the table,” he said, motioning them toward him. “You’ll just have to make a couple of these if more people want to join in.”

Theo shook her head and smiled as she walked away, but her heart was sore. Just when she and Grant had been getting somewhere, they were interrupted once more. Would she ever have more than a few minutes alone—really alone—with him? It was beginning to feel like some vast conspiracy of the gods against her.

A pair of toga-ed people ran by her, giggling madly, and then another. The second pair, a plump girl with curly brown hair and a man wrapped in a SpongeBob Squarepants bedsheet, nearly collided with her.

“Whoa!” the man said. He stopped and peered at her uncertainly. “Why, hello there, Theo. Coming to join us tonight?”

It was Marlowe Vine. He had occasionally joined her and Grant for drinks in the college pub and had only been asked to leave twice by the manager for excessive rowdiness. But despite his copious drinking Theo couldn’t help liking him; he was unfailingly cheerful and treated her with jovial courtesy. “Nice toga, Marlowe.”

“Isn’t it? Allie here let me borrow it. It belongs to her little brother, but he manfully gave it up for the weekend. I may need to get my own, though. I think it makes quite a fashion statement.” He swayed and caught himself on the girl’s shoulder. She giggled.

“You could say that.”

Marlowe leaned closer. “You don’t look very happy, you know. Where’s Grant?”

Was she that obvious? But no. It was true she and Grant were frequently together, what with the teaching. She lifted her chin and nodded back toward the couches. “Over there, helping with the banquet room.”

“Is that what they’re doing? Excellent! A symposium! Something else to look forward to tonight, eh?” He squeezed the girl’s arm and she giggled again.

“But I thought this was an undergraduate party,” Theo said. “You know, no alcohol?”

“It is, mostly. And I’m a chaperone, sort of. But we don’t need wine to be joyous, do we? Not much, anyway. Run along and make sure they’re doing it right over there, love.” He gave the girl a gentle push toward Grant and the others, and turned back to Theo.

“Now, why so sad? I hate seeing sad people around. It’s so—saddening.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I’ll be all right. I don’t know how you got the idea I’m down.”

“Ah, I always know these things. Ask Grant. Life’s not meant for sadness. Tell you what, though. It’s time you and he came to one of the proper symposia. No room for long faces there. I’m sure Julian will be happy to invite you to November’s. In fact, I’m sure he was planning to.”

“Thanks, Marlowe. That sounds like fun.”

“Mean that when you say it, sweetheart,” he said in a bad Bogart voice.

“Mean what?” Grant had come to stand with them.

“Ho there, friend Grant. I was just telling Theo here that it was time you two made it to a symposium. Get some pink in her cheeks and some starch out of your shirt. I livened things up a little for you up in New Hampshire, didn’t I? And to think you’d never tried cow-tipping.” He shook his head incredulously. “By the way, how’s our beauteous Olivia? Has she forgiven me yet? Now there’s someone who needs a few more symposia under her belt. Far too solemn for such a handsome girl, don’t you think? Then again, she always was too serious. You need to work on her more, Grant.”

Theo pressed her lips together and looked down at her feet. She’d forgotten that Marlowe had spent a year at Grant’s institute and knew all his colleagues and friends up there. Like this beauteous Olivia. Julian had asked Grant about an Olivia as well, hadn’t he? A small green snake hissed ‘very interessssting’ in her mind’s ear.

“Olivia’s fine. I spoke with her a few days ago.” From the corner of her eye she saw Grant glance at her as he spoke, but she would not look up from the floor.

“Fabulous. Send her my love, won’t you? Tell her she has to come down for a visit here. It’ll be like the old times, eh?” Marlowe clapped Grant on the back, then made a grab for his sheet as it started to slide. “Whoops. I say, Theo, what’s so fascinating about that floor?”

She was still staring down at her feet, but now from interest rather than from pique. “It’s the bird I saw at the department dinner. I’ve been looking for it ever since then, but I guess there was furniture over it. Look.” She took their arms and pulled the two men back a few steps.

There indeed was the sinister bird with its glinting eye, whether an eagle or a vulture she couldn’t say, stretched in its exultant dive toward—toward—she stepped back further.

Yes, there it was, at her feet: a naked man, bound hand and foot to a stained rock on the craggy side of a mountain, the granite beneath him worn smooth by his body’s agonized thrashing. A long, jagged wound gaped across his torso, bleeding freely. It was his blood that had stained the rock below him. Looking more closely, she could see that the bird’s beak was stained rusty red as well, and a fragment of purple flesh was still caught in it. It was mesmerizing and horrible.

“It’s Prometheus. Prometheus and the vulture. I should have remembered,” she said softly, staring down at it.

“Why, so it is. Olivia wrote an interesting little monograph on Prometheus, didn’t she, Grant?” Marlowe came around to peer down at the floor next to her. “You said you’d preferred Aeschylus’s handling—”

A sudden movement silenced Marlowe and made her look up. Without a word, Grant turned on his heels and strode out the door.

Chapter Six

Some days later Theo was walking down the hall after Dr. Herman’s seminar when she saw Julian’s secretary stride toward her. She hastily stepped to one side and tentatively said, “Hello, Ms. Cadwallader.”

To her surprise, the woman stopped in front of her. “Here,” she said shortly, and handed Theo a small scroll of thick cream-colored paper, tied with a gold ribbon.

“Thank you,” Theo said, but June was already stalking back down the hallway to her office. When she got to it, she slammed the door behind her.

“You have a nice day too,” Theo said under her breath, and let her backpack slide to the ground as she untied the scroll. Unrolling it, she read:

Tua praesentia

Petitur

Ad Symposium Departmenti

Idibus Novembris

Hora octava post meridiem

Vestis idonea requiritur