An Arrow's Flight

From chapter 7, Pyrrhus finds an unexpected guest in his bedroom

Pyrrhus was so relieved to be home, in such a hurry for his own bed, that he let the driver keep the change from a ten. He ran upstairs, foolishly exacerbating the headache, and queasily let himself in.

Leucon was awake, sitting in the living room. He jumped up as Pyrrhus came in. "Hey," Pyrrhus said. No sudden moves please. "It's four in the morning. Don't you have work tomorrow."

"Yeah, but -- keep your voice down. Listen, there's this guy in your room."

"What?"

"I mean, I told him you weren't here and I didn't know when you'd be back and you'd call him or something, but he just wouldn't go away."

"Why did you even let him in?"

"I don't know. He said it was important, and...I don't know, he seemed important."

"What's he look like?"

"Old guy."

"Shit. Since when are they following me home?" He crept over to his bedroom door, half afraid that whatever old fart had had the nerve to barge into his apartment wouldn't have stopped short of jumping in his bed.

No, the visitor was standing up, facing the doorway. It was the strange guy from earlier in the evening, the one Pyrrhus hadn't been able to place, who had looked up with an interest untinged with desire. He had evidently been sitting on the bed; he had just clambered up on hearing Pyrrhus arrive, and was leaning rather heavily on an oak walking stick with a brass handle in the form of a bird's head.

"Neoptolemus," he said.

Of course there were people in town who knew Pyrrhus's real name. Leucon had seen it on the lease, and his various employers, because they had to verify his age. Still, it wasn't something he just gave out. The stranger wasn't, as he had thought, some half-remembered trick. The man had something to do with home.

Or no: he had got the name from Archias, as he evidently got the address. Pyrrhus was pissed: Archias would hear about this. Except the man didn't say "Neoptolemus" like a name he had just learned.

Now Pyrrhus could ask outright the question that had seemed too rude in the bar. "Do I know you?"

"Perhaps not. But you are unmistakable: the very image of your father, when he was young." He got a distant look. "You should have seen him, running with the wild horses." The little flick of his tongue that accompanied this reminiscence smacked less of prurience than of connoisseurship, as if he were a man who admired but never tasted.

"You know my father," Pyrrhus said.

"I even saw you once. Before the war. I am Phoenix, don't you remember me? Your father's friend? Well, you were tiny, maybe you don't."

"You're right, I don't." Pyrrhus had always hated being told about things that happened when he was tiny -- the bulk of his mother's conversation, as she wasn't very pleased with his nontiny being. Perhaps some people are fascinated with such stories, like to hear about the self they don't remember just as we might like to hear about our predecessor selves in the Golden or Silver Age. For Pyrrhus, though, it was bad enough that people should know anything at all about him; he was unnerved at the idea that they might know things that he didn't. (Even though, that very evening, one customer at the Escapade had committed to memory the pattern of hairs around Pyrrhus's anus, which Pyrrhus had never beheld.)

Pyrrhus sat on the edge of the bed, in the little concavity Phoenix must just have vacated. Pyrrhus knew this was rude, but his headache had returned with new vivacity, and they couldn't both sit down. He left Phoenix standing before him, leaning on the walking stick. Phoenix didn't seem annoyed or uncomfortable, just stood patiently. Pyrrhus realized he was some kind of servant, no matter how nicely he dressed.

"I'm sorry," Pyrrhus said. "I just can't remember. Shit, I hardly remember Dad. How's he doing, killing a lot of Trojans?"

Phoenix was quiet for a second, as if trying to remember just how Dad was doing. Then he said, "He's dead." With so little drama that it didn't sink in right away. Even when it did, Pyrrhus thought it wasn't true. Not that Phoenix was lying, just that he was inexplicably mistaken, as if he had said it was raining when it was sunny out. Pyrrhus had not realized how much a part of the weather of his life his father had been, through his lifelong absence: what Phoenix was saying was as implausible and -- surprisingly -- unwelcome as a sudden shower from a cloudless sky.

"He can't be dead," Pyrrhus said, as if this were something you could reason about. Then he remembered it was: "He can't be. My mother said there was this spell or something. Nobody could kill him."

"There was a loophole."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be facetious. But there was. He was shot in the foot and -- well, maybe it was poisoned, or maybe he was just astonished -- but his heart stopped. You didn't know? It was in all the papers, on the news..."

"I don't keep up real well."

After a minute, Phoenix said, "Would you like to be alone?" For no reason: Pyrrhus wasn't even feigning grief. On the contrary, the picture was almost comical: the wayward arrow, his father outraged by the impertinence, keeling over.

"No, I..." It was going to be a long talk; he couldn't just leave Phoenix standing there. "Why don't we go into the living room?"

Leucon was still there -- days past his bedtime, he had to have been eavesdropping. Leucon started to get up, and Pyrrhus shook his head, no, stick around. As if he and Leucon, the present, could outnumber Pyrrhus's resurgent past, two to one.

"When did this happen?" Pyrrhus said.

"About a year ago."

"A year? You wait all that time, and then you come tell me?"

"I wasn't...sure where you were. I only just located your mother last week. I gather you haven't been in touch."

"You've spoken to her."

"A week ago. We had luncheon."

"How's she doing?"

"Surprisingly well. She seems to be entirely recovered -- not altogether flattering to your father."

"She didn't...she kind of knew she wasn't going to see him again. I guess she was sort of a widow already the day he sailed away." And didn't give a damn, was grateful to be released from the bungalow prison and restored to the palace. Almost as grateful as Pyrrhus was.

"I suppose so. Anyway, she told us where to find you."

"She knew where I was?"

"She knew you'd taken the ferry here. And once I'd got here: well, you weren't difficult to track. I had only to show your picture once or twice, and --"

Leucon said, "Yeah, people have seen a lot of him."

Phoenix smiled slightly. "A great deal, yes."

Pyrrhus interrupted this annoying burst of camaraderie. "Well, so -- what? You just came to tell me this news?"

"I thought it would be of more than passing interest."

"I -- " Pyrrhus knew he must seem like a monster; maybe he was, he felt so little about the news. Not grieving but tired. "Of course, but all this time...you haven't spent a year looking for me."

"No, I"ve been at the front, rather uselessly. Quite at loose ends, since your father died. It was only lately that I realized I ... I felt that I could be of service to you."

"What?"

"I don't mean that there is any particular service I can render. Only that I belong with you. You understand, I was with your father so long, and with his father, Peleus, before that, you Peleids are more or less my life's work."

Pyrrhus almost laughed in his face. "You mean you're out of a job?"

"Essentially."

"Well, I hate to break this family tradition, but -- look around, you can see I'm not exactly loaded. I'm not ready to take on a ... valet, or whatever you are."

"Counselor," Phoenix said, not indignant, just getting it straight.

"I don't need a counselor." Unless maybe he had a good headache remedy.

"Evidently not," Phoenix said. "You're making such a splendid life on your own."

Pyrrhus said, as automatically as you answer Fine to How-are-you : "It's my life." Even as he said it, he felt it wasn't so. This wasn't his life. It was all temporary, a detour. Obviously this couldn't be his life; any fool could see where such a life would end. He added, lamely, "At least I'm doing it on my own."

"Indeed. Your father would be so proud."

"Like he knew how to live."

"He was a great man."

"Terrific, so he's dead. No one ever dies from sex."

"I suppose not." Phoenix sat back. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Please don't," Leucon said.

Phoenix looked over at Pyrrhus as if he would overrule Leucon. He didn't.
"Very well," Phoenix said. He stared at the bird's head on his walking stick.

After a while, Leucon said, "So: you've been with the family a long time." Pyrrhus glared -- here he wanted the guy out of there so he could take his headache to bed, and Leucon was making chitchat. Leucon ignored him.

"Since I was very young. Peleus, you might say, adopted me."

"Peleus?"

"Neoptolemus's paternal grandfather."

Leucon looked over at Pyrrhus, grinning at hearing the name that he had only seen once, one the lease. No, twice: on the late rent notice, too. He turned back to Phoenix. "What, he just picked you up somewhere?"

"It's late, it's rather a long story."

"No, go ahead."

"Yeah, tell him your story," Pyrrhus said. "I'm going to bed."

Phoenix said, "I hadn't finished --"

"I don't have any business with you. I'm going to bed."

An Arrow's Flight

From chapter 7, Pyrrhus finds an unexpected guest in his bedroom

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