ANTHONEY DIMOS - AVE MARIA

Dimos, a graduate of the University of Chicago, lives in Europe and is crafting a series of novels based on the excerpt published in the Scarlet Leaf Review.

​The Trinity
 
Tome I
 
 
Ave Maria

​PROLOGUE

​Hermes, Present day
            As the church bells of the blue-domed St. Paul’s church echoed at dawn throughout the remote village of Panaghia Kalou in Santorini, Hermes watched Ines, a 19-year old French philosophy student at the Sorbonne in Greece for the summer, sleep nude on her stomach in his bed. The evening before they had quarreled in his shabby cave house over his unwillingness to paint a portrait of her, even though he was in love with her. “You tell me you love me, but you can’t paint me! But, you can paint her instead with no problem?!” said Ines, pointing to an unfinished portrait of Kendall Jenner Hermes had been commissioned to create.
            “Don’t be that way, cheri,” said Hermes. “You know it’s not like that.”
            “Do you love her?! Dîtes-moi!”
            Hermes made no response, whereby Ines recoiled, saying, “You do love her, don’t you?!”
            Upon returning from Athens, where he visited an exhibition of George Condo at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Hermes had met Kendall Jenner in the late spring at the cafe of a luxury hotel on the island where he was working on some sketches of a rendering of The Last Supper he was planning. She was on the island for a vacation sitting alone at the cafe sipping a freshly squeezed orange juice when Hermes took a seat close to her. Though he recognized her instantly, he remained aloof as she watched him draw. Eventually, however, he turned to make eye contact with her and said, “How’s your juice?”
            “I want you to paint me,” said Kendall.
            “And, if I refuse?” said Hermes.
            “Would you marry me instead?”
            “Only if Justin Bieber sings at our wedding.”
            “I’ll see what I can do,” she said giggling.
            Hermes had been cultivating a work, tentatively titled Kendall, drawing on the motifs of Andy Warhol’s Orange Prince and Liz; Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus; and Klimt’s Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen Echt. In the background of her image, he included a scattering of dolphins, an idea he took from Demaretion coins he had seen first used in Siracusa in the 5th Century B.C as well as elegant eyes echoing those seen on Athenian triremes from the Golden Age of the city-state.
            Taking sips of strong Turkish coffee, while listening to a piano sonata by Mozart playing on a Beats subwoofer, Hermes gazed both at Ines and the portrait of Kendall, reflecting on the decades of restless travel and exploration that had brought him to the Cyclades, where, nourished by the stillness and serenity of Greece, he could feed at the cradle of antiquity and Christianity, while worshiping the god Eros.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Part I

Book 1


Hermes - Early 2010s
i
            Hermes Agostino Konstantinos Echevarria peeked from behind his copy of The Illiad to exchange a smoldering glance with the stewardess Dimitra during his flight from Paris to Athens.  He had been coyly resisting her, trying to focus his energies on reimagining Achilles vanquishing Hector at Troy, as he listened on repeat to a live performance of “Runaway” by Kanye West in Los Angeles on his iPhone.  When she served him a small bottle of chilled white whine from the Peloponnese, she caught his eyes gazing at her lush cleavage, telling him with a devilish grin, “not even on your best day.” 
            To which he responded, “Well, you are blessed.” 
            “Enjoy your book,” she said snapping her head away from him feigning offense.
            Hermes was fleeing the United States in exile after losing more than a billion dollars in the hedge fund he had set-up to please his father’s wishes that he go into the investment business.  He had been quite successful at conceiving market strategies prior to that summer, attracting capital from eager fund managers seeking to profit from his vision.  Yet, overtime, his longing for painting betrayed his capacity to fully weigh his investment decisions. 
            His father Alcibiades had sensed that Hermes intentionally sabotaged the fund to spite him and set himself free to pursue his ambition of becoming a master painter.  Hermes was uncertain himself, though, of the motives that had compelled him to not trust his intuition and make such reckless investments against the U.S. municipal and government bond markets.  He had read recently a biography of Gaugin and wondered if Greece would become his Tahiti, though he had not completely committed to the idea he could become an artist of that caliber. 
            For Hermes, it was not the first time he had come to Greece in exile.  Ten years earlier,  just after graduating from the University of Chicago, where, in between going to the United Center regularly to sit court side and watch Michael Jordan lead the Chicago Bulls to multiple NBA titles, he, inspired by the spirit of Allan Bloom, cultivated his imagination for the good life through the Great Books of the Western Cannon, classical music and art history.  At that time, Hermes, viewing it as a graduation present to himself, wittingly seduced his father’s young fiancé Dasha to avenge his mother Diana, an international beauty queen from the mountains of Puerto Rico, who had been betrayed countless times by her husband’s philandering.  Following his son’s vengeful act then, Alcibiades had excommunicated him, vowing to disinherit him from the family’s fortune if he could break the legal trust established by his father Jorge, the family’s patriarch.       
            Born on his family’s Tudor-inspired estate Eleutheria on the prairies of Indiana equidistant between South Bend and Chicago just south of Lake Michigan, Hermes carried with him two canvases: one a portrait of a former paramour Carolina, entitled “El Beso”.  The other was a portrait of his cousin Denise in Puerto Rico, called “Preciosa”, who he had wanted to marry, when he was 17 years old, before Alcibiades intervened to thwart the union.  He had completed two other paintings a decade earlier that he subsequently had burned.  Over 15 years, he had filled sketchbooks with drawings and thoughts on artists, history, philosophers, novelists, inventors and music, and the human experience.
            Nevertheless, during his stay in Paris, Hermes spent most of time at the Louvre sketching marbles from Greece and Rome and admiring the desire and peril emanating from the ceiling Cy Twombly had painted in the Bronze room.  He visited as well a Twombly retrospective at the Pompidou Centre studying particularly the artist’s “Nine Discourses on Commodus” and “Fifty Days at Iliam” - all of which reignited in his mind the salacity, blood, and longing of ancient Mediterranean landscapes. In the evening, he would stand in front of the Louvre gazing at the illuminated palace basking in its splendor.    
ii
            As the captain ordered the crew and passengers to prepare for landing, Hermes glanced out the window of the plane admiring the unmistakable light of Greece glistening off the Aegean Sea.  He began to pray the handmade wooden rosary he kept with him from Puerto Rico. He always prayed the rosary for strength and God’s grace when he surrendered himself to moments of uncertainty. Pope John Paul II had blessed it for him personally while visiting the island, where Hermes was serving previously as a Catholic priest years earlier near his mother Diana’s mountain village of Lares. At that time, Hermes had the ambition of becoming a cardinal in the curio in Rome like Bessarion.  
            Dimitra came by one last time to take his empty can of Coca-Cola and dropped a folded piece of paper at his feet, saying: “This fell out of your pocket.” 
            “Indeed, I must have forgotten,” said Hermes.  “Thank you.”
            Dimitra said nothing turning away from him with calculated indifference.
            He picked up the piece of paper which read:
            “Don’t even think about calling me - 567.3321 X”
            Hermes chuckled and closed his eyes content he was not dreaming.
iii
            Hermes spent the first couple of weeks in Greece checked into a luxurious hotel along the Saronic Gulf in Vouliagmeni.  He rose early every morning around seven and prayed the rosary on his knees.  For breakfast, he would eat fresh yoghurt with honey and walnuts.  From there, he would spend the day at the beach, reading, swimming and walking. 
            The warmth of the sun, the fresh air and sensuous salt water of the sea reenergized him, removing the toxicity of the past.  He read several hours per day.  The wisdom in Marcus Aurellius’s Meditations, the fragility and nuance of Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and the sensuality of Byron’s “Childe Harold Pilgrimage" began to reinvigorate his artistic sensibility.
            Though he was tempted to call Dimitra, he had decided to forsake women and alcohol.  Hermes would spend time looking at the canvases of the two portraits he had completed satisfied with his effort but still believing they were incomplete.  He struggled to accept the fact that God only seemed to listen to him when he painted.  Each evening, as the sunset marked the end of the day, drenching the sky in a luminous fuchsia, he gazed into the distance transfixed by its fleeting radiance.
iv
            After a few weeks in Greece, Hermes went to a double feature of Woody Allen at an outdoor cinema along the coast.  The first feature was Blue Jasmine starring Cate Blanchett and the second was Match Point with Scarlett Johansson.  During the first screening, Hermes sat covered in a blanket he had smuggled out from the hotel while munching on freshly salted popcorn washed down by a Coca-Cola. At times his eyes would wander from the screen, gazing up at the glistening stars dotting the ink blue sky. He recalled the first time he saw a Woody Allen picture with his mother at a festival in San Sebastian, Spain. 
            Following the conclusion of the first film, he stepped outside to get some fresh air.  He sipped his can of Coca-Cola through a straw watching taxis pass along the main boulevard sporadically.  The night air was balmy.  On one hand, he felt completely relaxed and cleansed, yet a longing for the past remained.  Lush memories as well as haunting pain from his time in Athens a decade earlier circled his mind.  Though he desired not to resist it, he sought some sort of resolution that was proving elusive.
            Hermes returned to the theater and took a seat in the middle of the theater on the aisle.  As the lights dimmed and Match Point began, a girl walked by seeking a seat.  The irony was that the theater was empty except for Hermes and an elderly couple seated in the back row.  She turned to her left and then to her right, when their eyes met.  She looked away for a moment and then proceeded down the row to take a seat directly next to Hermes. 
            Hermes grinned slightly, instinctually knowing what was about to transpire.  For the first half of the movie, the two of them watched the film intently as if it were the first time they had seen it, even though both of them had seen the picture several times already.  At the intermission, the girl pretended to make a call on her mobile phone, while Hermes got up to buy a bottle of water to create a seductive distance for her to close.
            He returned to his seat just as the second half of the movie began.  He took a sip of his water and turned to look at the object of his affection.  She had long blonde hair with natural honey colored skin, accentuated by the summer sun.  She delighted in receiving his gaze, but feigned obliviousness to his presence, keeping her eyes focussed intently on the screen ahead of her.  Throughout the remaining half of the picture they exchanged glances, each ignoring the existence of the other’s interest, signaling their mutual desire. 
            Upon the completion of the film, the girl shuffled in her seat and rummaged in her purse, delaying her exit as inconspicuously as possible, hoping Hermes would make a move.  She stood and looked back in his direction while ardently resisting eye contact with him.  Hermes stood as well pretending to check his khakis for the key card to his hotel room.  Just as she turned to walk away for good, Hermes said, “I love your purse.”
            She grinned elated that he had begun the chase but made sure he did not see it.  She turned and said, fighting back any sign of pleasure at his overture, “Why, thank you.”
            “What did you think of the movie?” Hermes said with a knowing smile.
             “I found it comical.  I’ve seen it a million times before.”
            “What a coincidence - me, too.”      
            She said nothing to acknowledge him, turning to walk out.  He let her walk away to put some distance between them. He followed her slowly from behind eventually catching up to her on the street just as her valet opened the back passenger seat door to an antique German Phantom from the 1930s.  “Nice car,” said Hermes.
            “Are you following me?” she said turning toward him.
            Hermes surveyed the car for a moment and then returned his attention to her. “What’s your number?”
            “My number? What number?”
            “Your phone number.”
            “Why would I give you my phone number?”
            “I like you.”
            “Oh, you like me now.”
            “I’m Hermes.”
            “Raffaella.”
            “Na eisai kala.”
            “Yes, I won’t give you my number, but you can come to my house in the city next weekend for dinner.”
            “Sounds appetizing.”
            “9:00 p.m. sharp. And, don’t be late. I hate when people are late.”
            “It’s a date.”
            She wrote her address on his hand and kissed him gently on the lips before entering the car.  The chauffeur closed the door behind her and tipped his cap to Hermes before boarding the vehicle and driving off.
            His emotions fluttering, Hermes smiled and walked toward his hotel.  The balmy air of the fleeting summer night began to rekindle his spirit and zeal for the unexpected.
v
            Hermes moved into the most austere room at the Grand Hotel in Syntagma Square he could find, as summer had finally given way to the autumn.  He negotiated a long-term rate until he could find a more suitable accommodation.  His father Alcibiades had told him of his experience living in a simple hotel room at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and thought the lifestyle might suit him temporarily. 
            He spent his days wandering the Plaka; the Zappeion Gardens; and the Benaki museum of Islamic Art, where he viewed a special exhibition of works, inspired by the writings of Herodotus, collected from ancient Sumeria, Babylon, Arabia, Libya, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Achaemenid Empire. He lunched alone at taverna, reading foreign newspapers, scribbling notes in his sketchbook related to painting and his thoughts.  At the Acropolis Museum, he spent hours studying the Aphrodite with ostensible tears flowing from her eyes and paging through books on 5th century Greek antiquities and Minoan civilization, which inspired longing for Crete.  In the evenings, he would browse a fine antique shop abounding with porcelain Chinese and Ottoman ceramics and sit outside at cafes in Kolonaki Square sipping beer while staring at the harrowing moon.  He would cap each late night at the Grand’s bar sipping cognac in between a puffs of a Cohiba cigar while entranced at the tapestry of Alexander. 
            Hermes took the Metro one late morning down to Piraeus the port city. The exterior of the train was covered completely in graffiti. During the trip, he rested his against the window of an empty car watching the gritty neighborhoods of the metropolis pass with graffiti on buildings expressing intransigence.  He remembered his grandfather Jorge’s tales of Athens and Piraeus and felt a sense of longing. Upon disembarking from the train inside the Piraeus terminal, the station felt eerie, haunted by the spirits and conflicts of the past.  An empty train rested on the other side of the tracks positioned to return to Athens.  It was the middle of the day, and the station was largely empty.  Hermes walked slowly looking up at the ceiling and the ornate 19th century design.
            Once outside of the station, Hermes began to wonder along the old streets of the city.  The ambience felt something of the past - of a lost time or moment.  There were individual shops dedicated to home goods, hardware supplies, books as well as small markets.  He tried to imagine his grandfather Jorge wandering and navigating the streets and culture as an emigree from the countryside - what he felt, wanted, feared and hoped.  He considered the obstacles he must have had to overcome to build his life - people holding him back, betraying him, while remaining determined to succeed on his own terms.
            Hermes made his way to the port area and found a cafe.  He sat outside sipping a cappuccino and observing the life along the docks.  A couple next to him fought over a perceived infidelity, while a young family, seated adjacent, shared an ice cream dish.  Hermes took deep breaths of the maritime air and gazed deeply at the horizon line of the sea in the distance searching for his humanity.   

 
Jorge - Early 20th Century
vi
            Jorge Konstantinos felt his mother Ismene’s hand go cold, as he knelt beside her death bed.  “Mama!” said Jorge in desperation. “Mama, no!”  Jorge rose from his knees desperately shaking his mother’s unresponsive body.  “No, mama!” he said, beginning to weep.  He tried to shake her back to life again but to no avail.  Jorge then collapsed on her bosom holding his mother’s body weeping in sorrow.
            When his mother had become stricken with typhoid six months earlier, Jorge, 9 years old at the time, spent every free moment he could at her bedside praying to God to save her, pleading with the Almighty to take him instead of her.  Jorge would read her stories from the Bible after she had slipped into a coma.  He knew how much solace she found in the wisdom of King Solomon, the redemption of King David and the stories of the Archangels Gabriel and Michael. 
            The night his mother passed, Jorge told no one.  Instead, he slept in his mother’s bed holding her cold corpse until dawn when he informed his uncle Theodoros that she was dead.  After his mother’s funeral, Jorge slept in Ismene’s bed alone for almost a year until he moved into the home of his uncle and his two aunts, who would raise him over the following years.
            Four years later, Jorge never looked back at the village of Karitaina as he walked down the slope of the mountain at age 13 to the main road that would take him to the Peloponnesian city of Sparta.  The 20th century had begun, and he had lost already both of his parents and had no siblings.  It would be nearly 30 years until his son Alcibiades would be born and more than 60 years until his grandson Hermes would breathe life.
            Jorge had told no one of his plans to leave Karitaina only leaving a note to his uncle Theodoros, an Orthodox priest, in his coffee kettle reading: “I’m now a man, theo mou.”  It was the middle of spring, so weather conditions were on his side. He carried with him only a small battered rucksack with some bread and salty kefalotyri cheese and a tattered copy of a Greek translation of the Bible his uncle Theodoros had completed.  He took an empty diary from his uncle’s study as well to record his thoughts, though it would be some time before he wrote home. 
vii
            Born Giorgos Dimitrios Konstantinos Dimopoulos in a small stone-wrought home, Jorge had spent his early life in the rugged Arcadian mountains as a sheep herder.  The nickname “Jorge” came about from his time living and working on a coffee plantation in the mountains of Puerto Rico decades later, which he liked and kept upon moving to the United States. 
            As a boy, Jorge rose every day at five in the morning to help his mother’s brother Theodoros prepare the morning vespers.  Theodoros was born in a remote village near the lost Byzantine capital of Mystras; had lived for some years in Istanbul as a youth, where his father oversaw a significant tobacco interest to Russia; and for a time had studied with the monks at Mt. Athos.  His uncle had instilled in him a sense of independence passing on to him valiant tales of how his ancestors in Karitaina were among the first Greeks to rise up and fight for independence from the Ottoman Turks in the early 19th century. 
            In fact, Theodoros lost his father to a mob in Constantinople when the Greek War of Independence began in 1821. Not only did he watch his father’s macabre death at the hand of the horde in the City, but attended the executions of his older brother Evangelos, his uncle Stamatis, and cousin Markos. Only he; his mother; and his sister Ismene, Jorge’s mother, survived the violence, fleeing across the Black Sea to Odessa where Tsar Alexander I provided sanctuary.      
            Each morning before arriving at the exquisite Byzantine church abounding with gold mosaics depicting Christ and the apostles, Jorge visited the same cliff top and gazed at the 13th century Venetian castle towering over the village overlooking majestic valleys, rivers, and surrounding mountains.  Jorge, since the age of six, performed his duties as an altar boy with zeal and dedication.  He reveled in his uncle performing “Kyrie Eleison”. After each morning service, he would tend to the flock driving them along the rugged mountains of Arcadia.  For lunch, he would eat half a tomato with some fresh kefalotyri cheese and a hunk of rustic bread he kept in his coat pocket.
            In the afternoons, Theodoros, who had read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew at Cambridge, before devoting himself to the cloth and returning to Karitaina to fulfill his bucolic vision of the Arcadian ideal, would tutor Jorge in ancient Greek thought and literature as well as scripture from the New Testament in the original Greek, teaching him to read and write.  While Theodoros worked on a biography of Plethon he had been researching and writing for years, enthralled by the Byzantine thinker’s exploration of Kabbalism with the Ottoman Jew Elisaeus; Aristotle; Indian Brahminism and the mysticism of Mithra and Zoroastrianism, he would make Jorge read aloud the entire works of Thucydides, Herodotus, Homer as well as Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians and Thessalonians, among others.  Jorge found the life of Alcibiades rendered by Plutarch and Thucydides the most fascinating, and thus decades later named his son after the Athenian general.  
            At an early age, Jorge became a keen observer of nature as well. Heeding the lessons of his uncle on how understanding nature helped Leonardo da Vinci become a great mind, Jorge always believed that this education helped him succeed in life.  He never became overly analytical about a business decision or people, instead he understood the seasons and how winter ushers in the spring.  Ultimately, Jorge came to develop and trust his intuition and instincts above all to carry him through countless trials and moments of tumult.    
viii     
            An only child, Jorge’s father Phillip left him and his mother at the age of four.  Phillip moved to the England to pursue a fortune in London, but would never return.  He sent some money home at first to help support his wife and son, but eventually the resources and communication ceased.  His father, eventually failing his quest for wealth in the British capital, joined the merchant marines and sailed the world settling for a while in Hong Kong before becoming lost at sea in a shipwreck near Papa New Guinea.               
            Nevertheless, Jorge’s mother Ismene never knew the fate of her husband.  She would tease her son at first about his father,  "Where is he? Maybe he has a new family?”  Jorge would smile with an innate sense of humor, but could feel his mother’s despair, and thus would curse bitterly his absent father.  At the same time, he frankly could not really remember Phillip.  Overtime, he came to see his uncle Theodoros as his father trusting him implicitly.
ix
            Odyssean journeys, though, were something that Jorge’s paternal bloodline had embraced over generations.  His grandfather Achilles, in his late teens, immigrated to Virginia in the United States to work for a Greek from Spetses who had become a tycoon in the tobacco trade in the 19th century.  During his time in the United States, Achilles marveled at the success of business tycoons at the time such as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie.  At night, he would read the words of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville to help improve his English. 
            Yet, after years in Virginia and traveling some in the emerging nation in cities like Chicago and New York, Achilles felt nostalgic for Arcadia, and thus returned to the Peloponnese.  There he married a local village girl named Anna and gave birth to a son Phillip, Jorge’s father and two daughters Olympia and Clytemnestra.  After several years, though, Achilles became restless in Karitaina and desired to acquire a better life for his family.  He had met a man in Chicago whose family in Leros had accumulated great wealth from wheat and cotton interests in Alexandria, Egypt, and had encouraged Achilles to contact him if he ever decided to venture south across the Mediterranean.                
            Achilles left his family promising his wife and children that once he found work in Alexandria, he would send for them to join him there.  However, after a year in Egypt, he met and fell in love with a French woman named Pauline, whose ancestors had served with Napoleon during his campaigns in Egypt and Israel as well as later had helped build the Suez Canal.  At first, Achilles felt torn between the devotion and loyalty he had for his family in Greece and the passion he felt for Pauline.  Yet, as his love for Pauline blossomed, Arcadia and his family there began to fade from his mind.  For Achilles, they became one of the mirages he would see with Pauline when they spent time traveling in the Aswan desert.      
            Nevertheless, when Phillip turned 15 years old, he traveled to Alexandria to find and confront his father Achilles about why he abandoned the family.  Achilles, surprised at first that his son tracked him down, understood his sorrow.  He apologized and invited him to stay with his new family encouraging him to bond with his step-brother and step-sister that he had had with his new wife Pauline.  Phillip accepted the invitation concealing his rage at first, given the effort Pauline made in welcoming him and that of his step-siblings who accepted him great sincerity and fondness.
            Within a few weeks of his arrival, Phillip joined them on a cruise down the Nile River to Thebes. During the trip, Pauline, an Egyptologist inspired by visits with her grandfather to the see the treasures of the East at Le Louvre, was researching and writing a history of the land to rival Gibbon’s piece on Rome. Along the way, she would take breaks from her work and instruct her children and Phillip on the history of Egypt over the ages. She shared with them perspectives from the Pharaohs, Moses and Herodotus through Alexander, the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the Romans and to the times of Napoleon. Her children never tired of her telling the story of the Holy Family fleeing from King Herod to Egypt. Phillip found the her lessons related to Christianity in the region of particular interest, namely the monasticism of St. Anthony the Great and the martyrdom of St. Mark. Upon returning to Alexandria, she promised to take the children and Phillip to a museum in Alexandria that held ancient papyrus strains of texts from Homer and Plato as well as works in Hebrew and Arabic recovered from the ruins of the great library of the city.
            Despite Pauline’s kindness and generosity, over time Phillip came to envy the warmth and quality of life his father Achilles had established with his new family, while he and his sisters and mother struggled in Arcadia.  He incessantly asked himself why Achilles couldn’t love him and his siblings and his mother in Arcadia the way he loved Pauline and their children in Alexandria. It was something he could not muster the gumption to verbalize to Achilles, despite his greatest efforts. It would come to fester inside of him for the rest of his life until his passing at sea years later.
            During an evening when Achilles and his family went out for dinner at a local cafe, Phillip stayed behind saying he didn’t feel well.  While Achilles and the family were gone, Phillip, gripped by anguish, proceeded to raid the home breaking into his father’s safe stealing all of the cash, taking Pauline’s jewelry, a rare edition of The Book of the Dead from antiquity as well as any other valuables he could fit in his suitcase.  He fled the home quickly and rushed to the port where he caught the overnight ferry from Alexandria back to Piraeus.  When Achilles and his family returned home, Pauline became enraged at the theft and immediately sought to contact the police.  Achilles stopped her, though, saying, “It’s okay.  I deserve it. Don’t bother the police.” 
            “But, what about our money, my jewelry, our valuables?!  We just can’t let this go.”
            “We can get it back,” said Achilles.  “I let them down.”   
x
            Although Jorge only knew bits and pieces of his family history, he did not feel a crippling sense of sorrow upon losing his parents Phillip and Ismene.  Rather, a sense of freedom and empowerment permeated his being, feeling unfettered by what he really could achieve in contrast to his contemporaries who had parents who would dote on them to the point of suffocating their souls and vigor for life.  He was uncertain of what exactly he wanted from the world, but knew that Karitaina had no answers for him.  In his mind he was setting out like an eagle free to fly alone in the world, as a Spartan, mirroring young Leonidas, sent out into the wilderness to prove his worthiness.
 
 
           

 
Hermes - Turn of the 21st Century
xi
Maria could feel herself slipping to the other side, as the helicopter ambulance approached the beach on the Greek island of Symi during an unseasonably warm afternoon day before Christmas.  She laid emotionless on the beach, the rays of the sun illuminating her bronzed skin.  Tears streamed from Hermes’s eyes, as he held her.  He told her she couldn’t leave - that he loved her.  She could hear his words and tried to smile.  She wanted to tell him something but could not speak.  Hermes gripped her closely praying the “Hail Mary” vigorously begging for God’s mercy that He not take her.                
Hermes had begun a relationship with Maria several months earlier following his arrival in Athens during the early spring of that year. It was the turn of the new millennium, and he had just completed his undergraduate education and was at war with his father Alcibiades after seducing Alcibiades’s young girlfriend Dasha, a leggy model from a small village outside of Moscow, who Hermes’s father had employed initially as his personal assistant.  Hermes began the affair as retribution for his mother Diana, who Alcibiades had betrayed with impunity through the years, making sure his father caught him and Dasha in coitus on Alcibiades’s bed. 
Though it did nothing to alleviate the rage and betrayal he felt upon seeing his son and Dasha together in his bed, Alcibiades had felt all along that she secretly loved Hermes and was mostly interested in him because of the monthly allowance he paid her and the condominium he had purchased for her in the John Hancock Building.  Hermes, indeed, felt remorse for using Dasha as a vehicle for vengeance, though she relished being the prize between a father and son and interpreted the conflict as a testament to her desirability as if she were Helen of Troy. 
Out of vengeance, Alcibiades successfully persuaded a judge to freeze the trust, established by his father Jorge that provided Hermes with income, based on a trumped up charge of mental instability, facilitated by coercing a state governor, who owed Alcibiades a favor from financing his campaign.  Calculating his father would employ such a gambit to cripple him, Hermes diverted a small portion of the capital left in the account into a secret offshore account in the Bahamas, a financial lesson his father ironically had taught him at an early age.  The small amount of money he had in the account would last him about 12 to 18 months he thought, if he lived frugally.           
Outside of the conflict with his father, Hermes also had come to Europe emulating the path of great American artists and writers who sought education in the Old World.  He had studied the lives of John Singer Sargent, Cy Twombly, Henry James, James Baldwin, James McNeil Whistler, and Ernest Hemingway, among others, becoming entranced by the image of the American artist abroad.  Hermes believed that by following their path and immersing himself in museums, churches and ancient cultures he would be able to cultivate the necessary depth and nuanced textures for his work, as he forged his own path as a painter.
xii
Upon arriving in Athens, he immediately visited the Museum of Byzantine and Christian Art to view the special exhibition of the Christ Pantocrator icon on loan from the St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai, Egypt. Hermes recalled the lessons his grandfather Jorge had taught him about how the painting was created through fasting and devotion and of his own experience with penitent living at the monastery as a young man. Hermes gazed at the work for hours studying its composition, trying to decipher how it was created, wondering if he could manifest such a work in his lifetime.
After visiting the museum, he checked into a cheap pension in the Plaka near the base of the Acropolis.  He traded in his free drink voucher for a shot of ouzo, and then walked through Syntagma Square just after dusk.  Hermes wandered the quiet streets, scanning the windows of some of the closed stores, including a clothing boutique and a pastry shop, then gazing up at the grimy, tall buildings surrounding him, catching glimpses of the stars.        
He woke up the next day to a breakfast of fresh village bread slathered with butter and honey washed down with strong Greek coffee.  The music of George Michael played in the background, as he sat alone, listening to the traffic on the street.  His right hand grazed over the small scar on his neck over his jugular vein where his father Alcibiades had pressed his Cretan dagger.  Alcibiades had used the dagger as a letter opener for years and grabbed it immediately from the desk in his bedroom upon walking in on his son en coitus with Dasha.  Alcibiades felt the urge to kills his son for the betrayal.  His father’s last words to him reverberated in his mind, “You are no longer my son.” 
Hermes walked through the frenetic Greek capital fruitlessly seeking its glorious past at the Parthenon, the ancient agora, and the temple of Zeus, among other landmarks.  He passed by Greek Orthodox Churches, Neoclassical buildings, and dilapidated office buildings.  Antiquated electric trolleys transported passengers from one part of the city to another.  Locals sat at sidewalk cafes sipping coffee.  Stray dogs, moving in packs, wandered the city; some laying on sidewalks, appearing lifeless, while elderly men intrepidly toyed with them.
In the afternoon, the music of Miles Davis’s Spanish Sketches played in the background, as Hermes entered a record store on one of the city’s main avenues.  Televisions hung from the walls broadcasting a music video with Michael Jackson; locals stood in front of listening stations, bobbing their heads to the rhythms.  Hermes stopped at one station and put on a pair of headphones, listening to an opera collection featuring Maria Callas. 
Afterwards, he stopped inside a nearby café for lunch.  Echoing 19th century European splendor, the establishment featured a high ceiling with an ornate chandelier.  Mirrors were situated throughout the restaurant and small round brown tables were placed throughout, resembling those of a sidewalk café in Paris or Vienna.  The wooden glass display featured pastries, wines, and other refined gastronomic items.  Most of the clientele were elderly Athenians who had been regular customers for years. 
An old man sat at one of the tables, reading and writing in a notebook.  Many small groups gathered around the small circular, café tables, tasting pastries and chatting the day away.  Hermes stayed for a few hours, reading a biography of Albert Camus, and watching the life of the city pass.
xiii
 
            Hermes spent the rest of the afternoon in the posh Kolonaki neighborhood.  Athenians strolled along the narrow streets, shopping at the scores of trendy and elegant designer boutiques and aromatic pastry shops.  Kiosks sold newspapers and publications from all over the world, catering to the worldly residents. 
Locals congregated in various cafes, sitting and slowly sipping away at a frappe, talking politics and observing others.  Hermes took a seat in the main square of the neighborhood on one of the benches in front of the water fountain.  The tranquil ambience drew inhabitants to the rickety, wooden benches of the main square.  An old man played Bach on the violin, providing the background music, while an elderly lady, dressed in an elegant beige wool coat, walked around the small park, feeding the pigeons.  A little boy wailed as a flood of pigeons flew right at him; the scene resembled something out of a Hitchcock movie.  The boy’s father, though, laughed tenderly, as his toddler came running into his arms.  
As the dusk arrived, the neighborhood began to thrive.  People of all ages filled the cafés, dressed impeccably.  Hermes sat at one all night, slowly digesting fresh pastitsio and horiatiki.  The night carried on endlessly.  Elderly couples, dressed in their Sunday best, stayed out into the early morning hours eating, talking, and savoring life.  One café in particular on the square operated all night; and Hermes stayed until dawn people watching.  He sat listening to groups converse around him in various languages, remaining detached from the people around him, as he studied Plato’s thoughts on beauty and the divine. 
xiv
A few weeks into his time in Athens, Hermes began a Saturday morning with a walk in the National Gardens.  The sky was overcast, the air thick and warm.  Locals gathered in the park, strolling, reading, and chatting.  He wandered the area for a couple of hours, trying to uncover every part of it.  Though not looking for anything specific, he hoped to find something unusual. 
Taking a seat on one of the benches, he listened to the traffic of the city pass, wondering what would happen in the near future.  He thought of home and the discord with his father.  Hermes remained torn between reconciliation and protecting himself.  Though he was not intimidated by his new surroundings, Hermes was apprehensive about throwing himself into it completely, to bid farewell to the past. 
In the late morning, he journeyed through the city to the Exharia section of the capital.  The lively plateia there overflowed with bars and cafés.  On the side streets, laundry lines blew in the wind.  Students from the neighboring Polytechnic University congregated, as he sat taking a coffee at a café on the square while reading The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. 
After his coffee, he walked down one of the main boulevards, abounding with graffiti in Greek and English.  Some of it condemned the United States as Nazis and lauded the K.K.E., the Greek Communist Party.  From there, he ascended the nearby Streffi Hill.  At the top of the mount, he savored the fresh breezes, as he sat on one of the graffiti covered rock formations.  The view of the Athenian landscape from the top was gorgeous, resembling a sprawl of white against a backdrop of arid mountains with splashes of green cypress.  From this point of view, the city was peaceful, almost lifeless. 
A few people strolled below his vantage point, chatting while admiring the natural beauty of the oasis.  In the distance to the south, Hermes glimpsed the ferries and ships, approaching and disembarking from Piraeus.  Birds swooped above and bees buzzed frenetically. 
At dusk, he arrived at the base of Mount Lycabettus.  He intended to climb to its top, the highest point in the city.  For a while, he wandered around aimlessly, amongst the foliage at its base, looking for a clear path to the top.  As he searched, a beautiful woman in her early 40s approached him, walking her dog. 
“Milás Elinika?” she said.
“Etsi kai etsi…” he said.
She then proceeded to give him the directions in Greek, motioning her hands where he needed to walk.  But, Hermes still had an uncertain look on his face.
“Milás Anglika? English?”
“Nai,” said Hermes.
“Follow the path and you’ll see the steps to the top,” she said, “you can’t miss them.”
“Epharisto.”
“Parakalo.”
He began to turn his back to her to continue his walk up the mountain, when the woman said, “Parlez-vous francais?” 
He measured about an inch with his right index finger and thumb, indicating his very limited knowledge of French.
She still had a somewhat disbelieving look on her face and said,  “You’re not French?”
“No, American,” Hermes said.
“What brings you here to Greece?”
“Some adventure,”
“I see, I enjoy adventure, too,” she said, “I’m going to join you for the walk.”
A wry grin came over his face.  “Please do,” he said.
Her name was Georgina, the heiress to a banking and insurance empire in Cyprus, whose family were descendants of the Orthodox church on the island established within fifty years of the death of Christ, serving as one of the most ancient sites of Christendom.  Tall, lean, with long brown hair and deep blue eyes, she spoke English with a posh West End accent, bequeathed to her from her English mother.
“Have you ever been to the top of the mountain?” she said.
“No, what’s it like?”
“You’ll never forget it,” she said with a seductive glance.     
The climb up the mountain was a bit physically taxing, as the stone steps were steep and long.   
At the top, they both gazed at the vista of the glistening Acropolis.  Georgina took his hand and led him through the groups of people who had gathered at the top.  She guided him to various points along the marble floor, looking in all directions, seeking a perfect impression of the city.  The air was fresh and cool.  A prominent bell tower hovered proudly, and the small, white Orthodox monastery featured an illuminated cross at its apex.
            Hermes led her inside the monastery to view the gilded iconography of the saints.  They were alone inside with aromatic scent of the incense.  She turned to him and said, “Are you ready to behave a bit badly?”
            “Yes,” he said, moving in to kiss her. 
            She turned her head to avoid his lips letting him kiss her cheek.  Blushing momentarily, she said tenderly, “We can’t do that here, you blasphemous bastard!”
            Pulling away from Hermes, Georgina said, “I’m going to have a drink, if you care to join me…”
            “I’d like that,” he said.
            “I know the best spot.”
            “I’m sure you do.”
            She grinned in disbelief, as they headed back down the mountain side.  They stopped frequently to kiss.  At the base of the mountain, she hailed a taxi and they made their way north to an outer suburb near the sea.  They spent the ride in each other’s arms. 
xv
Once at her seaside villa, Georgina opened a bottle of champagne.  They sat on the terrace overlooking the water.  The stars above glistened.  “Tell me a secret?” Georgina said.
            Hermes grinned, amused at the game and said, “And, if I do, what will I get?”
            “It’s a surprise.”
            “I love surprises.”
            “I knew that the moment I first saw you.”            
            “Pray tell.”
            “Tell me a secret first.”
            “I feel very alone.”
            She kissed him, feeling the same.  They didn’t speak for the rest of the night, locked in passion. 
            The next morning they awoke in each other’s arms.  Hermes wondered who this mysterious woman really was.
            She awoke and said, “So, what do you think of Greece so far?  Is it all that you imagined?”
            “And more…”
            She laughed and then reached to kiss him.  They spent the morning in bed.  Just before noon, she prepared some coffee with fresh yogurt and fruit.   Hermes accepted her invitation to spend the day with her at the beach. 
            As they ate, Georgina said, “So, you’re here on adventure and for ideas for your painting?”
            “More like exile, to be candid,” Hermes said licking the honey from his lips.
            “An intriguing tale.”
            “Dickensian.”
            “Don’t tease.”
            They made love again before arriving at the beach.  Georgina sat and read a rare edition of Proust’s Swann’s Way her cousin Charlotte had given her as a birthday present.  Hermes mostly slept in between swims. 
            At dusk, Georgina said, “How does Italian sound for dinner tonight?”
            “Are you cooking or at a restaurant?”
            “I haven’t decided.”
            “On one condition, though.”
            “Being…”
Hermes looked toward the area covered in bushes.
            “Oh, God, you are vile,” she said, pretending to be mortified. 
            She casually rose from her beach chair and followed his lead to the garden. 
xvi
            Exhausted from the day, Georgina opted to take Hermes to an Italian place in Kifissia she knew run by a man from Naples.  As they motored in her black 1963 Cadillac convertible, they basked in the freshness of the summer evening air.  The car was her father’s that he gave to her once she learned to drive.  Originally, he had had it custom manufactured in Detroit, Michigan, and shipped to Cyprus upon the success of a new business venture with a shipping tycoon decades ago.  
Georgina aggressively dashed through traffic, and finally parked near the Orthodox Church in the plateia.  “This is where we volta,” said Georgina.  Hermes admired the verdant foliage, as locals rode in horse drawn carriages.  They sat at a café and indulged in some dirty martinis.  Georgina probed Hermes about his father and could see that he missed him. 
            When Hermes tried to learn more of her life and past, she remained opaque.  She couldn’t tell him how her parents had passed in a plane accident traveling from Cyprus to London on their way to visit her when she was 22 years old.  For the last two decades, she had spent much of her life in isolation.  She had been engaged briefly to a man she had met at school but she called it off inexplicably the day of the service.  In the meantime, she had spurned countless ardent suitors, as they were not robust enough to hold her.  Hermes, though, she thought, looking at his week old stubble, was masculine and gutsy enough to succeed where they had failed by not even bothering to try.
 

 
Alcibiades - Early 2010s
xvii
            Alcibiades wiped the remaining tears from his cheeks, as a piercing breeze swept across the grounds of Eleutheria, the family estate in Northern Indiana his father Jorge had established.  He could sense that these were the last days of his life - that God was calling him back for judgment.  It was a brisk early fall morning, and he had become emotional thinking of the longing he had felt gazing at the Man of Sorrows sculpture by Marion Perkins that he had encountered the evening before at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Though he had seen the sculpture countless times on his weekly visits to the museum, this time it became especially moving, as he was coming to terms with his own fleeting mortality. 
xviii
            His thoughts turned to a few hours before when, in the middle of the night, he berated his girlfriend Alessandra for not helping him to die as the pain from his metastasized leukemia had become unbearable.  He had not really slept properly in weeks and was tiring not only of the physical torment, but of life in general, seeking desperately a final reprieve.
            Dressed in a well worn double-breasted charcoal gray suit from a Saville Row tailor he had inherited from his father, Alcibiades wrapped himself in a pink cashmere blanket his mother Persephone had purchased in Afghanistan during a trip there through the Silk Road in the 1960s.  As the sun began to rise marking Sunday morning, he lowered his sunglasses to cover his eyes.  Stephenson, the family valet for the last 40 years, served him fresh Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee prepared in an Italian cafetera.  Alcibiades poured the coffee into a 19th-century Viennese porcelain saucer.  While reading Robert Hughes’s work on Goya, he munched on fresh homemade glazed donuts he had the family cook learn to prepare based on a recipe he had sampled at a bakery in San Sebastian, Spain. 
xix
            Alcibiades had met Alessandra at the Art Institute a few months earlier in front of John Singer Sargent’s “Egyptian Girl”.  The daughter of a Russian oligarch and a Brazilian fashion model from Buzios, Brazil, and forty years his junior, Alcibiades approached her by asking: “Would you be interested in having dinner with a much older gentleman?”  Over their meal of fresh seafood from Lake Michigan, she became particularly smitten by his ability to speak and read Modern and Ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, a skill set he had cultivated during his youthful ambition to become Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Constantinople.  That, however, was long before life circumstances intervened precipitating his belief that God had forsaken him. 
            While taking a sip of freshly squeezed orange juice, he looked across the vast lawns of Eleutheria at Mindy, his favorite English Longhorn cattle, grazing with the other members of the herd in the distance.  He had purchased her as a gift for his now deceased wife Diana, the mother of his children, as an anniversary present in a futile attempt to reestablish their marriage after one of his many infidelities. 
            Alcibiades had first seen Mindy when she was just a baby calf during a visit to a farm in York in the United Kingdom he took with his older brother Paris when they were children in the 1950s.  He and Paris had taken great interest in animals when they were young and had convinced their father Jorge to import sheep from the Basque country in Spain and hens and sheep from the Greek Island of Naxos.  It was one of the few warm memories Alcibiades had of his brother who had died in a tragic accident in Constantinople a month shy of his 23rd birthday while visiting Alcibiades. At the time, Alcibiades was 20 years old studying at a Greek monastery on the Prince Island of Halki the history of the Jews and early Christians in Anatolia as well as Orthodox theology.                     
            While carrying his saucer of coffee with him, Alcibiades rose from the French cafe table, imported from Lyon, and began to wander the grounds of the estate.  His father Jorge had purchased 1,000 acres there in Royal Point, Indiana, for pennies towards the end of the Great Depression after he had become terribly rich from discovering oil on his farm in Southern Indiana near the Ohio border.  Jorge, who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design and construct the estate, had based the construction of the main home on the Tudor mansions from Renaissance England he had seen in books on English history and during trips he took with his family to Great Britain.
xx
            Once he reached Mindy, Alcibiades stroked her brow and chatted with her.  He asked her whether she thought Hermes would come back from Greece before he died.  Alcibiades turned to look back at the stately mansion rising above the rural landscape.  He saw Father Christos making his way to the Orthodox chapel for the morning vespers.  Jorge had erected the chapel on the grounds, and Father Christos had resided in one of the cottages on Eleutheria for most of his life, living monastically on the estate rarely leaving, except in the 1960s when he marched in Selma, Alabama, with Martin Luther King. In the evenings, Father Christos would sip homemade raki and listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme while reading the tragedies of Shakespeare and Aeschylus.
            Jorge had persuaded him to leave his posting in Constantinople to serve as his family’s spiritual guide with the notion of bestowing a sense of decency and good onto his two sons.  Father Christos was instrumental in inspiring and cultivating Alcibiades’s ambition as a young man to become Patriarch of the Greek Church, tutoring him particularly in the life and writings of St. Paul as well as the epic poetry of Homer, Milton, and Dante.  Decades later, he would tutor Hermes on Byzantine mosaics and Early Christian art.  However, Father Christos and Alcibiades had not spoken in many years, as his former pupil had turned his back completely to the Faith.             
            Near his death thirty years earlier, Jorge asked for a final reconciliation from Father Christos, asking forgiveness for failing both of his sons.  Father Christos granted Jorge the contrition he sought and reassured him that Alcibiades could still return to the flock and receive God’s grace. 
xxi
            The evening prior Alcibiades had fallen asleep for only a few hours when an excruciating pain awoke him.  He shrieked from the eviscerating sensations that engulfed his body.  Alessandra tried to comfort him, but he would shout at her saying, “Why don't you help me die?”
            "Stop talking like that," she said. “You have to be strong. The doctors say there's a chance for you still to recover.  And, Father Pablo says we should not dismiss help from God.”
            “That is absurd! Those doctors are nothing but quacks at best.”
            “What are you talking about?  They helped you into remission before.  Don’t give up on the possibility they could do it again.”
            “This time is different,” said Alcibiades, “And, I told you that that priest of the Roman Church is nothing but a fool.” 
            “A fool?” said Alessandra, a devout Roman Catholic from her mother’s upbringing, “Father Pablo is the only one who comes to see you.  You know he prays for you all the time and you shouldn’t dismiss him because he is a Catholic priest.  Besides, as you say, you have no need for the Greek Church, right?”
            Alcibiades shrieked in pain again calling for Stephenson, who entered the bedroom.
            “Sir," said Stephenson.  “How may I help you?"
            “Get my favorite Purdey from the armory, Stephenson.” said Alcibiades in a completely sober tone.
            “Sir?” said Stephenson.
            "No!" said Alessandra. "Stephenson, do not do that!”
            “Please, Alessandra, can’t you see the pain I'm in?” said Alcibiades tenderly, looking at her with total vulnerability.  He then turned to Stephenson with a look of rage. 
            "Stephenson!  Why are you still here?  Get my damn rifle!"
            "Stephenson, please go back to your room,” said Alessandra. "I'll handle this."
            Stephenson deferred to her wishes.
            As she moved closer to Alcibiades to remove some of the sweat from his brow, Alcibiades grabbed her wrist hard, pulling her toward him, and said, “Can't you see I want to die, Alessandra? I want to die." His eyes revealed a desperate fragility she never had seen in him.
            “You’re hurting me,” said Alessandra, yanking away her arm and walking away into the bathroom.  Alcibiades reached for the bottle of Port and poured himself a glass, while gazing at a largely unknown painting by Velazquez of the Crucifixion of Christ.  Hermes had given him the art work as a gift and peace offering when he returned from Europe a decade earlier after seducing Alcibiades’s then mistress Dasha.  When Alessandra returned from the bathroom, she looked at him in disbelief.  “Well, at least don’t make me drink alone,” he said pouring her a glass.  Alessandra snatched the glass with disgust, while Alcibiades took a small nibble of a champagne truffle.        
xxii
            Upon finishing his morning walk around Eleutheria, Alcibiades had Stephenson prepare his 1962 Austin Healey for a drive into town. Alcibiades rode with the top down breathing in the early fall air, making his way to the town square in Royal Point.  He motored along tree-lined roads of elm and white birch trees, passing farmland abounding with sweetcorn ready for the autumn harvest. 
            Alcibiades drove daily to the square to have coffee at his favorite café and visit the local library his father had secretly endowed.  On that morning, he was rereading the short story “The Rich Boy” by F. Scott Fitzgerald over a lazy cappuccino with a chocolate almond croissant.  Piano sonatas by Mozart streamed over the speakers in the empty salon devoted to 19th-century American antiques purchased buy the proprietor. 
            After reading for an hour, Alcibiades pulled out some artisanal sheets of paper he had been using to recount his life.  Though he had turned his back on any form of faith, he felt an overwhelming compulsion to reveal his past and the circumstance that had precipitated his life choices before he died.  During his visits with Father Pablo, he shared this desire but feared the pain was too overwhelming to revisit.  Father Pablo had encouraged him to unburden his soul and that he could receive salvation still. 
            The death of his brother Paris, who he had killed accidentally in Constantinople in his early 20s, and later the circumstances surrounding an accident during his student days in England, and the consequences it had for the romantic relationship he was in weighed on him greatly, though more than 40 years had passed since these tragic moments had occurred.  The early death of his wife Diana tormented him as well, not to mention the nefarious business dealings he had engaged in to not only survive, when his father Jorge renounced him as his son, but profit from spectacularly.
xxiii
            At nine in the evening later that day, Stephenson dropped Alcibiades and Alessandra at the train station for Chicago.  Alcibiades preferred train travel over all forms of transport, resting his head against the window watching the imagery of the agrarian and post-industrial Midwest pass.
            Forty-five minutes later, Alessandra woke him from the mild trance he had fallen into gazing at the skyline of the city.   The two of them disembarked from the train on Van Buren Street and walked along Michigan Avenue.  Alcibiades wondered if this would be the last time he would see the grand, illuminated Art Institute and the Guimard Art Nouveau sign. 
            Along the way, they stopped on the corner of a side street to view the inventory of an antique shop specializing in pieces from Victorian Britain.  Alcibiades thought of the joy and anguish of his youth in the United Kingdom.  In the window, Alcibiades saw a 19th-century porcelain tea set that intrigued him.  It resembled one at an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert in London he had seen decades earlier with Ophelia and James.
            From the shop corner, he and Alessandra turned to catch a taxi to take them to the townhouse on the Gold Coast overlooking Lake Michigan.  Alcibiades gazed at the resplendent Tribune Tower as the cab crossed over the Chicago River meandering further down North Michigan Avenue.  Alcibiades reached to hold Alessandra’s hand which she obliged grinning at him momentarily and then looking away to observe the magnificence of the city’s architectural splendor at night.    
            The interior of the town house featured black and white checker board floors.  Antiquities from China, India, Persia, Egypt, Italy and Greece Alcibiades had purchased from the collection of a Roman Catholic cardinal lined the hallways.  Alessandra had kept the bedroom as a minimal space with a titanium clothes rack, positioned along the back wall of the room holding six dresses from Marc Jacobs and five pairs of high heels resting below it.  The bed elevated just six inches off the ground, and the mattress from Sweden was one of the most expensive manufactured models in the world.
            Alcibiades opened a bottle of Mastica from Chios with some figs and a box of Frango mints he had taken from the kitchen and walked onto the balcony, feeling a gentle breeze from the lake.  Alessandra was changing into a brand new lingerie ensemble she had purchased during the week as a surprise.  Alcibiades, though, felt no vigor for carnal pleasure.  He was lost in his thoughts, looking to the East at the black abyss of Lake Michigan, transfixed by the melancholic majesty of the night.