I made a quick decision. My plan would work if the path’s rocks, curves, and holes held him up a bit.
I dashed into the stadium and ran at the full length of the straight, smooth, hard running surface: a stade. I could almost have wished that there were an audience of Athenians to cheer me on. At the uppermost part of the stadium, I clambered onto the gangway that allowed spectators to move about on the seating mounds. At the top of the seating mound, I saw Mides approaching. I stooped down and waited. My wait was short.
I jumped from the top of the narrow stairway that led out of the stadium and landed full force on Mides. He grunted loudly. We rolled toward the trees, neither of us retaining enough strength to fight. We stopped rolling and lay with our arms around each other, like two lovers. Even then, I thought that our young playwright, Euripides, would have loved the irony.
I was staring at Mides’ bloody nose when the security man yanked us apart.
“He killed Parmades,” I said.
“The woman told me,” the security guard said.
Mides glared at me but remained silent. The security guard hauled him off down the path, past Selkine who ran to me.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I nodded. “And you?”
We wrapped our arms around each other.
When we drew apart, I caught my breath at the sight of Selkine’s face bathed in moonlight. Her eyes were luminous, her smile knowing.
“I didn’t know,” I said, “that you could throw a punch that could give a man a bloody nose. And what were you doing in the sanctuary anyway? How did you know that Mides...”
She laughed. “Stop firing questions more quickly than Socrates can, and I’ll tell you.”
I fell silent.
We turned to walk toward the sanctuary exit, Selkine’s clear musical voice explaining what had happened. “I just couldn’t imagine why Mides would give up staying in a villa to watch over me in the tavern. He likes luxury.”
“Really?”
“Didn’t you notice his tunic. The best of linen. And he uses high quality olive oil on his skin.”
I had to confess that I hadn’t noticed. I’d been in a kind of daze the whole while at Delphi, worrying about my and Selkine’s future.
“I also wondered,” Selkine continued, “why he felt it necessary to go to the villa to get things. The innkeeper’s wife told me he had taken a room, then gone back to the villa. I wondered why he couldn’t just send one of his servants or pay someone to go to the villa. For that matter, why couldn’t he send a servant to watch over me. The answer was obvious.”
“Obvious?” I said, feeling like one of Socrates’ less astute students.
“Yes. I realized that he wanted personally to keep an eye on both of us. He did so from the first moment we arrived at the tavern, either watching us himself or sending the Spartan.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thus his offer to get a cart for us. And the man in the cloak at the sanctuary.”
“No doubt also the reason he offered to help you find Parmades’ murderer. But tonight he clearly had something important at the villa he wanted to have with him. So after he returned, I had my servant woman watch his room. When he left to go down to the tavern, I went into the room. I found this.”
She held up her right hand. The golden statue of Apollo gleamed in the moonlight.
“Parmades’ father’s gift to the sanctuary,” I said.
Selkine nodded. “I left the tavern to get it to you. I thought I’d snuck out, but Mides obviously saw and followed me. When he attacked and tried to throw me down the theatre stairs, I hit him with the statue. It must have been Mides who was conspiring with the Spartan, telling him I don’t know what. He was never a supporter of the democracy.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said. “I should have known. I suspect he was telling Ampheus the plans Pericles has in case of war.”
“But surely those are public knowledge, discussed in the assembly,” Selkine protested.
“But where Pericles would send out triremes and how we would get supplies and water into the city, where our walls are vulnerable, are not public knowledge. Mides would have told Ampheus, and Ampheus told the Spartan. That way, Mides would have had no direct, incriminating contact with the Spartan.”
“But why kill Parmades?”
“Remember what Parmades told us at the fountain? That someone dangerous was at the tavern. I think that, like you, he must have recognized the Spartan as a Spartan, likely at the farmer’s, just as you did.” I shook my head. “When I stupidly told Mides that Parmades wanted to talk with me, Mides must have gotten suspicious. I suspect he got word to Ampheus to keep Parmades at the sanctuary, then sought him out and persuaded him to go up to the cliff, an opportunity to visit a local shrine and have a very private place to discuss a possible conspiracy. Parmades would have gone with Mides, perhaps distrustful of Ampheus, but never suspecting Mides’ role in the conspiracy.”
Selkine held up the statue. “Mides’ downfall. His greed.”
I nodded. “I wonder how much the Spartans paid Mides to betray Athens.” I looked over toward the Lesche with its painting of the fall of Troy. “Would Mides have helped the Spartans breach our walls? I suspect so.”
“For enough gold,” Selkine said. She smiled. “His name is appropriate, isn’t it? Like the Phrygian king whose golden touch became a curse.”
We turned at the gate and looked over the sanctuary under the moonlight. The columns of Apollo’s temple glowed against the shining rocks. Here and there, the moonlight touched the serene faces of the statues scattered throughout the sanctuary that we Greeks consider the center of the universe, the omphalos, the naval, the central point. But in the background, the valleys were dark and foreboding.
I looked at Selkine and knew that she was my omphalos. “Selkine,” I said. “Let us marry. Let us be together.” Perhaps I would always idealize Aspasia, Pericles’ mistress, but I would always love Selkine.
She smiled. “I will consult the oracle.”
I swallowed. “To see whom you should marry?”
“To see if we will have sons and daughters.”
I put my arm around her, and we stepped to the gate of the sanctuary. An owl hooted, a long, low sound.
As a Sophist, I did not believe in omens. Those who did might have taken the hoot as a warning of the trials Athens, Selkine, and I, together, would have to face.
The Other Woman
by Rob Kantner
To enter the exercise room, you needed a guest key. I was no guest — just a trespasser. Luckily, a withered grayhair, flushed and dripping, picked that instant to exit. He even held the door for me.
Inside, a young man in red shorts and white wife-beater tee lay on a mat, worshiping in the wall-to-wall mirrors the sight of his tanned hairy self doing odd things with iron dumbbells. Back in the corner was Micki Quick. Micheline A. Quick, that is: J.D., MBA, LL.M., doing eight mph headed nowhere. She waved me over. “Thanks for stopping by,” she said, puffing air as she bounced on her short, bare, flawless legs along the whirring treadmill belt.
“Heck, I live practically next door,” I exaggerated. Belleville is in fact two towns down 94 from Ann Arbor. Micki’s call had come just as I was turning my guys loose on the day’s tasks. “You stayed here overnight?”
She nodded. Micki was in her early thirties, short and slight, with gleaming close-clipped blond hair and a peaches-and-cream complexion. “Doing a seminar,” she said, with what air she could muster as she pounded away, at once in flight and stationary, sneakers doing the whap-whap-whap on the rubber belt. “Too far to drive from home.”