“Antinous!” Adriano screamed, but did not move.
In my memory now it all happens in the slow motion of the cheap horror movies that would, centuries later, occupy my sleepless days: Antinous’s jumping, his body hitting the water, his attempts at swimming, instinct against will. Each of these unnaturally prolonged, centuries in passing.
But I had drained him of life and strength and he could not have saved himself, even if he so wished. Slowly, slowly, he went under, was dragged under, until only his hair floated at the surface, seemingly for an eternity.
“I would accept him, even now,” Adriano said, evenly, calmly in the tone of one who trades a greeting with a stranger at the baths.
I looked up at him. His gaze was on the river where nothing remained to be seen, nothing other than the dark waters that had swallowed his lover’s body. His eyes were empty, vacant, equanimous.
Later, in the eight years he survived his lover, grief would come to him, scalding grief, and he would weep publicly like a woman, and he would build temples and monuments and force the senate to divinise this anonymous boy, and dot the empire with statues of this Bithynian and start a religion in Antinous’s name.
Alas, I found no enjoyment in his delayed pain. Nor was his grief the mourning of a man, but the mere death baying of senseless beast. As my soul remained, pinned to my dead body, his soul had left his living body and followed his lover’s somewhere—maybe Olympus. Somewhere beyond my reach.
And it was with cold, dreary detachment that he would write in his diary, “Antinous fell in the river and drowned.”
I always think of that sentence, so unlike Adriano, as I see in my mind that last second when Antinous’s hair opened and spread like a nocturnal flower blooming by the light of the moon on the waters of the Nile.
The moment I lost them both.
Dear John
I don’t know if this happens to other writers, but I often dream I’m leafing through magazines that carry my stories. Normally, I just look at the magazine in the dream and say, “oh, yes, that’s mine.” In this dream I got smart and read it. It was Dear John. When I woke, I still found the idea that we would create human beings simply for our physical gratification interesting and repulsive in equal parts. So I had to write it.
The night was cool. A soft breeze blew from the ocean, bringing with it a taste of salt and a feel of humidity.
The humidity clung to my platinum blonde hair, making it sticky and messing the lustrous waves that took so long to arrange. Good thing the beauty mark on my face wasn’t painted on; good thing my make up was permanent and couldn’t blur.
I smiled, and walked back and forth along the cracked sidewalk. Smile, smile, wiggle of hips, smile, smile, I looked adoringly at the glide cars passing by, silently, their drivers hiding behind the safe anonymity of darkened windows.
Click, click, click, my high-heels beating a rhythmic, monotonous sound against the pavement. Click, click, click.
My ankles hurt, as did my feet, from their unnatural position.
Zoom, zoom, zoom, the cars gliding by, one after the other, all featureless ovoids in different colors, like someone had raided a giant Easter egg basket and sped each of the eggs out on the highway. Now and then, an egg stopped, the shell opened, and a John came out.
Just what every little girl wanted for Easter.
I’ve never seen an Easter basket. But I remembered the twentieth century vids and educational material that they’d made me watch in the crèche: Easter with the eggs, and Christmas with trees and lights. It must have been some time to live in, the early twentieth century.
For all I knew, so was the second. Surely the Johns in those Easter-egg cars seemed to be having a blast. They talked of colonies on Mars, of a robotics revolution, of life spans extended to twice what they were twenty years ago.
But it didn’t matter to me. My lifespan was the same I’d been created with, and my life was this: click, click, click of heels across the pavement, back and forth, ignoring the other Marilyns. And the Racquels and the Elizabeths and all the others. Time to socialize with them at the dorm that night. Not now. Now it was time to smile, smile, smile and look sexy.
Now and then a John would stop and approach one of us, and extend his credgem, like a little clear marble, for approval. And then, if the authenticators disguised as golden bracelets on our wrists clicked their approval, then one of us would take the John to the office, and do what we’d been so well trained to do.
They’d trained us never to act tired, never to act bored. To take our clothes off. To take the Johns’ clothes off. To exclaim over their bodies, their big muscles, their all-male square shoulder—seven if we saw none of those.
They trained us to lay down in the prepared bed—sanitized for your protection—and spread wide, as they bumped and ground.
They taught us to smile, smile, smile.
Sometimes the Johns wanted to talk to me as if I were her. The other. The Marilyn.
I indulged them and prattled about my films, my love life.
How Joe jilted me and Jack did me wrong and how no one ever understood my artistic soul. Until this John.
Then the John would leave, and I used the cleaning spray down there—sanitized for your protection—and it was back to walking outside on the sidewalk.
“Hello,” he said.
He stood five steps away from me, and there was no parked car in sight. Just this man, over six feet tall, with light brown curls and sparkling blue eyes and a disarming smile.
I smiled back, as I’d been taught to do, and practiced for so many hours in front of the mirror, making my lips just so, so that the Johns would find them irresistible.
“Well, hello there,” I drawled, in my sexiest, breathiest voice.
He looked away, at the stream of cars, zooming by, then back at me, his smile not dimmed, but managing somehow to give the impression of shyness. “I was wondering,” he says. “How much it would be for an hour.”
I couldn’t place his accent, which was strange enough, considering how many people I got through here everyday. “Thirty creed units for an hour,” I said. “Sixty for the whole night.” Hardly worth it now, with the night half gone. But I still had to say it, with the big smile, and the slight wiggle of the hips.
He grinned. “Not tonight. I don’t have sixty. I’ll see next time. Tonight it will have to be thirty.” He handed me the credgem, an unembossed, clear one.
I popped it into the authenticator—the oval attachment dangling from what looked like a heavy gold bracelet on my wrist. I smiled while I waited.
He wore a well-cut suit, with an odd design, like the ones they wore in all those twentieth century vids that they’d made me watch in the crèche. It was black and emphasized his square shoulders, his narrow waist. But the cut was strange. It had to be a revival thing.
He smiled back at me as if he, too, had been to the crèche and practiced, a smile that would make your insides melt.
The gem cleared, and emptied. Thirty cred units was all he had.
I looked at him, surprised, because after all, a man like that exuded money, the feel of never having had to do anything he didn’t want to.
I led him to the offices, a block away, in a tall, grey tower, put up expressly for the purpose. Inside were cubicles, barely large enough to accommodate a large, comfortable bed, its sheets pulled back invitingly, and a broad band set across the white linen. The band said sanitized for your protection and was put there by the robots who cleaned the room afterwards.