First Man (6 page)

I went to Charleston.

I stayed there for two weeks, living out of a bare-bones hotel room and trying to understand why I was there instead of the place I was rapidly beginning to think of as home.

I had admired my father. I had sat at his knee, worshipping his intelligence and his dedication, never giving myself leave to be angry at the man who had driven his wife away with his relentless obsession. I was far too old to be blaming the man for my own failings, but I’d been adrift in the world since childhood.

I grabbed the half-empty glass of watery Scotch on the bedside table and drank it down without tasting it, hating myself. Somehow I’d managed to embrace the worst personality traits in both of my parents. I had my father’s ability to wear blinders and ignore everything but my current obsession, and my mother’s habit of running away when anything got too rough.

Sitting on an ugly floral bedspread in an anonymous room, I picked up the receiver of the beige hotel phone, running my fingers over the smooth plastic, not knowing if I wanted to call Lily to beg forgiveness or Edwin to beg for understanding.

At this point, I doubted if I would get either.

I drove back to Atlanta early on a Sunday morning with the few possessions I had bothered to bring to Charleston rattling around the trunk of my car. I didn’t show up at her apartment at five in the morning clutching a bouquet of flowers and a tear-soaked apology. Instead, I waited. When the afternoon came around, I was sitting on one of the stone benches just inside the gate of the botanical gardens.

She didn’t come. I stayed until the sun set and the garden was closing. I trudged into the parking lot, head hung, feeling like a fool.

Lily was sitting on the hood of my car.

“I saw your car,” she said simply.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.” She slid off the car and stood beside me. She reached up and brushed my cheek with her fingertips. “You’ve never come back before, have you?”

I shook my head, not trusting my voice.

“That means something. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to kill you for what you put me through. . . what I had to go through without you, but it’s something.” She allowed me to pull her into my arms, standing stiffly at first, but relaxing into my embrace after a few long moments.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you yet,” she said, her voice muffled by my shirt.

“I don’t deserve it yet.”

Months had passed, and the roots grew deeper. Lily had finally questioned me about how, despite my fascination with all things Greco-Roman, my deepest passion was Egypt.

The familiar inquisitive look had returned to her face. “Why Egypt?”

“Everything feels. . . timeless there. Tourists go to the pyramids, but I went into the tombs. You had to have the right credentials, and my degrees and the papers I’d authored were good enough. I can’t even begin to tell you what it’s like being so deep underground.” I paused, almost able to taste the dampness that had thickened the air inside the tombs. “I remember running my fingers over one of the walls. There was nothing special about it, no decorations, just raw stone, but I could
feel
the age of the tomb. I remember feeling like an intruder and not caring because it was so beautiful.”

Half of being a successful historian was being a good storyteller, and one didn’t get to be, as Edwin put it, “a ruddy rock star” by being anything but masterful, but I wanted this to be more than just another story to her. She had drawn her arms around my waist, grounding me as I wandered the Egyptian sands in my mind, and I pulled out of her embrace and walked across the room. I dropped to my knees beneath the one window in my bedroom. With the reverence of a supplicant, I pushed aside a stack of enlargements of
the Books of the Dead
and unlocked the small scratched and dented metal trunk.

“Can I see?” Lily’s voice was uncharacteristically timid.

“Of course,” I replied. Before the words had fully left my mouth, Lily was kneeling beside me. I pulled out a bottle wrapped in a length of gold silk and set it aside. The only other contents of the box were a thick book with a red leather cover and another bottle wrapped in black silk. I handed Lily the book and closed the box.

What’s in the other bottle?”

“Myrrh,” I answered quickly, watching with mild amusement as Lily finally opened the book. After scanning the first page for a few seconds she closed it and punched me in the arm. “What was that for?” I asked, not bothering to hide my laughter.

“You wrote your diary in Ancient Greek?”

I took the book out of her hands, relishing briefly in the familiarity of the worn cover before replying. “I started it in my last year at Eton. I wrote it in Greek because it was the hardest language I was studying, and I wanted the extra practice. I swear, it’s not as pretentious as it sounds.” I set the book aside and grabbed the bottle.

I rose to my feet and grabbed a stone bowl off of my desk. I emptied the keys, change, and other detritus of life that had accumulated into the small bowl onto the desktop, not caring where anything landed. Slowly, I uncoiled the silk from the bottle. Lily had followed me and stood watching as I placed the bowl on the nightstand and uncorked the bottle, pouring a generous amount into it.

The smell of spices filled the air.

“Olibanum,” I whispered.

“Olibanum?” she stumbled slightly over the unfamiliar native word.

“Frankincense.” I guided her hand to the bowl’s rim, releasing her as her fingers skimmed the surface of the thick amber fluid. “Frankincense,” I repeated. “Cassia. Sandalwood.” Capturing her hand again, I curled my long fingers around hers, the oil pooling briefly in our palms before dripping down our wrists. “Spirit. Heart. Body.”

“What about the Myrrh?”

I tensed. Thinking of the bottle wrapped in black locked safely away, I forced my voice to be light. “You wouldn’t like Myrrh. Nasty stuff. Smells like dirt.” I dipped my free hand into the bowl and traced it across her cheek before trailing my oil-coated fingers across her neck.

“In the old days, the women of the desert tribes would do this for a girl on her wedding night. They would paint her hands and feet with henna and anoint her with Frankincense oil.” I unbuttoned her shirt, the oil darkening the white fabric. “You should wear your hair this way more often,” I said, running my fingers through the blonde waves she usually flattened into submission.

“You should drop the world-weary act more often.”

I didn’t reply.

The words
, It’s not an act
echoed in my head, but I pushed them aside as I pushed her shirt off her shoulders. With methodical slowness, I traced the contours of her body with my oil-slicked hands. I felt her heartbeat quicken as my hands grazed the swell of her breasts.

Her bra went next, tossed to the ground next to her oil-stained shirt, and my fingers delicately circled her nipples which pebbled into hard peaks under my touch. The warm, spiced scent of the oil surrounded us in a heady cloud.

“Turn over,” I said, keeping my voice low to avoid breaking the spell. Lily rolled over on her stomach, and I was left with the bare expanse of her back. I pressed my hands against the base of her spine and slowly moved upwards, my fingers tracing each vertebra.

Lily’s breath deepened as my hands relaxed her taut muscles. Lily wasn’t normally a tense person, but her muscles were coiled tight today. Inch by inch, I coaxed her body into relaxation. Small moans of pleasure escaped her mouth, adding fuel to the fire that had been simmering in me since I touched her.

I tugged down the zipper on her skirt, adding that and the small scrap of blue lace she wore underneath it to the pile of abandoned clothing on the floor. Before I could turn my attention back to worshipping her body, Lily rolled over and sat up.

“My turn,” she said, and Lily’s patience with the impeding clothing was much shorter than mine. Shirt, jeans and boxers were removed in quick succession before I laid down on the bed below her like a supplicant.

More of the oil was pooled in her palms, thickening the scent in the air, and her hands were on me. Small and fragile, they followed the lines of my ribs before moving upwards, brushing over my nipples before reaching my shoulders.

Straddling my waist, Lily could feel the evidence of my desire for her pressing against her thigh. I could feel her own heat anointing me as her hands followed their meandering path across my body.

Almost of their own volition, my hands went to her hips. One hand slipped between us and then I was within her, buried in warmth and softness.

And love.

Ritual forgotten, I sat up and wrapped my arms around Lily, pulling her closer to me as I murmured the words I’d never said to another person into the curve of her neck. “I’ll never leave again. I love you. I’ll never leave.”

In those golden moments, I believed it.

EGYPT

M
onths slipped away like days, and, before I really comprehended it, I had been in Atlanta for a year. The wanderlust had never entirely faded, but somehow Lily had kept me grounded enough that the idea of leaving slipped to the back of my mind.

Our lives were comfortable. Lily had gotten a job with the classics department at the University assisting one of the professors with translating a newly discovered ancient Greek novel. She spent her days lost in the complex language and her nights lost in me.

I set myself the task of finally finishing a few academic papers of my own that had been relegated to the backburner for far too long. I’d largely ignored my own work for the past few years, choosing instead to focus on finishing the papers that had become my father’s legacy. I had enjoyed piecing together the puzzles he had left behind and turning the endless fragments of notes into something cohesive, but that time had passed.