boys."
And that fatal phrase on which the entire war pivoted, on which my sanity hangs, is pronounced in the voice of the wounded man that we left buried by the roadside on the way back from Gettysburg.
Ariadne's Skein
I've always been fascinated with Borges' poem and the idea of a circular time—the idea that the myths and legends of humanity might reflect the time ahead, not the time before them. This story was born of this.
"When Rome is dust Again shall wail in the endless Night of his rank palace"
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Minotaur"
We clambered onto the white deck of a Blue Gryphon 56 sea-to-air and sat on deck chairs disposed in two rows. There were fourteen of us, jet-lagged tourists from pan America and the guide who'd show us the manufactured wonders of Mythos.
Sunlight showed as no more than a hint of silver on the deep blue waves of the Mediterranean.
The man across from me reclined on his chair, stretched his long legs, threw his head back and half-closed his eyes. He wore only a scrap of shorts and looked no more than twenty. Tanned and sporting fashionably long black curls, he showed better defined muscles that any one man should have been born with.
Instinctively, I glanced at the middle-finger of his right hand.
In the place where an artifact had to display the red ring of his slavery or the black ring of his freedom either permanently embedded in the flesh this man wore a thin gold band. Matching ones adorned every finger of his right hand, even his thumb.
So, this exquisite creature had been naturally born, not test-tube assembled. Would wonders never cease?
He looked at me from beneath his artfully lowered eyelids. The corners of his lips lifted in a tentative smile.
"Living, breathing things to see at last." The fidgety older blonde who sat next to him dug a skinny elbow into his supple muscles. She wore a long yellow silk party dress, singularly out of place. "It will be a relief, after all those dried-up stones at Knossos and all the dreadful bits of pottery in museums."
He opened startling green-blue eyes and looked at her with the bewilderment of an innocent.
"But Nary, if you wanted an amusement park peopled with fantastic characters, why didn't we stay in Sea York? They do have those, you know?" His voice would serve a university professor better than a gigolo.
Which proved