The Last Stoic (12 page)

“Come on,” Gus said, handing him
a flute of champagne, “there are some people that want to meet you.”

Gus strode away, leading Mark
back through the villa to the entertainment room where he had started the
evening.  Mark followed.  Gus should know that he can be relied on, that he is
part of the team.  That he is one of them. 

This time, he heard the room
before he saw it.  The Superbowl had been switched off and a thumping, thudding
R&B was growling out of the muscular sound system.  Stepping into the room,
Mark noticed that the lights had been turned very low, with lava lamps casting
polymorphous shapes of crimson and indigo along the floor and up the walls. 
The air was thick with the oily aroma of marijuana.  On the giant plasma
screen, with all of its otherworldly resolution and high-definition, an
enormous erect penis wobbled like a drunken sailor until it was seized by a
pair of scarlet lips.  Arrayed around the room, on the various sofas, floor
cushions, love seats and overstuffed recliners, couples and threesomes petted
and stroked, caressed and fellated.

“Mark, meet Maria,” Gus said as a
young, petite Hispanic woman with dark brown hair, chestnut brown eyes, and a
very bright, warm smile appeared from the shadows, shook Mark’s hand, and
rubbed his shoulder.

 “And Tiffany.” 

Another young woman, with yellow
hair and unnaturally green eyes, emerged next to Maria, smiling.  She folded
her hand into Mark’s when he extended his to shake, and she put her arm in the
crook of his elbow.

“Mark is new to town.  I thought
maybe y’all could get to know each other a bit better.”

Gus turned to go and Mark laughed
after him loudly, like he was braying.  Before he had a chance to retreat, or
feign fatigue, Gus had already moved on.  He turned to the women, bowing his
head, unsure of what to do next.  Maria and Tiffany led him to an unoccupied
section of the leather couch.  He downed his flute of champagne and set it on a
side table. 

When in Rome
, he thought. 

The women weren’t much for small
talk.  They pressed their warm bodies against him, their slender fingers
tracing paths along his chest and down his thighs.  They whispered hotly into
his neck and ear, brushing their lips across his cheek.  His head swam as the
booze swirled and the testosterone surged.  Hyper-real images of straining,
pliant, contorting flesh flared from the plasma projector.  The boundary
between the sweaty gyrations unfolding on screen and the humid groping taking
place on the couch began to blur.  As his new companions continued to wander
across his body and his hungry hands wriggled beneath belts and probed under
straps, Mark could no longer distinguish between the tangle on screen and the
writhing on the couch. 

He scanned the room
breathlessly.  Was anyone watching?  No-one was.  They looked bored. 

Someone nearby groaned.  Loudly. 
Not with pleasure.  With disgust.

Mark raised his head and opened
his eyes.  He yanked his trousers up.  Maria and Tiffany peeled themselves from
Mark and sat upright, bewildered.  The rest of the Bacchanalians also paused to
assess the situation.  Mark peered through the crimson-tinged gloom.

“Ugghh!”

It was Chantelle, the young woman
Mark had met at the Oasis with Gus when he first arrived into town.  They
stared at each other.  She was holding a book against her chest.  Mark
blinked.  She groaned again.

“You think this is funny?”
Chantelle demanded of Gus, who had just pirouetted into the room.

“You’re late.  I didn’t think you
were coming,” he replied.

“I had some errands to run.  I
stopped off at a bookstore to pick up this.”

She thrust out the book she was
holding like it was a pointed stick.  It was a paperback edition of The
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

“I thought you might not have got
your copy yet,” Chantelle said to Mark severely, “so I picked one up for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Forget it.  Were you in on this
together?” She turned to Gus. “You invited me to a fucking orgy!?”

She waited for a response but
there was none.

“Good bye,” she said turning on
her heel to vanish as quickly as she had appeared.

Mark looked up at Gus who
shrugged.

“I invited her and told her that
you were really looking forward to seeing her again.  When the game finished
and she still wasn’t here I figured she must have changed her mind.  Bad
timing.”

Mark looked at Maria and Tiffany
and smiled sheepishly.  They weren’t the least bit put off.  Mark lay back
again and took a deep breath and attempted to digest this latest unexpected
event.  He erupted into a fit of giggles, and when they gradually subsided, he
passed out.

A shake at the shoulder roused Marcus
from his alcohol-fuelled snooze,
laid out on the lectus.  He propped himself onto an elbow and ground his fists
into his eyes.  His stomach reeled.  Another prod, this one to his midsection,
forced his eyes open.

“What is it?  What do you want?”

“Our money.”

“We have to go.”

Female voices.  Familiar voices. 
Voices that were hot and sweet not long ago.  Now icy and harsh. 

“Wake up!”  A tug at his ear.

“The sun rises.  We need to go!”

The film over his eyes thinned. 
Two women coalesced before him.  Maria and Theophania.  The pair with whom he’d
intertwined not long ago.

“Salve.”  Marcus smiled weakly. 
“It’s early, no?”

“Don’t go back to sleep.”

“Our money!”

“Your what?”

“Our fees.  Payment!  The coin
you owe us.”

“Coin?”

“Yes, we need it now.  We have to
go.”

“Money?  What for?”

Stony silence.  Pretty faces
contorted with contempt.

“You mean…for that?”

Maria nodded disdainfully.

“You’re…”

“We’re dancers,” Theophania
interjected.  “Gus hired us.”

“But I didn’t see you dance.”

“Extra services cost extra.”

“Did we actually…?” 

Marcus turned to avoid the
withering looks and his cheeks coloured.  The evening’s excess scorched up from
his sour gut and was barely turned back.  He clutched at the tunic which was
still down around his knees, genitals in full view splayed against his thigh. 
As Maria and Theophania stood by, arms folded and fingers tapping, he adjusted
his clothing and located the coin purse sewn inside.  Rifling through it he
pulled out several coins and offered them up.  His creditors were unmoved.  He reached
back and gathered up all the remaining coins.

“I’m sorry.  This is all I have. 
Take it.  Please.”

Theophania peered down at him. 
She grabbed his hand, tipped it over into hers and plunged the coins into a
fold of her toga.  Judging his obligations met, Marcus leapt from the lectus in
search of the toilet.  Laughter singed his ears as he scampered away.  Arched
over the toilet hole, Marcus expunged the greater portion of the night’s
consumption.  From the nearby wash bucket, Marcus cleaned himself and he
staggered back toward the atrium, ready for home.  He was intercepted at the
doorway.

“Marcus!  Canis filius!  Feeling
poorly?”

Gus clapped Marcus’ back.  
Marcus turned and looked into wide, unblinking eyes, the pupils heavily dilated,
the irises glowing bright.

“I had a bit too much.” Marcus
replied.

“Of what?”

“Everything.”

“Feel better?”

“A bit.”

“Good,” Gus said, producing a
flask of wine, “you can start again!”

Marcus raised his hands and
recoiled.

“Jupiter, no,” he said, “I need
to go home.”

“Suit yourself.”  Gus laughed. 
“More for the rest of us.”  He was gone, en route to his next entertainment,
not waiting for thanks or a farewell. 

Stepping gingerly through the
atrium, side-stepping single unconscious bodies and still-copulating pairs, Marcus
made his way through the fauces and vestibulum, until he was discharged into
the deserted street.  He walked ten paces along the slick cobbles and stopped,
leaning against the plaster wall fronting the senator’s villa.  Dawn was still
an hour away and the sky was a deep, bruised indigo.  A light fog had descended
on the city.  The breeze that funneled down the narrow thoroughfare was
mercifully cool and damp on his face.  Marcus held his head in his hands and
sighed deeply.  He recalled the stories Primus, Secundus and Tertius told, down
at the caupona, about what happened to the unsuspecting who found themselves
alone, at night, on certain city streets. 

A voice emanated from the
shadows.

“You!  What business?”

A pair of city guardsmen with
their distinctive helmets.  Marcus could not discern their faces.

“Me?”

“Yes, I don’t recognize you. 
You’re not from this neighbourhood.”

“I was …, at a friend’s house.”

“Oh yes?  Then what are you doing
there?”

“Just resting a minute.”

“You can’t loiter here.  This is
the senator’s residence.”

“Yes I know, I was just headed
home.”

“Move along then.”

He pulled himself from the wall
and shuffled down the laneway, headed in the general direction of his
apartment.  The streets were deserted.  Mostly. 

As Marcus navigated uncertainly
through the murk, he took some comfort from the ongoing Ludi Plebei
celebrations pouring from the domus doorways.  Belligerence and drunkenness,
shouting and laughing, slurs and tears.   More than once there was the heave
and patter of an intemperate reveller vomiting in the gutter.  At least I’m not
alone, he consoled himself.  They’re just having fun.  They have no quarrel
with me.  Now the houses were shabbier, the streets narrower and darker, the
odours more pungent.  Before long, Marcus heard nothing except the scrape of
his leather soles on the cobbles and the throbbing in his head. 

He stopped and listened hard. 
Footsteps?  Just the blood rushing in his ears.  He waited.  Still nothing. 

He exhaled in a rush and
chuckled.  Steady, there’s nothing to worry about.  Continuing, he quickened
his pace.  After only a dozen strides he paused once more, ears cocked. 
Boots!  Those were boots.  Despite the cool early morning air, beads had begun
to form on his forehead.  His breathing shortened. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Patricius Constantius the Younger
also stumbled through the shadows and fog of those same dark and narrow
laneways.  He hadn’t left the streets since arriving.  After selling Marcus’
old nag, Phoenix, to a tanner in the city outskirts, he’d spent the entire
scant proceeds on a single, succulent roast duck with all the trimmings.  Since
then he hadn’t enjoyed a dry bed or a hot meal.  Pride prevented him from
accepting charity, from begging, or asking the Christian for help.  I’ll die
like a gutter-mongrel, he swore, before I take one sestercius from the
cultist.  Now, ravenous and desperate, he was close to keeping his promise. 

He didn’t know anyone, he’d made
no acquaintances.  After holding a Ludi Plebei celebration of his own, draining
the last of his wine, Patricius set to trolling the market alleys with a vague
notion of intercepting a drunken merchant, relieving him of his coin-pouch.  A
Syrian spice trader or a Greek slave dealer, he thought, a fat, greasy son of a
bitch a long way from home.  A goat-fucker who really has it coming to him. 
Pluto’s prick, even a soused Gaulish grunter would do. 

Now there was someone in the murk
ahead, just a few paces.  A potential target.  Not too heavy, not too big,
judging from the foot fall.  Patricius stopped when Marcus stopped.  He too
listened carefully.  He assessed the noises ahead.  The hand that held the
large hunting knife, the knife he had scavenged from Marcus’ abandoned gear,
trembled and sweated.  Only the faintest silhouette was visible through the
gloaming.  So often he had fantasized of sticking one of those barbaric
bastards who had betrayed Rome.  He had one here.  He was certain of it. 

Marcus set out again, at a trot. 

“What’s the hurry?”  Patricius
hated how his voice had wavered as he spoke.

Marcus halted again, breathless.

“What are you doing prowling
around in this district, at this hour, like a spirit, like Sextus Condianus?”

Marcus didn’t respond.  Droplets
collected at his brow as he took careful steps away from the voice. 

“Maybe I could turn you in. 
Claim the reward.  Get a medal from the Emperor.”  Patricius’ laugh was
fractured by his own uneven breathing.

An arm went around Marcus’ neck. 
There was a prod of cold iron at his throat.  A hand wrenched his right arm
roughly behind his back. 

“I’m not Condianus!” he said.

“I don’t suppose you are.”

“What do you want?”

“What have you got?”

“I haven’t got any coin, I spent
it all.”

“Fraudator!  We’ll see.”

The knife remained lodged next to
Marcus’ trachea, as his captor loosened his grip and began patting down his
tunic, looking for a purse. 

“Keep your arm where it is,”
Patricius said. 

Marcus could feel hot breath
coating the back of his neck.  Patricius held Marcus close as he rifled through
his tunic.  He found the pouch and confirmed it was empty.

“No coin.”  Patricius felt his
adrenaline drain away. 

“I don’t have anything I can give
you.”

“No bracelet? No brooch?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Minerva’s marble ass!  You must
have something!”

Patricius ground his teeth. 
Fortuna spurns once more.  His earlier fervor faded into simple sadness.  He
continued to hold Marcus close to him, his chest against his back.  The grip of
his left hand intensified on Marcus’ wrist.  He could smell him, he could feel
his warmth.  The promise of the robbery had dissolved.  He clung to what was
left.  For several moments they stood like that, motionless and quiet in the
middle of the via.  The right hand continued its investigation.  It resumed its
patting, down from the empty purse over Marcus’ heart, over his tensed stomach,
under the leather belt at his waist.

What had been sapped from
Patricius now surged through Marcus.  Like a wild-eyed stag, he bounded away
and slammed into the wall directly in front of him, shouting with pain and
surprise.  He turned, and leapt again, this time clattering heavily into
Patricius, his knee striking him in the thigh and his forehead smashing his
nose.  They stood motionless face to face only twelve inches separating them. 
There was a moment of awful recognition, Marcus remembering the quiet, gloomy
young man from the roadside caupona, Patricius discovering the nefarious
Briton, his lost prey, the quarry that had brought him to his current state of
ruin. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marcus propelled himself forward,
barely eluding Patricius’ grasp.  His sandals lightly grazed the street cobbles
as he sprinted away without regard for direction or obstacles.  Blindly, he
dodged a hay cart, prominent curbs and gutter spouts, a comatose drunk, a
weaver’s signpost, and a stack of empty barrels. 

He’d run fifty paces when the
laneway jogged to the right and he rattled heavily into the stone wall of a
bakery.  His leg struck first, then his hand, and then his head.  He lost
consciousness and dropped to the street.  Waking seconds later, Marcus didn’t pause
to check for damage.  He continued running, ignoring the pangs coming from his
foot and wrist, the throbbing in his temple, and the burning at his throat,
gashed by Patricius’ dagger at the moment of escape.  After a half dozen blocks
he slowed.  After a half dozen more he stopped.  He listened.  Nothing.  It was
quiet, except for his panting, which also gradually diminished.  Marcus crept
into a damp alleyway and slumped against the wall.  His tunic was heavy with
perspiration.  The crispness in the air that had once refreshed now penetrated
his skin and chilled his bones.  He hugged his knees to his chest for warmth
and composure but nothing could calm his shivering.  As the adrenaline
dissipated, his heart rate slowed, fatigue overtook him and he fell asleep.

Someone was touching him, on his
face, on his thigh.  He shouted something unintelligible, something guttural.

“Shhh!”  A gentle, female voice.

Marcus peered through unfocussed
eyes.  A diminutive young woman bent over him, dabbing a sponge at his
forehead.  A larger figure stood a few steps behind her.

“It’s ok.  It’s ok.  You’ll be
fine, just a couple of scrapes.”

The warm voice enveloped him, a
thick, down blanket. 

“You can rest now.  You’re safe.”

It didn’t matter if it was just a
dream.  Sleep descended again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Patricius could not believe that
he had once more lost his mark.  He trailed him for several blocks, but
eventually the boot steps faded.  All he had, wandering the district, searching
and hoping, was a headache and a bloodied nose.  An hour later he stumbled into
the same street where he had confronted the Christian and the Parthian beggars,
shortly after his arrival in the city.  Patricius crossed to the corner looking
for the wild-haired refugee and his crippled sister, recalling the humiliation
and impotence of that earlier meeting.  He clapped the blade of the knife into
his free hand.

The refugees were camped out in
the mouth of an alleyway.  The cripple lay sleeping on a mound of blankets. 
The snoring brother leant against the wall of the adjoining domus.  There was a
third, snoozing beneath a black cowl.  Patricius peered through the lifting
gloom.  The Briton!  Marcus was wrapped in the woolen garment, his untroubled
face gleaming through the murk.  With the Parthians.  Patricius hooted.  For a
breath catching moment he imagined dispatching the beggars while they slept.