Lance Olsen - Calendar of Regrets

Give me your number. I'll call the police.

This is the thing it all comes down to, man. You get it? That car. That alley. I've been working nineteen-, twenty-hour days, sleeping four or five hours a night with the dreamless intensity of drugged blackouts. I was awakened a couple minutes ago by this clicking noise. Like fingernails on a metal desk. The cockroach on the pillow beside my head was talking through a speaker in its belly. You don't think I know how this sounds? You don't think I get it? Well, fuck you. We won, it said. We know what you know. Everything's primetime now. Everyone's a talk show host waiting to happen. You should be happy. You have a purpose. You're becoming a vacation destination. We're becoming a wax museum, I said. You're becoming yourselves, it said. Yeah, well, I said. I rolled off the bed, brought up my semi-automatic. My pillow and that fucker evaporated into smoking feathers, man. Only not before the end had already been set in motion. The crash at the front door. Footsteps on the stairs. Which is the thing, okay? The thing I wanted to tell you about? It isn't about any fucking clouds of boiling seawater sucked miles into burning atmosphere off the blue coasts of the Bikini atoll. People got that all wrong. It isn't about the Berlin Wall or Bin Laden, melting polar ice caps or misfiring DNA. You know what it's about? It's about watching, man. It's about observing the almost unobservable like this stunned car-crash victim, wondering if what you just heard and saw is real, those brakes, that car skidding across the highway and through the railing and down the embankment, the flames, the palms of the family hurrying across the inside of the fiery windshield. That's what I wanted to say, man. That's all. Believe me. It makes your fucking heart sw

swollen with anticipation, Iphigenia closes her eyes and parts her lips to receive Achilles' first kiss. She immediately feels she has done this before. They are alone in Achilles' tent on their wedding night, the grand ceremony behind them. All the others have tumbled away into the past. The somber betrothal, the sacrifices, the banquet, too. It is time for the sacred unveiling.

Achilles stands before her, slender, strong, chest and arms and legs agleam with oil, teeth flawless, breath licorice and mint, eyes cucumber green.

He takes her wrists in his hands, bends toward her.

Around them, a night sky of votive candles.

Iphigenia thinking: I would sacrifice my life to save him. It is that clear, that untroubled.

But just before Iphigenia does what Anthea asks her to do, she catches sight of a skirmish erupting beside her: five attendants wrestling a terrified deer forward, its neck and hindquarters roped.

No, a goat.

No, a bull.

No, a

The attendants have lifted the buck so that its kicking hooves cannot touch earth. Hanging there, it twists madly, strangling, struggling against the flock of hands trying to hold it down, its rolling eyes an outburst of shock and panic.

Quickly , Agamemnon commands, glint appearing in his enormous right fist.

The priests make way. Anthea lets loose Iphigenia's wrists, orders her assistant to let loose her ankles, helps the frightened girl off the altar. The attendants hoist the deer onto the gray slab in her stead, force it onto its side. Its legs skitter, trying to find purchase.

In a single gesture, Agamemnon advances, yanks back its head to expose its throat, and, driving down the knife, tearing sideways, intoning: Each of us must forgo in his own way. This is called heroism. Each of us must give what he least wishes to give. This is called duty. Through forfeiture, our people hound success. For favorable winds, I do what is demanded of me.

A cable of blood arcs from the thrashing animal's neck.

It sprints briefly on its side, gargling forth its life. Its chest heaves, then its body goes flaccid as a stand of wet flax.

Agamemnon steps back, blood dripping from his knife blade, and searches the skies for a sign.

Nothing.

Again, nothing.

Then, slowly, the breeze picks up. Steadies. The atmosphere blues.

A half-smile develops across Agamemnon's face. The goddess Artemis has not been paying attention. He is almost sure of it. She has not noticed the substitution.

Today we are lucky men, he announces proudly, turning toward the crowd. Today we are saved.

Achilles is more than twice her age, twice her knowledge and wisdom. He possesses a hundred times her experience. He has seen the sun set at the end of the world. He has seen an island levitate, each snake on Medusa's head bow down in prayer, a rainstorm turn hard and white like sand, only cold, a flaming dragon fall from the night sky.

Iphigenia adores the very idea of all that understanding embodied in this doorway to her future.

She digs her nails into his shoulder blades as he has asked her to do, learning him, his body's geography, what it has to offer, what it takes pleasure in, learning about the nature of the cosmos through its furious movements.

Slides down into a weightless sleep in which she does not believe she is sleeping where, on a long white band of beach, surrounded by hundreds of lounging seals, she watches a brawny middle-aged man with scraggly thinning hair wrestle a creature that refuses to sustain its shape. He has been at it for hours. The creature transforms itself into a thick writhing python, a snarling leopard, a snorting pig, a beautiful blond female angel with a bloody wing, and, finally, a great splash of seawater that melts into the sand and is gone.

The man rises, weary, beaten, and turns to face the vast ocean once more.

But just before Iphigenia does what Anthea asks her to do, she catches sight of the glint on the white-capped waves below.

A furious wind grows out of nowhere.

The sky dims.

Thunder paces back and forth along the plum horizon.

The priests notice her looking past them and turn to see what it is she is seeing. Her father follows suit. They stagger back in horror at the huge glistening black hump splitting the sea, hurling their way.

The giant serpent's head, big as one of her father's ships, rears up out of the furrowed water in an agitation of spray and commotion.

The wind shrieks.

A grainy blizzard of dust sweeps across the altar.

Bystanders cry out in dread, scattering in pursuit of their lives. Iphigenia struggles against the flock of hands holding her down. But Anthea and her helper stand fast. They will not give. They will not let Iphigenia go.

They close their eyes. Lower their heads. Brace themselves for whatever may come next.

Struggling against the flock of hands holding her down, eyes an outburst of

A lurch, and

A lurch, and Iphigenia is twisting madly, her mouth suddenly stuffed full of Achilles' fat tongue.

Agamemnon reclining in a warm pine-scented bath upon his return from the long series of battles, head tilted back, eyelids heavy, suspended at the very edge of fatigue, proud at what he has done, content, happy to be here at last after nearly a decade away, fingering absentmindedly the latticework of scars on his chest, his left forearm, his right thigh, aware of his wife's footsteps clicking across the room toward him.

He feels his penis stir between his thighs at the sound of her.

Feels it prickle and begin to swell.

In the underworld, a gray, rubbled hollowness, Achilles' shade hobbles toward her, his armor worn, his once beautiful face gaunt, his eyes missing, his lips sewn shut with sheep gut.