11. Dante
DANTE
My steps are steady and certain as we emerge onto the bog's path once more, but my mind and heart feel anything but. I’m not sure why witnessing Virgil enraptured in the loop, as he calls them, struck me so violently. He’s walked through both temptations resolutely, eyes downcast.
But something about this past one—for me it was some celebratory corporate dinner punctuated with fresh-shaved truffles and tuna sliced impossibly thin—sucked him in completely.
Watching it happen was equal parts fascinating and horrifying. His gaze had slid toward the scene around us, whatever he imagined, and then froze. His entire body stilled like a statue.
It sent such a jolt through me that if he hadn't responded the third time I yelled his name, I would have given him a bodily shake.
I take a step around a log floating just off the edge of the path. The swamp we traverse is changing, darkening. More moss hangs in shapes like stark, watching faces. More fog clouds what little gray light reaches here.
Something had shifted in Virgil after he emerged from the loop.
I don't know why he continues on this path with me, and I'm not sure why I hadn't bothered to consider it before.
No one does anything for free. Yet he'd nearly turned back before entering the temptations with me.
He was willing to walk away until I asked him to stay.
Perhaps that's why I'd offered up that memory to him.
The pappardelle pasta, the heaps of cheese.
Things I hadn't shared: the feel of a cracked plastic booth beneath my legs, the removed hats and mittens that allowed bare hands to graze, the sound of laughter when I unceremoniously dropped a noodle onto the table with a splatter.
Now Virgil walks quietly. I don't know his reasoning for remaining at my side even when I eschewed his counsel, but I'm fairly certain he gains little from it.
He'd mentioned being trapped here, that he enjoys experiencing things he hasn't before through others' memories. I can’t imagine that walking through his own miseries brings him any pleasure, however.
My watch ticks quietly against my wrist, and I brush hair behind my ear solely to hear the sound more clearly. More reassuringly.
Something is changing.
I'm dead.
I've accepted that.
I'm in hell.
I'm accepting that.
This man beside me has some purpose in walking with me.
I don't understand it yet, but I'm trying.
"You may join my mind again... if it helps you." I tack the last bit on, rushed and sounding far less certain than I intended.
Virgil turns to look at me. He's such a strange human—if we’re even human at all anymore.
He’s difficult to read. Most people have become boring to me because it’s so easy to discern their motivations.
There are perhaps a dozen things that drive most, and once you discover the driver, you can lead them anywhere you wish.
Virgil seems far more difficult to assign a simple label.
He laughs freely, yet seems haunted by ghosts I can't name.
He walks along steadily but pushes through realms he has no desire to traverse.
"Are you certain?" he asks. "I would not take what you have not chosen to give.”
Even his speaking it aloud—the idea of me consenting to allow him some private portion of myself—sends a sensation crawling down my neck. I've long learned not to trust others with any wisp of vulnerability.
"As you said, you'll make a better guide if you can see to navigate. And if you're not focused on your own struggles.”
He turns his face away at that. There's shame in this man. Embarrassment. Such a strange feeling to have over enjoying food. Plenty of humans give in to that mortal failing. Which makes me suspect that food itself had nothing to do with his hesitation through the last temptation.
"This next realm is the middle part of your genesis," he speaks in that soft way that matches his smooth skin and golden curls. “Many find it to be the most... difficult… part of the journey."
Ahead stands a door made of copper, studded with bolts, anchored in this eerie world like a monument. I already know what that space will reveal. My muscles stiffen, and I open my mouth to change my mind about allowing him into my thoughts, but then I force my lips to close.
It won't do us well to both be reliving whatever horrors we've endured. Whatever poor choices we've made. And if I'm dead and in hell, it matters little if he sees my shame.
"That is fine," I say, and before he can push back further, I open the door.
We step inside, my footsteps echoing. Virgil's shoes—ivory white sneakers, oddly enough—make not a single sound. The room that appears draws me up short.
The apartment is so small I can see everything at once: the single book-sized window, the neatly made bed that takes up most of the floor space, the kitchen, and bathroom, which are more like twin closets.
Nonetheless, a completely impractical desk-sized Christmas tree is perched on the single table, consuming valuable workspace.
The lights reflect in the window, making the space feel larger. Warmer.
Someone walks past me, and I tense, wishing I could burn this scene from existence.
I would take a hundred realms of temptation, a thousand moments of shame born from staring at some naked figure writhing beneath a shower's spray, ten thousand feasts, a million instances of whatever weakness damned me to this place.
Anything to avoid the moment I know we're in... and what it inevitably leads to.
Matthew walks up. He looks exactly as I remember him, but also rich with details I'd forgotten.
He's shorter than me, slim with thick dark hair and a scar through one eyebrow—a childhood biking accident that made his mother pray to every saint she knew and a few she invented in the moment.
His lips are full, his body artificially thickened by the hand-knitted sweater made by his grandmother.
"Hey, babe. How was work?"
I kiss him, gently, and something winged and soft and new flutters warm in my stomach. "Exhausting. I'm not sure I can get Christmas Eve off, after all."
"Oh." His entire body drops, and I want to snatch my words back.
To tell him I'll quit my miserable intern position.
But we both have dreams. His lie in art, mine in business, both of us trying to survive in this overpriced and heartless city.
He brightens almost instantly, as he always does.
"Well, that's all right. We'll have Christmas Day, right?
And I picked up some Chinese. I got those god-awful flavorless vegetables and chicken you like. "
I catch him from behind, wrapping an arm around his waist, stopping him as he walks toward the closet we call a kitchen. "They're healthy."
"They're inedible."
I rest my chin on his shoulder, breathing in the sweetness of him for a moment, before whispering what I've known was coming. "I had a strange phone call today. My father reached out to me. He wants to get lunch."
“Really?” Matthew looks back at me and—oh, how close he is. For a moment, I'm not Michael Dante, nearly forty. Instead, I'm babe and I'm twenty-seven and in love and broke with a Master’s degree and not much else, and it's all worth it. "Well," he says, "are you going to go?"
"I think I should. Hear him out."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No, it won't be anything. Not worth your time. It's just an opportunity for me to ask how he could walk out of his son's life and abandon him. You don't need to get to know someone that I have no intention of making part of our life."
He softens for a moment, places a kiss against my jaw right where it makes me shiver. "All right then. Come eat your tasteless dinner."
I laugh and join him.
I can feel it, the moment wanting to loop, to repeat itself. Instead of fighting it head-on or sinking into it, I do neither. Instead, I think of Virgil.
"I'm here," he says, whisper-soft.
Perhaps I spoke his name aloud without realizing it.
The next scene. A restaurant so far beyond my pay grade, I shiver to pass through the doorway.
My father stands and clasps my hand. There's a moment of artificial pleasantries with the man who looks like me—sharp nose, firm jaw—but older, his dark hair threaded with silver, his hands broad and sure.
“How could you abandon me?" I ask as the bread course arrives.
"Oh, Michael..." He sighs. "I tried to fight for custody of you, son. But you know how the damned court system is in this country. Always favors the damned women."
This pulls me up short. "You wanted to raise me?"
His mouth parts, and he brushes off the waitress offering to refill our waters. "Of course. I made some mistakes, mind. I had a temper in my younger years. I have regrets, son.”
A gasp escapes me. Despite usually disciplining my expressions, I can't help it.
“Imagine my surprise," he says, buttering a roll, "when I hear through the grapevine that a Michael Dante graduated top of his class at NYU and works for a competing firm. I had to reach out and see if it was you."
He searched for me. He found me.
"I want you," he says, and my breath catches. "To come work for me at my firm."
Once again, I don't fight the shift of memory falling as another forms around me.
Virgil's eyes have narrowed, and he stands still and stiff. When I glance at him, I catch something in his expression. It’s not judgment, but recognition.
The look of a man who understands what it means to be seduced by the promise of legacy.
Who knows exactly how such bargains end.
A new scene. I wear a sharp suit, custom, Brioni. I shake hands on another closed deal, leather gloves smooth against my palm. Christmas lights gleam in storefronts beyond us.
"Mr. Dante," the business associate—I've long forgotten his name—says. "We'll be in touch. Papers signed tomorrow."
"Happy holidays to you."
"And you." He nods to my father. "Evening."
He walks away, and my father and I stand in silence for a moment. Then he grins. "Another one in the bag. You're a chip off the old block, as they say. Let's crack open that Macallan 25."
I follow him back inside, up the elevator, through to his office with its fine leather chair and bookshelves gleaming with glass-cut trophies. The city glitters from the walls of windows as though it bows to his desires.
He pours a glass. "I have more news as well."
"As do I."
I'd finally decided to tell him about Matthew.
We'd argued more lately. Despite my moving us into Manhattan, providing him with all the time in the world to pursue his art, a credit card for whatever restaurants he wants, he's grown less happy than ever.
My late hours. The fact that I've yet to tell my father about him.
So much has happened, though. I've worked myself down to the bone, closed more deals than I ever thought possible, and doubled the value of my father's hedge fund.
The right time hadn't presented itself. And—secretly, in a way I can't hide from this realm, in a way I know Virgil can sense—I fear my father will be ashamed of me.
I've finally had him after an entire lifetime of absence that I don't wish to lose him again.
“Me first. You know Meridian Capital?" my father asks while pouring generous measures of scotch.
"Of course." They're the behemoth in our sector, commanding more than sixty percent of the market. A cowardly part of me is grateful for the delay of my portion of this conversation.
"Well, I'm out to lunch with none other than Richard Castellane this week, and I find out he has a daughter... around your age." He looks at me with a decided gleam in his eye. "Our two funds combining. Now that would be quite the merger."
Damn it. I should have spoken first. “Father, there's something I should tell you. I'm—"
"Michael." His eyes go dark and flat. "Before you speak, I want you to think about this life. The life I've given you this year. Do you like being a man of respect? Having a penthouse apartment and a seven-figure portfolio?"
I pause for a moment, thinking of Matthew's wet eyes after our last argument. Thinking of the foot-tall Christmas tree he'd stuffed into our shoebox of a home when we'd first graduated college and were living mostly on hopes.
But then I reflect on the last year. The security. Never having to scrutinize coupons or calculate whether I can afford both groceries and the electric bill. Never worrying about going hungry again.
"I do," I finally say, and it feels as though some piece of my soul departs with the words.
"Then you need to be single and very interested in a certain young woman next week. Am I understood, son?”
Another pause. Then I speak the words that will seal my damnation. I no longer wonder why I belong in hell. These memories remind me that it's a mercy Virgil bothers to walk alongside someone like me at all.
"I understand," I finally say.