Jake, Son of Zeus

The box Jake kept safe for Zeus faded in and out of his attention, as though it were a usually introverted child who sometimes wanted to be entertained. After a lot of thought, Jake moved it from his dresser top to the closet. He hoped separating himself from it by a door and a couple of feet would help him forget it, but even then, he thought about it, and without realizing what he was doing, began trying to figure out how to open it. After an hour in bed, Jake went to the closet, switched on the light, and examined the box. There were no seams that he could see, where the top would meet the bottom. It seemed completely whole, and it was heavy enough to be solid all the way through. In fact, now that the thought occurred to him, he figured there must be something very heavy inside or the hollow place inside was very small. The woman on top seemed to be inviting him to focus his mind completely on what might be inside.

Twice, he found himself standing at the closet door and forced himself to go back to bed. He couldn't be sure whether it was a desire to keep it safe or a desire to be near it and open it that brought him ever more strongly to that spot.

He fell asleep thinking of the box and the woman on top, who moved in his dreams with a serious grace.

Most of the time, though, Jake dreamed about Rachel. Often the three of them were together, and he would be driving down an endless, winding road beside a postcard ocean. Rachel would be beside him, Lily leaning forward between the seats, and they would be laughing or singing along to the radio. Or they would all be stretched out on a picnic blanket beneath trees so thick with leaves that Rachel would think it was evening and time to leave, and she would lift the end of the blanket and begin to shake the leaves off no matter how desperately Jake tried to convince her that it was just shadow, not night, that they still had hours, as much as half a day, together. But she kept shaking the blanket, and Jake would have to shield his eyes from the brittle leaves and twigs and insects that shrapnelled off in every direction.

Sometimes, though, it was just the two of them. Rachel would wear a thin summer dress and come to lie next to him on the white blankets in the white room where sunlight seemed to come, not just from the wide open windows, but from every surface. She would bring him wine or cookies or breakfast and sit with him, talking and laughing, until he set the food aside and pulled her against him.

In those dreams, he never asked himself if he was dreaming. If the thought even began to push at the edge of his dream, he immediately curled around Rachel more tightly. But it didn't matter. The dreams always ended, and Jake got out of bed and went to make coffee under the bare yellow kitchen bulb, trying to decide whether he wanted to remember the dream or forget it.

He measured out coffee grounds and filled the decanter with the distractedness of habit. Surely, she would forgive him for whatever it was he had done. Surely, he would find a way to extinguish the light of immortality in him that drew the insects of the immortal world into his life. Surely, he would get to go home again.