Gev Sweeney: Stories & Stuff

THE AIRY slap of bare feet upon a marble floor, the gentle clap of a hand upon naked flesh, the sigh of a gardener’s trowel impaling the earth: all say to me, “Ioannes.” He’d been the talk of Alexandria long before I knew him. People yawned when the governor of Aegyptus hosted games for victories over minor enemies in obscure parts of the Roman Empire, but they all went mad for the briefest glimpse of Ioannes. I had no idea why. He was a dancer, and I had no interest in dancing. I was a slave—an embroiderer and flax spinner for the wife of an advocatus, a counselor of law, in the Greek Quarter. My concerns, my indulgences, my interests were invested in the desires and needs of those who, at their whim, could get rid of me as quickly as they had bought me. But Ioannes noticed me, and I became the first of many he would call away from lives which, like mine, were renderings of incarceration, with an inventive mess of colors and designs more befitting the tomb of an ancient pharaoh...

IN the spring of 1797, Papa brought me to Philadelphia for what would be my last visit to our house. As we sat over dinner in the garden, he revealed the Church was opening a mission for expatriates in Paris. Because the French government at that time banned Christian denominations, the mission would be discreetly centered at an orphan asylum, which the presiding bishop himself had asked Papa to administer. For the second time in four years, my father was separating himself from me with what I perceived as a passion that approached willful neglect of his only child. I regarded him as if he had just jumped from a hot-air balloon without a parachute. “Papa, this is your home! This is my home! How can you leave it? How can you leave me?” Slowly, he cut his meat into tiny pieces. “Sweetie, I’d like you to understand that we who have decided upon this mission are neither pious men who wish to put on a show of devotion to God, nor cowards who wish to run from the city. Remember what...

R ICHARD ironed his nostrils with the back of his hand. All eyes around his desk looked elsewhere. You didn’t correct Richard’s less sociable antics. Not if you wanted to find your tires still stiff and plump when it was time to go home. The New Guy, who didn’t know better, acted like all the other New Guys on their first day at the collection agency: Solicitous. Brainlessly solicitous. “Jeez, Dick, I’ve got some Benadryl tablets on me, if you want to shut off that tap.” The New Guy yelped and spun around as the stapler bounced off his forehead. “Call me that again, and I’ll give you a dick up your ass. Sheila, you got a mirror in your cosmetics case? I want him to see the hole in his head. He looks like a teacher’s aide punctured by toddler demon seeds. You’re supposed to intimidate a client into paying their bills, not make them laugh their scrotums off. Who was I sending you to?” New Guy swore as Richard yanked the paper from between his fingers, leaving a skinny red st...