Callimachus’s Hymn to Athena

“I have a room that way,” I said, pointing northwest into the shape of the hills rising against more distant hills, vaguely distinguishable as deepening shades of black. “No,” she said. “Not there. They’ll find my blood all over your floor. Even if you wash it away, it’ll light up in those special lights, like in the movies.” “Where then?” “Somewhere else. I shouldn’t know where. It should be a secret.” “All right,” I said. “Oh god, his face. You caught him good. Sissy will need to put makeup on him for the ceremony. Imagine it,” she said. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Don’t get off here.” “I have a room that way.” “That’s too depressing. God, I couldn’t bear going to your room. Keep going. Good god. Keep going.” “OK,” I said, and turned off the blinker. And we went on, past a pillared rock formation out in the water and a few beach villages and the untenanted shopping center, and past the city that had fallen asleep without us. “My grandparents lived down there,” she said. She tapped the window. “Just there. Every summer when we were kids, we were just there,” she said. “Grandma’s living with Mom now, but that’s where the house was. Look, that’s it.” The little seaside neighborhood was laid out in neat rows and lit with lampposts so that I could make out from above the grid of streets and homes by the lighted vertices, swerving around a bit on the road as I did. She said, “That’s why Sissy’s wedding’s here. Right? I’d probably do it the same way if it were me. Not now. But I would’ve, if I’d married first. No, I don’t want you to get off here. Anywhere but here.” She put her hand down upon mine on the shifter and squeezed my crooked fingers. A lance of white agony carved, in an instant, up my arm and rattled my eyes like pill bottles. “I wasn’t getting off,” I managed. “You’ll have to bury me. Knock me over the head first,” she said. “Do you have a shovel, or will you dig my grave with your hands like a dog?” I told her to cut it out. “It’s not funny anymore,” I said. “Don’t be so dull,” she said. “Good god. Imagine me being murdered by a dull man. Good god! What are you even doing here? You don’t live here do you?” “Yeah,” I said. “I have a room back that way.” “I wonder sometimes—i used to wonder—passing through a Podunk spot like this: who the hell ends up living here?”