Prodigals by Greg Jackson Page A

the property and said sure, but Léo climbed into the Range Rover, coffee in hand, and motioned me up. We drove off without a word. The roads were empty in the early morning, the sun above us burning into a thin screen of cloud.
    â€œI thought you’d like to see the Temple of Mercury,” he said, “because of Rome.”
    I had mentioned the article at dinner and now said “Great,” as though I had any clue what he was talking about. It turned out be a temple, dating back to Roman times, at the top of a dormant volcano called Puy de Dôme. The mountaintop had a distinctive hump shape which I found familiar, and I said as much.
    â€œIt is the end of a Tour de France stage,” Léo said. “Maybe you have seen it on TV.”
    This seemed plausible, and I said—stupidly, I later thought—that it was always a bit uncanny to see in person things you have only ever seen on TV.
    â€œUncanny,” Léo said. “This means what?”
    â€œWhat does it mean?” I said. “Familiar—or almost familiar—but in an unsettling way.”
    â€œAh,” said Léo.
    We were at the top of the mountain. The cool air whipped at the fabric of our shirts. The ruins of the temple lay before us, the long stone walls terracing the lava dome. Above the dark scattered rocks a broadcasting station with a tall antenna rose into the sky.
    â€œThis is maybe how it is when people look at me,” Léo said. “Even Marion. Like instead of me she sees Léon Descoteaux. And who is that?”
    We gazed out at the Chaîne des Puys, a string of ancient volcanoes leading off into the clouds that gathered above the mountains in the distance. It felt like a moment to say something generous and true and the story of watching Léo in the U.S. Open semifinal tumbled out of me before I could stop myself. I told him I felt I had seen something special that day, something personal, perhaps even him . I said it was like watching what beauty or grace could do against power, and it made me hopeful that beauty had a chance. I had a vague idea that you could talk to French people this way.
    Léo frowned and gestured toward the temple. “You know, they used to think that Mercury, he carries the dreams from the god of dreams to the dreamer. I sometimes wonder if he ever switches the dreams along the way.”
    â€œLike a prank?”
    â€œMaybe like a prank,” Léo said. “Like say you’re Oedipus and you’re supposed to dream you fuck your mother and kill your father. But Mercury switches them and instead you kill your mother and fuck your father. Maybe you spend your life worrying you’re gay.”
    â€œOr you’re supposed to dream you’re the journalist. I’m supposed to be the tennis star.”
    â€œMaybe you dream you’re naked in front of the class,” Léo said. “Except instead of being embarrassed, you like it.”
    We drove home through a small village and stopped at a market in the town square. Léo picked out supplies for lunch and asked me about Vicky, how long we had known each other, when we’d met, and so on. The story of our meeting, which I told him, was one I’d repeated so often it now had more to do with prior tellings than anything else. I’d worked for the paper in college and had been writing a piece on classmates of particular and narrow excellence when I met Vicky. I’d interviewed a cellist with perfect pitch, a math genius who wrote equations in the fog of bathroom mirrors, a poet anthologized in her teens. Vicky was my last interview. Compared with the others she was wonderfully grounded. To judge by the first three, superlative talent came with a form of insanity. They all admitted to me in one way or another that part of them hated the distorting influence of their abilities, part of them longed for normalcy, because what struck everyone else as incredible came to them so