Cathedrals of the Flesh by Alexia Brue

cab).
    The tiny village of Ancient Korinth, only five minutes away, centered around a cluster of creatively named restaurants - Nikos's
     Place, Themis's Place, Panagiotis's Place - that served identical menus and guarded the entrance to the fenced-off archaeological
     site. Hidden behind the barbed wire were small, privately owned neighborhood baths called balnea, but we were to study a larger, grander, imperially owned bath called a thermae at the neighboring Isthmian site. Tourist buses were parked along the small street leading to the site, and it was clear that
     Korinth was a brief afternoon stop during a three-day Peloponnesian tour. The Rooms Marinos, the campus compound for anyone
     attached to Dr Greg Christopher's retinue, was farther up the gentle slope of Ancient Korinth, removed from the fray of the
     archaeological site.
    I unloaded my things from the taxi and walked into the gated concrete courtyard of the Rooms Marinos. The sun was setting
     over the pines, and the hooting of owls replaced the cooing of doves to welcome the oncoming darkness. Fuchsia bougainvillea
     climbed the walls of the main house. Two dried-out fountains crowned with white plaster statues of boy gods decorated the
     concrete esplanade. Someone with bad taste had lavished a lot of love on this place. One hundred yards away, near some temporary
     goalposts, I spotted a group of doughy college students and two middle-aged men milling about. The two men regarded me curiously.
     I experienced a moment of buyer's remorse, and I had yet to learn that they were all Southern Baptists.
    The more dominant of the two older men was thick-limbed and heavyset, his thinning black hair combed forward in a Caesar.
     He looked the part of a patrician and possessed an air of irritability that seemed to have nothing to do with the very pleasant
     circumstances —warm May evening, pines swaying gently in the breeze, the faint smell of rosemary and lamb being prepared for
     dinner. He took an impatient swig from a water bottle that was holstered around his waist. His nose was fried to a crisp and
     looked as though it might fall from his face at any moment, thereby morphing him into one of those dime-a-dozen noseless busts,
     the kind that litter third-rate museums. I knew immediately that this must be Dr Christopher. The other had a gentler affect
     — a kind, soft-contoured face with a gap between his front teeth. I'd found my grown-up Alexandros. He wore rimless glasses
     and had salt-and-pepper hair that made it hard to age him — anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five. This must be the southern
     professor, Dr Garrett Greene, the one Dr Christopher had palmed me off on when I'd inquired the week before about digging
     opportunities.
    It was too late to turn back. Now was the moment of awkward introductions. I barreled ahead, reminding myself that I was a
     confident New Yorker who'd dealt with much worse than morose professors. My arrival was welcomed with as much effusion as
     grisly academics muster for anyone who doesn't make tenure decisions. More accurately, Dr Christopher seemed to tolerate my
     presence, whereas, by comparison, Garrett Greene seemed warm and inquisitive. I was shown to my room and introduced to my
     roommate (I hadn't been expecting that). She was a heavyset girl named Janet who'd brought a thick stack of Nora Roberts novels
     and enough anti-everything medication to run a MASH unit for a month. Our shared room with two cots and a barely functioning
     bathroom was the size of Kemal's smaller deck. The library tour and modern Greek lesson were in an hour, followed by a family-style
     dinner. I was a freshman again.
    That night at dinner, Dr Greene, who insisted I call him Garrett, and I drank red wine, while the students sipped water and
     regarded the tzatziki and spanikopita (spinach pastry) suspiciously. On the page, Garrett was someone whose curriculum vitae
     would have intimidated me, but in person he was open,