Margin of Eros Read online

And then, retrospectively, he disappeared.

  29.

  Jesus hung up the phone and squeezed Romeo gently behind the ears, lifting his fur away from his spine and invoking a gratifying display of kitty bliss. Compared to the Olympians, Jesus’ life was relatively uncomplicated. He still felt confident that their plan to get Eros banished to Earth was a sound one, but he had to concede that both Eros and Hermes had a point – he really had no idea when it came to women. Which was precisely why, prior to taking Eros’ panicked phone call, Jesus had been working on his online dating profile on YiDate.

  Jesus liked to amuse himself with the idea that his foray into online dating was an anthropological experiment. Of course, he was fully aware that he wasn’t the only lonely soul in town sheltering under that philosophical ruse. He had chosen YiDate not because he specifically wanted to date Jewish women, but because he specifically didn’t want to date Christians. He just thought it would be awkward. He didn’t really want to date an atheist either and in his experience, the default position of the ‘spiritual but not religious’ was some kind of Christian/Wiccan hybrid, whereby ‘God’ was simply replaced by ‘the goddess’, who still came with her own set of parental baggage.

  Also, it was one less multiple-choice question to answer.

  ‘Describe your personality in one to two sentences.’ Jesus thought about that for a moment. ‘Curious,’ he wrote. Then stared into space for a good five minutes. He was still staring when Alfa sprang into his lap, looked at the small screen resting on Jesus’ knees, then looked back at Jesus with an upturned left whisker, as if to say ‘LOL’. ‘You’re right,’ said Jesus, deleting it. ‘Curious’ could imply that he was curious about life. Or it could be code for ‘bi-curious’. He tried again. ‘Curious about life.’ But what exactly did he mean by ‘life’? He frowned. This was more difficult that he thought it would be. Couldn’t he just put up a picture? His voice coach had recently encouraged him to get some head shots done and the results had been quite pleasing. Even Hermes had conceded that they made him look ‘datable’.

  He had just about decided to give the whole thing away as a bad joke when the phone rang.

  ‘Hallelujah,’ said Hermes.

  ‘Hey,’ said Jesus, his finger hovering over the ‘delete profile’ button. ‘Can you describe my personality in one to two sentences?’

  Hermes didn’t miss a beat. ‘Great guy, spends a little too much time with his cats but always there for you with a craft beer.’

  Jesus was impressed. ‘Thanks,’ he said, typing in Hermes’ answer pretty much verbatim, only substituting ‘nice’ for ‘great’ and omitting ‘craft’, in case it made him sound pretentious. ‘I think your cousin is a bit nervous,’ he added.

  ‘With good reason,’ said Hermes. ‘I think his mother is up to something.’

  ‘The crying?’ said Jesus.

  ‘No, I just got a text from one of the Furies. Aphrodite and Hera were spotted drinking cocktails together on the beach. And they hate each other.’ And after a moment’s pause: ‘She cried?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Then we’re screwed.’

  Idly, Jesus scrolled onto the next page of his online profile. ‘Describe your interests in two to three sentences.’

  ‘Are you online dating?’ asked Hermes. ‘Jesus, I could set you up with anyone you want.’

  ‘I know,’ said Jesus. ‘But, you know…’ He sighed. ‘Cats, obviously. And beer. Would it sound obsessive if I mentioned cats and beer again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hermes, feeling vaguely irritated. He was due at the Olympic Council in under an hour, at which he would be forced to vote on who knew what gods-awful punishment for his cousin, merely because Eros had refused to complete the infatuation cycle of the biggest douche bag Hermes had ever met, and the woman that he was beginning to suspect he was in love with.

  ‘Maybe I’ll skip that one,’ said Jesus. ‘Describe your ideal relationship…’

  ‘My ideal relationship,’ interrupted Hermes, ‘is with a woman who takes off her underwear in a restroom and casually hands it to a movie star in front of her colleagues.’

  Jesus frowned. ‘Do you think I should put that down? It seems a bit too narrow.’

  ‘Not you,’ said Hermes. ‘Me. That’s my ideal relationship.’

  Jesus thought about it for a minute. He may not have been the quickest greyhound out of the gate when it came to women, but when it came to human relationships – or even divine/human relationships – he was extraordinarily perceptive. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Hermes.

  ‘Do you want to come around for a beer?’ Jesus asked. ‘I’ve got some Canadian porter.’

  ‘No time,’ said Hermes. ‘If I want to be vaguely coherent for the trial, I’ve got to get out of here. I’m on countdown now.’

  Jesus frowned. ‘You wouldn’t sabotage the trial…’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ said Hermes crossly. He was angry at himself for admitting his feelings, but at the same time, relieved to have done so. In the tumultuous and unstable situation he now found himself in, the only thing that was clear to Hermes was his overwhelming need to have Violet love him back. That she could do this without making love to him had not yet occurred to him. And when it did – much, much later – it was not the crushing blow to his ego he might have expected, but a joyous explosion of gratitude. Unfortunately, before he was able to learn that lesson he was going to have to live through several banishments (Eros’ and his own), an estrangement (Eros again), a bloody battle (his own) and a near death experience (Violet’s). So it was a good thing that all he was feeling at that moment was a little confusion, lust and guilt.

  ‘So anyway,’ said Hermes, clearing his throat, ‘I’m not sure what kind of shape Eros is going to be in when he gets here. You might want to stock up on cinnamon sticks. And maybe some rooibos and ginger tea. You can get it at Trader Joe’s.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Jesus, making a note. ‘And thanks for the help with my profile.’

  ‘Forget about internet dating,’ said Hermes. ‘I’ll set you up with a development assistant at Paramount. You’ll love her. Her name’s –’

  And suddenly he was gone, as the countdown timer to his trans-dimensional leap hit zero and the cracks warped and wefted around their heavenly cargo.

  Back on Earth, Jesus blinked at the page in front of him. After a moment’s hesitation, he dragged his finger across the screen and hit ‘save profile’. Then he shut down his iPad, ejected his cats from his lap and went off in search of a strong ale.

  30.

  Violet lay on her bed counting her breaths. And when that didn’t work, she stole a Valium from Ashley’s bedroom and made herself a cup of peppermint tea.

  Ashley wasn’t home for once, which made the whole situation seem less real. Or rather, it temporarily removed the burden of truth from the situation, in so far as ‘truth’ could be considered to be anything indiscriminately broadcast on Ashley’s Facebook page. When the Valium started to kick in, Violet finally felt calm enough to call the office with an all-purpose gynecological excuse. She got as far as dialing the first seven digits when she remembered that Aaron was taking the afternoon off. Not only would he not miss her absence, he would present her with a small gift the next day – a Jo Malone miniature perfume gift box, say, or a set of travel sized Origins body soufflés – that he always claimed they were giving away in his first class lounge. Violet knew this to be a lie – not because she had flown first class and had any evidence to contradict his claim, but because she booked all Aaron’s travel and knew for a fact that the times he was most generous, he hadn’t been anywhere at all. Or at least, not anywhere out of town.

  She had a theory that he spent these absent afternoons with hookers, and that these hookers had a sideline in discount cosmetics. It hadn’t occurred to Violet that the gift giving was motivated by his guilt, and it couldn’t possibly have dawned on her that his guilt was a result of spending the afternoo
n with the goddess of love, who he didn’t love, instead of his executive assistant, who he did.

  There didn’t seem to be much left to do with the afternoon except take a long bath, but Violet didn’t want to risk taking all her clothes off in case there was an earthquake and she had to run out into the street, naked apart from a bath towel. OK, that wasn’t the real reason, but she didn’t want to add yet another paragraph on masturbation to an already overloaded text. So she sat quietly at the kitchen table, sipped her peppermint tea and read Walgreens catalogs until, some forty-five minutes later, Ashley burst through the front door, her mouth flapping in the paroxysmal throws of a multiple verbal orgasm.

  31.

  The members of the Olympic Council were an impressive bunch. Except on casual Friday (or ‘casual sex Friday’, as Hermes liked to call it), when nudity was the norm, Council members were decked out in the most stunning bejeweled, be-feathered and bedazzling creations ever gathered in one location, outside of Liberace’s closet.

  Eros wasn’t a member of the Council, which saved him from the awkward necessity of having to nominate a proxy for his own judgment. All the same, he thought he might dress for the occasion, reasoning that if you can’t beat them or join them, you can still sartorially shame them. By bribing a prison raptor with the promise of a free golden fawn show, he was able to get word to his dressmaker on the outer Aeolian islands. His line of credit with the dressmaker was long, as he had previously arranged for both the local silkworm breeder and the local goatherd to fall in love with her, which pretty much gave her a lifetime supply of sumptuous fabrics. Also, she was a dab hand at natural dying methods and could produce shades of blueberry and lavender that had been known to make the Muses swoon.

  Eros fidgeted nervously with the tie of his cape. Despite Jesus’ reassurances, he was sick with anxiety. When the centaurs came to get him, the delicate folds of indigo silk under his armpits were stained a deep Prussian hue, giving the impression that he was sweating ink. His Egyptian snakeskin sandals slapped against the cold marble, echoing all the way to the great hall in time with the drums of the Fates, who flanked the entrance to the Council chamber on all such fateful occasions, smirking or winking, depending on the extent to which they had been snubbed, seduced or stalked by the prisoner. In Eros’ case, all three Fates were only too familiar with his mother’s meddling, so they looked upon him with a certain amount of sympathy. Still, their drums beat with the same resolute certainty as they did for any god, hero or demigod about to face the Olympic Council, as if to say, in actylic pentameter, ‘It’s out of our hands now, baby.’

  They were all there: Zeus, Eros’ grandfather, el Presidente and philanderer; Hera, his wife and first lady, goddess of matrimony and the missionary position; Poseidon, the gay uncle, god of scuba divers and skinny dipping; Demeter, beloved patron of the poppy and the pig, goddess of heroin and ham sandwiches; Athena, patron of Athens and democracy, reluctant goddess of the Euro; Dionysus, inventor of the beer goggle, peer pressure and the phrase: ‘One for the road’, patron of disqualified drivers; Apollo, god of light, music, poetry, prophecy and archery, and thus, a complete asshole; Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt and the hymen (not ‘the hunt and the cunt’, a playground chant which, although ubiquitous in Olympus, was not strictly accurate); Ares, god of violence, children’s television and puppies; Aphrodite, goddess of love, drag and drama queens; Hephaestus, Aphrodite’s long-suffering husband, master blacksmith and inventor of the phrase ‘going at it hammer and tong’; and Hermes, fleet-footed lovable rogue, patron of FedEx and fellatio.

  The number of hours of needlework required to clothe the Olympic Council in the kind of ostentatious splendor that greeted Eros was not fit to be contemplated by anyone not cursed with an eternity of solitude. Appliqué was in that year. As was Chinese calligraphy. The result was part tattoo parlor parody, part psychedelic quilter’s conference. The simple elegance of Eros’ flowing lines and (unfortunately, non-colorfast) aquatic spectrum was overshadowed by what appeared to be a bunch of transsexual Eurasian showgirls and their biker boyfriends. Even Hermes looked a little sheepish in what appeared to be several sheep, draped over his shoulders and offset by a short crimson sarong, inadvertently decorated with ‘I hate yum cha’ in Chinese characters. Poseidon, on the other hand, hadn’t bothered to change for the occasion and was therefore comparatively understated in his mother-of-pearl jumpsuit.

  Boom. Zeus let his scepter fall into the well-worn groove next to his throne. Standing in the center of the room, Eros felt the sound reverberate through his feet, a direct result of clever engineering in the Council chamber and the ‘form over function’ design philosophy of his flimsy soled sandals.

  Boom. It was like being tickled under the toes by an echidna. Eros shifted from one foot to the other, trying to alleviate the sensation until he caught the edge of a glare from Artemis (doe skin kimono with the embroidered kanji for ‘Huntress’ on the back, silk ocher turban and thigh high biker boots). He stopped moving.

  Boom. ‘Eros, son of Hephaestus,’ Zeus began.

  ‘Dream on,’ Eros muttered under his breath, glancing across at his actual father, Ares, who was studiously avoiding eye contact.

  ‘You have been brought before the Olympic Council today for a direct breach of an Olympian decree,’ Zeus continued. ‘Do you have anything to say in your own defense?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eros, clasping his cape for courage. He cleared his throat. All eyes fell upon him as he mustered up his last thimble of courage. ‘It was a dumb decree,’ he said at last.

  The collective intake of breath in the room caused a series of cascading ripples in the feathers, fur and faux oriental fabrics of the assembled gods and goddesses.

  ‘Are you suggesting,’ roared Zeus, ‘that a decree issued by this Council – after lengthy debate using all the rhetoric at our disposal, voted on after a long lunch and agreed upon unanimously could possibly be – and in fact was – as you so eloquently put it, dumb?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eros. ‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.’

  Again the intake of breath. Demeter even went so far as to flutter a feather boa in front of her face. This, from the goddess whose unsanctioned trip to Hades to rescue her daughter was directly responsible for Spring break.

  ‘I see,’ said Zeus, lifting his scepter, ‘then I have no choice but to –’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Hermes. ‘May I say something?’

  Zeus paused, his scepter in mid-air. ‘Were you proposing to defend the indefensible?’ he asked. Aphrodite started to giggle. Then, realizing she was the only one, stopped.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Hermes. ‘I just want to make sure you have all the facts.’

  ‘The facts?’ said Zeus, resting his scepter temporarily in its groove.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hermes, glancing at Eros and noticing for the first time that his arms seemed to be turning purple. ‘The facts surrounding this blatant and deliberate attempt to undermine the Council, the punishment for which should be the severest available.’

  ‘But –’ blurted Aphrodite.

  ‘Something to add, Aphrodite?’ asked Zeus. All eyes were suddenly on her sequined leotard and ermine headdress.

  ‘I thought we agreed,’ she said meekly.

  ‘Nothing is agreed upon until the final vote,’ said Zeus. ‘Let’s hear what young Hermes has to say.’

  All eyes were now on Hermes, except for Eros’, who was glaring at his mother with a mixture of rigid fear and boiling rage.

  ‘It is clear that for some time,’ said Hermes, ‘Eros had been looking for an opportunity to defy the Council. To branch out on his own, so to speak.’

  With the showmanship of a TV barrister, Hermes held their rapt attention. This was better than Judge Judy. The Furies, who had bugged the room, were now broadcasting it all over Olympus. The live audience numbered among the thousands, not including lucid goats.

  ‘What proof do you have of this?’ said Zeus.

  ‘P
roof?’ said Hermes, all of a sudden beaming with the same maniacal glee that had convinced Violet, when she first met him, that he was an intractable nutcase. ‘This is all the proof you need.’ With a flourish, he reached into the sheepskin folds of his long cape and pulled out a golden arrow. ‘No number,’ whispered Hermes, over the hushed awe that had descended on the room like a San Jose sea fog.

  ‘No number?’ growled Zeus, his eyebrows seeming to merge. ‘You mean, this a freelance arrow?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hermes, twirling it around like a baton. And then the final nail in the coffin: ‘It’s untraceable.’

  Of course, the arrow was a fake, an untreated blank stolen by Hermes from Hephaestus’ workshop one night after Hermes managed to get the old god so drunk on Cycladian cactus wine that he passed out in a bowl of hummus.

  ‘Untraceable!’ Zeus turned to his grandson, eyebrows now seeming to ignite it a single white flame. ‘Is this true, Eros?’

  Eros wasn’t much of a liar. But his desire to be over and done with this circus overcame his every inclination towards honesty. ‘What if it is?’ he sneered. Or at least, tried to sneer.

  ‘You know what this means?’ roared Zeus. Eros nodded. His grandfather lifted his scepter, and when he brought it down, small lightning bolts shot out from the end, one of which started a fire in Artemis’ feather boa, causing a small commotion until Poseidon managed to put it out with a glass of ambrosial ale. ‘Banishment,’ intoned Zeus, with no sense of anticlimax.

  ‘What?’ screamed Aphrodite.

  ‘All in favor,’ said Zeus. Nine Olympians raised their hands in the air. Zeus turned to his wife. ‘Hera?’

  Hera sniffed. ‘I’m with Aphrodite,’ she said.

  Zeus rolled his eyes. ‘I hardly think castration is sufficient punishment for such a heinous crime.’

  Eros suddenly saw the floor come up to greet him. It was only with an immense effort that he managed to catch himself before his head hit the deck. ‘Castration?’ he whispered hoarsely. On his hands and knees, he felt the full weight of his predicament in the three feet of solid marble beneath him.