Margin of Eros Read online

  Jesus felt mildly embarrassed. Not because half of the patrons in the café were staring, and not because the awkward squatting position she had assumed had revealed more of Marie’s underwear than she had probably intended to reveal on a first date. He was embarrassed because he had made the observation that when dog owners said ‘He’s never done that before,’ what they actually meant was ‘He does that all the time, but I can’t stop him and I don’t want you to think I’m a bad person.’ Jesus didn’t think Marie was a bad person, but he didn’t really like her dog and he was embarrassed that his anti-canine vibes had forced her to lie within five minutes of meeting him. ‘I am so, so, sorry,’ said Marie, when the dog had finally stopped barking. By this stage, most of the patrons had turned back to a their lattes, apart from another couple on an internet date who were smiling across at them sympathetically.

  ‘It’s really OK,’ said Jesus, as Marie settled onto the seat opposite him, subtly hitching up her jeans. ‘There’s no need to lie.’ Immediately, Marie’s eyes opened wide and her hand gripped tightly on the leash, precipitating a fresh guttural outburst from the dog. Too late, Jesus realized that it had been the wrong thing to say. ‘I mean,’ he said, sensing that he may be digging himself into a deeper hole, yet having no real option but to soldier on, ‘some people don’t like dogs. Some dogs don’t like people. It’s unrealistic to expect,’ he continued, swirling his finger through the spilled salt, ‘that every animal should like every person, all the time. And vice versa.’ He looked up at Marie apologetically, trying to gauge her reaction. She didn’t appear to be particularly impressed, but then again, she was still there. ‘What’s his name?’ asked Jesus, nodding toward the dog.

  ‘Jimi Hendrix,’ said Marie. Jesus opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Other than the obvious, there didn’t appear to be anything to say.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Marie. ‘But you should hear him sing along to the Star Spangled Banner.’

  Jesus laughed. ‘So,’ he said, ‘a musician.’

  After that, the afternoon blossomed into a video clip for a love song written by a trio of dead twenty-seven year olds. Inside the intimate cocoon, time waltzed slowly on while palm tree shadows dripped onto the sidewalk. Outside of it, chairs scraped, sirens wailed and stereos bleated; coffee cups came and went, ice melted, milk frothed and dusk fell with the manic urgency of trick photography. At around half past five, something started to buzz insistently inside Jesus’ shirt pocket, but he barely felt it. ‘I think your phone’s ringing,’ said Marie. Jesus paused, his glass of beer raised halfway to his mouth. He couldn’t even remember ordering a beer, yet here he was, drinking one. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, putting down the beer and taking out his phone, ‘I thought I turned it off.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Marie, pushing her chair away from the table and unhooking the dog’s leash. ‘You go ahead and answer it.’ For a moment, Jesus thought she was going to leave, and the possibility alarmed him so much that he had to take a large gulp of his beer, just to steady his beating heart. But then, as if blowing him a giant rainbow bubble, Marie leaned forward and whispered sweetly: ‘Jimi Hendrix needs to pee.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jesus, ‘of course.’ He was unused to animals whose excretions required supervision and was still surprised by dog owners’ willingness to assume this supervisory role. Still, as he’d put his foot in it earlier – although, thanks to the Section 53.49 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, not literally – he thought he should remain silent on the topic.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ said Marie. Jesus looked at his phone, flustered. Since his phone was on vibrate, no catchy refrain from the mid-80s had alerted him to the picture now flashing on his screen; one that Hermes had set at the same time as his personalized ringtone and which Jesus, despite reading the manual in five languages, had no idea how to remove. ‘Cute friend,’ said Marie, as she led Jimi Hendrix outside to do his business.

  Jesus frowned at the picture of Hermes posing in his Speedos at Muscle Beach. Much as he loved Hermes, Jesus found it hard to love his habit of taking a simple journey and turning it into a hair-raising detour. As he took the call, he made a mental note to keep Hermes away from Marie for as long as possible. His reticence was not motivated by jealousy. From what he knew of Hermes’ taste in women, Marie was nothing like his type and besides, he trusted Hermes from the Earth to eternity. It was more that his friend was like a walking turning point, a booby-trapped sign labeled ‘Easy’ that took you straight out of the chalet onto a black diamond run. Which was fine, when you needed a bit of excitement in your life. But sometimes – like today, for example – all Jesus wanted was a simple glide across the snow.

  ‘How did your date go?’ asked Hermes. Inside his father’s BMW, Hermes adjusted the volume on his earpiece and checked the rearview mirror as he pulled onto the I-5. On a whim, he’d decided that instead of going to Los Feliz for lunch, he’d go all the way to Mexico. Unfortunately, Hermes had been forced to eat most of the food to keep awake on the return journey, which probably wasn’t going to go down too well with Eros.

  ‘I’m still on it,’ said Jesus.

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  Jesus considered the question. ‘I don’t know. Am I?’

  ‘The point of a first date is to leave them wanting more.’ Actually, the point of most of Hermes’ first dates was to leave them with a sample of his DNA, which, had anyone had it analyzed, would have surprised a few geneticists. But the point of the kind of date that Jesus was on was definitely to gain the upper hand.

  ‘What do you mean, the upper hand?’ said Jesus.

  Hermes rolled his eyes; a pointless gesture, given that he was on the phone.

  ‘Did you just roll your eyes?’ said Jesus.

  Hermes ignored the question. ‘So what’s she like then?’

  ‘A goddess,’ said Jesus, ‘only nicer.’

  ‘Are you in love?’ asked Hermes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jesus. ‘How am I supposed to tell?’

  ‘If you have to ask, then you’re not,’ said Hermes. ‘Unless,’ he added, after a moment’s consideration, ‘you’re you. In which case, I’d probably need to tell you.’

  Jesus thought that sounded reasonable. ‘So,’ said Jesus, gazing idly out into the street, where a small crowd was gathering outside Chanel, ‘am I?’

  ‘Are you in love?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we were talking about?’

  Hermes drummed his fingernails against the steering wheel. Much as he loved Jesus, he found it hard to love his ability to take a complicated subject and distill it into elementary principles, usually with an elegant simplicity that made you wonder why you’d never looked at it that way. Somehow it took the fun out of self-absorption. ‘I’d have to meet her,’ said Hermes.

  ‘No chance,’ said Jesus.

  Hermes pretended to be offended. ‘Are you ashamed of me?’

  ‘No,’ said Jesus.

  Hermes sighed. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘what would you do if you never got to see her again? If you asked her on a second date and she screened your call, and never called you back?’

  Jesus thought about the question. Across the street, a dozen photographers were jostling for position, attracting a crowd of onlookers of their own. Hollywood sometimes reminded Jesus of the Dr. Seuss book, ‘A Fly Went By’. The fly runs from the spider, who runs from the bird, who runs from the slightly bigger animal, and so on, until they all finally realize that they are all running from, essentially, nothing. Only in the case of fame, everyone was running the other way. ‘You still there?’ said Hermes.

  ‘I’m still here,’ said Jesus. Half a block away, he noticed Marie and Jimi Hendrix heading toward the onlookers watching the photographers watching the mirage. Barely breaking stride, Marie and Jimi Hendrix stepped off the curb, took a slight detour around a black Mercedes limo, crossed the street and entered the café, without giving the growing spectacle so much as a backwards glance. ‘I don�
��t know,’ said Jesus, after another long pause. ‘Do you think that’s likely to happen?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Hermes. Idly hitting the ‘seek’ button on the stereo, he came upon a station playing ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,’ by Tears for Fears. It was one of his favorite songs.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Jesus.

  ‘Me too,’ said Hermes. He was approaching the gates of the studio and had approximately five minutes to dream up an excuse for why his twenty-minute lunch run had turned into a five-hour marathon. Even in LA, ‘Traffic’ probably wasn’t going to cut it.

  ‘And by the way,’ said Jesus, watching the afternoon light catch Marie’s caramel highlights as she poured a glass of water into a portable doggie bowl, ‘the answer to the question is ‘yes’.’

  ‘The original question?’ asked Hermes.

  ‘The original question.’

  Hermes sighed as he pulled into his father’s parking spot. All for freedom and for pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever, sang the boys from Bath. ‘That makes three of us,’ he said.

  43.

  Hermes wandered into the building around 6pm carrying a bag of corn chips and a bottle of tequila. He was the first to admit that it was a pathetic offering, but still, he had expected more than a couple of cleaners and a pregnant elevator attendant in the way of welcoming committee. Apart from those three-and-a-half lonely souls, there was not another worker around. Or so it appeared. Drifting by the petrochemical purr of the floor polisher and the dainty deceleration of the elevator, a soft lyric wandered through the atmosphere. Hermes knew the song. Lonely and low, it told a tale of love gone wrong in a whisky soaked nasal whine. Generally he was not a fan of country and western, but ever since Jesus had lent him The Best of Hank Williams, he had been coming around to both types of music. Following the drift of Hank’s heartbreak, he wove his way around a couple of corridors and cubicles and was somewhat surprised to find himself back in the print room, where his (fake) Canadian (real) cousin was pouring over a stationery catalog with the woman of their mutual infatuation.

  ‘What about this one?’ he heard Eros say.

  Violet brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, leaning forward for a closer look. ‘What is that?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a cherry pitter,’ Eros replied. ‘Saves on mess and fuss, easy to use and dishwasher safe. An essential item for the holiday season.’ Breathing in deeply, he could smell the honey shampoo in Violet’s hair. In this simple act, he felt the pleasure of a swarm of honeybees as they pierced the stamens of a thousand white blossoms in a Japanese orchard. ‘They’re nickel plated,’ he added.

  ‘Sounds completely extraneous,’ said Violet. ‘Order two.’

  ‘They’re $29.99 each,’ said Eros. ‘Plus tax.’ He paused, his pen hovering over the ‘quantity’ box.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Violet, mentally flexing the platinum plastic, ‘order five.’

  Eros grinned, marking a large V in the box.

  Entirely satisfied with the afternoon’s work, Violet closed the hefty catalogue with a bang and peered over Leo’s shoulder. He was growing on her, this slightly awkward, angel faced intern. He was like the ‘My Little Pony’ of interns. Gratuitously cute, yet strangely surreal. And perceptive, too. Not only had he instantly picked up on the subversive intricacies of catalog ordering, he had honed in on a couple of useful-but-pointless items that, despite Violet’s many misspent hours of browsing, she had somehow overlooked. ‘Um,’ she said, as she perused the strange squiggles on the order sheet. ‘Leo, are those Roman numerals?’

  Hermes, who had been hovering by the door like an uninvited party guest, felt that now was the perfect time to crash. ‘They haven’t completely embraced Hindu-Arabic numerals in Canada. At least,’ he said, glaring at Eros, ‘not in the more remote provinces.’

  Violet caught the sharp edge of the glare and deflected it with one of her own. ‘I think you’ll find,’ she said, ‘that they have.’ Canadian, autistic or both, she had started to feel very protective towards Leo. ‘And at least,’ she added, somewhat illogically, ‘they can tell the time.’ Staring pointedly at the clock above the door, she noticed for the first time that the face was made up of Roman numerals. She wasn’t sure whether this observation supported her statement, or contradicted it. Either way, she was left with no choice but to back up her words with her body language. Eros and Hermes followed her gaze. Like factory workers awaiting the knock-off siren, all three now stared at the clock face above the door, where the little hand was on the VI, and the big hand twitched anxiously around the II. Eros, for his part, felt completely stupid. Of course, he was familiar with the standard Hindu-Arabic numerals. He had simply assumed – due to the clock, and the somewhat confused vii-page ‘prologue’ of Foxhole Fury, that the two systems were interchangeable on Earth.

  ‘Well of course they can tell the time,’ said Hermes, smiling enigmatically at Violet, as if Time itself, and not willful ignorance, explained both his cousin’s numerical slip-up, and his own four-hour absence. ‘Want some Tequila?’ he added, holding out the bottle of Patrón. Hermes didn’t drink much alcohol, mainly because the effect it had on him was somewhat unpredictable. Either it had absolutely no effect at all, or it had the opposite effect to the one alchemically ascribed to his great uncle Dionysus. That is to say, it improved his balance, increased his self-awareness and decreased his tendency toward naked karaoke, even when encouraged in that direction by a vocal majority.

  The exception to this rule was quality tequila. Although not as mellow as Ambrosial Ale, it produced a giggling dizziness similar to a day spent swirling down water slides. At least, that was the effect it had on Hermes. It made Jesus talk to his cats incessantly and Eros was an untested entity. As for Violet, he could only assume that her inebriating loveliness was enhanced by the fermented nectar of blue agave. Violet, however, knew better. ‘Is this what you call dinner?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Hermes, sensing a crack in her defenses and going after it with a sharpened tortilla, ‘this is dinner.’ Holding up the bag of toasted corn, he waved it to and fro like some kind of demented hypnotist.

  Violet weighed up her options. She could either go home, microwave a meal, get morbidly drunk on red wine and spend hours torturing herself over an email to her absent movie star lover. Or, she could hang out with a couple of 20-year-olds, get pleasantly drunk on tequila, make some nachos and play ‘SingStar’ on the giant screen in the audio editing suite. Perhaps even enjoy herself. The choice was obvious, and yet even as she calculated how fast she was going to have to run in order to catch the next no. 96 bus home in time for Jeopardy!, the timetable stuck in her throat. Next to her, Leo appeared to be glowing slightly, possibly even panting a little.

  ‘Is he even old enough to drink?’ she said to Henry, in response to which the country cousin laughed so hard that Henry had to hit him on the back, repeatedly, until he coughed, wiped his eyes, and finally caught his breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, biting his lower lip as a single ecstatic tear rolled down his cheek and dripped, shimmering, onto the stationery order form. Had she been paying close attention, Violet might have been surprised to see it land on the paper, singe a small hole and rebound in a smoky valentine. So it was lucky that Hermes chose that moment to grab her by the arm and steer her out of the room, kicking Eros lightly in the shin with the heel of his sneaker as he spun around. The message was clear: Tone it down, sunshine.

  Eros nodded to himself, consciously encouraging his heart rate to fall back to a more manageable level, counting his breaths the way Jesus had taught him. Hermes was right. He was in grave danger of not only making an even bigger fool of himself, but of exposing both of them for the divine loose cannons that they actually were. Such a scenario fell into a category of Olympian defiance that made his current civil disobedience seem like a trifling misdemeanor. There would be pain. There would be mythic beasts. There would be Hades to pay. And yet, as he walked into the kitchen and found Violet
arranging corn chips on a tray while a shirtless Hermes juggled an avocado, a bottle of tequila and a Golden Globe, he reflected that behaving normally around Violet was probably easier said than done. And that Hermes was in no position to tell anyone to tone it down.

  44.

  The white Porsche spun into the parking lot with a slow motion fishtail, moving with the heavy elegance of a great white whale doing tricks under water. Apollo had always wanted to be a stunt driver, but like most things that were fun, his father had put the kibosh on it, crushing his dream like a dead squid under a green rubber boot. Cursed with perfection, Apollo was good at everything he ever did and, it was safe to assume, every other thing he’d never even tried. Music, tick. Archery, tick. Miscellaneous ball sports, tick. Seducing women, tick. Seducing men, tick. Poetry, politics, astronomy, gastronomy. Tick, tick, fucking tick. To say that he was bored with his life was selling boredom short. He was a master of all trades, and jack of all of them. Except for two: stunt driving and playing the harp. To that end, he had spent most of the last century redefining ‘virtuosic’ at the palace of his cousin Euterpe, when he wasn’t carving up her pastures on the outer edge of a chariot wheel. It was a fairly frivolous existence for a god whose beauty, brilliance and clairvoyance were exactly the kind of stardust needed to keep the popularity of the Olympians alive. But as interest in the pantheon waned, Apollo had failed to step up to the plate and as a result, the monotheists had well and truly staked their claim.

  For a brief period in the early 1990s, Apollo had abandoned his arpeggios and moved to Los Angeles with his half-brothers Ares and Dionysus. Hollywood idolatry was something he could understand, could embrace, and even aspire to. He was on the verge of hiring a publicist with a view to orchestrating a comeback, when an unfortunate run-in with a celebrity Scientologist convinced him that the Earth was undeserving of his deity. And so, Apollo II – The Sequel went into turnaround. A number of creative differences, chiefly with Ares, and universally devastating reviews of his self-penned romantic comedy Baby, Light my Lyre, were the final nails in the coffin that sent Apollo back to Olympus with his aquiline nose out of joint and his instrument tucked firmly between his legs.