Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  He squeezes my shoulders. “I’m trying to make it better for you.” He lets go of me and moves to the wall. “Since I didn’t want to send in a cameraman, you’re going to have to watch your position in the room. Cameras and microphones are installed here.” He points at the center of a distinctive whorl in the mosaic. “Make sure you keep that in mind. We’ve positioned the chaise longue where we’ll get plenty of good angles and great light as long as you stay there. Think of it as your red zone. If you mess this up, I can promise you that after the first cut to commercial, your dad will have me send a cameraman in here pronto.”

  “I can’t do this, Icarus,” I say, turning back toward the door.

  “Yes, you can,” he says, his voice professional. “This isn’t a decision, Ariadne. It’s happening.” He pulls me in close, putting his arm around me. “It’ll be like ripping off a Band-Aid, popping your reality cherry. It doesn’t even hurt that much your first time. Or so I’ve been told.”

  He’s practically begging me to laugh, to take some of the awkwardness away. But I can’t.

  “How can you ask me to do this?” I say.

  He looks at me so seriously, the same as he has always been—a lonely boy, sad and true—my only friend. “Ariadne, I don’t have any choice—and neither do you. This”—he gestures at the room, my dress, everything—“this is our life, yours and mine. The best we can do is make it as beautiful as possible. We have to make you as beautiful as we can.”

  “How can that be enough?”

  “It has to be,” he says. “Beautiful or ugly, those are the only choices we have. Unless you’d like another kind of penance? A kind of penance that doesn’t involve soft cushions and a cute boy?”

  I shiver, remembering the chain on my ankle and the waves pulling me under.

  Icarus hands me a piece of paper. “Your lines,” he says. “Memorize them.”

  I look down at them—three sentences: I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stand the thought of you dying. I’ll help you …

  “Not much dialogue,” I say.

  “Yeah, people are not staying up late for this very special episode because they want to watch you talk to Theseus. You need to convince Theseus, and the viewing public, that you have fallen for him, that you are betraying your family, and the gods, for him. By the end of this very special episode, we need to see some skin.”

  “I can’t…,” I say.

  “You can.”

  All this time, I thought the deaths of the Athenians were the only sacrifice the gods demanded. I was wrong. The gods were asking something of me, too. More than my childhood, which they stole so long ago I barely remember it. They have to take my soul, too.

  Icarus kisses me lightly on the forehead. “You can do this.”

  I whisper, “Don’t make me.”

  He leans in close to my ear. “This isn’t me. Don’t ever think I’d do this to you. Neither of us has any choice.”

  Together we leave that crooked room, as he goes back to showrunning, and I return to my own room and whatever new outfit my mother has planned for me to wear.

  Guess you can’t risk being underdressed for betrayal.

  ELEVEN

  For the first time in my life, I’m attending one of my mother’s dance parties. It’s exactly as horrible as I’d feared. The flashing red lights, the hanging smoke, the music so loud and rhythmic that it pushes out coherent thought.

  It is a crush of beautiful people, posing for one another and the cameras. The Athenians are here, too. Traditionally, the night of the drawing brings some real drama on The Labyrinth Contest. A fight. Drunken confessions. Hookups galore. Someone will get pushed into that pool fully clothed before the evening is over.

  People do crazy things when their days are numbered.

  I stand at the corner of the room, unsure about what I’m even supposed to do. The cameras are here. My bodyguards are behind me. I spot two of the Athenians making out on the dance floor. There’s no sign of Theseus.

  I understand my blocking for tonight.

  Now I have to survive it.

  My mother breezes past, arm in arm with Xenodice. She pauses to take a hard look at me, appraising, pleased with her handiwork. “Dance, darling,” she says before she is off.

  I escape to the bathroom instead. In the ladies’ room, the music descends from deafening to mind-numbing.

  I look at my face in the mirror. I don’t even look like myself. My makeup was reapplied when I went back to my room, and they’ve put me into a different dress. This one is very pale blue, signaling my ingénue status, but it’s made of strips of Lycra, like a bandage. My sisters love a bandage dress, but I’m finding it nearly impossible to navigate. I tug at the bottom of it, hoping for a bit more coverage on my thighs. Why is the skirt so short? Why doesn’t it have a back? Why are we pretending that it counts as clothes?

  My phone and the ball of silver thread are in the small silver bag that dangles off my wrist. Even here, in the bandage dress, I’m on duty if my brother starts an earthquake.

  Giggling comes from one of the stalls, and when the door opens, Acalle comes out, adjusting her skirt (as short as mine). Vortigern follows her, looking embarrassed. He is zipping his pants, tucking his shirt in. Also, he’s a guy. In the ladies’ room.

  In front of the mirror, next to me, Acalle reapplies her lipstick, which has smeared. She ignores him, and me. Finally, she looks back at him and points at the door.

  “Get lost,” she says. “I’ll be down to see you later. Maybe.”

  Vortigern slinks out.

  “What?” she says, looking at me. “I decided to keep him around for another day.” Then she looks at me again more carefully, narrowing her eyes. “Aren’t you looking virginal. Not for long.”

  “Shut up, Acalle.” I’m not in the mood for it.

  She laughs now, a real one. “You don’t like this, do you? I always thought no one was interested in you because you weren’t pretty.” She says this easily, like there’s nothing hurtful in it. Just a fact of life. Like some of us are tall and some are short and some aren’t pretty.

  She comes behind me, so we’re both looking in the same mirror, and she loosens my chignon a little. We are sisters. There’s no denying it. Her nose is thinner, her lips fuller, but our faces are remarkably similar. We have the same body. You could mistake me for her.

  “You are pretty,” she continues. “I mean, I’d shave a couple inches off my nose if I were you, some fillers in your lips, but you’re completely acceptable. Hot, actually. You couldn’t see it before now.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” I say.

  “You’re shy,” she says.

  “They’re trying to make me do things … with Theseus … that I don’t want to do…”

  She squeezes my shoulders. “I saw that video, sister. I know exactly what you want to do.”

  I can’t deny how I feel about Theseus, but … “I don’t want it like this,” I say. “Not on camera.”

  She reaches into her tiny handbag and pulls out a silver canister. She jiggles something out into her palm. It’s a jumble of pills. “Here,” she says. “Take one of the green ones—they take the eyes off.”

  “Don’t you mean the edge off?”

  “No, the eyes. You can forget that everyone is watching.”

  I look at her.

  “Go on, take it,” she says, putting the green pill in my hand. “That’s how you make it through when you don’t have Eros on your team.”

  I close my fingers around it, then drop it into my silver evening bag.

  She pops the handful of other pills into her mouth and leans forward, drinking from the faucet. Then she sashays out of the bathroom. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  * * *

  My hands are shaking as I leave the bathroom, remembering Acalle’s face as she downed those pills.

  I always thought my sisters liked this.

  I find Icarus. “Icarus,” I say. “Did you know t
hat Acalle takes pills?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I look out at the dance floor, where Acalle is leaned up against the bar, ordering a drink, her camera crew tracking behind her. Next to her, an older man on a barstool puts his hand on her backside. It’s Polydectes, a very, very rich man from some random island. She giggles flirtatiously.

  I have a sudden memory of Acalle in that one video with old Tyndareus of Sparta, when he kept saying no, that she was too young, and she kept taking off pieces of her clothes, until he finally gave in with a groan. Icarus and I thought Acalle’s persistence was hilarious, and we wondered what it was that turned her on so much about poor goofy Tyndareus, who was older than my daddy. I understand now. She was taking pills. She did it for the show. For the Paradoxes.

  “How long have you been pimping my sisters?” I ask.

  “Hey, hey,” he says, “pimping is a strong word. And it’s not fair. You haven’t been out with Acalle and Xenodice. I have. They like this fine. They like the boys. They like the clothes and shoes. They love being famous. Sometimes, to be famous, you have to do things that you would not otherwise wish to do.”

  Polydectes has backed Acalle up against the bar, and she rests a manicured hand on his shoulder.

  “So you’re telling me she wants to hook up with that guy?”

  “You’re worrying too much,” Icarus says. “That’s not one of the plotlines we’ve worked out. She’ll get away from him in a minute.”

  “If she doesn’t—or if it was a plotline you’d decided on?”

  He has the decency to look embarrassed. “Look, she would be okay. If it was something she didn’t love, she’d do it, then a week or so later, she would be off on a shopping spree and everything would be fine. She saves up a wish list for exactly that kind of situation. She has dresses on hold in her favorite stores. It’s part of the Paradoxes. Acalle can take the good with the bad. She’s happy. You’ll see.”

  “How long have you known?” I ask again, looking him in the eye, refusing to be sidetracked. Refusing to unsee what I have seen.

  He looks down at me, sadly. “I’ve always known, Ariadne. The question is, why haven’t you?”

  Why haven’t I known?

  Why did I stand by watching them, thinking about how much I hated my job, but thinking they liked theirs? I’ve always known that their lives are something I would never want. How can I have never understood that they might not want it, either? That sometimes they might hate the cameras, or the sex tapes, or the parties. I thought they wanted this. Maybe they do, but that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t have any choice about doing it.

  They are doing what my mother wants. Making us famous.

  A camera crew comes up to us, and a production assistant passes Icarus a pink-and-purple drink.

  He hands it to me.

  “Drink it,” he says.

  I take a sip of it, then nearly choke on the sickly sweet taste of it. I’ve finally gotten away from the muddy feeling that Daddy’s martini gave me. I don’t want to start again.

  “This is terrible,” I say.

  “Best I can offer for now,” he says. “You’re going to need to drink it and look happy about it.”

  Icarus nods his head very slightly to the right and when I look that way, I see Daddy sitting in one of the banquettes that line the walls. He’s pretending to listen to one of his cronies, but he is watching me. Daddy never stays at these parties for long. It’s clear he’s sticking around to make sure I do as I’m told. That I do what the gods demand.

  “You are going to be convincing the entire world that you are doing something difficult and dangerous, that you are putting yourself forward in a way you have never done before,” Icarus says quietly. “That means that you are going to need to act the part. Which means that you need to drink this liquid courage.”

  I nod at Icarus. “Fine,” I say, then I take a long drink of the pink concoction, forcing myself to look happy.

  “Good girl,” Icarus says.

  “Now what?” I say.

  Icarus uses his phone to pull up the minute-by-minute ratings picture across platforms. “Okay,” he says, “looks like we’ve had almost no drop-off from the drawing—and right now the only thing we’re offering is a live feed of Acalle and Xenodice doing their Paradoxes thing. The drawing itself was up fifty percent over last year. Your very special episode is set to start in two hours.” He looks at his watch. “So what we need is for you to find Theseus, get him to come with you to that room I showed you, and get some footage that I can edit into the end of the very special episode. If you’ll remember the storyboard, right now, we have an empty space at the climax.”

  I have a mental image of the storyboard he showed me—Theseus and I together on a chaise longue. The lines I am supposed to say. What is supposed to happen after.

  I’m thinking, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.

  I don’t say it.

  “Now, let’s find Theseus,” he says.

  He leads me across the room, me stumbling a little from the effect of the drink, to the edge of the writhing mass of people. He tells me something, but the music drowns his voice.

  “I can’t hear you,” I shout.

  He points across the room, and I see Theseus leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

  The way to him is blocked by a crowd of dancers.

  He’s standing in an alcove, where the music is probably less deafening. Hippolyta is practically snuggled up against him.

  He’s wearing a suit again, which I like, although I miss the flash of leg I got in the warrior costume. Hippolyta is wearing a very short gold backless dress that manages to look incredibly badass while also showing great expanses of skin. She is as tall as Theseus, and she holds her head high. She has a wide, warrior stance. I can’t imagine what would happen to the idiot who thought that tiny dress was an invitation to touch her without permission. He’d be lucky to keep his hand. She touches Theseus’s arm in a way that makes it clear he has permission.

  “Go over there and talk to him,” Icarus shouts at me.

  “What?” I say, even though I did hear him this time. I want to make him suffer. He walks his fingers on his other hand for me to demonstrate, then points at Theseus and Hippolyta. Then he points at the camera crew and leans in close so I don’t miss a word.

  “See if you can generate some drama with the Amazon,” he says.

  The Amazon who could take me out with one swing? That Amazon?

  “Then get him out of here,” Icarus says. “We need to get you both to the room your mother made. So you can promise to help him. So you can show us some skin and blow the top off the ratings for this very special episode. Are you ready?”

  “I can’t…,” I say, and my anger and sadness and horror at my situation are there, right under the surface, ready to burst out, if Icarus gives me even the smallest amount of sympathy. Icarus must know it, too, because he doesn’t tell me again how sorry he is.

  “You can,” he says.

  I take a deep breath, then wade through the crowd of dancers, Icarus beside me, my bodyguards clearing a path ahead of me, while the cameramen follow behind. I can’t walk like myself in this dress and these shoes. I fight the urge to tug down at the hemline, knowing that it will draw attention to what I’m trying to get people to ignore.

  Eyes are on me from every direction. In a way that I have never felt before. It’s desire. And anger. And possession. Even with my bodyguards, people touch me as I pass them. As though my tight dress gives them permission.

  My skin crawls.

  This must be what it is like for my sisters all the time.

  Finally, we are through the crowd of dancers, and Icarus steps back, my bodyguards making a space in front of me, and there is no one between me and Theseus and Hippolyta. As soon as I step into the alcove, the sound of the music drops. Theseus and Hippolyta seem to be having a serious conversation, not paying any attention to the debauchery
going on around them. Oblivious to the grinding dancers, the flashing lights, the missing clothes, the smoke.

  I look back at Icarus, who looks back at Daddy, who is glaring at both of us from the banquette. Icarus gives me a funny tail wiggle, then makes a shooing motion toward Theseus.

  Theseus and the Amazon barely seem to have noticed me, although I am hard to miss because I have an entourage. A camera crew. Bodyguards. Not to mention a bandage dress.

  This is why I hate going out in public.

  What is Theseus doing? I don’t understand. Was I imagining our connection? Has everything been a trick? Why isn’t he saying hello to me?

  I run through the possible opening gambits—excuse me feels small, like I’m intruding on their confab; a simple Theseus doesn’t seem right, either, if he’s trying to hurt my feelings.

  “Are you going to ignore me all night?” is what I finally go with.

  The Amazon turns her head slowly, like a cat lazily examining some item of prey. Theseus looks annoyed, like he’s been interrupted.

  Then his face quickly runs from irritated to surprised to curious to suspicious.

  “Ariadne?” he says like he’s genuinely confused.

  “Bingo,” I say. “That’s my name.”

  “You…” He gestures at me, clearly encompassing my dress, hair, shoes, makeup, everything. “You look like…”

  “She looks like her trashy sisters,” Hippolyta says helpfully. “We thought you were one of them. They keep sneaking up on Theseus here, trying to get him out of his clothes.”

  “Wait, what?” I say, looking at Theseus. That hurts. My sisters have to know that I’m interested in Theseus by now. Why would they chase him? Because they are who they are. Because that would boost ratings, too. Everyone loves a triangle.

  “Not that I blame them,” Hippolyta continues, and nothing about her face suggests that she’s kidding. “I, too, have been trying to relieve this young man of his garments.” She rests her hand on his chest proprietarily. “To date, I have been unsuccessful.” She leans in and kisses him on the mouth. “I am nothing if not persistent.”