by Paul Neuhaus
“We’ve always had strong women,” I interjected. “They were hiding in plain sight.”
The old man nodded. “I don’t doubt that,” he said. “Men can be blind. Anyway, there was this girl. There was me and this girl. This girl, my love, wasn’t just beautiful and kind, she was… She was everything. She was what I needed and, I’d like to think, I was what she needed.”
I leaned forward, rapt. “What happened?” I asked.
Tiresias sighed. “My brain looked inward.”
“What did it see?”
“It saw that my love was mortal, and I was not.”
“And?”
“And… It made me lash out. Do and say terrible things. Ultimately, it made me turn away without ever offering the girl an explanation. All she knew was that my love had soured, and she assumed it was her fault. But it wasn’t her fault. It was my fault. Because I was a coward.”
“You were a coward?”
“Yes,” he said. “I couldn’t face the idea of my love growing old and dying. I couldn’t imagine her growing sick and dying. I left Sicily and the girl—my love—never married and died alone.”
Quiet hung over us for a long moment like a weight. Finally, I said. “Well, Ty, I really wanna thank you for coming over here and cheering me up.”
He smiled but it held little humor. “You know the moral of the story, right?”
“Don’t fall in love with Sicilian girls?”
“No! Fall in love with Sicilian girls if that’s what your heart tells you to do. My heart told me to love that girl and to stay with her, but my brain won out. Since then, not a day has gone by without me thinking of that time, that place and that girl. Not a single day.”
Again with the silence. Finally, Ty pushed back his chair and stood. I walked him out. “Enjoy the bass,” he said.
After he left, I sat on the couch, staring into space, until Amanda Venables arrived for coffee.
At 9AM sharp Amanda knocked on the door. I got up mechanically and let her in. “Don’t look so happy to see me,” she said. She looked very much the way she did when I’d first met her. Pretty but not working hard to accentuate the fact. One thing was different and only I would know it—she was disguised. In her role as Mistress of the Underworld, she wore an unadorned iron crown. It was her badge of office and it conferred her powers onto her. She couldn’t take it off, not even in the surface world. That’s why—via the power of godly magic—she was disguised as a person not wearing a crown even though she was totally still wearing a crown. Gods and goddesses go to weird lengths to blend in with mortal folk.
“I haven’t slept yet,” I replied. “And my blood is mostly alcohol.”
The former lawyer folded her arms in front of her chest. “You’ve been on a bender and you didn’t invite me?”
“I would have but it was a special occasion. An ex-girlfriend wanted to talk me out of the funk I’m in. It didn’t go well. She kicked me in the pussy.”
“Huh. Can’t say as I’ve ever been kicked in the pussy. What’s that like?”
“You want I should show you?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Take my word for it: There are a million things you’d rather try.”
She opened the door and ushered me out. “I’ll drive,” she said. “I don’t trust you with all that booze in your system.”
“It’s not just booze,” I said. “It’s also mushrooms. A little grass. Some kinda blue pill.” I shut the door and locked it behind me. Then I brushed past the Pontiac and headed toward her lime green Smart car.
Amanda started to follow but stopped after she’d only gone a couple of steps. “Wait. Are you just gonna leave Hope here by herself?”
I rolled my eyes and looked back at her. “Yeah. Why?”
“Remember that whole thing where Hope got stolen and we had track her down in Hades and, even though you got her back, your new best friend—AKA me—got hornswoggled into taking over as queen of the dead? Bad things happen when you leave Hope unattended.”
“You guys keep saying that to me. What do you think? I take her absolutely everywhere? I used to go out without her all the time. To the grocery. To the dispensary. To the liquor store. You lose one jug under dubious circumstances and you’re stamped a serial jug-loser.”
“Okay, okay,” Venables said, raising her hands and resuming her walk toward the driver’s side of her roller-skate-sized vehicle. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing. But if Hope gets stolen and I have to take over for any other AWOL deities, you and me’re gonna tangle.”
On the drive to the nearest Starbucks, Amanda wanted to know the details of my Long Beach to Malibu adventure. From our adventure together against Medea and Orpheus, I knew her to be a bit of a hellraiser. Being cooped up in the Underworld all the time with Constantine Constantinides had to be taking its toll. I would’ve advised her to bail on that situation but bailing as Queen of Hell would’ve turned her into an instant inmate rather than Grand Poobah. The circumstances around her ascent to goddess-hood had been complicated. Anyway, I promised I’d talk to her about her difficulties adjusting and, even though I wasn’t in the proper mindset for moral support, I felt obligated to do so. When we parked and got out of the car, I told my rebel brain to be nice. My rebel brain said, “I’ll think about it.”
Once we had our drinks and were seated outside, I said, “So… How’re things?”
Amanda scrunched her nose. “That can wait,” she said. “I wanna ask you something and I don’t know if we’re good enough friends yet.”
“Only one way to find out.”
She took a deep breath and said, “What’s wrong with you? What happened?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Three pep talks in less than twelve hours was over my limit. At least that’s where I thought she was heading. Before I came out swinging, I wanted to at least check. “What do you mean?”
“I mean at the end of our adventure you seemed like you were doing pretty good. You’d been a recluse for years and years and maybe you were ready to shake it off. Then I hear—through the grapevine—you had a run-in with an ex- and now you’re all Hermie Hermit again. Only you’re Hermie Hermit with a mean streak. What happened? Why the backslide?”
I rubbed my temples and counted to ten. I gave her the most honest answer I could without taking a deep dive. “I don’t know. That’s the absolute truth. It’s the sum of several parts. Like when somebody cooks something, and they mix together a bunch of different things and you don’t know how they did it but it’s delicious. A bunch of things happened, and they weren’t especially anything on their own, but they came together into a funky broth.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s see if we can reverse engineer the broth.”
I had no interest in reverse engineering the broth. “You can’t reverse engineer a broth. It loses its intrinsic brothiness.”
“Of course, you can,” Venables replied. “You just said somebody mixes together a bunch of ingredients. That’s called a recipe. All I wanna know is, what were the ingredients in your broth of mean-spirited reclusiveness.”
“What would be the goal of that? An easy-to-follow guide for depression and self-pity? Do we want to make it, so others can stew in my same broth?”
“No. Now you’re just being belligerent. If we break it down, maybe we can make it stop happening. To you. C’mon, let’s get into it.”
“I don’t wanna get into it. Maybe if you’d caught me pre-bender, I would’ve been game, but right now, I’m not. Let’s do your thing.”
My friend sighed. “You’re no fun. Alright, let’s do me. But I wanna come back and do you at a later date. Figure out a day when you won’t be blotto the night before.”
“That’ll be tricky.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, there’s a fine line between being the genuine article and just cultivating a persona.”
“Now I’m cultivating a persona? My… current state is a put-on? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m just making an observation.”
My brain was having a lot of trouble keeping Mean Dora in check. I wanted to get the focus off of me as quickly as possible. “Can we just cut to the Connie bashing? I’m getting a headache.”
“Connie bashing? Who said I was gonna Connie bash?”
“Nobody. They didn’t have to. I saw you for half an hour last month; all you did was complain about him.”
“You agreed with me! You saw him… being himself.”
I took a drink. Until then, I’d forgotten what I’d ordered. It ended up being some kind of peach iced tea thing. It was too sweet. “How well did you know Connie before you slept with him?”
She smiled. Not a smile of mirth but one of, Oh. I think I see where this is going. “You know how long I knew him. You were there.”
“You’re right. I was there. I had at least a Cliff’s Notes idea of who each of you were—and, I admit, it might’ve been nuance-free. Still, I had the broad strokes. Here’s my point: People are who they are. If you’re interacting with adults, they’re fully-formed by the time you get to them. They don’t change. Not in substantive ways. Unless you want to date children, get used to not having a lot of impact on how people think and act.”
“So, you’re saying I should’ve waited to find out whether Connie was a doofus before I gave up the goods?”
I jutted my chin forward and blinked my eyes dramatically. A gesture meant to convey, Duh!
“Okay, well, maybe you’re right about that. You can’t tell me you planned on staying with every little fling you had. I don’t know that I had any long-term plans with Connie. He was nice, and I liked his whole Josh Groban vibe. I didn’t know I’d end up getting stuck with him.”
“You’re not stuck with him. Take off the crown and renounce the Underworld.”
Venables gave the table a little pound with her left fist. “You know the problem with that plan. The second I take off the crown, I die. I turn into a ghost. You should know that since you’re the one that killed me. I don’t wanna be a ghost. I’m around them twenty-four seven. You know what ghosts are? Bored as fuck, that’s what they are. They trudge around all day, looking all hangdog. Being dead’s like being at the DMV. Only they never call your number.”
I shrugged. “Those’re your choices near as I can figure it. You can stay Queen of the Underworld and put up with Connie’s idiosyncrasies, or you can be a shade. I don’t see any other options.”
“Idiosyncrasies? More like character defects.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean ‘doesn’t matter’?”
“How many long-term relationships have you been in?”
“What?”
“How many long-term relationships have you been in? A year or longer…”
Amanda had to pause and think. She even counted on her fingers. “Four. Five if you count Weird Harold, but I’d rather not count Weird Harold.”
“Four then. How many of those four guys were exactly the way you wanted them to be?”
“None.”
“How many had recurring behaviors you wanted to stamp out?”
“All of them.”
“Did you try to correct the behaviors?”
“Yes.”
“How successful were you?”
Her shoulders fell. “Not.”
“Right. Which was my point. People are who they are. You couldn’t change them because the wiring was already in. You could’ve either accepted them for who they were, or you could’ve moved on.”
“Wow, you really are no fun. What happened to the good ol’ days of girls sitting around bitching and moaning about their men?”
“I never did that. You’re my first female friend in… Maybe ever.”
“For real?’
“For real. But we’re not done yet…”
“We’re not?”
“No. I’ve got more questions… Does Connie deliberately try and undermine you emotionally or psychologically?”
“No. I mean I don’t guess so.”
“Has he ever laid a hand on you?”
“No.”
I took another sip of the peach iced tea and regretted it. “Has he done much of anything beyond saying insensitive things about your appearance?”
“No.”
“Could you counter those comments with sarcastic responses?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean every time he says something about your body, you should say something about his dick.”
“His dick? Just his dick?”
“Correct. His dick and nothing else.”
“And that’ll keep him from saying nasty things about me?”
I looked around to some of the other patrons like, “Can you believe this chick?” None of the other patrons were listening to us. It was nothing but a sarcastic gesture. “No. What’ve I been saying? You can’t change people. They’re immutable. Particularly someone like Connie.”
“What do you mean ‘someone like Connie’.”
“I mean Connie’s Greek.”
“So?”
“Greeks’re a special breed.”
“Greeks’re a special breed? What does that mean? You’ve got license to be rude?”
I shook my head. “No. Not license. We don’t get any special favors because of who we are. But we are who we are. All of us.”
The ex-lawyer leaned in. “You’re gonna have to break that down for me.”
“Greeks are just like other people. Only more so.”
“More please…”
“Take whatever you are and times it by two.”
“More please…”
“We’re… volatile. We’re… exaggerated. It stems back to our old-time religion. Our gods—some of whom you’ve met—were the worst role models you can imagine. Big, outsized personalities. Giant passions, giant moods, giant behaviors. They were like a clique of super-powered high school kids. Back in the day, Olympus was Raging Hormone Central.”
“And Connie has that?”
“Yes. We all do.”
“So, I should give him a pass for being Greek?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You can give him a pass or not give him a pass. He’ll be Greek either way.”
She paused to digest. “That’s a very defeatist attitude.”
“No, it’s a there’s-so-much-I-can’t-change-so-I’m-just-gonna-get-on-with-my-life attitude.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
“What?”
“Getting on with your life?”
I gave her the most bored look I could muster. I answered in a monotone. “I see what you did there.”
“What about me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m mostly Lithuanian. How’re Lithuanians wired? I’m asking so I’ll know what I can get away with going forward.”
I thought for a minute. “Believe it or not, you’re my first Lithuanian. Which is amazing since I’ve been alive like a million years.”
“Well, you’re so specific as regards to the Greek mindset… According to you, every Greek carries the same basic set of traits. Which means you should be able to diagnose all Greeks from just one specimen. Based on what you know about me, what’s the four one one on Lithuanians?”
I saw the trap but, for some reason, I took the bait anyway. “I’d wanna look over a couple more Lithuanians to be sure, but, offhand, I’d say Lithuanians are never satisfied. They’re high-strung and they expect others to bend to their needs rather than meet in the middle. Lithuanians are… childish.”
She stooped in her seat, clearly not believing I’d just gone there. Anger came into her eyes fast. “Yeah, well, maybe Greeks’re dicks. Did you think about that?”
“I was—”
“No, no, no. You talked, now let me talk…”
I shut up, giving her the floor.
She didn’t talk. She started to a couple of times, but she stopped each time (apparent
ly not satisfied with any of the things she thought of to say). Finally, she raised her finger, glared at me, gathered her purse and stomped out.
After a moment, I took another sip of my treacly drink and wondered how I was gonna get home.
I ended up walking back to the trailer. It was only a couple of miles. As I entered the Tonga Lei parking lot, I wished I’d stayed at Starbucks and finished my crappy drink. Standing on my steps and knocking at my door was yet a third visitor.
Elijah.
I was too tired to yell at him from across the pavement, so I waited until I was standing right behind him. “Yo,” I said.
I spoke quietly so as not to startle him. He was still startled because he didn’t realize there was someone else standing so close. After he recovered, he smiled a crooked smile and rubbed his hands on the front of his sweatshirt. “Yo,” he said.
We stood there without saying a word for a long beat and then I brushed past him to unlock the door.
I left the door open behind me, and my old flame entered. “Nice place,” he muttered. “I like the plates.”
He was talking about the Walking Dead commemorative plates Pan had given me as a going away present. His going away, not mine. “Thanks. I’ve got the whole set.”
“Is that what you’re into? Zombies?”
I shrugged. “It beats walking around dressed as a pony.”
He nodded. “Can I sit?”
I nodded in return and leaned against the desk.
El sat down on the couch. “Is that what this is gonna be? Trading barbs?”
“I didn’t know it was gonna be anything. You’re here unannounced, remember?” I looked him over. Again, he was still the man I remembered from fifteen years ago, albeit with a little more mileage. He was wearing civilian clothes, at least. It would’ve been impossible to talk to him had he come in cosplay mode.
“Okay, well, I’m not here for the reason you think I’m here. Or at least the reason I would assume you’d think I was here. You said you didn’t wanna talk about that, and it’d be stupid to try and force you. I’m guessing you’re as strong-willed as you were back in the day, so what’d be the point?”
“Right. What’d be the point?”
He nodded again. The tension was thick as hummus. He wisely decided to get to the point. “Keri’s missing,” he said.