I was thinking aloud, but those thoughts were beginning to take shape.
“Huh. You don’t even take credit for the women. You make them forget you, and then you even forget them yourself, because by the time you have to fill out your reports for hell, you have to make ’em all up.” Once I started thinking about him the way a sister thinks and not the way a girlfriend thinks, everything made sense. “Huh. The only thing,” I added slowly, “that doesn’t fit the pattern is the Ravenswood Project.”
He flared his nostrils at me and threw his head back. “The Ravenswood Project never existed.”
“You mean the victims’ compensation program never existed.”
“No, both of them are fake. I made them up.”
“But—” Now I was seriously confused.
My first guess, the night he said it, was that it was a line. Then Baz did a double take when I brought it up, and that convinced me it was a line, especially when Baz caught on and backed Archie up so quickly. So what did that mean?
“Lido made all those charms. Because I keep getting dumped.” My lip trembled, and I felt my voice begin to wobble. “And then I met—” I was about to mention the angel Tenariel and Delilah from the Regional Office.
His face softened. “I know, and I’m sorry. I really am.” He heaved a sigh. “That’s what went wrong.”
I swallowed. “You mean, I screwed it up somehow.”
“No, I did. I felt sorry for you, and I felt guilty, which are feelings I normally go out of my way not to feel. That’s why I screwed up. I made up the Ravenswood Project and the victims’ compensation program to make you smile. And somehow the Home Office got wind of that. And here we are, knocking ourselves out to make it real.”
I frowned. “So—so if there’s really no Ravenswood Project and no victims’ compensation, then you don’t need to make it rain men for me.” My heart lightened. “So we can be together if we want!”
He stomped my heart. “Never.”
“Not even if we—”
“Not if the Home Office is guarding your cherry for a decent man.” He sounded terribly final.
I squeaked, “Well, but she, that woman from the Regional Office, she wants me to, uh, keep an eye on you.” I admitted to myself that that sounded bogus, come to think of it.
“Ah.” He gripped my wrist hard. “I knew I’d forgotten something. What’s all this about a caseworker from the Regional Office?” He looked deadly serious.
“Her name is Delilah, and she told me all about you going through a bad patch with some woman forty years ago.”
His jaw dropped. He was shaking his head as if he didn’t realize he was doing it. “Tell me.”
I did. I told him about her black leather suit, and her saying that I did sex demons. How it had freaked me out when she said that about him burning the lair down every time he got emotional about a woman and how last time he’d killed himself. I mentioned the business card with the flames, and her nice French manicure, and how she said she wasn’t allowed to care about anybody.
“I got the impression, you know, Archie—I think she knows you, and she kind-of likes you.”
As I talked, his face darkened and his eyes widened. I felt the hand on my wrist tremble. When I finished, he let go and sat back against the couch, white-faced.
“Archie, what is it?”
He put his hands over his face and his elbows on his knees.
All of a sudden I remembered Lido saying, When he breaks his heart, he spreads the hurt around. I remembered Veek stomping him to help him toughen up. And I remembered Kama treating him with pretend-contempt and watching every single move he made. Even leathery old Baz treated Archie with coarse-fibered tenderness.
“I can’t,” he muttered despairingly behind his hands. “I thought I could.”
“What?” I said again.
“It’s too late. She’s found me,” he said. “She’s up to something. She’s got me in her crosshairs, and you too. I—” He raised his head from his hands to look at me with enormous pity and guilt. “I don’t even know if I can save you.”
He seemed so defeated. I was speechless.
He turned toward me and picked up my hand. “It’s Love. Her. The goddess. She’s finally caught up with me. Maybe she’s been watching all along. But this time she’s decided to crush me.” He put my hand down delicately, as if it would fly away. “I just didn’t want you to be hurt.”
“Archie—”
“Don’t you understand?” he said harshly. “It isn’t about ‘can we date,’ or ‘isn’t this naughty, Archie’s having the same girl for a while.’ Not any more. It’s over.” He slashed at “over” with his hand. “It could be—” He swallowed.
Now I hurt too much to speak.
He said, “I brought you something to read. It’s grossly out of date, and the guy had a political ax to grind like you wouldn’t believe, but there’s a lot of truth in it.” He picked up his grocery bag and took out a fat little hardback book. He opened it at a bookmark. “Here.”
“Aphrodite,” I read, and he slapped his palm over my mouth.
“Silently, okay?” The look in his eyes said he wasn’t kidding.
“Okay, okay,” I croaked. I read. It was a list of stories about the Greek goddess of love. According to Bullfinch, who wrote the book, she got mad a lot. She gave Medusa snake hair. She made the goddess of dawn into a nympho-rapist. She got a herd of mares to rip a king to pieces. It went on from there. I cleared my throat. “Whoa. Crabby.”
“Yup.”
“She turned this guy into a—”
“I’ve read it, thanks.”
My eyes widened. “Were you alive when all this happened?”
“Don’t be silly. That was old stuff when my ancestors were rowing goat-hide boats.”
“How did she—you know?” I gestured feebly. “Turn you into a sex demon?”
He sighed and shrugged hugely, as if nothing mattered any more, not even keeping his secrets.
“You remember I was supposed to design a temple for her, and I didn’t. Well, my tutor turned in some drawings of his own, I guess, though I never went to look at it, but I guess it sucked. The day they dedicated the temple, she turned up at the wine festival where I was hanging out, spitting mad. And, okay, I was drunk. I guess I sassed her.”
This I could picture.
“She told me I was born to serve her. I would have to serve her until—but that’s the part where I passed out. When I woke up, all I could remember was…her. How big and real and scary and powerful she was. And I knew that she was after me.”
He scratched the back of his ear, making a face, and I realized this was what Archie looked like when he felt ashamed of himself.
“I ran. I just kept running. After thirty years or so I realized I wasn’t aging. Wasn’t like it mattered. I didn’t want to do anything or be anything. I just kind of slid into this work.”
“Bull.” I felt stronger. “That’s slacker talk. You don’t just wake up one morning and find out you’re zapping into women’s apartments naked or kissing them till they come standing or—or—”
He hunched his shoulder. “I guess that’s not all that happened. That day. I was pretty high, you understand,” he said, dodging down a side issue. “Cypriot hash was something special, you mixed it with this sweet red wine they made—”
“What. Happened?” My voice was steel.
He frowned. “I think we had sex. It’s really blurry now. You understand I wanted to forget it. So I—”
“Never mind.” I rolled my eyes. “I know how you tried to forget it. Twenty-three hundred years of sucking a bong and slacking off.” I snorted. “How did you get a sex demon job with the Regional Office?”
“Just happened on it, I guess. I had a lot of horizontal jobs, off and on. Harem guard, temple boy, sacred prostitute, this and that. They petered out during what used to be called the Dark Ages until all that was left was this tight-sphinctered ascetic cult that had been spreading
like a cancer over the north. They were very down on sex. So of course wherever you have a ban on sex, you have sex demons.”
He shrugged. “Best job I could get, really. Only thing better was when we stopped turning in our reports on parchment, which you make by scraping sheepskin until it’s thin, and went to the online forms like you saw.”
I had only partly listened to this. “Why did you burn—burn down the lair—those times?”
“I was afraid she’d caught up with me. Or worse, the girl I was interested in. I figured if I went up in smoke, she would call the score even and let the woman slide.”
“You what?”
He made a “whatever” gesture. “Or I got really, really smashed and tried to sacrifice a chicken.” His voice rose, and he dismissed the whole thing. “Or maybe it was an accident, ever think about that? People screw up sometimes. Not you, of course,” he added.
I stood up, and he shut up.
I glared down at him. “If you dare. If you dare try to protect me by killing yourself, I will personally cut a deal with these caseworkers to hunt you down, in heaven or hell or Cyprus or Grauman’s fucking Chinese Theatre, and kick your butt up around your neck like a collar.”
“Chloe,” he said gently. “Those ‘caseworkers’ weren’t from the Home Office, and they weren’t from the Regional Office. That was Her. The goddess. She’s toying with me. Spying on me. Fucking with my head.”
“And mine?” I said. “Am I involved in this fantasy world of yours at all, besides as an extra?”
He stood and grabbed my arms and jerked me up against him. His eyes were tortured.
“I don’t want you hurt,” he said in a choking voice. “She’s insanely jealous. She can do anything for revenge, and she will.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and I knew that my heart had left my body and moved into him. I could swear, too, that his heart had come to me. With one hand, he brushed hair out of my face. Then, as if he couldn’t stop himself, he pulled me closer and kissed me.
I felt no magic music in my bones. His kiss was salty. I couldn’t breathe for the hard, hot, stone-sharp lump in my throat.
Then he pulled loose and hugged me.
“I loved you,” he whispered in my ear.
Then he tossed me down on the couch, tripped over the coffee table, knocked his bag and everything in it to the rug, and blundered out of my apartment.
I heard his motorcycle start up outside. I stood in the middle of my living room and screamed, “You coward! I hope she fries your liver! Don’t you dare walk out of here!” The motorcycle sound roared away into the distance. “Dammit, Archie!”
But he was gone.
I kicked the baby powder love charm under the sofa. I kicked his book of Aphrodite stories across the room and nearly broke my toe.
I half-trashed my living room, furious with Archie and with myself. Then I stayed up all night cleaning up. About ten a.m. the next day I decided to redecorate for real and went through the place methodically throwing away everything that reminded me of every guy I’d ever dated. That took a while.
Then I was numb for three days.
I went to work Thursday, demo at a private party on the North Shore, but my smile felt so forced I guess it showed. The hostess sent me home early.
That was a problem. As long as I was moving, I didn’t feel anything.
But when I was alone and motionless, it was a hundred times worse than every breakup I’d ever suffered. Just as Archie had predicted. Fever, existential confusion, loss of appetite, loss of sleep, delirium, dizziness, uncontrollable physical cravings, emo fits, the works.
Archie was right. Love sucks.
Chapter Thirteen
LIDO CALLED ME FRIDAY MORNING to remind me that I was going with him to Marc’s mother’s house for dinner. It was the only thing that could have got me out of bed.
He seemed stiff and distracted. “C’mon, we have to be there before sundown. Can we take your car?”
No girlfriend sympathy for my long face.
I had no idea what to expect. Marc was so polished and so ultragay, I dunno, maybe I’d expected the kind of party my brother Seth throws, with lots of slim guys in black collarless dress shirts and pegged jeans, talking about art.
Nope.
It was a zoo. A herd of little kids came hurtling out of the interior of the house as we got to the door, which was open, except for the screen door. They squealed and shoved past us.
Marc appeared immediately behind them. “Hey, you animals! We’re eating soon. Get in here. Oh, hi,” he added, seeing us. “Come on in.” The kids ignored him. “Welcome, Lido. Welcome, Chloe.”
Lido stopped short at the threshold so sharply that I thought, what if they’d, like, put some kind of whammy on the doorstep and Lido couldn’t enter?
He was looking at a bit of metal nailed near the top of the doorpost. He met Marc’s eyes for a moment. Then he stretched up a skinny tattooed hand and touched the metal, then stepped inside.
“First shabbos?” Marc said to me sympathetically.
“Yup, my virgin shabbos,” I said, trying to pronounce it the way he did. “Be gentle with me.”
The kids came crashing into the house and squealed past.
“I’ll do my best,” Marc said ruefully. “Kids! Settle down or I’ll set Bubbie on you.” Marc brought us into a dining room full of light and food smells and talk and people.
Marc, it appeared, had a huge family. I felt right at home. He introduced us to three brothers and the same number of sisters and half a dozen aunts. He had a lot of female relatives of a certain age who sat around drinking wine and talking at the top of their lungs. His Bubbie was the scary one. Funny and scary. Marc introduced us and then he disappeared into the kitchen.
“Silly fagele,” Bubbie said. “Thinks he can grow ovaries if he dicks around in the kitchen. Come here and talk to Bubbie.” She made Lido sit next to her, and I sat on his other side.
I subsided gratefully with my god-awful sweet kosher red wine, trying to listen to four conversations at once.
“Tell me about my grandson,” I heard Bubbie demand.
Lido stiffened beside me. “I don’t know him very well.”
“Who does?” Bubbie said philosophically. “But you like him.”
“So-so,” Lido said. “He’s pretty pushy.”
“His grandfather was German. Reena!” Bubbie interrupted herself. “Reena, get over here. We’re ready to start.”
People were driven to the table. The squirrelly kids parked across the table from us visitors. Mark helped a woman bring dish after dish after dish out of the kitchen. Some dishes were hot, some cold, but they all smelled like heaven.
“My daughter Reena,” Bubbie said. “She cooked all this.”
My eyes widened. “All this?”
Lido sat silent in his chair, looking around the table. A half-smile touched his lips. He was taking long breaths, like a diver getting ready to go deep.
At some point I realized that something bizarre had happened. Somehow I was sitting with the kids, across the table from Lido, not next to him. Now Marc was sitting in the chair that I was sure I’d been sitting in before.
“Oh my God.” Lido was staring at a dish. “Is that flodni?”
When had I moved? I couldn’t remember moving. Lido looked small and skinny even next to Bubbie, with Marc on his other side.
I could have been mistaken. The candlelight was bright but wavery, and I’d apparently already had a lot of the wine.
Reena was very different from her mother. Bubbie was svelte and elegantly dressed in a faintly hippie way, as if she had come of age in the nineteen sixties era of love beads and then found money but no taste. Reena was short and fat and middle-aged. She moved nonstop, even while sitting still. She supervised getting the food on the table and making the kids sit down and seeing that everyone had wine in their glass, and she talked to her family and talked back to her mother, all at the same time.
Once
we were all seated around the table, her voice dropped, and then the whole room seemed to stop moving because she was finally still. She started talking in a foreign language, Hebrew I guess, very slowly. Even the kids held still.
Reena looked across the table at one of the older men. He named everyone around the table and asked in English for a blessing on each one of them, even me and Lido.
Then he looked at Lido and said, “I understand you’re from the old country. Maybe you know a nuggin you can bring to us. A musician like you.”
To my horror, I realized that Lido was weeping. I almost spoke, but it was impossible. It’d be like talking in church.
Lido put his head down a moment. I wished I could throw my napkin over him, cover him, hide him.
Then he began to sing. It was a short little thing, just a la-la-la kind of song, and I realized to my relief that it had no words. He sang it low and slow, three or four times. His voice was perfectly clear, even while tears ran down his face.
The rest of the family joined in, and I sort of piped up, glad no one could hear my froggy singing voice.
The mood in the room seemed to swirl around with the music. I couldn’t describe it. I watched Lido, upset for him, worrying that he’d been pushed over the edge somehow. But then I realized that everyone in the room was feeling…whatever this was. I let my mouth open and shut, trying to track the way my own mood swirled around. Happy, sad. Happy, sad. Hopeful, sad, happy, hopeful, sad. Happy-sad, hopeful-peaceful. We sang it for about ten minutes, or an hour, or maybe only two minutes. I couldn’t tell.
When Lido stopped, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
Reena said something and then Bubbie made a gesture beside me, shoving with both hands. “Fall to!” she said.
The next minute, everyone was eating.
While I dished corn onto my plate, I saw Marc make the oddest gesture. He put his hand on the back of Lido’s neck. Just…laid it there.
Lido took food as it came to him and smiled a little whenever someone told him how they liked his nuggin song, and Marc just kept touching him on the back of his neck. After a minute I looked away to pass bread, and when I looked back, Marc had both hands on the corn platter.
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