Dancing With Cupid

by Jennifer Stevenson

  I closed my eyes. Behind my eyelids, I could still see us filling with colors, one at a time.

  I don’t know how long I watched.

  “Lunch?” said Kama’s voice.

  The gull had stopped screaming. I didn’t want to open my eyes on the ordinary world.

  With eyes shut, I jumped to my feet, holding his hand. “Let’s eat.” Only then did I look.

  Kama smiled up at me from the concrete looking, as usual, contented and delighted at the same time. As if he wanted nothing more than to be here with me.

  He certainly had perfected his seducer’s technique.

  He gave a tug on my hand. “Help me up.”

  It wasn’t until I had hold of her hand, as we lay under the Bean, that I realized how worried I’d been that I had rushed her awakening.

  Then I freaked out that I’d been worrying. What, me worry?

  But I was paranoid about rushing her. I had to go slow. Sloooow. This was not my plan cul, as Veek called it, a quick fuck and buh-bye. She had to get her goddess memories back, but gradually, so that they didn’t destroy who she was now. She’d spent a lot of lifetimes becoming this person. I had to respect that.

  But here she was now, holding my hand. I felt like a seventh grader at a basketball game, triumphant, ragingly horny, terribly anxious, and at the same time at peace. They could kill me now. I’d die happy.

  This was only a metaphorical wish.

  I still didn’t know how Shiva would take it, if and when he found out that I had a body again, kinda, and that I’d hooked up again with Rathi.

  Recipe for making rabbit stew: first catch one rabbit.

  I had to hook up.

  I had to tell her who she was, who I was.

  I had to see what she was going to remember and hope like hell she wasn’t as mad as she had been four hundred and fifty years ago.

  All these dire thoughts floated through my mind as we lay there. I started to work up a sweat, and then I noticed her hand in mine. I saw her face reflected above me, so near mine. And peace descended on me.

  I wanted her to take her hair down. It seemed to me that if I could free her hair, the rest would come. Dumb thought, huh?

  She shut her eyes at some point. I blissed out, watching the play of light and shadow cross her face as above us, above the Bean, clouds came and went, flooding the plaza with reflected radiance.

  When at last she sighed, I said, “Lunch?” I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I ignored it.

  Suddenly she jumped up and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s eat.”

  I’d stashed the lunch basket with a friend at the bike rental place near the Galaxy Theatre. We collected it, then walked over the serpent bridge to a big lawn dotted with trees. Not many people came here. We could see the water, but we weren’t close enough for the crowds headed for the band shell to disturb us.

  Lunch had set me back two hundred bucks. Baz had really come through. I didn’t ask him who he knew who could cook Assamese or where the hell he’d found all the different fish and vegetables. As I laid them all out, the smells woke things in me I hadn’t thought of for half a millennium. I was hoping Rathi would feel that, too. Her current incarnation was born in Delhi…but the goddess was from Assam. It was those memories I wanted to waken.

  Rathi looked at the spread and her eyes closed and she sniffed. “What is all this?” She gave a shaky laugh.

  I knew then that it was working. I hadn’t bothered with the five arrows of seduction in a very long time, on the principle that candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. This time, I had to waken not only her senses but her memories. And because I’m a big chicken at heart, they had to be good memories.

  I pointed to the dishes. Banhoor chungat mach—fish in bamboo hollow. Little silver swam barb fish with bamboo shoots. Mach bhoja—fried sea fish with mustard oil. Fiddlehead stir-fry. Papaya alkaline. Cold rice garnished with coriander leaf, lemon, and chili. Rice beer fermented with marthu leaves to drink. And for dessert, pitha dumplings with pistachio and cardamom and a handful of madhoi maloti sitting casually on the edge of the dish, little orange-fleshed fruit that had cost more than all the rest of the meal together.

  “Is this a seduction?” It was the right question, and she asked it quietly. But there was a lawyer look in her eye. No, not lawyer. It was the look of a kid who tells the truth and gives it to you straight from the heart. And expects it in return. And can see a lie under a brick.

  “I want,” I said carefully, “for you to know something that is very hard to know.”

  She cocked her head. “I’m smart. Why not just say it?”

  “My very last resort,” I promised. “Try this.”

  Well, she seemed to like the food. I have to admit I felt kind of weird eating it, myself. Those smells and tastes and colors belonged to a world I hadn’t thought of for half a millennium. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend those bicycle bells were temple bells tinkling, that distant motorboat was a lowing buffalo, and that sitar music—wait a minute—

  “All right, now I know why you wanted to picnic in this park today,” Rathi said, amusement in her voice.

  I opened my eyes. “Don’t you like it?”

  “On the day Ravi Shankar gives a free concert at the Pritzker Pavilion.”

  I realized that the music wasn’t just in my head. People were drifting across the lawn and sitting down to listen. On the stage, far across the serpent bridge, a guy in cloth-of-gold brocade played sitar.

  “Sitar music isn’t for everyone,” I admitted. “Of course if you spent the last twenty years listening to Nine Inch Nails, I’m screwed.”

  “Actually, I’m more of a cool jazz girl,” she said. “It was thoughtful of you, anyway.”

  That was almost creepy, the Indian music coincidence. I hadn’t thought about music. Showed I was slipping. I’d counted on the sounds from the harbor and the gulls to relax her, to act as background to my—

  “Your baloney never stops,” she said.

  “My ‘baloney’? Are you making fun of—”

  “Of your sausage? You’re quite right. ‘Baloney’ is surely aggrandizing it. I would guess it’s a cheddar cheese dog at best.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you—could you possibly be trading weenie jokes with me?”

  “Are you blushing?” She threw me an amused look and bit a steamed dumpling in half. Her teeth were very white.

  “Well excuse me for thinking you were a virgin,” I said in a wounded tone, trying to recover. Dammit, my face was red.

  “Most girls are virgins when they learn weenie jokes,” she said. “I came over to a Los Angeles public school at age nine. I learned them all as quickly as possible, in self-defense.”

  I could have made a remark about her powers of self-defense. This woman was very far from the frightened girl who had burnt up her panties in a judge’s personal restroom. Her eyes flashed, bright and self-possessed, over the dishes I’d spread on the scarlet cloth.

  “Is this yellow khorisa in the anja? Oh my. I haven’t had that since I was a child! Where in Chicago did you find it?”

  “I know a really good cook.” And that was all she would ever know about Baz.

  The look she sent me gave me pause, a sort of uh-huh look. My hot flush betrayed me again. What did she know? I had so many secrets from this version of Rathi. A wave of homesickness swamped me—homesickness for her, for this specific woman who once knew me inside and out. I was tired of waiting, tired of pretending she didn’t own me body and soul, and really tired of making do with other women.

  “I want to apologize,” I blurted.

  She blinked. “Surely a first. Go ahead.”

  “For—well, for presuming. When I brought you those, uh, clothes.”

  I saw her processing the “uh” and knew the moment when she caught up with me. Color rose delicately in her cheeks.

  “It was very thoughtful.” She sent me a Rathi look. “Don’t spoil your tact now.”

  “You seemed in do
ubt,” I said. “I felt—I just wanted to—I guess I’m not the ideal person to help with the, uh, transition.” That was a lie. I was the perfect person. I wanted her to believe that.

  “Transition?”

  “Awakening. Opening of the flower. The serpent of life.”

  She flushed darker. “You don’t have to use flowery language with me. In this world, a woman stays a virgin by knowing all the words.”

  “And by saying no anyway.” I nodded. “I’m not talking about sex.”

  “You amaze me.” She gave me another Rathi look, but she was watching me closely.

  I had her now. “Not many women awaken fully, ever.”

  “Unless you are helping, eh?” she said.

  “I would say, statistically speaking, you are unique.”

  “That’s a new way of saying, ‘O, Rathi, you are the only one.’”

  I opened my mouth and shut it.

  “This is supposed to be a seduction, isn’t it?” she said.

  “You’re always stepping on my lines,” I complained.

  We looked at one another, and I remembered how many times we had exchanged this look—her catching up with me long before I could cook up my next line, and my conflicting feelings of helplessness before her wit, satisfaction that she was mine, exasperation because I could never win, and simple pleasure in her company. As she always did back then, she grinned at me.

  I shook my head. “You always could talk rings around me.”

  She leaned forward and put her hand over mine. “Tell me about my kundalini.”

  I took a deep breath. There were about fifty ways I could explain this to her, and most of them were so oversimplified, they could only be interpreted as a cheesy way of seducing the girl you were explaining it to. A very ignorant girl would buy about anything. But once Rathi remembered her past, she would no longer be ignorant. And she’d have another reason to be mad at me.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket again. Looking into Rathi’s eyes, I suffered something else I hadn’t felt in forever: self-doubt.

  Irritated, I pulled out my phone. Text from Baz. hedz up bro that hi prstess came 2 th lair 2x lookn 4 u.

  My chest clutched up. That Lotus Bride woman! Shit, shit, shit!

  “Kama? What is it? Is it that girl again?”

  “What?” How did she do that? Dammit, she could still read my mind. I made a feeble attempt to pull myself together. “Where were we? Kundalini, right.”

  She squeezed my hand. My pulse leaped. I felt rattled. Her big brown eyes were so soft and understanding that I made a giant mistake.

  I gulped. “I wasn’t going to tell you this yet. It’s too soon. You have a lot of changes ahead of you, Rathi.”

  “Yes, yes, quite so.” She flapped her free hand and pressed mine with the other hand. “You can tell me.”

  I took a big breath. “You’re the reincarnation of my wife, the goddess of love.”

  She was shaking her head, smiling sadly. “Oh, Kama.”

  “I’m not making this up. We were married for six thousand years, give or take. We wrote the book of love. Then, uh, stuff happened, and we had a fight. I’ve been looking for you—”

  “For four hundred and fifty years, yes, right, very well.” She pushed my hand and giggled. “You are so full of yourself, Kama. I wondered how you could be staying amused since you graduated from college. Apparently you have a tremendous amount of imagination. Girls like you, and you bore easily, so you embroider this story for them—”

  “I’m not embroidering anything. I faked those transcripts. I never went to any school. I’m sixty-two hundred years old, I’ve worked for heaven and three different hells since you left, I’ve had all the toys and all the girls and they just don’t matter to me, Rathi. I’ve been bumming around the States for over a century, and I’ve—” I swallowed. “I’ve missed you a lot.”

  She dimpled. “Aren’t you leaving out some important parts?”

  “Dammit, I’m serious, Rathi.”

  “Or is it all about you?”

  That stopped me in my tracks. “What? No!”

  “You’re supposed to tell me I’m your love goddess, and we are meant to re-create the Kama Sutra and upload the video to the Internet, right?”

  “Upload—re-create—what?” I stammered.

  She gave my shoulder an affectionate little push. “I am not opposed to re-creating the Kama Sutra. I’m even willing to let you wake up my kundalini, if you can promise I won’t burn up any more lingerie in public. Video is out.”

  I was having trouble catching my breath. “Rathi, I swear to you—”

  She got up on her knees and leaned across the scarlet cloth and the empty dishes. Her lips came very close to mine. “Oh, give it a rest.” She brushed my lips with hers. “Mister big shot love god.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I had to shut him up somehow. He was ruining my plan. An adorable Kama with a deeply ingrained slacker philosophy I could sleep with. A delusional Kama who needed to convince me of his so-great importance made me feel guilty and foolish and rather too old and responsible to be playing his game.

  So, as I leaned forward to kiss him, I thought, Just be yourself, Kama. Don’t try to impress me.

  His lips were sweet and spicy with the khorisa we had been eating. I heard ringing in my ears, or maybe it was bicycle bells on the path behind us. I closed my eyes. I felt myself leaning into him. When our bodies met, I lifted my mouth far enough to say, “You can touch me, you know.”

  “I’m afraid to,” he gasped.

  “Mmm,” I said, feeling the vibration of my voice inside his mouth. “It is rather public here. Can’t the god of love make us invisible?”

  He hummed into my mouth now. “That,” he said breathlessly, kissing my eyelids, “I can do. But first, take your hair down.” He kissed my neck beside the hollow and made me shiver.

  “You,” I moaned. “You do it.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  I don’t know what he was doing to my neck now. Biting it? Licking? I was afraid to open my eyes.

  “Take your hair down, Rathi, and I’ll make the world go away.”

  I growled at him. Then I pushed him away, pulled out my chopsticks and my industrial-grade scrunchies, and gave my head a swing, so that my heavy, twisted rope of hair unwound and unfurled. I could feel the fuzzy mass untwisting lazily, tumbling down past my waist like a nest of black snakes making baby snakes. In the cool, moist lake air, of course it frizzed out immediately into such a dense cloud that I felt safe in opening my eyes. I could barely see out of it.

  Kama watched my hair do its exploding tornado thing with a look of pure boyish awe. “You’re beautiful.” He reached out both hands and parted my hair to expose my face.

  He certainly knew how to make me feel beautiful.

  Shuffling on his knees toward me across the picnic cloth, he lifted the fluffy black wings of my hair and, with a slow, gentle gesture, made a tent of my hair and snuggled under it, right up against me.

  He touched his forehead to mine. “Oh, Rathi.” I waited hopefully. In the sudden silence, I heard him heave a tremulous sigh, as if his heart were full. When I couldn’t wait any longer, when I felt myself tipping toward him, just as my hands took hold of his hips to pull him against me, he leaned his head to one side and kissed me.

  His kiss was very different from the animal kisses I had used with him at Judge Green’s chambers, or our gentler touching with the lips later. First he kissed my upper lip very gently. I held still, smelling his breath against my face. Then I moved my lower lip against his, pulling at his lower lip, startled at my own boldness. We nuzzled like that, first me sucking his lower lip, then him sucking gently at mine. I felt I was learning gentleness from him.

  When I pulled away for a breath, I found that I was sitting on his lap, in a cradle made of his folded legs. I felt that itchy, urgent, hungry feeling. I wanted to eat him in two bites.

  “How do you feel, Rathi?” he said softly.

&nb
sp; “I—I don’t know.” I panted as if I’d been running. My heart pounded. My ears rang. I wanted to kiss and kiss and kiss.

  “How’s the underpants? Still cool?”

  I gave my head an impatient shake. My hair shivered over both our bodies. “I don’t know! I feel—”

  “Yes?” His eyes lit up with eagerness.

  “I feel as if we’ve been fighting with swords and you’ve stopped to ask me if my makeup is straight,” I said impatiently. “How do I know?”

  “And you don’t care,” he said in a mocking voice, smiling at me as if he had discovered me himself.

  His arms around me felt strong as stone. My arms were round his middle. Under that absurd scarlet tank top, his muscles were smooth and hard and yet his skin felt like silk to my fingertips. I curved my fingers and dug my nails into his shoulders, I don’t know why.

  He gasped. His eyes grew round. “Again.”

  I dug harder. Suddenly I noticed that indeed the flesh inside my silky panties was heating up. Only one thing would cool it now. Using legs and arms, I hitched myself up deeper into his embrace, until our bodies were glued together, and took his mouth with a growl.

  He moved in my arms this time. If I felt like a tigress, he was my tiger, powerful and swift. We grappled one another tightly, kissing deep and hard, biting against the insides of one another’s mouths. His hands slid down my back to my butt, then inside the back of my khaki shorts. I was digging my nails into his shoulders. Suddenly I felt his nails dig into my lower back—my hips—down the outsides of my thighs. I was grinding against him with my crotch, feeling wet, feeling the heat fill that spiral stairwell with molten lava, up, up to my belly button. I was breathing like a galloping horse, taking big, biting kisses at his mouth.

  He slid his hands lower into my shorts. Suddenly I felt his nails bite into my butt. It felt so right. And yet I was shocked. I jerked my mouth away from his and struck him on the back with my fist. “Phat!” I cried, not knowing what I said.