Dancing With Cupid

by Jennifer Stevenson

  He said quickly, “I have to get you through the next part. It’s prati-prasav, reverse birthing, getting your past back. It’ll be hard. I’m not surprised you’re scared. That’s why gods prefer to hang onto one body for a long time. Reincarnation is a bitch to get through.” His voice rose as I backed away. “Please, Rathi. I can help.”

  I felt the lava in my belly. But the lawyer in me gave me strength to look Kama in the eye.

  Trying to keep my voice steady, I said, “All this is very affecting. But if I believe you, then my life is in ruins. What happens to you? You don’t sacrifice anything. I would be throwing away everything I’ve worked for. You can solve your problems by having sex with whomever. But what exactly would I be agreeing to? You have convinced me that I am, or am becoming, something more than human, but what exactly is that? Will it be worth it to me, to give up all I’ve worked for?”

  I leaned forward. “Very well. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that I am—and want to be—the goddess of love. I don’t know how to feel like that. I don’t know how to be that. What’s more, how can we do whatever ‘that’ is without getting into trouble with Shiva, or with local gods, if they even exist? You talk about a past I don’t remember. But what plan are you proposing for our future?”

  Throughout this rational speech, I shook from head to foot. I wanted very much for him to have answers to these questions.

  His expression was troubled. I realized the truth.

  He had no answers.

  I took a deep breath. “I need to go home now. Alone. I need to think about all this. And I really need to talk to my mother and my aunt.”

  Kama didn’t speak.

  He was letting me down.

  He had no plan.

  My eyes stung. I backed away and bumped into the women standing in the circle around us. “Let me pass!” I shrieked. The parrot on my shoulder squawked and relieved itself on my sleeve.

  “You’ll have to talk to him again,” Annette said, at my elbow.

  “Give him time,” Gina said. “He’s had his head up his past. He’s behind the curve.”

  The vigilante squad was disintegrating before my eyes.

  “Whose side are you on?” I demanded foolishly.

  I knew, of course. He’d slept with them. He’d made them feel like celestial nymphs. I was just another woman, and their rival.

  I turned away, sickened.

  I pushed my way to the door through the crowd, found my umbrella, and let myself out.

  Behind me Lolly said, “You better go after her.”

  Before he could catch me, I raced down the stairs and ran for the elevated train station.

  The green parrot with the red beak clung to the tip of my umbrella and squawked.

  I sat back on my heels and put my head in my hands while that Lollygirl and her friends twittered around me. Time was running out. I could feel the soles of my bare feet and my palms heating up. Any day now I could go up in flames. Again. Who would collect my ashes this time?

  Rathi must feel like this, too, poor girl.

  I was coming to the conclusion that my life had changed, and not for the better.

  This was simply not fun.

  My choices came down to three.

  I could take Rathi to bed, rush her into it and save my own ass, but maybe drive her over the edge. Raised the way she was, tight-assed and virginal into her thirties, she could crack like an eggshell.

  I could wait a little longer. But the heat in my hand- and foot-chakras told me I didn’t have much time.

  I could try to hasten the prati-prasav and waken her memories before I finished waking her kundalini. Maybe if she remembered being a goddess, she’d be able to handle her first sex in the-gods-only-knew-how-long. Of course, once she remembered being a goddess, she’d remember how pissed she was when we parted, and she might walk out on me again.

  That one was the deal breaker. I could fix everything else…or die trying. Feeling the lash of her anger tonight, I knew I couldn’t bear life if she became herself again and still didn’t want me back.

  Damn. Rathi was right. I had three choices, and I was scared shitless of all of them.

  Was that the guy she saw? Some cowardly punk in puffy sneakers with delusions of grandeur about his dick?

  Never mind that she had admitted she was having weird experiences of her own. She seemed willing to believe in the testimony of her senses, but at the same time she was unwilling to buy what she perceived as my bullshit.

  I had to admit I was pretty full of bullshit.

  So, really, I kind of had to make my move.

  Whatever the hell that was.

  The murmuring around me had stopped. I realized I still had to talk my way out of this apartment without getting torn to pieces by my faithful celestial nymphs.

  “O mighty lord,” the Lollygirl priestess intoned.

  I stood. “You got any spare jeans?” I said.

  The circle around me tightened.

  “You seem to have…an emergency…O Lord,” said the priestess.

  She was looking at my lap.

  I looked down. Well, duh. Anytime I was within fifty yards of Rathi, I had a boner. Anytime I hadn’t had sex for a week, I had a boner. Anytime my spidey senses detected a willing woman within half a mile, I had a boner, pointing due Pussy. Rathi had just left, it had been way more than three weeks, and…I looked up. The roomful of underdressed celestial nymphs seemed really crowded.

  “Sweat pants?” I said.

  The Lollygirl frowned.

  The apsaras huddled a little closer to me.

  “We know you need it,” said one of the women.

  “She won’t mind. She knows you’re a sex god,” said another.

  “It’ll be fun,” said a third, and that made the most sense of anything I’d heard today.

  I missed fun.

  I looked around the room. For some reason their faces seemed more familiar to me now, maybe because I’d come close to death and-slash-or eternal bachelorhood in their presence. I’d slept with every one of them. Give me a little longer and I might actually remember their names.

  Freaky.

  Whatever the reason, I felt I couldn’t just walk out. Aside from the probability that they’d tackle me and rape me, it would be mean.

  The parrot on the Lollygirl’s shoulder let out a screech.

  I had an idea.

  I sighed.

  “Ladies, you’ve been really great. You’ve helped me fulfill the most important quest of my long, long life.” I gave them the puppy eyes. “And since you saw what happened to Rathi today—” I gestured at the parrot. “You now know what to expect for yourselves.”

  That made them look at each other. I thought I detected a teeny bit less eagerness for a gang bang.

  “Yes,” I said seriously. “I’m afraid that the changes in her are inevitable. I’m really worried about her. And she’s got six thousand years as a goddess behind her, though she doesn’t remember them yet. It would be cruel of me to expose all of you to the same risks.”

  Their looks seemed more speculative now.

  The circle tightened again. I could feel their body heat from all directions.

  I didn’t need warming. Smoke was already seeping up around my bare toes.

  I said quickly, “Now that I’ve found Rathi, I can’t face sex with anybody else right now. Even if it kills me, I’m gonna wait for her.” I felt the truth of this noble-sounding declaration like a gong of dread inside my ribcage. “However, the least I can do is help smooth out your own transformations.”

  All the apsaras began talking.

  I raised my hands. “Please. Maybe you remember your Kamadeva sutras?” They wouldn’t, but I bet they would shut up.

  They shut up.

  “The mates of my original apsaras were divine musicians. Seducers, and damned good at it. Hell, they worked for me.”

  I stood on tiptoe so I could see the exit. Then I held up my hands and twiddled them.


  I called in Hindi, “Holy gandharvas, you have found your perfect mates! Now woo them as best you can!” Lightning crackled between my fingers.

  Every woman in the room gave a gasp.

  The parrots screeched.

  Each parrot turned into a naked man.

  Each naked man was holding a musical instrument—a flute, a lute, or a drum.

  The women screamed.

  Damn, I’m good.

  Most of the women ended up on the floor, since their gandharvas had been sitting on their shoulders when they assumed human form.

  I watched. The gandharvas were a motley bunch, but they had enthusiasm and…I narrowed my eyes critically…yes, skills. As they set to work, I began remembering more about these women. Would that hunk of beef remember to be careful with the old lady—Anna? Annette, that’s right. Her arthritis had been my big challenge. Yep, she had him locked in the Noose of Rathi, with her ankles crossed behind his back.

  Deb seemed to have gotten over her rigid upbringing. Clepha was talking a blue streak to her gandharva, lord yes, I remembered now, she’d been starved for the yakkity-yak, and the sultry lutemeister in her lap seemed to love it. Off in a corner, a very young-looking flautist was shampooing the feet of a hefty blonde. What? Do I have to teach these guys everything? I looked closer. Oh yeah. Gina. Raped at ten. I nodded. A gentle cabana boy was just what I had been for her myself.

  I stepped, hopped, and wriggled between bodies until I got to the door. Nobody paid me any mind.

  In the doorway I paused again. The Lollygirl was picking right up on things—she and her divine drummer went from patting skins to hiding the bamboo in less than a minute.

  I hadn’t seen a scene like this since a certain bathhouse party in Trecento Avignon in thirteen thirty-eight. I heaved a sigh of pride.

  Sadly, pride was all I was gonna get out of it.

  I opened the apartment door, remembered I was naked, closed it, sneaked into the bedroom, and scrounged a pair of extra-roomy yoga pants and some flip-flops.

  As I sneaked out to the street, I wondered if they would decide to clean the carpet. Nah—they’d probably roll it up and throw it out. Nobody would notice the scorch marks my bare feet had left behind.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I didn’t sleep much in my condo at the Darth Vader building that night. When I did, I dreamed of ancient cities smelling comfortingly of home.

  I also dreamed about sex. I was grossly disconcerted to wake from a dream of tangled bodies and hypnotic drum and zither music to find myself sweating, my heart pounding, my whole being suffering from an urgency I scarcely knew what to do with. I began to panic.

  Then I thought of Kama’s face, smiling so tenderly at me that my galloping heart steadied and settled. I slept…and dreamed.

  A dozen or more men and women were with us in this dream. It began as a dance, with beautiful music played by the men, and the women moving with slow grace and perfection of style. The music changed. The musicians laid down their instruments. I saw that the dancers were naked. First one musician joined the dance, then another. Sometimes they moved through the dancers, pausing for a kiss here, a caress there, and sometimes several men surrounded and touched one woman—touches that shocked my prudish heart.

  That was the first thing I learned from this dream.

  In this dream, I knew I was a prude.

  I’d thought myself choosy, fastidious maybe, but a citizen of the world for all that. Now I knew I had been hiding from all this. My parents needn’t have worried. My own prudery had stifled my sexual feelings.

  Nevertheless, as these dream men and women did things I had never seen with my own eyes or wanted to imagine, I found myself heating in that now familiar way. Growing slippery in intimate places. Wanting to join in.

  I looked elsewhere, shocked at what I saw and shocked at myself.

  Now I saw that Kama directed it all. His throne was wide and low and padded, and to my joy, when I approached, he patted the seat beside him invitingly.

  There was ample room for two on that throne.

  Even lying down.

  I was not surprised to find that I, too, was naked.

  I walked up to the throne and put my hand on his naked thigh. Though his most godlike part was as naked as the rest of him, my prudishness kept me from looking at it. Instead I looked at his shoulder and kissed it. I kissed his proud, boyish pectoral muscles, then the curve of his neck. I knew that he was holding himself motionless with tremendous effort.

  The heat rose in me.

  I smelled a smell like searing meat.

  I looked down. I lifted my hand from his thigh and found a huge red blister on his skin in the shape of my hand.

  When I looked into his eyes, horrified, he seemed sad, anxious, and frightened.

  A streak of lightning passed across the space between his face and mine.

  The sound of the scream in my own throat woke me.

  I woke with a start. Rathi is dreaming of me. That thought flooded me with joy. In the next second I was horny again.

  After six boner-free hours of sleep, I started heating up.

  I looked down at my wood, which quivered in time with my heartbeat. The poor, lonely knockwurst. I groaned.

  I was too lazy to get on my bike and ride to the lake, so I headed for the roof. It was only four in the morning but the birds sang and the sky was pale blue already.

  The hot tub was stone cold. I slipped into it gratefully. My dick sizzled as the cold water slid around it. I shut my eyes and breathed, “Fuck, that feels good.”

  In a few minutes I was back asleep.

  At five o’clock Thursday morning, my alarm went off.

  I found my living room window boarded up, pigeon feathers scattered on the living room floor and furniture, and the green parrot with the scarlet beak trying to make a nest on my lampshade with pigeon feathers and fibers it was pulling out of my living room rug.

  I put out some grapes for the parrot and went to work.

  All morning long, thoughts of yesterday jostled in my head, from our kiss on the bridge, to the pigeons flying through a hole I had melted in my plate glass window, to Kamadeva on his knees, naked, dear god, naked, how could anyone focus on the law? And most of all I thought about his infuriating and demoralizing patience and tenderness and utter cluelessness. It’s just a job.

  I banged on my computer keyboard with extra energy.

  I avoided the copy room.

  I didn’t set eyes on Kama. So he was avoiding me, too.

  I called my mother on my lunch hour. No answer.

  I was too angry to speak to Auntie Lakshmi, so I couldn’t call her.

  “Are you okay?” Janine said when she brought me my messages after lunch.

  “Fine,” I chirped tightly.

  “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.”

  “Warn?”

  “About Kama. He’s usually careful not to hurt…anybody.”

  I felt my face freeze over while emotions chased through me: foolish, naked, ashamed, angry, agonized.

  “No one here will judge you, you know.”

  I wanted to scream in her face, He made me a goddess but he didn’t have a plan! How is that not hurting me? I swallowed.

  “Thank you,” was all I said. I looked at Janine, keeping my poise with every ounce of my strength, until she turned red and backed out of my office.

  That left Lolly. I was more than a little afraid to call her. What would she think of my running away, leaving Kama naked in her apartment? More than that, I was afraid to be told what had passed there after I left. The man did fancy himself a sex god, and he’d claimed he was desperate for sex, and that apartment had been full to bursting with women who had all slept with him once before and wanted another sample of his wares.

  On the other hand, I had nowhere else to turn.

  “Rathi? Omigod, I have so much to tell you. Can you come over?” Lolly sounded breathless and girlish, far from her priestessly dignity
of last night.

  My heart began to thump unpleasantly. “I’d like that. I feel terribly confused.”

  “Come on over! Boy, you really missed a party after you left.”

  This was precisely what I had not wanted to hear. On the other hand, I would rather hear it unvarnished from Lolly than dressed up in Kama’s no doubt self-exculpatory flights of fancy. “I’ll be there by five thirty,” I said.

  Call me a coward. Thursday I hid out in my copy room with the door shut. Every time the door opened, I tightened all over. The heat was coming in waves now. I’d sweated through my polo shirt by the time I got to work, and I had to change socks twice.

  At three, I faced an angry woman, but she wasn’t Rathi. The by-god senior partner stomped into the copy room. Her hands were empty and there was blood in her eye.

  “What are you up to with that girl?” she said bluntly.

  “I—me—what?” This wasn’t how the harassment management script went.

  A lot Irene would care. She’d just kill me.

  “I’ve tolerated your antics because you kept it out of the office. Yes!” Her hand came up like a stop sign. “I know you’ve had them all. But you kept it out of here, and you kept it light. If I’d had one complaint, even one mention—”

  “But you didn’t?”

  Irene was silent a moment, as if she was choosing her weapon.

  My mind raced.

  Don’t argue with the boss.

  To hell with the boss. Why I should care about this crappy little job?

  Because if she fires me, I can’t be near Rathi at work.

  What was I thinking? I’d be dead in two days if things didn’t work out.

  “None of them fell for you,” Irene said finally.

  I opened and shut my mouth. It showed how rattled I was that I totally forgot the dimples. “I fell this time.”

  Irene’s eyebrows did their dancing bear routine. “Oh. And how is that supposed to work out?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  The plan thing again.

  It began to occur to me that I probably did need a plan.