Margin of Eros

by Hawthorne, Clare

  9.

  It had almost been too easy. Violet had been seeing Aaron as a client for a couple of months, at a time when he claimed to have been drug-free for six. The problem was – or so he told Violet – that he kept running into old friends who were still using. As this was happening with increasing regularity, it had led him to the conclusion that he was deliberately attracting temptation into his life, and was therefore on a collision course with the relapse roller coaster. ‘Either that, or it’s awards season,’ countered Violet. It was true, Aaron conceded, that the narcotics supply in Hollywood – both legal and illegal – ballooned like silicone in a strip club the minute those ‘For your consideration’ ads started appearing in The Hollywood Reporter. It was as if the sober mind wasn’t properly equipped to deal with the kind of fawning, yawning and scorning that an extended Oscars campaign required. Still, Aaron felt that it wasn’t ‘fair’ that he, as a successful studio executive, should be subject to the same temptations as agents, actors and assorted ass-lickers who clearly ‘needed’ the awards more than he did.

  ‘So you think that life should be fair?’ Violet asked him, pressing him to describe his notion of fairness, in an ideal world. It was a pertinent question, one that Ares would contemplate each time he was on the verge of screwing with Violet’s life in some cruel and worshipful way. Sometimes, but not often, with a nagging sense of regret.

  In reality, of course, Ares had never touched a narcotic – at least not one that Violet or anyone on Earth had ever heard of. The kind of high he got from his one hour a week with Violet was like a purple rush of lavender infused honey to his loins – indescribably sweet, spiritually transcendent, and difficult to clean off the carpet. But like any true addict, the potency of this maintenance dose soon barely raised a blood sugar blip. It was as if his honey had been replaced by aspartame. He needed more. He needed intravenous Violet, a constant drip, but not like this. The tables had to turn; he had to be the boss of her. And she had to be grateful for his largesse.

  That he was a childish and manipulative egotist was already clear to Violet. Her only mistake was that in assuming he was human, she was failing to take into account the ubiquitous scope of his delusions. When he started canceling appointments, she assumed that he had either started using again, or had found another therapist to feed his unappeasable need for attention. She didn’t assume – and of course had no reason to assume – that he was intricately plotting her professional demise.

  To do this, Ares needed the help of his sister Eris, a pale-skinned, raven-haired temptress whose sense of injustice at having been left out of the cool pool when they were handing out goddess titles motivated many of her petty and belligerent schemes. Goddess of unarmed conflict; what a crock. Goddess of barroom brawls and jiu-jitsu, goddess of Major League melees. She could go on and on, and often did, but Ares was in no mood to hear it. Fortunately he was able to divert her from her favorite grievance with a plan aimed at exposing a bunch of talentless, overpaid celebrities for the psychotic, deviant junkies that they really were. At least, that was how he pitched it to Eris.

  Eris had always fancied herself as an actress. It drove her crazy that her family ran a Hollywood studio, yet she was banned, by Olympic decree, from ever taking on a starring role. ‘Too much attention,’ was the official reason, but Eris felt that she had been singled out for this shabby treatment on account of her enviable talent, her elfin beauty, and natural affinity for the limelight. That, and the fact that she had seduced one of her half-brothers before blinding him with belladonna, covering him with cactus nectar and tying him naked to a stake in the middle of a Trojan anthill. And all because he had called her the goddess of jelly wrestling.

  Denied the chance to be one herself, Eris had thus developed a love/hate relationship with celebrities that closely mirrored that of the general public – that is, she voraciously consumed every detail of their private lives and rejoiced in their public disgrace. Ares therefore needed to exert very little spiral pressure on his sister’s rubber arm to convince her to participate in a scheme that would combine her two favorite pastimes.

  To be fair on Eris, she was a pretty good actress. During her first session with Violet, she was able to convincingly fake mild anxiety without resorting to hand wringing, twitching or any reference to vacuuming. She could have been a subject in a psychology prac exam; if anything she was too subtle. Certainly she would have failed to get the role of ‘crazy woman that you just know is going to snap and push the baby down the stairs later on in the movie’, had it been an audition. But Violet was a good psychologist, and she picked up on the unfaithful husband, the postnatal depression and the sporadic bulimia without having these issues overtly flagged by her client. For Eris (or ‘Erin’, as Violet knew her) the whole experience was immensely enjoyable. Why it had never occurred to her to go into therapy before she couldn’t fathom – an opportunity to talk about herself endlessly while flexing her thespian muscles. As far as Violet was concerned, here was the perfect client – intelligent, highly treatable, and not working in entertainment. After several weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy, Erin had learned to control her panic attacks and was now talking about re-entering the workforce and separating from her husband. While Violet, flushed with the post-Freudian glow of effective therapy, was even rethinking her move to Portland.

  Then the crash. Deviously orchestrated by Ares and featuring a virtuosic performance by the goddess of spousal abuse.

  10.

  It was a Friday night, and for the first time in a long time Violet had a date. His name was Jason and he wasn’t a god or mythical character of any description. The name was just a coincidence. In fact, he was an actor, who had narrowly missed out on a part in Patriotic Duty by virtue of being too black for the token black role. What wasn’t a coincidence was the ‘chance’ meeting between Jason and Violet in the produce section of the Venice Beach Wholefoods; a meeting that Ares had paid for in cash, along with the promise of an audition for Foxhole Fury. Jason made a joke about coffee, something about how many free trade agreements it took to make a cappuccino, and Violet let her guard down a little. The gap was no wider than a plump Nicaraguan bean, but it was just wide enough for Jason to slip under her cynicism and plant that bean in her heart, along with the hope that for once – just once – it might grow into something worth savoring.

  Violet was living in Santa Monica at the time, in a one-bedroom apartment three blocks from the ocean. None of her furniture was from Ikea, and her refrigerator was stocked with over-designed juice bottles and eggs laid by emancipated Rhode Island Reds. Her car was a three year old Honda Civic Hybrid, but not for long. The organic heart of her white-collar world was about to arrest with the stabbing certainty of a triple bacon bypass.

  Violet’s last client of the day was getting on her nerves. She stifled a yawn when he started talking about leverage, and how it should be an amortizable asset just like goodwill and his seven cars. ‘Fuck the IRS,’ he said, in conclusion.

  ‘I’m afraid our time is up for today, Mr. Katz,’ said Violet. Mr. Katz glanced at his Omega watch and was temporarily bamboozled by the sheer number of dials. He looked up blankly. ‘Same time next week, Mr. Katz?’ Violet said in her Friday night voice, soothing and steel reinforced. Sometimes Violet was oblivious to the effect she had on men, and sometimes she wasn’t. Usually the second scenario was prompted by her urgent need to be rid of their presence, and called into play the subliminal suggestion of an inappropriate adventure at some unspecified time in the future, if only they would fuck off forthwith. Mr. Katz blushed and excused himself, his testicles itching against the soft cotton lining of his Ralph Lauren Y-fronts.

  ‘I thought that sleazeball was never going to leave,’ said the anorexic receptionist, shutting down her Facebook page and spitting gum into a disused coffee cup. Violet wondered whether it was time to stop advertising for staff on craigslist.

  It was just after six-thirty when Violet switched off the main lights at th
e Health Center. Still plenty of time to shower, blowdry her hair and wander around in her underwear until she had cooled down sufficiently to put on her new dress without risking armpit Armageddon. She was about to set the weekend alarm and finalize the lock-up when she noticed a figure running across the parking lot. In spike heels and a fitted cocktail dress, the woman’s fragility was comically emphasized by her tripping staccato gait. ‘Erin?’ said Violet in surprise. The last time she had seen Erin, her client had been full of confidence and cognitive techniques. Now, quite clearly, she was a wreck – smudged mascara, broken nails and poorly coordinated handbag. With no alternative, Violet ushered Erin back into the building, glancing over her shoulder at the wistful vermilion of the rapidly setting sun.

  It was several minutes before Erin was able to control her breathing. ‘My husband…’ she finally managed to say. And then she burst into tears. Violet fought to keep her thoughts centered on the crisis at hand. The crisis at hand, however, had far less pulling power than the new dress in her closet. Violet wasn’t superstitious, but really, she should have known better. It was like some kind of rule: buy a new dress for a first date, and he’ll stand you up. Buy a new dress for a second date and he’ll spill red wine down the front of it and grope you with the napkin. Buy a new dress for a third date and he’ll come all over the spaghetti straps before you’ve had a chance to –

  ‘– guess I could always stay here,’ said Erin.

  ‘I’m sorry, what did you just say?’ Violet fought hard to focus.

  Eris blew her nose theatrically. A little nasally excessive, sure, but the bitch wasn’t even listening. ‘I said I could always stay here. I mean, I’m sure he’ll calm down by tomorrow morning and give me my cards back. And my keys. And my phone. And my insulin. I just don’t think I could cope with the police right now. It would just be for tonight.’

  Inwardly, Violet groaned. ‘I’m afraid that’s just not possible.’ There were proper channels for these things. Emergency accommodation, risk assessments, forms to be filled out, faxed and forgotten. By which time it would be midnight next Thursday. ‘Don’t you have a friend you could stay with?’

  ‘He took my phone. I don’t have any numbers.’

  ‘You don’t know where they live?’

  Eris widened her eyes a little and rotated her irises. It was a cheap hypnotist’s trick and not worthy of her reputation, but time was a-wasting. ‘But how would I get there?’ she said.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I ran all the way,’ said Eris, her voice suddenly acquiring a birdlike breathlessness.

  ‘Then I’d be happy to drive you,’ said Violet, knowing it was a breach of something or other, but surely only in some misdemeanor category and no worse than, say, failing to separate your trash.

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you, thank you,’ gushed Erin, her relief so genuine that she herself couldn’t work out if they were tears of theatrical affectation, or tears of devious joy. Devious joy had certainly kicked in by the time Violet had ushered her out of the building and set the alarm, using a six-digit code that Eris easily memorized. From here on in it would just be a simple matter of picking the appropriate locks with her universal key – one of the more useful tools on the Olympian army knife that even the lesser goddesses were awarded at birth.

  When Violet dropped Erin off at the immodest Brentwood mansion of her friend, it was close to seven thirty. A mere half-hour to drive home, change, and make her way to Boa, the waterfront steakhouse in Santa Monica where Jason had suggested they dine. The only problem was, small setbacks in the dating game such as this had a tendency to make Violet want to eat popcorn for dinner in the bath. It took a grinding mental gear change for her to shower, slip into her grey silk Japanese print dress, pull up her hair into a loose bun and apply a hint of makeup. When she walked into Boa at ten past eight, people noticed. She looked like a goddess – albeit a sane, benevolent goddess with a Master’s degree in Psychology and a waxing crescent under each armpit.

  Needless to say, Jason failed to show up.

  The location should have tipped Violet off, above and beyond the curse of the new dress. Who invites someone they meet in Wholefoods to a steakhouse on a first date? No one from LA, that’s for sure. As Violet trudged back along Third Street Promenade, weaving through catalog families, Swedish tourists and folk-rock dreamers, it vaguely occurred to her that she should drive back to Brentwood to check on her client’s emotional state. But as her own emotional state had just taken a beating from the smug smiles of the actor/model/waiters and the elderly couple on the adjacent table who had offered her their bread basket ‘just in case he doesn’t show’, she didn’t think she could locate the listening skills.

  Instead, she went straight home where she changed into her sweat pants, took the last of her prescription painkillers and fell asleep in the sticky polyester embrace of the uncensored seventies.

  She didn’t give Erin another thought until Sunday afternoon, when she received a panicked phone call from the Health Center manager, informing her that a security guard had discovered that the building was unlocked and the alarm had not been activated, presumably all weekend. Further investigation revealed that the filing cupboards had also been left open. There was nothing Violet could do but accept the blame and wait for the consequences of her spectacular mental lapse to emerge. At this stage it was unclear just how serious the consequences of that lapse might be, but something told her that the doomsayer’s convention in her digestive tract was much more than a Vicodin comedown.

  11.

  It had been a long time since Violet had allowed herself to ruminate on the circumstances of her professional downfall. By the time the number 96 bus arrived fifteen minutes late, cramped and pungent as an old man’s pajamas, she was in the kind of carbon monoxide funk that can only be cured by immoderate drinking. Fortunately her alcohol budget had only been marginally exceeded that month, so it was with little guilt that she got off the bus one stop early and made a detour to Trader Joe’s, where she picked up a bottle of ouzo and a goat’s cheese pizza. Had she been in a more dispassionate state of mind, her choices might have surprised her, because she wasn’t crazy about aniseed and had always thought that she hated goat’s cheese. At least, she had up until a couple of days ago, when she’d suddenly developed a vague yet persistent craving.

  12.

  The mist peeled softly from the surface of the lake, revealing a reflection so still that the slightest breath from the golden fawn by the water’s edge crinkled its immaculate clone. A thick carpet of foliage surrounded the lake, generously dotted with a type of plump, overripe blueberry that fermented during the day and froze overnight, making it the preferred early morning snack of golden fawns everywhere. The tipsy fawns could often be seen along the high tarns, emerging one by one from the pre-dawn shroud as their gilded pelts caught the virgin rays that splintered through the spruce. Which made for fantastic target practice.

  When Eros first started shooting golden fawns with his heart shaped arrows, it often had the undesired effect of causing them to fall in love with their breakfasts. A morning’s hunting would frequently produce a landscape littered with paralytic fawns, passed out in piles of blueberry vomit. Over the years, Eros had refined his technique so that it now involved a startle response, at which point he would let fly his barbed valentine and the unsuspecting fawn would fall in love with whatever it happened to have been startled by. Inevitably, this still involved blueberries a lot of the time, but more often than not the startled golden fawn would fall in love with another golden fawn, and Eros would be treated to the electrifying spectacle of golden fawnication.

  Unique among Olympian animals, the hermaphroditic golden fawns mated with their minds, quite literally, by intertwining their small antlers and rubbing their foreheads together until an explosion, not unlike the flowering of a Roman candle, caused a shower of platinum sparks to spread out over a wide radius. Even more startling than the visual spectacle was the ecs
tatic mood wave that went along with it. Similar to the evangelistic fervor of a property investment seminar or U2 concert, it spread out in concentric waves and drenched all in its path with a kind of manically heightened self-belief, which most immortals found incredibly arousing. Witnessing the mating could cause temporary blindness or spontaneous orgasms or, in rare but coveted cases, both.

  Strangely, no one actually knew how the effect was generated or indeed, how the process produced baby golden fawn. More to the point, no one really cared. Much like aspirin, whose miraculous pain-relieving properties were exploited long before its biomechanical pathway was understood, golden fawn junkies (or ‘fawn fuckers’, as they were colloquially, if inaccurately, known) were more than content to voyeuristically partake in the union without giving much thought to cause or consequence, either to their own mental health or to the delicate ecological balance of the high tarns. Fortunately, the practice turned out to be self-limiting, as most fawn fuckers would inadvertently cast themselves into Hades in moments of delusional grandeur.

  This morning, however, not even the prospect of stinging retinas and vicarious vasodilatation could inspire Eros to action. His heart wasn’t in it. And when his heart wasn’t in, neither were his heart-shaped arrows. Throwing his quiver to the ground, he lay down on a mossy promontory by the lake and closed his eyes. Breathing in deeply he imagined, not for the first time, that he was driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible with a small cardboard pine tree dangling from the mirror. Saturated with paradise, he craved the pseudo-Scandinavian scent of the tacky and the fake. Bored by turquoise, he longed for a human sea, a prosaic sea full of cruise ships and E. coli. He longed, in other words, for California. On one side of him, the jaundiced ocean with its slow rolling waves, lethargically swallowing surfers and coughing up fiberglass phlegm. On the other side, the brown cliffs and dirty white mansions of movie stars, built to withstand earthquakes, forest fires and multiple restraining orders. And by his side, the one, whose face he can never see but whose hand is gently resting in his lap, teasing the outside of his board shorts with her fingertips, nonchalantly undoing his fly and easing his rapidly hardening penis into the open air, the warm breeze kissing his skin as she slowly leans over and –