‘Virtual castration,’ said Zeus dismissively. ‘It just means you wouldn’t be able to use it for, oh, I don’t know,’ he waved his hand expansively, ‘a thousand years or so.’
‘What in Hades is virtual castration?’ demanded Hermes.
‘Ask her,’ said Zeus, pointing to Aphrodite. ‘She’s the one who came up with the idea.’
Aphrodite readjusted her sequined stole. ‘I just thought it would teach him a lesson,’ she sniffed.
‘What would teach him a lesson?’ growled Hermes. Even though he was as soft as an angora bunny most of the time, he could still growl. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly inspire the kind of ‘duck and cover’ instinct as, say, a withering stare from Aphrodite.
Aphrodite gave Hermes a withering stare. ‘Since he is clearly fixated on this mortal woman,’ she continued, pausing for a moment to allow the more hypocritical gods a sharp intake of breath, ‘he doesn’t deserve to experience the loving embraces of his equals.’
‘I never do experience them!’ protested Eros from the floor. ‘You cripple them, and, and give them horrible diseases! You shrivel their…’ he paused, horrendously embarrassed to find himself on the verge of tears. ‘Their bits,’ he continued. Outside the door, the Fates, who were eavesdropping intently, shook their heads sympathetically. ‘What a megabitch,’ said Clotho.
Zeus turned to Aphrodite, a mixture of surprise and contempt playing out on his jowls. ‘Why in Hades would you do that?’
‘He’s making it up,’ scoffed Aphrodite.
‘No I’m not,’ moaned Eros.
‘He’s not,’ agreed the Fates. But no one was listening to them.
‘All right!’ said Zeus, banging down his scepter with finality. ‘I’ve had enough of this palaver, this whole business has gone on long enough and I’ve got golf at three. You – ’ he said, pointing at Eros with the kind of authority that could – and often did – spark forest fires, cyclones and other cataclysmic events – ‘are banished to Earth, until such time as you can demonstrate to me that you are worthy of your position as Inflamer of Hearts, and are once again a useful citizen of Olympus. And you –’ he pointed to Aphrodite, who cowed a little behind her impeccable features – ‘can have your castration, as long as you can work out a way to do it so that when he returns to Olympus, his business is still in business.’
And with the groaning of a thousand oak trees, he pushed back his throne, picked up his ten gallon hat and thundered out of the room, sending his attendants scampering and fawning in his wake.
‘So much for democratic process,’ Athena muttered into her ale.
32.
‘Omigod omigod omigod,’ said Ashley. Violet, who had just started cutting out a coupon for 50 digital prints, paused, her scissors poised. She was familiar with this form of verse and knew from experience not to interject.
‘Omigod omigod omigod,’ said Ashley. Violet thought she might risk a snip of her coupon.
‘Omigid omigod,’ said Ashley. Violet made a second silent cut.
‘Omigod omigod.’ Only one side to go.
‘Omigod omigod omigod.’ Violet fanned herself gently with the coupon while Ashley paused for breath. ‘Outside,’ she finally managed to say, before collapsing on a dining chair and slumping forward on the table. A moment later she raised her head. ‘Wow, two mascaras for seven dollars.’
Violet stood up slowly, her heart filled with a kind of ecstatic disgust that was new to her then, but which would become so familiar that she would eventually regard it as a normal part of being in love. Still fanning the coupon, she made her way to the picture window overlooking the garden and peered through a crack in the curtains. Taking up several parking spaces on the opposite side of the street was one of those huge ‘clean diesel’ tanks regularly given to celebrities by car manufacturers trying to green up their image, while still appealing to the basic human need for twenty-inch tires. H-U-N-T-E-R said the license plate. ‘F-U-C-K’, said Violet.
‘It’s really him, right?’ said Ashley. ‘I mean it’s like, really, really him?’
‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Violet, simultaneously closing the curtain and using the fabric for support.
‘Omi –’ Ashley started to say, then stopped herself, finally hitting vernacular saturation. ‘I mean, I know we had a moment the other night but how does he even know who I am? How does he even know where I live?’
Violet opened her mouth to speak. Then closed it again. There seemed no way to break it to Ashley, because on the surface, Ashley was one hundred percent justified in her assumption. Ashley was attractive. Ashley was funny. Ashley was loud, outgoing and flirtatious. She went to bed in makeup, heels and hair extensions. She woke up in flagrante delicto. She waxed her genitals and moaned like a porn star. She deserved a one-night stand with a celebrity. It was her aim in life and it had thus far eluded her. There was really no way to tell her. Unless –
‘Violet?’ Hunter called out. His knock had the tentative syncopation of a prom date. Violet bit her lip. ‘Violet? Are you in there?’ Violet snuck a guilty look across at Ashley, who was valiantly trying to think of something to say other than –
‘Oh my fucking god.’ There were tears in her eyes as she scraped back her chair. By the time she had stormed down the corridor, she had already composed the Tweet in her head. ‘Roommate just cut my lunch, can’t believe she would do that, thought she was a lesbian’. It never occurred to her that, had she not been so keen on broadcasting her indignation, she might have actually been introduced to the meat substitute in their romantic sandwich.
Hunter wasn’t actually a vegetarian, of course. He just liked to pretend that he was around other vegetarians. Around other meat eaters he could put away half a cow. But he had it in his mind that Violet was some kind of Ayurvedic princess, possibly because she did yoga and caught public transport, or possibly because she fitted into the category of unavailable temptress who stonewalled him with her witch hazel eyes, then tied him in knots with her knickers.
‘You’d better come in,’ said Violet, opening the door wide enough to see the small crowd of dog walkers, leaf blowers and neighborhood watchers starting to loiter on the sidewalk just beyond her front gate.
‘I thought we could go out,’ said Hunter. ‘I know this great little vegetarian restaurant in Malibu.’ Silently, Violet calculated how long it would take to drive from East Hollywood to Malibu, getting 18 miles to the gallon or maybe 22 if they took the freeway, crammed in beside Hunter in his cavernous SUV. She came up with the conservative estimate of 55 minutes. ‘I’m not a vegetarian,’ she said.
Hunter laughed. ‘It’s OK, babe,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to eat meat on my account. Actually,’ he added, leaning into the door frame and exposing, to maximum effect, his steeply sloped biceps, ‘I only eat it for the protein.’
Hunter leaned in closer, his hand resting just above Violet’s head with a kind of casual possessiveness that the psychologist in her would normally have found alarming. Unfortunately, the psychologist in her was bamboozled by the sheer spectacle of his t-shirt, which was plain gray marl, cost two hundred dollars and felt like mink. Or would have felt like mink, had Violet been game enough to touch it. He was famous enough to eschew ironic logos in favor of blatant body contouring, and Violet knew that if she stayed that close to him any longer, she was going to have find out if the slightly slippery, slightly smoky appearance of the fabric in front of her could deliver on the tactile delights it promised.
‘Fine,’ she said, ‘let’s go eat tofu.’
33.
Eros had never been hungover before. But if he had been, he might have described his current physical state as ‘nothing like a hangover.’ Likewise he had never undergone general anesthesia. But if he had, the range of sensations fighting for dominance in his slowly spinning consciousness might have been a little more familiar. He felt like his brain had been removed while he was asleep, then clumsily replaced by an intruder startled by the unexpected a
ppearance of headlights in the driveway.
And the light! Searing, scorching, refracting fragments, stiletto blades dipped in hot sauce. ‘Sunglasses,’ he croaked, ‘and –’. Squinting at the blurred shapes all around him, he pointed a shaking finger at an object just out of reach.
‘Cinnamon?’ said Hermes. Eros nodded. Hermes slid a pair of Ray Bans over his cousin’s eyes, then, like a soldier tending to his dying buddy in one of his father’s movies, gently placed a cinnamon stick in his mouth. Eros sucked on the stick with as much strength as his numb lips would allow. He felt like a baby on his first breast, struggling to latch on but instinctively knowing that whatever sustenance he could glean would somehow see him through the first few hours of newborn confusion. ‘Better,’ he muttered after a while. Stretched out on Jesus’ checkerboard kitchen floor, naked apart from his Wayfarers, he looked like an ad for Yves St Laurent, artistically devoid of the product he was supposedly hawking. Hermes glanced across at Jesus in the next room. ‘This is worse than I thought,’ he said.
Jesus looked up from his airfreight copy of Beer and Brewer magazine, a celebration of the beer industry and lifestyle in Australia & New Zealand. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ So far, no one had mentioned the anatomical question mark hovering over the recently arrived ex-archer. From where Hermes was sitting, everything looked pretty normal but if there was one thing he knew he could count on, it was Aphrodite’s flair for the devious. It would be naive to expect anything as innocuous as erectile dysfunction. Eros, who was preoccupied by the lurching gyroscope in his center of gravity, was clearly in no state to focus on – or even remember – the exact details of his punishment. The last time Hermes had seen Eros, prior to his arrival on Earth, was just before he was taken away to be ‘adjusted’ by Aphrodite’s personal sorcerer. But he had heard on good authority – well, OK, on the Furies’ dubious authority – that the screams coming from the east tower were the most ear shattering sound to have reverberated through the stone walls since Eris had been denied permission to audition for American Idol.
‘Water,’ said Eros, raising his head just enough to see the periphery of his manhood. The sight set off some kind of alarm bell, but the alarm was buried under a pillow under a blanket under a parallel universe, and thus barely registered with the lolling god. Glad to finally be of assistance, Jesus leapt to his aid. ‘Sparkling or still?’ he said. Then, in response to Eros’ slightly panicked look, added: ‘Or maybe vitamin water? I have guava, kiwi or lime. Or maybe it’s guava, kiwi and lime.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I’ll go check.’
Eros turned to Hermes, his expression a little like that of a seventeenth century Venetian bean merchant stumbling across a Starbucks. Drinks choices were limited in Olympus, and because Eros had never had occasion to eat or drink on Earth before, he had never been faced with the bewildering beverage buffet offered by the average American refrigerator.
‘Still water will be fine,’ Hermes assured Jesus. ‘But if you’ve got any cranberry juice, I’ll take one of those myself.’
Jesus opened the refrigerator and peered inside. He supposed he did have a lot of different liquid refreshments; so many in fact that the solid food items could be counted on one hand. And half of those were cat food. Not for the first time, he wondered whether a woman’s touch would help to restore the balance of his life from mostly liquid to something more grounded. He didn’t think that now was the time to bring it up with Hermes, however. Pulling out a cranberry juice, an Evian and a Miller Chill, he nudged the fridge door closed with his toe and settled onto the kitchen floor with his friends in a comfortable half lotus. It was cool down there. Jesus handed two bottles across to Hermes, who twisted the lid off the Evian and offered it to Eros. Eros, propped up on one elbow, managed a few gulps before his neck gave out and his head dropped back onto the tiles.
A short while later, sensing a party or perhaps a potential coup, Alfa padded into the room and sniffed the air. Weaving her way around the gods, she put one paw on Jesus’ knee and was about to leap into his lap when she caught sight of something through her dilated pupils and did a double take. Or rather, she did a single take consisting of a violent hiss, an arched back, bared teeth and an electrified tail. Then she ran from the room in a white blaze of fur.
Three sets of eyes were now fixed on Eros’ groin. Three sets of eyes saw a perfectly innocuous sight. Clearly, they were not seeing what Alfa had seen. It would take earthly eyes to reveal the true horror of Aphrodite’s punishment. Or, failing that, an earthly reflection. ‘Get me a mirror,’ said Eros.
34.
To Violet’s surprise, the conversation with Hunter moved with considerably more fluidity that the rush hour traffic along Sunset Boulevard. It wasn’t that they had a lot in common; rather, that they had absolutely nothing in common, not even a mutual interest in the life and works of Hunter Cole, a subject about which Violet was mostly ignorant. This allowed Hunter to talk about himself freely while Violet asked intelligent questions at appropriate intervals, barely having to feign surprise when he revealed the number of times he had been married (twice), number of times that he had been nominated for an Oscar (once) and the number of times that he had fathered a child (zero, as far as he knew).
By the time they reached the Pacific Coast Highway, Hunter had begun to tire of his monologue and had even thrown a few questions Violet’s way: How long had she been working at Olympic? (About six months.) Had she ever thought about acting? (No.) Had she ever dated an actor? (Not intentionally).
The highway didn’t dodge its reputation as a romantic piece of tarmac. Hunter opened the stadium-sized sunroof and the aerial bombardment stung Violet’s eyes and pounded her eardrums. It was just the sensual awakening she needed. Conversation petered out pleasantly as refugees from the city zipped past in their six cylinder playthings, letting their leaden feet sink into the floor, loosening the reins of all that wound up horse power crammed under their bonnets by German engineers. Staring out across the ocean, Violet realized, with a small lump in her throat, that this was the first time she had been north of Santa Monica since – well, since that thing she didn’t want to think about, not with the sunset and the sea breeze and the movie star and all.
The restaurant was hidden along an un-signposted road that wound into a secret canyon, unadulterated by gated communities, rebirthing centers and rehab resorts. In the parking lot, the only other vehicles were a Mercedes SLK belonging to the owner and a motorbike belonging to the quasi-famous chef, even though it was his night off. This was because Hunter had booked out the entire restaurant, with a clean sweep of his hefty forearm that had cost him half a leg as well. The restaurant owner was an old friend, while the chef was an ambitious heroin addict who needed the money. And the rest of the diners, so rudely evicted, were eating complimentary Wagyu burgers at Bu, the owner’s up market burger joint by the Malibu pier.
When she first moved to California, Violet had made the observation that vegetarian food, at least in its West Coast incarnation, fell broadly into two categories. Category one consisted of food that was incidentally vegetarian, while category two consisted of food that was made with fake meat. Violet vastly preferred the first category of vegetarian food; unfortunately the second option tended to populate the menus of the kinds of vegetarian restaurants that Violet could these days afford. But Mali was not that kind of restaurant, and the heroin addict was a French hippie of North African descent, whose opinion of meat substitutes was on a par with his opinion of English wine, American coffee, and cocaine. His reputation as a fusion genius was deserved, so it was a shame that he was on a fast track to celebrity rehab in a long sleeved shirt.
Hunter’s insistence on total privacy meant that the owner had given the wait staff the night off, and had, of necessity, adopted that role himself. As a consequence, what had started out as an intimate dinner became a kind of platonic double date and therapy session, with Hunter and the owner reminiscing about good times and fine wines, while Violet and the
heroin addict discussed diet fallacies, French colonialism, and the heroin addict’s abandonment issues. Nonetheless, Violet enjoyed her meal and very much enjoyed the increasingly ancient bottles of wine from the owner’s private cellar that kept popping up on the table like dusty sentinels. She got drunk, of course, and in an ideal world would have gone home with the heroin addict, who wouldn’t have been an addict but would have taken her back to Paris with him where they would have lived a responsible, meat free existence and raised café au lait babies.
But in dystopian Los Angeles, where there are no angels, only disobedient love gods and traffic violations, Violet went home with the movie star and had drunken sex, fell asleep with her head resting on the movie star’s chest, and woke up with a dead arm and stiff neck. In the blunt light of dawn, all the supposed health benefits of red wine gathered in a picket line and beat their placards against her forehead. She was in no mood, therefore, to face the music, which buzzed ecstatically in her head like a cross between the Beach Boys and Boyz II Men. Her left eye was wedged shut against Hunter’s chest, and the rhythmic rise and fall and slight nasal wheezing told her that he was still sound asleep. With her one open eye she roved around the room, finally resting on Hunter’s penis, which lolled in flattering half-wood against his thigh. It was an average sized penis, and therefore considered by Hunter – and indeed, all men in this division – to be slightly above average. Violet was relieved about this. She had been a little fearful that Hunter’s obsession with bulking up might have masked a micropenis, but there was nothing at all wrong with the resting specimen in front of her. In fact, she wanted to take a closer look. But the combination of hangover and morning after jitters prevented her from moving.
Unless –
Margin of Eros Page 12