Margin of Eros

by Hawthorne, Clare

  Ares looked at his watch. He had sent Kurt to the airport an hour ago but there was still no sign of him or his passenger. Shortly after dispatching Kurt, he’d sent Violet to the local mall on a flimsy pretext, hoping that she would have the initiative to forget about the errand and spend the afternoon drinking cocktails by the pool on the company credit card. But no, there she was, shimmering through the heat haze with a plastic bag and a weary smile, equal parts subservient and superior, her hair wilting down her neck in damp little curlicues. ‘They didn’t have bunny rabbits,’ she said, holding out the bag, ‘so I got you frogs. At least I think they’re frogs. They’re green, anyway.’

  ‘Thank you Violet,’ he said. He thought about licking the back of her neck, and the gritty taste of her desert sweat. He turned away.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ Violet asked.

  Ares bit his lip. He felt as if his professional relationship with Violet was at a crossroads. On the one hand, he enjoyed the considerable power inherent in his role of both employer and immediate superior. On the other hand, it was becoming increasingly clear that Violet was not the sort of woman who would ever sleep with her boss. He realized there was a trade off between having her around him all the time and actually having a chance with her, but this had only occurred to him after the thrill of having her around all the time had peaked. And it was quite a peak. He knew that he needed her to get to know him as a man, and not as her boss, even though he wasn’t actually a man in the strictest sense of the word, and being her boss was the only way he knew to sustain the heightened level of arousal that he now needed in order to get it up in the presence of Aphrodite. Who he obviously couldn’t give up because he wasn’t getting anywhere with Violet, and he was, after all, a god.

  Quite a dilemma.

  Fortunately he was saved from making any rash staffing decisions by the arrival of an oversized hybrid vehicle with tinted windows and offensive mega bass.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Ares, tossing the bag of novelty post-its onto the floor and marching down the unstable steps of his pre-fab office.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Violet, under her breath. Then, for want of anything else to do, she grabbed a clipboard for a prop and followed him out the door.

  ‘Thank fucking god,’ said Freya, as she stepped out of the vehicle, slamming the door behind her with as much force as her whippet thin, five foot two frame could manage. The noise pollution of angry rehab rap and general bullshit backslapping of Hunter and Kurt had lodged in her brain like a tent peg and she knew from experience that only swimming, Ibuprofen and cocktails, in that order, could hope to dislodge it. ‘Hi Aaron,’ she said, without meaning it. Noticing Violet for the first time she gave a flicker of a smile and held out her hand. Had Violet been topless, Freya would probably have recognized her breasts. Fully clothed, she merely acknowledged her as the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. She was particularly perceptive in that regard.

  For half a second, Violet wondered whether this pretty, petite young woman could be Hunter’s girlfriend. But there was something about her iron grip and her Iron Maiden t-shirt that suggested otherwise.

  ‘Freya,’ said Freya. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Violet,’ said Violet. ‘I’m Aaron’s assistant.’

  Something in Freya’s eyes hardened and she dropped her hand. She hadn’t expected to be confronted with Hunter’s latest fuck in person, at least not in broad daylight. And she hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful. Attractive, certainly. But also waxed, polished, painted and possibly Eastern European, like a pornographic matryoshka doll. Either Hunter was playing against type or this was a totally different Violet. Of course, she’d have to see her tits to be sure.

  ‘Would you mind taking off your shirt?’ she considered asking, but she never got the chance. Indeed, she was saved from any future mammary detective work by the reaction of her celebrity employer as he climbed out of the car. ‘Hey you,’ he said. He may have even pointed. Certainly, he winked. Freya narrowed her eyes, as the latest fuck flushed like hot sauce.

  On the other side of the romantic divide, Violet felt the saliva being suctioned from her mouth as if by a dental hygienist. The sun disappeared behind the only cloud in the sky and a shadow fell over her alone, like a negative spotlight. She cleared her throat, wanting to say something but suffering from a kind of desert stage fright more commonly associated with featured extras in combat fatigues.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ said Kurt, slamming the driver side door and throwing the keys at a random bystander, an electrician of Puerto Rican descent. ‘Fucking paparazzi, man.’ In fact, the paparazzi had consisted of one local journalist who had tailed Kurt to the airport, but it made him feel important to verbally abuse an easy target. ‘Oh,’ he said, spotting Violet. Due to several layers of lingering resentment, the latest stemming from Violet’s executive accommodation at the Venetian, Kurt had developed a coping mechanism whereby he acted surprised to see Violet, every time he saw her. ‘You still here?’ his tone was meant to imply, as if to suggest that she was an extraneous union employee, whose presence on set was a mandated annoyance. Unfortunately Kurt was no actor, and he hadn’t quite nailed the inflection. Instead he came across like a stalker, feigning astonishment at having run into his victim for the fiftieth time that day.

  Freya looked from Hunter to Kurt to Violet to Aaron. And then back to Violet. As a passive observer of heterosexual relationships in general, and of Hunter’s in particular, she like to think that she had pretty much seen it all. But this ménage-a-quatre had her flummoxed. And to be honest, a little freaked out. ‘If you don’t need me for the rest of the afternoon, I’m going back to the hotel to take a swim,’ she said. ‘I have a menstrual migraine.’ She didn’t really, but she had observed that for some reason, being a lesbian meant that the mere mention of her period sent most men into a mumbling huddle of avoidance; as if the combination of her sexual preference and her menstrual cycle immediately conjured up some alarming gynecological possibility. Which was completely ridiculous of course, and why she felt entirely justified in exploiting it.

  Right on cue, Kurt said something about the weather and Aaron, who up until this point had been seething silently, grabbed a walkie-talkie from the nervous electrician and started barking instructions. ‘Get Ivan here now!’ he yelled.

  ‘You need to turn it on at the base,’ said Violet calmly; or as calmly as she could manage, given that her mouth was still clinically dehydrated and her armpits were taking up the slack. Freya stared at her in surprise. Perhaps she had underestimated this latest love interest. In which case, it really didn’t make sense. ‘Actually,’ Violet continued, handing her clipboard to the increasingly perplexed electrician, ‘I think I might go for a swim too.’

  ‘Sure thing ladies,’ said Hunter, pretending to check the messages on his phone but secretly imagining the possibilities.

  ‘I’m sorry, Violet, but I can’t let you hang around the pool all afternoon,’ said Ares, conveniently forgetting that half an hour ago, he had been hoping that she would do just that.

  ‘Oh come on Aaron, give the girl a break,’ said Hunter, winking at Violet. His fantasies weren’t going to be derailed that easily.

  Ares shuddered. He was suddenly feeling powerless and knew from experience that on such occasions, he was at risk of extreme and inappropriate displays of power. ‘Where the fuck is Ivan!’ he screamed on every channel.

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s Øyvin,’ said Violet, taking the keys from the electrician and gently shoving Kurt out of the way as she opened the car door and collapsed into the relative cool of the all leather interior. She felt like she had just sprinted up four flights of stairs. As Freya opened the passenger door, Violet took a deep breath and started the engine. Then, summoning up every ounce of foolish desire, she lowered the window and turned to face Hunter, who had abandoned his phone ruse and was now staring straight at her. ‘See you tonight?’ she said.

  56.

  Above the Bellagio
casino, the night sky hummed with a heavy frenetic energy, unpredictable and full of dark potential. The air felt dense, as if a couple of dueling thunder gods were sharpening their lightning forks while hurling preliminary abuse across the cumulus. But the only gods on hand were getting ready for dinner, and the mood was not so much one of friendly mythological combat as of mildly anxious despondency. At least, that’s the way Eros was feeling. Hermes was still full of beans, literally, after his narrow escape from in vitro fatherhood. Far from being chastened by the experience, he was determined to make amends for a wasted week.

  ‘You’re not seriously wearing that?’ he said to his cousin. Over on the king sized bed, Eros curled into a half-crunch and cast an uncritical eye over his outfit. ‘I’m wearing it,’ he said. ‘It’s up to you if you want to take it seriously.’

  ‘At least let me iron your pants,’ said Hermes, who was ironing an Hermès shirt in his underwear. Ironing was one the things he enjoyed most about being on Earth, along with Converse sneakers, his eponymous fashion label and disposable razors.

  Eros propped himself up on his elbows. ‘What’s the point?’ he said.

  ‘The point,’ said Hermes, pointing the tip of the iron at Eros in a gesture at once both camp and malevolent, ‘is that you look like a sad sack of goat’s business and you’re going to seriously harm my chances with the locals.’

  ‘The locals?’ said Eros, curling his lip derisively but taking off his trousers anyway. ‘The last lot of locals you fancied nearly spawned a football team of demigods. Can you imagine the shit that would have hit the chariot wheel? Your testicles would have been toast.’

  ‘It was more like a basketball team,’ Hermes muttered. ‘But I take your point.’

  ‘My point,’ said Eros, ‘is that we’re supposed to be spying on Violet, not running around flopping it out for every wasted bridesmaid in the Bellagio.’

  Hermes grinned. ‘I’d like to see you try that,’ he said, neatly pressing the back pocket of Eros’ pants.

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Eros, looking down at the soft bulge in his boxers. It should have been easy to forget what was under there, particularly as he had deleted the image that Jesus had sent him. But every time he thought about Violet – which was a lot – his G-rated genitals reminded him that as long as he remained on Earth, he was virtually unlovable. He didn’t need Hermes to stick the sneaker in too.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hermes, handing Eros his trousers. ‘If it’s any consolation, I think she actually likes you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Eros, pulling on the warm, creaseless pants, ‘but it’s not.’ And as he zipped up his fly and experienced, once again, the constrictive fist of earthly attire, he reflected that if his banishment continued indefinitely, he was going to have to move to some remote part of Scotland and take up the bagpipes. There, at least, he could dangle in pixelated peace.

  57.

  ‘And then I was up for the lead in Braveheart Two, but they ended up giving it to Ewan McGregor,’ said Hunter, swirling his Chardonnay with what he hoped was a sommelier’s insouciance.

  ‘But doesn’t William Wallace die in Braveheart?’ said Violet. In the flickering red candlelight, Hunter’s face had a kind of Halloween glow. His nose, always a little on the large side, was casting a goblin-like shadow that wouldn’t have been out of place in a puppet show.

  ‘Who?’ said Hunter, taking a sip of his wine and making a face that conveyed a mixture of pleasant surprise and knowing condescension, a look he perfected when playing a French winemaker turned resistance fighter in Ignoble Rotterz.

  ‘Sir William Wallace,’ said Violet. ‘Mel Gibson’s character.’ It was strange the way so much of the interior decor in Las Vegas seemed to come straight out of an Indochinese brothel. Or at least, what Violet imagined to be an Indochinese brothel, based on a number of Vietnam War movies in the Olympic Studios back catalogue that Aaron had forced her to sit through. Which, now that she thought about it, pretty much guaranteed that the image she had in her mind was nothing like the interior of a genuine oriental bordello.

  Violet was nervous. And when she was nervous her mind filled with useless trivia based on whatever she happened to be doing in her day job. When she was a psychologist, this had involved mentally regurgitating research statistics from her Masters thesis on panic disorders. Working at Olympic studios, it was box office receipts. But tonight, for some reason she was fixated on art direction.

  ‘Oh sure, in the original he dies,’ said Hunter, ‘but it turns out it was all a dream.’

  ‘His torture and beheading was a dream?’ said Violet, twirling her fettuccine al funghi idly around her fork. She didn’t get it. Why didn’t Hunter want her? When she had emerged from the pool in the late afternoon, with a flushed face and overheated body that surely must have exuded latent desire, she had fully expected Hunter to pick her up and carry her off to his suite for a solid twelve hours of athletic sex. But instead, he had handed her a towel and asked her to dinner. OK fine, a man had to eat, but did he have to talk as well?

  ‘That’s the brilliant part,’ said Hunter. ‘It was his subconscious fear of being tortured and beheaded. That’s why his wife’s head appears in the crowd. Magical realism.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he wake up in the next scene?’ said Violet. ‘Why didn’t he help out at the Battle of Bannockburn?’

  Hunter laughed. ‘Wow, you sure know a lot about movies.’

  Violet flushed. In Hunter’s presence she suffered from the lethal combination of physical insecurity and dogged determination, which resulted in her subconscious trying to compensate for her perceived lack of attractiveness with intellectual diarrhea. ‘What happened to the movie?’ she said, staring at her plate. ‘Did it ever get made?’ A lone slice of mushroom floated in golden pool of oil, fringed by an atoll of congealing cream.

  Grinning, Hunter shook his head. ‘McGregor got the Obi Wan gig and then the script disappeared up some executive’s ass,’ he said, grabbing a couple of bocconcini from the salad bowl and stuffing them into his mouth, apparently too famous for cutlery. ‘You want some more wine?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Violet, ‘I’ve kind of got a headache.’ This was true, but it wasn’t the reason she didn’t want anything more to drink. In fact, the wine was sensational and had she been by herself, she probably would have polished off the rest of the bottle with a few chocolate truffles on the side. But if she had any more to drink she would be at risk of embarrassing herself, and she had already done enough of that for one day. Whatever weird movie star agenda Hunter had that evening, she was clearly not a part of it. And he was, of course, right. Her crazy hormonal fantasies were messing with her judgment and she had been insane to suggest a liaison when they would be working together every day. She’d had her movie star moment. And now it had passed. ‘I have to get up at five tomorrow and I got too much sun this afternoon. I should probably go to bed.’

  Hunter stared at her in surprise. ‘Really?’ he said, his glass halfway to his mouth. ‘I thought we were going to fuck.’

  The whoosh of air that was sucked into Violet’s body could only have been the result of some kind of vacuum, created by the obliteration of her internal organs due to some kind of cosmic collapse of stars, galaxies, nebula, rearranging atoms, reversing gravity –

  ‘Hey are you all right?’ said Hunter. ‘Your look kind of out of it.’

  Violet caught her breath. With a mental effort that felt like an organ grinder winding down a rusted handle sticking out of her right ear, she looked Hunter in the eye. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, simmering like caramel. ‘But I think I will have another glass of wine.’

  58.

  With the discreet vigilance of a pit boss and the suppressed disdain of a mâitre d’, Kurt watched from a distance as Beef and his entourage carved up the craps table. Beef was throwing down chips like they were gold doubloons, as if he were playing to lose. He had on a red cowboy hat and a pair of snakeskin boots, the rest of his outfit oscillating betw
een homeless chic and Dude Ranch Ken, depending on how close you were standing. Beef didn’t like to shower during a shoot, which would have made him a difficult person to be around even if his personality hadn’t beaten his body odor to it.

  It was an impressive performance, certainly good enough for the hookers and hangers-on but Kurt had seen it all before. Most people thought B-grade celebrities like Beef could afford to hemorrhage money on the gaming floor and still pick up the tab at breakfast. The reality was a little more impecunious. Beef’s strategic losses were merely to draw an adoring crowd and to punish himself for his repressed sexual desires, although Kurt didn’t know that last part. What he did know was that Beef was a brilliant poker player, a back room savant with an alcoholic’s chemical focus and a habitual liar’s barefaced bluff. The only problem was that the win/loss ratio wasn’t always one-to-one. On a good night, Beef would sober up at some point, jettison the entourage and sequester himself away in a high rollers’ room until he had barely dented the fortunes of a number of Asian businessman, but significantly bolstered his own.

  On an average night, Beef would keep on drinking, attempt to sleep with a couple of the hookers but fail to get it up, fail to pay them and end up with a bleeding nose and his Rolex missing in an alley behind an all night pancake parlor.

  Kurt didn’t like to think about the bad nights.

  The problem was, there was absolutely no way to tell which of these three roads Beef might venture down, on any given evening. The only thing Kurt knew for sure was that the devil was at the crossroads.

  ‘Kurt!’ yelled Beef across the table, ‘Buddy! Come have a roll with us!’

  Kurt cleared his throat. ‘No thanks,’ he said, ‘I’m good.’