Margin of Eros

by Hawthorne, Clare

‘We know that!’ said Beef, his accent thickening in exact proportion to the size of his audience, ‘Yer too fooking good!’ All around him, fellow gamblers laughed with the greasy euphoria of the losing streak. Kurt smiled, a thin lipped, sober grin, as he mentally reminded himself of the number of scenes that Beef still had left to shoot. ‘Uno,’ he breathed. ‘Uno uno uno.’ For some reason the mantra was more soothing in Spanish.

  Unfortunately, just as the repetition was peaking in effectiveness, Kurt happened to glance across the gaming room floor, where he was confronted with the sight of two shamelessly attractive men dressed in perfectly pressed casual attire, as if they were handing out lawnmowers on Wheel of Fortune. ‘Oh god,’ he said, getting it half right.

  ‘Kurt!’ Hermes called out cheerfully, pretending that the last time they had spoken, he hadn’t preceded that epithet with ‘Fuck off’.

  ‘That’s Kurt?’ whispered Eros. ‘He doesn’t look that bad.’

  ‘Wait until he opens his mouth,’ muttered Hermes. His teeth were already beginning to ache from his plastered on smile but he figured he could keep up the act for as long as it took them to track down Violet. The longer they were unsuccessful in their search, the more he realized just how much he wanted to see her.

  ‘There’s no fucking way Aaron authorized this,’ said Kurt, when Hermes and Eros were standing close enough that his snarl wouldn’t attract the attention of Beef. As far as any celebrity knew, Kurt was the most mild-mannered guy on the planet; patient, jovial, and always there for you with a bucket and a fresh pair of shoelaces.

  ‘Authorized what?’ said Hermes. He knew exactly what was going on in Kurt’s head but he kept his tone light, even though pretty much everything that came out of Kurt’s mouth made Hermes want to tie him into an elegant mess off stammering, contradicting logical blubber with a short length of Aristotelian string. At least Kurt was bright enough to realize when he had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You’re just here for the weekend.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Hermes, ‘we came to see Violet. She invited us up and we were supposed to meet her at our hotel. But she didn’t show. Any idea where she is?’

  Beside him, Eros had been gazing around the room with an anthropologist’s detached regard and an archer’s pinpoint focus. But at the mention of Violet, his head snapped back into the conversation. ‘We’re really worried about her,’ he said, looking a little like a Japanese cartoon hero, with his perfectly coiffed hair and almond saucer eyes.

  Kurt looked from one intern to the other, trying to simultaneously assess the situation and work out a way that he could turn it to his advantage. Fortunately, as a Hollywood bit player, he was particularly adept at this. On the one hand, he knew exactly where Violet was. On the other, he hated Henry and would rather drink a pint of phlegm than help him out. On the other, other hand, he didn’t want Violet to spend another second with Hunter and any disruption that he could facilitate was probably worth the psychological pain of abetting the enemy. Then there was the issue of Beef, who was looking more and more like he was getting ready to launch into a downward spiral of public humiliation and professional liability. ‘I’ve got no idea where she is,’ said Kurt, with a sudden stroke of genius, ‘but Beef might know.’

  ‘Who in Hades is Beef?’ said Eros. Luckily, Kurt was too enamored of his own plan to notice the slip up, and Hermes was already staring in wonderment at the celebrity circus across the room. ‘Come on,’ said Kurt, ‘I’ll introduce you.’

  Like a diminutive pop producer flanked by half a boy band, Kurt made his way through the sea of silicone to the crowded table. He didn’t know it, but the otherworldly eye candy by his sides was the perfect bait for Beef, and the only thing, short of an overdose, that was going to stop him in his tracks tonight. ‘Beef,’ Kurt shouted, when Beef had rolled and, rather unexpectedly, won with a seven. ‘This is Henry, and this is –’ he glanced at Eros, drawing a blank, ‘– his friend. They’re from the studio and they’re looking for Hunter. Have you seen him?’

  Eros shot Hermes a look of mild confusion, bordering on panic. No one had mentioned Hunter, which could only mean two things: Kurt was a lying weasel, and Violet was with the movie star. ‘Fuck off, Kurt,’ said Beef, slurring his words with exaggerated brogue while doing his best not to drool on the feet of the two celestial beings in front of him. Hermes grinned, holding out his hand. ‘I’m a huge fan,’ he said, even though he had never seen Beef before in his life, on screen or in person. However, his vast experience with celebrities and closet homosexuals had led him to several rapid and accurate assumptions about the man in front of him, chiefly that he would respond well to flattery and innuendo. ‘And this is my friend,’ he said, deliberately lingering on the innocent endearment and turning it into a euphemism, ‘Leo.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Eros distractedly. He was still in a state of shock and so hadn’t registered Beef as anything other than a slightly whiffy guy in a cowboy suit. Misinterpreting Eros’ unfriendliness as jealousy, Beef felt a muted thrill as he turned his attention to the dark haired hunk and amped up what his publicist referred to as his ‘scruffy bad boy charm’. ‘Hunt-er?’ he said, draping an arm over an adjacent hooker and casually squeezing her nipple. ‘Why d’ya want that cunt?’ Even Hermes had to admit that way Beef rhymed ‘hoont’ and ‘coont’ was not without a certain charm.

  ‘Actually we’re looking for Violet,’ said Hermes, ‘and Kurt here thought you might be able to help us.’

  ‘Vaaaahlet?’ said Beef. ‘Who the fook is Vahlet?’

  Eros wasn’t the sort of god to strike down a human with a single bolt of lightning, partly because it had been outlawed by the Olympic Council but mostly because he had a certain amount of sympathy for humans and had recently concluded that the most stupid and offensive things they did and said could probably be blamed on tight underwear and television. So although a small part of him wanted to break apart the craps table with this guy’s skull, the larger part of him made the observation that no heterosexual man could have failed to notice Violet. He therefore came to the same conclusion that Hermes had come to five minutes ago, namely that they could manipulate the actor to their advantage by acting like a couple of Poseidon’s pool cleaners. It wasn’t his finest moment, but these were desperate times. He turned to Hermes, a perfect pout flexing his Cupid’s bow. ‘I told you we should have gone to see Cher,’ he said.

  Kurt’s eyebrows nearly hit the low-slung lighting. They were gay? He could have high fived a hooker. All this time he had assumed that Violet had been banging the intern and the movie star, cruelly circumventing the middleman. But now all that his ego had to contend with was the inevitability of every woman on the planet preferring Hunter to him. He sighed contentedly, satisfied in his mind that the natural order of things had been restored. Ironically, the world was about as close to chaos as it had ever been, and the only creature capable of restoring equilibrium was standing in front of Kurt with a pixelated penis, pretending to be gay in order to ascertain the whereabouts of the woman who, through no fault of her own, had precipitated the whole crisis.

  But Kurt wasn’t to know that.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Beef, as if he had them every day. ‘How about we go find Hunter? It’ll be a laugh.’ A laff. All around him, prostitutes and croupiers glanced nervously at one another, quickly tabulating the cost of this unexpected development and coming up with a sizable deficit.

  ‘Sounds awesome,’ said Hermes, flashing Beef his most unhinged grin.

  ‘Sounds awful,’ said Eros, falling into the pantomime with such ease that he actually started to feel a little guilty. But not so guilty that he was going to stop.

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Hermes, somehow managing to wink at Eros, Beef and a particularly attractive prostitute, all at the same time. ‘It’ll be fun.’

  Eros sniffed theatrically, ‘There’d better be cocktails,’ he said.

  59.

  Freya glanced up at the s
ky and shivered. It was supposed to be hot in Vegas at this time of year, but tonight the threat of thunder loomed above the imitation Eiffel Tower. It wouldn’t be a tropical storm, either, judging by the sudden plunge in air temperature and the icy spittle she had just caught on the back of her neck. Pulling up the collar of her leather jacket she stepped gamely onto the sidewalk, wondering what the hell she was doing on this fool’s errand when she could have been inside under the down comforter eating peanut butter pretzels and watching Easy Rider.

  The weird thing was that it had been hot all afternoon. Stinking hot. She had spent an hour in the pool with Violet, where she had suddenly found herself discussing her girlfriend’s refusal to come out to her family and the strain on their relationship that this duplicity was causing. Not only had Violet turned out to be compassionate and insightful, she had offered to email Freya the name of a psychologist who specialized in same sex couples counseling and had published a research paper on that very topic. And then Hunter had turned up and Violet had turned into a case study in Cosmopolitan.

  The only reason Freya had agreed to come and meet Hunter was that he had sounded genuinely scared about his date. ‘She’s probably just had too much to drink,’ Freya said, silently cursing her failure to turn off her phone the second she pulled on her PJs.

  ‘No,’ Hunter insisted, ‘she’s had less than half a bottle. Probably only a third.’

  ‘Of wine?’ said Freya. She had to ask.

  ‘Yes of fucking wine,’ Hunter yelled. For all his faults, he never really snapped at Freya and this sudden departure from his usual dumb jocularity had her worried. She let out a slow breath, mentally kissing her bed goodbye. ‘Well is she conscious?’ Please say yes, she begged silently, squeezing her eyes shut as if anticipating a particularly gory scene in a slasher film. She knew it was illogical, but sometimes it helped dilute the impact of Hunter’s more alarming revelations.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Hunter.

  It didn’t help. ‘Sort of?’ she said, barely keeping her cool. ‘Is she lucid? Talking? Can she walk?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Hunter. During her three years with Hunter, Freya had, on occasion, found herself relating strongly to the character of Jules in Pulp Fiction, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Specifically, the scene in which Jules points a gun at the would-be drug baron and demands: ‘Say ‘What?’ again!’

  Hunter had a tendency to repeat himself. Short of holding a gun to his head, however, Freya didn’t think she was going to get a useful answer out of him any time soon. And she definitely had no chance over the phone. Therefore she would have to get it out of him in person. But this would mean getting changed out of her pajamas. She decided to give it one more shot. ‘So she’s sort of lucid, sort of talking, and she can sort of walk?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hunter. ‘It’s like she’s sleepwalking. And sleep talking. Mainly about cheese.’

  ‘Did you say cheese?’

  ‘Apparently she doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Hunter, I am going to ask you this once, and you are going to tell me the truth. What fucking drugs have you given her?’

  As if anticipating his indignation, a short blast of static severed the connection, obliterating whatever insight Hunter might have been able to provide. Freya sighed. This was precisely the kind of thing she had been worried about. For someone as bright and beautiful as Violet to be interested in Hunter, she clearly had to be on drugs. At this point in time, it was hard to say who Freya would have preferred to deal with: a detox freak like Candi-Ann with her plate throwing personality disorder, or a seemingly normal person like Violet with a secret drug habit that could land them on the cover of OK! magazine faster than you could say ‘oxycodone’. On balance, she had to go with Candi-Ann. In Hollywood, Candi-Ann just seemed normal. But due to the inherent hypocrisy of the industry and the speed with which recreational drug users sought to distance themselves from addicts, it was going to be much more damaging to Hunter’s career if his involvement with Violet went public.

  Plus, Freya was starting to feel sorry for Violet, and the last thing she wanted to do was become emotionally attached to one of Hunter’s girlfriends. No, this had to end, and it had to end tonight.

  Typically, the only cab that Freya could hail was a Humvee limo. She felt confident, however, that turning up at a restaurant in such an anabolic chariot would attract no more attention than if she’d turned up on her cherry red scooter in a bikini. Less, probably. Such was the beauty and the terror of Las Vegas. As it turned out, the other advantage that the limo had over her Vespa was its roof. The sound from the first wave of hail was like a scattershot of rubber bullets. The second, more like a firing squad. After a five second sprint from the limo, her leather jacket was dead and her boots were badly wounded. As she stood panting in the foyer of the restaurant, she felt the hail start to melt down her back, the cold taking hold of her spine and squeezing it in a witch’s grip. It was the coldest thing she had ever felt in her life, so cold that it was burning. It made her eyes water and her tailbone tingle. Meanwhile, the cool stare of the hostess was not helping.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said, in a tone that implied otherwise.

  ‘What the fuck,’ Freya panted. Never had uttering Hunter’s ludicrous code phrase felt more appropriate.

  60.

  Jesus gazed across the canyon from his balcony, trying not to let the distress show on his face in case it sent Alfa into a panic. She was skittish enough as it was. Romeo had been missing for three days now, and although that wasn’t unheard of, the tumultuous skies didn’t bode well for a wayfaring cat. The clouds had been gathering since late afternoon, piling layer upon layer, each layer darker and thicker than the one before, like sloppily applied concrete. The air had a volatile smell, somewhere between a striking match and a barbeque briquette. Jesus was no meteorologist but he knew a couple of thunder gods and he was familiar with the genre. He couldn’t say for sure that the gods were involved, but the rapid, unseasonal build up and the monochromatic sky was typical of their work. By the time the sun went down, the air was as thick and pungent as an oil spill and the barometric pressure had plummeted. Jesus had tried calling Hermes a couple of times, hoping to receive some kind of update on the climatic conditions but he’d only been able to get through to his voice mail. At a quarter to eight, he saw the first fat droplets land on his umbrella plant. Five minutes later, the downpour was so pervasive that he barely heard his phone ringing, only just catching the last few notes of Hallelujah as he turned to go back inside. He ran into the kitchen, fully expecting to hear from his friends in Vegas and being somewhat surprised – and to be honest, a little disappointed – to see that it was not Hermes’ or Eros’ name flashing on the screen, but that of a famous actress, who he hadn’t seen since his first fateful date with Marie.

  ‘They’ve cancelled the red carpet,’ wailed the actress, who had recently changed her name from Fiona to Florida. It took Jesus a moment to figure out what she was talking about, after mentally running through a couple of scenarios involving discontinued floor coverings.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Your new movie.’

  ‘The premiere is tonight,’ she sobbed, ‘but it’s raining.’

  Jesus glanced outside, unnecessarily confirming what he could already hear. The downpour sounded like an angry mob, banging on his sheet metal roof with sharpened pitchforks. ‘That’s true,’ he said.

  ‘And Carlos won’t come with me unless he gets to go on the red carpet. Can you believe that?’

  Jesus could. He could also sense where the conversation was headed, and the unease it inspired in him was not unlike the disquiet he felt at the beginning of awards season, when his schedule was always uncomfortably full. ‘Can’t you go by yourself?’

  ‘By myself?’ It was as if Jesus had suggested she give up mascara. ‘It’s my first movie! Everyone will think I’m a total loser.’

  Jesus sighed. Sometimes he had a real sense of achievement from his work with actresses. They were
such a contradiction: fragile yet steel willed, confident yet terrified. Helping them find a sense of peace within themselves, independent of their self-generated publicity, was what it was all about. Other times he felt that he was just part of some elaborate game, the latest accessory, like a non-toxic dentist or shamanic gardener.

  ‘Will you please come with me?’ Florida begged. ‘Pretty please?’

  ‘To be honest with you, Fiona –’ Jesus started.

  ‘Florida,’ Florida corrected him.

  ‘To be honest with you, Florida,’ Jesus said, ‘I’m really worried about my cat. I don’t know where he is and if he comes home in this storm, I want to be here.’

  ‘Your cat,’ said Florida, in a very quiet voice. Jesus had the sense that she was finding it hard to fathom how anyone could prioritize the wellbeing of a beloved pet ahead of the reputation of an occasional client who never took his advice.

  ‘Yes,’ he started to say. ‘He’s been missing for three days and I…’ He trailed off, watching in amazement as Alfa leapt off the kitchen bench and sprinted toward the stairs. ‘Actually can you hold on a minute?’ he asked.

  Florida sniffed. ‘Well, I guess I…’

  Jesus didn’t wait for her to finish the sentence. Taking the stairs three at a time, he chased after Alfa, landing in the spacious den that opened out onto the rooftop deck. He could have exploded with joy. There, pressing her nose against the glass door, was Alfa. And on the other side, drenched to his ragged kitty bones, was Romeo, meowing pitifully. As Jesus opened the door, a wall of water soaked him from head to toe but he didn’t care. Scooping up Romeo, he buried his beard in the sodden ball of fur and wrapped his jacket around them both. There may have been a couple of tears; with all the rain it was hard to tell.

  Back in the kitchen, Jesus toweled off Romeo with a Marimekko tea towel and emptied two cans of Fine Flakes of Tuna onto an Alessi plate. Even Alfa seemed content to watch her playmate eat, without her usual distract and conquer tactics. Jesus watched his cats for a long time, filled with a perfect sense of peace.