Margin of Eros

by Hawthorne, Clare

  It was only then that he noticed his iPhone on the bench.

  ‘Fiona?’ he said, with little hope of an answer.

  ‘Florida,’ said Florida. ‘I’m still here,’ she added, not in the petulant inflection that Jesus might have expected but in a sad, deflated whisper. Jesus glanced across at his cats, who were slinking around one another like a spinning yin and yang. He smiled, full of the fuzzy glow of a family reunion.

  ‘What time does the movie start?’ he asked.

  61.

  ‘This could be bad,’ said Eros. Squashed under a flimsy awning with a crowd of half-tanked bachelorettes, freezing his well-fondled ass off while waiting for a limo outside a casino wasn’t exactly how he had envisioned spending his evening. Next to him, Hermes nodded in agreement, zipping up his jacket and squinting at the cracks of lightning as they crawled across the sky like spider veins.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ sneered Kurt, ‘afraid that you might mess up your hair?’ Temporarily forgetting that his alter ego, Mr. Agreeable, was still on duty, Kurt had allowed his real personality, Kurt with a silent ‘n’, to sneak out of storage. Fortunately, Beef was too busy fending off the bachelorettes to notice the difference.

  ‘Not really,’ said Eros, who had decided to treat Kurt like the beige wallpaper that he was. ‘I’m afraid that my grandfather might turn up.’

  ‘Oh really?’ said Kurt with a snigger. ‘Why’s that? Did you forget your closet?’

  ‘Fuck off, Kurt,’ said Hermes, who hated beige wallpaper and had suddenly decided to remember that Kurt had stalked Violet and threatened to get him sacked. Turning to Beef, he grabbed the ham actor by the arm and pulled him away from the tiara squad. ‘How far is the restaurant?’ he demanded. There was something about the sky that was filling him with a dreadful sense of urgency. He couldn’t prove it, but the shape of the lightning splinters bore a strong resemblance to a certain part of his family crest, in the quadrant representing ultimate destruction.

  Beef looked down at Hermes’ hand where it held onto his biceps. The commanding grip would normally have been thrilling to him, but there was something about the blazing whites and the spinning irises of the beautiful man’s eyes that freaked him out, and not in a warm, S&M kind of way. ‘It’s three blocks,’ he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of Paris. ‘But we can’t walk there in this!’

  ‘We’re not walking,’ Hermes said, tightening his grip. ‘Come on.’ Half dragging, half pushing Beef, he ran out into the storm, defying gravity with every fluttering stride. Not quite as spectacular but equally as swift, Eros trailed a second behind.

  Staring after them, Kurt watched with a seething volcano of fury in his heart, as his alter ego and his actual personality battled for supremacy. In the end it was the jeers of the bachelorettes that got him out into the rain. ‘You fucking cunts,’ he screamed after the interns, barely able to see them through the liquid blackout curtain and therefore confident that his abuse was hypothetical. Unfortunately, he underestimated the canine keenness of the interns’ ears, and not only were his words heard, they were duly noted.

  Despite all the hours spent with personal trainers, Kurt was not a fit man. To be fair, even a track star would have struggled to keep up with the gods, which explained why Beef, who actually was in reasonable shape, lay gasping on the floor in a pool of iced water when Kurt eventually burst through the front door of the restaurant. Off to one side, the interns were wringing out their jackets and shirts, their heads bent close in conversation as an entire restaurant ogled in amazement at this unexpected visit from the Chippendales.

  With impeccable disdain, the hostess gazed at Kurt, her eyes as dead as sapphires. Unperturbed, Kurt stared levelly back. ‘What the fuck,’ he growled.

  ‘Right this way sir,’ she said.

  62.

  She seemed to be lost, although come to think of it, she wasn’t sure exactly where she was supposed to be going. Her legs felt like they were encased in lead, but when she looked down, she discovered that they were merely encased in chocolate frosting. Or at least, what appeared to be chocolate frosting. On closer inspection the frosting was solid, possibly made from some sort of animal hide. It was stiff, too, like a chopping board, but somehow a lot more supple. She decided it must be some kind of armor, although why she needed it or how she had acquired it was not clear. It didn’t chafe at all, however, and although every step was like wading through thigh high snow, she felt strangely smooth and free.

  Maybe if she put down her sword she could move a bit faster. As an experiment, she leaned it against a large rock and took a couple of steps, intending to circle the rock and come back for the sword if it made no difference to her progress. But as soon as she was out of arm’s reach, the sword sprung back into her hand like a light saber, or rather a heavy saber, as the metal slapped painfully into her palm. ‘Ow,’ she said. In response, the sword seemed to hum slightly, like a low-pitched tuning fork. She frowned. Was that an apology? Or was it a rebuke? It was hard to tell. When she strained her ears to try and get a handle on the sound, it immediately disappeared, as if sucked back into the metal like harmonic anemone. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I guess you can stay.’

  After a while, her biceps started to ache and she decided that holding onto the sword didn’t mean she had to hold it aloft, so she started to drag it behind her, creating a small trench in her wake. It seemed like she had been walking through the same patch of forest for hours, although she couldn’t remember when she had begun and she didn’t feel particularly tired. What she was starting to feel was hungry, so she was particularly relived to spot the familiar white canvas roof of her favorite market stall, a little further along the trail.

  When she got there, however, it wasn’t actually the cheese stall from the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, as she had initially assumed. It was still a cheese stall, but the guy behind the table was not the cheerfully obese Italian cheese man who always gave her a little extra Romano, but a handsome man with extremely pale skin and odd colored eyes. Not vampire-odd but mismatching-odd. Heterochromatic, like a cat. Come to think of it, his hair was a little strange too, a slightly unnatural shade of brown, burgundy almost, but patchy, as if he had dyed it himself but neglected to read the instructions. ‘Hello, Violet,’ he said. There was something familiar about his voice but she couldn’t say what it was. Perhaps it was the noncommittal accent, or the slightly odd emphasis on the last syllable of her name. ‘You look hungry,’ he continued, sweeping his hand across his array of wares. ‘Would you like a sample?’

  She looked down at the table, where a dozen or so plates of cheese were laid out, each one slightly different from the others. She picked up the nearest plate and sniffed. On the plate, the cheese looked like a soft blue brie, normally one of her favorite cheeses. But it smelled like something else, something putrid and disgusting, and not in a deliberately nasty, old shoes kind of way. It smelled like death. She dropped it onto the table, trying not to gag. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t like cheese.’

  ‘You liked it before,’ said odd-eyes.

  She took a step back from the table. ‘No I didn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, standing up and revealing a lower half as charred and twisted as an incinerated tree stump, ‘you did.’ Pushing over the table, he sent the plates of cheese crashing to the ground, where they immediately exploded, like entrée servings of nitroglycerin. Fortunately, her legs were protected by the armor and the force of the explosions only threw her backwards a few feet, where she landed on her back in a pile of leaves. As the handsome/hideous creature strode towards her, slicing through the table and setting it on fire with his volatile legs, she struggled to her feet and raised her sword, trying hard not let the tremor show. Odd-eyes laughed. ‘You’re not seriously thinking of using that are you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, drawing it back over her shoulder, like a batter stepping up to the plate, ‘I am.’ And with a forceful swing that spun her around in a full circle, sh
e neatly sliced off his head.

  After a brief airborne moment, the head fell to the ground with a dull thud, bounced a couple of times, then finally came to rest in front of a moss-covered log, its brown and blue eyes blinking in surprise. ‘Sheep,’ it said, then promptly disappeared into thin air, along with the rest of its dismembered body. She knelt down to catch her breath. ‘Far out,’ she said to herself. ‘That was lucky.’

  Oddly, when she reached out to grab her sword again and continue on her way, she found that it, too, seemed to have disappeared. Hopefully, this meant that she wouldn’t be needing it again, which, after the cheese incident, was quite a relief. Straightening up, she grabbed hold of her ankle for a quick quadriceps stretch, in preparation for the next phase of the journey. It was then that she noticed that she was topless from the waist up. Strange. She had to assume that she had been topless for the whole time, as, try as she might, she couldn’t remember seeing any kind of matching armor, or even a studded leather bodice. At any rate, the temperature had soared into the nineties and rivers of sweat were running down her legs after all that fire and beheading. She had the sudden irresistible urge to take off her armor, which she did. Unsurprisingly, this left her feeling a little exposed. So she was particularly relieved to see a white dress hanging from a tree up ahead, fluttering in the breeze.

  The dress fit her perfectly. Actually, it wasn’t really a dress, more like a sheet, but it was gathered at the shoulders and a thin gold cord hung about the waist, which she tied in a loose knot to one side. She felt immediately lighter, so light that she wanted to skip. So she did. Tra-lala-lala, she sang to herself. She was covering a lot of ground now, speeding through the trees as they became thinner and thinner until suddenly she could see out from under the canopy. And what she saw was a mountain. Was this where she was going? She consulted her internal compass and decided that it must be. It was like no other mountain she had seen before. Roughly volcanic in shape, it rose out of the distant treetops, on and on, up and up, until the summit peaked in an explosion of white light. It was like a star on a Christmas tree, only the tree was a mountain and the star was a blazing white ball – an actual star, as opposed to its wire and tinsel facsimile. ‘How lovely,’ she said to herself.

  As she skipped onwards through the thinning foliage, she began to smell something. It wasn’t a dangerous smell, but a pleasant one. She just couldn’t quite place it. She noticed, too, that the earth was getting darker, in patches, and at the same time lighter too. And softer and harder to run in, a little like –

  ‘Sand!’ she cried with delight. That was the smell, that slightly salty, slightly piney scent. Yes, and the trees had changed to some kind of pine – cypress, perhaps? – and the trail was getting wider. Gradually, the darker sand gave way to a brilliant white, and the trail stretched ahead forever, like a bright strip of paint pointing her to her destination. Picking up the hem of her dress she started to run, as fast as her bare feet would carry her. Her lungs were aching as she sprinted up a small sand dune and slid to her knees. The ocean. And there, on the other side of an infinite bay, the mountain, rising up out of the blue.

  But what a blue. She had never seen a color like it before. It looked like she imagined the center of an iceberg might look – a pure blue, a crystal cave. But somehow it didn’t look cold. It looked refreshing. Impossibly refreshing. And impossibly inviting. Giggling, she threw off her dress and started to run, her feet burning on the hot sand, the sun searing down on her bare skin. It was a long way to the water, a lot further than she had imagined, and by the time she reached the dark crescent of wet sand she was panting hard. She paused, gearing up for the final sprint and plunge into the icy blue. And then she froze.

  Someone – or something – was in the water, rising up from under the gentle waves and moving resolutely towards her. She held her breath, fearing another confrontation with a terrifying creature. And then he emerged from the ocean, his body dripping with heart-pounding perfection.

  In his left hand he was carrying what appeared to be a short spear; in his right hand, possibly a fish. She didn’t know where to look. He was completely naked, but then again, so was she, so she was hardly in a position to throw stones. He didn’t look as if he was going to hurt her, however. In fact, apart from the spear, he looked very gentle. Sculptured, golden, and gentle. As he got closer, she decided to focus on the spear, for want of somewhere else to look, and discovered that it wasn’t actually a spear at all. It was a thin, golden arrow. Startled, she looked up, and was surprised to find a face so familiar to her that it seemed almost part of her own reflection. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

  63.

  ‘What did she just say?’ demanded Hunter. Pausing momentarily in his manic pacing, he pointed a trigger finger at the blonde intern, who was at that moment carrying Violet across the room while the dark haired one pulled a couple of tables together and cleared a space on top. It was a disaster. He could visualize the headline now, stripping him of all credibility and dashing his Oscar chances for yet another year.

  Ignoring Hunter, Eros laid Violet down on the table, propping her head up on an oriental pillow. He felt like howling. In a brief moment of lucidity, she had opened her eyes, recognized him, and spoken the same words that had both thrilled and terrified him, the first night he had laid eyes on her. Only this time, they didn’t thrill him. ‘What does that mean?’ Hermes said, stroking her forehead and feeling, in the searing dampness, the answer to his question.

  ‘It means she’s going to die,’ said Eros.

  ‘She’s going to fucking die?’ yelled Hunter. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘I don’t think he can help,’ said the blonde one. Then, turning to the dark one, he added, somewhat cryptically, ‘But it’s probably not a bad idea to call him.’

  ‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ said Freya.

  ‘No!’ shouted everyone except for Beef, who was too busy feeling bad about having an erection.

  ‘Try and stop me,’ said Freya, pulling out her phone. For a long, tense moment, it looked as if Hunter might do just that, but then the dark intern shrugged and turned his back on them, pulling out his own phone. ‘Fine,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘Call the cops, call the concierge, call the Queen of England. There’s nothing anyone can do.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Eros said, picking up Violet’s hand. Her pulse was extremely weak but a fiery heat was raging underneath her skin. She hadn’t spoken since she recognized him and he didn’t think she would again. Unless he did the unthinkable. ‘She’s rejecting it,’ he said, brushing the hair back from her forehead with aching tenderness, ‘because I couldn’t finish what I started.’ He turned to Hermes, his eyes full of immortal despair.

  Hermes nodded, an unfamiliar prickling sensation starting to burn the back of his eyelids. ‘You have to finish the job,’ he agreed.

  ‘What job?’ sneered Kurt. Mr. Agreeable had well and truly retired for the evening, and the real Kurt was feeling all the better for it.

  Hunter glanced at Kurt, a little surprised at the tone, but agreeing with the sentiment nonetheless. ‘Yeah, what job?’ he said.

  ‘I’m going to have to shoot you,’ said Eros, with a smirk. It was the first part of the evening that he actually enjoyed. He even enjoyed the next bit, where Hunter pinned him to the ground while three people – or two, if you didn’t count Kurt, who wasn’t actually trying – tried to pull the action hero off him. ‘You’re going to shoot me, asshole?’ spat Hunter. His breath smelled of Chardonnay and snails. ‘I shoot punks like you every day.’

  Eros tried not to laugh. ‘I thought you only pretended to shoot them,’ he said. No, it was no good, he really was going to laugh. This, of course, only further enraged Hunter.

  ‘I use live ammo!’ Hunter screamed.

  ‘No you don’t,’ spluttered Eros, his eyes watering.

  ‘He’s right, you don’t,’ said Freya.

  ‘On my ranch!’ Hunter insisted. ‘On my ranch, assholes!’ />
  ‘OK,’ said Hermes, hanging up his phone and striding across to the melee with a calm sense of purpose. With one hand he reached through the pack and plucked Hunter off his cousin, holding the action hero in the air for a moment before tossing him into a corner like a sack of Montana manure. ‘I can’t get through to Jesus,’ said Hermes, turning to Eros. ‘But I don’t think we can wait.’

  Grabbing hold of Hermes’ hand, Eros pulled himself to his feet. They both turned to Violet. Her body appeared to be undergoing some kind of mild shock therapy, every limb aflutter with a dreadful, moribund shiver.

  With a curious frown, Freya turned from the interns, to Hunter – who sat groaning in the corner while Beef and Kurt took turns slapping him in the face, with mixed motivations – then back to the interns. ‘You’re gods, right?’ she said.

  Eros glanced at Hermes, who shrugged indifferently. A perceptive lesbian was the least of their worries at this point.

  ‘Well which ones are you?’ she persisted.

  Eros made his way towards the door, trying not to bump Violet on any of the low hanging dragons. ‘I’m the god of love, and this is my cousin, Hermes,’ said Eros.

  ‘Like the handbags?’ said Freya. Hermes was about to say something when Violet suddenly cried out, an eerie, high-pitched moan, like the sound of a shipyard at midnight, wind whistling through skeleton sails.

  ‘We need to hurry,’ said Eros, pushing open the swinging saloon doors with his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, where the fuck are you taking her?’ said Kurt, looking up from his sanctioned slapping. Eros paused, turning back to Hermes.

  ‘Obviously they can’t remember any of this,’ he said.

  ‘Obviously,’ agreed Hermes, pulling out his cinnamon tin.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Beef, glancing up at the two half naked supermen carrying a rapidly deteriorating, unconscious woman and completely misreading the mood, ‘at least she’s not underage.’