‘Won’t the name give it away?’ It was easily the most preposterous idea for a show that Jesus had ever come across, and he was certainly no stranger to far-fetched concepts, both as a viewer and a confidante for disgruntled TV producers. He was so sure that Eros would refuse to be involved, however, that he politely went along with the pitch, nodding thoughtfully as Apollo banged on like a high school marching band.
‘Of course we don’t tell them what it’s called,’ said Apollo. ‘We just get them to sign watertight contracts so that by the time they realize what’s really been going on, they’re back in Texas with a broken heart and a big fat check.’
‘You seem pretty confident that everyone will take the money,’ said Jesus.
Apollo laughed. ‘Look around you,’ he said. ‘Does this look like the kind of world where people are going to choose love?’
Jesus looked around him. He had never been to Las Vegas before, so the uncensored energy was a little overwhelming. All around them, taxis crawled like larvae towards the queen of diamonds, blinking blindly into space. ‘I take your point,’ he said, as a sword-shaped shadow fell across the windscreen.
Apollo grinned. Swinging the Porsche into the driveway of the Bellagio, he leaned on the horn for no reason whatsoever. There was nothing he liked quite so much as being right, except perhaps being right, loudly, at two-thirty in the morning. Unfortunately for Apollo, two-thirty in the morning in Las Vegas meant very little, apart from a change of shift, and the only person he managed to startle was a Japanese-speaking front desk clerk who shouldn’t have been dozing in the first place. And thus his obnoxiousness went unappreciated.
Tossing a handful of drachma at the valet, Apollo strode into the foyer without bothering to wait for his passenger, who shuffled uncomfortably behind him. In such lustrous surroundings, Jesus felt about as out of place as he did at Emporio Armani, where his older female friends often dragged him in an attempt to dress him like a stockbroker and distract themselves from their sadness. The casino had the same kind of mournful energy. When he got to the elevator lobby, he found Apollo tapping on the ‘door open’ arrows impatiently, while simultaneously checking out his reflection in the mirror. ‘How old do you think I am?’ he asked, as Jesus stepped in beside him.
Jesus shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Three thousand, maybe?’
‘Wrong,’ said Apollo, offering an alternative profile to the mirror, ‘I’m four-and-a-half thousand. Nearly five, actually.’
Jesus let out a low whistle. It wasn’t, as Apollo chose to infer, a whistle of admiration. It was a whistle of release, a single note of gratitude for the speed of modern elevators and the knowledge that he would soon be reunited with his friends, who bore about as much resemblance to their uncle as the Las Vegas skyline bore to the Yosemite Valley. His sense of relief, however, was quickly replaced by one of concern as Hermes ushered them into the suite.
‘He’s been like this since midnight,’ said Hermes, pointing to a chrome and black leather armchair positioned strategically in front of the giant TV. Eros sat slumped before the flickering images, his golden bow in one hand, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon in the other. The bourbon was just a prop, of course. He didn’t want to drink it – indeed, couldn’t drink it – since the liquor was really there and he was only partially present. But as a symbol of manly despair, it had no peer, and in it he found comfort.
‘You want me to talk to him?’ said Apollo.
‘Definitely not,’ said Hermes. He frowned anxiously, chewing on a splinter of cinnamon. With all the stress, he had devoured half a tin of bark and was down to his last scroll. And he was right out of oil of amnesia. A trip back to Olympus was urgently needed and, judging by Apollo’s presence, probably mandated as well. But he couldn’t leave Eros here in this semi-catatonic, semi-dimensional state. He had to do something.
‘Mind if I try?’ said Jesus. The events of the last few days were weighing heavily on his mind and he was beginning to understand the vital importance of the young god of love. He thought he might be able to persuade him, at the very least, to turn off the TV, put some clothes on, and take a long bath. Although possibly not in that order.
‘It’s been my experience,’ said Jesus, perching himself on the edge of the lounge chair, ‘that BBQ Pitmasters should never replace the opinion of a qualified therapist.’ Next to him, Eros stared straight ahead, unblinking, unacknowledging. Onscreen, contestants were arguing the merits of avocado in potato salad. Those from the East Coast were against it; those from the West were for it. ‘Although,’ Jesus went on, ‘I once knew an actor who claimed that BBQ sauce was better than Valium. Presumably he meant for calming you down. I doubt that Valium would be any good on spare ribs.’
Eros shifted in his chair. Virtually, infinitesimally. ‘What happened to him?’ he said quietly.
Jesus smiled. ‘He passed away from diabetes related complications,’ he said. ‘That stuff is full of sugar.’
Without moving his body, Eros glanced sideways at his friend. ‘You made that up,’ he said.
‘Only part of it,’ said Jesus. ‘The stuff about the sugar is true.’
Like a slowly inflating sponge, Eros rose up a little in his chair. ‘I wish I could die,’ he said.
‘We all wish that sometimes,’ said Jesus.
‘I’m never going to get over her,’ said Eros.
Jesus scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘That’s probably true,’ he said.
‘So what am I supposed to do about it?’
Jesus shrugged. ‘Go home. Have a bath.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ said Eros.
Jesus looked down at the solid bottle of bourbon and his distant, ephemeral friend. ‘You already are home, aren’t you?’ he suggested gently.
Slowly, Eros nodded, acknowledging the inevitable. ‘Would you mind holding this for me?’ he said.
‘Sure,’ said Jesus, taking the bottle, as the vision before him pulsed a little, momentarily brightened, and disappeared across the timeless void.
‘Right,’ said Apollo, turning to Hermes as he emptied a snack-sized packet of peanuts into his mouth, ‘now that’s done, I have to escort you home. You’re needed back on Council.’
‘No sheep,’ said Hermes, pulling out his last piece of bark.
71.
Aphrodite screamed. Then, when the assembled Council continued to discuss everything from their fungal infections to the price of Andalusian pomegranates, she screamed again; although to be fair, her second effort was more of a shrill squawk.
‘Listen to me!’
It was outrageous, the way these so-called Olympians could describe the texture of the skin between their toes in medical detail, but put it to them that the entire of fabric of their society was about to crumble if they didn’t listen to reason, and they would stare at you like you were some kind of unhinged harridan. ‘It’s too soon, you sweaty, corpulent morons! We must wait!’ But her words had little effect. The underground rumble of the automatic chamber door caused a minor decrease in volume, but even the arrival of Zeus, flanked by four fawning centaurs, was not enough to silence the chatter. ‘Enough!’ he roared, pounding the floor with his staff. ‘Take your seats at once. Aphrodite, you will have your chance to speak. Now sit down!’
Aphrodite’s mouth hung open, thwarted in its opening gambit. Glancing around, she realized that she was the only one standing on her chair. Even Hera, her opportunistic partner in crime, was examining her nails indifferently. Gathering her violet robes around her – the color specifically chosen as a tonal slap in the face of her lover – she sat down huffily, pressing her fingertips together in an impatient pyramid and pursing her perfect lips.
‘One thousand, two hundred and thirty-three,’ Zeus intoned somberly. And then, in response to a cough from one of the centaurs, who leaned across and whispered in his ear, he corrected himself. ‘I’m sorry. One thousand, two hundred and twenty-five mortal souls in love. I forgot to set the machine to auto-re
fresh.’
There was a collective exclamation point, followed by a burst of nervous discussion. Eventually Artemis spoke up. ‘Is that just in Los Angeles, or the whole of California?’
Zeus turned to one of the centaurs for a brief consultation. ‘No,’ he said, his voice weighted with the carnal sadness of one who has loved, and been loved by, many, ‘that’s the whole world.’ He paused for a second to let the consequences of his statement sink in. ‘Apparently the Italians are holding out. But they can’t last forever.’
Ares rolled his eyes. ‘That’s what you said to Pyrrhus before the battle of Heraclea,’ he said. ‘And look what that cost him.’
‘Silence!’ commanded Zeus. Rising up in his seat, he lifted his heavy scepter as if it was made of paper-mâché and pointed the sharp end at his son. ‘Your rampant lust has set in motion this calamitous chain of events. Your primitive bloodlust has taken over the mortals and you have become far too powerful to be trusted in their midst. You have even,’ he paused, the tip of the scepter shaking with emotion, ‘allowed the son of Hades to rise up into their world.’ A ripple of disgust moved around the table. Zeus lowered his scepter carefully, his eyes still boring into the lowered ornamental headdress of his son. ‘You are hereby ordered to abandon your movie career and return to Olympus.’ With resolute finality, Zeus cracked his scepter against the floor. The entire chamber resonated in throbbing silence, until a hesitant cough from another of the centaurs prompted Zeus to squint at the fine print on the hastily drawn decree. ‘Once you’ve finished post-production on Foxhole Fury,’ he added, tapping his scepter down lightly with a certain sense of anticlimax.
Ares sighed with relief. He didn’t exactly relish the prospect of being chained to the dreary idyll of Olympus, but with a bit of luck and a lot of manipulation he could stretch out the post-production for at least a year. Which gave him another year to prove to his father that he could be trusted among the mortals. Or if that failed, another year to find a loophole.
It also gave him another year of Violet.
‘Aphrodite, did you want to say something?’ asked Zeus.
Aphrodite lowered her hand, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. ‘I’d just like to say –’ she started, glancing sideways at her chastised lover. For a moment, their eyes met, and the bolt of desire that flew between them in that instant caught her so far off guard that she had to dig her fingernails into her palms. Even Ares looked surprised. It was as if the threat of enforced proximity has somehow reignited a dormant blaze. Aphrodite turned away and closed her eyes. And when she opened them, they were more determined than ever. ‘I’d just like to say that at least they noticed us.’ Her words were rushed, but their impact was felt around the room.
‘Noticed us!’ scoffed Athena. ‘Noticed him, you mean. Noticed hailstorms and riots. That’s not us, Aphrodite, that’s him!’ She pointed accusingly at her brother, who scowled at her with black-eyed fury.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ said Aphrodite. ‘They noticed something. They noticed what they didn’t have. And when the last one of them has fallen out of love, they need to realize that only we can give it back to them.’
‘And how do you propose that we let them know, my love?’ said Hephaestus. A quiet, practical god, her husband rarely spoke up at Council meetings. But when he did, the others listened. ‘Do we force your poor son to appear before them, dressed in a silk diaper with a set of fake wings on his back, twelve feet tall with his golden bow and angelic face, threatening to withhold his arrows if they don’t kneel before you?’
Aphrodite sniffed. As a matter of fact, the scenario outlined by Hephaestus was pretty close to the one she had envisioned, minus the diaper and fake wings. And she still thought it was a good idea. But there was something about the measured, reasonable tone of her thoughtful, well-respected husband that absolutely crushed the fight out of her. She hated him. And not in the passionate, oscillating way that she hated Ares. She hated her husband because he understood her, because he felt sorry for her, and because he loved her anyway. ‘He’s your son too,’ she said.
‘Arguably,’ Hephaestus said mildly. Stretching out his crippled leg, he felt a dull pain throb from his femur to his sacroiliac joint. ‘We don’t need the mortals to adore us. Although it is nice.’ Smiling at the assembled Olympians, he felt their tacit agreement. ‘We just need to encourage them to procreate, to multiply and to take a broadly skeptical view of dogmatic theological systems. Admittedly, to a certain extent we have been failing in our third tenet.’ A low murmur acknowledged the truth of this statement. ‘So although I don’t think that a twelve foot cherub is the answer, I think we could stand to establish more of a presence on Earth.’
‘Exactly!’ Apollo piped up excitedly. ‘That’s exactly what my new game show, Greed Date will do. We take a bunch of mortals, we get Eros to shoot them, and then we –’
‘Silence!’ yelled Zeus, splitting a tile with his scepter and at the same time, compounding his splitting headache. Much as he loved all the yelling and banging associated with his job, it was hardly worth putting up with all the inane chatter and irrelevant diversions. ‘We will not discuss game shows in my chamber.’
‘Your chamber,’ muttered Athena. But no one paid her any attention.
Zeus raised his scepter above his head. ‘All those in favor of banning Ares from Earth and subsequently creating a greater presence there for ourselves, raise your right hand.’
‘You can’t put a double-barreled question to a vote,’ protested Athena. ‘They’re totally separate issues. It doesn’t make any sense!’
Zeus looked around the room, as if trying to follow the path of an annoying flying insect. ‘All those in favor,’ he repeated. Several of the Council members tentatively raised a hand, while the remainder of the gods and goddesses looked quizzically at one another and Athena pretended to shoot herself in the head. Zeus brought down his scepter. ‘Passed by unanimous decision,’ he said. Full of the egalitarian thrill of democracy in action, he rose to his feet, preparing to draw the meeting to a close. ‘My fellow Olympians,’ he began, and immediately felt an urgent tugging on his robe. He paused. He frowned. He looked down at his wife.
‘Aren’t you forgetting someone?’ said Hera.
Zeus followed her gaze to the formal entrance of the chamber, where a couple of lonely demigods stood to attention. He blinked. He felt confused. And then he remembered. ‘Send in Eros!’ he commanded. At once, the demigods swung open the heavy doors. Caught off guard, Eros stood chatting earnestly to one of the Fates, while the others gave him a sympathetic but vigorous shoulder rub. ‘You know I’m not allowed to tell you that,’ whispered Clotho as she shoved him through the door. ‘But let’s just say I wouldn’t throw away your boat shoes.’
My boat shoes? thought Eros. Do I own any boat shoes? Looking over his shoulder, he tried to glean another sliver of information from his confidante as the demigods ushered him into the room. But it was too late. The door was closed.
‘Eros, son of Hephaestus,’ said Zeus, his tone somewhere between a cup of tea and his afternoon nap. Eros couldn’t help it. He yawned. Suddenly Zeus snapped out of his grand-parental disinterest. He face turned red. Then magenta. Then purple. A hiss of steam escaped his ears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he growled, rising up to his full thunderous height. ‘Am I boring you, Eros?’
Eros watched in alarm as small bolts of lightning fizzed and popped from the end of Zeus’ beard and a blazing orange fireball erupted from his head. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that your grandfather was still the same seven-foot power station who defeated your great-grandfather in a bloody battle for Olympus. And other times, it wasn’t. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Eros, lowering his head and averting his eyes. ‘I haven’t had a lot of sleep.’
‘Good!’ said Zeus. ‘And I hope you’re getting used to it. Because for the next year, you’re going to be in every cloak room, every back seat, every dive bar with a dark corner. You’re going to shoot so many golden arrows your e
lbow will forget it has another function. You’ll repopulate the Earth with delirious, doe-eyed lovers, falling over one another with sickening, vulgar displays. You will leave no mortal unaffected. And you will never, ever travel bodily back to Earth again. Do you understand?’
Eros raised his head to find eleven members of the Council staring at him with varying degrees of rage, disapproval and displeasure. Seeking out his cousin, he found the only face he trusted. Hermes gave him the slightest nod, less than a quarter inch of acknowledgement but in it Eros saw the mirror of his own thoughts. Just because you understand, said the nod, doesn’t mean that you plan to obey.
Eros turned back to his grandfather. ‘I understand,’ he said.
‘Wonderful,’ said Zeus, beaming with such festive joy that he that might have passed for Santa Claus, had Santa Claus been styled by his theatrical Egyptian cousin. ‘All in favor of rescinding Eros’ banishment, banning him from trans-dimensional travel and sending him back to work?’
Athena put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ she said.
72.
Violet fiddled with her ridiculous lace garter, which was itching worse than ants in her pants. Only this time there was no adorably perverted intern to offer his assistance. To make things worse, the sudden pang beneath the central panel of her tight bodice had just caused her to spill a little of her champagne on her left breast. This wasn’t exactly how she had envisioned her wedding day. Then again, it wasn’t exactly how she had envisioned her life, either. Where were her friends? Oh that’s right, they had abandoned her when she had sold the shameful secrets of her celebrity clients to the worst kind of tabloid journalists. Something she had never done, of course, but circumstantial evidence and the sworn affidavits of those very journalists, who made up lies for a living, had somehow turned out to be more persuasive than her side of the story. They were ‘disappointed’ in her, those former friends. Concerned for their professional reputations. The irony being that they were as big a bunch of star fuckers as anyone else in LA, and they would have been here in an instant if she’d invited them.
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