Venus Envy (39 page)

“I pray I can remember all this when I get home.”

“You will,” Mercury assured her. He moved to the mouth of the cave. “Dammit to Hades. She’s heading this way.”

“Want to make a run for it?” Venus joined him to check the horizon.

“We have two things to our advantage,” he said. “She’s getting so nearsighted and she’s too vain to wear glasses and she’s not as fast as she used to be. She might pass us by.”

“Yes, but on the chance that she doesn’t, let me see if there’s a way out of here through the back.”

“Let me go with you,” Frazier offered.

“Stay with Mercury. If this is one of the ways down to Pluto, then you can’t go there. If you cross the river Styx, that’s it, Frazier. It really is the river of No Return.”

“Charon, the ferryman, will take your money too,” Mercury growled. “Actually, he’s not so bad. He doesn’t charge any more than the Staten Island ferry, but you have no idea how greedy Pluto is. Not only will you be
stuck in Hades, you’ll be flat broke. Hurry up, Venus. Her eyesight may be failing but she’s not stupid.”

Venus disappeared into the back. Bats flew up, she emitted a low, soft whistle, and they flew with her into the deep recesses of the cave.

Mercury left the mouth of the cave. He embraced Frazier. “Fasten your seat belt. We’ll get through it.” He kissed her on the neck.

Outside, the wind picked up and the rumble, rumble heralded the approach of the goddess, who was hitting the ground hard as she strode.

Venus, cobwebs in her beautiful hair turning to silver, motioned for them to follow. They hurried to her side. She led them to a tiny room off the main cave. “This will have to do. If she finds us, I’ll have to hold her down while you two get out.”

“She’s big and strong and even though it was forever ago she was no coward during the war with the Titans. I’d better occupy her.” Mercury’s voice was hoarse.

“You’re faster than I am. You need to get Frazier home.” Venus stated the obvious.

The footfall was deafening and stopped at the grotto. The three froze, the plan unfinished.

Juno entered the cave. “I know you’re in here. Give yourself up and I’ll be lenient with you.” She waited. “I know I have a reputation for vengeance but those stories are told by my detractors. After all, I’m a woman, too, and I know how seductive men can be, especially that man. He can talk a dog off a meat wagon. Now I will count to ten. If you don’t voluntarily give yourself up I’ll find you and it will be the worse for you, human. One, two, three …”

As she counted Venus crouched down, ready to spring if Juno tracked them down.

On seven a great huffing and puffing could be heard.

“Juno, you’ll catch a cold in here.” Jupiter had followed her to the cave.

“You don’t care what happens to me.”

“Of course I do, darling. You mustn’t jump to conclusions.”

“Ha! With your track record? I’d be a blistering idiot to believe one word from you. In fact I can always tell when you’re lying—your mouth is moving!” She returned to her counting. “Eight.”

“Honey, let’s talk this over.”

“I am going to find that human tart, that quivering piece of flesh and blood, and turn her into a python.”

Cleverly Jupiter replied, “That’s redundant.”

“I have never changed anyone into a python.”

“I know that, sugarplum”—his deep voice, sweet as honey, rolled over the words—“but Athena turned Medusa into a half-snake half-woman with that awful hair. You don’t want to be accused of being a copycat.”

This hit home and Juno paused a moment. “Athena would tell everyone that, too, and in her most judicious voice. I wish you didn’t favor her so much. And that bullshit about her not having a mother—Metis was her mother and the whole world knows it.”

“She feels motherless.” He realized he’d get nowhere defending his daughter. “And I myself, much as I love her, have always thought she made quite a mistake in not allowing you to be a mother to her and teach her the womanly virtues.”

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

“You’re trying to keep me from my task. Come out and show yourself, you little blond vixen! I won’t turn you into a python. I promise. I’ll cover you with cellulite. That’s worse!”

“Lamby-pie, you’re getting flushed in the face. Now
remember your blood pressure. Let’s get out of the damp.”

“Did you go to bed with that girl?”

“I did not.”

“Then why was the sky full of your sperm?”

“Iris was playing jokes on us. She’s in charge of rainbows and I think she hasn’t enough to do these days—with all the pollution in the cities, who can seek the rainbows? I’m sure she was playing a joke on us.”

“Somebody shot the dots off Iris’s dice. She’s not smart enough to think of a joke like that.”

“All right then. I’ll tell the truth but you forced me to it.” He held out the bait. She drew closer to him. “Venus’s gardens appeal to me. I find solace and comfort there when business becomes too pressing. The rose fragrance curled into my nostrils and reminded me of you and suddenly I was overcome with desire—but, darling, you were nowhere in sight. So I jerked off and I called your name when I came.”

Juno’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Really.”

“I can’t stand humans anymore. They all go to therapists now. I can’t sleep with them. Could you stand stories about their fear of the dark or their lack of self-esteem? Apart from that, I’m older now. I’ve learned something from the centuries.”

How fine those words sounded to Juno. “What’s happened to them? They used to worship me properly, and you, of course. Now they blame everything on their mothers. I’m bearing the brunt of this, metaphorically, and I swear I’ll get even. Men are afraid to write about their mothers. They’re afraid to admit they love their mothers. Sigmund Freud made cowards and liars out of them. These … these candy-asses caved in to a Viennese doctor without a fight. It’s outrageous. Men
caved in to an idea and it wasn’t even an idea backed up by guns. Astonishing.”

“I quite agree and I think we’ve got to do something about it.” He put his mighty arm around her waist. “The Electra complex offends me as much as the Oedipus complex offends you, sweetheart. Drivel. Why, humans have no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.” He bussed her cheek. “Say, how about a chocolate éclair and some coffee at your place? Then we could … play.”

“I make the best chocolate éclairs,” Juno bragged.

“And the best love.” Jupiter, with a sigh of profound relief, guided his wife out of the cave.

Frazier, Venus, and Mercury waited a long time before venturing out.

“If we’d stayed in there long enough I would have had to use my Girl Scout skills.” Frazier wiped the clammy sweat off her brow.

“Hey, bumping you off the local board of the Girl Scouts was a cheap shot.” Mercury peeked out of the mouth of the cave. “They’re gone.”

“Just to be safe, let’s wait a bit longer before going outside. It’s entirely possible they could have another fight on the way to her kitchen.” Venus sat on the altar. “Frazier, would you have made us eat bugs and start fires by rubbing sticks together?”

“I thought
we
could rub together,” came the swift reply.

“My, my, we are feeling good.” Mercury laughed.

“What I feel is gratitude. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life looking like cottage cheese.”

“You could invent a Girl Scout badge for surviving cellulite,” Venus told her.

“Girl Scouts should have badges for adulthood and middle age.” Frazier walked to the mouth of the cave. “Let’s see. We could have a badge for surviving divorce.
A badge for loss of job and loss of hair, badges for bankrupting yourself sending the kids through college, and certainly a badge for braving your first face-lift. However, knot-tying has to be done in bed.”

“Ooo, I like that.” Mercury experienced a twinge of lust. He would have liked to carry on but prudence dictated he get Frazier back to earth.

“Let’s walk for a while and then we can pick up the pace.” Venus, now outside, called them to join her.

As they walked along the ancient path laid with cobblestones, the sun popped out from behind the clouds and the raindrops on the leaves sparkled with tiny rainbows, reminding Frazier of Jupiter’s multicolored emission.

“Do you two know about AIDS?” she asked. Why the thought occurred to her she didn’t know. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t imagine a god and goddess feeling pain.

“Oh, yes,” Mercury said. “We can’t contract it but we’re aware of it.”

“Do you feel pain?” Frazier wanted to know.

“Of course. Remember your Iliad? Mars and Athena mixed it up on the plains of Troy. I think she cut him on the thigh and he howled bloody murder. Healed right up, though.”

“Mercury, was that Athena?” Venus asked.

“I’ll ask her next time I see her. Maybe she put a human up to it. Anyway, yes we can feel pain but we heal very quickly.”

“On earth, I think the Reagan and Bush administrations will be remembered one hundred years hence as the people who could have stopped the plague but chose not to because the right people were dying.” Frazier’s jaw set hard.

“The Republican Party has certainly sold out to the
right-wing fanatics, the Christian fundamentalists, and the fat cats, haven’t they? They’re quite smug but they are right—AIDS
is
God’s curse, but not on homosexuals and drug addicts.” Mercury walked a little faster.

“It will be God’s curse on them.” Venus, saddened by any form of intolerance, finished Mercury’s thought for him. “They will suffer for their lack of compassion and that Christian charity they bleat about, for as they turn their faces from the afflicted, so will we turn our faces from them, and the terrible revenge will be when their children die of AIDS years from now. They are so removed from real sexual behavior that they won’t be able to figure out how it happened. I pity them as much as I loathe them.”

“Hideous as they have been to gay people I don’t wish it upon them.” Frazier suddenly recognized that she, indeed, didn’t wish AIDS on anyone.

“Forgiveness is very Christian or very Venus.” Mercury reached out for her hand. “I don’t believe in it myself. Sock me and I sock you. Or better yet, I wait a good long time and create a revenge of sublime elegance.”

“Imagine if Frazier sought revenge against the people who have been unkind to her recently? It would take up so much time—and is Billy Cicero worth it? Or those silly Girl Scout ladies or even Libby, whose entire being is programmed to resist spontaneous pleasure?”

“Humans have short life spans. Maybe revenge does take too long but I like to see my enemies twist in the wind.” The little wings on his sneakers flapped for a second. “What about you, Frazier?”

“I guess I don’t mind seeing them in trouble, as long as my hands are clean. Not only do I not have the time to get even, I lose interest. I get distracted and sometimes by the oddest things. That wonderful Ben Marshall
painting of Sir Teddy the horse. When I look at that I forget about what’s going on around me. I love the painting that much. My flashes of hatefulness never last long.”

“Maybe as you get older you won’t have any at all.” Venus smiled.

“As long as people act so silly about my being a lesbian or a bisexual or whatever I am, I think I’ll have my little flashes.”

“Most of those people are ignorant. They aren’t malicious,” Venus counseled.

“Who cares? The effect is the same. That was one of the reasons I was so circumspect about my life. Once people perceive you as gay, that’s all they can see. I’m being robbed of my individuality. I may have been repressed before, I may have been emotionally dishonest, but I was seen as a full human being, not a category. I really hate this shit.”

“I do too,” Mercury agreed. “But worse things have happened to nicer people.” He burst out laughing.

Frazier did too. “That’s true.”

“About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all. They won’t like your voice or your accent or your sexuality or the color of your skin. You can’t let them stop you.”

“I don’t—but it still hurts.”

“At least you’re not alone. Your Auntie Ru loves you and your Dad. Carter—he’s working at it, and there’s always Mandy.” Venus smiled broadly, pinkish gold light surrounding her head.

“It’s a paradox.” Frazier noticed the smooth skin on Mercury’s cheek, those sculpted cheekbones she had
kissed. The sight of him made her shiver all over again. “No one will speak to your life but you.”

“What do you mean?” He turned his head toward her, her amber eyes brilliant.

“I mean, black folks spend a lot of time trying to explain their reality to white folks, assuming the whites will even listen, women to men, gays to straights. You can plain wear yourself out trying to explain yourself to the so-called dominant group and then you haven’t the time to discuss the environment or arms control or the economy or even the best restaurant in town. But if you don’t do it, no one gets anywhere. I never realized how exhausting this would be, this coming out, if you can stand the phrase.”

“Life.” Venus smiled again.

“What?”

“Life is calling and she’s not rational. Just think, no one has ever lived your life before. It’s brand-new. I would worry far less about people understanding me than I would worry about not joining in Nature’s grand dance.”

“If only we had more time,” Mercury murmured as they approached a door on the road—just a door, no house.

“Frazier, I love you very much.” Venus kissed her. “You must go home now and I will give you my gifts if you’re open to them. I want you to remember something.”

Frazier, devastated that she would be leaving her friends, started to cry. Mercury put his arms around her. “Chin up, girl. Come on, we’ll never really be too far away from you. I’m the god of communication, remember. The secret is: be clear and be simple. You humans make everything so complicated. Just noun, verb, direct object.” He kissed her and she returned the kiss. “Life is
calling.” He repeated Venus’s sentence, then handed Frazier to the goddess.