Matching Wits with Venus

by Therese Gilardi

  “You know you’re such a pretty girl. I’m surprised she’s never tried to compete with you.”

  “Of course she hasn’t,” Jennie replied coldly. “Nor has she tried to compete with you.”

  “So what can I make you for dinner? I was thinking tuna steaks would be great on the grill. I imagine you must eat a lot of fish to keep your skin so perfect?”

  Stella’s fingers loosened around her cigarette. Jennie watched, fascinated, as she saw the tension slide from the other woman’s body as if it were falling rain. Amelia had been right; flattering her mother always distracted Stella from whatever the topic at hand had been. “That would be fine.”

  “I’ll just go and get that started then. Excuse me.”

  Jennie walked through the kitchen and down the hall to the guest room. She cracked the door open and smiled. Amelia was curled up on her right side, in the same position she used to sleep in whenever they had their slumber parties, a throw pillow between her arms. The pillow moved up and down, up and down. Jennie closed the door and returned to the kitchen where she stared at the telephone.

  She should really call Justin and let him know he could leave Happily Ever After By Amelia whenever he liked. Although she wouldn’t mention it, she knew he cleaned for Esmeralda and she didn’t want him to miss work. She picked up the receiver and dialed.

  She started when she heard Justin’s smooth deep voice answer.

  “It’s Jen. I was just checking in. I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay there all day.”

  “No problem. Though I’m sorry to say yours is the only call I’ve answered.”

  Jennie sighed.

  “Too bad. You’ve got a great phone voice.”

  Justin laughed.

  “So how’s Amelia?”

  “It’s complicated. But she’s going to be all right. I’ve got her resting here. She’s pretty broken up though; between her father’s arrest and illness and that disappearing boyfriend of hers, she’s exhausted.”

  “She’s a fighter. She’ll be okay. So will your business, I’m sure.”

  “Ha. I don’t think the chances of that are too good.”

  “You never know what’ll turn up. What would you say is your biggest problem?”

  Jennie twisted a ringlet of hair around her finger.

  “Attracting new customers for sure. We’re lousy at that since we’ve never had to do it.”

  Justin looked out the window. Further down the street he saw the dark haired man who’d asked him to spy on Amelia. Although the other man was wearing what looked to be almost a monk’s ceremonial robe, he was easy to recognize thanks to his habit of leaning his body slightly to one side. He was standing in the shadow of a taco truck pretending to read a map. Only Justin knew, from all of the times he’d walked past the touts flogging the red white blue and yellow sheets, that the man was holding the map upside down.

  “Don’t worry about anything. Just tell Amelia to feel better. I’ll wait here ‘til it’s time to close just in case anyone calls or comes by then I’ll lock the door and pull it behind me.”

  “Thanks Justin. You’re a real pal.”

  ****

  Justin watched from the window, shielding his eyes from the white California sun as the man who’d try to pay him to spy on Amelia, Amelia’s boyfriend, and a plump woman hurried up the street, dodging strollers, skateboarders and sightseers. Justin slipped back inside, into the back room of Happily Ever After By Amelia. Moments later, he heard the pink and purple wooden hearts bang against the glass pane on the door as the trio entered the front room.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I need your advice.”

  Aphrodite raised her black eyebrows. Her glossy red lips split into a feline-like grin as she looked at Venus. She ran a hand over her own trim hip and smiled.

  “I knew it! You wish for your own Greek chorus boy.”

  Venus laughed.

  “No, but perhaps someday. No, I need to know what you would do. Now that Cupid is…gone.”

  “Gone,” Aphrodite repeated as she narrowed her eyes.

  For a moment Venus had the uncomfortable sense that the Greek goddess knew what she had done with her son. She lowered her gaze then shook her head.

  “He’s fine. He’s just, well, I’m his mother. It was my duty to teach him that there are heavy consequences that must be paid when a sense of loyalty and duty to one’s family is forgotten.”

  Aphrodite nodded.

  “Of course. It is a mother’s duty.”

  “So now I’ve got to figure out how to restore my reputation. That, that mortal he was with and her father are responsible for trying to render me irrelevant. Me, the goddess of love! What would I do if I couldn’t make matches? I lack your lust for life.”

  Aphrodite curled her fingers and dug her long nails into her palms. She looked at Venus and smiled.

  “Surely darling, you should keep this knowledge, the story of the matchmaker and her father, to yourself. You certainly don’t want word to get out that a mere mortal has bested you. They wouldn’t have to strip you of your powers, you’d have done it to yourself by going public with this news.”

  “You’re right.”

  Venus looked out at the Acropolis. She could see the colorful umbrellas held aloft by tour group leaders as they led their charges through the slender streets. The men, women and children dutifully following the spinning nylon reminded her of the worker bees that had congregated around the hive they’d built in the rafter of a beam behind her house in the Hollywood Hills. Day after day after day she’d heard them buzzing around until Renaldo, swathed in a mask and gloves, had mounted a ladder and killed their queen and they disappeared. She wondered if the tourists would disappear if a strong wind blew away all of the umbrellas.

  “Venus? Venus!”

  She turned toward Aphrodite.

  “I’m glad you agree with me.” Aphrodite exhaled slowly. “It’s always best to keep one’s problems hidden.”

  ****

  “I’m dying, Amelia.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  Amelia pulled the blue and green plastic chair closer to her father’s hospital bed.

  “It’s true. You’re a grown woman. I don’t have much time.”

  Gerard looked at the monitors tethered to his chest and the plastic tubes bearing various medications that were stuck into his body at odd intervals.

  “I can’t leave this world watching you make the same mistakes as me. Otherwise, my life is nothing but failure.”

  Amelia’s eyes filled up.

  “Don’t say that! You’ve made me what I am.”

  Gerard stared at Amelia with his bright green eyes.

  “I know! You live in fear. And it’s my fault.”

  Amelia drew her left hand back from its resting place on her father’s arm.

  “That’s not true! Why would you say that? I have my own business, my own house….”

  “But you’re a coward where love is concerned. You surrender rather than fight for what you want.”

  Amelia closed her eyes. She pushed the air through her nose, but it was no good. The fetid smell of death teased her nostrils. She opened her eyes and sat up straight.

  “You’re wrong. I fought and I lost.”

  Gerard reached for Amelia’s fingers.

  “That was fate. You can try to fight fate, but it doesn’t matter. But you’ve chosen to walk away from Colin.”

  Gerard pointed at the plastic brown water pitcher on the table next to his bed.

  “Please, can you give me some ice chips?”

  Amelia watched as Gerard rolled the small watery slivers around in his mouth.

  “You know I’ve had a lot of time to think. Do you know what concerns me most?”

  Amelia shook her head.

  “Well it’s certainly not the guard outside my door, my animals or even all of these death threats the doctors seem to think I don’t know about. It’s that I tried my hardest but in
the end of the day I’m just like my father. You know he wanted to open a bakery? But his parents forbade him. Said they didn’t come all the way to America so he could take up the trade of his ancestors. So he did what they wanted, lived the life they felt he deserved even though it never made him happy. He lived in a self-made prison. That’s really why I began working with animals. My father had me so convinced that the only way I could think for myself was to escape the influence of other people. But I built my own house of bars here on the edge of the desert.”

  Amelia ran her arm against the cool faux leather cushion of her chair. Her father had always been so reticent about discussing his family; she’d assumed it was his marriage to Stella that was responsible for the fact that he rarely went up north to visit his relatives. She looked at the shriveled figure in the bed and wondered how she could have lived with her father for so many years and not known him at all.

  Gerard tried to sit up.

  “No Dad! You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Listen to me, Amelia. I’m leaving this world full of regret. I failed to fight for the love of my life. I let her walk away; I even held the door for her. And now you’re doing the same thing. You’re one of the rare ones, lucky enough to fine love twice. You know Daniel wouldn’t want you to walk away.”

  Amelia squeezed her father’s hand.

  “You’re right. But Colin’s gone, Dad.”

  Gerard looked at Amelia with watery eyes.

  “Then you find him Amelia, even if it means you have to go to the ends of the earth.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Justin was waiting in the back alley when Amelia and Jennie arrived at Happily Ever After By Amelia the next morning. Jennie smiled at him as Amelia fumbled with the key and unlocked the door. Amelia sighed when she stepped inside. She’d grown to hate the vacant dusty smell that had replaced the scent of baked goods scented candles and potpourri that used to dot the shop.

  “How are you?” Justin asked.

  Amelia looked at him and smiled wistfully.

  “I’m fine.” She looked over at Jennie.

  “In fact, you could say I’m positively full of life.”

  “So congratulations are in order?”

  Amelia tilted her head back and pursed her lips.

  “You know, I think they are!” She grinned.

  “I’m going to have a baby! There, I’ve said it.”

  Jennie hugged Amelia, who touched Justin softly on the arm.

  “I’m actually getting excited. Between my father’s problems and this mess,” she said as she pointed at the empty armoire, “and Colin’s disappearance, I haven’t really given much thought to anything that is not happening here and now. But this is going to be great. I know it.”

  “I’m sure,” Justin replied. “Look Amelia, it’s Colin’s disappearance that brings me here. Maybe you should sit down.”

  Amelia leaned against the padded pink armchair in the corner.

  “What is it? I can’t imagine things could be any worse, unless you’re going to tell me he’s married.”

  “No, at least not that I know of. But he definitely isn’t who you think he is.”

  Justin glanced at Jennie.

  “Look, my current situation has nothing to do with what I’m about to say. I don’t drink or do drugs.”

  “Of course not!”

  Amelia took a deep breath. Whatever Justin had to say about Colin was of utmost importance. But so was taking advantage of this opportunity to get Justin to talk about himself, something she’d tried to get him to do for months.

  “Okay, Justin, you broached the subject. I’ve never wanted to pry, but I know you’re not what you seem to be. Would you like to tell us what’s brought you here? What’s happened that lead to you living on the streets?”

  Justin looked around the room, then over at Amelia and Jennie.

  “I’m from the upper mid-west. My family is Scandinavian. They’re farmers who emigrated from Canada–my parents’ place isn’t far from the border. I didn’t realize ‘til I came out here that I had one of those rare childhoods that could best be described as totally functional. My father loved my mother and my mother loved my father. We didn’t have any kind of family problems beyond the usual lack of money faced by lots of farming families.”

  “Must have been nice,” Amelia murmured.

  “It was. Like most everything you don’t know what you have until after the fact. Anyway, from the time I first held a crayon, I was drawing, making my own little flip books I’d use to tell my own stories. They were my own version of animated short films: I’d flick through them really fast, so it looked like the drawings were moving. I gave voices to all my characters - I even wrote songs for them. It made me pretty popular at parties.”

  Justin smiled at the recollection.

  “Once my English teacher told my high school guidance counselor about my books she became obsessed with the idea of my going to film school. She visited my parents out on the farm several times to convince them I had to study filmmaking. She even helped Dad bail hay one year. She didn’t have to work on my mother. She has always loved to read and adored movies, so she was sure the counselor was right. Before I knew it they’d rented out my sisters’ bedrooms and Mom took a job sorting feed sacks so I could come out here and study film.”

  Amelia snapped her fingers.

  “I knew it! You’re Justin Sorvenson.”

  Justin nodded.

  Amelia turned to Jennie.

  “This man is brilliant. But his naive attitudes,” Amelia said as she wagged a finger, “They explain why he is where he is today.”

  “It’s nice to hear someone sees it that way.”

  Amelia looked at Justin.

  “You were used as a scapegoat.”

  “I think so.”

  “What happened? Fill me in,” Jennie begged.

  “I got involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit. After a few years out here, I began working in sound production. I realized that was actually where my aptitude was. I developed this new sound technique that someone else claimed I stole from him even though I’d never met the guy. But he had one of the big studios behind him, and he was married to a producer. So his claims that I’d stolen not only my new technique but also the storyboard I was working on for a new film, met with sympathetic ears. He offered me a settlement: I relinquish my claims and he’d ensure I wouldn’t be blackballed from the industry. Naturally, I refused. So he promised to bury me in so many lawsuits,” Justin laughed bitterly, “that, to quote him, I’d find myself ‘living on the streets one day as the price for pride’. Really, those were his exact words. To think that anyone with that kind of cheesy dialogue could claim ownership of my story.”

  Jennie looked at Justin.

  “And your background made you certain you’d have to only present your side of the story and justice would prevail.”

  Justin snickered.

  “And of course,” Jennie continued, “You couldn’t let your family know what was going on, not after all they’d done for you.”

  “Plot of a bad B movie, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Why didn’t any of your former colleagues help you?”

  “They did. They let me live with them for months. They fed me and stored all my stuff so it would be ready if the day came when I could claim it. But eventually, this guy got to them. Promised they’d be ostracized if they continued to help me. So I left. I’d ruined my own career, I couldn’t bring anyone else down with me.”

  “I’m so sorry. Will you ever forgive me?” Jennie asked.

  “Like I said don’t worry about it. You’ve both been kinder to me than ninety percent of the people I’ve met.”

  “I wish there was some way I could hire you, Justin. But Jennie and I are just about out of work ourselves.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Amelia. Besides I’m afraid you’ve got bigger problems.”

  Justin glanced at Jennie. He nodded slightly. She moved closer to
Amelia.

  “I hate to tell you this but unless your boyfriend is a master magician capable of making himself and two other people disappear into thin air, he’s not human.”

  “What?”

  Jennie guided Amelia all the way down onto the chair cushion. She sat on the arm and draped her hand over Amelia’s shoulders.

  “While you were at the hospital, Jennie had me wait here. I was in the back room when I heard your boyfriend and his two friends out in the main room. I decided to confront them. I’d been able to see them the whole time they were in the shop, standing in the middle of the floor. As I stepped over this threshold they disappeared in the proverbial cloud of smoke.”