Him on whom his parents have not smiled,
no god honors with his table,
no goddess with her bed
Virgil’s 8th Eclogue
1.
Tippy Eliot pressed her lips firmly together and gazed into the storefront window. Her reflection hinted vaguely that there were circles beneath her eyes but the glare of the sunlight off the glass disputed with her for certainty. She took a step back on the sidewalk for she did not want the passersby to suppose she was so myopic as to be forced to press her nose against the window. Tippy had not slept at all well last night.
Glancing up at the tower clock she made a rapid calculation. April’s apartment was six blocks from where she was standing. She could make her purchase, telephone April from the phonebooth inside and if she were home, walk over, visit her friend and still get back to the corner in time to catch the last run of the Pisgah 28 which would convey her to the Institute and her waiting husband.
Tippy gnawed the cuticles of her left hand. What should she buy April? This would be her sixth visit and her sixth gift. It caused her some anxiety but Tippy was powerless to flaunt tradition, even one established by herself.
April’s favorite color – green. April’s age – thirty. Tippy would enter the store, close her eyes, take thirty steps into the building, open her eyes and purchase the first green item she laid her eyes on. Oh, what fun! It was almost mystical!
As Tippy prepared to enter the department store she shot a final glance at her reflection. She admired her legs, sheathed in their sheer black stockings, the ones with the fickle viola pattern along the seams. She had worn them with explicit enthusiasm, for today April was to teach her the tango.
2.
Eliot’s eyes were closed. Polonius, gazing at his friend, shifted upon the bench where they were both seated and wondered if Eliot were asleep. After a long minute during which Polonius grew conscious of the change in temperature and its effect upon his black pullover, Eliot blinked, then opened his eyes, and spoke.
-No. No, I don’t see how you can deny it. what you said just now. I wonder, is it true? But what has America to do with the Gothic? Far less, I would think, than with the Baroque. You take that building for example. What in the name of heaven was the architect thinking of? Could it be that through some warped perspective such a thing might be construed as beautiful? No, I’m afraid that would be carrying the myth of artistic perversity to something of an extreme. Looking at that building the conclusion must be inescapable. The architect wants us to suffer.
Polonius looked at the building. He tried to suffer as he imagined his friend was suffering but when he turned again Eliot was smiling, a very picture of serenity. Was he going to fall asleep again?
-Well, Eliot said, slapping his hands feebly down on his knees.
-that’s all for today. I should be going, you know how my wife loathes unpunctuality. Tomorrow we’ll talk about Versailles. Ignore the text, or read it if you like. It’s harmless. But do look up and memorize the definition of these words: bureaucracy, efficiency, vanity. Ah, here she is now.
She came. She smiled. She spoke a dozen words of infinite politeness and culture to Polonius and then she led her husband away, slim gazelle beside an arthritic, good-natured Great Dane, spectacles gleaming lovingly down.
Polonius sighed. If he did not suffer, really suffer, and soon, he would never get himself a girl like that.
3.
Scamander raised his eyebrows.
-No. I’ve not been unaware of his absence.
-Whose absence is that? Cressida asked, leaning over their table, tray of bottles and glasses casting a savagery of light like a bad futurist photo-montage across their shirtfronts.
-Polonius, my dear, sighed Scamander, looking into Cressida’s face with the flirtatiousness of the misogynist pederast.
-Oh, Poly’s been around, you’ve just missed him is all, Scamy, she laughed, setting down their glasses.
Farotitius, Scamander’s pale-eyed catamite, looked from Cressida to his mentor. Funny, he had never noticed before how bad Scamander’s skin was. He must remember to read up on the latest treatments. He looked suddenly down at his knees, fiddling cautiously with the stem of his glass. He was filled with an instance of fear that Cressida, who addressed everyone in a diminutive form of her own choosing, might take it into her adorable, if unavoidably female head, to practice some variation upon his own name. Fairy, Farty, Titty. Yeek! He shuddered and took a hasty sip of his wine to counteract the nosebleed he felt brimming like a slowly waking reptilian beast back somewhere in the stygian depths of his nasal passage. He spluttered, nearly choking, and began to blush furiously.
-Easy does it, dear boy, Scamander soothed, glancing at him with detached interest and reaching languidly across the table to press Farotitius upon the wrist.
Scamander Katzenjammer was a faculty member of the Aloysius Bertrand Institute of Technology. Like his older colleague Eliot, he specialized in the dream symbology of architecture but unlike the other, he rarely indulged in shop-talk with his special pupils, of whom Farotitius was the current favorite. What Scamander found of interest in Farotitius was quite simple. The boy possessed a nice ass, an unpimpled and Raphaelite face, and a malleable if somewhat uncluttered mind. What Eliot saw in that Polonius youth was beyond him. Farotitius had intimated on several separate occasions of indiscreet tipsiness that it was not what Eliot saw in Polonius so much as what Polonius saw in Tippy, Eliot’s flimsy, nubile, haute-couture wife. Perhaps that was it. Bloody unlikely though. Eliot was far too dense to be that admirably cruel. And Polonius? Polonius was too nerveless to court either disaster or success in such an efficient manner. One could imagine him nursing a lonely beer and mooning at her from across the room at one of the fortnightly Faculty-Student cocktail hours, or masturbating sadly into a rumpled towel with the aid of a stolen snapshot, but the notion that the boy would have the sense to compromise himself or her in any more direct fashion was laughable.
Scamander looked at his own lad. Farotitius was still entranced by the safety of his kneecap. Perhaps I should call Cressida over and see if she can make the little darling squirm and blush, Scamander thought, before deciding against it. he would see to it that Farotitius had another three glasses however, he was in need of some punishment later in the afternoon.
4.
April Hallalise lit her eleventh cigarette of the day with her green enamel lighter, a recent gift from a friend, and looked down into the street. She had drawn the curtains on the windows of her thirty-third floor office against the afternoon sun and now stood, one hand holding back the edge of a heavy drape, the other angling the cigarette so that the smoke expelled directly onto the glass, scattering in drowsy confusion.
Cecily had just brought in two packages, either one of which, alone, was capable of ruining her day.
Cecily was a timid thing, fearful of April, as she had good reason to be.
The year before, April had returned unexpectedly after hours and discovered Cecily seated at the desk of Judah Salazar, their boss. In her hands was a file of a light purple color not commonly used in their department. Cecily had shut it instantly. Her intention was that of making photocopies of the confidential minutes appended to the East Asian International Accounts. It seemed she had a boyfriend who worked for a competitor and … it was an old story. April had calculated rapidly and decided that she would not turn the girl in. Cecily had, of course, no way of knowing this, and had embarked on a career of regular penance, supplying April with documents from Personnel, where she worked. The particular file, the glistening purple of the EAIA had been replaced. April had not asked to see it but had made a careful note of its disposition in the cabinet.
Sinister music, please.
The first of the two packages was a copy of two paragraphs from April’s latest efficiency report, written by her boss Salazar. The previous year, shortly before she had discovered Cecily’s infatuate criminality, Salazar had begun making overtures to April. At first she had succeeded in ignoring them, couched as they were in ambiguous terms. Then, one Friday afternoon, Salazar had come into her office and made a repellent and obscene demand, which he followed with a threat should she attempt to inhibit his desires. April had responded with an act which had frightened and shocked him and that had been the end of that. Or so she thought. The mole-work of Cecily had revealed the extent of Salazar’s malice.
Standing at the window April silently repeated what she had read.
“… during the course of several private meetings between myself and Ms. Halalise, she has evidenced signs of stress and hysteria … Despite the excellence of her track record with clients she has come under my suspicion regarding possibly unsavory elements of her character … Although Company policy dictates hyper-sensitivity towards the private lives of its employees, I am compelled to suggest that the Special Agency be brought in to document the non-work-related activities of this employee … Due to the high level of her responsibilities the Company cannot afford her to present a weak link in Its armor ….”
April’s anger with Salazar’s memo had been nothing compared to the shock she had received upon examining the second package. This had not come from Personnel but from the mail room, according to Cecily. In any event it had been sealed and addressed to her so perhaps it was true.
April let the curtain fall and returned to her desk, pressing the intercom button as she stubbed out her cigarette.
The voice of Nicky, her secretary, whined into the room.
-Yes, Ms. Halalise?
-Nicky, I’ll be leaving for home in a few minutes, so direct any calls I receive to my private number. Also, should anyone inquire, I’ll have the Zeno and Ilium files with me.
-Very well, Ms. Halalise. Have a good weekend.
5.
Phosphorescent morningstar sheltering in the moon’s cool wake. Fair feral bones, a woman’s lovely flank in the hall’s blue shadow, her lair and convent. Black gown spanned with silver. Blind light decimated the close algebra of her shadow, addressing against the wall. Sun-washed courtyard, a faint discharge of lavender, roses, semen, and lime. By candles’ tidy blue flame, a shower of red hair. Gloomgreen the slip slept when she stepped from it, her despondent finery. Nudity her most haunting flattery. In half-dark the luminous detail of skin, love’s white palace. Faint light drowned her from throat to thighs. Flame of morningstar, coalescent to mingled shadows.
Naked, Venus straddled the bidet. She sponged idly between her legs, lost in thought. The party had been a bore. Bloody Artemis and her bleeding twilight of the gods. So prim, so proper, so dementedly unfuckable. Well, not a complete loss. The mortal contingent had been pleasant enough, particularly the young bureaucrat from the Chadean legation. Venus sighed, remembering his fluency in the flowerbed. Her English had stunned him, as had her brimming clerical French. but it had been her diaphanous Latin that ravished him to her, an animal’s chant of devouring scorn. Above the beach of her white body his forehead broke into a myriad of metallic stars. In his ruined moaning she had echoed the dome, the fractured cupola, his seed like a flood of sunlight inside her.
Speaking of which, Venus looked down.
6.
In another part of the Olympus Hotel Apollo was surfacing.
Tend hold pollux tend depress abyss to banked tended salt advent gravewaters hold tend now understar veers to downstar shapely fending wolves sands ooze disgorged starfish dottering cast shellwrack diamond undertow brace sink rise to hard gold earth.
-Rise and shine!
Apollo opened his eyes. Slender and pale, Aurora stood over him smiling.
-Hi, Apollo said sleepily, glancing down to make sure the silk sheets were adequately hiding his morning erection.
-Hi. You awake now?
-I’m getting there, thanks.
-Well, I’ll be off then. I was afraid you might try to sleep later after the party last night.
-No, no, Apollo grunted, pushing himself up on his elbows and yawning.
-I split fairly early. Dullsville.
Aurora laughed, showing the small pearls of her teeth.
-I hear that Artemis is pissed. Your favorite sister got caught again, blowjobbing Africans in the marigolds.
Apollo gave a half-hearted grin.
-So what else is new?
-Well, toolaroo! Aurora called gaily, disappearing into the hall.
Apollo yawned again, scratching his armpit lazily. Flinging off the sheets, he staggered to the open window. Bracing his hands against the sill he leaned far out, breathing in the cool air of the garden. He slid his hands along his sleepwarm erection, his testicles contracting with the chill.
Apollo solemnly intoned:
-There once was an embassy hick
with a candle instead of a prick.
But flammable Venus,
queen of cunt and of penis
quickly melted him down to the wick.
Something flashed, white and brief through the foliage below.
-Oh Apollo, your divinity’s showing!
Apollo caught a glimpse of white and gold and heard the high-pitched flutter of a girl’s laughter. It was one of his sister’s attendants, randy little Opima. He leaned out and saw the long legs and short skirt of the second girl rounding the far corner of the hotel. He smiled wanly to himself. Little bitches. He was sorry Aurora had left so soon. Slowly his godhead descended.
7.
-No.
-Yes.
-No!
-Yes!
-Yes?
-Yes. Why would I lie? Scamander’s my friend.
-Maybe it’s a trick.
-Why would I want to trick you, Polonius?
-Maybe you don’t know it’s a trick. Maybe you’re being tricked too.
-Scamander wouldn’t do that to me. he wouldn’t do that to you either.
-But he doesn’t like me.
-Oh, that’s just his way. He doesn’t like a lot of people.
-But why would he do this to Tippy?
-Polonius, stop it! I keep telling you that he has this thing. I don’t know what he plans to do with it, though.
-Pictures. You said he had pictures.
-Yes. A contact sheet.
-And you looked at it? You mean you sat there and let him show you those awful, awful …
-No! I saw that they were photographs, but I couldn’t tell what of, or who was in them, or anything. Scamander told me what they were of.
-And you believed him?
-Yes. Why shouldn’t I have?
-I don’t know.
-What are you thinking, Polonius?
-I don’t know. I don’t know.
-What are you going to do?
-I don’t know, Farotitius.
-I wish I hadn’t told you.
8.
Scamander Katzenjammer was in for an unpleasant surprise as well, that Friday afternoon.
He had attended a long and leisurely luncheon with several of his colleagues from the Department. The conversation had been more amusing than was usually the case and he had enjoyed trying to bait old Eliot with a riddle involving Oedipus and the aqueducts of Tenerife. Without great success naturally, the man was simply incredibly opaque!
Scamander was now back in his office, basking in his post-prandial routine. He had replaced his yellow walking shoes with a pair of lincoln green slippers, now propped upon a turquoise hassock of damask and felt, a gift from a former graduate student of his and a memento of a visit the two had paid to a bathhouse in Smyrna. The memory pleased him, he could almost scent the air full of oil and hashish, the granular touch of young honey-colored skin, soft, so soft …
Scamander took another sip from his glass of sherry (3 ice-cubes, a full tablespoon of brown sugar). Perfect.
Opened before him on his desk was his latest acquisition, a new addition to his shelf of private picture books. Although he had received it earlier in the week he had not had the time to address it in the manner it deserved. He gazed lovingly at the title page. “Les fouettes de Venus, Paris, 1884-1895, daguerrotypes des Freres Champlin”.
Scamander touched his lips to the glass, tongued a tip of sherry and began slowly, with infinite, aching rectitude to leaf through the book. Ah, marvelous! This was the real thing.
Scamander’s Friday afternoon ritual, while a necessary secret from all, was observed scrupulously. Even his favorites were denied access between the hours of 1:30 and 3:45, and he reveled without fear of disturbance or discovery. It was therefore all the more shocking when the door to his office flew open and Polonius came in.
Scamander flung himself backwards in his soft chair.
-What do you think you’re doing? he snapped, and then, observing with a mixture of awe and disgust that Polonius was quite literally trembling with the force of some emotion, he followed his sudden instinct towards mollification.
-Did I perhaps forget an appointment, dear one?
Polonius stood still for a moment and then slammed the door with astounding vigor. Turning back towards the desk, he approached the crouched figure of Scamander, finger outstretched.
-You bloody polymath! Polonius shouted.
-you shameless, sodomitical hulk of gangrenous filth!
-Strong words, dear, Scamander was able to whisper.
-Don’t ‘dear’ me, you disease! You blackmailing little euphemism for a malfunctioning stormdrain!
Polonius paused for breath and wiped the spittle from his chin. Scamander leaned forward, hands fig-leafing the Champlin Brothers’ little boys. Perhaps he should offer the maniac a sherry. No, that would mean having to come out from behind his desk. He opened his mouth and after a moment of undignified wheezing, found his voice and gave it the push.
-I see no reason to dispute with you any of my, uh, attributes. There is one thing however. You mentioned blackmail?
-Oh, come on, Professor, Polonius cried, his voice a high-pitched wail of wounded indignation. ‘I may not know Vitruvius from Vitellius but I know a horse-trough from the imperial bathtub!
-My dear boy, Scamander wheezed, your meaning somewhat escapes me but I do admire your style. After such eloquence I’m ashamed to indulge in a cliché but I’m afraid I don’t have the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.
Polonius lifted his finger again, ruddy Angel of the Lord.
-You are blackmailing Mrs. Eliot. That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t deny it.
-Deny it? Why, it’s too absurd! Mrs. Eliot? Tippy? Blackmailing Tippy? I admit the idea is preposterous enough to possess some charm but I’m afraid I’ll simply have to refuse credit for any such crime.
-Wisen up, Katzenjammer. Farotitius told me everything.
-He did, did he? Well, what precisely am I supposed to be blackmailing our Tippy for? Did she fall asleep at the dinner table listening to that drone of a husband perhaps? Or did she …
-Don’t you insult Mrs. Eliot, you sepulchral ashpit, you slimy lily, you!
-My, oh my, sighed Scamander, his nerves a sudden fluster of tiptoeing tacticians.
-why don’t you begin at the beginning, my gentle Polonius and tell Uncle Scamander what naughty little Tippy’s gone and done.
-This conversation’s over. You lay off of her or by God I’ll cave your skull in!
-A death threat is it? Tsk tsk. I’ll bet you dollar to donuts, darling, that the campus police will be interested in this bit of news.
Scamander attempted a benevolence-in-victory smile and lifted the telephone receiver, dandling it suggestively.
-And what about that book you’ve been trying to cover up there? Do you think they might take an interest in that too? Huh, Professor?
Scamander cradled the receiver softly.
-Get out of my office.
-I was just going. Remember what I said.
-Word for word, dear.
When Polonius had gone, Scamander scampered across his office and turned the key in the lock. Leaning against the door he felt weak, the underarms of his jacket soaked with perspiration. He poured himself another sherry and sat down. After the first glass he stopped trembling, but after the second Scamander began to cry, sobbing hoarsely into the smoothness of his oil-of-olay palms.
9.
April made a practice of destroying each piece of information which came her way through Cecily’s services. She trusted much to memory, and had taken care to memorize the pages she had seen which dealt with the procedures of the Special Agency. Even if Salazar’s request was granted with little question, there would be a necessary delay involved. Still, she would have to act fast.
She stopped her car across from Pennyroyal’s Cabaret and stepped into the phonebooth. She listened for the esophagus-clearing of her coin’s descent and dialed rapidly. Wrong number. She was more shaken up than she thought. It took her a few seconds of sifting before she came up with another coin.
Tippy blew a wreath of blue bubbles from her naked shoulder and lowered herself further into the warm water of the tub. A mountain of bubbles frothed gently against her chin as she ran her fingers languidly over her flat belly and down to the little ridges of her hip bones.
April had said she would be taking the afternoon off, so as a precaution against missing her call Tippy had wound the long telephone cord under the bathroom door, setting the telephone upon the cache-sexe hamper. She gazed at it now and thought of April. Thinking of April she moved her fingers aimlessly over her stomach, meandering towards the underslopes of her small breasts.
It had been so thrilling, so different! Strange, like learning to swim in a dream. She had never expected ….
When the telephone rang Tippy reached it before the first shrill note had faded.
-Hello, she said, breathlessly.
-This is April. I must see you.
-Yes?
-Yes, as soon as possible. Can you come?
-Yes, yes, I can leave in fifteen minutes.
-Good. Now, do you know where the Elysian Fields Café is? On the corner of Nymph and Flotsam?
-Yes, it’s not far.
-Right. I’ll be inside.
-Okay. The shuttle goes right past …
-I’ll see you soon then. Goodbye.
-Goodbye.
Tippy replaced the receiver and slid back into the bubbles. Her heart was pattering somewhere high up in her chest. Strange. A tunnel of light broke in the back of her mind. With a quick movement the window shut again and Tippy slid back into the shadows.
10.
-Mistress, may I come in?
-Yes, Spolia.
Spolia parted the airy curtain and stepped into Venus’ bedroom. Her mistress was sitting on the edge of her bed. She was naked except for her scarlet dancing slippers and a pair of canary yellow bobby sox. Her red hair hung down, covering her breasts.
-Is Opima with you? Venus asked, eyeing Spolia carefully.
-She’ll be along shortly. She’s trying to decide what to wear.
-Ah.
Venus shook her hair back over her shoulders and stared up at the ceiling, kicking her legs lightly in the air. There was a rosebud of lipstick set perfectly round her left nipple.
-Will you be needing both of us tonight? Spolia asked.
Venus’ legs stopped kicking.
-Yes, I will. You didn’t have other plans did you?
-Oh no, none at all.
-Good.
-Would you like to dress now, Mistress?
-I suppose.
Spolia stepped to the closet. Glancing in the full-length mirror along the wall she could see Venus, pouting her lips as though lost in thought. Spolia missed fucking her mistress. It had always been such an event and the perfect cure for her post-menstrual migraines. They had been constant companions up until a few months ago, when things had come to an abrupt end. Since then Venus had allowed no one into her bed, though she continued to bestow orgasms on undeserving mortals of both sexes. Spolia knew, from rumors in circuit among the staff that the withdrawal of her mistress’ affections, previously so indiscriminate, had provoked criticism among the other Gods. Except for Apollo, who largely through indifference granted his sister license to get away with murder. Spolia liked Apollo. He was cuter than Mars and a good deal better in bed. She had not benefited from direct experience yet but felt it to be a safe assumption. Mars, who was given to boasting loudly and crudely, had never progressed beyond the school of get-it-up-and-shove-it-in open-air quickies, and his idea of foreplay was a brief, bruising squeeze of each breast. Spolia pursed her lips in distaste at the memory. But Apollo had his eye on Opima anyway, the silly little tease.
An hour later Venus was finally dressed. She had decided to keep on the scarlet slippers and yellow sox, which lent a note of charm to her faded blue jeans and torn black tee-shirt with a steely-eyed Bertrand Russell emblazoned down the front.
-You’d better go find Opima, Venus said, turning to Spolia.
-Did you wish me to bring her back here?
-No, no. Just make sure you’re both back here at the usual time. Oh, and have Opima invite my brother Apollo along as well. I may need his help tonight.
-Very well, Mistress.