‘HERE’S TO MARRIED life,’ said Ares, in what he hoped was a convivial tone. Raising his glass of Hip Hop Hooray IPA, he looked Hunter in the eye with a hypnotic gaze, but only for long enough to compensate for the lack of alcohol in the movie star’s glass. They were in the kind of bar where it was impossible to find anything as prosaic as ‘beer’; rather, Ares had been forced to listen to the bartender’s endless fawning sonnet to a drink that wasn’t a patch on an off-season ambrosial ale, no matter how many whimsical names you gave it.
Hunter clinked his calorie-free tonic water against Ares’ glass. It wasn’t so much the drinking he missed as moments like these, man-to-man, glass to glass. Somehow, giving up alcohol and drugs had canceled his ticket to the confessional, that disparate group of drinking buddies who could always be relied upon to listen non-judgmentally to his many, many indiscretions and to sagely encourage the acceptance and self-forgiveness such outpourings demanded, because after all he was only human and a movie star to boot. Naturally, he had provided reciprocal solace to many other very human, very indiscreet and moderately famous individuals. Yet it seemed that, now that his life was much less of a shitshow, his opinions had somehow become less valid and his assurances less reliable. Alcohol, it seemed, fueled a perpetual delusion machine that relied on the full immersion of its participants. With the help of his therapist, Hunter had come to grips with this particular social malaise, but that still didn’t stop him from feeling, from time to time, that nobody really liked him very much.
‘To married life,’ said Hunter. Much like his tonic water, which would have tasted a lot better with gin in it, his toast lacked the kick of conviction. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Violet. There was no one in the world that he would rather gaze at, adoringly, hour after hour. No one that he would rather tolerate first thing in the morning; no one whose disapproving frown he would rather subject himself to, when caught peeing in the sink. It was just marriage. It was so awfully, predictably pleasant. Like the weather in southern California, without the reality check of a trip to New York in winter to remind you of what you weren’t missing out on. If only there was some way that he could dabble in the debauchery of an attractive stalker, or a guilty gang bang with a stripper and a bunch of army buddies, or more accurately guys who had played his army buddies, since he had never actually served his country but that didn’t make him any less deserving of group sex than your average red-blooded patriot.
Did he just say that out loud?
‘So you’re not happy?’ said Ares, taking a large sip of his highly alcoholic designer ale to disguise his escalating glee.
‘No, no,’ said Hunter, suddenly feeling panicked. ‘I mean, yes, yes, of course I’m happy. It’s just that—’
‘Just what?’ said Ares, licking the foam from his lips.
Hunter looked around, with the desperate expression of one whose every action, opinion and Getty Image has been bestowed with ludicrous significance. But all he saw around them were self-assured hipsters, who knew how to order a beer by its individual appellation and would never admit to having seen a movie in which he starred, let alone pollute their selfies with his presence.
‘It’s just that—what’s so great about happiness?’
Ares nodded thoughtfully, or rather, in a way that he hoped appeared thoughtful. Like all of Zeus’ offspring, he had been forced to study Classical philosophy for a couple of hundred years and was therefore well versed in the various schools of thought on the subject. Further, in an effort to please Violet, not entirely motivated by his desire to manipulate her into bed, he had read a book by a French monk that she had recommended to him when he was her fake client (or rather, when he was her real client with fake mental health issues; or rather ‘faked’ mental health issues, since he had a number of genuine mental health issues that he’d made a point of hiding from her), thereby discovering that his obsessive desire for her was incompatible with happiness. ‘So much for that,’ he’d thought at the time, tossing the book aside like an empty dinner plate. In other words, although Ares was more than capable of critical discourse on the virtues or otherwise of happiness, he had no intention engaging in it with Hunter, because Hunter was a moron who also happened to be having sex with…
‘…Violet,’ said Hunter.
‘Sorry?’ said Ares, who had also been simultaneously daydreaming about his last therapy session with Violet, during which she had congratulated him on his progress and hesitated momentarily before patting him lightly on the forearm, a gesture almost unbearably erotic to the over-aroused god of nuclear armament.
‘It’s my wife,’ said Hunter. ‘That’s her ring tone. Do you mind if I take it?’
If Ares hadn’t been so pained by Hunter’s casual use of the word ‘wife’, he might have been even more appalled by the ring tone: ‘Every breath you take’ by the Police, the stalker’s anthem. Which was, of course, completely hypocritical of him, given that a) his attitude towards his own wife clearly indicated profound indifference to the word; and b) his actions towards Violet made Sting’s obsessive lament sound like a breath mint jingle.
Hunter was still sitting there, patiently tapping his fingers in time, as Ares silently fumed about the change in personality of his major star that had apparently turned him into the kind of guy who asked if he could take a call. From his wife.
‘Go ahead,’ said Ares.
‘Hello my angel,’ said Hunter. For someone who thought that marital bliss was overrated, he certainly sounded pleased to be conversing with its source.
Ares scowled. In order to cover his eagle-eared eavesdropping, he pulled out his own phone and began twiddling his thumbs. He’d never really gotten the hang of ‘apps’, preferring to waste Violet’s time with trivial tasks that he could have taken care of himself in seconds, thanks to the entrepreneurial wizardry of teenage billionaires. He was so unused to them, in fact, that he was completely taken aback by an icon that seemed to be glowing at him—no, throbbing—with a luminous lime hum as enticing as it was disconcerting. Not knowing what else to do, he tapped it. Immediately, he was transported into a hitherto unknown app, which announced itself as O-mail, ‘the only official and secure Olympian email site’. Strangely, his family crest seemed to be the dominant design feature of the site, albeit a modernized version featuring graffiti snakes hissing viciously through the strings of a stylized lyre.
‘He fired you? That little shit can’t fire shit,’ said Hunter, reverting to his pre-marital vocabulary and thumping loudly on the table. Ares’ head whipped up. Whatever was going on with Hunter’s phone conversation was clearly more interesting than an email from Zeus, as unprecedented as that might be.
‘Sorry babe, I know he’s your friend,’ added Hunter quickly, his tone softer.
Ares had to clench his jaw to keep from interjecting. Surely he was the only one who could fire Violet. And clearly he hadn’t done so. Which meant that someone was messing with her. And if they were messing with her, they were messing with him. And that was a big mistake (so thought Ares as he forced himself to take another sip of his ridiculous beer while simultaneously attuning his ears to the barely audible frequency of the female voice on the other end of the line).
‘It’s not his fault,’ said Violet. ‘He’s only the messenger.’
Ares had to concentrate on puppies and butterflies to keep from crushing his beer glass with his bare hand. The messenger. Although the word in such a context could have applied to anyone at the studio, some pan-dimensional instinct told him that the messenger in question was none other than his flippity-flappity son, who had, apparently, secured an early release from the Oracle and was now back on Earth, fucking up his father’s life.
‘So you don’t want me to shoot him,’ said Hunter, winking, for some reason, at Ares who had dropped all pretense of being otherwise engaged and was now listening blatantly to the conversation. Well, blatantly to one side of it. Surreptitiously to the other.
‘…how you can be such an asshole. You know how important it is for me to keep working. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I actually passed out.’
‘Babe, babe, I’m sorry, it was a joke,’ said Hunter. ‘You know, don’t shoot the messenger!’ Grinning at Ares, he made a complicated hand gesture that seemed to imply that Violet had her period. Either that, or he wanted to have sex with an oil well.
You really are an asshole, thought Ares.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ said Violet. ‘I passed out.’
‘Seriously?’ said Hunter, still grinning like an emoticon.
‘Yes, seriously. For two hours.’
‘Like, unconscious?’
And so on. Listening to lovers’ conversations, reflected Ares, was a little like buying something you’ve just seen advertised on TV. You know it’s a piece of junk, yet the compulsion to purchase is like a downhill slide that began the moment you picked up your phone and dialed 1800-CRAPOLA. By inviting Hunter out for a drink, Ares had courted this opportunity, only to be reminded that he didn’t like beer, that Hunter was an imbecile, that Violet was being subjected to a degrading and humiliating relationship that she was never going to leave voluntarily and that the entire thing was probably his fault.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Hunter, tucking his over-sized cell phone into one of his many jacket pockets. ‘Duty calls. Next time we talk about your old lady, OK?’ And with a quick glance about the room, just in case a family of autograph-seeking Midwestern tourists had accidentally stumbled into the bar and somehow managed to squeeze into a booth designed for skinny jeans and skateboards, he turned on his Toms and was gone. Ares frowned, momentarily confused by Hunter’s use of the term ‘old lady’, until he recalled a male bonding scene from Last Saddam Standing and realized that it was slang for ‘wife’. He raised his eyebrows. Although his wife was over 4500 years old, by Olympian standards she was barely approaching middle age. Not only that, she was a goddess of venerable beauty, standing out like a solar flare in a realm of overrated radiance. She was worthy of the desire of any rock star or president, even if she had sworn off men, gods, and everything in between. Or so he’d heard.
Ares sighed. He didn’t like thinking about his marriage at the best of times and now he’d done so twice in a day. Searching for a distraction, he glanced back at his phone and was slightly alarmed to discover that the entire screen was now throbbing at him in an accusatory shade of jade. He tapped at the O-mail icon, but instead of a distraction was chastened to discover a message that reinforced his sense of failure, both as a husband and a father.
Hi Dad, said the email, in the graceful geometry of his native alphabet. Unfortunately, we have to talk.