“A deal,” he says. “Renounce this chump, and come home with me. Be my faithful wife, and all is forgiven.”
The clock on the mantelpiece gets two or three clicks in before Aphrodite begins to snicker. Ares, who has watched for her response, now guffaws with laughter. Too big, too loud, but he’s relieved, and he’s never been a good actor.
“You think she’ll leave this for you?” He flexes his many (very, very many) muscles. They swim like dolphins under his glowing skin. The removal of his shirt has done glorious things.
Hephaestus is drowning inside, but he’s come this far and he sticks to his plan. “You reject my offer?” he says. “Then I’m taking you to trial on Olympus.”
The net, which had lain over them like a heavy blanket, now encircles and encloses Ares and Aphrodite like a laundry bag, while a chain hoists them upward. Their divine limbs, so impressive in marble statues, jumble every which way uncomfortably. The netting bag rotates slowly through the air, like a ham curing over hot coals.
“What are you doing?” Aphrodite cries. “You put us down at once.”
“Your court date has been moved up,” answers the bellhop. “Father Zeus will officiate at the bench, and the other gods will form a jury.”
The goddess of beauty has turned a delicate shade of pale green. The spectacle of the entire pantheon of immortals howling and cackling at her mortification! Nobody knows the sting of gods’ mockery better than a god. And nobody knows your weak spots better than sisters. Those prissy little virgins, Artemis and Athena, always looking down their smug, goody-goody noses at her.
Bagged like a chicken she might be, but Aphrodite still has her pride. Far better to bargain with her husband in a swanky Manhattan hotel than to quail before her entire family.
“Hephaestus,” she says smoothly—and Aphrodite can have a brown velvet voice when she wants to—“is there, perhaps, a third option?” She sees her husband is listening, so she presses her advantage. “Couldn’t we just talk this out here? The three of us?” She elbows Ares. “We’ll stay in the net and listen. Ares will behave. Surely we don’t need to drag others into such a private matter.”
Hephaestus hesitates. Privacy is Aphrodite’s domain. A hotel room practically gives her a home-court advantage. He smells a trick.
But she does have a point. He, too, has pride to sacrifice upon the altar in hashing this matter out publicly.
“Let me get this straight,” he says slowly. “You decline your right to a trial by jury?”
“Oh, come off it,” says Ares. “You’re a blacksmith, for Pete’s sake, not an attorney.”
Hephaestus turns to his wife. “All right,” he tells her. “We can do it here. A more private trial. I’ll be the judge.”
“Judge, jury, and executioner?” protests Ares. “This kangaroo court is a sham.”
Hephaestus wishes he had a bailiff who could club this unruly spectator on the head. But that’s probably not what bailiffs are supposed to do.
“Never mind him,” Aphrodite tells her husband. “You’re already sitting in judgment upon us, so, yes, be the judge if it suits you.”
Ares laughs out loud. “Tell you what, old man,” he says. “Fight me for her. May the best god win.”
Just how many times Hephaestus has imagined that satisfying prospect, not even his divine mind can count. The devious and cunning weapons he’s devised, lying awake and alone at night, plotting a thousand ways to teach his cocky brother a lesson! If only.
But you don’t accept a challenge to duel with the god of war. Hephaestus is no fool.
Except, perhaps, where his wife is concerned.
He produces for himself a bench and a gavel. “This court will come to order,” he says. “Let the trial begin.”
DECEMBER 1942
The Judgment of Manhattan
HEPHAESTUS LOWERS THE net back to the couch and lets it expand so his prisoners can at least sit comfortably. They can stand up, but they can’t go far.
“Goddess,” he says, “in the matter of Hephaestus v. Aphrodite, you are charged with being an unfaithful wife. How do you plead?”
Aphrodite considers. “Amused.”
Ares snorts.
“You’re in contempt of court,” Hephaestus says. “How do you plead?”
“On which charge?” asks the goddess. “Infidelity, or contempt?”
Hephaestus’s nostrils flare. This is already off to a terrible start. “Both.”
“Ah,” she says. “Guilty on both counts. But I don’t mean to be contemptible.”
Hephaestus pauses. “You plead guilty?”
She nods. “Um-hm.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t expected this. The clever lines he’d prepared, the scalding words, they desert him like traitors.
“I’ve disappointed you.” Aphrodite’s voice oozes with sympathy anyone would swear is sincere. “Would it make you feel better to present your evidence anyway?”
Who’s manipulating whom here?
She’s not afraid. No amount of evidence will matter.
But Hephaestus spent months gathering it, so he submits it for the court.
The lights dim. A succession of images appears in the air before them like a Technicolor film in their own hotel room. The goddess of love and the god of war, kissing under a shady bower. On the snowcapped rim of Mount Popocatépetl at sunset. Cuddling on the shoulder of an Easter Island statue. On the white sand beaches beneath the sheer cliffs of Smugglers’ Cove, on Greece’s own Zakynthos Island.
“Hermes,” mutters Aphrodite darkly. “Zeus never should’ve given him a camera.”
If Hephaestus had expected his wife to writhe in embarrassment at this damning proof, he has only disappointment for his efforts. She’s shameless. His brother is shameless. He was a fool to think he could shame either of them.
The images fade. Silence falls.
Aphrodite watches her husband.
Hephaestus’s thoughts swirl. What had he expected? A tearful apology? A pledge to be true? He should’ve known this would never work.
But he’d been desperate. Even Olympians, when desperate, can’t think straight. Of all the beings in the cosmos, Hephaestus is the only one who can’t pray to the goddess of love for help with his marriage troubles. The poor sap hasn’t a clue.
“Hephaestus,” Aphrodite says gently, “this trial was never to get me to admit something you know I don’t mind admitting, was it?”