Page 71 of In the Garden of Monsters

“A bitch that holds the ends of Dalí’s purse strings,” I said, lifting up the dress I was meant to wear. The tulle flowed across the bed.

Once we’d dressed and done our hair and makeup, Lillian picked up her trident and pointed it at me. “I command you to have a good time tonight.” She could always make me laugh and forget my worries, and despite the gravity of my situation, I found myself reveling in the levity she brought to Bomarzo.

“Can a goddess command another goddess?” I asked, playing along.

“I suppose if one cursed another, right? I mean, that must have happened.”

“Yes! After Aurora slept with Venus’s lover, Mars, Venus placed a curse on her so that she’d only fall in love with mortal men.”

Lillian waved her trident at me again. “Then tonight, beautiful Proserpina, I curse you to have a good time.”

I was about to retort when a loud knock on the door caused us to jump.

“By the gods,” Jack said, looking us up and down when Lillian opened the door. “You are both...breathtaking.”

“Well, aren’t you also rather easy on the eyes,” Lillian said with a grin.

I had to agree with her. Jack’s toga left most of his chest exposed, his muscles rippling beneath the single swath of fabric draped over one shoulder. He held a scepter in one hand, a large bronze key in the other, and a golden diadem lay nestled in his gilded curls.

Lillian looked puzzled when Jack turned around to reveal a papier-mâché face with a beard on the back of his head. “Who are you supposed to be? A two-faced god?”

“He’s Janus,” I told her.

Jack puffed up his chest. “That’s right. I am your god of beginnings, gates, passages, doorways, and endings, or at least, that’s what the note with the mask said. I must say, it is my pleasure to escort you to our dinner destination, a place bound to be equally surreal.”

“It seems at least one face of god Janus is chivalrous, too,” Lillian teased. A second later she gave a little squeal of delight as Paolo trotted by in a toga decorated with the same luminous scale design as her dress, with a diadem made of seashells on his head. It was immediately clear that he was Neptune.

“It seems Dalí has a bit of matchmaking in him,” I mused to Jack.

“Then I should have been made Hades,” he whispered in my ear, his voice hungry.

“I wish you were,” I said, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that if Ignazio played any role tonight, it would be as the god of the Underworld.

But Ignazio was nowhere to be found when we arrived in thesala grande, which had been transformed to feel like Mount Olympus itself with tufts of cotton clustered around the base of beautifully painted papier-mâché mountains formed to resemble rocky peaks poking through the clouds. A servant sporting a short white toga and gleaming gold cuffs on his wrists accompanied us to our seats at the table, which had been laid with a gilt-edged linen tablecloth adorned with dozens of white candles of varying lengths.

No one would be playing footsie under the table tonight, for not only had the silver chairs been set nearly five feet apart, but they’d also been staggered so no two diners faced one another. Worse, Lillian had been seated at the opposite end of the table from me, across from Jack, and for me to have a conversation with her, I might have to shout. This was especially true if I was to be heard over the quartet of clarinetists, who began to play something akin to a march as the Dalís entered the room, the artist gallantly holding Gala’s hand in the air. They, too, were in full costume, he in a white toga with armlets of burnished metal, a crown of laurel leaves on his head, and a lightning bolt fashioned from papier-mâché in his free hand. Gala glowed in a diaphanous dress of pale amber with a cloak of bright peacock feathers, a radiant diadem on her head, and a scepter in her free hand.

“This! This is aDîner de Gala. A tribute to the goddess that she is,” Dalí exclaimed, bowing before his wife. Then he raised his lightning bolt over his head. “Tonight you will experience the bounty of Olympus!”

And with that, he led Gala to her seat, one of two elaborate gold chairs at either end of the table. Once he’d taken his place opposite her, he gave each of us the once-over and, seemingly satisfied, struck his scepter on the ground with a loud thump. Immediately, six dead-eyed servants appeared at our sides to pour the wine, a golden liquid heady with an aroma of elderflower and strawberries.

“Let us toast to Gala.” Dalí lifted his glass in the air. “To the beauty of Gala, to the glory of her visage, the bounty of her words.”

Gala basked in the praise, her smile belying the venom I knew ran in her veins. I picked up my glass reluctantly. She was the last person I desired to toast. But I took a drink and, despite the deliciousness of the wine in my glass, forced myself to restrain. I half hoped Lillian wouldn’t restrain herself, and we wouldn’t have to hike down the secret passage after all.

Then Dalí clapped his hands together three times and Ignazio entered the room.

I held my breath and took him in. He was the true embodiment of Pluto in a red toga that exposed a well-chiseled chest, an iron crown resting on his head, and, in his hand, a dark bident. He moved with grace and his eyes shone with purpose. And his purpose was me. He came to stand before my place at the table and bowed.

“Beautiful Proserpina, you are, as ever, radiant,” he said quietly enough so that only I heard his compliment.

It was the first time he had ever called me by that name. My stomach filled with butterflies—though perhaps it was more apt to think of locusts, as there was nothing delicate about the feelings that Ignazio inspired within me. He was dark, dangerous, and determined. I held his gaze, equally determined. I had no idea how I would do it, but I vowed to hold my own against this man.

He turned to Gala and gave her a sweeping bow, more elegant than the one he had given to me. “My queen, we are ready to delight your senses.”

“By all means,” she replied, raising her hand in a gesture of permission.

Ignazio stole one more hungry glance at me, then looked at Dalí, nodded, and snapped his fingers. Again, the servants swept in, this time setting before us the first course—a dish containing what seemed to be an egg that had been breaded and fried and some sort of greenish-brown paste spread on a small slice of rye toast, surrounded by gold-gilt almonds arranged attractively around the edge of the plate.

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