Page 29 of Perfectly Matching Again

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Demeter doesn’t care about me. She couldn’t even say my name for days?—”

“Yes, yes, she couldn’t say your name. I bet she screamed it loud enough?”

The bears groaned collectively again and moved to a table further away from them. Erato considered joining them.

“You seem to think very little of yourself, Muse. I can’t say I understand.” Hera patted her perfect hair. It occurred to Erato that she had not thought of herself as perfect in quite a while. In fact, she had thought of herself as anything but… especially for Demeter.

“And why is that, Muse? Where is your swagger? Sure you won’t allow some mild disdain to stop you from getting whatyou, of all the immortals, want? Unless my sister is not what you want.”

Hera was looking at her expectantly. Erato gulped.

“You are goading me.”

“I am trying to figure out why you’re here, moping, feeling miserable?—”

“You dragged me here!” Erato threw her arms up.

“Only because my sacred bond was severed, and I didn’t even know Demeter could do it all along!” Hera sounded exasperated, and Erato suddenly felt like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room.

“She severed the bond?”

Hera looked at her with utter disbelief before repeating slowly, enunciating every word, as if Erato were indeed slow.

“She. Severed. The. Bond.”

Behind her, the chorus of bears sang out “She severed the boooooond!”

Erato’s heart was beating double time. Demeter could’ve ripped the thread twenty thousand times during their predicament. She could’ve cut it the second Hera placed it. She could’ve undone it at any given second, and yet…

“Yes, there, voilà, the light bulb moment. I swear, I don’t get what she sees in you at all.”

Erato threw a ‘don’t even think about it’ look in the general direction of the bears, preempting any commentary or, Hades forbid, singing. They stayed silent. Balls were re-racked rather quickly.

“I think I have made a terrible mistake.” Erato gestured to the bartender, and he placed the second vodka in front of her.

“Gasp!” Hera clutched her chest dramatically. The bears mimicked her gesture. Erato rolled her eyes. Hera went on with her mockery. “The bulbs just keep lighting up, Muse.”

“I am not at all certain this is how you should be speaking to your future sister-in-law, Hera.” Erato sipped her vodka slowly this time and grinned widely at the Goddess next to her.

“Oh Zeus, you will be insufferable about this, won’t you?”

Erato shrugged and elbowed Hera gently.

“I mean, if she’ll have me, and if you bless the union.” Hera stared daggers at her but her heart was so light, Erato just kept grinning. “And how could you not? I will tell everyone this match was entirely your doing. Well, yours and the bears. Are they actual bears, by the way? Did Artemis have a hand?—”

The men’s laughter boomed and Hera narrowed her eyes, snapping her fingers for silence.

“Enough about the bears!” Then she blew out a breath and lowered her tone. “And don’t bring me into this, either. The Cupid started it, and I am nobody to oppose the Fates. Even they know the brouhaha with the arrows is not to be taken lightly.”

Erato’s eyes grew large and Hera bit her lip, shaking her head.

“I should not have said that.”

“Was Sabine involved?” Erato’s heart, which had just risen all the way to the Olympus, plummeted down.

Hera plucked the vodka out of her limp grasp. She downed it without as much as blinking, and Erato wondered about what exactly did this woman do all day up in her fancy club in Manhattan. Then Hera did something so striking, so out of character, Erato nearly fell off the stool. She reached and grasped Erato’s hand with her own cold fingers.

“It may seem that I care for very little, Muse. My children, dumbasses as they are. My club, my Olympus. My revenge against Zeus. I am well known for those things. But I have to tell you that my sister is the one who stood by me, despite all my schemes, my plotting. Generations passed and she has not abandoned me. All of the gods and goddesses demand things ofme and then leave. They fear me. They think me unstable. The jilted wife of a philandering husband. And that might be true.” Hera’s fingers trembled slightly on Erato’s as she went on.

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