In Love with Love

In fact, from the moment I had kissed her, my ribs hadn't bothered me. What in the hell was happening to me?

My shirt, I thought in a frenzy. The blood on my shirt. If I imagined it all, I imagined that too. I grabbed up my shirt and held it up, letting the bow tie flutter back to the ground. Rather than being relieved to see the blood I remembered, I was even more confused and frightened.

I glanced at the clock above the mirror. It was five minutes after midnight. Valentine's Day had been over for five minutes. It was now February the Fifteenth. A small voice barely heard beneath the gibbering madness wondered if she had faded as the clock ticked over to the next day.

The morning sun peeking inside my window found me having not slept at all. I was sitting at the small eating nook in my kitchen sipping a cup of coffee with my back resolutely turned towards the bedroom and the unanswered questions that lay within. The top arch of that orb seemed to beckon me to leave the scene of confusion and fear even further behind and come to greet it.

The dojo wouldn't be open yet, but I couldn't stand to be there anymore. I needed some return to normalcy that I couldn't seem to find in my own home.

My stride lengthened as I reached the sidewalk and slid from a walk to a jog. I was not running from the confused jarring of memory or madness. I was just getting started on my morning workout.

Yeah, sure I was.

On my way to the dojo where I trained, I passed the museum she had mentioned. If she had. If there had been a she to mention it.

My curiosity slowed my feet and I turned to mount the stairs to wait at the door. I wasn't waiting long when a woman about my age started climbing the stairs.

"You're early." She called as she came closer. "We don't open for another half hour."

"That's okay." I called back. "I just wanted to see this exhibit I heard about before it was taken down."

"The 'Goddess of Love and Fertility' exhibit?" She asked more conversationally as she drew closer.

"That's the one." I nodded. "I figured with Valentine's being over, it would probably be taken down pretty quickly and I wanted to check it out before it was."

"Oh, well I can assure you that it is going to remain up until the first of March."

"Ah, well." I shrugged. "I'm here and I'm looking forward to seeing it. I don't mind waiting until you open."

The woman stood staring at me for a long moment and I wondered what she was thinking.

"Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything for you to come in while I got things started." She said, finally.

"Oh, I don't want to be any trouble."

"Nonsense." She said. "It's freezing out here."

I shrugged again since I didn't know what to say to that. It was February. It was supposed to be cold. But, at her insistence, I followed her inside and waited as she locked the door once more.

"Hi, Ralph. I brought a guest." She called.

"All right, Ms. Danvers." A bodiless voice called back.

The words seemed to echo in that vaulted hall and I shuddered at the eeriness of it. Only the warm sunlight creeping steadily across the floor as the sun rose outside kept it from being the setting for a horror movie.

"My exhibit is over there, through those doors." Ms. Danvers said.

"Your exhibit?" I asked.

"I conceptualized it." She nodded. "I spent the better part of the year gathering the pieces for it. It's mine as much as it is anyone's."

"So, it's not just a traveling exhibit going from museum to museum?" I asked having some faint notion about how such things were reported to work.

"Not this one." Ms. Danvers seemed inordinately pleased that I'd asked. "Oh, the pieces travel here and there, but separately. It took quite a lot of work to get them all together here at the same time."

"Why go to that much trouble?" I asked.

"What are you? A reporter?" Ms. Danvers laughed. "I don't know. I was just always fascinated with the myths of a goddess of love and beauty and fertility since I was a little girl and first heard of Aphrodite. From there it was Venus. And then the lesser known Cythera, Cypris, and Acidahlia. And from there-"

"What did you just say?" I interrupted, feeling like all of the blood had just drained from my body out through the soles of my feet. "Acidahlia?"

"Why, yes." Ms. Danvers looked nonplussed from my interruption. "Acidahlia is sometimes believed to be a demoness or a succubus, but many believe that she is another name to the same myth as Aphrodite as worshipped by a splinter cult."

"I see." I said faintly. And, indeed, if you could somehow expand your consciousness to accept the idea of a real goddess appearing to a mortal, then I was beginning to put a label on what had happened to me.

"Well, I need to check on a few things if you want to go ahead on in and see the exhibit dear." Ms. Danvers said when I didn't expand.

I wasn't sure I wanted to anymore. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know anything else. But, I felt a need to know that drove me to look.

What I saw made my hair stand on end.

Many cultures celebrated a deity that held within her purview love, beauty, sexuality, and fertility. Some saw this individual as a goddess, others as a demoness depending on that cultures other mores and memes. One such entity was named Acidahlia.

Perhaps even more frightening was the mention that in her Roman characterization of Venus, she was either the bride or concubine of her brother Mars, the god of war, who was also married to Narine, the Roman goddess of Valor.

Oh, my God! I thought before I stopped myself. Did I just go toe to toe with the freaking god of war? And not only win but fuck his wife?!

That gibbering thought was the last I had before Ms. Danvers was kneeling over me, shaking me awake.

I made my apologies for causing a scene and promised that no I didn't need an ambulance. Then I extricated myself and got as far away from that place as I could in as little time as possible.

The sun set on me in that same park, still thinking. And the conclusion that I came to was more than a little unsettling.

The ancient stories are full of gods and goddesses walking among mortals and even seducing them. In a way, science has taken the place of gods and modern man bends his knee to that instead. But, there are so many, so very many things that science can't explain.

What if the ancients had it right? What if a man in love with love somehow gained the attention of the goddess of love and beauty? What if her jealous paramour came after her to retrieve her?

Epilogue.

I probably shouldn't have but I fell into the habit of buying a single rose each day and taking that rose down to the small pond in the center of the park where I used to sit on Valentine's and throwing it and a piece of chocolate into the water. Water just seemed more fitting since most myths agreed that she came up out of the water.

I eventually went back to the museum and studied that exhibit forwards and backwards. Then, when it was broken down and shipped away, I began picking Olivia's, I mean Ms. Danvers, brain. One thing led to another and we began to see each other outside of the museum as well. The thought occurred to me that I should feel guilty at one point, but Ms. Danvers is never so articulate and animated as when we are discussing the old myths.

Something might have developed there, but in November I received a surprise package at my front door in the shape of a little redheaded baby girl. It took some doing to get the courts to see things my way, but I'm not going to back away from any fight when it comes to little Danae who I am sure is my daughter.

Speaking of that, since my daughter is also the daughter of either a goddess or demoness of love and beauty, I have continued to work out with MMA. But, I have also started collecting guns. Somehow, I have a feeling that her dear old dad is going to need to have some back up around in a few years.

Right now, she is too young to even know what is happening when we go down to the pond and her daddy throws a rose and a chocolate in. In a few years, she might ask me why. When she does, I already know what I will say.

I'll say I don't really know how it started. Maybe it had something to do with not getting any Valentine's Day cards at school as a kid...