Looking for a little love this Valentine's season? Ever wondered what the real story is behind Cupid and Venus? Then please consider "Matching Wits With Venus", available at Amazon, B&N online, and all fine online retailers .... And have yourselves a very happy hearts' day! XOXO
In the valley below the thirty foot
white block letters that spelled
out HOLLYWOOD, between Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” museum and a string of
psychic reading rooms, sat a glass-front shop with a rose-colored door. Above the storefront’s small bay window
a pink and purple sign proclaimed Happily Ever After
By Amelia. Inside, Amelia Coillard stretched out
her hands to receive a large almond vanilla pie.
“It
took me all night to make this,” a tall woman wearing an enormous pear shaped
diamond on her left hand said, “But I wanted you to know how grateful I
am. Really, Amelia, you’re the
best. David and I want to invite
you to our wedding. On June
twenty-first.”
Amelia
bowed slightly and smiled.
“Glad
we could help Susanna. Don’t
forget to tell your friends about us.”
The
woman nodded, then strode past the wrought iron café table where Amelia
interviewed clients, out onto the empty sidewalk.
“We’ve
got another wedding, “ Amelia called out to her assistant Jennie as she stepped
into the back room and placed the pie on a distressed pine sideboard, next to
the boxes of chocolates, baskets of figs, bottles of champagne, potpourri
sachets and bundles of beeswax candles she’d received from satisfied clients.
“Let
me guess,” Jennie replied, rubbing her hands together. “The summer solstice.”
Amelia
nodded.
“Flowers
in bloom, longer days, baby animals at the zoo. It all means only one thing: June brides. I don’t know how
people can be so hopeful.”
“Hmm,
well you’d better get ready. Your first client will be in to fill out her
patented personality profile in ten minutes. You know, she actually asked me if
I’d mail her the profile and let her fill it out at home! As if we’d release your proprietary secrets!”
“I
don’t know what I’d do without you to look after me.” Amelia chuckled.
She
reached inside the little cupboard in the corner and withdrew the fitted white
crocheted sweater she’d gotten two years
ago at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. The seller had told her the cardigan had been
part of the trousseau of one of the old stars who’d lived up in the Hollywood
Hills. Amelia wasn’t sure she believed the woman’s story, but the sweater’s
delicate pattern reminded her of wedding lace, so she wore it every time she
met with a client. And, though she never told Jennie, Amelia was convinced that
the sweater from another woman’s trousseau was as close as she’d ever come to
clothing herself in bridal wear.
While
Amelia was pulling the sweater over her black mini-dress and adjusting her wavy
auburn hair over its pearl trimmed collar, she
saw a photo smiling out at her from the back of the cupboard. Inside the silver frame stood an
extremely thin young man, his eyes protruding below penciled on eyebrows, a
blue bandana wrapped around his head. As Amelia reached out to caress the photo
she heard someone rapping on the back window.
“Justin,”she
called out to the young man in the red and black leather jacket, torn jeans and
scruffy tennis shoes.
Justin’s long hair needed a
trim and he could use a shave, as well as a bottle of sunblock. Like many of
the others who bedded down on the streets around Hollywood and Vine, his face
was testimony to the hard realities of living rough under the merciless
California sun.
“I’ve
got something for you,” she said as she opened the door.
Amelia
scooped up a napkin, fork and bottle of water from the table that held her
teakettle. She handed them to
Justin, along with a plate bearing half of the almond vanilla pie.
“Thanks
Amelia.”
“Have
a good day.”
Amelia
watched as Justin disappeared into the alley. She gazed up into the hills in the distance, at the faded
ocher stucco mansion that stood atop the highest point. Long verandas seemed to
wrap around the house, though it was impossible to know for certain if they ran
across the back of the home, since the far side of the walled property was not
accessible by road or foot. It sat atop a fault line; no one dared venture onto
the rocky terrain for fear of disrupting the crusty earth beneath the
bougainvillea bushes.
“Don’t,”
Jennie said softly as she sidled up next to Amelia a moment later.
“Don’t
what?”
“Don’t
go down that path, Lia. It’s not going to take you anywhere you want to be.”
“I
don’t know what you mean.”
“Come
on, let it go.”
Amelia
sighed.
“Do
you have any idea how many cakes, cookies, tarts, baskets and bouquets I left
on those stone steps? Do you know,
I used to climb up to that gate every year on Christmas Eve and what should’ve
been my parents’ anniversary and leave her these hand-written letters I’d actually
sealed with a kiss. I taped those
little Hershey’s candies to the envelope when I was little and then, in high
school, I slathered red lipstick on my lips and ran my mouth across the back of
the envelope. I can’t believe I was so stupid!”
“We
all do dumb things.”
“Yeah
but come on! Believing in the
existence of an ancient Roman goddess AND that she lived right in my own
neighborhood? Talk about desperate.”
Jennie
laughed.
“It
does sound absurd when you put it that way. Plus everybody knows that house has
been abandoned for decades. Why they don’t add it to the Haunted Hollywood tour
is beyond me.”
Amelia
nodded. As she took a final look at the mansion Amelia thought she saw a flash
of light shoot out from its left flank.
****
Inside the ocher
palazzo Venus flicked her cream colored scarf over her slender shoulders as she
peered through the ultra-powerful telescope she had trained on Happily
Ever After By Amelia.
“You
have to do something about that woman or before you know it they’ll be tearing
down all those statues of me and calling her the goddess of love.”
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