"T hat poor mortal! I feel just awful for her," Venus said, gazing after the woman who had let out the tremendous belch.

"She has extraordinarily bad hair," Persephone said.

"It's not that bad. It's just thick and curly and she hasn't managed it properly."

"Please. It's frizzy and awful. And what about those clothes?" Persephone shuddered. "Why any woman would wear baggy sweatpants and that horrid appliqued shirt I'll never know."

"She just needs some help." Venus sipped her martini, then her eyes widened. "You know, I could help her!"

"What are you talking about?"

"That poor mortal with the bad hair. I could help her." Venus nodded enthusiastically, talking quickly over Persephone's protestations. "I adore this realm, I mean city," she corrected herself.

"It's so much less depressing and banal than say, Troy." She rolled her violet eyes. "I believe it would be exhilarating to make a mortal my own special project."

"That's called community service here, and I can put you in touch with the downtown YWCA if you want to help the general populace - " Persephone began, but Venus cut her off.

"No, no, no. That's not personal enough. Think about it. To be advised, helped, coached, by the Goddess of Love herself! What a lucky mortal that would be."

"Except no one here knows to ask for your aid. That's part of the beauty of the modern world. Remember?"

"Don't be so negative."

"I'm not being negative. I'm being honest," Persephone explained patiently. "Here you're not a goddess. You're a beautiful, desirable woman. You would only offend a plain little nothing like that unfortunate girl if you began offering unasked for advice."

Venus sighed. "Fine. I understand that." Then she brightened again. "But if someone did ask for my advice I'd be overjoyed to help. It would be fun. Much more fun than dealing with hardhearted Anaxarete, or that wretchedly annoying Psyche."

Persephone shrugged. "If someone here asks for your advice I don't see any harm in you giving it."

"Then we are in complete agreement. As if Love would ever butt in where she's not wanted."

Persephone rolled her eyes.

"Did I notice a ladies' room somewhere in that direction?" Venus asked innocently, pointing vaguely past the bar.

"It's over there through that velvet curtain. But hurry, we need to get going. I just remembered that I promised Mother I would make an appearance in Eleusis tonight. You know, mustn't miss the great festival of Eleusinian Mysteries...." She mimicked Demeter's regal tone and then drained her martini and signaled for Jenny to bring their check.

"I know." Venus shared an understanding look with Persephone. "Demeter does get so terribly serious about her festivals. Don't worry. I'll hurry. Oh, don't want to forget this." She grabbed the Pricilla's Toy Box shopping bag and carried it with her as she walked quickly past the bar, almost ignoring the beautiful men who definitely weren't ignoring her. Even distracted as she was she spared them a small smile and automatically slowed her pace so that her hips moved with a beckoning, seductive roll, causing the firemen to fall silent, hypnotized by her beauty. Venus almost didn't notice. Almost.

She ducked through the curtain and followed the sign that pointed her to the left. The ladies'

room wasn't big, but it was neat and very clean. Velvet curtained stalls lined the wall in front of her. She was admiring the way the burgundy fabric seemed to glitter in the light from the vintage chandelier that dangled overhead when she heard the oddest thing. Someone was speaking her name.... No, it was more than that. Someone was invoking her aid!

How extraordinary. Quietly she moved forward. The poor belching mortal with the unkempt hair was standing before one of the antique sinks. Staring into the mirror, she was reciting an ancient invocation spell. The words wrapped around Venus like a lovely silken robe, caressing her skin and filling her with what felt suddenly like magical warmth.

"Pleasure, joy, delight and bliss, oh dear Venus, grant me this. With love and hope I call to thee, work your magic just for me. Beautiful Venus, blessed be, happiness and ecstasy are the gifts I ask from thee!"

As the invocation concluded Venus felt a tremendous tug within her, as if something was compelling her very soul to listen to this mortal's cry. She rushed forward, and still holding the Pricilla's Toy Box bag, she spread her arms dramatically.

"Of course I shall aid you!" Venus cried.

Pea gasped and whirled around, her hand going to her throat. "Oh, shit! You scared me. I thought I was alone in here."

Venus frowned mildly. "Not quite the reception I usually receive when I personally answer an invocation."

"What do you mean? Who are you?"

"Venus, of course. And your name is?"

"Pea," she said automatically.

"Pea? What an odd name. Are you quite certain?"

"Of course I'm certain. It's my name. Well, actually it's my nickname but it's what everyone calls me." Then Pea blinked, shaking her head like she was trying to clear it while her mind caught up with her words. "Who did you say you were?"

"Venus, the Goddess of Sensual Love, Beauty and the Erotic Arts," she replied a little smugly, using the most formal of her titles.

Pea's mouth flopped open.

"You besought my aid, and gladly I offer it to you!" Venus proclaimed with a flourish that made the tissue paper in her shopping bag rustle.

Pea closed her mouth, opened it and then closed it again.

"I understand. You must be overwhelmed with delight." She walked around Pea, clucking her tongue softly. "We do have considerable work to do." Venus reached out and touched her appliqued ballet IS the pointe shirt as if it were a rare insect she had the misfortune to discover. Then she shifted her attention to Pea's hair. Shaking her head she said, "By Aeolus's gaseous anus, we must do something about this first."

"What?"

"Your hair, of course. You don't brush it, do you?"

"Of course I brush it. What else am I supposed to - " Pea broke off, passing a hand across her forehead and looking utterly confused. "Look. I don't want to be rude, but how is my hair your business?"

"You invoked my aid. I remember exactly what you asked for - you said, 'Happiness and ecstasy are the gifts I ask from thee.' I already told you that I'm answering your plea. I'm here to help you find happiness and ecstasy. Clearly you can't find either with such misbehaving hair."

"Okay. Well. Hmm. That's nice of you. I guess. And I appreciate your, uh, interest, but I'm fine. Really." She started to move carefully around Venus like she was afraid the woman might suddenly explode.

"I saw you run in here because you were embarrassed," Venus said gently. "I don't think you are truly fine."

Pea's cheeks flushed, but she put on a gay smile. "Oh, that's just me. I embarrass myself all the time. I'm used to it."

"If that were true, why does your smile not reach your eyes?"

"It does. I just...I'm..." Pea floundered. "I have to go." She rushed toward the door.

"If you would wash it and then apply a small amount of coconut oil, comb it only with your fingers and let it dry naturally I believe you could begin to tame your hair."

Pea stopped short of the door. Turning, she met Venus's kind gaze. "Coconut oil?"

She nodded. "Pure coconut oil of the highest quality you can acquire. And it is of the utmost importance that you stop combing your hair. Do only this." Venus ran her fingers gently through her own thick, silver-blond tresses, starting at her scalp. "And you must do this, too, to help encourage the curls to be round and full instead of..." She paused, searching for the right words.

"Instead of willful and unruly like the wild mane of a lioness." Venus reached up and scrunched handfuls of her hair, pretending to have errant curls instead of glistening waves.

"That works?" Pea said hesitantly. "Really?"

"Would Love lie to one who has invoked her aid?" Venus smiled benevolently. Pea chewed the side of her lip, her expression telegraphing that she was torn between being intrigued and being certain she was talking with a crazy person. "Thank you," she finally said, good manners winning out over all other considerations. "I'll try it."

Venus cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. "Now, before we begin to repair your rather unfortunate manner of dress, I need to know if you are pleasuring yourself regularly."

"Ohmygod! You did not just ask me that!"

"Of course I did, darling." Wrinkling her brow, Venus tried not to show her frustration at the mortal's apparent lack of intelligence. "It's a completely natural question. If you're not pleasuring yourself properly, how can you expect - "

"Stop! After the day I've had I can't take any more."

"I'm just trying to help."

"Weirdly, I almost believe you."

With sudden inspiration, Venus pressed the Pricilla's bag into Pea's hands. "Consider this a gift from your goddess."

Awkwardly, Pea took the package and began backing toward the curtained door, obviously deciding it was easier to go along with the woman and escape than to argue with her about gifts and masturbation. "Okay, well, again, I say thanks and I'll definitely take your hair care advice, if you will take a piece of advice from me in return."

"How unusual - a mortal giving a goddess advice. Tulsa is such a refreshing place." Venus looked curious and eager. "Please, enlighten me."

"From now on go easy on the martinis." Pea smiled nervously and ducked back through the curtain.

"That certainly didn't go as expected," Venus said to herself. Still trying to understand how a mortal could ask for and then reject her aid, she walked through the thick curtain and reentered the bar area of the restaurant just in time to see Pea trip up the little bar step and drop the Pricilla's bag - right in front of the row of firemen. The huge phallus rolled out of the bag to land, vibrating cheerfully, at the feet of a man who was so exceptionally handsome that Venus wondered that she hadn't noticed him earlier. He bent to retrieve it. Holding it carefully, he offered it back to poor, embarrassed Pea.

"Ma'am, I believe you dropped this."

Speechless, Pea stared in horror back and forth from the vibrating penis to the handsome fireman.

"Ma'am?" The men around him were chuckling, but valiantly he managed to keep a sober expression. Then his eyes widened in recognition. "Aren't you Pea? My neighbor with the Scottie who thinks she's a cat? The brownies you left at the station were good."

Pea took the phallus from him, turned it off and dropped it back into the shopping bag. Venus noticed that her face was flaming red and she looked ready to cry, but when she finally spoke her voice was filled with self-effacing cheerfulness. "That's me - Pea! Your neighbor, the Scottie cat's mom, loud burper, owner of a humongous vibrating penis and excellent brownie baker. I'd love to stay and talk with you, Griffin, but I'm off to embarrass myself fully somewhere else. I just reached my limit here." Then, with the men's laughter following her out the door, Pea dropped some money on her table, picked up her book and fled.

"Pathetic. Truly pathetic," Persephone said.

"I should zap them into silence," Venus said. Her fingers twitched as she narrowed her eyes dangerously at the still laughing row of virile men.

"Venus, no, don't..."

She ignored Persephone and continued to glare at the men. The most handsome of them, the one who had been somewhat polite to Pea, met her eyes and Venus was caught by the blueness of his dark-lashed gaze. He nodded at her with a faint smile lifting his lips. The goddess reminded herself sternly that, no matter how chivalrous he had appeared, he was still part of the group of men who had laughed at Pea, so she should ignore him. But there was something about the sparkle in his eyes...the handsome tilt of his full lips...and especially about the way he looked at her - confident and openly appreciative, which was so different from the way even the most warriorlike of the ancient mortals ever dared look at her - that Venus didn't look away...couldn't look away. And that's when it happened. That spark. That lovely, inexplicable sizzle that sometimes happens between people that not even Love herself can always predict.

"Venus, would you please pay attention! I said don't do anything to them. You really shouldn't punish them. The mortal is obviously a ridiculous young woman."

"She is not!" Venus reluctantly pulled her gaze hastily away from the intriguing man and snapped at Persephone with an unusual show of temper. Her head was oddly fuzzy and she was suddenly feeling like she might cry. "She just needs some help. She's actually sweet. Confused, perhaps, but sweet."

"Venus, what have you been up to?" Persephone asked as she took the love goddess's arm and propelled her from the restaurant.

"I only did what you said I should do."

"What does that mean?"

"You were the one who said if a modern mortal asked for my aid that I should grant it."

"I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"Venus!" Persephone rounded on her. "What - did - you - do?"

"I walked in the ladies' room and Pea was - "

"Pea?"

"The mortal you think is pathetic. Stop interrupting."

"Sorry. Go ahead."

"Pea was reciting an invocation." Venus gave her a "so there" look. When Persephone didn't say anything, she added, "One of my invocations. She was actually asking for my aid. By name. Me. And you know the poor girl definitely needs my aid."

"Are you telling me that you told her who you are?"

"Well, of course. She was calling me."

"You said you're Venus, Goddess of Love."

"Of course I did. That is who I am."

Persephone began rubbing her right temple. "And this Pea person said what in response to your proclamation?"

"She was surprised and seemed perhaps a little slow in her ability to understand."

"You mean she didn't believe you."

"You could put it that way."

"Good. Then there was little harm done. Come on. Let's get you home before you're on the evening news."

"The what?"

"Forget it. I'll explain all of this to you later. Let's get back. Demeter is going to be unbearable if I'm late again." They left the restaurant and Persephone looked up at the prematurely darkening sky. "And our timing is excellent. No one, mortal or immortal, likes to get caught out in a nasty Oklahoma rainstorm, and it definitely looks like one is almost here."

Venus sighed and didn't say anything else, quickening her pace to keep up with Persephone. She felt so odd - definitely out of sorts, like part of her was sad and embarrassed and very, very tired. Persephone linked arms with her and silently Venus hurried down the sidewalk with her while rain clouds roiled across the bruised-looking sky. They crossed the street in front of the renovated Tribune Lofts and followed the pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks. They came to the spot in the heart of the bridge that locals had taken to calling the Center of the Universe because of the weird acoustical phenomenon they experienced when they stood dead center of the swirling brick-and-concrete pattern, which was actually a byproduct of having a portal to Olympus operating in the modern world.

Persephone glanced around them. "Well, the storm is definitely making things easier for us. No one's out here." She waved her hand at the space in front of them and the air rippled. A spherical area about as big as an ordinary door materialized, and without hesitation the Goddess of Spring walked into it, instantly disappearing. Venus sighed again and stepped forward, only to run face first into something so hard and impenetrable that, with a little yelp, she jumped back, rubbing her nose.

Persephone's disembodied head appeared from the middle of the sphere, like she was peeking out of a curtained alcove. "What is taking you so long?"

"I don't know. I..." Hesitantly Venus moved forward, holding one hand out in front of her. When she came to the area of the shining orb near Persephone's face the air suddenly solidified, barring her from entering it. "I can't get through," she said faintly.

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course you can you just - " But Persephone's words broke off when she grabbed her friend's hand and attempted to pull her through the portal, but found that, although her own arm slid easily back and forth from one world to the other, Venus's encountered unmovable resistance.

"Has something happened and I've lost my powers?" Venus asked as Persephone reentered the modern world.

"That shouldn't matter. Even a modern mortal would be able to pass through Demeter's portal, which is why I'm so careful about no one seeing me come or go," Persephone said. While the Goddess of Spring was talking, Venus had turned to face a lovely tree that grew not far from them. She flicked her slender fingers at its winter naked branches and suddenly it burst into the delicate white blossoms of a Bradford pear in the middle of spring.

"My powers are fine," she said.

"Let's try it again. Maybe it's the portal and it's corrected itself now. We'll go through together."

Persephone linked arms with her again. "Ready? One - two - three!" The goddesses walked to the glowing sphere. Persephone moved through it easily, but Venus's arm was wrenched from hers as the Goddess of Love, once again, seemed to have walked into a glass wall.

"Fornicating satyrs and their furry balls!" Venus cried in frustration. "What by all the levels of the Underworld is wrong with this goddess-be-damned thing?" But even as she cursed and paced a thought tickled at her mind...a thought that took her back to Lola's restaurant and the ladies'

room and a simple invocation that had unexpectedly pulled at her soul -

"The invocation! I answered the invocation and agreed to give Pea my aid," she told Persephone as the goddess reappeared from the portal.

"So? We've been answering invocations for eons. That never stopped us from returning to Olympus."

"I know, but there's something different at work here. I don't know what for sure yet, but the invocation touched me in a way I've not been touched before." Venus paused, concentrating.

"I'm bound to her!"

"Her?"

"Pea. That's why I've been feeling so odd - they're not my feelings. I've become linked to the mortal!"

"Oh no. Venus, what exactly did the mortal's invocation ask of you?"

"Pea asked that I give her happiness and ecstasy," Venus said miserably.

"And you agreed? Aloud?"

Venus nodded. "And I remember that I felt something during her invocation - something tugging within me that was compelling me to answer her." The goddess closed her eyes and shook her head. "I thought I was just experiencing the effects of our lovely martinis, but that wasn't it. It was the invocation itself; it was literal and binding."

Persephone gasped. "Which means you won't be able to leave this world until you've brought that pathetic mortal happiness and ecstasy."