Chapter 2

Somehow I found the energy to dress and head home with Helena after another late evening of Nick's tales. Buzz driving us to my apartment in the Bentley helped. Naomi accompanied us as well, and after sharing kisses left us at my door before Buzz drove her to Natasha's to sneak into her bed. "Her keys," she smiled with remarkable cheer for such a cynic, jangling the small ring containing two keys.

Helena and I made love slowly that night for not quite an hour, not even finishing with a rough hard fuck at the end. Somehow we found our first and only climax together, probably because our intimacy allowed me to feel her shivering interior as well as her murmuring "Oh Joe." Despite the softness of the orgasms, we both felt their loving power. The release relaxed us into sleep.

"Oh God, it's good to sleep in," I yawned the next morning during a languorous stretch.

"Mmm," Helena agreed, kissing my nipple and grinning. "But we do need to hurry."

"We'll be fine," I grinned back. "But I better shower alone."

We briefly lingered on a kiss and reluctantly broke it knowing it would quickly lead to too much delay.

As usual Lindy showed no tiredness from her relentless work when we greeted her at ACT still chowing down on our breakfast muffins. In fact she beamed.

"I take it it went well," I surmised referring to her dance rehearsal with Samantha and Barnaby.

Lindy nodded, but an excited Barnaby standing behind her filled in the word her humbleness would never admit, "Brilliantly."

Any further discussion amidst our small group became interrupted by a loud voice and flapping arms.

"It's just not fucking fair!" Serena yelled. "That little incestuous group gets the fucking weekend when Michael's play obviously needs the time as well as getting his deserved audience! I know it was random but it must have been rigged."

We chuckled and shook our heads. I glanced at Snake who shrugged.

Vance calmed her. "It's fine, Serena. It's ready."

"Just two more fucking days is all I need!"

"Serena, look at me." They stared into each other's eyes as Vance whispered something which remarkably relaxed her. Afterwards he kissed her forehead and said, "I'll give you the proscenium the entire day." He looked at his cast, who nodded. "In fact our friends and the rest of my cast will stay and watch. You can do a full dress as often as you feel you need it."

Serena's eyes surveyed the cast of her play that Vance had been directing, a mix of friends of theirs and ACT veterans and received their nods. "You sure?" she asked Vance.

"Absolutely. Your play is coming along like gangbusters. Nary a tweak needed. And we'll have tomorrow afternoon for any last minute adjustments."

"Okay," she replied meekly.

"By the way," Sean O'Casey announced in his booming Irish tinged voice, "none of you have worries about your audience. All shows have been sold out."

Various versions of "Awesome," "Cool," and "Yay" came from nearly every voice in attendance.

"You can congratulate our stage manager slash logistician slash press agent, Doris. She managed to feature us prominently in every local media and even a couple national broadcasts and papers."

We applauded the blushing middle aged woman. She waived the applause away. "It was the easiest promotion I ever undertook. The media came to me. I'm sure our friend Steve giving us the generosity of his time had a lot to with it."

Winking at his twin angels ubiquitous in their presence with him, the comedy star Steve Schwartz smiled. "My pleasure. Though you should thank Nick as well. He seems to have many connections in the media."

Nick shrugged.

As it turned out, whether because of extra rehearsal or not, Michael's play under Serena's direction achieved what it sought. The drawing room comedy ala Noel Coward went from snickers to roars of laughter by its ending just as Michael had hoped.

And Serena's play under Vance's deft and exacting direction wowed its audience on Friday night. I congratulated Vance afterward, commenting, "You know there's a trend happening."

"How's that?" Vance grinned.

"I noticed the careful movement of your actors. You directed it like a dance."

"Serena has a musicality in her language," Vance shrugged. "And the lack of stage directions freed me up a bit. The contrasts of various black cultural references, their generational clashes excited me most in her play and made the choreographic overlay impossible to resist."

"You did well, my friend."

"Even better than I imagined. See that tall handsome gentleman talking to Serena? He runs a black theater in St Paul, the one that August Wilson used to develop his plays."

"Penumbra Theater," I nodded, watching Serena's eyes go wide and her lips stretch into an overjoyed smile. "I'm from there, remember? And even if I wasn't, it's well known."

"Yeah," Vance sighed effervescently. "He wants us to bring it there. He wants to add it to their next season. The timing couldn't be more perfect. The theater is putting together the season now."

"That's awesome," I congratulated him.

"Yeah," he sighed again. "So what's this trend?"

I laughed. Even with the overwhelming thrill of having Serena's play inserted into a highly regarded professional theater's season with the possibility, like August Wilson's plays, of moving it to Broadway, my genius friend remembered my earlier comment.

"Choreographing actors rather than just directing them. You figure it out," I smirked.

Vance nodded. "Lindy with your play and Barnaby working with Natasha on Lindy's."

"That's more than half of us young, chosen playwrights' works using choreographed movement."

"You know," Vance said contemplatively, "I don't know if that makes a trend, but I kind of hope it does. It's like the development of opera in which all theatrical skills mesh into a spectacle of epic proportions thrilling audiences rich and poor alike. All that's missing is music."

"I can help with that," Nick interrupted. Beside him stood the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Tall and elegant, with the subtle body shape of Aphrodite or Venus depicted in oil paint or marble by past masters of those media, her face couldn't have been more perfect with an elongated and yet perfectly cast nose and large eyes with rich blue sky irises and soft pink kissable lips. That alabaster visage, neither broad nor narrow but a perfect in-between, was framed by long wavy pale gold strands of hair escaping from a perfectly coifed pile of it held together by what looked like a crown of dark metal though too delicately formed to be considered a crown really. It's as if those old masterpieces depicting perfect beauty in goddess form had become flesh.

I had noticed her arrival before the play began. She had been accompanied by an Aryan god like man as handsome as she was beautiful. Not just their beauty gained notice, but an unease that had bordered on the violent, and most particularly an argument that had turned into shouting that quieted down when he pulled her into her seat beside him before the performance.

"This, my friends, is Helen," Nick introduced her.

I gawked and not because of her beauty. "You told me she was dead," I muttered.

Helen spoke. Just like the rest of her, she sounded beautiful with a deep sonority that bordered on song. "Is that what you told them, Konikalis?" Her use of his ancient name proved who she was as if I had any doubt. "I'm afraid, as that jokester Sam Clemens once claimed, my death has been greatly exaggerated."

"I never said she died. I only said I lost her. Though she seemed dead when I ran off completely distraught avoiding my own death from the Greek invaders. I didn't wish to see her lovely head being separated from her equally lovely body."

"What the hell is going on?" asked a perplexed Vance.

Nick chuckled. "Just reciting lines with an old scene partner, my friend. Joe got a kick out of it earlier and wanted to join in. Congratulations, by the way, on Serena's continued success."

"How did you know?" asked Vance.

"I saw you chatting with Mr. Bellamy and Serena chatting with him now. Not even high praise from that director would have caused such glee in the both of you. Anyway, Helen has a gift for music and her amorata has even a greater gift and a group of friends who enjoy bringing their ideas to life. I'm sure they would enjoy contributing their gifts to benefit our various theatrical endeavors."

"You didn't seem too enamored with your Aryan friend," I commented to Helen.

Helen actually shivered. "My master has little to do with this, and in fact finds it rather distasteful."

"Your master?" I asked.

"Simon," Nick and Helen replied simultaneously.

The name made me shiver nearly as much as Helen had.

"You see Joe," Nick continued. "Helen is my one and only fallen angel."

"Fallen, hunh," Helen smirked. "I just latched my pretty teeth to a star rather than a reflection of one as you insisted on being."

"That must have hurt his little pecker," Nick joked, rubbing his crotch and grimacing.

"You!" Helen laughed, slugging Nick on his shoulder hard enough to stagger him. With Nick's powerful strength, I knew that had to be plenty hard. "If I must pleasure men, it's less of a burden if it's small. You know that."

I looked at Nick. "So Simon's blood mixed with yours somehow to..."

Nick gestured at Vance and I nodded. "We'll discuss this later, Joe."

Vance got the hint and excused himself, saying, "It looks like Serena needs to jump up and down like a little girl with me."

"Wait," I said. He paused his leaving. "Chanda's going to show her videos of Lindy's various rehearsals and our incestuous group's plays tomorrow at Barnaby's. Want to come?"

"Definitely. When?"

"How about 10am. That way we not so early birds can get some well needed rest. We'll have a pizza feast for lunch there."

"Sounds fun," he remarked, departing with a curious glance at Helen and Nick.

As if on cue, all the angels surrounded us looking less than pleased at Helen.

"So?" I asked.

"Not here," said Nick. He began walking from the front edge of the auditorium out into the hallway that led to the lobby, all of us following like wolves following their alpha. I held Helena's hand just behind Helen who trailed Nick by inches.

"To the suite?' I asked as we entered the hallway.

"Yes," Nick replied.

"Will Simon let you join us?" I asked Helen.

"Fuck you," she replied. Even that expletive sounded pretty.

Whether permitted or not, she accompanied us outdoors where a second car, an obscenely long limousine, a classic Lincoln a decade younger than the Bentley and not nearly as pretty, managed to contain most of the large entourage. During the journey out of the theater, I noticed no Simon to keep Helen from joining us. I knew Simon didn't need to be there. Just a headache inducing intrusion into her thoughts like he had done to Naomi would have prevented it, I imagined. She and the oldest angels joined Nick in the Bentley while the rest of us fitted into the limo driven by a clone of Buzz, a cousin as it turned out.

We did have to wait for Naomi attempting separation from a pouting Natasha. A kiss, a hug, some discreet fondling and whispered promises finally did the job. Despite the calming of her lover, I couldn't help sensing a hidden tension brewing in the lovely Jewess's body.

Beside them the twins made a much easier separation from Steve. The paparazzi lit the sidewalk with flashbulbs when they each embraced and kissed him. That would be front page news in all the entertainment rags and TV shows. Headlines wouldn't hurt us, of course, no matter how tawdry; the tawdrier the better more than likely.

While we emptied the limo and the Bentley at the Knob Hill hotel, a checker cab parked and another beauty emerged from it. Except for her dark brunette bobbed hair, being several inches shorter in stature and having a more voluptuous body, the woman who approached Helen slowly and tentatively looked remarkably similar to the fallen angel. Her beauty resounded less from this lady despite the similarity. Perhaps her shorter stature made her look cute. Cute was not an adjective appropriate to Helen.

"Mistress," the Helen clone bowed just her head, but her body showed supplication as well if more subtly.

"This is my angel," Helen smiled, kissing the top of the woman's head. All of us took in a breath.

"Angel?" Salomé queried.

Lifting her supplicant's head with a tender touch under her chin, Helen chuckled and kissed her causing delight to beam from the woman. "Shall we?" she said to Nick instead of explaining, and the entourage followed its leader into the hotel.

Once everyone finally filled the suite and the door closed, Naomi released her anger, shouting at her fellow angel, "You fucking bitch! You actually chose that smarmy hypocrite over Nick! I had to fight his horrid spidery legs scraping at my brain all my fucking life trying to threaten me with worse if I didn't succumb to his domination. No temptation, but a full on assault that made migraines a dull throb in comparison. And you know what beat him? A soothing chuckle and a big grin! A loving and genuine respect for me and my sisters. Fucking appreciation for us being his offspring. Did that asshole show you anything like that once?"

"You have a bit of Simon in you too, my beautiful Jewess."

"More than you have," Nick told her calmly. "You have a quarter of him. She has half."

"Impressive," Helen smiled, her hand lifting to touch Naomi's cheek.

Naomi slapped it away. "Fucking bitch," she grumbled. She flopped down beside Nick on his right side opposite Betty, Nick occupying his usual space on his couch. Naomi rested her head against his shoulder. Betty's fingers combed through her hair before soothingly sliding down her arm until they intertwined with her fingers.

Helen had chosen my usual spot on the loveseat, her unintentional disrespect causing a slight resentment from me. I don't know if she noticed it or not, but after leading her companion or whatever onto her lap, she gestured to me and tapped the empty seat beside her. Shrugging, I sat there. Helena immediately took a defensive position against Helen's obvious seductive powers by claiming my lap.

"You're Greek aren't you?' Helen asked my lover.

"Nick named me after you. I'm Helena. Obviously he wanted to replace failure with success."

Helen laughed.

"First of all," said Nick, "what does your friend know about us?"

Helen's companion spoke, a most seductive quiet purr with a sexy thick French accent that did not appear to lessen the woman's grasp of the English language. "I am fully cognizant of the immortal nature of Helen and of Simon and that he has walked this earth for Millennia, much longer than my mistress. I presume you and Simon are similar and these are your angels."

"She is not like one of us," said Salomé. "She is as mortal as Joe and Lindy here."

"It's a loving joke," Helen smirked. "Introduce yourself," she demanded.

"Angelique Chasseur," the woman bowed. "Ever vigilant servant of my Mistress."

The more I gazed at Helen's "angel," the more I saw their resemblance. "No," I thought, "Nick's angels would never seek a mirror for their lovers or geniuses. Never would they demonstrate such extreme narcissism."

Nick seemed in agreement with my thoughts. "You really are a piece of work, Granddaughter," he muttered. "This Master, Mistress shit really..."

"You're the piece of work, Grandfather!" Helen exclaimed. "Call a spade a fucking spade! We are gods to these pitiful, vulnerable, short-lived humans. And you more than any of us. You and Simon are gods and we're your angels, goddamnit! We serve your whims and our servants, whether minions or, in my angel's example, or Joe here or Lindy, the mortals we prod into excelling, are there to worship us, right Angel?"

"Yes Mistress," Angelique murmured devoutly. "You deserve to be worshipped. We are but worms in your glorious eternal presence."

Nick's angels muttered. Helen's beautiful voice rose above it. "Every fucking minion called you master. Every fucking time you tried correcting them. They knew their place even if you didn't. They may say your name instead of Master, but you could hear the word there. Who's the fucking hypocrite, Master? Simon at least knows his place in the fucking hierarchy. At the fucking top!"

"Simon's a psychotic bully," Nick began quietly and got louder. "Always was and always will be. Pushing his agenda like a bully pushing a weakling. All that Caucasian purity crap. So he was born in the Caucuses and got whiter and whiter with each new skin. So fucking what! That bullshit about man modeling god in all things physical is the largest piece of shit ever excreted upon this earth! A monster fucking shit from a monster fucking bullheaded psychopath! I! Am! Not! My! Brother!!!!"

The walls actually shook when he shouted. Frequent shudders of small quakes in the region probably kept any neighbors from fearing for their lives.

"Brother?" I thought, unfortunately aloud. Terrifyingly angry eyes focused on me. Thankfully they quieted quickly. Even better, Nick's grin returned.

"It's a term of coincidence and not of affection," Nick answered. "We appeared about the same time, though my first appearance occurred in Mesopotamia far away from the Caucuses. I guess I found a wiser, more civilized agenda there than he did in those mountains." He looked at Angelique. "Do you love your mistress?" he asked her.

"Excuse me, Master?" she responded quietly.

"You heard me."

Her eyes softened. "Yes Master, I love my mistress completely and utterly. I don't think I could function without her."

"Make love to her then."

A moment of confusion became a wry smile. "As you wish, Master."

Angelique's kiss broke through Helen's resistance almost immediately. Tongues came into play. Hands caressed breasts. It broke up a couple minutes later. Angelique ended her loving gaze at her mistress and looked at Nick.

"I said make love," Nick commanded barely hiding a grin. "Joe, would you show them the smaller bedroom?"

"Father?" Helena muttered.

"You go too, if you wish," Nick chuckled.

Amazingly aggressive, Angelique pulled her mistress to her feet to follow us. As soon as we entered the room, Helen sat on the foot of the bed and her lover straddled her lap. The kiss began again, with Angelique pulling down thin straps of her mistress's pewter colored nearly transparent dress, the color matching the metallic crown or whatever that held her hair. Stripping the dress downwards revealed Helen's perfect breasts in all their glorious nakedness.

When Helena and I moved to give them privacy, Angelique begged us, "Please don't leave. I think the master wished you to stay."

"He's not..." Helena began before being interrupted.

"Could you loosen her hair, please," Angelique begged Helena.

We shrugged and Helena removed her shoes and got on the bed behind her namesake, studying the metallic structure that held the coif together and began releasing the golden tresses.

The kiss resumed. Angelique's hands caressed Helen's breasts, two handfuls of perfection with small pink taut nipples. Helen's hands worked to undo the buttons of her lover's white blouse, getting to the black bra beneath it.