A Fall from the
Walls of Troy
by
Jill
Zeller
SMASHWORDS EDITION
******
PUBLISHED BY:
J
Z Morrison Press on Smashwords
A Fall from the Walls of
Troy
Copyright ©
2011
by Jill Zeller
Cover art by http://depositphotos.com
Smashwords
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A Fall from the Walls of Troy
I heard one nurse's voice but I saw two, and they were twins. Sparks haloed the room lights and the hospital walls breathed. Through bent Venetian blinds, I saw darkness. Was it the same night? How long had I been unconscious? How long ago since I fell off the walls of Troy? And were was that guy with the spear?
I remembered being up in the scaffold in the damned expensive high heels, because the nurses kept asking me the last thing I remembered. I didn't remember falling but I knew it was more than twenty feet. I remembered I shouldn't have been up there.
It all started with the shoes. They were, as I have said, expensive shoes, and so was the tiny black dress and the opal bracelet, although after I spent my remaining credit card amount on my hair cut, the gel they laced through my hair cost more than the bracelet and shoes combined.
“Samantha,” Augie said to me two days ago as I stood on his balcony, counting the lights on the Bay Bridge while I waited for him to get off his cell phone with the one hundredth client/friend/sycophant who called him twenty-four-seven, “You are gorgeous, more intelligent than Madame Curie, and look far younger than thirty, but do you really, really know how to build a replica of the Trojan Horse out of Greek olives and grape leaves?”
His words stung. I gave him my best withering glare which he returned with his half-smile smirk. I was flattered he thought I looked younger than thirty when I was really thirty-four, but I didn't let him see.
Augie tilted his head. “And besides, I can't make you laugh any more.”
Not laughing then, and not laughing earlier tonight as I surveyed how my Horse, standing on hooves built from licorice fondant on a black-robed table, dominated Gallery Sutro. I actually hadn't built it myself, but got help from a friend who had just been fired from her job as sou-chef at the Sir Francis Drake. My Greek food theme complemented Augie's collage-representations of larger than life heroes in 12-by-10 foot frames: Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector; bold, naked men, noticeably well-muscled and well-endowed in the Greek ideal, even though Hector was a Trojan.
Surveying my creations just before the doors were to open, I listened unsmileing as Augie told me to make sure no one took any photographs. He was very particular about that. I had enough to worry about, like making sure there was enough champagne.
Augie had worried about who would serve the champagne. I said people could get their own from two servers at the bar. He didn't seem happy with that idea, but I let it go. It was my show, after all. I had it under control.
People milled around outside, waiting to get in. I had made sure the right people heard about the show, and found the perfect naval-gazing neo-grunge band to play droning music. Augie asked if they might wear togas, but I demurred. Only Romans wore togas, didn't they? I thought it would be better if they were naked, to honor the way Greeks competed in the ancient Olympic Games, but I didn't want to finish the night with anybody getting arrested.
Even more than the Trojan Horse, I loved my Walls of Troy in painted burlap, bodies of dead Trojans sprawled over the parapets. It loomed across the rear of the gallery. From it wafted musky odors of sea, sand, and burning sandalwood torches. The intermittent wail of a grieving widow pierced the air—special effects I begged from an ex-boyfriend who once worked as a New York stagehand.
We opened, fashionably late. Guests flowed in, snagged glasses of champagne, moved around the white-washed hall, and once the room was nearly full, Augie made his entrance.