They were standing close by the Temple, three Myrmidons keeping guard over them. The rest of the crowd had dissolved into little bunches spreading all over the park. Forrester knew he would have to leave, too, and very soon. There were seven girls waiting for him down below.
Not that he minded the idea. Seven beautiful girls, after all, were seven beautiful girls. But he did want to keep an eye on Gerda, and he wasn"t sure whether he would be able to do it when he got busy.
Somewhere in the bushes, someone began to play a kazoo, adding the final touch of melancholy and heartbreak to the music. The formal and official part of the Baccha.n.a.l was now over.
The _real_ fun, Forrester thought dismally, was about to begin.
CHAPTER NINE
"Now," Forrester said gaily, "let"s see if your G.o.d has all the names right, shall we?"
The seven girls seated around him in a half-circle on the gra.s.s giggled.
One of them simpered.
"Hmm," Forrester said. He pointed a finger. "Dorothy," he said. The finger moved. "Judy. Uh--Bette. Millicent. Jayne." He winked at the last two. They had been his closest companions on the march down. "Beverly,"
he said, "and Kathy. Right?"
The girls laughed, nodding their heads. "You can call me Millie,"
Millicent said.
"All right, Millie." For some reason this drew another big laugh.
Forrester didn"t know why, but then, he didn"t much care, either.
"That"s fine," he said. "Just fine."
He gave all the girls a big, wide grin. It looked perfectly convincing to them, he was sure, but there was one person it didn"t convince: Forrester. He knew just how far from a grin he felt.
As a matter of fact, he told himself, he was in something of a quandary.
He was not exactly inexperienced in the art of making love to beautiful young women. After the last few months, he was about as experienced as he could stand being. But his education had, it now appeared, missed one vital little factor.
He was used to making love to a beautiful girl all alone, just the two of them locked quietly away from prying eyes. True, it had turned out that a lot of his experiences had been judged by Venus and any other G.o.d who felt like looking in, but Forrester hadn"t known that at the time and, in any case, the spectators had been invisible and thus ignorable.
Now, however, he was on the greensward of Central Park, within full view of a couple of thousand drunken revelers, all of whom, if not otherwise occupied, asked for nothing better than a good view of their G.o.d in action. And whichever girl he chose would leave six others eagerly awaiting their turns, watching his every move with appreciative eyes.
And on top of that, there was Gerda, close by. He was trying to keep an eye on her. But was she keeping an eye on him, too?
It didn"t seem to matter much that she couldn"t recognize him as William Forrester. She could still see him in action with the seven luscious maidens. The idea was appalling.
All afternoon, he had put off the inevitable by every method he could think of. He had danced with each of the girls in turn for entirely improbable lengths of time. He had performed high-jumps, leaps, barrel-rolls, Immelmann turns and other feats showing off his G.o.dlike prowess to anyone interested. He had made a display of himself until he was sick of the whole business. He had consumed staggering amounts of ferment and distillate, and he had forced the stuff on the girls themselves, in the hope that, what with the liquor and the exertion, they would lie down on the gra.s.s and quietly pa.s.s out.
Unfortunately, none of these plans had worked. Dancing and acrobatics had to come to an end sometime, and as for the girls, what they wanted to do was lie down, not pa.s.s out--at least not from liquor.
The Chosen Maidens had been imbued, temporarily, with extraordinary staying powers by the Priests of the various temples, working with the delegated powers of the various G.o.ds. After all, an ordinary girl couldn"t be expected to keep up with Dionysus during a revel, could she?
A G.o.d reveling was more than any ordinary mortal could take for long--as witness the ancient legend concerned the false Norse G.o.d, Thor.
But these girls were still raring to go, and the sun had set, and he was running out of opportunities for delay. He tried to think of some more excuses, and he couldn"t think of one. Vaguely, he wished that the real Dionysus would show up. He would gladly give the G.o.d not only the credit, he told himself wearily, but the entire game.
He glanced out into the growing dimness. Gerda was out there still, with her brother and the oaf--whose name, Forrester had discovered, was Alvin Sherdlap. It was not a probable name, but Alvin did not look like a probable human being.
Now and again during the long afternoon, Forrester had got Ed Symes to toss up more rocks as targets, just to keep his hand in and to help him in keeping an eye on Gerda and her oaf, Alvin. It was a boring business, exploding rocks in mid-air, but after a while Symes apparently got to like it, and thought of it as a singular honor. After all, he had been picked for a unique position: target-t.o.s.s.e.r for the great G.o.d Dionysus.
Who else could make that statement?
He would probably grow in the estimation of his friends, Forrester thought, and that was a picture that wouldn"t stand much thinking about.
As a stupefying boor, Symes was bad enough. Adding insufferable sn.o.bbishness to his present personality was piling Pelion on Ossa. And only a G.o.d, Forrester reminded himself wryly, could possibly do that.
Now, Forrester discovered, Symes and Alvin Sherdlap and Gerda were all sitting around a large keg of beer which Symes had somehow managed to appropriate from some other part of the grounds. He and Alvin were guzzling happily, and Gerda was just sitting there, whiling away the time, apparently, by thinking. Forrester wondered if she was thinking of him, and the notion made him feel sad and poetic.
Gerda couldn"t see him any longer, he knew. The darkness of night had come down and there was no moon. The only illumination was the glow rising from the rest of the city, since the lights of the park would stay out throughout the night. To an ordinary mortal, the remaining light was not enough to see anything more than a few feet away. But to Forrester"s G.o.dlike, abnormally perceptive vision, the park seemed no darker than it had at dusk, an hour or so before. Though the Symes trio could not possibly see him, he could still watch over them with no effort at all.
He intended to continue doing so.
But now, with darkness putting a cloak over his activities, and his mind completely empty of excuses, was the time to begin the task at hand.
He cleared his throat and spoke very softly.
"Well," he said. "Well."
There had to be something to follow that, but for a minute he couldn"t think of what.
Millicent giggled unexpectedly. "Oh, Lord Dionysus! I feel so _honored_!"
"Er," Forrester said. Finally he found words. "Oh, that"s all right," he said, wondering exactly what he meant. "Perfectly all right, Millicent."
"Call me Millie."
"Of course, Millie."
"You can call me Bets, if you want to," Bette chimed in. Bette was a blonde with short, curly hair and a startling figure. "It"s kind of a pet name. You know."
"Sure," Forrester said. "Uh--would you mind keeping your voices down a little?"
"Why?" Millicent asked.
Forrester pa.s.sed a hand over his forehead. "Well," he said at last, thinking about Gerda, only a few feet away, "I thought it might be nicer if we were quiet. Sort of private and romantic."
"Oh," Bette said.
Kathy spoke up. "You mean we have to whisper? As if we were doing something secret?"
Forrester tightened his lips. He felt the beginnings of a strong distaste for Kathy. Why couldn"t she leave well enough alone? But he only said: "Well, yes. I thought it might be fun. Let"s try it, girls."
"Of course, Lord Dionysus," Kathy said demurely.
He disliked her, he decided, intensely.