The Perils of Unrequited Love

SIDE STORY II: JUST A WOMAN

" Everybody loves somebody sometime..."

——Dean Martin (1964)

Clarisse Séraphine Dubois

Clarisse Séraphine Dubois was making crêpes. It was a simple act, yet so terribly domestic that she wouldn't be able to picture herself doing it a few years earlier.

Now, to be clear, Clarisse wasn't always wild. Nobody was wild from birth. Up until the age of eleven, Clarisse grew up in a very domestic house, with a regular house

wife mum, a white collar father and an older sister and a younger brother and received domestic training, such as sweeping the floor, doing laundry and cooking. Her life was greatly altered when her father died after losing a battle to cancer and her rich paternal aunt decided to take her under her wings. Aunt Christie, bless her soul, was a worshiper of Aphrodite and it had been her dream, her ambition, to give Aphrodite the perfect high priestess. Aunt Christie decided that Clarisse would make a marvelous madame, with her beauty, her natural leadership and her great affinity to magic. Thus, ended the period of domestic life for Clarisse. She had been trained in the art of seduction, male domination and magic thereafter.

" la crêpe est prête, mon chéri" She heard herself saying such a normal sentence as she flipped the pancake. It flew in the air and her husband hurried to catch it. Only to miss it by an inch, but no worries, the pancake spun in the air and gently landed itself on the plate on the table, in front of a teenage girl with curly titian hair.

Hedone, the goddess of pleasure, clapped her hands together excitedly. " Voila!"

" Très bien" Gérald, her sweet, handsome husband, lifted his thumb at the goddess.

" Ma petite, tu veux du nutella ou sirop d'érable?"

" Tous les deux, s'il te plait"

Gérald sat at the kitchen island and plattered thick nutella and syrup on the pancake for Hedone.

Up until today, Clarisse always doubted the extent of understanding her husband had of their permanent house guest. Did he never notice magic happening right in front of him? Did he not even once question why Hedone never aged, never once in the past decade got sick? Gérald seemed to be content with the explanation that Hedone was her boss's granddaughter. And she knew that he thought she used to work as a madame of an international escort service. What surprised her even more was the fact that Hedone was here, sitting in her dining room. For some inexplicable reasons, Hedone had taken a liking to Gerald and basically invited herself to stay at their home in Neuilly-sur-Seine four days a week, even though it was a good mile away from Paris, where the fun was.

Gerald had done the impossible domesticating the universe's wild child. Well, that was to be expected of her husband since he also domesticated her, who was once dubbed the queen of wildflowers. Considering that they began with her drugging his drink with a potent Aphrodisiac and putting a love spell on him to get him to stop inquiring into the cult's activities ( Back then, the French government suspected that the temple of Aphrodite is a façade for an international espionage mission and Gerald was the head of the investigation, but that was another story for another time.), she could hardly believe that the power balance would shift greatly.

They had crepes and coffee for breakfast. Gérald was a gentleman enough to do the dishes.

" I have to go to École militaire*. I will stop by the supermarket and do grocery shopping for you on my way back."

He petted Hedone, who just started her dessert of chocolate moose, on the titian head, grabbed his wallet and went into the living room. Clarisses followed him, bringing him his suitcase and helped him with his necktie.