You can’t choose your parents, but the fates were kind to Orpheus. His father, Apollo, is something of a renaissance man; well read, accomplished musician, even an Olympic gold medalist in archery. At sixty, the chairman and CEO of Sony Music, he still turns heads with his athletic build, green eyes, and salt and pepper shadow that he leaves unshaven. Suits hang well on him. He always looks effortlessly comfortable.
His mom is an award winning poet. Ten years her husband’s junior, Calliope has a way with words; precise, elegant. Petite with an angular face often mistaken for Italian, the light brown curls falling around her neck softened by the California sun. An Emerita at Stanford, she will often retreat to the beach house to write. Apollo has called her his muse for as long as she can remember.
Growing up in the sprawling mansion in the Malibu Hills with its fountains and priceless art collection, Orpheus was never at a loss for company. Siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and a parade of celebrities filled the space with parties and holiday feasts. His favorite aunt is Artemis, his father’s twin. Without children, she would always bring exotic pets and, even now, Orpheus finds time to spend weekends at her wildlife sanctuary up in the Redwoods. Every Thanksgiving she’d best her brother at archery, giving Orpheus a sly wink as his dad traipsed back up to the house, brooding.
Something of a prodigy, Orpheus took to music at an early age; piano, drums, but his passion was the electric guitar. By thirteen his renditions of Voodoo Chile and Stairway were comparable to the originals. He was a star student at Berklee College, a regular busker at Quincy Market where he could pull three hundred on a weekend. Now, six years on, he was a luminary in the world of blues guitar.
Eurydice loves her parents, but sometimes wishes she could’ve chosen differently. She doesn’t really mean it, so she doesn’t beat herself up with extra guilt. Korean immigrants, her mom and dad have run a successful and bustling restaurant a couple blocks south of Wilshire since before she was born.
An only child, Eurydice has caved at the weight of expectation and pretends she’s at peace with it. She left the San Fernando Valley to go to school in Oregon but dropped out the end of her sophomore year.Now she lives in a shared apartment in Seattle, trying to make a go of it as a freelance illustrator for graphic novels. Her mom calls her everyday. Sometimes she picks up.
So many moving parts have to align for a chance encounter to take place. Months later Orpheus would claim it as destiny or fate. Eurydice would shake her head, disbelieving of a cosmic plan. But the moving parts came together, nonetheless.
The night Orpheus was bringing his brand of blues to The McCaw in downtown Seattle, Eurydice was supposed to be back in LA for the weekend, but her dad had gone down with the flu and they postponed. Her roommates had gone camping, so she had the apartment to herself with a Netflix binge on deck.Incoming text. Want to come to a concert? Followed by another. Austin bailed. They’re front row seats! Gabe’s boyfriend was a nurse and often on call. A third text. You can be my beard for the evening. Eurydice smiled. Together or separate, Gabe and Austin were always fun company. She texted back. What time?
“I love this guy’s stuff!” Gabe is swaying and clapping in rhythm along with most of the crowd. Eurydice is fascinated by this man who can make magic come out of his guitar.He looks too young to be such a virtuoso.His face is angular, handsome, dark stubble around his lips and on his chin. Eyes deep, far away in a zone as his music fills the arena.
He doesn’t usually focus on people in the audience, but he couldn’t help but notice her. This young Asian woman at the end of the front row, the shape of her eyes, straight black hair. She made an impression on him that he couldn’t ignore.
The house lights were up, people collecting belongings, slowly making for the exits. Eurydice touched Gabe on the arm. “Thanks for bringing me, this was fun.” Gabe gave her a hug. One of the crew clearing the set hopped off the stage in front of them. “Miss?” She looked at him, uncomprehending. Nobody had addressed her that way before. “Would you come backstage? Someone would like to meet you.” He glanced briefly at Gabe who gave Eurydice a You go, girl look. He hugged her once more. “I’m going to grab an Uber.”
Orpheus had found his Eurydice. Their story had begun. Weekends away, late night dinners, strolls along Santa Monica beach. She stayed at the mansion, meeting the approval of Apollo and Calliope, and Artemis who taught her how to shoot an arrow. He learned some basic Korean to impress her parents. It worked.He composed impromptu songs just for her. Life was good.
Eight months on and he asked her to move into his house in Atherton. On the first anniversary of their meeting at the concert he asked her to marry him. E! Online ran them as the cover story. Jimmy Fallon had them on his show, and Orpheus played a couple songs.
Aristaeus drained the remainder of the Dos Equis and chased it with a Jack Daniel’s. He tapped the shot glass twice on the bar top and got a refill.He wore a leather vest over a Valhalla t-shirt, each of his powerful arms embroidered with the same Copperhead tattoo.The honky tonk dive was mostly empty at such a late hour, couples shuffling around on the dance floor in blue jeans and boots. The old school cover band was doing a lackluster tribute to Magic Carpet Ride. Above the bar one of the screens was showing college football highlights, and on the other his half-brother was shredding it on a late night show. The camera panned to his pretty fiancé beaming with pride. Aristaeus slugged back the second shot, slid off the stool, and headed for the door.
After the diagnosis Aristaeus’ mom tried to make peace with the ghosts from her past. Dealt so many bad hands, made so many poor choices. At the kitchen table one night she told her son about his real father. How she was a naïve twenty year old waiting tables at the Yardbird in Vegas. How an older, charming Apollo flirted with her all night, touching her wrist when she brought drinks.The limousine ride to his suite at two in the morning. The three pregnancy tests she did, all with the same result.
Of course, Apollo disowned her, refused to believe it was his. One night a dubious man showed up at her apartment and handed her an envelope with five thousand in cash. Get lost kid, he’d said and opened his jacket so she could see the Glock in his waistband. Two days later she was on I-40 going back to Texas.
It’s been a year and a half since that evening at the kitchen table, Aristaeus’ mom gone just a week later. He stayed on in the two-bedroom house on the outskirts of Amarillo where his mom raised him on minimum wage jobs. At thirty-four with a high school diploma, there aren’t a ton of prospects outside of his job at the motorcycle repair shop. But now he had a plan.
Devil Dog had the reputation to back up the nickname. A self-proclaimed psychopath, he was intelligent and shrewd enough to keep his criminal activity under the radar. He had a broad network, knew a lot of people. Aristaeus used to ride with him back in the day. Now he was sharing a beer on Devil Dog’s back deck in Odessa, pitching his plan.
Dog regarded him, processing. “Kidnapping is a felony.” The Dobermann at his feet heard something in the bushes and cocked its head to one side. “That’ll up the price.” Aristaeus had considered that. “I’m getting that son of a bitch to cough up five mill. That’s three for me, one for you, and five hundred K for the two guys who’ll make the grab.” Devil Dog cupped his hands and lit up a Marlboro,the snarling heads of a Cerberus tattoo fixing their fiery eyes on Aristaeus. “I’ll make some calls. Give me a few days.”
The planning was thorough. Two months of surveillance, setting up a route, a hideout. The snatch occurred on an unremarkable Tuesday morning, the Bay Area sun barely above the horizon. Eurydice on her morning jog, earbuds filling her head with Orpheus’ new album, the perfect facsimile of a California Water Service truck drawing no suspicion. The abduction was swift, professional, and within moments she was in the back of the truck duct taped and zip tied. They crossed the Dumbarton Bridge and in Stockton switched to a Chevy Suburban. From there they headed east up into the Sierra Nevadas.
Orpheus paced the wood floors in his suite overlooking Central Park. He was in New York promoting the new album. Eurydice hadn’t answered all day.He called his dad but it went to voicemail. As he passed the phone from hand to hand it lit up with an incoming FaceTime. “Eurydice!! Where have…” She was sitting in a high backed dining chair, mouth taped, wrists and ankles zip tied.His brain went into overdrive. Then a voice, off camera. “Follow the instructions to the letter and she lives.” Orpheus was crying, hands shaking the camera. “Right now she is alive, as you can see. You will receive a text. Do what it says.”The call ended. Orpheus wipes his eyes to see the text. He reads it three times.The porcelain vase he hurls at the wall shatters into a thousand jigsaw pieces.
He came alone, as instructed. His Land Rover kicked up dust on the unpaved road, the mountain forest pulling him up into its clutches. Nobody knew he was there. Not a soul. In an hour he would be driving back out of the Sierras with his Eurydice.
The dirt road ended at a small clearing, the large, timber vacation home rising out from the trees. He parked next to the two other SUVs out front and waited. His phone rang. “Set the bags in front of the porch steps and then put your hands behind your head. Nice and slow.”He did so. The mountain air was cold. A bear of a man with a hounds of Hades tattoo came out from the screen door. Behind him Eurydice, flanked by two other men. All were armed. When Eurydice saw Orpheus she almost smiled. He almost ran to her.
Devil Dog took his time checking the ransom. Satisfied, he nodded for Eurydice to walk over to Orpheus. “Keep driving. Don’t look back.” In the stillness of the forest, the click was unmistakable. A safety latch being released. Orpheus turned.A volley of gunshots. Each of the men slumped, felled by a clean head shot. Orpheus and Eurydice didn’t hear the rounds that killed them, but they fell with hands still clasped together.
Aristaeus stepped out of the trees.Checked for pulses. Cold, calculating, expressionless. He picked up the three sports bags brimming with cash and tossed them onto the back seat of a black Lincoln. He got in, adjusted the mirrors, and drove away.
