Short fiction: "What Would Hera Do?" by Fennel Steuert
Chilltown Blues presents:
“What Would Hera Do?”
Heather had been between jobs too long. Her uncle wouldn’t let her stay home unless she looked for another one.
For her own good, he said.
“You’re 30-something now. You’ve got to start with something and stick with it, even if it makes you miserable. ‘Cause one day …. well, you know.”
She was glad her uncle didn’t say “one day you won’t be miserable,” and it wasn’t like she wasn’t craving for something to just ... work and work well, for her, and with her, so she went back to the mall – to its fortune teller kiosk, where, bank card in hand, she waved her card by a crystal ball.
Fortuna was the bust of a stereotype -- an old gypsy woman with hands that crept over that crystal ball. Heather watched as Fortuna’s gray eyes whirled, her system processing payment of the requisite five dollars.
“What is it you seek, my dear?”
Heather ran her other hand over the plaque where she’d crossed out text about how it works best if you use short, concise questions.
“Is there any job in this mall where I don’t have to let myself be used like …”
“Articulate more quickly, my dear,” said Fortuna.
“Right…like one of those chairs people wedge in the heavy emergency exit … you know, when they go to smoke outside but end up sitting on the chair in the doorway.”
Fortuna shrugged.
“I should take your job,” Heather said. “You are clearly burned out, Fortuna.”
Heather spied a security guard looking down at her from the mall’s second level. They were on to her, she knew, from the tiny acts of Fortuna vandalism. Heather had crossed out the plaque’s words about conciseness several times, most of them back when she worked in the greeting card store and there was a longer line for the new AI attraction.
“Bend because you are not dense enough for the wind to go around you,” Fortuna said suddenly.
Heather resisted a double-take. She found the nearest exit then walked casually to the other side of the mall. She looked up at one of the security drones as it whizzed by, stopped over the four-floor parking garage, and hovered there. A few people were coming in and out of the garage, looking each other over (“Which one of you fuckers is it keeping tabs on?” Heather figured they were saying).
She found another entrance and headed for the mall’s food court.
Heather walked around aimlessly, at first.
Some guy sitting with his girlfriend gave her the once-over, even made eye contact. It had been a while since anyone looked at Heather that way, so it felt sort of good along with the sort of bad.
Maybe you didn’t need five-thousand followers on social media just to be seen, Heather thought heavily. Like what’s-her-face had …
As Heather began looking for “help wanted” signs, in the corner of her eye, someone waved energetically at her.
It was a guy who ran the support group she was in – Alfredo. He was at a table with a woman Heather thought looked vaguely familiar.
Heather went over to them as Alfredo gestured at her.
“Sam,” he said to his companion, “this is Heather. I know her from work.”
“Yes,” Heather said. “I’m also a counselor.”
Alfredo gave Samantha a weird look, and Samantha’s face lifted toward Heather with a “sure you are” nod.
Heather grimaced. There’s got to be some kind of oath where counselors don’t call out the people they’re supposed to be counseling, she thought.
“All right, well … I’m looking for a job. Counseling doesn’t pay super well, as you know. Mr. Fredo.”
Heather turned to leave; even her back felt flushed.
“Hey,” said Samantha. “My family has an eatery here. We can use someone right now.”
The mall’s fast food options rarely had “help wanted” signs, and Heather didn’t feel like asking each one of them if they did, so this, she thought, was as promising as anything.
“If it’ll help you out,” said Heather, “sure, I’ll take a look.”
Heather stood outside Pantheon, thinking it was ridiculous that Samantha had called it an eatery.
Each of the food staff wore a T-shirt with the name of a Greek god or entity on it. The walls were beige, but the tables were white, like they were part of something made from the pillars of a coliseum.
Since when are ‘eateries’ so tacky? Heather thought.
But then Heather remembered when she worked at the greeting card store and people complained about “mall greeting cards,” like there was some classier emporium of them somewhere, and she hated herself for being so snobby.
So Heather took the job to make up for her snobbery … like those labors Hercules had to do after his stepmother tricked him into slaughtering the people he cared about most.
Fortuna will probably love me for this. Being employed again means more money and more fortunes about stuff people with money can do, like buy shit and then really spruce up a garden with it.
In her first week, Heather trained under “Lares” as he instructed her how to wash the produce for the Pantheon’s signature Mediterranean salad -- with the customer’s choice of protein source. All the while, Heather lobbied for a “Herculina” T-shirt.
Lares must have told Samantha, because she showed up one busy lunch period and told Heather that the correct female form of “Hercules” was basically “Herca” or “Hera,” to be super accurate, and they already had a Hercules.
“Huh,” said Heather. She rarely saw the guy with that T-shirt in person, but he popped up on the store’s Nowform social media feed all the time.
Lares had left Heather alone, once again, and she was doing her best to take orders in between running to the kitchen, where Jupiter and Pluto had also jumped over from a different era’s mythology to fill orders for the lunch hour crowd.
“I’ll take the Hera T-shirt then,” Heather told Samantha. “Also, do you have a T-shirt?”
What she meant by that was, I don’t suppose you could be a god/dess and help me out?
“I used to be Diana,” said Samantha. She looked at the woman whose order Heather had begun taking, smiled, and left.
Heather got her Hera T-shirt on the Saturday that was the last day of her workweek. Then she quit without telling anyone. She also blocked Pantheon’s number on her phone. When Alfredo asked her how things were going at the group meeting that week, she told him things were going great. She’d been in and out of groups since she was committed the one time.
She still went out, looked up better made-up gods on her phone, as she sat on benches along various bus stops.
She went to the mall again the next week and sat on a bench alone in her “Hera” T-shirt, and thought about where else she could apply for work.
The next day, she lit up a little when she got a call on her phone. She hadn’t since she and Paul broke up, but it was just Samantha. She pressed red and went to the mall again, this time without being Hera.
Heather dutifully waited in a line of three people at Fortuna’s, then when it was her turn, she waved her bank card and whispered very close to the little audio holes in Fortuna’s forehead:
“I need to get my act together, Fortuna. That’s why Paul dumped me. Well, that and he found someone like me but with, like, more nice things. Less baggage. How do I get or become someone who has nice things? I actually do want to help my uncle out.”
“Try Rising Anchor, the work networking service that can also help you find a partner!”
Heather nodded. “Yeah … OK, I just paid for an ad. But I’m lonely too, so I will do that, Fortuna.”
On Heather’s way home, the mall’s security drone followed her.
It followed her past a house party so loud she heard it from six-hundred feet away – where smoke rose into the sky from a man burning tires as part of his party’s barbecues, as he did a few days every week that wasn’t winter.
It followed her past the fence with the plants so overgrown that she could never tell if the animal that lunged at the wood stakes was actually a wolf, or if it just sounded that way.
She was almost flattered by the drone’s attention. Her phone buzzed with a text and, possibly boosted by the slight unease, her hopes soared that Paul suddenly gave a shit about her again.
But the text was from the Pantheon: “Please return the property you’ve stolen from the Pantheon. The security office will be notified when you’re in proximity of the mall – until you return the property you’ve stolen.”
Whatever, she thought.
The drone followed her all the way home and stayed there past nightfall.
Her uncle went to the window. “I heard about this. They’re supposed to be keeping tabs on quality of life issues.”
She smiled. “Yeah, it’s great they’re finally doing something. Only took most of history.”
“Uh huh.”
When her uncle glanced back out the window again, he sighed. “Spoke too soon. It’s gone now.”
“Oh,” Heather said, trying not to smile. “That’s too bad.”
She went to retire for the night, putting on her Hera T-shirt thinking that Samantha had some damn nerve to mess with the real ruler of their stupid Pantheon.
She would even tell Alfredo that to his face the next day at her group session, if he mentioned anything about Heather not having earned that shirt.
When Heather went to group the next day, the drone came back and followed her so quietly she didn’t even notice until she saw its shadow overlap with hers.
She walked slowly into the building, hoping some birds would pick a fight with it for getting in their way. But no …
Some Hera I am.
Alfredo was even more smiley and weird than usual, but it all seemed dialed up for everybody else. Not Heather.
She stuck around until they were the only ones in the room. Nobody else in the support group really lingered anymore after Alfredo said they were done, like he had anything else to offer that wasn’t mandated – not until someone whose mental health had newly been compromised by life, to the point of an episode, joined the group.
Heather went to the window and tapped the sill. She ducked behind a wall as the drone almost came face to face with her.
Alfredo was looking at her wide-eyed.
Heather smiled awkwardly. “Can we talk for a moment?”
“Sure,” he said. “I have to say it; I’m incredibly disappointed that you let Sam down. She gave you a real chance at something, Heather. There are consequences to actions, as you can see. Why don’t you just return that shirt?
“Why would I want to stop being Hera? I earned being a hate-filled bitch goddess. I had to put up with a week of being behind a counter here …. not in some quaint suburb or wherever Samantha’s family lives. Have you seen their Nowform account?”
“You should still be going to the therapist,” Alfredo said, somewhat sympathetically.
The program only has the one to go around, Heather thought. You should know that.
“The others … they need her more than me,” Heather said. “Please get your girlfriend to let me be drone-free. I need to look for another job.” She turned to the window. “I can’t have this thing following me. How is this shit even legal this far beyond the mall?”
Alfredo began putting his things in his bag. “Sam’s family is a pillar of that mall.”
Heather sighed. “Wait, I remember the ‘shoplifting is out of control’ stuff on the news. And some other stuff about it I had tuned out.”
“You didn’t even give Sam two-weeks’ notice,” said Alfredo. “Just return the T-shirt, Heather.”
“No. They could dock it out of my final paycheck. In fact, I assumed they would! ‘Diana’ is just being a ...”
“Reasonable, mature adult? You can – and should – rise to that by now.”
What would my T-shirt do? Heather thought. Because the real Hera, even if she lost all of her powers, wouldn’t be able to deal with any of this. She certainly wouldn’t give the T-shirt back, though.
Heather nodded to herself, walking slowly away from the counseling center in its building among a busy commercial stretch.
As people who looked up glanced around to figure out who the drone was following, she left her uncle a message.
“I may not be coming home tonight, but I’m with a friend. I’m still looking for a job.”
Heather looked up towns that were 35 miles away – past the quieter, local one where she’d been called a racial epithet once.
She looked up. “What’s your range, oh Diana, goddess of, um, hunting?”
Heather walked to the edge of town, remembering how much Paul, her ex, hated passing through there. He thought of it as a border between high standards and low ones. Heather did too, but in a different way …
She kicked a crushed soda can.
The drone continued to hover over her as she walked and walked.
Heather stopped, looked up and put her hands around her mouth. “Know why Paul hated this spot? Because it marks the border between his trashless quiet town and our trash-filled city.”
Heather heard a bus rear up on the road. She searched in vain for a bus stop nearby to catch it, but there wasn’t any. She covered her mouth as the bus passed and dust flew everywhere.
She was sure someone got a kick out of that inside the bus, which made her kinda glad not to be on it.
Heather figured she was down, roughly, to about 20 bucks to her name and about two hundred bucks she could put on her credit. It hadn’t been long enough for her Pantheon paycheck to deposit into her account.
Paul’s address still came up on her rideshare app. She ordered a ride to his house.
It had been three months since she saw it last; it was almost a second home, then.
Heather never thought of all the places she might have to go where she wasn’t wanted, she’d be going back to this one. But she couldn’t think of a single other address in the next town over.
In her ride’s rear-view mirror, Heather saw the drone circle back the way it came in the purple-tinged sky.
But will it be back for me this far out tomorrow? Heather wondered.
Heather closed the rideshare car’s door as she got out.
It was the only sound, and as the car quietly drove away from Paul’s house, Heather thought Paul might look out and see what this local version of a commotion was about.
Her ex’s bedroom on the top floor of the family’s two-story home was lit warmly against the night sky.
He was probably still dating that yoga instructor, Heather figured.
Heather walked fifteen minutes to the main street. She wasn’t sure entirely, but she’d given the Pantheon her number and she knew the phone itself had like 50 trackers on it. No more just hoping it would go away. She hovered around the trash can in front of a brightly lit sandwich shop, trying to look up how these new security drones worked, but between her phone plan and like one lightning bolt’s worth of wifi reception (goddamn you, Zeus), she couldn’t look up anything.
The thought of giving back the shirt was more tempting, until she realized it was rare anyone called her anymore. So if this was how they were tracking her … Heather let the phone fade to its passcode screen, then she dropped it in the can. Shaking her head, she kept walking until she came upon another brightly lit storefront: Cellular Heaven.
There was a woman behind the counter.
“Hi,” said Heather. “What’s your cheapest, most reliable phone?” she asked. “And also ... are you guys hiring?”
“You’re in luck on the phone,” the woman said. “And yes, we’ve got a vacancy.”
“Turnover high here?” Heather glanced out at the window: still no drone. “It’s high back where I used to work, I mean.”
The woman shrugged. “It’s a quiet gig where you’ve got to hustle for commissions. Getting someone reliable always means a turnover eventually, when they get luckier.”
“Huh,” said Heather. “Well, I’d like to fill out an application. “I still want a new phone, even if I don’t get a job.”
“You’re probably better off applying online,” the woman said.
“I’m a good fortune teller,” Heather said. “The only plan I can afford will definitely make a reliable connection very hard.”
“Ah …” The woman gave Heather a form. “We prefer applications with at least one reference,” she said.
Heather nodded. Her former manager from the greeting card store would do.
When Heather finished the form, she handed it back and tapped the counter a few times. “The bus runs through here, right?”
“It does,” the manager said.
Heather nodded to herself. “So about that phone …”
Cradling her new phone because she didn’t have a pillow, Heather spent the night on Paul’s lawn. It was surreal to her how no one else ever seemed around where he lived — but one of those reliable kinds of surreal, at least.
The drone was not a night owl, but maybe it’d waiting for her at home, Heather figured. She didn’t want to think about that. She just wanted someone to call her and talk to her, or better yet, do that whole in-person thing, but one day at a time, she supposed.
Heather dozed off and woke up with Paul and the woman with five-thousand followers staring at her.
Paul sighed. “Heather, what are you doing here?”
“Hi,” said Heather. “It’s a long story. I became this goddess and you get, well, followers, and one followed me till I got here. Something about this place, though ...”
Paul and his new girlfriend were looking at her like she was pathetic, and Heather almost laughed despite how there was part of her that just wished he’d hug her. But he didn’t see all of her anymore ... he definitely thought she was pretty once, but she’d also been rough around the edges. And she still was, but Heather knew that wasn’t all she was, so Paul, who was really kind of a weenie, anyway, could go kick rocks.
She looked at Paul’s girlfriend, taking note of the resemblance again and remembering how Paul had a sunroof over the driver and passenger seat.
What was one more possible follower for someone with so many? thought Heather.
She pointed toward the route that would get trashier the closer she got to home. She took a deep breath.
“Since we’re all here, can I get a ride? I was only here for work.”
Fennel Steuert is the author of “Magic Flask.”