Incubi

“What do you think Amy Vandersteen’s like?” Ginny posed.

“I saw her on Signature once. She’s an asshole.”

“Most good directors are.”

“And what about these two guys?” Veronica asked, putting panties into her Samsonite. “The poet and sculptor?” (Two guys picked up the painting, Stewie had told her earlier. “Young but kind of gruff. They gave me a receipt, loaded up Vertiginous Red, and drove away.” Then Stewie, who made no secret of his bisexuality, flashed his famous grin. “I wouldn’t mind going the rounds with them, though. They were what you female types call hunks. Serious baskets, if you know what I mean.” “Not only are you a pimp, Stewie,” she’d informed him, “you’re a horny dog.” “Woof, woof,” he’d replied.)

“We’ll find out when we get there, won’t we?” Ginny complained, “but we’ll never get there if you don’t hurry up and finish packing!”

It was a combination of unconventional tangents that gave Ginny Thiel her attractiveness. She was a little overweight, but in a cute way, not fat, just fleshily robust; she’d always been told that she wore it in the right places. She was about 5’5”. A fresh gleam in her face betrayed her age — thirty — such that she often still got carded in bars. Large brown eyes peeked out from under bangs as severe as Stewie’s; her hair was black and cut straight at the neckline. She’d been married and divorced twice; she’d dumped her first husband, and her second husband had dumped her, which was about the same time she started to become successful. She often claimed that her failed marriages were the best things to ever happen to her professionally. “If my marriages hadn’t turned to shit, what would I write about?” she’d said once. She and Veronica had been friends since junior high.

Stewie came back in, having loaded Veronica’s first suitcase into Ginny’s 450. “I can’t believe you girls are doing this. Talk about spur-of-the-moment.”

“It’s about identifying our self-actualization,” Ginny said, “but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Oh, is that what it’s about?” Stewie laughed, gold chains glittering about his neck. Tails of light shimmered on his knee-high boots. “I think the female sex drive might have a little bit to do with it too.”

“That’s another thing you don’t know about, and Jesus Christ, Stewie, would you please get rid of those ridiculous boots?”

“You two just don’t want to admit that you’ve got the hots for this Khoronos guy.”

“I have no problem admitting that,” Ginny said.

“Neither do I,” Veronica added, then blushed.

Stewie grinned at her. “And what’s old Jackie boy say about that?”

“I told you, we broke up—”

“You mean you dumped him,” Stewie cut in.

Veronica wanted to kick him.

“You ought to least call him,” Stewie suggested. “Let him know you’re on your way.”

“Stewie, don’t be a butthole,” Ginny said. “Why should she call him? They broke up.”

“It just might be nice to give him a call,” Stewie addressed Veronica, ignoring Ginny. “He still worries about you.”

It was weird the way men were. Jack hated Stewie, and Stewie hated Jack, but as far as their former relationship went, Stewie was all for it. He constantly inferred that Jack was good for her and she for him. It didn’t make much sense, but Veronica knew that’s how Stewie felt.

She looked sadly to the phone. I should call him.

“Don’t,” Ginny said. “He’s history. He’s out of your life now. It’s stupid to call him.”

“Well, we’re still friends,” Veronica hemmed.

“Former lovers can never be friends. Get real.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Stewie warned. “She’s a bitter, socio-anarchistic feminist nihilist.”

“I wish I had a dick so I could tell you to suck it.”

“Both of you shut up!” Veronica nearly screamed. She decided not to call. Ginny was probably right. What purpose would it serve now?

They packed the rest of their things into Ginny’s car.

“When are you coming back?” Stewie asked.

Veronica looked unassured to Ginny, “I don’t really know.”

“We’ll come back whenever,” Ginny grandly answered.

“That tells me a lot,” Stewie razzed. “I do have my client’s business interests to manage, you know.”

“You have your vanity to manage, through representing a famous artist,” Ginny balked. “That’s all you have.”

“I’ll call you every night,” Veronica promised. “Keep working on those Abrams people for the book thing, and push for the show at MFA. I want that one bad.”

“Have no fear, O beloved business interest.” Stewie jokingly kissed her fingertips. “Your future is in my hands.”

“Thank God the rest of her isn’t.” Ginny started the car. “And lose the boots, Stewie. The Musketeers are dead.”

“I’ll give them to you for Christmas, along with a new vibrator, which you’re obviously in need of.”

“Would you two please stop it?” Veronica pleaded.

“Have fun girls,” Stewie offered.

He watched the car pull out of the lot and disappear. He stared after them for quite some time. It was just a morose feeling, like a sudden shadow on a sunny day. The feeling, for some reason, that he would never see them again.

* * *

Twice they had to stop for deer. My God, my God, was all Veronica could think. She’d never seen deer for real in her life.

Ginny, typically, had forgotten her directions. They used the ones Veronica had gotten from the secretary on the phone. The place was an hour or so out of the city, in the northern part of the county. Long, winding lanes took them up the ridge through forests and orchards and quiet little homes set back off the road. Seeing all this at once, Veronica came to a chilling conclusion — her artist’s sanctuary had made her forget that beauty like this existed. What is beauty? the existential instructors had always asked. Beauty is what your work must always communicate. Beauty is not what you can see, it’s what you feel. In her paintings, she’d always tried to find beauty through emotions — through human things. But this was different beauty: the trees, the landscape, the blue sky, and all that those things summated visually as a result. Even the silence was beautiful, the air, the spaces between the poplars and pines. Veronica felt lost for a moment, adrift in awe.

“I haven’t been laid in two weeks,” Ginny announced.

The comment’s frankness blew Veronica’s muse to bits. Was Ginny making another innuendo? To Khoronos?

“Thank God I brought rubbers,” Ginny added.

Her intentions were plain. Veronica’s own sex life had been rather shunted before Jack. She’d always felt it inappropriate for a woman to be anticipatory, but now she wondered why. It had been a terrifying decade. Before AIDS it was herpes, and before herpes a dozen different strains of VD. Jack had been the only lover in her life she’d not used condoms with, because the department required drug and STD tests every six months. It wasn’t easy for a woman to feel safe nowadays, but it was a pretty safe bet when a guy pulled out five years worth of negative blood analysis reports from the county health services department. Yes, bringing condoms made Ginny’s intentions plain, but Veronica could not help but blush. Secreted into her own suitcase was a twelve-box of Trojan ribbed. This was the first time she’d even admitted it to herself. Ginny’s not the only one with anticipations.

Ginny was rambling on behind the wheel, “I mean, I can’t even sit down without squirming. You know what I’m talking about? I’m…mushy.”

“And crude.”

“Crude? What about you? Isn’t that why you broke up with Jack? Because you weren’t sexually fulfilled?”

“No, it is n—” But the rest never left her mouth. “It was a bunch of things,” she said instead. She didn’t dare tell Ginny about her own condoms. “Maybe we’re just a pair of sluts and don’t know it.”