Unclean Spirits

“Save your breath, preacher,” Midian said. “They made up their minds. Besides, Coin’s just looking. He didn’t find us.”

“Leaving the warded house is a mistake,” Ex said.

“It’s their mistake to make,” Midian said. “And your subtext’s starting to show.”

Ex turned a venomous gaze on Midian, but the cursed man either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Chogyi Jake appeared from the kitchen and nodded silently with his usual beatific smile.

“You kids have a good time, now,” Midian said. “Play safe, and don’t come back early. I’m going to teach these boys a little bit about how you play poker. If you get back before I’ve cleaned them out, I’ll be disappointed.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Aubrey said, and then, directly to Ex, “We’ll be careful.” Ex grunted and turned away. Aubrey offered me his arm. It was the cheesiest thing a guy had ever done with me. I liked it.

The summer sun was just pushing its way down to the western horizon, the light turning bloody in the pollution and heat. Far to the east, the sky was dipped in indigo, a few stars struggling to find themselves in the gloom. Aubrey held my hand as I got into his car, and then we were off.

“I know this Cuban place,” he said.

“Anything,” I said. “You’re driving.”

“Jayne?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not postponing,” he said.

“Welcome,” I replied, smiling to myself.

Growing up at home, boyfriends had been clandestine by nature. There wasn’t any going out without a chaperone. There were church group parties, there were occasional get-togethers with girls from school, and very, very rarely I would go out of town for a track meet or a speech competition. My first kiss had been at the state qualifiers my sophomore year with a guy I’d met that night and never saw again. The next year, I’d arranged a plan with three of my friends that let me slip out to a movie with a guy from French class when my parents thought I was at one of their houses. I did it four times before we got caught, and I was grounded for a month. My mother had wept for days, and my father made me go talk to the pastor at our church about the sin of lust, a conversation that neither the pastor nor I enjoyed.

When I opted for a secular college, my father lost all perspective. In fairness, I’d known he would and that expectation had been part of what made the decision easy for me. He made it clear that I would do as he said, or I wouldn’t be welcome in his house. I called the bluff. I can still remember the look in his eyes when I left. It was like he was watching someone he loved walk off a cliff.

When I got to ASU, I didn’t have any idea how to deal with men. I didn’t have any experience or any friends. All I could do was fake it and hope. My first lover had been a graduate student who was the teacher’s assistant in my biology class. I found out later he’d been going through the roll in alphabetical order, and made it through the early Ns before the end of the semester.

His name was Gianni, and he’d had a gentle touch and a quick smile. He’d been an attentive lover. When he left, I was glad to have known him and profoundly less than devastated that he was gone. My second lover was named Cary. His jacket was back at the house. We hadn’t ended so gracefully.

The restaurant looked like a frame house, pale blue siding with yellow pastel trim. Aubrey parked on the street and we walked across the low, well-cut lawn like we were going to a friend’s house. His hand brushed mine as we walked through the door, and I took it. We sat at a small table, and I let him order wine for us both. I smiled at him across the table and he smiled back.

Gianni, Cary, Aubrey. It seemed like I had a thing for guys whose names ended in a vowel sound. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the thought before I said it or anything equally asinine out loud.

I ordered the black tiger shrimp. Aubrey got something called ropa vieja. I sipped the wine, feeling the warmth of the alcohol in my throat. Aubrey smiled. I smiled back. We didn’t say anything.

“This feels a little awkward, doesn’t it?” I said.

Aubrey shook his head, denying it, and then said, “Well. A little, maybe. First dates.”

“I guess,” I said. “Not just that, though. I feel like I’m looking over my shoulder all the time. Like they are going to be there.”

“Tell you what,” Aubrey said, “you keep watch behind me, I’ll keep watch behind you.”

The anxiety in my belly softened a little.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Is it always like this? When you and Eric were working on things before, was it always this…”

I raised my hands, trying to make a gesture that would express what I couldn’t find words for.

“No,” Aubrey said. “This is the most intense thing I’ve ever done. It’s intimidating. I keep wanting to call Eric and ask him what to do, and then I remember that he’s…”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not very good first-date chatter, is it?”

“It’s weird,” I said.

“In all kinds of ways,” Aubrey said. “Apart from all the rest of it, I keep trying to wrap my head around the idea that you’re the girl Eric talked about. You aren’t what I expected.”

“How so?” I asked. “I mean, what kinds of things did he say about me?”

Aubrey thought about that for a second.

“He wasn’t wrong about any of it. It’s just the person he was talking about was a kid, and you aren’t. He said you were smart. Mouthy. That his brother was about the worst match for you as a father that he could imagine,” Aubrey said. “I didn’t get the feeling that they particularly got along, Eric and your dad.”

“Cats. Dogs,” I said. “Our family has had its Jerry Springer moments.”

“I heard a little bit about that. There was some static when you stopped believing in God.”

“It didn’t start out that way,” I said. “It’s where it ended up. Maybe it’s where it had to end up.”

“How’d it start, then?”

“I stopped believing in hell,” I said. “I kept thinking about it, and I just couldn’t make it square up. My dad and the pastor and everyone, they kept talking about a god that loves people and wants us to be well and happy, and then they’d talk about all the terrible things that would happen to me forever if I pissed him off. It just didn’t make sense, you know? Why would someone that loves you make it so that you could be tortured forever just because you didn’t do what he said? So I figured they were wrong. I figured that there wasn’t really a hell, because God loved us and he wouldn’t do that to us.”

“How old were you?”

“About twelve, I think,” I said. “I tried to explain it to my dad, but he didn’t think much of it. Eventually, I figured out that I shouldn’t talk about it. But then I started thinking about other things that didn’t make sense. I looked at the world, and it just seemed…I don’t know…bigger than what they were telling me. And somewhere in there, I woke up and thought, you know, if Jesus died for my sins, that’s not really something I asked him to do.”

Aubrey laughed. It was a warm sound, and I relaxed a little, just hearing it.

“It sounds like you didn’t lose faith in God as much as in your church,” Aubrey said.

“When you stop believing in someone who’s been telling you stories, you stop believing in the stories too,” I said. “I wanted to believe, just for tactical reasons. It would have made my life a lot easier. But there you go.”

The food came, and it was better than I’d expected. It turned out ropa vieja meant “old clothes” but was really shredded beef with some genuinely wonderful spices. We talked a lot about my family and Eric and behavior- changing brain cysts, which should have been gross but was actually really interesting. The background fear faded if it never quite went away. I had flan for desert. Aubrey just drank coffee.

“So,” he said when I put down my fork, “you think Midian’s cleaned them out yet?”

“Probably not yet,” I said.

He smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me neither.”

We went to a nightclub in an old church that played well-mixed techno. Despite my expectations, the Goth contingent was in the minority. Most of the people seemed like young-professional types and college students. I danced for a while, Aubrey near me, but not so close that we were really dancing together. Then the floor began