Succubi

Ann followed the nurse back upstairs. In the room she proficiently injected the bottle’s contents into one of the IV connections. When she looked down at Joshua Slavik, her expression remained flat.

Ann deliberately averted her eyes. It was hard for her, too, to see her father this way. Hopeless, she thought now.

“He comes to every now and then,” Milly enthusiastically remarked. “You should try to be around as much as you can.”

Ann knew what the woman was saying. The next time he comes to may be his last.

Milly could see Ann’s restrained despair. “Let’s let him rest now,” she said, and went out. “Even though he’s comatose, he shouldn’t be disturbed at night. The brain continues the normal sleep cycles. Unnecessary noise and movement can disturb him.”

“Is that what this is considered? A coma?”

“I realize it’s a scary word, but, yes, unfortunately. I’m sure Dr. Heyd has explained…” The rest fell off. Ann didn’t need to be retold that her father was dying.

They went back downstairs. Milly poured two iced teas and took Ann out back. Potted plants hung off the enclosure over the slate patio. Peepers thrilled heavily from the woods beyond. “This is the most beautiful house in town,” Milly remarked, “and such a lovely yard. Your mother does a terrific job keeping it up.”

“Where is she, by the way?”

“Board meeting. They have several per week. The town wouldn’t run without your mother. It’d be like any other town.”

Would that be so bad? Ann wondered. “Where do you live, Milly?”

“I have a house two blocks up from the town square. It’s small but very nice.”

Ann couldn’t imagine that Milly made much money, not as an RN in Lockwood. How could she afford her own house? “What are mortgages like around here?” she strategically asked.

Milly looked at her as if shocked. “There are no mortgages. Lockwood is a collective incorporate. Didn’t you know that? Anyone who lives in the town contributes to the town. The town gave me the house, and my car too. For as long as I live here.”

Ann winced. Whatever happened to private enterprise?

“Plus, the town pays me. Fifteen thousand a year.” Milly Godwin beamed.

Ann’s firm paid more than that in overtime for their three paralegals. “Couldn’t you do a lot better somewhere else, like at a hospital. RNs start at several times that where I live.”

“Yeah, and they also pay rent, car payments, auto insurance, health insurance, and thirty percent in taxes. Lockwood pays all that for me. It’s part of the community employment plan. Besides, I wouldn’t dream of leaving Lockwood.”

“Why?”

“No crime, no drugs, no corruption and sleazy politics. No gangs and no half assed education. I’d never want my daughter growing up in all that.”

“Oh, you have a daughter?”

“Her name’s Rena, she’s fifteen.”

“I have a seventeen year old myself,” Ann said.

“I know. Melanie. She’s lovely. Oh, and I didn’t mean to imply that you’re wrong to raise her in the city. I only meant—”

“I know,” Ann said.

“We’re happy here, and that’s the important thing.”

“Sure.”

They sat down on a stone bench past the slate. “What’s your husband do?” Ann asked, sipping her iced tea.

Milly Godwin laughed abruptly. “He ran out years ago.”

“I hear that,” Ann said. “Same thing happened to me.”

“I’m not even sorry he left. Rena and I are much better off without him. The bastard left when I was eight months pregnant. This was when your mother started the community assistance program. The town took care of me, then sent me to nursing school. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I was on my own.”

Again, her mother’s shadow reared. This town ran itself among itself. It bred what it needed to exist. It perpetuated from within.

“Lockwood’s New Mothers Program is really good too. If a woman gets pregnant, she doesn’t work for two years but she retains her pay. After that there’s free day care. There’s also a retirement program, an accident program, and an education program. Lockwood takes care of it all. The town has a multimillion dollar investment fund. Jake and Ellie Wynn are trained brokers. Lockwood’s been in the black for decades.”

But how could that be? How could Lockwood, with a population of five hundred, generate such a level of prosperity? The vast farmland to the south was valuable, but it must have taken some risky investments with produce profits to make all this work. Maybe Ann’s mother was smarter than she thought. Nobody was really rich, yet nobody seemed to want for anything.

“I saw your man earlier,” Milly said. “He seems very nice.”

Your man, the words echoed. What an antiquated way to put it, yet it sounded nice. My man, she thought. “He’s a teacher, and a published author.”

“Not bad looking either.” Milly grinned. “But don’t worry, I won’t go gunning for him.”

You fucking better not, Ann thought. “You date anyone regular?”

“Oh, no. Pretty slim pickings in Lockwood as far as single men are concerned. All the good ones get taken right away, and what’s left just hang around, drink beer at the Crossroads. Your mother figured she’d let them have a watering hole at least. Every animal needs a trough.”

Ann nearly spat out her iced tea. “And I thought I was a cynical feminist.”

“It’s not feminism,” Milly said, and sat back. “I see it more as realism. What’s the one thing that all the world’s problems have in common? Men. Not good for much of anything except filling potholes and fixing cars when they break.”

Ann couldn’t help but laugh.

“Why get involved with something that’s going to turn rotten anyway? After they have you, they take you for granted. Pretty soon you find out that you’re married to a couch that drinks beer, watches football, and farts.”

Now Ann was really laughing.

“I can live quite nicely without that,” Milly went on. “And I don’t need a man in my life to feel complete… Oh, but I didn’t mean to imply that your man—”

“I know, Milly, you’re just generalizing, right?”

“Right. And when I need to get laid, I get laid.”

The promptitude of this comment almost stunned her.

“I mean, why mince words, you know?” Milly stood up and traipsed into the dark yard. “It’s like fruit on a tree; it’s out there when you want it. Doesn’t mean you have to marry the tree every time you want an apple.”

Ann laughed again. “That’s some metaphor.”

But Millicent Godwin drifted into a sudden, sentient silence, facing the woods. Suddenly, she seemed reflective.

What was it?

Crickets and peepers echoed back their chorus.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” Milly whispered.

“Yes, it is,” Ann replied. She looked up into the dark. The moon seemed sidled over the horizon, tiny in its ascent, and pinkish.

Milly turned slowly, surreally. In the moonlight her face looked wanton, her eyes large and clear. “Beautiful things are born on nights like these,” she whispered.

Ann stared at her.

“Yes, the most lovely things.”

—