“I know you,” the kid says.
The demon lover says, “Of course you do. You are?”
“Ray,” says the kid. He’s maybe twenty-five. His look says:You know who I am. “Meggie’s told me all about you.”
As if he doesn’t already know, the demon lover says, “So what do you do?”
The kid smiles an unlovely smile. Scratches at his groin luxuriously, maybe not on purpose. “Whatever needs to be done. That’s what I do.”
So he deals. There’s that pot in Meggie’s dresser.
Down at the lake people are playing volleyball in a pit with no net. Barbecuing. Someone talks to a camera, gestures at someone else. Someone somewhere smoking a joint. At this distance, not too close, not too near, twilight coming down, the demon lover takes in all of the breasts, asses, comical cocks, knobby knees, everything hidden now made plain. He notes with an experienced eye which breasts are real, which aren’t. Only a few of the women sport pubic hair. He’s never understood what that’s about. Some of the men are bare, too. O tempora, o mores.
“You like jokes?” Ray says, stopping to light a cigarette.
The demon lover could leave; he lingers. “Depends on the joke.” Really, he doesn’t. Especially the kind of jokes the ones who ask if you like jokes tell.
Ray says, “You’ll like this one. So there are these four guys. A kleptomaniac, a pyromaniac, um, a zoophile, and a masochist. This cat walks by and the klepto says he’d like to steal it. The pyro says he wants to set it on fire. The zoophile wants to fuck it. So the masochist, he looks at everybody, and he says, ‘Meow?’”
It’s a moderately funny joke. It might be a come-on.
The demon lover flicks a look from under his lashes. Suppresses the not-quite-queasy feeling he’s somehow traveled back in time to flirt with himself. Or the other way round.
He’d like to think he was even prettier than this kid. People used to stop and stare when he walked into a room. That was long before anyone knew who he was. He’s always been someone you look at longer than you should. He says, smiling, “I’ll bite. Which one are you?”
“Pardon?” Ray says. Blows smoke.
“Which one are you? The klepto, the pyro, the cat-fucker, the masochist?”
“I’m the guy who tells the joke,” Ray says. He drops his cigarette, grinds it under a heel black with dirt. Lights another. “Don’t know if anyone’s told you, but don’t drink out of any of the taps. Or go swimming. The water’s toxic. Phosphorous, other stuff. They shut down the muck farms, they’re building up the marshlands again, but it’s still not what I’d call potable. You staying out here or in town?”
The demon lover says, “Don’t know if I’m staying at all.”
“Well,” Ray says. “They’ve rigged up some of the less wrecked bungalows on a generator. There are camp beds, sleeping bags. Depends on whether you like it rough.” That last with, yes, a leer.
The demon lover feels his own lip lifting. They are both wearing masks. They look out of them at each other. This was what you knew when you were an actor. The face, the whole body, the way you moved in it, just a guise. You put it on, you put it off again. What was underneath belonged to you, just you, as long as you kept it hidden.
He says, “You think you know something about me?”
“I’ve seen all your movies,” Ray says. The mask shifts, becomes the one the demon lover calls “I’m your biggest fan.” Oh, he knows what’s under that one.
He prepares himself for whatever this strange kid is going to say next and then suddenly Meggie is there. As if things weren’t awkward enough without Meggie, naked, suddenly standing there. Everybody naked, nobody happy. It’s Scandinavian art porn.
Meggie ignores the kid entirely. Just like always. These guys are interchangeable, really. There’s probably some website where she finds them. She may not want him, but she doesn’t want anyone else, either.
Meggie says, touching his arm, “You look a lot better.”
“I got a few hours,” he says.
“I know,” she says. “I checked in on you. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t run off.”
“Nowhere to go,” he says.
“Come on,” Meggie says. “Let’s get you something to eat.”
Ray doesn’t follow; lingers with his cigarette. Probably staring at their yoga-toned, well-enough-preserved celebrity butts.
Here’s the problem with this kid, the demon lover thinks. He sat in a theater when he was fifteen and watched me and Meggie done up in vampire makeup pretend-fucking on a New York subway car. The A train. Me biting Meggie’s breast, some suburban movie screen, her breast ten times bigger than his head. He probably masturbated a hundred times watching me bite you, Meggie. He watched us kiss. Felt something ache when we did. And that leaves out all the rest of this, whatever it is that you’re doing here with him and me. Imagine what this kid must feel now. The demon lover feels it, too. Love, he thinks. Because love isn’t just love. It’s all the other stuff, too.
He meets Irene, the fat, pretty medium who plays the straight man to Meggie. People named Sidra, Tom, Euan, who seem to be in charge of the weird ghost gear. A videographer, Pilar. He’s almost positive he’s met her before. Maybe during his AA period? Really, why is that period more of a blur than the years he’s spent drunk or high? She’s in her thirties, has a sly smile, terrific legs, and a very big camera.
They demonstrate some of the equipment for the demon lover, let him try out something called a Trifield Meter. No ghosts here. Even ghosts have better places to be.
He assumes everyone he meets has seen his sex tape. Almost wishes someone would mention it. No one does.
There’s a rank breeze off the lake. Muck and death.
People eat and discuss the missing P.A.—the gofer—some Juliet person. Meggie says, “She’s a nice kid. Makes Whore-igami in her spare time and sells it on eBay.”
“She makes what?” the demon lover says.
“Whore-igami. Origami porn tableaux. Custom order stuff.”
“Of course,” the demon lover says. “Big money in that.”
She may have some kind of habit. Meggie mentions this. She may be in the habit of disappearing now and then.
Or she may be wherever all those nudists went. Imagine the ratings then. He doesn’t say this to Meggie.
Meggie says, “I’m happy to see you, Will. Even under the circumstances.”
“Are you?” says the demon lover, smiling, because he’s always smiling. They’re far enough away from the mikes and the cameras that he feels okay about saying this. Pilar, the videographer, is recording Irene, the medium, who is toasting marshmallows. Ray is watching, too. Is always somewhere nearby.
Something bites the demon lover’s thigh and he slaps at it.
He could reach out and touch Meggie’s face right now. It would be a different story on the camera than the one he and Meggie are telling each other. Or she would turn away and it would all be the same story again. He thinks he should have remembered this, all the ways they didn’t work when they were together. Like the joke about the two skunks. When Out is in, In is out. Like the wrong ends of two magnets.
“Of course I’m happy,” Meggie