The woman, who is a medium, says that she has a message for him. She says she hopes he will understand the meaning.
“Traveling very fast. No time to say good-bye. There are no dogs here.”
And now it’s the demon lover’s turn. He says: “A long time ago when Meggie and I were together, we bought a bungalow in Venice Beach. We weren’t there very much. We were everywhere else. On junkets. At festivals. We had no furniture. Just a mattress. No dishes. When we were home we ate out of takeout containers.
“But we were happy.” He lets that linger. Meggie watches. Listens. Ray stands beside her. No space between them.
It’s not much fun, telling a ghost story while you’re naked. Telling the parts of the ghost story that you’re supposed to tell. Not telling other parts. While the woman you love stands there with the person you used to be.
“It was a good year. Maybe the best year of my life. Maybe the hardest year, too. We were young and we were stupid and people wanted things from us and we did things we shouldn’t have done. Fill in the blanks however you want. We threw parties. We spent money like water. And we loved each other. Right, Meggie?”
Meggie nods.
He says, “But I should get to the ghost. I don’t really believe that it was a ghost, but I don’t not believe it was a ghost, either. I’ve never spent much time thinking about it, really. But the more time we spent in that bungalow, the worse things got.”
Irene says, “Can you describe it for us? What happened?”
The demon lover says, “It was a feeling that someone was watching us. That they were somewhere very far away, but they were getting closer. That very soon they would be there with us. It was worse at night. We had bad dreams. Some nights we both woke up screaming.”
Irene says, “What were the dreams about?”
He says, “Not much. Just that it was finally there in the room with us. Eventually it was always there. Eventually whatever it was was in the bed with us. We’d wake up on opposite sides of the mattress because it was there in between us.”
Irene says, “What did you do?”
He says, “When one of us was alone in the bed it wasn’t there. It was there when it was the two of us. Then it would be the three of us. So we got a room at the Chateau Marmont. Only it turned out it was there, too. The very first night it was there, too.”
Irene says, “Did you try to talk to it?”
He says, “Meggie did. I didn’t. Meggie thought it was real. I thought we needed therapy. I thought whatever it was, we were doing it. So we tried therapy. That was a bust. So eventually—” He shrugs.
“Eventually what?” Irene says.
“I moved out,” Meggie says.
“She moved out,” he says.
The demon lover wonders if Ray knows the other part of the story, if Meggie has told him that. Of course she hasn’t. Meggie isn’t dumb. It’s the two of them and the demon lover thinks, as he’s thought many times before, that this is what will always hold them together. Not the experience of filming a movie together, of falling in love at the exact same moment that all those other people fell in love with them, that sympathetic magic made up of story and effort, repetition and editing and craft and other people’s desire.
The thing that happened is the thing they can never tell anyone else. It belongs to them. No one else.
“And after that there wasn’t any ghost,” he concludes. “Meggie took a break from Hollywood, went to India. I went to AA meetings.”
It’s gotten colder. The fire has gotten lower. You could, perhaps, imagine that there is a supernatural explanation for these things, but that would be wishful thinking. The missing girl, Juliet, has not returned. The ghost-hunting equipment does not record any presence.
Meggie finds the demon lover with Pilar. She says, “Can we talk?”
“What about?” he says.
Pilar says, “I’ll go get another beer. Want one, Meggie?”
Meggie shakes her head and Pilar wanders off, her hand brushing against the demon lover’s hip as she goes. Flesh against flesh. He turns just a little so he’s facing away from the firelight.
“It’s about the premiere for next season,” Meggie says. “I want to shoot it in Venice Beach, in our old bungalow.”
The demon lover feels something rush over him. Pour into his ears, flood down his throat. He can’t think of what to say. He has been thinking about Ray while he flirts with Pilar. He’s been wondering what would happen if he asked Meggie about Ray. Really, they’ve never talked about this. This thing that she does.
“I’d like you to be in the episode, too, of course,” Meggie says.
He says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think it’s a terrible idea, actually.”
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Meggie says. “I think it would be good for both of us.”
“Something something closure,” he says. “Yeah, yeah. Something something exposure something possible jail term. Are you insane?”
“Look,” Meggie says. “I’ve already talked to the woman who lives there now. She’s never experienced anything. Will, I need to do this.”
“Of course she hasn’t experienced anything,” the demon lover says. “It wasn’t the house that was haunted.”
His blood is spiky with adrenaline. He looks around to see if anyone is watching. Of course they are. But everyone is far away enough that the conversation is almost private. He’s surprised Meggie didn’t spring this on him on camera. Think of the drama. The conflict. The ratings.
“You believe in this stuff,” he says finally. Trying to find what will persuade her. “So why won’t you leave it alone? You know what happened. We know what happened. You know what the story is. Why the fuck do you need to know more?” He’s whispering now.
“Because every time we’re together she’s here with us,” Meggie says. “Didn’t you know that? She’s here now. Don’t you feel her?”
Hair stands up on his legs, his arms, the back of his neck. His mouth is dry, his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. “No,” he says. “I don’t.”
Meggie says, “You know I would be careful, Will. I would never do anything to hurt you. And it doesn’t work like that, anyway.” She leans in close, says very quietly, “It isn’t about us. This is for me. I just want to talk to her. I just want her to go away.”
(1992) They acquire the trappings of a life, he and Meggie. They buy dishes and mid-century modern furniture and lamps. They acquire friends who are in the business, and throw parties. On occasion things happen at their parties. For example, there is the girl. She arrives with someone. They never find out who. She is about as pretty as you would expect a girl at one of their parties to be, which is to say that she is really very pretty.
After all this time, the demon lover doesn’t really remember what she looked like. There were a lot of girls and a lot of parties and that was another country.
She had long black hair. Big eyes.
He and Meggie are both wasted. And the girl is into both of them and eventually it’s the three of them, everyone else is gone, there’s a party going on somewhere else, they stay, she stays,