Get in Trouble: Stories (8 page)

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, and everyone else leaves. They drink and there’s music and they dance. Then the girl is kissing Meggie and he is kissing the girl and they’re in the bedroom. It’s a lot of fun. They do pretty much everything you can do with three people in a bed. And at some point the girl is between them and everyone is having a good time, they’re having fun, and then the girl says to them, Bite me.

Come on, bite me.

He bites her shoulder and she says, No, really bite me. Bite harder. I want you to really bite me. Bite me, please. And suddenly he and Meggie are looking at each other and it isn’t fun anymore. This isn’t what they’re into.

He gets off as quickly as he can, because he’s almost there anyway. And the girl is still begging, still asking for something they can’t give her, because it isn’t real and vampires aren’t real and it’s a distasteful situation and so Meggie asks the girl to leave. She does and they don’t talk about it. They just go to sleep. And they wake up just a little bit later because she’s snuck back into the house, they find out later that she’s broken a window, and she’s slashed her wrists. She’s holding out her bloody wrists and she’s saying, Please, here’s my blood, please drink it. I want you to drink my blood. Please.

They get her bandaged up. The cuts aren’t too deep. Meggie calls her agent, Pike, and Pike arranges for someone to take the girl to a private clinic. He tells them not to worry about any of it. It turns out that the girl is fifteen. Of course she is. Pike calls them again, after this girl gets out of the clinic, when she commits suicide. She has a history of attempts. Try, try, succeed.

The demon lover does not talk to Meggie again, because Pilar—who is naked—they are both naked, everyone is naked, of course—but Pilar is really quite lovely and fun to talk to and the camera work on this show is really quite exquisite and she likes the demon lover a lot. Keeps touching him. She says she has a bottle of Maker’s Mark back in one of the cabins and he’s already drunker than he’s been in a while. Turns out they did meet once, in an AA meeting in Silver Lake.

They have a good time. Really, sex is a lot of fun. The demon lover suspects that there’s some obvious psychological diagnosis for why he’s having sex with Pilar, some need to reenact recent history and make sure it comes out better this time. The last girl with a camera didn’t turn out so well for him. When exactly, he wonders, have things turned out well?

Afterward they lie on their backs on the dirty cement floor. Pilar says, “My girlfriend is never going to believe this.”

He wonders if she’s going to ask for an autograph.

Pilar’s been sharing the cabin with the missing girl, Juliet. There’s Whore-igami all over the cabin. Men and women and men and men and women and women in every possible combination, doing things that ought to be erotic. But they aren’t; they’re menacing instead. Maybe it’s the straight lines.

The demon lover and Pilar get dressed in case Juliet shows up.

“Well,” Pilar says, from her bunk bed, “good night.”

He gets Juliet’s bunk bed. Lies there in the dark until he’s sure Pilar’s asleep. He is thinking about Fawn for some reason. He can’t stop thinking about her. If he stops thinking about her, he
will have to think about the conversation with Meggie. He will have to think about Meggie.

Pilar’s iPhone is on the floor beside her bunk bed. He picks it up. No password. He types in Fawn’s number. Sends her a text. Hardly knows what he is typing.

I HOPE, he writes.

He writes the most awful things. Doesn’t know why he is doing this. Perhaps she will assume that it is a wrong number. He types in details, specific things, so she will know it’s not.

Eventually she texts back.

WHO IS THIS? WILL?

The demon lover doesn’t respond to that. Just keeps texting FILTHY BITCH YOU CUNT YOU WHORE YOU SLIME etc. etc. etc. Until she stops asking. Surely she knows who he is. She must know who he is.

Here’s the thing about acting, about a scene, about a character; about the dialogue you are given, the things your character does. None of it matters. You can take the most awful words, all the words, all the names, the acts he types into the text block. You can say these things, and the way you say them can change the meaning. You can say, “You dirty bitch. You cunt,” and say them differently each time; can make it a joke, an endearment, a cry for help, a seduction. You can kill, be a vampire, a soulless thing. The audience will love you no matter what you do. If you want them to love you. Some of them will always love you.

He needs air. He drops the phone on the floor again where Pilar will find it in the morning. Decides to walk down to the lake. He will have to go past Meggie’s trailer on the way, only he doesn’t. Instead he stands there watching as a shadow slips out of
the door of the trailer and down the stairs and away. Going where? Almost not there at all.

Ray?

He could follow. But he doesn’t.

He wonders if Meggie is awake. The door to her trailer is off the latch and so the demon lover steps inside.

Makes his way to her bedroom, no lights, she is not awake. He will do no harm. Only wants to see her safe and sleeping. An old friend can go to see an old friend.

Meggie’s a shape in the bed and he comes closer so he can see her face. There is someone in the bed with Meggie.

Ray looks at the demon lover and the demon lover looks back at Ray. Ray’s right hand rests on Meggie’s breast. Ray raises the other hand, beckons the demon lover closer.

The next morning is what you would predict. The crew of
Who’s There?
packs up to leave; Pilar discovers the text messages on her phone.

Did I do that? the demon lover says. I was drunk. I may have done that. Oh God, oh hell, oh fuck. He plays his part.

This may get messy. Oh, he knows how messy it can get. Pilar can make some real money with those texts. Fawn, if she wants, can use them against him in the divorce.

He doesn’t know how he gets in these situations.

Fawn has called Meggie. So there’s that, as well. Meggie waits to talk to him until almost everyone else has packed up and gone; it’s early afternoon now. Really, he should already have left. He has things he’ll need to do. Decisions to make about flights,
a new phone. He needs to call his publicist, his agent. Time for them to earn their keep. He likes to keep them busy.

Ray is off somewhere. The demon lover isn’t too sorry about this.

It’s not a fun conversation. They’re up in the parking lot now, and one of the crew, he doesn’t recognize her with her clothes on, says to Meggie, “Need a lift?”

“I’ve got the thing in Tallahassee tomorrow, the morning show,” Meggie says. “Got someone picking me up any minute now.”

“ ’Kay,” the woman says. “See you in San Jose.” She gives the demon lover a dubious look—is Pilar already talking?—and then gets in her car and drives away.

“San Jose?” the demon lover says.

“Yeah,” Meggie says. “The Winchester House.”

“Huh,” the demon lover says. He doesn’t really care. He’s tired of this whole thing, Meggie, the borrowed T-shirt and cargo shorts, Lake Apopka, no-show ghosts, and bad publicity.

He knows what’s coming. Meggie rips into him. He lets her. There’s no point trying to talk to women when they get like this. He stands there and takes it all in. When she’s finally done, he doesn’t bother trying to defend himself. What’s the good of saying things? He’s so much better at saying things when there’s a script to keep him from deep water. There’s no script here.

Of course, he and Meggie will patch things up eventually. Old friends forgive old friends. Nothing is unforgivable. He’s wondering if this is untrue when a car comes into the meadow.

“Well,” Meggie says. “That’s my ride.”

She waits for him to speak and when he doesn’t, she says, “Good-bye, Will.”

“I’ll call you,” the demon lover says at last. “It’ll be okay, Meggie.”

“Sure,” Meggie says. She’s not really making much of an effort. “Call me.”

She gets into the back of the car. The demon lover bends over, waves at the window where she is sitting. She’s looking straight ahead. The driver’s window is down, and okay, here’s Ray again. Of course! He looks out of the window at the demon lover. He raises an eyebrow, smiles, waves with that hand again, need a ride?

The demon lover steps away from the car. Feels a sense of overwhelming disgust and dread. A cloud of blackness and horror comes over him, something he hasn’t felt in many, many years. He recognizes the feeling at once.

And that’s that. The car drives away with Meggie inside it. The demon lover stands in the field for some period of time, he is never sure how long. Long enough that he is sure he will never catch up with the car with Meggie in it. And he doesn’t.

There’s a storm coming in.

The thing is this: Meggie never turns up for the morning show in Tallahassee. The other girl, Juliet Adeyemi, does reappear, but nobody ever sees Meggie again. She just vanishes. Her body is never found. The demon lover is a prime suspect in her disappearance. Of course he is. But there is no proof. No evidence.

No one is ever charged.

And Ray? When the demon lover explains everything to the police, to the media, on talk shows, he tells the same story over and over again. I went to see my old friend Meggie. I met her lover, Ray. They left together. He drove the car. But no one else supports this story. There is not a single person who will admit
that Ray exists. There is not a frame of video with Ray in it. Ray was never there at all, no matter how many times the demon lover explains what happened. They say, What did he look like? Can you describe him? And the demon lover says, He looked like me.

As he is waiting for the third or maybe the fourth time to be questioned by the police, the demon lover thinks about how one day they will make a movie about all of this. About Meggie. But of course he will be too old to play the demon lover.

Secret Identity