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 says. “And your timing is eerily good because I have to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot,” he says.
“It’s complicated,” she says. “How about later? After we’re done here?”
It’s almost full dark now. No moon. Someone has built up a very large fire. The blackened bungalows and the roofless hall melt into obscure and tidy shapes. Now you can imagine yourself back when it was all new, a long time ago. Back in the seventies when nobody cared what you did. When love was free. When you could just disappear if you felt like it and that was fine and good, too.
“So where do I stay tonight?” the demon lover says. Again fights the impulse to touch Meggie’s face. There’s a strand of hair against her lip. Which is he? The pyromaniac or the masochist? In or Out? Well, he’s an actor, isn’t he? He can be anything she wants him to be.
“I’m sure you’ll find somewhere,” Meggie says, a glint in her eye. “Or someone. Pilar has told me more than once you’re the only man she’s ever wanted to fuck.”
“If I had a dollar,” the demon lover says. He still wants to touch her. Wants her to want him to touch her. He remembers now how this goes.
Meggie says, “If you had a dollar, seventy cents would go to your exes.”
Which is gospel truth. He says, “Fawn signed a prenup.”
“One of the thousand reasons you should go home and fix things,” Meggie says. “She’s a good person. There aren’t so many of those.”
“She’s better off without me,” the demon lover says, trying it out. He’s a little hurt when Meggie doesn’t disagree.
Irene the medium comes over with Pilar and the other videographer. The demon lover can tell Irene doesn’t like him. Sometimes women don’t like him. Rare enough that he always wonders why.
“Shall we get started?” Irene says. “Let’s see if any of our friends are up for a quick chat. Then I don’t know about you but I’m going to go put on something a little less comfortable.” Meggie addresses the video camera next. “This will be our final attempt,” she says, “our last chance to contact anyone who is still lingering here, who has unfinished business.”
“You’d think nudists wouldn’t be so shy,” Irene says.
Meggie says, “But even if we don’t reach anyone, today hasn’t been a total loss. All of us have taken a risk. Some of us are sunburned, some of us have bug bites in interesting places, all of us are a little more comfortable in our own skin. We’ve experienced openness and humanity in a way that these colonists imagined and hoped would lead to a better world. And maybe, for them, it did. We’ve had a good day. And even if the particular souls we came here in search of didn’t show up, someone else is here.”
The A2 nods at Will.
Pilar points the camera at him.
He’s been thinking about how to play this. “I’m Will Gald,” he says. “You probably recognize me from previous naked film roles such as the guy rolling around on a hotel room floor clutching his genitals and bleeding profusely.”
He smiles his most lovely smile. “I just happened to be in the area.”
“We persuaded him to stay for a bite,” Meggie says.
“They’ve hidden my clothes,” Will says. “Admittedly I haven’t been trying that hard to find them. I mean, what’s the worst thing that can happen when you get naked on camera?”
Irene says, “Meggie, one of the things that’s been most important about Who’s There? right from the beginning is that we’ve all had something happen to us that we can’t explain away. We’re all believers. I’ve been meaning to ask, does Will here have a ghost story?”
“I don’t—” the demon lover says. Then pauses. Looks at Meggie.
“I do,” he says. “But surely Meggie’s already told it.”
“I have,” Meggie says. “But I’ve never heard you tell it.”
Oh, there are stories the demon lover could tell.
He says, “I’m here to please.”
“Fantastic,” Irene says. “As you know, every episode we make time for a ghost story or two. Tonight we even have a campfire.” She hesitates. “And of course as our viewers also know, we’re still waiting for Juliet Adeyemi to turn up. She left just before lunch to run errands. We’re not worried yet, but we’ll all be a lot happier when she’s with us again.”
Meggie says, “Juliet, if you’ve met a nice boy and gone off to ride the teacups at Disney World, so help me, I’m going to ask for all the details. Now. Shall we, Irene?”
All around them, people have been clearing away plates of half-eaten barbecue, assembling in a half circle around the campfire. Any minute now they’ll be singing “Kumbaya.” They sit on their little towels. Irene and Meggie take their place in front of the fire. They clasp hands.
The demon lover moves a little farther away, into darkness. He is not interested in séances or ghosts. Here is the line of the shore. Sharp things underfoot. Someone joins him. Ray. Of course.
It is worse, somehow, to be naked in the dark. The world is so big and he is not. Ray is young and he is not. He is pretty sure that the videographer Pilar will sleep with him; Meggie will not.
“I know you,” the demon lover says to Ray. “I’ve met you before. Well, not
