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
