Possession
by Joshua MosesHe lies swollen and still, his body curled beneath the sheets, breath hitching like there's a roadblock somewhere in the back of his throat. She wants to turn the television on, to make her think of something else. But that means he'll wake up and that means they'll have to talk, and honestly talking is the last thing she wants to do anymore. She's done nothing but talk for the past six weeks and it isn't working out and she just wants him to take the hint and leave, but it never seems to work out that way.
He fascinated her when they met. Nothing deterred him. She'd thought it was charming how he slogged through obstacles without even acknowledging them. He'd asked her out seven times. She'd given him six "no"s before she gave in. She'd found it funny how he kept driving his broken-down Pontiac until it fell apart and the insurance company messed up and gave him eighty thousand dollars. But she was no longer amused.
It was not amusing when he showed up at the law office and they just hired him, there, on the spot, without having an interview scheduled or a resume or even being a lawyer. Not any more. He just never surrenders and never stops and never walks away, and somehow things seem to work out.
More than work out. He's always successful. And here she is, working another in a series of temp jobs in a crappy accounting firm in the far west Loop, where the trains don't even run, and he doesn't even show up to the office until eleven most days, and it's enough to make her scream, which she does. She screams and he wakes up, creaky and smiling, and looks over at her.
"Did you say something, babe?" he asks. Even after a night of his mucusy growl driving her crazy, his voice is even and smooth, like a senator's.
"No," she answers. "Go back to sleep." He sits up and puts his hand on hers, smacking his lips and squinting his eyes.
"What time is it?"
"Around eight," she says, "I'd better get moving."
"Why? You don't have to work today."
"No, but I wanted to go get the paper and go through the want ads, look for something."
"I could help you," he offers, sleepy-eyed.
"No." She sighs. "I'd rather just do it alone."
"Come on, I insist. I'll take you to breakfast, you can look at the want ads and I'll read the sports section. It'll be nice." He scratches underneath the blanket and she doesn't even want to think about how that finger must smell since he was scratching, scratching, scratching all night, scratching and coughing.
"No, no thanks." She clears her throat. She decides to try again, to correct things. "Look," she says. "Look, I just don't think this is working out."
"I know," he answers, "Why don't you just take a break from the whole job hunt thing for a while? I make plenty of money, I'm happy to help you out. You could even move in with me, save money on rent. In fact, I'd even pay your half for you."
She shivers. "No," she says.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, flexing broad shoulders and rigid abs, his bare ass flecked with sweat. He's beautiful, enthralling, corrupting, a menace.
He smiles at her and flexes. "I had a great time last night, honey," he says, out of nowhere, like they didn't just have the conversation about her not moving in with him. He pads to the dresser and scratches himself again, eyeing her reflection in the mirror.
"Yeah," she answers.
"Is there any coffee?"
She shakes her head. Of course there isn't any coffee. She's been lying there still for the past hour, hoping he would vanish, but he is still there, in her room, haunting her life. Her roommate doesn't drink coffee, probably never will.
"I'll make some," he says, and he opens the door and walks naked into the hallway. She moves to protest that Jennifer might be up but realizes that she doesn't care, that it might be a good thing, that it would cause a confrontation and then he would have to Go.
She stands in her pajamas and walks to the door and hears the television playing cartoons and knows that yes, her roommate is awake. She readies herself for the inevitable scream but all she hears is laughter. He comes grinning back down the hall, uncircumcised penis bouncing back and forth between his legs like a strap of leather. "I forgot to put pants on!" he chuckles, puts a hand on her arm as he sweeps past, and she grits her teeth again, wearing away the enamel.
She walks out into the hallway and sees Jenny's head over the back of the sofa, in curlers. "Sorry about that," she calls.
Jenny looks up and she's grinning almost to her eyeballs. "He's a monster," she says.
She rolls her eyes. You don't even know, she thinks.
She sits down next to Jennifer on the couch and watches cartoons. He brings her coffee and sits next to her and he talks about the Future. Jenny sits on her other side and watches Scooby and Shaggy and their cynical gang battle whatever faux goblins stalk that particular night, eternally vigilant. She can think of one demon she wishes they'd vanquish.
"I don't know," she says. She wants to say: get out, get out of my life, find someone else and clasp on and never ever ever come back, but her tongue will not cooperate. "I don't know," she says, repeating herself. He's smiling and he rests his hand on her knee, having never learned not to draw to an inside straight, not to pet a cat backwards, not to say "at least it's not raining". She drinks her coffee. It's perfect.
She sits stewing for the better part of an hour. Then she suggests a shower. For her, not for him. He doesn't catch the hint: now is the time to slip out the door and into oblivion. No, she says, she wants to shower alone. He sits on the couch with Jenny and flips between the Wild Thornberries and MTV2 as she slips into the bathroom.
She turns the water on and sits down on the toilet. She pees but when she's done she keeps sitting there, the window growing more and more inviting even as it steams. Finally, she stands up and strips her pajamas off. She gets under the water and feels it rush on her face and down her body, trying to wash every trace of him away. She uses the soap like a holy relic, anointing away sin. She's run out of shampoo and so she borrows Jenny's, and it smells like guava or somesuch. Mango. She checks, it's mango, and she imagines herself somewhere on a beach, away from him and his smirking bankers' hours and encroaching hands, being fed by almost anybody else.
She showers so long that she uses all the hot water and doesn't feel the least bit bad about it. At least a dozen hairs are coiled in the drain and she halfway hopes she's going bald, that baldness will drive him away, but no, the hairs are blonde and Jennifer's, lonesome single Jennifer in curlers, snacking on marshmallows through the weekend.
She steps from the tub and dries herself, then knots the towel around her hair and stands in front of the mirror. It's fogged and she writes FUCK YOU LUCAS in it, then she wipes over it with her palm. With her luck, he'll finagle a shower and see it. Then, she realizes, she wants him to see it.
She wants him to know how she feels, for once, to understand what she wants and that it isn't him. She blows on the mirror, refogging, and she writes it back, bigger:
FUCK
YOU
LUCAS
and she admires her handiwork. She reaches over and flushes the toilet and takes the lotion out of the cabinet. She applies it liberally, both because her skin is dry and to waste time. Then she puts her pajamas back on, blue Old Navy pants and Black Flag T-shirt, stolen from a long-ago ex whom she suddenly misses terribly.
She's so frustrated she could cry, and she does, and she hates him for making her cry. But the voice in her head, his voice, says, no, baby, you' re crying for nothing. She hates him for that, too. She brushes her teeth with lebensraum fury, a microbe holocaust.
When she steps out of the bathroom and into the cool of the hallway, he's still there, and he and Jenny are debating boy bands. She slips into her bedroom, she hopes soundlessly, and picks out panties, bra, frumpy form-concealing clothing. She's no sooner got her top off when he comes in again. "Trying to hide?" he asks her.
She shakes her head in mourning. "She's right outside," she says.
"She doesn't care." He comes towards her and she pulls her shirt on, a purple sweatshirt totally unnecessary in July, neglecting her bra. He puts his hands on her waist and she turns away.
"I care," she says.
"Don't worry about it," he answers, and he kisses her, undoing five minutes of tooth brushing in a single stroke. His breath smells like chocolate and she realizes he's been eating her cereal, likely her last bowl of cereal, and she bites down on her tongue, hard.
"Ow," she says.
"What's the matter?"
"I have a headache," she replies, holding her jaw.
"I'll get you an Advil."
"Forget it," she says, "it's gone."
"Are you OK?" he asks her, concern creeping into his baritone. He cocks an eyebrow and peers at her through clear blue eyes.
"Yes," she says. "I'm fine. I'm just a little stressed."
"Why?"
He wouldn't, or couldn't, stop. "I just, I don't know. I need some space for a while."
"That's fine. We'll take a drive out to the country, find some space. We can go up to Wisconsin, to the cabin."
"No," she says. That's not what I mean, she wants to say. Not at all. "I think my headache isn't gone after all," she says. "I'd just like to rest today."
"That's fine." He smiles at her again. His hair is sticking up and it looks like horns, bristling and dangerous. "We can just hang out here."
She grinds her teeth back and forth four times. "I think I should just be alone for a while," she says.
"How about I buy Jenny two tickets to see Rent this afternoon? I could call it an early birthday present, she can call up that boy she likes."
She feels another scream coming on. Once again, she fails to suppress it.
When she was six, her favorite book was Make Way for Ducklings. When she was twelve, her favorite book was Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. When she was eighteen, her favorite book was The Bell Jar. Now she is twenty-four, and his favorite book is The Bell Jar, and she would seal herself up in a crawlspace except he would be there and he would have flowers and he would have cooked dinner and he would talk about how they should take a vacation to someplace like Prague or Milan and go hiking and she'd never even get around to closing her eyes.
"Anything yet?" he asks her.
"No," she says. "Nothing." She's looking at ads for truckers, cross-country; for nighttime security guards; for strippers and dirty talkers and whores. She clears her throat.
"Do you need some water?"
"No," she says. She ruffles the paper and looks up at him. He's looking at her, all blue-eyed sparkle. "What?" she asks him.
"Nothing," he says. "You're beautiful," he says.
"Could I have some water?"
"Sure," he answers, not a trace of annoyance in his voice. He walks to the sink and fills a glass from the faucet. He brings it to her and he kisses her on the forehead. "Here you go," he says.
She doesn't say anything.
He sits back down and picks up his book (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) and pushes his hair back from his eyes. It's still sticking up in the back, on each side, like Pan. All he needs is goat legs. She clears her throat again.
"Are you OK?"
"Yes," she answers. She looks up at him. He wants to say something. She raises her eyebrows, resigning herself to it.
"She's really incredible," he says.
"Who?"
"Maya Angelou."
"Yeah," she answers.
"She's been through so much. We're so fortunate."
She looks back at the want ads.
She said she didn't want to go out that night, but somehow she's at a party and she doesn't know anybody, and so far as she knows neither does he, but he's introducing her to everybody as though he does and they absolutely love him, everybody in the whole world loves him. It's an incredible apartment, an elevator building right on Lincoln Park, two levels and floor-to-ceiling windows, and from the instant the doors opened it's been about him.
Here's a bottle-blonde model, sliding up to him with a smile and a drink, and she wishes the princess good luck. Here's a self-described punk in a leather shirt with a cigarette and a goofy grin, suddenly happy to submit to an alpha male. Here's a full partner at thirty, asking for his business card, hoping he can entice him away with a substantial offer. She stands with her forehead against the window and prays that the glass breaks and she tumbles forever into the night. She feels a hand on her neck and she turns around but it isn't him, and a wash of joyous frenzy sweeps her. It's the host of the party, a former professional athlete of moderate renown, a man with a neck like string cheese and a scar running horizontal across his forehead.
"Sorry," he says, in a gracious tenor, "I thought you were Cindy."
"No," she answers, eyes glinting, salivating. He smiles and walks away. She wants to follow him, to beg him to be her savior, but her feet are grown suddenly heavy and ignorant. She turns back to the window and the lights shine out over the lake, reflecting the moon and the buildings.
North Avenue sweeps out into the distance, the historical society perched on its edge, the mansions of State Street swallowed between identical protruding towers. Lake Shore Drive curves along the sand, white lights racing towards, red lights away. Somewhere there is a car with an empty seat, headed south towards Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and New York and the ocean and she wishes she were in that car instead of most of the way plastered in an unfamiliar apartment. She feels another hand on her neck and she turns and it's him this time. She sighs.
"Are you OK?" he asks, like the King of Hearts for the twentieth time that day. He's smiling with concern.
"Yes," she replies.
"Are you having a good time?"
"I'm fine."
"Sorry I left you for so long. Just lots of people. I was expecting some friends would be here, but they're not up yet, so I had to introduce myself."
She bangs her head against the window. It doesn't hurt nearly as much as she wishes it did. "I need a drink," she says. She attempts a smile but it comes out more like a grimace, some travesty of emotion. "Please," she says.
"Do you want to go?" he asks her. She wants to go. She does not want to go with him.
"No."
He walks to the bar and pours her a glass of wine. He pours a brandy for himself. He walks back and offers her the wine. She takes it and gulps it down. Then she takes the brandy and gulps it, too. He looks at her with amusement, tempered with worry. The alcohol makes him go all swimmy in her vision. She hopes he's melting but he isn't, she blinks and he's back. He puts a hand on her cheek and kisses her. She pulls away but he leans in and she wishes she had a cigarette though she hasn't smoked in a year.
"I don't feel so good," she says. She pushes past him and finds the toilet. He follows her in. "Can I please go to the bathroom?" she demands.
"Are you OK?" he asks her, again, again.
"I'm fine."
"Do you need to throw up?"
"No."
She looks at herself in the mirror and she's a mess, her hair is tangled and her makeup, applied indifferently, is streaked across her face. She turns around and he's crossarmed, forehead creased and eyebrows pointed. She grabs her temples and exhales in his face. "Leave me alone," she says.
"I think we should go," he says.
"Just leave me alone." She turns back and she washes her face, carelessly splashing. She dries off in a twenty-dollar towel and looks at her image again. Now her makeup is mostly gone but she's so pale, so pale. She's a depression-era portrait, a flapper ruined and on the streets. Her nails are like claws and trains are changing gauge in her stomach. She crowds her shoulders together and turns around to face him, nearly on top of her.
"Do you need to throw up?" he asks her again. She shakes her head and turns back to the sink, turns on the faucet and takes great gulps from it, cold water refreshing. Her shirt is splattered but she barely cares, doesn't care at all. She pushes her hair back and feels him standing behind her. She squints in the mirror.
"Why can't I see you?" she demands, squinting, hunting for his missing reflection. Then the water comes back up and she's perched over the toilet. He holds her hair while she vomits.
She doesn't remember the ride home, really, not at all. She remembers hoping that this is it, he'll be gone, but he held her hand the whole way back and helped her into the house, undressed her, put her pajamas on, got her water and climbed into bed next to her. She dreams terrible dreams of sulfur and carnage and in the earliest morning she feels terrible, worms gnawing at her bones. She sits up and he jolts, ready to help her throw up again.
"I'm fine," she lies, "Go back to sleep." He pats her on the head and lies back down, puts an arm around her waist. It's barely five, she realizes, on a Sunday. She takes the arm off her with a shiver and stands, legs wobbling but generally beneath her. He sleeps almost on his face and his breathing sounds awful, slobbering into the pillow. He scratches mindlessly beneath the blankets and she grits her teeth again. It's only a few steps to the hallway and she walks as quietly as she can, opens the door and steals out toward the kitchen. There's nothing in the fridge but half a container of Chinese rice and some eggs so she eats some Fritos. Her suitcase is in the back of the closet where it's been since Italy and she pulls it out carefully, inch by inch. When she has it all the way out she unzips it and leaves it lying open on the floor.
She moves as silently as she can move while still moving forward. A dim light from the blinds tells her the sun is hefting itself over the edge of the world and so she must move quickly. She takes only a few things, some clothes, a toothbrush, a photo album. He keeps sleeping, preposterously, as she reaches into the pockets of his jeans, slung over the chair by her desk. She finds his keys, his keys to her apartment and her car, and takes them, muffling the jangle. She presses the clothes to her chest and tiptoes back to the suitcase, past Jenny's room, drops everything in unsorted. She zips it up and pulls on her shoes, discarded in a heap by the front door. It's two flights down to the car, somehow parked directly in front. She knows she's still drunk but this is her only chance, and she starts the car with a rumble. It's a few twists and turns and she's on the Kennedy, headed towards the Loop, car easing back and forth across the road, an inelegant automotive dance.
The sobriety test was just like television, attempting to point to her nose with an unsteady index finger while reciting the alphabet, a task she evidently failed. She brought no ID, no license. The registration was missing. She sat in the station, beside a surly black officer, refusing her name. Eventually he put her in a cell. The other woman in the cell is sleeping on the floor even though there's a cot available. She sits on it and fumes. A television blares racecars somewhere. She blocks him with her mind, trying to defend her presence, to guard it from him. She calls on every spirit she's ever known. She hopes and she hopes, but it's only a few minutes before he arrives, somehow, unsummoned, eyes peering and friendly.
"Are you OK?" he asks her.
She shakes her head. "What are you doing here?"
He just laughs. He has her out in less than an hour, no charges pressed.
"I'm basically an attorney," he explains. He's in a good mood. She climbs silently into the passenger seat. She doesn't speculate on how he got there, doesn't want to know. Chicago is just around the edge of the lake, on the other side of the border. She looks out at the few remaining steel mills, the amber flames that leap forth from their tubes and scorch the sky. He whistles an aria through the stench. "Do you want some breakfast?" he asks her.
She doesn't answer. He looks over at her and smiles. She sees his eyes rumbling in his head, obscenely deep, and can feel him sliding back inside of her even then. The road streams beneath them. How quick would be the release, she wonders, were she to bolt onto the pavement and await the diesel beasts that stream all around them?
He turns his gaze back to the freeway, and she nods at the emptiness of the driver's seat in the rearview mirror, absent and yet so present. She feels her gaze drawn back to him, herself drawn back and subsumed into his personality. He flicks the silver dial and presses one of the buttons he's reprogrammed. His fingers drum the steering wheel and Johnny Cash plays to a railroad beat.
He, too, is dressed in black. His nails are afire and his suit is unrumpled. His hair is still sticking up in two furry tufts atop his head, two resplendent horns, and no earthly artifact, not even the hopeful Baptist church bells of Indiana on Sunday morning, will ever make them lie down.
This story has been named a Notable Story of 2004 by Story South.
Joshua Moses sold his soul to finance in 2000 and has been trying desperately to buy it back. His work has appeared in Pindeldyboz, Facsimilation, and on the late and lamented Playboy.com Comedy Club. His pieces are linked at JoshuaMoses.com. Some of his favorites include "Notes to Underground" (here), "Win One for Mounty" (here), and "Resurrection" (here). His novel, The Monkey's Uncle, which is mostly about Communists and only a little bit about monkeys, is awaiting discovery. He can be reached at joshua at joshuamoses dot com.