Getting Hitched Fiction -Demon Lover

By Jodi Cleghorn

I stand on the threshold looking in.  My senses warn me to turn back now and go back to what I know.  The embittered voice of experience weighs in, prompting me to remember my decision to give up love.  It reminds me that love is fool’s gold and I can rise above it - I will be happier living without it.  As I stand in the doorway, the smoke tendrils willing me into their wispy grasp, the maiden indulgent voice within says, ‘live in the moment without expectation’. I hesitate, the drum beat of my heart shifting tempo, then step inside. The door shuts behind me.

My friend told me it was a party but this seems more like a bohemian talk-fest of ideas and jazz.  Everyone has a wine glass or cigarette in their hand; some manage both in the same hand or leave the cigarette to hang from between their rapidly moving lips.  I cough, unused to the smoke and lack of fresh air.  The room feels claustrophobic but I don’t panic.  My friend has said that if I’m giving up love I need to take up hedonism – I need to become self-indulgent and pleasure-seeking without regret.  My friend reminded me I will only have to worry about myself when I turn my back on love. So he brought me here.

I would be no more a native on Mars than I am here, though no one stops to stare at me.  I begin to move in the ambient morass seeking my friend. In the candlelight and cigarette haze, people move like shadows and everything seems ephemeral. 

My search is performed in a sea of strange faces until a set of eyes lock mine.  He is not my friend, but I recognise him immediately.  He is alone by the window, his hands in the pockets of worn jeans gazing at me.  A gust of wind clears the air between us and a dazzling smile plays on his lips, giving me a disjointed sense of reality.  I have seen him solemn, stoned, and even sadistic once. This smile is wrong. 

He walks over to me and I know that it’s not just tobacco being enjoyed in the stuffy room.  My head is spinning and I feel I am hallucinating.  It cannot possibly be him ... here? Without a word he puts an arm casually but firmly around my waist and I allow him to walk me over to the alcohol.  He pours us both huge glass balloons of red wine and I follow him to an empty, threadbare settee.

I know his name – but he never asks mine.  I sip the wine cautiously at first as he leans over and tells me that he hates jazz.  I tell him the jury is out – I’ve never had enough exposure to decide.  He talks to me of the Velvet Underground and The Beatles, of existentialism and Cartesian dualism, of Shakespeare and Rushdie.  I nod and listen, with each breath and mouthful of wine, being drawn ever-increasingly into the aura of his personae.  The magnetism mesmerising,  more intoxicating than the cheap Grenache. I love Lady Madonna and he Paperback Writer, so I mention my love of writing. He listens to my travails as a writer, moving closer and closer to me, until he is a nano-breath away from my lips.  And he remains there, in my space, without moving any closer.

He looks into my eyes and I feel as though he’s seeking my soul.  I want to look away but I can’t. Yet I don’t feel violated. He takes my hand in his and he kisses the back of my hand gently.  Bolts of electricity discharge up my arm and I realise that I am holding my breath. He has long tapered fingers like my own and his touch is surprisingly cool, despite the heat in the room.  I want him to hold my hand forever as he places his hand and mine on his thigh.

Once I’ve drained my wine glass and recollected myself, I ask him if he believes in hedonism. He replies with a question and I am unsure of my answer for the first time. Afraid of what I might reply, I lean in and kiss him.  He releases my hand and takes my head in his hands, his lips becoming demanding against mine.

For a split second I remember that he has a wife and kids.  I feel a brief flash of guilt, but when he pulls away from me his eyes tell me that in this moment I am the only one.  I embed myself here in the moment with him.  At first he grins and then laughs and it’s contagious.  I’m laughing as well and he has my hand in his again.

My friend arrives at my arm as I’m listening to verbal memoirs of an impoverished industrial childhood in the Midlands.  My friend tells me that we must leave and I protest.  There is no disagreeing with my friend though, his hand is firm on my arm and there is a desperate need in him to polarise my position.  I shake my head and say that I am not leaving, but it is futile.  My friend whispers that this is no place for us, that there are events unfolding here that we should not be part of.  I don’t understand, especially since it was his idea to come here and I’m walking the talk that he put in my mouth. I don’t care if this man is married. My friend has never been bothered by infidelity or any part I’ve ever played in it.

My friend’s fingers dig deep into the flesh on my lower arm before I can again attempt to voice my argument.  So I relent and go with him for now, but as soon as I’m dropped at the door of my decrepit apartment building, I’m on my phone calling a replacement taxi. The party is easy to find again, I paid attention as we left. In the dead of night, in the middle of the week, I’m warmly ensconced in the taxi on the return journey within an hour.

The party has dispersed for all intents and purposes when I walk through the door a second time, this time truly of my own volition.  He is engaged in a passionate discussion with another man, his pale cheeks flushed, when he looks up and sees me standing there.  In the next breath I’m in his arms and he murmurs softly how happy he is that I have come back. He pours me another glass of wine and another.  We talk wrapped in each other's arms and encased in thick musty blankets on the balcony until the sun comes up. He doesn’t ask me to stay and I don’t suggest that I leave.

I don’t wonder why he hasn’t returned home to his wife and children.  He doesn’t speak of them and I don’t feel compelled to ask, considering all the other things that he has shared with me through the short night. He is no longer the collection of characters I’ve come to know him as on the screen. I see and feel him for the man he is.  The fabric of my being has been torn and I will never be the same again. 

Later, with the sun high in the sky, I wake in the same clothes from the night before.  My head is cluttered with a hangover and the dislocation of waking in a strange place.  The bed beside me is warm but empty, and I hear voices come from a room close by.  Rubbing my crusty eyes, I get up and search out the shock of cold water on my face, gulping handfuls of metallic water into my parched mouth.

It’s then, with my face still tingling with the rush of frigid water, that it dawns on me what they are talking about.  Not talking, but planning.  It is a final dry run and now I know too.  Long minutes pass before any of them notice that I am standing dishevelled, listening in the doorway of the lounge room.  They are sitting on the floor amid dirty wine glasses and overflowing ashtrays.  Bob is playing on an old turntable wailing that ‘The Times are A-Changing’ amid the crackling of the needle – or is that his voice?  I muse that ‘Eve of Destruction’ is possibly more apt but I say nothing.

He rises from the floor, the stubble darkening his jaw line giving his masculine beauty a menacing edge.  I don’t resist, despite what I’ve heard, as he takes me into his arms.  He explains nothing and I seek no justification for his actions.  I simply accept them as he accepts me.  We kiss passionately after I write my apartment number and street address on the back of a coaster from the local pub.  He says he will see me later this afternoon and will take me out for dinner once it’s done. And I leave it at that, pretending that the voices in my head belong to someone else.

The hours pass agonisingly slow in a self imposed media blackout and the sun is setting as his voice comes clearly through the intercom in my tiny lounge room.  I don’t invite him up. The elevator is broken and again the landlord doesn’t care because he lives elsewhere.  I’m already dressed for dinner and the paparazzi. I poise on the brink of the fire escape looking down, thinking of Inanna’s descent. 

He’s leaning nonchalantly against the building as I emerge from my building, hands thrust in his pockets just as he was last night.  The golden twilight throws interesting shadows on his sculptured cheek bones. Taking the glove from my hand, our bare hands meld to each other in the crisp air, clasped so tightly it is painful. I want to search his eyes to see if there is an element of fanaticism that I missed, that I didn’t know to look for last night, but his eyes are shielded by designer sunglasses.  Out here he’s public property and this is my fifteen minutes of fame.

We walk in silence for blocks until he suddenly propels me down a narrow alleyway. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead and I recoil from him as he takes a handgun from his pocket. Twenty-four hours ago I knew who I was, what I was doing. Now I have no idea and the panic begins to rise in me.  He presses the gun into my gloved hand and I have no idea what to do with it, vacillating helplessly between the options available.  His chocolate brown eyes implore me to take it even though the voices in my head are demanding me to withdraw, that I am now out of my depth.  In the confusion his lips are soft on mine, and he tells me softly that he wants me to be safe. I don’t doubt for a moment his sincerity and I yield.  

He steps back out into the street light to hail a taxi and we’re speeding downtown to make the debut it seems I have chosen.

© Jodi Cleghorn 2008

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