Soul Mates

by Donald Hanley

  “My character must be as unique as me, of course,” Lilith pronounced haughtily. “I shall create the most beautiful woman ever to grace a digital world.”

  “All right, well, knock yourself out,” I told her. “I’ll be back later to see if you’re done.” She dismissed me with a wave.

  I was about to go over and check on Daraxandriel when I heard a loud gasp from Susie’s room. I ran over there to find Mom standing by Susie’s desk holding her wastebasket with a shocked expression on her face. “Mom! What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t believe it,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Look!” She thrust the wastebasket at me and I peered inside gingerly, half-expecting a toad to jump out at me. Instead, all I saw was a small pile of cotton balls daubed with something pink.

  “Is that – female stuff?” I grimaced.

  “Yes!” Mom shoved the wastebasket into my hands and starting going through the desk drawers. She let out another gasp when she reached the bottom drawer and plucked out a small glass bottle. “Look!” she demanded, almost hitting me in the nose with it. “Nail polish!” I took the vial from her and I was relieved to see it was the same color as the substance on the discarded cotton. “And lipstick!” Mom held up a glittery cylinder. “Susie’s wearing makeup!”

  “So?” I frowned. All girls wore makeup, except maybe Daraxandriel, and even she wore some at prom last month.

  “Have you ever seen Susie in makeup before?” Mom looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

  “Well –” To be honest, I’d never paid that much attention to Susie’s skin. I regularly saw way too much of it to worry about those kinds of details.

  “She must be seeing a boy,” she whispered to herself, her entire face lighting up with hope. “Peter, you were outside when she left. Was there a boy there?” She grabbed my arms in a vice grip, staring eagerly into my eyes like a starving woman asking if I had a piece of stale bread.

  “Um –” I was never going to win it big in at poker. I was a terrible liar and I couldn’t bluff to save my life. “Maybe.”

  “Oh my goodness.” Mom released me and turned around in a complete circle, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. “I need to tell your father about this. No, he’ll just tell me to leave her alone but this is far too important to ignore. She’s new to all this, she’s dealing with feelings she never had before. Peter!” She seized me again and shook me. “What if she has sex with that boy? She’s too young!”

  “They just went to the movies,” I told her uneasily, trying to extricate myself.

  “That’s even worse! Sitting there in the dark holding hands, who knows what might happen?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. Cameron doesn’t seem like that kind of –”

  “Cameron?” She pounced on that like a shark. “Is that his name? Cameron?”

  Crap. “Susie won’t let anything happen, Mom,” I reassured her. “She can take care of herself. If he tries anything, he’ll just end up with a broken arm.”

  “That’s true,” she acknowledged sadly. “But –”

  “Let her figure this out on her own, Mom.” I took the lipstick from her hand and tucked it and the nail polish back in the drawer. “Just act normally when she gets home, okay? She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.” Probably sometime after her thirtieth birthday.

  “But –”

  “You don’t want to scare her off, do you? You know how she gets when you try to tell her what to do.”

  Mom sagged in resignation. “Yes, you’re right. I’ll guess I’ll just do the rest of the laundry, then.” She picked up a small bundle of Susie’s clothes from the floor and wandered out of the room, mumbling to herself. It was pretty sad to see, actually, but I told myself it was better this way.

  I checked on Lilith’s progress but she was still working on her character’s face, comparing them to her own features in a small cosmetics mirror. I almost suggested that she just copy Dara Alexander’s character file and change the hair color, since she was obviously intending to reproduce herself digitally and Daraxandriel had already done the work, but the exercise was keeping her busy and out of trouble so I left her there and went outside to see what Dad was up to.

  He’d been talking about replacing one of the tall sprinkler heads by the fence for a few weeks now, since it had a tendency to drip for a couple of hours after the cycle was done and he bemoaned the waste, despite the fact that it was at most a cup of water. I figured that all he needed to do was tighten the head a little but I found him using a spade to dig a hole all around the coupling like he was searching for buried treasure. The fact that the hole was filled to the brim with muddy water implied that something had gone terribly wrong somewhere along the way.

  “Peter,” he told me tersely, wiping his hand across his brow and leaving a brown smudge behind, “see if you can find the shutoff valve. There’s a crack in the line somewhere.”

  “You think?” I was willing to bet that the crack was spade-shaped. “You really shouldn’t start projects like this on Sundays. The hardware store closes early tonight.”

  “This won’t take long,” he asserted confidently. “We’ll just patch it up and it’ll be as good as new.” I held my tongue and went to shut off the water.

  All in all, it took us over two hours to bail out the hole, find the leak, cut out the faulty section, run down to the store for a coupling and PVC glue, wrestle the pieces into place, wait for the glue to dry, and then cautiously turn the water on again. We knelt with our heads almost touching as we stared down at our handiwork, searching for any leaks. After a couple of minutes, Dad nodded his head in satisfaction.

  “Perfect,” he declared. I silently pointed at the sprinkler head, where a bead of water formed at the top and slid down the pipe. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Let me try something.” I grabbed a pair of pliers from the garage and used them to twist the head a few degrees. Dad’s skeptical expression turned to chagrin when the dripping stopped. He looked from the sprinkler to me to the pile of mud at the edge of the hole.

  “Don’t tell your mother,” he said finally, grabbing the spade to scoop the dirt back into place.

  We were already pretty soggy so we just rinsed off the worst of the mud from our arms and legs with the garden hose and left our shoes on the patio to dry. We restored the tools to their rightful places in the garages and went inside to shower and change, passing Mom in the laundry room as she sorted through the last load.

  “All done?” she asked suspiciously. “That didn’t take you very long.” She meant relative to Dad’s other plumbing projects, of course.

  “All done,” he assured her. “No problems at all.” Mom was looking at him so my eyeroll went unnoticed.

  “Well, good. Bring those clothes in here after you clean up,” she ordered. “They can go in with the last load.” She picked up the slacks I’d worn last night and patted the pockets. “Peter, look at this,” she chided me, extracting my wallet. “I nearly washed this!”

  “Sorry, I got distracted this morning.” I accepted my wallet, my keys, and a small collection of coins from her.

  “It doesn’t take any time to empty your pockets,” she grumbled. “And how many handkerchiefs do you need to carry anyway?” She pulled out a wad of multicolored cloth from the last pocket and then paused with a confused look as my heart jumped into my throat and then dropped with a splash into my stomach. I watched in horror as she peeled the bundle apart and discovered my handkerchief and two pairs of women’s panties, one polka-dotted and the other white lace.

  “I can explain!” I stammered. Mom and Dad both turned to look at me, waiting for my perfectly reasonable excuse for why I had Daraxandriel’s and Melissa’s underwear in my pocket, and my brain just shorted out. I had nothing. “No, never mind, I can’t.”

  “Well,” Mom said finally, clearing her throat, “I’ll just put these with your things after they’re, ah, dry.”

  “Than
ks,” I said dully. I trudged off to take my shower, but not before overhearing Mom tell Dad, “Sleepovers sure have changed from when I was his age.”

  To my surprise, Daraxandriel and Lilith were actually talking when I entered the bedroom, although no one would mistake it for friendly banter.

  “Thou needs must attack from the flank!” Daraxandriel told Lilith in exasperation. “Thou art a rogue, not a knight!”

  “It’s too fast!” Lilith protested, stabbing at the keyboard. “I can’t get behind it!”

  “Then avoid its claws! Tap thy movement keys twice in succession, that thou might dodge its strike.”

  I stole a glance over Lilith’s shoulder. Her white-haired, leather-clad clone danced around a snarling werecat, slashing its fur with a pair of wicked knives. They were both at half-health and it wasn’t clear which one of them was going to come out on top in this battle. “So how’s it going?” I asked.

  “Great!” Lilith snapped.

  “Poorly,” countered Daraxandriel. “She lacks patience in battle.”

  “This would go a lot faster if I had better weapons,” her sister grumbled.

  “Thou needs must earn them. Now! Cut its throat as it rears at thee!”

  The werecat rose up on its hind legs to slash at Lilith’s character, but she rolled forward, ducked beneath its paws, and jabbed both blades into its neck. The cat howled in pain and knocked the rogue aside, but the damage was done. It slumped to the ground and expired in a spreading pool of its own blood. A moment later, its spirit drifted up from its corpse, glaring resentfully at its slayer.

  “There! Thou hast the right of it now!” The two women grinned at each other in triumph and then remembered they were supposed to be mad at each other. They both averted their eyes.

  “Well, that was mildly entertaining,” Lilith noted, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle on her sleeve. “I might continue on for a bit.”

  “Thou hast improved,” Daraxandriel admitted reluctantly, returning to her chair. “Do not forget thy loot.”

  “So you went rogue, did you?” I observed. “I would have thought you’d be a sorcerer like Dara.”

  “Hardly,” Lilith scoffed. “That’s not my style at all.”

  “But sneaking around and stabbing people in the back is?”

  “You make it sound like a bad thing, Peter,” she pouted. “I’m all about subtlety.”

  “Subtle like a brick to the head,” I muttered to myself. “So what’s your character’s name?” I peered at the character display in the corner of the screen. “Lilith Alexander?”

  “Dara suggested it,” she said off-handedly. “I thought it would be amusing.”

  “Her character is akin to mine in appearance,” Daraxandriel muttered, looking embarrassed. “By rights she should be styled likewise.”

  “I can hardly wait until you two meet up in the game,” I said dryly. Lilith Alexander was only level 4 so it would be a while before that happened, unless Dara decided to return to the low-level areas. “Don’t try to rush things,” I cautioned her as I grabbed another change of clothes from the dresser. “Things just get harder from here.”

  “On the contrary,” Lilith smiled, “I intend to press forward. My rise to power begins now.” Something about the way she said that sent chills down my spine.

  12

  I sometimes wonder how anybody gets along with anyone else. We all have our own opinions and quirks and habits that we don’t even realize we have, until someone insists on doing things differently. Their way may be just as valid as yours or maybe even better but it just doesn’t feel right.

  I imagine it’s a lot easier if you’re madly in love with the other person, so that little things like leaving the toilet seat up or taking the last brownie don’t even impinge on your consciousness. On the other end of the spectrum, casual friends can just walk away from one another if they start getting on each other’s nerves, until tempers cool down and they can pick up where they left off.

  Married people and anyone else forced by circumstances to be stuck with someone for an extended period of time – prisoners and shipwrecked castaways, for example – have to come up with some way to deal with each other’s foibles without giving in to the urge to strangle the other person. You can put up with a lot if you can see the light at the end of the tunnel but if there’s nothing but darkness ahead, any little thing – not replacing the empty toilet roll, folding the towels wrong, or, God forbid, snoring – can test the patience of a saint.

  Somehow, couples have to learn to let things slide and remind themselves every day that whatever it is that’s bothering them, it’s really not that important in the grander scheme of things. Compromise isn’t easy. Frankly, it’s a wonder any relationship lasts longer than a month.

  I warned Dad about Susie and, after he got over his incredulous surprise, he made Mom promise to leave Susie alone unless she approached her on her own. Mom needed an outlet for her excitement, though, so she started cleaning the house like we were about to have guests over. She mopped the kitchen floor, scrubbed the counters, polished the appliances, and vacuumed all the carpets, humming to herself the entire time and glancing eagerly at the front door every time she passed. I tried to bet Dad that she’d break her promise within five minutes of Susie’s return but he wouldn’t take me up on it.

  I spent most of that time watching Lilith work her way through all the starter quests in Glenhollow and finally head out into the countryside to make her virtual fame and fortune. I would have offered my advice but Daraxandriel beat me to it, pulling her chair up besides Lilith’s to point out the traps and pitfalls she’d encountered in the same area. There was none of their earlier sniping at each other and they even laughed at something I couldn’t catch. Their budding friendship should have been good news but it just made me feel vaguely uneasy.

  Mom appeared at one point with my neatly-folded laundry and a request to put it all away before it got wrinkled. I discovered the two articles of unexplained underwear discretely tucked into the middle of the stack and I just stuffed them both into one of Daraxandriel’s drawers, figuring that the odds of Melissa ever seeing her wearing her panties were vanishingly small. At least, I sincerely hoped they were.

  Susie still hadn’t returned home by the time we sat down for spaghetti dinner and Mom was starting to get antsy. I excused myself to go to the bathroom and pulled out my phone as soon as I closed the door.

  Mom knows about Cameron, I texted Susie.

  Her response came back mere seconds after I hit Send. I told you not to tell anyone! There was a long string of angry emoticons at the end.

  It wasn’t my fault. She figured it out on her own. Mostly. When will you be home?

  Never. I’m moving in with Cameron. Bring my stuff to his house.

  Does he know about this?

  I’ll tell him when dessert gets here.

  You’re having dinner with him?

  We’re at the Sizzler.

  Nice. He must really like you.

  Yeah. That one syllable immediately conjured up an image of Susie blushing, except that Susie never blushed. Weird.

  I’m glad you’re having a good time but you still need to come home tonight.

  Not if Mom’s going to be crazy about it.

  Dad made her promise to leave you alone. That earned me an eyeroll emoticon. I know but it’s the best we can do. Just throw Mom a bone and she’ll die a happy woman.

  What do you mean?

  Ask her for some motherly advice.

  Gagging emoticon.

  It doesn’t have to be about anything important. Ask her how long you should wait before you call Cameron.

  Why do I need to call him?

  To thank him for taking you out.

  Aren’t I supposed do that when he drops me off?

  Of course.

  Then why do I need to call him later?

  To let him know that you really appreciated him taking you out.

  Aren’t I supposed do tha
t when he drops me off?

  I needed an emoticon for heaving a sigh. Yes, but a follow-up call shows that you thought the date went well and you’re still interested in him.

  Oh. Before I could respond to that, she followed it up with, Dating is too complicated.

  Yes, it is. So you’ll be home soon?

  Maybe. Dessert is here. Stop bothering me.

  “Peter?” Dad knocked on the bathroom door. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Yes, fine!” I flushed the toilet and rinsed my hands in the sink for good measure. He looked me over suspiciously when I came out.

  “Your mother was concerned about how long you were taking,” he said.

  “I wasn’t gone that long,” I argued. “She’s just all wound up about Susie.”

  “That’s an understatement,” he noted dryly. “Any idea when she’s planning to be home?”

  “She’s having dinner with her, um, friend. She should be back after that.”

  “Ah. And you discovered that vital piece of information while contemplating life in the bathroom?” he smiled.

  “Yes, through that mystical bond brothers and sisters have,” I informed him, heading back to the kitchen.

  “Otherwise known as a cellphone.” I pretended not to hear him.

  Our dessert was neopolitan ice cream. Lilith took three scoops of chocolate, Daraxandriel matched her in vanilla, and I settled for one scoop of strawberry. Mom and Dad were more egalitarian in their choices, each getting a sampler of all three flavors. The two sisters raced each other to the bottom of their bowls, with Lilith declaring Daraxandriel the victor by a single spoonful and rewarding her with another scoop. Daraxandriel looked ridiculously pleased by her triumph.

  They returned to Lorecraft after the dishes were cleared away, leaving me with nothing to do except watch over their shoulders and wait for Susie to get home. After an hour, though, I was starting to wonder if she’d made good on her threat to move in with Cameron. It shouldn’t have taken them this long to share a sundae or whatever and then drive here from the Sizzler. The sun hadn’t set yet but there wasn’t a lot for a young couple to do on a Sunday evening in Hellburn, especially if they were being driven around by a parent.