“Miriam!” Ben’s voice cut through her reverie.
“What, Ben?” She tried to focus on him, but his face was wavering and splitting into two.
“I said, I’m sorry about the other night.”
“You did?”
“I said it, like, three times. You were staring off into la-la land or something.”
“Oh, sorry.” She didn’t want to talk about that night. “It’s…just…don’t let it happen again, okay?”
“I won’t, I promise,” Ben said. “So. How do you like your steak?” He always asked that, and she always told him she didn’t like it. Tonight, she was more interested in getting home.
She forced down another bite, wishing Ben’s face would come into focus. She was looking at him, but somehow it was Jack’s face that would slide into view, looking at her with his wide, kind blue eyes. “He’s great—I mean, it’s great.” Oh, shit, she thought. He’ll catch that slip. Too much shiraz was catching up with her.
“He?” Ben asked, the suspicion apparent in his voice.
“I meant it. The steak. The cow. He, the cow, is what I meant.” Her words were coming slurred.
Ben burst into laughter. “You’re drunk!” He seemed to think this was funny. “Oh, god, you’re wasted. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this drunk.”
“Yeah, I may have had a bit too much wine.” Miriam set down her fork and wobbled to her feet. “I want to go to the ladies’ room. Then we can go?”
Ben chuckled again. “Yeah, sure. You gonna make it to the bathroom on your own?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
“You sure? I can help you, if you want.” He waggled his eyebrows and winked.
She just shook her head and concentrated on taking one step at a time, wishing she’d worn flats instead of heels. She didn’t have to pee; she just needed a few seconds away from Ben. Miriam touched up her makeup, more for something to do to pass the time than because she cared whether she looked good for Ben. When she ran out of stalling tactics, she stood at the mirror and stared at her reflection, hating Ben, hating herself for being stuck with him. Wishing, more than anything, that she was with Jack.
She wasn’t, though. She had to leave the bathroom; she had to go back out to Ben and try to keep him calm until she could escape home.
Taking a deep breath, Miriam returned to the table, keeping thoughts of Jack firmly out of her mind.
* * *
Ben’s apartment was always too hot, and it smelled like cheap cologne and old coffee. They’d gone back to his place, of course. He hated her apartment. It was too small, he said, and he didn’t like being right above where he worked. It was three miles from his place to the bar, and Miriam had walked those miles more times than she could count. She often ended up stranded at his place without a ride home.
Now they were back at his place, and both of them were tipsy; Ben was fumbling to untie his shoes, tossing his keys on the microwave, peeling his shirt off. He swayed across the room to where she sat on the couch. Miriam felt his hand on her knee, his lips on her neck. She swallowed in an attempt to fight back the sudden rush of nausea in her throat.
“I’m not feeling so good right now, Ben,” she said.
He either didn’t hear her, or didn’t care. His hand slid farther up her thigh, under the hem of her dress, and his lips found hers. She couldn’t kiss him back. All she could do was keep her eyes closed and push away the urge to vomit.
But no go.
She lurched to her feet, tripped, stumbled, and kicked her heels off as she ran to the bathroom. For several long, painful minutes, Miriam heaved into the toilet, acid burning her throat, her stomach lurching in protest. She felt Ben’s hands holding her hair back, heard his voice murmuring something meant to be comforting. Finally, the nausea passed, and she felt better. Strange how that works, she thought. She hated throwing up, but she always felt better afterward. She rinsed her mouth and brushed her teeth with the extra toothbrush Ben kept for her.
Maybe he’d take her home now.
No such luck. He was waiting for her in his bedroom, stripped down to his boxers, sending a text.
“Come on, baby, come lie down with me,” he said, setting down the phone.
“God, Ben, give it a rest. I just threw up.” It would have been better to remain sick. Maybe she could vomit again.
“Don’t you feel better, though? Anyway, it’s our anniversary, and I switched shifts with Eric so we could be together tonight.” He stood up and took her by the hand, pulling her to the bed. He kissed her chest between her breasts, unzipping her dress with one hand, the other exploring upward from her knees, his fingers clumsy and rough.
She was still drunk, and she couldn’t summon the energy to resist him, so she stood unmoving, eyes closed. His fingers looped through the hem of her panties, pulling them down, and then his fingers continued their exploration upward. Her dress was on the floor now, and he was unhooking her bra and kissing her throat; her body was responding, not quite against her will. She had once wanted to love him. Well, not exactly. She had wished she could love him, and tonight that would have to be enough. She had to get through this somehow, after all.
She was lying down on her back, and he was kissing her breasts, playing with her nipples, moving downward, kissing her thighs and between them, and all she wanted was to push his head away, but she didn’t dare. He rarely put this much effort into sex, so maybe she should try to enjoy it while it lasted.
She closed her eyes and let go, let herself pretend she liked it. Then, suddenly, Jack’s face appeared in her thoughts. He was gazing at her, and she couldn’t help but dream, but wonder, how he would feel pressed up against her, warm skin to warm skin, his hands tender and gentle on her body, his eyes watching her with real love. She lost herself in the dream, muzzy, still-drunk thoughts mixing reality with imagination. She felt someone push inside her and move above her. She knew it was Ben, but she just couldn’t help wishing, wishing, wishing it was Jack. She had to keep herself from crying out for fear she’d say Jack’s name by mistake. Her body was with Ben, but her heart was with Jack, and her mind was too confused to make sense of anything.
Again she felt her blood begin to boil, and this time it didn’t build up slowly. No, this time it was abrupt and full of force. She was alight all at once, feeling a pool of power grow within her, burgeoning into a well of magma that had to be released, but she didn’t know how, didn’t know what it was that she was feeling. It wasn’t sex; it was something else, something new. It was a fire in her blood, painful in its intensity, and it was growing hotter by the moment. She had to release it. She imagined an explosion in her mind, visualized a bomb going off, put all of the heat in her blood into the imagined detonation. Time stopped for a fraction of a second, and then she felt a rush of nova-hot heat run through her. She was no longer Miriam; she was fire, she was heat.
Suddenly, Ben rolled off her, cursing. “Shit, Miriam!” he shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She felt drained now. “What’s wrong, Ben? What happened?”
“You burned me!”
“What? What do you mean, I burned you?” She peered at him blearily and noticed the skin on his torso had reddened, as if he’d been sunburned, or scalded by boiling water.
“I don’t know! Your skin, it was…hot, like, burning hot. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you, but it hurts like a bitch. You sick or something?”
“I don’t know, Ben. Maybe. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Sorry isn’t gonna make it hurt less, you crazy bitch.” He was angry now. He hated showing pain.
“Well, I said I’m sorry. I don’t know what else you want from me. I don’t know what happened.” She slid off the bed, wary of his rage.
“You’re a goddamn freak is what happened.” He lashed out and slapped her, open-palm, across her face.
Something inside her snapped, and she hit him back with a closed fist, as hard as she could. Be
n stumbled backward, clutching his jaw in surprise. Rage filled his face, flushing his tanned skin darker. He stood up, his fists clenching at his sides. Miriam wanted to run, but refused. She wanted to scramble away from him, jump through the window stark naked and flee, anything but let him hit her again. But she refused to show him fear. She glared back at him, fierce, defiant. He took a half-step toward her, and she tensed, waiting for the blow. But it never came. He turned away with a growled string of curses, put on a pair of gym shorts and a tank top, grabbed his keys, and left. He’d never left before. She felt relief, but she also knew that he would keep his rage pent up, releasing it later, twice as bad.
Miriam turned to the window above his bed and watched him leave. He was looking down at his phone, texting as he walked. Almost at his parking space, he looked up and stopped, almost dropping his phone. A red Maserati sat in his designated parking spot, his truck nowhere to be seen. He sorted through his keys and seemed stunned to find not the Chevy key, but a different one.
Ben turned to look at Miriam through the window, then back again at the car, a calculating expression on his face. He pressed a button on the key fob, and the headlights flashed, accompanied by a brief horn blast. Ben trailed his fingers across the hood, stroking the lines of the car, an affectionate gesture. He rested his hand on the door handle, hesitated, and , with one more glance at Miriam, he slid down into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. He rubbed his hands together with glee as the engine rumbled to life. The door closed, the engine roared, the tires shrieked, and Ben was gone.
Miriam scanned the parking lot, but all was still and silent. Ben’s beat-up S-10 was truly gone, without explanation. With no logical explanation, at least. Ben had just looked at her as if thinking she had something to do with it, and Miriam found herself wondering the same thing. Twice now something odd had happened, either during or after sex. Both times something Ben wanted appeared out of the blue, and both times she felt as if she were going to catch on fire, literally and physically.
Was she making these things happen?
Miriam shook her head, refusing to entertain the idea. Freak coincidences. Hot flashes, maybe. A prank by one of Ben’s Corps buddies? But none of his friends could afford a car like the one Ben had just driven off in, so that couldn’t be it. She didn’t know how it had gotten there since they’d come home from the restaurant. She honestly didn’t. Magic? Magic wasn’t real. There was no such thing as magic. And certainly not in any way connected to her. She didn’t even know why the word “magic” had come to mind.
There was no such thing as magic.
It was all nonsense. Coincidence.
But, yet again, Miriam was trying to convince herself of something she didn’t believe.
* * *
As she walked home, Miriam tried not to think about the strange business with the car and the cell phone. She tried not to think about Ben. Or Jack. Instead, she turned her thoughts inward, to herself.
Her memory wandered back in time, to the time before her dad had died. Her dad had been her hero, her rock, and when he was alive, it had been the only time she’d ever felt truly loved. Her mother was a difficult person, betrothed to Miriam’s father when she was barely more than a girl herself. Miriam suspected that her mother had never accepted the match, or even tried to like her husband, much less love him. Khadeeja al-Mansur was a cold and distant woman who had never wanted children. She had treated Miriam like a nuisance her entire life, and then when Miriam’s father died, things only got worse. Miriam had been relegated to servanthood, forced to cook and clean and stay silent, lest her mother’s short temper explode.
Miriam tried to remember her father’s face but found it difficult. She was only eleven when he died of a heart attack. She tried to push that memory away as well, but it was stubborn. The day he died, she had been in the bathroom, curling her hair before school. She heard her father grunt, and then she heard the thud of a body hitting the floor. Khadeeja hadn’t screamed or cried. She had watched with a detached expression on her face as her husband had clutched his chest, gasping for breath, eyes wide and frightened. Miriam had been the one to dial 911, to hold her father’s hand as the tears formed in his fearful, wrinkled eyes. By the time the ambulance arrived, Aziz had gone still, and Miriam was alone in the apartment. Her mother sat on the front step of their Dearborn home, smoking a Virginia Ultra Slim, conversing desultorily on the phone in Arabic with her sister.
Later, Miriam had wept alone in her room; her mother had never cried, even at the funeral. She never talked to her daughter about death, or tried to console Miriam.
Six years passed, uncomfortably and slowly. Miriam stayed at school longer and longer each day, joining clubs and teams simply as an excuse not to go home. Then, a week before her seventeenth birthday, Miriam had come home to a silent house. This was not unusual; her mother spent much of her time at her sister’s house across town, or with the neighbors. This time, however, something had felt…off. Wrong. Miriam hadn’t been able to put her finger on what it was, but a tension in her belly told her something had changed.
She searched the house carefully, half-expecting to find her mother’s body in the bathroom. Instead she had found a stack of money on the kitchen table—two thousand dollars in twenties and fifties—along with a curled yellow Post-it note in her mother’s crabbed scrawl: You’re on your own. No signature, no “I love you.” Just two thousand bucks and four words. Six months later, the house had been foreclosed on and repossessed, leaving Miriam with no home, no family, and no income.
Her father’s family was still in Iraq, so there was no help from them. Her mother’s sister claimed that she couldn’t take in another mouth, not with four of her own children to feed. Miriam’s aunt had allowed her stay with them for one night, and then the next morning she’d given her a couple hundred dollars and sent her on her way, refusing to answer the door if Miriam came by after that.
Miriam’s only real friend from school, Yanira, had begged her father to let Miriam stay with them for a few weeks. Yanira’s father had agreed, and Miriam had found a job waiting tables at a Leo’s Coney Island. That had been the start of Miriam’s independence. She saved enough money while living in Yanira’s basement to buy a car, and that beat-up old Volvo had been her home until she could afford an apartment of her own.
The day she moved into her own place changed Miriam’s outlook on life. Up until then she had simply been trying to survive, one day at a time. She had spent nights lying awake, wondering what she had done to make her mother abandon her, and what she could have done differently. When Miriam laid her head on the pillow that first night in her new place, she realized that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and couldn’t have done anything different. The pain of that knowledge didn’t go away, and the hole in her heart hadn’t vanished, but it was a start.
Then she met Nick, and things had changed on her again….
Glancing at the time, Miriam shook herself, refusing to think about Nick. Down that road a world of bad memories waited…memories she did not want to relive. Besides, she was almost home and could hardly wait to get into bed.
“Miriam.” Jack’s voice startled her so much she yelped and put a hand to her chest to still her hammering heart. Jack just laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He was outside her apartment, sitting on the bottom step, waiting for her.
“What are you doing here, Jack?” She wanted her voice to sound harder than it did, and wished it sounded less relieved.
She didn’t want to be so glad to see him. She didn’t trust herself around Jack. His eyes delved too deeply into her, and his hands on her body had excited her in a way she’d never felt before. She wanted him, but she couldn’t let herself have him. If she got too close, Ben would find out and hurt him. Or else Jack would change, as men always did. They would seem nice at first. And the nicer they were at the start, the nastier they became later. That was a truth Miriam had learned the hard way, through black eyes and bro
ken ribs and excuses no one ever believed.
“I wanted to see you,” Jack said. He made it sound so natural, and the sound of his voice, the sincerity in his kind blue eyes, pushed all her concerns away, making a lie of her fears.
Damn it, Jack. He was making it hard on her. I don’t want to see you. The words wouldn’t come out. “Well, here I am,” she said. It was better than throwing herself into his arms, but not by much. She kept her eyes down. If she let him see her eyes, he’d ask what was wrong, and she’d tell him….
His fingers touched her chin, tilting her head up. Oh, lord, there they were, those bright blue eyes that seemed to see into her heart, past her defenses and into the soft core of her soul. “You’re upset,” he said.
“I’m fine.” She didn’t even believe herself as she said it.
Jack rolled his eyes. “If by ‘fine’ you mean upset, then yes, you’re fine,” he said.
How the hell could he know how she was feeling just by looking at her? She had always thought she had a pretty good poker face, but Jack saw straight through her to the real emotions she tried to keep hidden.
“I’m fine, Jack. Leave me alone.” Her only defense was anger.
Jack didn’t seem bothered. “You didn’t even see me until I just said your name. That’s not fine. And why the hell are you coming home at one-thirty in the morning, on foot? Is something wrong with your car again?”
Questions…so many questions. Each answer would lead to more questions, and then he’d get all sensitive on her, and she’d let him in to her kitchen to talk, and then she’d kiss him, and then she’d wake up and he’d be gone. Once they get into your pants, they’re as good as gone. Or they stick around just to get back into your pants, and then you can’t get rid of them, and once they’re tired of you, they leave. And that was the preferable outcome.
Jack and Djinn Page 5
