Djinn and Tonic

by Jasinda Wilder

The evasions are putting up a wall between us, and I want to break it down, but I just don’t know how. I have to let it go, try to push it all away and simply enjoy the time I have with her.

  “Okay.” I reach out and take her hand. “I hear you loud and clear. No more questions, no more pushing. The last thing I’ll say is this: you’re not alone, in whatever you’re going through. At least, you don’t have to be. I’m here, and if you need anything, all you have to do is ask. I’ll be there, and I’ll do whatever is in my power to do, okay?”

  Leila nods, visibly fighting emotion. “Thank you, Carson. You don’t—you don’t know what it means to me to hear that.”

  “I’ve been on my own my entire adult life,” I tell her. “So I think I kind of do, at least a little.”

  She forces a smile. “So. How ’bout them Tigers, huh?”

  I laugh. “Nice try. I thought you might want to know, I officially closed Miriam’s case.”

  A more genuine smile, this time. “Good. I think, personally speaking, that you made the right decision. I’m not in your shoes, obviously, but from everything you told me…I’m not sure you’d ever get the answers you’re looking for, at least not that you could take anywhere official. If you’ve had this hard a time believing the evidence you’ve seen with your own eyes, imagine how hard it’d be to make a case for people who have only your word on everything?”

  I nod. “Exactly. I saw it, with my own eyes. I saw what Miriam could do, and I still have a hard time believing it. My captain is by-the-books, show-me-hard-evidence-or-you’ve-got-nothing. I’d never convince her of the case I’d have to make with the evidence I do have.”

  Leila moves the subject after that to the latest summer blockbuster movies, and I let her, all too willing to put that case behind me. Leila seems grateful that I’m willing to let the subject be changed, and she makes an obvious effort to focus on me rather than her internal debate.

  When we finish eating, I pay the bill and we leave the restaurant, strolling out into the warm evening. My car isn’t far away, so I drive us across the city and find a parking space off of West Jefferson Avenue, then tangle my hand in Leila’s and lead her across the busy street and past the huge metal fist of Joe Louis to the river’s edge. We lean side by side on the railing, watching boats ply the wide river, the lights of Windsor bright in the lowering dark of night, now just two people lost in the summer crowd of a beautiful Detroit evening.

  Leila seems content to simply stand next to me and hold my hand, and I’m not inclined to break the silence either. After a while, Leila turns and puts her back against the railing, pulling me to face her, her hands on my shoulders.

  “Carson, look. I’m not being fair to you. I know I’m not. It’s ridiculous of me to have all these secrets, and tell you they’re there, but not tell you about them. Especially with you being the kind of man you are—”

  “What kind of man am I?” I ask.

  “Well, you’re a detective. You have this drive to know the truth. Like Miriam’s case? You were obsessed with it. Every time you came into the bar, you were brooding over it. You couldn’t let it go.” Leila pulls me closer and I slide my hands around her waist, nodding for her to continue.

  “So here’s something I can tell you: My dad…sometimes his business isn’t entirely…legal, okay? Don’t ask me to elaborate, but that’s part of why I’m hesitant to talk about my past.”

  “I guessed as much when you told me he was a ‘businessman’,” I say, making air quotes with my fingers.

  “Okay, so that’s part of it, and it makes it tough on me. I don’t really want anything to do with his business, legitimate or otherwise. Plus, I’m still a woman, and according to his beliefs, women have no place in business. Yet he has all these expectations of me, and I…I can’t meet them. I just…can’t. Except if I don’t, I’ll end up alienating my whole family, and they’re all I have. They’re already close to disowning me for moving here, you know, for leaving them and for not being…‘traditional.’” She says that word with bitterness. “Plus, my dad is having trouble with his business, with the…the not-so-legal side of things, if you know what I mean? So I’m worried for him on top of everything else because, as I’m sure you’re aware, criminals aren’t exactly…forgiving.”

  I nod, absorbing and processing what she said. It has the ring of truth, but it still leaves me with more questions than answers; Leila is obviously trying to put my curiosity at ease without revealing anything too compromising.

  “Listen, I don’t care what your dad does. It’s out of my jurisdiction, for one thing. I’m a small-time Detroit detective, okay? I’m not DEA or FBI or anything, so there’s nothing I can do anyway. Even if I wanted to make a claim or a report, I’d need evidence to get them to make a move. And I’ve got enough on my plate going on in Detroit that I just don’t have the attention to spare to look into some drug dealer in Chicago, or whatever it is he does. But all of that aside, I understand if you can’t talk about it, even though I suspected as much anyway. But—” I hesitate, and then go for broke, speaking the deep-down truth.

  I rub the stubble on my cheek, then return my hand to her waist. “That’s not what’s really bothering me, Leila. It’s that you don’t trust me. I know we’ve only known each other a short time, and I have no right to demand every little secret and detail about you and your life, but…I want them. That’s the honest truth, Leila. I want all the details, and I want the secrets. I want you to trust me.” I grip her waist tightly, pin her with my eyes, let her see into me. “The other part of what I’m feeling here is that I know there’s more to it than just your dad’s occupation, legal or otherwise. That’s another evasion, a half-truth, or a truth meant to distract me from the deeper reality. There’s something else, something major that you’re holding back.”

  Leila tries to speak, but I hold up a hand. “Just wait a second, please. Just let me say this. I like you, Leila. I like you a lot. God, that sounds so juvenile, like we’re in grade school or some shit. ‘Do you like me, check yes or no.’ You know? But I…I want to be with you.” The words stick in my throat, not wanting to come out, but I force them out, push them past the lump of nerves. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known in my life, and I’m crazy attracted to you, on every level. But, if you have these secrets, I’m honestly not sure where this can go. If you have issues to resolve, or whatever, I can wait. I can give you time, if that’s what you need.”

  Leila’s features crumple with emotion. She seems on the verge of tears, and I can’t decipher whether she’s happy that I told her how I feel, or upset because she doesn’t feel the same, or if it’s something else entirely.

  She takes several deep breaths. “Carson, god…You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear that. You really don’t. I want to be with you too…”

  “But?”

  “But I’m not sure it’s possible, no matter what I want. And the ‘why’ of it is all tied up in the rest of what I can’t talk about. The deeper reality that I can’t explain to you.”

  I shake my head, not quite able to accept that. “So you want to be with me, but you’re not sure you can, but you can’t tell me why you can’t?”

  Leila just nods, not meeting my eyes, head lowered, face in her hands. Her shoulders start to shake, and I realize she’s crying. Not just crying, but sobbing. I’m completely at a loss for a moment, then I do the only thing I know to do: I lift her face to mine and kiss her. She pulls away at first, but I follow her, putting a hand on her cheek, fingers splayed across her jaw, my thumb brushing away her hot tears.

  She hiccups, laughing and sobbing, and pulls back slightly, not out of my embrace but enough so she can catch her breath. She meets my eyes, hers sparkling with tears and a thousand emotions I have no words for.

  I rest my forehead against hers, our lips not quite touching. “You are so beautiful, Leila,” I whisper.

  I wish I could express what I’m feeling for her, but I simply can’t summon the right words.r />
  I decide to give her an easy out. “You don’t have to tell me anything, okay? I don’t need to know. If you can’t be with me, I’ll understand, and I’ll respect that.” I start to pull away, but Leila puts her hand behind my head, tangling her fingers in my hair, and tugs me back toward her into another kiss.

  She kisses me with a passion that seems desperate, as if she needs me and can’t get enough, as if to get as much of me as she can while she has the chance. I close the gap between us so our hips are pressed together, kissing her back with the same fierce need. It feels like she’s saying goodbye yet again, an all-too familiar sensation now, and the sense of desperation I’m getting from her is contagious, washing through me in palpable waves.

  A breeze kicks up from the river, blowing over us and ruffling our hair, rippling our clothes. It’s a warm, steady wind at first, the kind of breeze I’d expect from a summer night on the Detroit River. But as our kiss deepens, tongues flicking out and exploring tentatively, hands wandering and caressing, the wind starts to pick up, blowing harder and hotter, buffeting us from all directions, skirling around us in wild eddies. It feels like we’re standing in a river of wind, like we’re caught in a jetstream. I’m blown against her so we’re pressed against the railing with enough force that I put a hand on the railing to steady us. People around us are beginning to flee, huddling together, shrieking as hats and purses are plucked away and tossed by the wind, now blowing violently.

  Leila pulls away to break the kiss, looking around at the now-empty river walk, which only moments before had been teeming with people. The wind is playing with her hair, blowing it around her in black waves that never seem to tangle. She meets my gaze, her eyes steady but fraught with emotion.

  The river behind us is wild with white-capped waves, the clouds above shredded and blown apart. Trees are bent sideways, and the few people still making their way out of Hart Plaza lean forward into the wind, shielding their eyes from the dust and dirt and grit lacing the gale-force winds. I look back to Leila, and what I see now makes me question my own sanity: the wind isn’t buffeting against her as it is me; she’s not being knocked around by the constantly shifting gusts of battering wind. It’s as if the wind is blowing through her, as if she’s not quite solid, somehow. The wind gusts and pushes against her without moving her, and the edges of her form dim and turn translucent, as if she could fade away and become part of the sudden storm. When the wind changes direction, the edges of her form dissolve into nothingness, flickering and fluttering and fading away in the same direction.

  She is the wind.

  Through all of this, her gaze never wavers from mine. Her dark eyes have been replaced by blinding, brilliant white orbs, their substance whirling and moving and shifting with each gust. She’s showing me something, I realize. She wants me to see this, to see the wind curling and skirling around her like a living, visible thing, her body disappearing into the substance of the gale, her eyes white as cumulus clouds lit by the sun.

  Then she kisses me again, and when our lips touch, the wind howls around us with renewed hurricane force. I hear a scrape and a crash, glancing out of the corner of my eye to see a big orange-and-white construction pylon tumbling away like a plastic bag caught in a breeze. I taste wind on her breath, taste the dust of a thousand faraway places, taste the green glow of sunlight on leaves, taste trees bending in storm winds, taste ocean salt and clean cool rain.

  Around us, the howling wind reaches a crescendo, roaring around us to block out the world, pushing away problems and questions. All I know, now, is her, Leila, a soft mass of curves caught up in my arms, her body blown away by the wind into near invisibility yet somehow still solid and soft and real in my hands. I can feel her heart beating against my chest, can feel the heat of her body radiating against mine, the soft skin of her arms wrapped around my neck. I let my hands explore downward to lift the hem of her skirt, the soft silk of her thighs under my palms changing to the firm muscle of her taut ass. She pushes back against me, and I know she’s feeling the hardness of my desire crushed between us. The roaring winds tug at us, push and pull us, and I suddenly feel weightless, my stomach dropping away, feel myself borne up by the constant rush of air beneath my feet, pushing me skyward.

  I open my eyes and break the kiss, glance to one side and see the earth falling away beneath us, Hart Plaza and the fist sculpture and the river all visible through a vortex of dust and newspaper and leaves and lost articles of clothing. I’m standing on air somehow, clutching Leila to my chest, standing at the center of a massive tornado a hundred and fifty feet above the ground.

  Leila touches my jaw to turn my face back to hers, a small smile on her lips, her alien all-white eyes still somehow familiar. She kisses my jaw, my neck, nudges aside the collar of my button-down shirt to kiss my chest, and my breath catches at the tender affection of her lips on my skin. Her hands on my back slide down to slip under the waistband of my pants and my underwear to clutch my skin, kissing, kissing, kissing me as if she can’t ever get enough.

  All this as we are unexplainably, impossibly airborne.

  Somewhere inside my head, I’m freaking out, my mind screaming questions, but I shove them away. I know what’s happening is impossible, but I don’t care. I know I should be terrified, I know I should be asking how this is happening, but I don’t ask. I know Leila is making this happen somehow, and that scares me, but I ignore that, too.

  Her lips on me, her hands unbuttoning my jeans, her breasts and her breath, this is all I know.

  Then, abruptly, she jerks her hands away from me, only moments from having me in her hand. I’m left gasping, aching, trembling, but I know from the look in her now-human eyes that the craziness of the situation is impinging on her consciousness.

  The winds slow and lower us gently to the ground once more.

  Leila falls against me, sobbing. “I can’t—I can’t…I want you, but I just can’t. It’s not fair to you, and—god, I’m so sorry…” and then her words fail her and she succumbs to the tears.

  I wrap my arms around her shoulders, holding her in an embrace, not speaking, just holding her until the storm of tears slows.

  “Why? Why can’t you? Please tell me,” I murmur.

  She shakes her head. “Please, please…don’t ask that. It’s too painful.” She looks up at me, her mascara running. “Don’t you see, though? Do you see what I can’t say?”

  “Yes,” I answer. “I see. But I also see that there’s still something huge keeping you from me. I saw what Miriam was capable of. I see what you’re capable of. I can accept it, I can believe it. It may take some time to adjust and come to grips with the truth, but I can accept who…and what...you are. But that’s not the problem. Not really. If I knew the real, true obstacle keeping us apart, I might be able to figure out a way to solve it.”

  She shakes her head. “No, you couldn’t. It’s…impossible.”

  “Why?”

  Leila groans, bumping her forehead against my chest. “Don’t ask that. Don’t make me lie. I can’t tell you. It’s for your own protection as much as anything.”

  That only irritates me more, and I let the irritation show in my voice. “I don’t need protection, Leila. I can take care of myself.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Leila shoots back, an edge to her voice, waving at the overturned cars, street signs ripped out of concrete. “You saw what I just did. Can you defend yourself against that? I had you a hundred and fifty feet in the air, held up only with my power. Now imagine if I was an enemy, someone out to kill you…remember Miriam? What you told me she could do?”

  I try to imagine that kind of power but directed against me. My mind boggles, and resists, refuses to capitulate to the truth. “Maybe…maybe it was just a coincidence. I mean, it could have been a freak windstorm or—”

  “Carson,” Leila interrupts. “Don’t play stupid, all right? You saw that, you felt it, and you know it was me. You wanted me to trust you and I did, at great risk to myself, I should add. I
shouldn’t have done that, I shouldn’t have shown you that. It goes against the oldest and most basic laws of my people, so don’t insult me by pretending it was some freak coincidence. If you can’t handle the truth, don’t ask for it.” She jerks away from me, walking out of the plaza, straightening her clothes and running her fingers through her hair.

  I adjust my own clothes and jog after her, catching at her arm.

  “Leila,” I say, spinning her to face me.

  “No, Carson. Just don’t. If you can’t believe the truth when it’s right in front of you, this won’t work. And nothing has changed—you have to understand that. I’m still bound by—” Leila stops and starts over, facing away from me, watching the cars rush down Jefferson Avenue. “I can’t be with you, whether you believe what you just experienced or not. So I guess it doesn’t matter. This is out of my hands, and certainly out of yours.”

  My mind and heart are at war with each other: my mind is telling me that what I’d seen and felt was impossible, but my heart is telling me it doesn’t matter; I love her whether she’s some weird tornado-woman or not.

  I love her? That thought takes me by surprise, shocking me into stillness.

  Then what she’s just said filters through to my awareness.

  “You can’t be with me? I thought you just weren’t sure?”

  “Carson, why can’t you just stop asking me so many questions?” She claws her fingers through her long, loose black hair, tips her head back and growls under her breath. “The truth is I’ve never been free to be with you, not from the very beginning. I’ve been trying to convince myself I could find a way around it, but…I can’t. I can’t. I’ve gone in circles about this so many times, wishing, hoping, fighting against the facts, and…there’s just nothing I can do.” Leila finally meets my eyes, and I see a sadness in her gaze, a resignation laced with anger. “I…I care more for you than I should, Carson, and the worst part is I’ll never be able to be with you. Not ever. I never should have kissed you. I never should have even let whatever this is between us get started, and I really shouldn’t have let things go this far. It’s not fair to you, and it only makes what I have to do all the more painful for me, because now I know what it feels like—what could have—” She breaks off, fighting tears, pain rife in her gaze.