“You said was. He was like your husband,” Charles said, slowly picking up his pizza again, though judging from the reluctant way he ate it, his appetite hadn’t yet returned.
“He loved me, but not as much as he loves Maya,” Valorie replied. “It sucks donkey balls, but that’s what it is. Now, I’m not inclined to be much more charitable to your wife as you are to Bell, but I would have wanted you to move on. The good part of me anyway.”
“And the less good part of you would have wanted me to die miserable and alone because I wasn’t with you?” Charles said with a wry smile.
“I’d be lying if I pretended to be a better person than that.”
“We all have a little bad in us,” Charles said. “After all, I would have rather you be turning tricks while strung out on heroin than for you to be dead.”
“I guess you still hold on to the adage that ‘where there’s life, there’s hope’.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I don’t believe in that,” Valorie said. “But I’ll take the sentiment as it was meant.”
“And I’ll take your dislike of my wife as a compliment to me,” Charles responded. “She’s a good woman, Valorie.”
“You wouldn’t love her if she wasn’t.”
“She doesn’t remind me a thing of you,” Charles said. “I don’t think I could have handled it if she’d had anything in common. We’re a good match, you and I. My wife and I are a different good match.”
“You said are.”
“That’s why I asked about the wish,” he replied.
Valorie lowered her head and sighed. “As long as we’re in here, we’ll be like we were before I got wished into Arcanium. We can stay in here as long as we need. When we leave, though, it’s up to me whether we’re really taken all the way back to start over again or whether…this is it.”
“But it was my wish,” Charles said.
“Your wish. Bell’s rules,” Valorie said. “He’s been concerned for me lately.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter.
“Ennui,” Valorie said. She patted his thigh. “It’s just an existential crisis, so you can relax. No one’s beaten me in years.”
“I’m never going to get used to what you went through, am I?” Charles asked. “I mean, if you could hear how you sound…”
“I know how I sound. I also know what I’ve lived. So believe me when I tell you it’s not as bad as it seems. No worse than the real world, although I wouldn’t say it was better either,” Valorie said. “You’re not condemning me to a lifetime of morale-improving whippings and drudgery if I stay, Charles. So don’t let’s start over just so I don’t have to be in Arcanium, all right? There are other ways out of the circus. Bell offered me this one for now. That’s all. And I don’t want to force you to start over with me if the wish you made was more wishful than real. I wouldn’t do that to you. You have a life. You have a woman you love. You have two children you love.”
“And occasionally want to strangle, but yes. Elian hit his rebellious years, and I swear, that boy’s not going to make it to eighteen if he doesn’t get his nose on straight,” Charles said, shaking his head as he finished his slice.
“What about your daughter?” Valorie asked. It wasn’t as hard to talk about his kids as she’d suspected. She and Charles had both been in enthusiastic favor of children prior to their engagement.
But in Arcanium, no one had children. Period. Arcanium wasn’t a family circus in more ways than one.
“She either hasn’t hit her rebellious phase or we’re going to have to push her into one for her own good,” Charles replied. “Kendra’s an angel. I wish Janice and I could take credit for it, but both of us are dull, indecent and downright cruel in comparison to her. I swear, the Catholic Church is going to make her a saint if she keeps things up.”
“How do you push someone into a rebellious phase?” Valorie asked.
“We’re not sure yet. Mix some rum into her smoothies? Give her some magic brownies? We’ll think of something,” Charles said.
“Thank God I can tell when you’re kidding.”
“They’re good kids,” Charles murmured. He gazed at his empty plate with unfocused eyes.
“You wouldn’t lose them for the world,” Valorie finished for him. “And I’m not the world.”
“You were once,” he said, setting his plate aside. He slipped his hand into hers.
There was an arrowhead in her throat when she swallowed.
If Bell had just, poof, granted the wish, Charles wouldn’t have known what he had lost. And Valorie wouldn’t have known what she’d taken. This way, Valorie would know at least until the wish was granted, and so would Charles. And maybe somehow they’d know even when they were taken back. Maybe the circumstances of their staying together would feel off. Maybe not, but the possibilities were enough to give a woman pause before taking what wasn’t hers anymore.
Charles, like this, in his twenties, in their apartment—this Charles was hers. But as soon as they stepped out of the tent and Valorie had to make her decision, Charles wouldn’t be hers anymore. The last thing she wanted to do was steal another woman’s man away, just so she could experience the life she’d thought she should’ve had. If she’d been meant to have it, she wouldn’t have come to Arcanium, she wouldn’t have made the wish and she wouldn’t have stayed in Arcanium all this time.
“But you moved on,” Valorie said. “And so did I,” she added before Charles could respond with anything like an apology.
“This…” Charles gestured to the replication of their apartment bedroom. “All this. You. I came here because I couldn’t get you out of my head, Valorie, and that’s because I never let you out of my heart. Once I saw you, once I saw that you were alive and amazing and just as beautiful a person as you were when you left—”
“More amazing, less beautiful a person, but I guess there has to be a balance,” Valorie said with a shrug and a self-deprecating smile. “Just as much alive.”
“I never got to say goodbye,” Charles said. He tightened his grip on her hand. “I know that most people who have their family or their lover ripped from them never get to say goodbye either. We got more of a goodbye than most. We literally said it to each other before you left for the circus. And we said I love you. But the two of us—the organism of our relationship—we never got…”
“Closure. Is that what we were having, from the time you kissed me to now? Closure sex?”
Charles rested his head against the headboard.
“I’m being blunt, Charles. I’m not accusing you of anything,” Valorie said. “That’s what it felt like to me too.”
“I missed you. I loved you. I still do.” He turned back to her and brought her hand to his mouth, saluting it with a kiss. “The love didn’t die just because I moved on. I can’t help but think it’s still not fair to you, coming back, putting you in this position where you have to make the decision, putting you in the situation where you might have been pulled into the past against your own wishes.”
“My, that’s mighty mature of you, sir,” Valorie said.
“Yeah, that happened without me noticing,” Charles said, laughing. “I think around the time we started teaching our son basic boundaries and ethics.”
“Before he knew how to say those things, I’m sure. I don’t think I got mature,” she said, closing her eyes. “I got older in my head, but I don’t think I ever got mature. It’s like the way that seasons change but they still follow a pattern year after year. Things moved forward for you. I moved on, but I don’t know whether it’s really possible to move forward in Arcanium.”
“Maybe that’s your ennui right there,” Charles said. “You’re ready to move forward, but this circus place doesn’t let you.”
Maybe, she thought. But while the statement sounded rational, it didn’t ring true.
“So are you done with me now?” Valorie asked. “Or do you think we could have a little longer?�
�
“I could take a rest,” Charles said. “Hold you like we used to spoon in the night. But, Valorie, I’ll never be done with you. God, it hurts hearing you say those things. Did that demon tell you that?”
“Not that demon, no,” Valorie replied. “I ended the relationship with Bell. And I ended the second one with the second demon. He as good as told me that, but our arrangement was temporary from the start.”
“That could be your problem right there,” he said, drawing her down under the sheets.
She put her plate on the nightstand and snuggled back against him. “What?”
“You keep attaching yourself to demons.”
“Charles…”
“No, bear with me. Speaking off the cuff, completely open-minded. No judgment on this place. No religious commentary on whether or not you should be with demons. But you’re trying to make a go of it with demons, and you said yourself that they’re not like us. Fundamentally, not just culturally.”
Charles’ breath was warm against the back of her neck, fluttering against the wisps of hair there. He wasn’t as warm as John. Only a demon could be, and only if they were doing it on purpose.
“You might be looking for meaning—love—in the wrong place. I’m no theologian. I’m just a humble guidance counselor,” he said, stroking the line of her collarbone as he spoke. “But it seems fruitless to look to demons to help you grow or get anywhere you want to go. Isn’t their aim to be an obstacle?”
“Bell’s not a demon,” Valorie said.
“Okay, he’s not if you say he’s not. If you say he loved you, just not the right way, then he did. But the second one was a demon. Were you going to turn to another demon to try to move forward?”
“No,” she said slowly.
“Did you find yourself a man? A real man, not someone who kind of looks like one and has the, um, equipment.”
“He’s not exactly a boyfriend, Charles,” Valorie said. “And he’s supposed to be temporary too.”
“Supposed to be?” Charles asked.
“I can’t bring him with me if I leave. He’s still got time to serve, and I mean that how it sounded,” Valorie said.
Charles huffed his laughter against her vertebrae. “A genie, a demon and a criminal? How did I end up the most normal of your men?”
“There was Kasmir.”
“Oh yeah, forgot about him. Perfectly normal.”
Valorie slapped his upper arm. Bad breakup.
“You are really normal,” Valorie murmured, running her fingertips over his arm much like he stroked her collarbone, to touch him, to feel the silkiness of his arm hair against her skin, to remind herself that he was really there—although now the trouble was remembering that what she was feeling wasn’t real. “Completely normal, from head to toe. You’re unique, but you’re normal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“You’re just not normal anymore,” Charles finished for her this time. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
They were finishing each other’s sentences. It should have been right, she thought as she tried again to swallow.
But the synchronicity now was artificial. It was only because they were their young selves again—their physically young selves. Their respective soul beats would be out of sync the second they walked out.
“Sleep with me, Charles,” Valorie whispered. She twisted around in his arms to embrace him face to face, tucking a leg between his. “A few more hours. Please.”
“There’s so much I want to do for you,” he whispered, holding her even more tightly, “but I know I can’t do it because we can’t go back. I mean, we can, but we can’t, not after all this time and what we’ve put into these last twenty years. I love you, Valorie.”
“I love you too, Charles,” Valorie replied.
“And this, I can do.”
She rested on his arm and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to, because it meant she’d lose precious hours with him.
But she was exhausted, and so was he.
* * * *
When they woke up, they hadn’t moved, but Charles was hard again, as tended to happen even after rigorous sex. Almost without thinking, Charles moved onto his back, Valorie slid her leg out from between his and straddled him. She shifted until the head pressed against her entrance. Then she wriggled back to sink herself around him.
They weren’t fucking. It was too slow, too sleepy. They weren’t even making love. This was their bodies meeting, connecting, feeling, experiencing, the postscript to their previous session. They enveloped each other until it was as though they were one entity, their arousal climbing at the same pace, the quickening of their pulse and breathing matching up until Valorie pressed her face against his chest and whimpered, the orgasm like shattering glass in slow motion. They froze when Charles stiffened around and inside her, following her climax with his own, eyes tight shut.
But they had to wake up eventually.
“What time is it?” Charles asked.
Valorie propped herself up and glanced at the clock. “Ten o’clock. Holy crap. I don’t know whether it’s right because… But if it is…”
“Then I need to go home,” Charles said. He sighed, rubbing his eyes then letting his hands hit the pillow in resignation.
And she needed to let him go. Charles had been the one to make the wish, but she was the one who’d wanted it more than him. Because he’d made a life for himself, and she…
She unwound herself from him and crawled off the bed to find something to put on, even though they’d probably walk out in the same things they’d gone in wearing.
It was also possible that this little pocket of artificial reality was on a separate timeline from the world outside it. They could walk out to Bell standing outside the tent, John in the distance, as though no meaningful time had passed, no mark of their final consummation on the world, only in their minds.
Valorie could live with that.
They got dressed in silence. Valorie fought against the impulse to request more time. Hell, a movie. They’d spent all these hours sleeping. They’d at least be awake for a movie. But it didn’t matter how many things they did together. Just like their lives before hadn’t been enough, nothing here would be enough. It would still have to end. If she was a decent human being. She wasn’t, in a lot of ways, but she was decent enough for this. For him.
They stood in front of the tent flap that had taken the place of their front door, dressed as though they were going out somewhere casual. Normal. Someplace a future young married couple would go to together on a Saturday night.
Charles held his hand out. Valorie took it.
Together, they stepped out into the circus. The false world fell away behind them like a gust of wind. When Valorie looked behind, all she saw was the interior of her own tent.
They wore what they went in with. Charles was his real self again. Now she saw that doubling even more, with the image of his younger self fresher in her mind. She looked up at the night sky to fight the disorientation.
“Valorie.”
She lowered her eyes to Charles’. He kissed her forehead with such tenderness.
“Goodbye,” he whispered, still with his lips against her skin.
“Bye, Charles,” she said. She slipped her arms under his jacket to hug him, but she wasn’t clinging anymore.
“Mom!” someone yelled. A voice that hadn’t fully dropped yet. “Mom, I found him!”
“I knew it.”
Charles jerked away from Valorie and stumbled around. Janice was standing where John had been. Two tents closer, Elian pointed at his father. He clenched his jaw so hard that Valorie could see his cheekbones twitching in the dark.
Elian was furious, but Janice… Tears that must have burned her fiery eyes poured down her cheeks.
“You son of a bitch.” Janice spoke quietly, but Valorie could hear her fine.
Charles looked like he was going to be sick and faint at the same time “This isn’t�
��” he stammered.
And it wasn’t. To her bones, Valorie agreed with him. The first kisses had edged the line, but they hadn’t cheated. “I told myself it couldn’t be. I told myself the father of my children and the man who sleeps in my bed could never stray, not if he wanted to be right with God,” Janice said. “Elian was more suspicious. Said you were looking at this…this woman too closely. Said you had paint on your shirt last week, when you told me you were going in to work. I told him it couldn’t be, but when you said you were going to work today too, I called Patrick. Guess who said he hadn’t seen you today or last week?”
“I can explain,” Charles said.
Valorie would have loved to hear the explanation he came up with. She’d already come up with one herself—she was her own daughter, the lovechild from the long-ago engagement. Conceivable. Understandable. Forgivable.
“No!” Janice shouted, slicing her hand through the air, baring her teeth against the sobs that wracked her body. “I’ll kill you for doing this to us.”
That was when Valorie heard the trill of the clowns.
The evening performance was over.
“You need to leave,” Valorie said, trying to make herself heard without catching the clowns’ attention. “Now.”
Both Janice and Elian were where they weren’t supposed to be—and Elian was underage.
“Shut your whore mouth,” Janice snapped, her voice thick with emotion.
Whatever the reason Charles had married Janice, it seemed she had more in common with Valorie than Charles had thought.
“I’ll take care of her,” Elian said. He swung the large branch he’d been carrying up like a club.
“Really?” Valorie tried not to smile at the absurdity of the whole awful situation. A smile wouldn’t set the right tone, not that Valorie was accustomed to the right tone. “You’re not allowed here. You’re going to get in dangerous trouble, both of you. You need to leave right the fuck now.”
“Please, Janice, we can talk about this after we go,” Charles said, alarmed by Valorie’s urgency. She wouldn’t be afraid of anything in Arcanium without a damn good reason, and he knew it. “It’s really not what you think.” He started toward his wife.
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