The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  On the night of our fourth date, I thought I saw someone pass by the window. I rushed over to look out. Abe was flying away like a bat out of hell. He should have broken up with Mikayla by now. More than two dips in the well could kill her.

  I flew over to Mikayla’s room and opened her window. She was lying asleep in her bed. I walked over, put my hand to her throat and felt only a faint pulse. I shook her shoulder, but she only moaned. Zounds!

  I hurried back to Alexa.

  “Listen to me, love, your friend isn’t feeling well,” I suggested in her ear. “You don’t know why, but you have to go check on her. I’m going to get something to help her. Give me fifteen minutes and then go check your room.”

  “Cookies?” she said, sitting up.

  “What?”

  “Will cookies help her? Is it a blood sugar thing?” she asked, waking.

  “Yes, if you can get her to eat them. Okay. Get them and come with me.”

  She grabbed a package from her desk, and we walked down the hall to Mikayla’s room.

  I called her, but she didn’t respond. I shook her. She was cold. “Mikayla!”

  I shook her more vigorously until she opened her eyes.

  “Cristien? Alexa?”

  “Are you okay?” Alexa asked her.

  “No. I feel like shit. Where’s Abe? He was just here.”

  “Have you eaten? Can you eat a cookie?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I turned on the light while Alexa broke off a piece. She put it to Mikayla’s lips, but she only took the tiniest of bites before turning her head away.

  “I don’t feel well,” she said.

  “Do want some water?”

  She nodded.

  Alexa ran to the little kitchenette by the living room. She brought back a full glass, and Mikayla drank the whole thing thirstily.

  “I feel so weak,” she said.

  There were dark circles under eyes and shadows in the hollows of her cheeks. That bastard had nearly killed her.

  “You want me to call somebody?” Alexa asked.

  “No. It’s probably just a cold,” I said. I didn’t want anyone else involved in this. “She’ll be fine in the morning.”

  Alexa gave me a look. She came over and whispered in my ear, “She looks worse than anyone I’ve ever seen with a cold.”

  “Mikayla?” I called. She didn’t answer. “Mikayla?” I touched her shoulder. She had passed out again.

  “Stay here with her, Alexa. Don’t move until I get back. If anyone comes tell them she had a nightmare.”

  “Is this a dream or is this real?” Alexa asked. I swallowed.

  “Okay, listen we came back from the date and you went to tell Mikayla something and found her like this.”

  “Nope. I wouldn’t ask you up to my room,” she told me. “And you have wings.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, and made them disappear before I put my shirt back on, “You found her this way and ran downstairs to find me. I was still in my car. You asked me to come up.” I waited for her opinion.

  “I’ll buy that,” she said.

  “Good. Wake.”

  “Cristien?” she said, blinking.

  “I’m going to get something to help her.”

  “Okay,” she said, “hurry back.”

  “I will.” I rushed to my car and drove off. Her body needed sugars, anything to help it make energy. I bought bottles of Gatorade and went back to the dorm.

  Alexa and I were able to get Mikayla to drink them. She recovered slowly as the night wore on. By six am, she had eaten two cookies and looked better.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said.

  “Get some sleep,” I told her.

  Alexa and I went back to her room.

  “Thanks for helping me with her. I’m so glad you were here.”

  “You’re welcome,” I told her. She smiled and came and kissed me on the lips. It was the best kiss she had ever given me.

  “I’ll pick you up around eleven for a late brunch,” I told her when she released me.

  “Sure,” she smiled.

  Then I went home and dragged Abe out of bed to kick his ass. After, I got dressed again and took Alexa to eat. She told me Mikayla was up and around again. We went for a horse and buggy ride through Central park, had an early dinner, made-out for a few hours, before she went back to her room.

  Yes, dating had its moments.

  It also could be pure hell. I soon discovered that the weekend was too short and the week too long. During the week, she had classes. She had to study. She was very insistent. And if I had a job like I was supposed to, perhaps I could have seen her point, but since she was my job, it was as though I were being laid off when I was quite eager and able-bodied.

  I started to go through withdrawal. It was like I was really twenty-one again, trying to get some time with my honey. I had the sweaty palms, awkwardness and loneliness. So, I did what all young men do when their girlfriends are supposed to be studying: I talked to her for hours.

  Thank God for cell phones. If I had to stay in my apartment in my empty bed instead of outside her dorm, or on the sill across from her window, or on her roof pacing, I would have gone stark raving mad with worry. I liked to see her, see her energy was stable, see that she was safe.

  We talked about everything: poetry, the stars, time, history, life on earth, what she was studying, doing, what she wanted, hoped for, dreamed about.

  Neither of us talked about our families much though. And it was for the same reason.

  “So, where did you grow up?” I asked one night from her roof.

  “I’m a Brooklyn girl,” she told me.

  “You? You don’t have an accent, an attitude, or anything.”

  “My mom paid extra at the private school to make sure they got rid of all that.”

  “Private school girl, ehh?” I teased.

  “It’s not what you think. I got in by my wits alone. No money to my name.”

  “There is nothing wrong with being smart and working hard for what you want. I’m told it builds character,” I joked, but she didn’t laugh.

  “I suppose, but it gets weary sometimes. All work and no play makes Alexa a dull girl. My mom is counting on me to succeed. She worries about my future. I think it’s made her little crazy,” she laughed. “Still, she’s my role model. She works hard too and has sacrificed a lot to get me a good education. I don’t want to let her down.”

  “Your parents divorced?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Yes. My father left before I was born. I never met him. He was a spoiled man-child who ran off on his motorcycle one night and never came back. Anyway, they met at a party. They fell in love. She dropped out of college, and they got married. Then, poof, he was gone. I showed up a few months later. It was like I chased him away. That’s my genesis,” she said. “Now you can tell me how you grew up in a castle with a silver spoon in your mouth and two loving parents.”

  “My mom was a nun. I grew up an orphan.” I omitted the fact that I had indeed lived in a castle, but a lot of people did in those days.

  “Really?” she cried. “Holy crap. I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago and best forgotten.”

  So, we changed the subject, and she read to me from books I had not looked at in centuries, books I had read when the authors were still alive and yet when those well-rehearsed words came from her lips they were new again. I lived moment to moment because of her, I actually felt the days passing over me. They were brightened by her curious, brilliant mind, by her novel ideas, by her humor. She made everything new. She wanted to talk about philosophy, politics, the environment, disasters, current events that usually whizzed by me in the day-to-day hunt for sustenance. She slowed down time.

  One night, we somehow ended up discussing Wile E. Coyote as a paradigm for obsession. She argued that Wile E., with all the resources he wasted on gadgets, could have been living high on the hog.

  “He was so skinny,�
� she complained after she had Googled him and watched a few skits on YouTube. “Poor thing, he looks like a size-zero model.”

  “But, Love, no other food would have satisfied him. He only wanted the Road Runner. He was obsessed with her. Obsession does not allow for satisfaction. You can never really eat your cake and have it too, which is the only way you can satisfy your obsession: by devouring and still having the object of your fascination,” I said from experience.

  “But he really didn't want to catch it,” she argued.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was the chase he wanted. To eat the Road Runner would have ended that, ended his only reason for living. He isn't really that inept. He really didn't want to catch it.”

  “I guess not,” I said, thoughtfully. “It's the journey not the resolution that matters. If he caught her, he would lie down next to her and die too.” That was when I knew I would never hurt Alexa. I would die before I did that. I knew it in my soul.

  “Well, at least his tummy would be big,” she said, with a smile in her voice. I tried to laugh.

  Before her, I usually thought that the sun had risen upon everything, that things were interesting to mankind because they died and had not seen the same pathetic play called life over and over again. But Alexa was unique. In all of my life’s history, I did not think that there was another woman like her. Women never had the freedom to think as they did now, to act as they could now, to know as much as they did, and she saw it all in her unique Alexa way.

  “I think heaven is old-school,” she said once. “I mean, who wants to do nothing for eternity? Everybody knows it’s boring. That’s why all the interesting people think they are going to hell.”

  “Do Jews believe in heaven and hell?”

  “Nope. They believe in a kind of afterlife where you will be rewarded your good deeds or punished.”

  “Sounds like Heaven and hell.”

  “Nope. We call it ‘Olam Ha-Ba,’ the world to come.”

  “You think we end up in ‘Olam Ha-Ba’?” I asked.

  “I went to a religious school, but we weren’t religious at home. We attended synagogue on the big holidays like Yom Kippur, Passover and Purim but not much else. I’m kind of morally Jewish more than anything else. Anyway, I was taught that you go through the prozdor, a tunnel, to the next world. It always sounded like rebirth to me, though my Rabbi never agreed.”

  “So, you believe in reincarnation,” I surmised.

  “Well, it makes sense if you look around. Everything is cyclical. It’s like the universe is shouting all the time that Death is an illusion. I think reincarnation is good. It’s forever and everybody gets as many chances as they need to get life right. There are no losers and no hell except the one we make for ourselves right here.”

  “Nice and neat.”

  “I think so.”

  She was fascinating. She was sure. She had the surety of youth. Alexa had an opinion on everything, even monsters. Vampires were so prevalent in literature and movies, it was inevitable that they would come up. It was destiny.

  “Blaming misdeeds on vampires would be a great way to hide yourself from the world,” I said on the phone as I balanced on a ledge across from her window. Then I realized what an opportunity this was. “What if you . . . were bitten? What would you do?”

  “Go to the hospital and get a rabies shot because there is no such thing as a vampire.”

  “No, I mean, hypothetically. What if you were that girl, and a vampire came to you and said either become a monster or die? What would you do?”

  “For real?”

  “Yes.” I could see her shrug from my perch across the alley.

  “I don’t know. Assuming I believed that he would kill me, I guess I would want to live. Everybody wants to live. The monster part is the part I’m iffy on. I don’t think anyone can change you into a monster.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you only become a monster when you believe you are one, when you give in to the negative things people say about you. Jews believe you have two sides, the yetzer hara, the bad side, and the yetzer hatov, the good side. They each whisper in your ear trying to get you to go one way or the other. You just can’t listen to the bad stuff. You can’t give in no matter how tempting. So, even if I did become a vampire if there were such a thing. I’d find a way not to kill, not to be evil.”

  Now I had my answers. She would not want to take her own life as I feared, as I had wanted to do early in my change. Nor would she allow herself to become a creature I would have to destroy. I felt suddenly as if a weight had been lifted from me.

  I spent my nights in her room carefully fighting her monsters for her. There were fewer and fewer every evening. It seemed word had spread about my new rule, so I finally I had some peaceful nights.

  I also got bored out of my mind. I turned on her computer to while away the time and found her Facebook page open. Her full name was Alexandra Aliyah Wyndham, and she was only eighteen. It nearly broke my heart. She was too young to have to face all this, possibly to die.

  I looked over at her. She was holding her teddy bear. I wished I was a man for the millionth time since my change, but not for my own sake this time, but for hers. I wished I was a man, and she was a woman, so could I could give her all she desired, take the time to romance her, make her dreams come true.

  After that I read her books, the list of books she wanted to read, her papers, her notes, her poems on Wattpad. One, an old one from a year ago, was quite prophetic:

  Blue thunder marks the course of man, white lightning the way of the world.

  But leave me to my solitude and a footprint in the sand.

  I shall go where no man follows with a garland in my hair, dancing with the muses if they dare.

  Come dance with me my fairy cousins, come fill my heart with love or my prayers have not been answered by the one above.

  I shall follow no rainbow, no distinct avenue but will follow all sensation and every careless mood.

  I am dauntless deemed and fear none born of man until he that shall bind me to a distant sand.

  And then amongst the others my fortune doth hold.

  For blue thunder marks the course of man, white lightning the way of the world.

  The newest one she wrote on her laptop late into Wednesday night. She wrote, keeping me waiting in agony to be near her. I balanced precariously on the ledge of a factory window across from her, watching her efforts, unable to go any farther than I was from her, wondering who she was writing to at such an hour and what was so important that she missed her bedtime. Jealousy burned me with every stretch of her finger over the keys. When she was finally asleep, I burst into the room to see. The poem went like this:

  We shared a dream in the misted night,

  Two souls entwined, sharing in one delight.

  Mind to mind, touch to touch,

  Nothing to nothing, much to much.

  Eye meets Eye, Aurora returns.

  The bond is broken, dust in an urn.

  I printed it and put it in my wallet.

  Not a Knight Anymore

  The month was almost over. Still, I was confident. I was like a champion stallion at the Preakness gate. I was downstairs at seven sharp. I always felt greedy on Thursday, after her weekly absences. I always needed to see her lips moving when she spoke to me.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she smiled. She was wearing a blue dress.

  “Let’s go.”

  I had Lance’s plan to follow. I was to use this Thursday to sure up my boundaries and expand them a little. So, during the movie about some aliens doing something stupid to the earth or in space (I wasn’t paying attention) my hand skirted over her lap to her thighs and around the back. She stiffened a little but not much. I repeated the action many times to both our enjoyment.

  The field was now mine. My hands could wander pretty much freely over her sleek stockings. I was quite smug. Unfortunately, I forgo
t that she was a feminist, so what was good for the gander was good for the goose. Her hand went south. She was probably only going for my leg, but I stopped her at the junction. If we hadn’t been in a public place I would have lost it badly. Even so, I wasn’t in my chair anymore but in hers. When I finally opened my eyes, hers were as big as saucers.

  “Excuse me,” I said, clearing my throat, getting off her and resuming my seat. Damn the Compulsion. Thankfully, the theater was almost empty. I crossed my legs. She sat watching the people dying and screaming on the screen. I think she was in shock.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, touching her hand. She didn’t move. “Alexa?”

  I touched her cheek. She jumped a little then looked at me with something like surprise and something like a question in her eyes, but she said nothing.

  “Are you not talking to me again?” I asked.

  She shook her head but continued staring forward.

  “But you aren’t saying anything.”

  She shrugged a little, turned back to the screen. Back to this again.

  “Alexa, I apologize,” I said. It was impossible to go slow when the Compulsion was demanding I go faster. “But sometimes it’s . . .”—I didn’t want to say “hard”—“difficult. I want you so much, all the time. I get a little crazy, but I’m fine now.”

  She mumbled something.

  “What was that?” I said, leaning closer.

  “I get a little crazy too.”

  I almost laughed, except her little face was so serious. That was like Sponge Bob equating himself to Hannibal Lechter. Still, she was letting me off the hook, so I was glad. I put an arm around her. She put her head on my shoulder.

  The light from the screen illumined her features. She looked like an angel, and I, of course, was the devil. People will say what they want, call me every name in the book—stalker, certifiable, obsessed, unworthy, scum—but they would play the devil too if that was the only way they could get close to an angel.

  My angel went back home at one a.m., and, of course, she took heaven with her. She wrote on her laptop till the wee hours that night. When she was sleeping, I climbed inside, hurried to her tiny desk and turned on her computer. And while I had guessed, or hoped, that I was the inspiration for her last poem, this time I could not help but know that these were really mine: