The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  “What time is it?” she finally asked.

  “You don’t want to know.” It was five-thirty.

  She dropped her head in despair on the counter.

  “You know I wouldn’t do this to you if it wasn’t important.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled, rubbing her eyes.

  “What happened to your glasses?” I asked.

  “You just noticed now that I can see without them?” she cried.

  I could say nothing in my defense. She just rolled her eyes and walked away. She slept all the way to her dorm, head thrown back while she snored.

  “Alexa, we’re here.”

  “Huh? Oh,” she opened the door.

  “What, no kiss?” I called.

  She came back and pecked me.

  “I’ll pick you up at six sharp tonight,” I told her.

  She waved, then left, stumbling through the doors of the lobby.

  I turned the wheel of my car and sped away. I was in the diamond district in forty minutes. Today was the Sabbath, a Jewish holiday. Everything was closed, but I had the key. Myself. The shop had a state-of-the-art electronic lock. It was easier for me to open than a deadbolt. Energy was my vassal. I took out the cameras too. I started to work. I got dressed in fireproof clothes and facilitated the pour. The ring came out exactly the way I imagined. Now for filing, polishing and setting the stones. I finished at five thanks to all the new equipment they had and my strength and speed. I was very pleased. I held it, sparkling in the light of the store. I would go home and change and get to Alexa’s early for once. Then Sunday, I would take her to dinner and propose. I still had shopping to do for both of us. I knew her dress size already. I had peeked when she changed clothes.

  I was racing to my car when a cold chill went through me like someone had just danced across my grave. I searched the crowd and saw a round, moon-like face before me, watching me. It had been so long, yet I always knew when she was near. She still hadn’t given up shaving her hairline to make her forehead seem bigger, which was the fashion in my day. She wore a long black skirt and a frilly pink blouse. She was smiling, like an evil child, but still smiling. I stopped short. When she was happy it was never good.

  “Lily,” I growled.

  “Tristram, how good it is to see you,” she lisped.

  I hated when she used that old name. It meant sorrow, sadness.

  “My name is Cristien now, and you were always a terrible liar,” I told her, continuing to my car. “What do you want?”

  “Why would I come to you if I wanted something?” she asked, cutting in front of me and tilting her head so that her dark thick waves swung like writhing snakes.

  “Then why are you here?”

  She shrugged. “It’s my birthday. Which you seem to have forgotten.”

  I shook my head. If she thought I believed that one.

  “Happy Birthday,” I said, walking away again.

  “Tris . . . I mean, Cristien,” she called.

  I kept going. It was forever since she could call me back to her. I got in my car. She knocked on the window.

  I rolled it down.

  “Give me a lift?”

  “I’m in a hurry. Sorry,” I said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere that would interest you.”

  “Really? I’m very interested, though. What are you doing in the diamond district? Selling some baubles? Are you strapped for cash? Do you need a loan?” She was terribly happy.

  “Bye, Lily,” I said, rolling up the window.

  She put her hand inside, stopping the glass from closing, “Wait. It isn’t my Birthday.”

  “Really? I would never have guessed.” I kept pushing the button, trying to make the window close.

  “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  “Not really.” I said giving up and putting my hands on the steering wheel.

  “I had to see you,” she frowned theatrically. “I had this feeling like . . .” Her brown brows came together. Then she smiled again, her tiny white teeth showing, “Are you dying?”

  “Sorry. I can’t make your day. I feel fine.”

  She pursed her lips and pursued me. “You look very well, in fact.”

  “Thanks. Now you’ve seen me, Lily. I would think that would be enough for both of us for at least another couple of centuries.”

  She thought about it.

  “You would think so,” she said, but she still didn’t remove her hand.

  “Listen, I have to go.” I revved my engine to punctuate my statement.

  “Farewell,” she said, stepping back.

  As I drove away, I saw her watching me in the rearview mirror. I shook my head. That was weird. I drove home, woke Lance and told him to watch out. Lily was in town. He made a disgusted face as he lifted his head from his gray pillow.

  “You serious?” he murmured.

  “If you run into her, don’t say anything about me and Alexa, okay?”

  “How is she going to know me, dude?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “Anyway, if I see some really short, ball-breaking succubus coming my way, I’ll run in the other direction.”

  “She’s older and faster.”

  “Well, I’m younger and hotter. Maybe I’ll go to Brooklyn for a few days, visit the old haunts.”

  “Coward.”

  “Yeah right. If half the stories you told me are true, never will be too soon to meet her.”

  “Have a good time in Brooklyn,” I told him, leaving.

  I drove to Alexa’s. She was waiting for me outside her dorm, her books still in her hands. She smiled and I forgot everything. I rushed to her arms, like she was a safe harbor.

  I had plans to go dancing with her in my apartment this evening. I had plans to dance with her out on the balcony of my bedroom. Then I was going to carry her inside, finally get her ridiculous bra off, and play with her wings again. I would, of course, be a respectful fiancée, an exemplary knight guarding her honor, until we were wed. Still, I had plans. We got Chinese food and a video. While I drove, she told me about her day.

  “I ran into Mikayla. She is so getting on my last nerve. She keeps looking at my finger and shaking her head.”

  I pulled into my building’s lot and parked.

  “Ignore her,” I said, smiling.

  “So, how did things go with you today?” she asked after we got on the elevator.

  I slipped my arm around her, “Very well, thank you.”

  “Everything in order?” She smiled in the way only she could.

  “Skies are clear as far as the horizon,” I said, pressing number eleven. Then I pulled her closer and kissed her. The door opened, and we headed down the hall to my apartment. There was someone in front of my door. She was short and a brunette with long curly hair. My heart froze.

  “Lily?”

  “Who?” Alexa asked, looking around.

  Then she turned to us. The venomous smile froze on her lips when she saw Alexa. I forged ahead to my door. I could feel the two of them staring at each other.

  “Could you wait inside for a moment, A . . . Dear?” I stopped myself before I said her name. I didn’t want Lily to know anything about Alexa.

  “Sure,” she said and slipped inside. I closed the door and stood in front of it.

  “Bringing them home now? You always said your place was sacrosanct,” Lily lisped. “It’s obedient too. How nice.”

  I glared at her, waiting.

  She looked left and right. “I told you. I’m worried. I think you’re in danger. I wanted to warn you.”

  “Forewarned. Goodbye.”

  “Wait,” she said, touching me. I pulled away. She hadn’t touched me in centuries. My blood pressure rose, and rage filled me.

  “Sorry,” she said, wiping her fingers on her skirt. “But I had to stop you. You weren’t listening to me.”

  “I heard you,” I said, staring at her doll-like expression—blank and cold. “I’m wondering why you care. It’s not li
ke you ever did before.”

  “Maybe I’ve changed,” she said, smiling to herself because she knew she hadn’t. Then she looked at me again, that same scrutinizing glance she’d given me in the diamond district. It was like she was measuring me for a coffin. “You seem to have. In the old days, you would have had your sword out by now. You would have been spitting epithets too and telling me how much you hated me.”

  I took a deep breath then sighed, letting it all go, all our past, because I wanted to go to that girl in there, that succubus that drove me mad, and be hers and only hers. “True, but the thing is I don’t hate you anymore.”

  Lily reacted as if I had struck her. She stepped back from me, her face pale. “What do you mean? You’ve forgiven me?”

  “Sure, if that is what you want to hear.”

  Her tiny nostrils flared triumphantly. “You haven’t forgiven me!”

  “No, I don’t care,” I shrugged. “One way or the other, all these years, it’s been you and me in my head fighting through eternity. Now it’s over. You need my forgiveness? I forgive you. I set you free.”

  Her face turned livid. “It’s that girl, isn’t it, that mixed-blood American?”

  “Like you know who your father is,” I said, turning from her. She grabbed my arm. I pushed her away. She did not go far. “I told you eight hundred years ago never to touch me again, and I meant it.”

  “She’ll leave you,” she hissed, her pale lips cracking. “She’ll leave you like you left me!”

  “I left you?” I shouted. I was so shocked I pointed to myself. “You were never even there! I saw you with him. Was I supposed to believe you were giving him CPR with your vagina?”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Cristien!”

  “You’re calling me vulgar? You haven’t had a decent moment in your life. Not one honest second. Even now, pretending you care.”

  “I do care,” she screamed. “I feel it. I feel alone! I spared you. I fed off others and let you live. You’re mine. I made you.”

  “You didn’t make me. You used me and lied to me and left me when you were done. I’m sorry if now after eight-hundred years you have an emotion, but that’s your problem, not mine. Go see a psychologist, join a support group; there’s a whole world of people out there for you to leech off of.”

  “But you’re the only one who really knows me,” she said, coming closer, “and I know you.”

  “You never knew me, never understood me.” I said, moving away.

  “Cristien, you can’t do this to me!” she screamed, her face turning purple.

  “What? Stop hating you? I already have. Most people would be happy about that.”

  She glowered at me. “I can’t wait till she’s done with you. When she’s left you and ripped out your heart. You always asked too much, Cristien. You’ll ask too much of her, and she’ll leave you. No one can live up to your expectations. That’s when I’ll find you. I’ll be there, standing over you, watching you suffer.”

  “Or maybe I’ll understand you better having stood in your shoes,” I said.

  “I don’t want your understanding,” she sneered, and left.

  Avalon

  Alexa was sitting on the couch, her hands in her lap. She looked way too composed.

  “I suppose you heard most of that?” I asked after I walked into the apartment.

  “Even if I hadn’t had my ear pressed to the door, I would have gotten most of it,” she confessed.

  “I guess the neighbors on several floors got most of it,” I said, coming to sit next to her. I put my head in my hands. I expected a touch on my shoulder, neck, something to comfort me, but nothing came. I looked up.

  “So the five-foot-tall dominatrix is a succubus, and she was your first?” she asked. Alexa looked a little wide-eyed. The fine hair on my neck stood up.

  “Yes,” I said, carefully.

  “Eight hundred or so years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  She blinked at me a few times like I was Tutankhamun. Then she said, “And she still comes to visit?”

  “This is the second anniversary since her last visit.”

  “Two years ago?” she cried.

  “Two hundred years ago,” I corrected.

  “Oh.” Her mouth shaped an unnaturally perfect round, and her eyebrows almost levitated off her forehead.

  “Are you okay?”

  Alexa blinked again; then she frowned. “So, she came back why?”

  I opened my mouth then shut it.

  “I really don’t know,” I said after a moment. “She shows up every double century or so, starts a fight and leaves. With any luck, we won’t see her for another couple of hundred years.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she said, still looking confused. “What happened between the two of you anyway?”

  I sighed. I didn’t want to talk about Lily anymore. I wanted to forget her.

  “Does it matter?” I asked.

  “I thought you might want to talk about it,” she said, coming closer.

  “Not really.” I was a guy. We didn’t talk about those things. We buried them.

  “It’s weird, her coming now,” she said, becoming animated. She was a girl. She would talk it to death. “I mean, what happened between you two that made you hate her for eight hundred years? That’s a pretty long grudge. You must have really loved her once.”

  So, that was it. “No. I never loved her.” I took Alexa’s hand. “She seduced me with lies. I was a twenty-one-year-old squire doing my vigil at the altar of St. George. She came to me and said she was, don’t laugh, a fairy. She put on a pretty impressive light show for me. Even a few owls showed up. Then she told me she loved me and would change me into one of her kind, so she could to take me to King Arthur’s court where I would be knighted and live forever, serving the King until his time came again. Then I would ride forth into a golden age of the world.” I hadn’t looked at Alexa the whole time I was explaining. I was so embarrassed about being that gullible. When I turned to her though, she wasn’t laughing. She looked very serious.

  “And then what happened?” she asked.

  I sighed. “It took me two days to grow my wings. I thought she had cursed me when I got them. It wasn’t until I met Lance forty years ago that I found out it was genetic. Anyway, she left me behind every night. She said she was going to make preparations. For some reason I stopped believing her, maybe because she came back smelling of cheap booze every morning. Or maybe it was how I was laid up in a filthy horse stall instead of riding the golden mare she promised. Anyway, when I finally got my wings, I didn’t tell her. I followed her. And I found her doing what succubi do best. I confronted her and left her. The last time I saw her was two hundred years ago. The things she said to me then. She was always cruel, but her wit had been sharpened by age. I wanted it to come to blows. I was so furious, but she just laughed at me and left. And then she showed up today.”

  I fell silent. Alexa put her hands around my face.

  “You okay?” she asked, searching my eyes.

  “Yes,” I told her, taking her hands and kissing them. “I don’t care what she says, what she does anymore. I have you.”

  “You do, and I’ll never leave you. Never. We’ll make our own Avalon right here in New York. And you’ll be my knight in shining armor forever.”

  “Forever,” I vowed, pulling her into my arms. She would never know how precious she was to me, what her words meant to me. Or how she had healed me. Then, Alexa reached up and kissed me. It was a tender kiss, girlish, naive. It made me smile.

  “Let’s go to my room,” I said.

  “We haven’t even had dinner,” she cried.

  “We can eat in bed.”

  I grabbed the food, and she raced me to the door. I let her win. I got my dance. I got her bra off. All in all, it was a very good night.

  The next day we spent shopping on Fifth Ave. I bought ten dresses for her, all of which she begged me not to get. One, a black suede, I asked her to wear on Sunda
y. It was jaw-dropping stunning on her. I also bought her matching shoes and purses that the salesperson was hawking. I told her we were going out.

  I was tired of fast food and my apartment. We would have a night out on the town. Dinner and Carmen at Lincoln Center, I said. She was glad, excited even. Of course, we weren’t going to sit through a three-hour opera. I had even better plans. I only had to pick up a suit for myself in the morning. And I was considering dropping by Chandraswami’s on the way back to thank him again and give him the news.

  I’m a succubus. I sat staring at the ridiculously expensive dresses Cristien had bought me. They lay draped across my tiny bed. I had placed them there so I could stare at the rainbow of colors, white, cream, red, maroon, blue, gold, pink, rust, green, and black. They cost over ten thousand dollars. That was more than my mom had in her bank. It was ludicrous.

  I’m engaged to an incubus. I had gone into all the stores I had never thought I could afford to go into. The weird thing was that I didn’t care. I could hardly remember any of it. All I recalled was how much I liked it when Cristien liked me in a dress. Nothing else mattered. If he hadn’t purchased them, I still would have been happy. How weird was that? I supposed wanting and having were two totally different things. Maybe I never really wanted those things, just the idea of them because I thought they would make me happy. Now that I was happy, I didn’t care.

  I’m a succubus engaged to an incubus. Well, I cared a little. I picked up the black suede one. It was so lovely, with rhinestones encircling the cut-out over the cleavage and down the open back. It looked like something a movie star would wear. I would keep only this one. The rest would go back. Wait. Maybe the maroon? I wanted to wear that for my engagement dress, or the white one. I compromised with myself. I would keep those three and that was all. I hung up the rest carefully.

  I have wings, and I’m engaged to an eight hundred-year-old incubus. He was taking me to the opera. I hadn’t been to one in years. The last one I saw on television. Carmen: wow. I hoped the singers would be good actors as well. Sometimes it’s hard to emote when you are wailing your lungs out. The opera! I couldn’t wait.