The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

“It’s a Sufi love story about a girl named Layla, which means night, and her lover, Majnun, which means madness, or the complete absorption by love. The woman at the bookstore said it was the most romantic book ever written.”

  “Was Majnun always mad?”

  “No. Wait and see,” he said, taking the book out and opening it.

  I moved closer, pushing myself into the nook of his arm.

  “Unfurl before me the scroll of love,” he quoted passionately, “Oh Alexa, you are my Layla, and I am your Majnun.”

  Needless to say, he didn’t get very far. The book fell to the floor.

  I woke with a start and turned to her.

  “Alexa?” I shook her. She didn’t move. I shook her again. Oh God, what had I done? I reached over and took out a vial. I lifted her head and poured it into her mouth. I waited but nothing happened. I grabbed another, then another. Finally, yellow then blue-green smoke came out from between her lips. She opened her eyes.

  “Mmm.”

  “Honey, are you okay? Can you sit up? I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, moving her mouth around. “Why are you waking me up so early?”

  I looked at the clock. It was only six. She didn’t wait for me to answer. She pulled the sheet over her head and turned her back to me. I dragged my hand through my hair.

  Well, I was awake. I showered and dressed and then made my way to the kitchen to start breakfast. Lance was just coming in. He frowned at me, closed the door. What did I do to him?

  “Dude, you know, you two could at least wait until I leave,” he growled. “Damn. Do you know how it feels to have to listen to somebody making your daughter scream? I didn’t know if I should kill you or clap. I think I got my first gray hair. And after, I couldn’t even concentrate.”

  “Sorry, it won’t happen again.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s what the two rabbits in the boat said, but fifty drowned when it sank.”

  “I promise. No more. Really,” I said, putting up my hands. “No more books.”

  “Books?” he asked.

  “I was reading to her,” I told him, remembering Majnun and Layla’s youthful attraction for one another. Last night, I could not help but think about how it might have been if Alexa had come to me in Lily’s place. I would not have lasted even an hour. She would have touched me, her hand slipping under my black shirt that symbolized death, and I would have felt life surging through me. I would have thought she was a princess, a queen, without her ever saying a word. She would not have needed to lie. I would have made the excuses for her. I would have let her take my sword. I would have given it to her, eyes down, while I begged her to receive it, trading it for her touch, so she would let me die in her arms and be reborn in them.

  “Are you crazy?” Lance shouted breaking me out of my reverie. “Don’t read. Watch a movie, some TV. You two are too literary to read books. It’s foreplay for you. Go visual.”

  I tried not to smile.

  “How was she this morning anyway?” he asked.

  “It couldn’t wake her up again,” I admitted, hanging my head.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yes. She’s sleeping.”

  “What is wrong with you?” he growled. “Do I have to get her a chastity belt?”

  “No,” I said, getting aggravated. He was taking his fatherly duties too seriously.

  “You have eternity. What are you rushing for?”

  “You have eternity too, but you’re out of here as soon as the sun is down. You haven’t missed one night in fifty years, and you’re telling me to calm down?”

  He took a breath, “Okay, but you’re different. You have self-control.”

  “It’s not easy,” I said, remembering how she felt pressing herself against me. How warm she was. How she smelled so sweet. How her skin shone, and her eyes sparkled when she had looked up at me. I sighed. “Especially when she’s right there.”

  He looked unconvinced. All right then. I had tried to explain in guy terms. Now he asked for it. I would tell him why it was so impossible. I looked up at the cherry wood cabinets and spoke the truth. “Maybe it’s because I’m not only taking. I’m not there for what I can get and leave with. I’m giving too, giving everything I am.” I glanced at him. He was still waiting, still listening. I forged ahead.

  “It’s like”—I searched hard for a way to describe the indescribable—“I melt, my whole body, my soul, melting and mixing with her soul, her body, like honey, hot sweetness, until I think I’ll die if it goes on any longer or die if it ever stops. And then, it’s all gone. All division is gone between her and me: dark and light, good and evil, everything becomes One. I understand all of it: time, space, matter and nothingness. I see the pattern of the universe, the hand of the architect, the artist’s signature, and it is no different than my own. I see where I fit, how everything fits, how it all makes sense. It’s the most profound experience. Like Chandraswami said, it’s sacred, like seeing the face of God, like heaven. If you could go to heaven, wouldn’t you as often as you could? If it was sitting there waiting for you with arms open, how could you say no?”

  He stared at me, wide-eyed. Then he made himself frown.

  “I don’t care,” he said, “cut it out until she’s better. Capisce?”

  And then Lance left. He looked back once before walking through the kitchen door. He wanted to understand what I was saying but couldn’t. I looked different to him. I was different from him, and it hurt. I finished making breakfast alone.

  The Devil You Know

  I brought Alexa cheese and eggs in bed around eight-thirty. She was smiling and sitting up. We spent the day chastely reading excerpts from the book to each other. I sat in the chair by the bed to avoid too much temptation. I made lunch. Near sunset, Lance opened the door. He saw me reading, leaning toward Alexa, my elbows on the bed.

  “Layla enslaved with a glimpse from the shade of her dark locks. Majnun was her servant and . . .”

  He snatched the book from me and walked out.

  “Hey,” Alexa called after him.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” I sighed, sitting up.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she frowned.

  “He’s trying to save us from ourselves.”

  “Who asked him?” she cried. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “We can watch TV,” I told her.

  “There is never anything on TV.”

  “We can try the movie station.”

  “Everything sucks on the movie station.”

  I brought down the screen from the ceiling and started switching channels.

  “Wait,” she said. I looked at the screen and saw the craggy trees and dark wind-swept clouds of England.

  “Wuthering Heights,” she whispered in an awed tone.

  I sat down beside her. I didn’t know the actor. I knew the book. A commercial came on. I pressed the mute.

  “You sure you want to watch this? It’s kind of brutal.”

  “So, you hate him too?” she accused.

  “Who?”

  “Heathcliff.”

  “I don’t hate him. He’s a fictional character.”

  “Everybody hates him. He’s the mirror of his times. He reflects back the cruelty of the landed gentry and destroys them with their own viciousness and racism.”

  “He was nuts, dear.”

  “No,” she cried, “he was Majnun. He took from those who had taken from him. He gave back what he was given. He goes where Shakespeare could never allow Shylock to go. He actually gets his pound of flesh,” she said, her eyes twinkling fiercely.

  “And what did that get him but death and misery? How can you admire him?”

  “I wouldn’t want to know him or be in the same city with him, but I understand him. I understand his rage.”

  I looked at my little wife, wondering how she could know anything of that monster. “How?”

  “Because I’ve always been an outsider. Historically, Jews are o
utsiders, but I was an outsider amongst outsiders. I’m Jewish because of my mom, but because of my father … Lance, I don’t look it to people. Hispanic, maybe, but nobody guesses Jew, not even Jews unless they’re Sephardic, but I was raised Ashkenazi,” she said. “So, yes, I understand Heathcliff.”

  I folded her into my arms.

  “Love, we all feel that way. You don’t think I felt that way when I was young? I was called a Devil spawn. Nobody, let me forget that. When I first changed, I went to a priest and he tried to exorcise with every torment imaginable, then he tried to kill me for my own good.

  “Afterward, I hated everyone I met. I was worse than Heathcliff because I had more power. I became all the things everyone said I was and worse. I burned churches to the ground, destroyed people’s lives because I wanted to be ‘Good,’ and no matter what I did they wouldn’t let me. So, I became their worst nightmare.

  “I know what a monster is. I know where anger and pain can lead, and you don’t want to go there. It wasn’t a good place. I stopped only when I got tired of making them right about me. I decided to defy them instead of fulfilling their prophecy.” I hadn’t wanted to tell her about that time in my life, but I felt I could now. I took a breath, returned to the present, to her, “We all wish we were someone else, sometimes, but no matter how any of us try to hide it, the others who are not like us won’t let us forget it, and maybe they shouldn’t. It forces us to find the ones who are different the way we are different. Now you have a new family, new people and you’ll fit in just fine once you can walk around a bit. Among Nephilim color isn’t an issue. The oldest of us are from Africa, Carthage, Nubia, Egypt, and India to name a few places. Power comes with age and the oldest are the dark-skinned goddesses.”

  “At least now I know who, or perhaps I should say what, I am.” Then she frowned. “I’m a Jewish, African-, Native-, European-American Succubus. I think. Wait. Did I miss anything?”

  “I think it would be simpler to say you’re an American,” I told her. “No place else in the world could all those people and species come together to make you. You’re unique. You’re Alexa.”

  “I’m American Alexa,” she smiled as if she liked saying that.

  I held her harder, my precious, one-of-a kind jewel. I wanted to protect her from the world, wanted to shake it off and never look back. The movie came on. I tried to see Heathcliff through her eyes.

  The next day I woke up at eight. I could have flagellated myself. After all the promises, all the good intentions, we did it again. I shook her.

  “Alexa?” She didn’t respond. Oh damnation.

  I took a vial, put it to her lips, then another and another until indigo smoke rose from her tongue. She woke up, smiled at me and went back to sleep. I went out to make breakfast, feeling terrible. Lance came out scowling.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “You know what.”

  “How do you know? We did it after you left.”

  “You leave an energy trail like the Big Bang. You disgust me, dude,” he said.

  I leaned on the counter. I couldn’t stop. It was like I was addicted to her. I didn’t know what to do. I threw water on my face from the sink. It was too much to ask for me to stop. I didn’t seem to be able to. But I had to. Okay, no books, no movies. What was left? Cards? No. We would end up playing strip poker.

  “Listen,” I told him, raising my head, “I tried, okay. I said, though it was really against my self-interest, that we should wait till she was feeling better. Do you know what your daughter did? She took my hand, licked it and rubbed it all over her and then dared me to say she could feel any better than she did right then.”

  “Don’t try to blame this on that innocent child,” he sneered.

  I could feel the blood rising into my hair. “She is innocent and very young, but what she lacks in experience she makes up for amply with imagination. She’s got me spelling her name forward and backward.”

  “Alexa is not that hard to spell, dude, unless you’re illiterate.”

  “Try spelling it while she’s . . .”

  “Too much information!” he shouted over me, waving his arms.

  “If you think we should stop, you go tell her. I’ve made the endeavor and failed. Most of the time it’s as if she’s the succubus and I’m the helpless victim.”

  “Oh, please.” Lance rolled his eyes and turned away.

  “Knock,” I yelled after him, “she hasn’t been fed yet.”

  He knocked. I listened.

  “Alexa?”

  “Yes?” she growled.

  “Don’t you think you two should slow it down, Honey? You aren’t really feeling well. You haven’t even been able to get out of bed.”

  “So, you’re my mommy now?”

  “No, I just thought . . .”

  “You could come in here and take my book because you slept with my mother?”

  “No. I . . . I . . .”

  “Bring back my book, or I’ll be the last kid you ever have!”

  He came back. I stood with my arms folded across my chest.

  “I’m calling Chandraswami,” he said, pointing a finger at me. He went for the phone.

  “Go ahead. Nothing scares me now.”

  He dialed and waited.

  “Hello,” he said. “This is Lance, Cristien’s friend.” There was a pause. “Yes, the incubus.”

  Then he went on to describe how I was, in his words, “killing” Alexa. Some friend. I listened while Chandraswami explained to him that “as the physical body is a manifestation of our spiritual being, so sex is a manifestation of our supreme desire to unite with the Eternal.” Lance became quiet, and surprise crossed his face. I tried not to smile.

  “Goodbye,” he said, hanging up.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “according to that quack, you’re to take her three times a day and bring him pictures in a week. But he did say she should rest. And rest means snoring, not breaking the bed!”

  “Go to sleep,” I told him.

  “How can I sleep with all those colors floating around everywhere?” he shouted, leaving.

  “You were high half your life. You’d think you’d be used to seeing things.”

  “Cristien, I’m hungry!” Alexa screamed.

  “Coming.” I hurried out with a bagel and cream cheese in my hand, though I did not know which appetite I would be called on to sate. Not that I was complaining at all. In fact, I was having the time of my life. If she could actually walk around, it would be perfect, but that would come. Chandraswami had promised. And last night she had been quite athletic. And she was finally hungry. That was a very good sign. I was hopeful. Soon the world would be ours. Watch out, I thought.

  I opened the door. Alexa was bouncing up and down on her legs and surfing channels. She smiled at me and held out her hands for breakfast. She made me laugh. I sat and watched her eat and hum along to Sesame Street.

  “C is for crumb cakes, and that’s good enough for tea.”

  Then she went back to sleep in my arms. We slept through lunch and dinner. Lance checked in on us, and Alexa gave him a list of things to buy.

  “I want strawberry cheesecake, barbeque potato chips, white cheddar cheese popcorn and some tampons.” I was sure Lance was going to faint.

  We ate lunner, what Alexa called lunch and dinner together. She took her vial, and purple and white smoke came out of her mouth. She thought it was cool. I didn’t, so I turned on the TV. She started surfing channels again.

  “Uh, Sweetheart, maybe we should try for something tamer tonight,” I suggested.

  “Why?”

  I thought about it. I could say, “because you might get better faster if we didn’t explode like suns tonight.” Or I could say, “you might walk tomorrow if we didn’t nearly die of ecstasy today.” Or I could blame it on Lance. “We’re guests now, Alexa, and he needs rest. He’s getting crazy.” I considered saying all those things, especially the last one, but
as logical as they might be, she would do what she wanted with me anyway. So, I said the first ridiculous thing that came to mind as I looked at the bed.

  “We’re making your bear blush,” I said pointing at the thing accusingly.

  “He’s fine,” she said. “He sleeps through everything. Besides, he’s happy when I am.”

  “Is he?” I asked of the polyester fluff taking up room in my bed.

  “Oh,” she said turning to me, “You two haven’t been properly introduced. CJ, Cristien. Cristien, CJ.”

  She picked him up and proffered his straw-colored paw.

  I took a deep breath, struggling to be amused.

  “Go on,” she said, as if I were afraid of him. “He likes you.”

  “He likes me?” I asked, doubtfully.

  “Very much.”

  “Really?” And here I was planning to dispose of him during our honeymoon trip in the ocean or an airport garbage bin.

  She moved him closer, made me take the lump he had for a hand. I shook it. It was soft and furry but unappealing.

  “There,” she said, and put him back in the bed between us. “CJ. Cristien Jr.,” she smiled, changing the channels.

  The thing’s glass eyes turned toward me. I swear I saw him grin.

  “I think he’s a little hairy to blame paternity on me. I want a DNA test.”

  “I don’t know why I named him CJ. Maybe it was fate,” she shrugged. “Maybe I knew you were coming along. For whatever reason, he’s Cristien Jr. from now on.”

  She was smart, smarter than me by a long shot. Now, I had to like the thing. I even found myself laughing a little bit about my old nemesis turned son. I slid closer to her, combed my fingers through her long hair. CJ. Okay, I might be able to stand him a little longer.

  Alexa slammed the remote down on the bed and sighed. “I hate being sick. I hate it.”

  I thought she was going complain that nothing was on. I would never know how her mind worked.

  “It’ll be the last time you’ll ever be sick in your life. So, it’s not so bad. Besides, I like babying you,” I told her.

  She still looked frustrated. “But it’s our honeymoon.”

  “Hasn’t even begun.”