by Stacey Longo
Seriously, Billy, this girl is already fucking with your head, and you’ve barely said ten words to her. Trickster goddess? Leave her alone. You want no part of whatever she’s up to, he thought.
“What’s your name?” Billy asked, silencing his stupid conscience.
“Keiana,” she said. When she spoke her name, and only when she spoke her name, her accent clarified, revealed a bit of her true self.
“Irish?” Billy asked.
“What? The hair didn’t give it away?” she said as she slowly ran her fingers through it.
Billy watched them enviously, waiting to see if they came out coated in blood. Nope. “The lack of freckles threw me off,” he said.
“And your name?”
“Billy…Langman.” He lifted his pint, stopped just short of his mouth, and said, “Pleased to meet you.” Then he drank three big gulps.
“The pleasure may actually be mine,” Keiana said.
“Is that so?” The thrill of the chase, the hunt; he hadn’t felt it in a long time, although she’d approached him. So wouldn’t he be the prey? No. He decided that he would turn the tables, had already begun to do so, in fact. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, woo – woo.
Her smile dropped a bit. “Take me to your house. I want to see it.”
Perhaps he hadn’t moved the tables quite far enough.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet.
Ray put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “I’ll buy this round.” His voice was a monotonous whisper, as if still entranced by her.
“Thanks, Ray.” Billy got up and led her out.
The sun had been down for a few hours, so the air had a bit of a chill in it. Keiana wasn’t wearing much: black pants and a little black t-shirt with a white symbol on it.
“Are you cold?” Billy asked.
“No. I’m used to colder.”
He led her towards his car. “What brings you here? From Ireland, I mean.”
“I haven’t lived there for quite some time,” she said. “I’m looking for something.”
“What are you looking for?”
“It’s hard to describe, but I’ll know it when I see it.”
With the press of a button, a beep, and a flash of lights, Billy unlocked the car and they both got in.
“I have an apartment, not a house,” Billy said. He started to feel ashamed of the hole-in-the-wall he was taking her to, the hole-in-the-wall in which he lived, like a rat. “You said house before, but it’s not. I just got divorced, and she has the house.”
“Oh. That’s too bad. It seems like people aren’t able to love forever anymore. There was a time when ‘til death do us part’ was too soon, when people wanted to spend all eternity together, but that seems to have changed.” She stopped to think for a moment. “Why didn’t it work out?”
Billy almost told her about Susan Walker. “We just seemed to grow in different directions.”
***
When they reached Billy’s rat-hole, he parked the car and led her to the door.
“It’s kind of small, I’ve got to warn you,” Billy said, feeling ashamed again, his proximity to the apartment building his embarrassment, piling feelings of inadequacy onto it.
“You worry too much,” Keiana said.
He slid his key into the lock, turned it, and sighed just before pushing the door open.
They went through the small foyer, past a few light coats and a couple of hats hanging on the wall, and into the living room. The room was sparsely decorated. The walls were white and nothing hung on them. A few pieces of furniture graced the room, and the only decoration that Billy had bothered with were a number of pictures scattered about on various pieces of furniture.
Keiana picked up one framed photo. In it, Billy’s parents held up an infant Billy to point quizzically at the camera. “Your parents?”
“Yup,” Billy said. “You want a drink?”
“Do you have any red wine?”
“I think I might,” Billy said. He headed in to the kitchen hoping he did have a bottle.
Keiana moved on to another picture: Billy and his father, from when Billy was fourteen. Billy’s father wore a dusty tan cowboy hat and a long, suede jacket, his six-shooters prominent at his hips. Billy was a diminutive copy of his father, in both look and dress. The two beamed at the camera, each with their jackets pushed back, as if at the ready to draw their guns and go to battle.
“Tell me, Billy, why I haven’t seen any real cowboys while I’ve been in Texas,” Keiana said, raising her voice a bit so it would carry into the kitchen.
Billy came back into the living room, a bottle of Cabernet and a chrome corkscrew in one hand and two wine glasses in the other. “What did you say? I hope Cabernet is alright.”
“Why haven’t I seen any real cowboys since I’ve been in Texas?” She looked at the photograph again, considered it for a moment, and then returned it to its place.
“Well…” Billy stopped to force the corkscrew into the top of the wine bottle. “That sort of depends on who you ask. I’ve read things that compared cowboys to knights, said that they were nothing more than products of their violent societies and that as people grew more distant from those time periods the concepts became romanticized, the brutality of it glamorized, and what we’re left with now is mostly fiction. The types of people remained the same, so that your knight in the dark ages became your pirate later and your cowboy later still. Those people say that down the road they become your gangsters and gang members, and that they’ll be viewed the same way at some point.” Billy pulled the cork from the wine bottle with a little pop, and smiled a bit. He felt smooth, smoother than he’d ever felt before, smooth as glass, as silk, no, smoother than any cliché.
Keiana looked at him with eyes of obsidian, past strands of blood, smiling a grin both interested and flirtatious, urging him forward in every sense of the word. “What do other people have to say on the matter?”
“My daddy would have said that they’re gone because there’s nothing left for them to fight for, no cause, for good or bad. He always taught me that a cowboy was no different than anyone else faced with a decision: they either fought for the good or the bad, but once the decision was made, they risked their lives fighting for it.” Billy held the bottle without pouring it, thinking of his father, missing him.
“I’ve never heard a man call his father ‘daddy.’”
He tried to read her eyes, to see through the night in them and discern what she was really about. Part of him thought she wanted sex, and another part, the nocturnal part that saw better in the dark, could almost make out something else, something more that she wanted.
“Hell, he wasn’t my father, he was my daddy. Anybody can be a father. He was my parent and my best friend until the day he died.”
Her eyes shimmered. She took the bottle from Billy’s hand and poured the wine.
There was a moment of silence.
Then she asked, “And which side would you choose? Good or bad?”
“I like to think that I’d choose the good.”
“How would you know which side that is?”
***
It began slowly, with her unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time, as if she had all eternity for foreplay. Only later, as he peeled her clothes from her body, finding that it fulfilled every promise its curves had made, did things gain momentum.
The speed and force built as they explored the mysteries of bodies, both their own and each other’s, moving sometimes together and sometimes against each other, squeezing and sucking and scratching with abandon.
It was wild, frenzied with passion, and it seemed to go on without end. Billy found himself amazed by his own stamina and endurance, his ability to resist his body’s urges to release.
Their bodies were at war, writhing and grinding the other’s into submission. Going on even as their muscles burned and their skin virtually poured sweat, they persevered.
Billy felt as if h
is entire body was on fire, his every motion fueled the flames, his every thrust added to the heat.
Keiana’s lips met his mouth, sucking on his tongue momentarily, and then moved on to his cheek, down his neck.
She kissed, and then licked his throat. Then she moaned and scraped against his skin with her teeth. They were so sharp, as if ivory blades had been firmly and carefully scraped across his throat, had considered opening his jugular and decided against it.
Billy only realized what the wonderful feeling on his neck was after it had passed.
He looked down at her, curious but never letting his body cease its assault on hers.
She threw her head back and moaned again.
For an instant he saw her full lips pulled back from her porcelain white teeth, two of which were longer and sharper than before, long and sharp like a wolf’s, the teeth of a predator.
It was amazing and horrifying. It was gorgeous.
His eyes closed; his body trembled. He forced himself to thrust once more, twice, and then his trembling body refused, and he slowly lowered himself onto her sweaty skin, his face nestled into her breasts.
He waited until his breathing had slowed before speaking. “That was amazing.” He played the image of her moaning face, her full lips and inhuman fangs, in his mind again and again.
She twirled her fingers in the short brown hair at the back of his head, adding gentle pressure that further pressed him against her chest.
“Yes, it was,” she said.
He lifted his head and looked at her. She was smiling, but not the playfully devious expression from earlier. This was happiness in its simplest form, without any complicated motives and disguises. She looked younger than she had earlier. With her conceited act cast aside she could have passed for a seventeen year-old girl.
Billy was again taken aback by her beauty, but not the way he had lusted after her earlier. She was like the unrequited love of a renaissance artist, captured in oil paints to smile for all eternity. She was an Irish Dulcinea, perfect to the point of losing her realism; too pure, too beautiful, too flawless to exist outside the imaginings of a tired and crazy old knight-errant.
But most importantly: No fangs.
All in your head, Billy. You losing it? You starting to think you can save the world and get the girl by jousting with windmills? Shut up, Billy thought.
He kissed her, long and slow, making sure to thoroughly experience the fullness of her lips.
They laid in silence for a while. Billy tried to think of something to say, but felt self-conscious. He always found himself wanting to talk, to really talk, after sex, which drove Emily crazy, as all she wanted to do afterwards was cuddle and discuss how great the sex was, how in love they were, the same mindless conversation every time. No real sharing of ideas, no actual communication. Billy agonized over the silence, until finally, Keiana broke it.
“Tell me what really happened between you and your wife,” she said, her voice soft, non-accusatory.
Billy opened his mouth to deny that anything of note had happened, to assure her that things just hadn’t worked out.
Why not tell the truth? he mused.
He closed his mouth and thought. She actually wants to communicate. She wants what you’ve always wanted. Have your circumstances changed you that much? Why ruin it?
“Emily and I got married young,” he began. He slid his hands behind his head, raising it a bit off the pillow, and stared up at the plain white ceiling. “We didn’t think we were young, of course, but we still had a lot of growing up to do after we were together, and we grew apart…far apart.
“I’ve always felt like there was more to life than just getting through it, and Emily had believed that too. As we got older and pressure built, and all the bills and responsibilities started sucking all the life out of her, she forgot there was anything more. Life to her was about paying the mortgage and working overtime and trying to get a promotion. She was always looking ahead and never stopped to enjoy where she was.
“Meanwhile, I was just as nearsighted as when we first got married. I wanted an adventure, a passion…I would say ‘let’s go away for a long weekend,’ and she would want to save the money and get work done instead. I would encourage her to do the things she liked, that made her happy, even if only a little bit, and she would tell me it was a waste of time, that she had more productive things she could do.”
Billy paused, unsure of how to progress to the end, of his story and his marriage.
“As time went on, it just got worse. We’d always argued about kids before: I wanted three and she wanted four, but she started saying she wasn’t sure if she really did want any, or at least that she didn’t want any for quite a while. She wanted to make sure her career was established first.
“We started fighting…a lot.” Billy found himself remembering their honeymoon. They had been broke, and a road trip to the gulf coast of Mexico was the best they could afford, but they’d been dreamers then, both of them. They’d talked about kids and trips and being great, even though they didn’t know how they could pull any of it off.
“I understand that everybody has to get older, that you have to grow up and let some of the old dreams go, but nobody should give up on everything. For the last couple of years, the whole purpose of her life has been to get it over with.
“I know it was as much my fault as hers. Lord knows how things would have been different if I would have just grown up a little. So we fought constantly. Sometimes she would throw me out; sometimes I would just leave before she got the chance. One night, the fighting got real bad, I don’t even know what it was over…I honestly don’t think I really knew then, but I went out.
“I ended up getting drunk, very drunk, completely blacked-out wasted, and when I sobered up, I was cheating on my wife. After that it was hopeless. Things were completely ruined before I even realized it. The cheating continued, Emily found out, and she divorced me. My old friends don’t talk to me; at least most of them don’t, anymore. I can’t even talk to my own mother without her telling me how disappointed in me she is until I finally get annoyed and hang up.”
Billy realized he’d started rambling. He’d let the momentum build until the inertia carried him right past the answer and into something else entirely.
“You think I’m a horrible person?” he asked after a pause that, while quite brief, seemed like hours to him.
“Not necessarily. You did a horrible thing, that much is true, but that isn’t enough to condemn you as a horrible person.”
He searched her face in the dark for the vanity and overconfidence he’d seen in the bar earlier that night. Had it all been a ruse, a façade? he wondered. Could this sweet girl and that stuck up bitch coexist in a single body?
“Why didn’t you get a divorce earlier?”
He tried not to cringe and angled his face away from her. “I never thought it would come to that. I probably wished for it more than once, but I never thought it would actually happen. Then it was too late.”
“Do you think it’s impossible to love forever, without growing comfortable, then bored, then out of love?” The defenses were down now; there could be no doubt about that.
“Why did you come up to me tonight? Of all the guys in there, why’d you tell me to take you home?”
“I already told you. You were the only man trying to ignore me. All the others were overeager.”
“So you thought I was a challenge?”
“No.” She paused. In the darkness he could hear the smile in her voice better than he could make it out visually. “You only tried to ignore me, and too hard at that. You weren’t doing a very good job.”
“Then why?”
“All of those eager men, their lust, it’s too transient. It passes too quickly. I’m not as young as I look. I’m searching for permanence.”
“You said you were looking for something else before,” he noted.
“No, I said only that I was looking for something and that w
hen I saw it I would know I found it.”
“You walked into Johnny Ringo’s looking for permanence? Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places.”
“I’ve got time. I look everywhere.”
“You must be well traveled.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said. “So is it possible?”
“What?”
“Permanence. Love that doesn’t end once lust is spent,” she said.
“With the right two people, I still think it is…I hope it is,” he said.
Keiana rolled over a bit, pressing her nude body up against his. It felt cold and soft against his skin, delicate as rice paper and just as exotic.
“I think the same thing,” she said. She nestled her head where his shoulder met his chest and drifted off to sleep.
He was awake for some time after that. He ran through sensory images of all kinds: the look in Emily’s eyes and the subtle fury in her voice when she’d told him that she knew he’d been having an affair; the hot, slick feel of adulterous sex with Susan Walker; the smell of Keiana’s hair, like cinnamon and cloves; the taste and burn of whiskey as it trickled its way down his throat.
But always his mind came back to two things: the sound of her voice pronouncing the word ‘love’ with its unplaceable accent, and the haunting image of her face, her mouth opened in a moan, her lips pulled back to reveal two fangs more perfect than those brandished by any predator.
***
When Billy woke for work the next morning he decided not to wake her. He showered and dressed, left her a note saying to make herself comfortable or lock up if she left, and went to work.
He was surprisingly productive yet again, but completely lost in thought. The mechanical elements of his job ran on autopilot while his mind drifted back to the night before.
When he got out, he headed straight home, without his usual detour to Ringo’s. He got to his apartment and paused, uncertain, before opening the door.
He was hit with the smell before the door was even half open. A rich, savory aroma that made him think of meals he’d never eaten but seen on television. He smiled. She’d stayed. He’d convinced himself it was stupid to hope for it, but here she was.
