Kelly Link: Get in Trouble: Stories

“I’m the guy who tells the joke,” Ray says. He drops his cigarette, grinds it under a heel black with dirt. Lights another. “Don’t know if anyone’s told you, but don’t drink out of any of the taps. Or go swimming. The water’s toxic. Phosphorous, other stuff. They shut down the muck farms, they’re building up the marshlands again, but it’s still not what I’d call potable. You staying out here or in town?”

The demon lover says, “Don’t know if I’m staying at all.”

“Well,” Ray says. “They’ve rigged up some of the less wrecked bungalows on a generator. There are camp beds, sleeping bags. Depends on whether you like it rough.” That last with, yes, a leer.

The demon lover feels his own lip lifting. They are both wearing masks. They look out of them at each other. This was what you knew when you were an actor. The face, the whole body, the way you moved in it, just a guise. You put it on, you put it off again. What was underneath belonged to you, just you, as long as you kept it hidden.

He says, “You think you know something about me?”

“I’ve seen all your movies,” Ray says. The mask shifts, becomes the one the demon lover calls “I’m your biggest fan.” Oh, he knows what’s under that one.

He prepares himself for whatever this strange kid is going to say next and then suddenly Meggie is there. As if things weren’t awkward enough without Meggie, naked, suddenly standing there. Everybody naked, nobody happy. It’s Scandinavian art porn.

Meggie ignores the kid entirely. Just like always. These guys are interchangeable, really. There’s probably some website where she finds them. She may not want him, but she doesn’t want anyone else, either.

Meggie says, touching his arm, “You look a lot better.”

“I got a few hours,” he says.

“I know,” she says. “I checked in on you. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t run off.”

“Nowhere to go,” he says.

“Come on,” Meggie says. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

Ray doesn’t follow; lingers with his cigarette. Probably staring at their yoga-toned, well-enough-preserved celebrity butts.

Here’s the problem with this kid, the demon lover thinks. He sat in a theater when he was fifteen and watched me and Meggie done up in vampire makeup pretend-fucking on a New York subway car. The A train. Me biting Meggie’s breast, some suburban movie screen, her breast ten times bigger than his head. He probably masturbated a hundred times watching me bite you, Meggie. He watched us kiss. Felt something ache when we did. And that leaves out all the rest of this, whatever it is that you’re doing here with him and me. Imagine what this kid must feel now. The demon lover feels it, too. Love, he thinks. Because love isn’t just love. It’s all the other stuff, too.

He meets Irene, the fat, pretty medium who plays the straight man to Meggie. People named Sidra, Tom, Euan, who seem to be in charge of the weird ghost gear. A videographer, Pilar. He’s almost positive he’s met her before. Maybe during his AA period? Really, why is that period more of a blur than the years he’s spent drunk or high? She’s in her thirties, has a sly smile, terrific legs, and a very big camera.

They demonstrate some of the equipment for the demon lover, let him try out something called a Trifield Meter. No ghosts here. Even ghosts have better places to be.

He assumes everyone he meets has seen his sex tape. Almost wishes someone would mention it. No one does.

There’s a rank breeze off the lake. Muck and death.

People eat and discuss the missing P.A. — the gofer — some Juliet person. Meggie says, “She’s a nice kid. Makes Whore-igami in her spare time and sells it on eBay.”

“She makes what?” the demon lover says.

“Whore-igami. Origami porn tableaux. Custom order stuff.”

“Of course,” the demon lover says. “Big money in that.”

She may have some kind of habit. Meggie mentions this. She may be in the habit of disappearing now and then.

Or she may be wherever all those nudists went. Imagine the ratings then. He doesn’t say this to Meggie.

Meggie says, “I’m happy to see you, Will. Even under the circumstances.”

“Are you?” says the demon lover, smiling, because he’s always smiling. They’re far enough away from the mikes and the cameras that he feels okay about saying this. Pilar, the videographer, is recording Irene, the medium, who is toasting marshmallows. Ray is watching, too. Is always somewhere nearby.

Something bites the demon lover’s thigh and he slaps at it.

He could reach out and touch Meggie’s face right now. It would be a different story on the camera than the one he and Meggie are telling each other. Or she would turn away and it would all be the same story again. He thinks he should have remembered this, all the ways they didn’t work when they were together. Like the joke about the two skunks. When Out is in, In is out. Like the wrong ends of two magnets.

“Of course I’m happy,” Meggie says. “And your timing is eerily good because I have to talk to you about something.”

“Shoot,” he says.

“It’s complicated,” she says. “How about later? After we’re done here?”

It’s almost full dark now. No moon. Someone has built up a very large fire. The blackened bungalows and the roofless hall melt into obscure and tidy shapes. Now you can imagine yourself back when it was all new, a long time ago. Back in the seventies when nobody cared what you did. When love was free. When you could just disappear if you felt like it and that was fine and good, too.

“So where do I stay tonight?” the demon lover says. Again fights the impulse to touch Meggie’s face. There’s a strand of hair against her lip. Which is he? The pyromaniac or the masochist? In or Out? Well, he’s an actor, isn’t he? He can be anything she wants him to be.

“I’m sure you’ll find somewhere,” Meggie says, a glint in her eye. “Or someone. Pilar has told me more than once you’re the only man she’s ever wanted to fuck.”

“If I had a dollar,” the demon lover says. He still wants to touch her. Wants her to want him to touch her. He remembers now how this goes.

Meggie says, “If you had a dollar, seventy cents would go to your exes.”

Which is gospel truth. He says, “Fawn signed a prenup.”

“One of the thousand reasons you should go home and fix things,” Meggie says. “She’s a good person. There aren’t so many of those.”

“She’s better off without me,” the demon lover says, trying it out. He’s a little hurt when Meggie doesn’t disagree.

Irene the medium comes over with Pilar and the other videographer. The demon lover can tell Irene doesn’t like him. Sometimes women don’t like him. Rare enough that he always wonders why.

“Shall we get started?” Irene says. “Let’s see if any of our friends are up for a quick chat. Then I don’t know about you but I’m going to go put on something a little less comfortable.”

Meggie addresses the video camera next. “This will be our final attempt,” she says, “our last chance to contact anyone who is still lingering here, who has unfinished business.”

“You’d think nudists wouldn’t be so shy,” Irene says.

Meggie says, “But even if we don’t reach anyone, today hasn’t been a total loss. All of us have taken a risk. Some of us are sunburned, some of us have bug bites in interesting places, all of us are a little more comfortable in our own skin. We’ve experienced openness and humanity in a way that these colonists imagined and hoped would lead to a better world. And maybe, for them, it did. We’ve had a good day. And even if the particular souls we came here in search of didn’t show up, someone else is here.”