Kelly Link: Get in Trouble: Stories

Fran stepped back. “Wait up. Okay? I’ll tell you a thing if you promise not to tell my daddy. Okay? There’s an old house farther up the road that nobody except me and my daddy knows about. Nobody lives there, and so my daddy put his still up in it. He’s got all sorts of articles stashed up there. I’ll take you up. But you can’t tell him what I done.”

“Course not, darlin’,” Kyle said. “We don’t aim to cause a rift in the family. Just to get what we have coming.”

And so Fran found herself climbing right back up that same road. She got her feet wet crossing the drain but kept as far ahead of Kyle and Ryan as she dared.

When they got up to the house, Kyle whistled. “Fancy sort of ruin.”

“Wait’ll you see what’s inside,” Fran said. She led them around to the back, then held the door open. “Sorry about the lights. The power goes off more than it stays on. My daddy usually brings up a flashlight. Want me to fetch one?”

“We got matches,” Ryan said. “You stay right there.”

“The still is in the room over on the right. Mind how you go. He’s got it set up in a kind of maze, with the newspapers and all.”

“Dark as hell at the damned stroke of midnight,” Kyle said. He felt his way down the hall. “I think I’m at the door. Sure enough, smells like what I’m lookin’ for. Guess I’ll just follow my nose. No booby traps or nothing like that?”

“No, sir,” Fran said. “He’d’ve blowed himself up a long time before now if he tried that.”

“I might as well take in the sights,” Ryan said, the lit end of his cigarette flaring.

“Yes, sir,” Fran said.

“And might there be a pisser in this heap?”

“Third door on the left, once you go up,” Fran said. “The door sticks some.”

She waited until he was at the top of the stairs before she slipped out the back door again. She could hear Kyle fumbling toward the center of the Queen’s Room. She wondered what the queen would make of Kyle. She wasn’t worried about Ophelia at all. Ophelia was an invited guest. And anyhow, the summer people didn’t let anything happen to the ones who looked after them.

One of the summer people was sprawled on the porch swing when she came out. He was whittling a stick with a sharp knife.

“Evening,” Fran said and bobbed her head.

The summer personage didn’t even look up at her. He was one of the ones so pretty it almost hurt to peep at him, but you couldn’t not stare, neither. That was one of the ways they cotched you, Fran figured. Like wild animals when someone shone a light at them. She finally tore her gaze away and ran down the stairs like the devil was after her. When she stopped to look back, he was still setting there, smiling and whittling that poor stick down.

She sold the guitar when she got to New York City. What was left of her daddy’s two hundred dollars had bought her a Greyhound ticket and a couple of burgers at the bus station. The guitar got her six hundred more, and she used that to buy a ticket to Paris, where she met a Lebanese boy who was squatting in an old factory. One day she came back from her under-the-table job at a hotel and found him looking through her backpack. He had the monkey egg in his hand. He wound it up and put it down on the dirty floor to dance. They both watched until it ran down. “Très joli,” he said.

It was a few days after Christmas, and there was snow melting in her hair. They didn’t have heat in the squat, or even running water. She’d had a bad cough for a few days. She sat down next to her boy, and when he started to wind up the monkey egg again, she put her hand out to make him stop.

She didn’t remember packing it. And of course, maybe she hadn’t. For all she knew, they had winter places as well as summer places. She would bet they got around.

A few days later, the Lebanese boy ran off, no doubt looking for someplace warmer. The monkey egg went with him. After that, all she had to remind herself of home was the tent that she kept folded up like a dirty handkerchief in her wallet.

It’s been two years, and every now and again while Fran is cleaning rooms in the pension, she closes the door and sets up the kerchief tent and gets inside. She looks out the window at the two apple trees, the dead one and the living. She tells herself that one day soon she will go home again.

When the sex tape happened and things went south with Fawn, the demon lover did what he always did. He went to cry on Meggie’s shoulder. Girls like Fawn came and went, but Meggie would always be there. Him and Meggie. It was the talisman you kept in your pocket. The one you couldn’t lose.

Two monsters can kiss in a movie. One old friend can go to see another old friend and be sure of his welcome: so here is the demon lover in a rental car. An hour into the drive, he opens the window of the rental car, tosses out his cell phone. There is no one he wants to talk to except for Meggie.

(1991) This is after the movie and after they are together and after they begin to understand the bargain that they have made. They are both, suddenly, very famous.

Film can be put together in any order. Scenes shot in any order of sequence. Take as many takes as you like. Continuity is independent of linear time. Sometimes you aren’t even in the scene together. Meggie says her lines to your stand-in. They’ll splice you together later on. Shuffle off to Buffalo, gals. Come out tonight.

(This is long before any of that. This was a very long time ago.)

Meggie tells the demon lover a story:

Two girls and, look, they’ve found a Ouija board. They make a list of questions. One girl is pretty. One girl is not really a part of this story. She’s lost her favorite sweater. Her fingertips on the planchette. Two girls, each touching, lightly, the planchette. Is anyone here? Where did I put my blue sweater? Will anyone ever love me? Things like that.

They ask their questions. The planchette drifts. Gives up nonsense. They start the list over again. Is anyone here? Will I be famous? Where is my blue sweater?

The planchette jerks under their fingers.

M-E

Meggie says, “Did you do that?”

The other girl says she didn’t. The planchette moves again, a fidget. A stutter, a nudge, a sequence of swoops and stops.

M-E-G-G-I-E

“It’s talking to you,” the other girl says.

M-E-G-G-I-E H-E-L–L-O

Meggie says, “Hello?”

The planchette moves again and again. There is something animal about it.

H-E-L–L-O I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

They write it all down.

M-E-G-G-I-E O I W-I–L-L L-O-V-E Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

“Who is this?” she says. “Who are you? Do I know you?”

I S-E-E Y-O-U I K-N-O-W Y-O-U W-A-I-T A-N-D I W-I–L-L C-O-M-E

A pause. Then:

I W-I–L-L M-E-G-G-I-E O I W-I–L-L B-E W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

“Are you doing this?” Meggie says to the other girl. She shakes her head.

M-E-G-G-I-E W-A-I-T

The other girl says, “Can whoever this is at least tell me where I left my sweater?”

Meggie says, “Okay, whoever you are. I’ll wait, I guess I can wait for a while. I’m not good at waiting. But I’ll wait.”

O W-A-I-T A-N-D I W-I–L-L C-O-M-E

They wait. Will there be a knock at the bedroom door? But no one comes. No one is coming.

I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

No one is here with them. The sweater will never be found. The other girl grows up, lives a long and happy life. Meggie goes out to L.A. and meets the demon lover.