“She’ll be all right.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said.
“They don’t have any reason to hurt her. If they’re after me, she’s no good to them dead.”
“How about hurt?” Jay snapped. “Or taken over by demons?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Those would suck.”
“I can’t believe you did this to us. I just can’t believe you’d be so selfish.”
I turned to look at him. The heat of our combined breath was fogging the insides of the windows, and he looked like a silhouette of himself in front of privacy glass. A streetlight another street away caught the window behind him, giving him a false halo.
“Guess I don’t see it that way,” I said, then turned back to watching the street. Lights were on in the houses. Men and women going about the rituals of their lives. Getting ready for parties or watching TV or putting the kids to bed. All of it going on while I froze my ass off waiting for the chance to lead a strike on a nest of demon-ridden wizards who probably wanted me dead. Damned selfish of me, all right.
As if he could hear me thinking, Jay tapped his palms on his knees, shook his head, and spoke.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was out of line. I’m kind of freaking out here. I just don’t understand all what’s going on. I mean . . .” His voice broke. “I’m supposed to be getting married next week. I’m supposed to be worrying about getting a job that makes enough money and what kind of fucking diaper container to use so we don’t stink up the house and making sure Carla’s not miserable because we’re back here instead of Florida with her family.”
“Well, given our family, Wichita is kind of a hard sell,” I said. “No offense.”
He laughed. It was a small sound, and bitter, but it was more than I’d expected, and I was glad to hear it.
“I sooo didn’t want this,” he said. “Seriously, this wasn’t in the plan.”
“How’d it happen?”
Jay rolled his eyes.
“Well, sometimes when a man and a woman love each other very, very much, they give each other a special kind of hug,” he said. I punched his shoulder.
“Not what I meant. How about . . . I don’t know. How’d you meet her? What’s she like when my bullshit drama’s not jumping through the windows?” I said. And then a moment later, and more plaintively than I’d meant it to sound, “Are you happy?”
A car drove past, blue or brown or black. Between the fogged windows and the night, I couldn’t tell. Something dark. Jay was quiet so long, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. When he did speak, his voice was soft. Almost gentle.
“She’s great. Smart and talented. And beautiful. She got here, and she made friends with everyone at church right away, even though she’s . . . you know.”
“Hispanic and knocked up?”
Jay lowered his head to his hands.
“Yes,” he said. “That.”
“I’m not throwing stones,” I said. “She’s cool with me.”
“Thank you,” he said, laughter in his voice. “I’m glad my crazy sister with her porn star SUV and coat and scary-old-man entourage isn’t freaked out.”
“What’re you talking about, ‘porn star SUV’?”
“It’s a porn star SUV,” he said. “The only things its missing are a wet bar in the dashboard and a bunch of little cameras in the backseat.”
“Shut up,” I said, and punched him again. “How do you know what porn star cars look like anyway? I thought you were all Jesus all the time.”
“You thought that, did you,” he said. “You noticed I’m in a shotgun wedding, right?”
“Fair point,” I said.
“I don’t love her.”
He said it so easily, his voice so calm, so conversational. The words hung in the air between us, implications trailing out behind them. He was going to have a wife, a baby, a home, a life. Decades stretching out before him sharing his days and nights with a woman he seemed to like. I wanted to say something comforting and wise. Something that would make his situation better, or if not better, at least better than that. I put my hand on his.
“What about you?” he said. “The blond guy. He’s in love with you, isn’t he?”
“He thinks he is,” I said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s even true. That issue’s got a lot of complexity in it.”
“Because of the angel inside you?”
I opened my mouth, closed it again. This wasn’t a conversation I’d been planning to have. Ever. With anyone.
“Sort of,” I said, feeling my way around the syllables like they might have sharp edges. “She’s not an angel, though. Or a demon either.”
“So what is she, then?”
“She’s what I’ve got to work with,” I said. “And it makes Ex a little scared for me.”
“And the other guy? The Asian?”
“He’s harder to unease,” I said.
“Do you love them?”
I ran a hand through my hair.
“I have an unhealthy thing for Ex,” I said. “By which I mean, I think it’s probably a bad idea and I’m probably reacting to a bunch of things besides him. But it’s there. Chogyi Jake’s . . .”
“Like a brother?” he asked, a smile in his voice.
“More like a mom, actually,” I said. “He’s just so nurturing all the time. I mean, it sounds kind of creepy when I say it out loud, but it’s actually really nice.”
“So they’re your family now.” There wasn’t any rancor in the question. No outrage at the idea that I might have made a family different from the one I’d been born into. I sat with it for a few seconds. Ex. Chogyi Jake. Aubrey. Kim.
“I guess so,” I said. “I guess they are.”
“And are you going to church at all?”
“I’m not,” I said.
I looked out the side window. The house nearest us had its Christmas lights on still, a half dozen bright colors blinking on and off. Inside, the blue flicker of a television danced like a fire.
“I wish you would.”
“It’s not really who I am these days,” I said. “Maybe later. When things have calmed down a little.”
“I’d appreciate it,” he said. “It was hard when you left. There were a lot of things that got thrown into the air. Plans had to change.”
“Mostly plans about what college I’d get my ‘MRS’ degree from,” I said.
“Well, that too,” he said.
“Yeah? So which plans were you thinking of?”
Jay shrugged.
“I always pictured you being around, is all. Mom and Dad are going to get old. They’ll get sick and need us to take care of them, and I figured it would be the three of us together. You and me and Curt. And, you know, I figured your kids and mine would be going to Sunday school together. Or, you know, at least Christmas services. When you stepped out of the picture, it blew everything up.”
“I didn’t mean it to,” I said. “I just . . . I needed to go, you know?”
“I do,” Jay said. “I know exactly. I remember when Mom called me and told me that you’d gone to Arizona even though Dad said you couldn’t. Honestly, the first thing I thought was She can’t do that—can I? But by then I was almost done with my degree, and after I had that . . . well, I could go anywhere.”
“So you went to Florida because I went to Arizona?”
“I don’t know if I’d say that,” he said. “But part of what made me think I could go out in the world was that you already did it. Only, it didn’t work out all that well, did it? I mean, here we both are.”
Something shifted on the sidewalk about half a block down. I tried to wipe the steam from the inside of the windshield, but it was already half frozen, so instead I scraped it with my fingernails, tiny white threads of frost falling to the dashboard. Chogyi Jake and Ex. I rolled down the window, and Ex stepped up.