Demon: A Memoir - By Tosca Lee Page 0,90

decline, if I was, as people said, hitting bottom.

You’re losing it, man.

No, I’m waiting.

But my calendar remained empty, a vacant face staring back at me every time I opened it. I came to regard it with contempt, swearing at it for yielding nothing, calling it names and slamming my desk drawers.

On the eighth day, I sat on my sofa, staring at the laptop across the living room, the glow of it like an oversized LCD nightlight. I found myself thinking of Sheila and wondering how she was, wishing I had her phone number so I could call her and apologize for my callousness. She might have made a mistake, but she had obviously suffered for it in ways Aubrey never had.

I thought also about how centerless and adrift I had been after Aubrey’s leaving—until I found a new, more compelling body by which to fix my existence: Lucian. But now I wondered if he would leave me, too, and what could possibly take his place as he had taken Aubrey’s. Even in losing Aubrey, I had not felt this level of anxiety, these jolts of panic, had not gone to these mental lengths. I felt sad about that, in retrospect, sad and regretful. While I might never have measured up, might not have prevented her leaving, I saw so many things now that I could have done—if not to keep her, then at least to have allowed myself more closure.

The monitor started to go into hibernation. As I got up to tap it awake, it blinked to life. I sucked in a breath.

4:30: Hurry.

It was 4:28. I stuffed my feet into my shoes, grabbed a jacket, and left.

I WALKED ON SHAKY legs to the closest restaurant, a wrap-sandwich-and-soup joint on the corner of Norfolk and Massachusetts Avenue. I had never eaten here; I had always thought it looked dingy. Scanning the sparse, stained tables, I saw I was right. A college student talked on the phone behind the counter. A couple ate in chilly silence on a pair of bentwood chairs. A blonde woman, the only other patron, waved impatiently to me.

Her eyebrows were too dark for her sallow complexion, the wavy blonde hair bleached too light. She did not smile at me as I sat down.

A wrap sandwich lay on a plate between us. She pushed it toward me. I didn’t want it.

“I lost my job.”

“I know.” She sat back, regarded me with a dispassion I found amazing and infuriating. I had been sick with waiting, with the need for explanations, and now she sat, looking at me like a babysitter biding her time until my parents returned.

“But they’re still considering the contract, Helen says. I hadn’t signed it yet—”

“I’d be surprised if they take it.”

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“You ruined it, Clay.”

I blanched. “But you said they’d publish it.”

“No, I said you would publish my story.”

“Do we have to argue semantics? You said—”

“Just because I say something doesn’t mean it will happen, Clay.” She crossed her arms, regarded me over high cheekbones that seemed too patrician for the bad bleach job and cheap makeup. And I saw my hoped-for payoff in all of this, the reward I felt I had coming to me, begin to trickle away.

“Then—then I’ll submit it elsewhere. It’s bigger than Brooks and Hanover anyway.”

She seemed to consider this, a ring-laden hand toying with a strand of pale hair, her gaze returning to me, searching mine. “All right. Then let’s get to it.”

And then I noticed her eyes. They were the least human I had ever seen them, glittering in a ménage of mercurial colors beneath a brown veneer. I sat, transfixed, not knowing what to do, hearing again the voice in my head: Leave!

“How does it end?”

“With you,” she said simply. “As I said, it has always been about you.”

“You say that, but what do you mean?” My every question seemed laced with desperation, every answer not enough.

“My story has given way to yours. Don’t you see? No, of course you don’t. Listen to me. It was all done. These children of God were bursting to life like kernels of corn popping into bloom. Suddenly, El was everywhere, manifest by the sheer act of belief in this Messiah, this gift of spilled blood drunk from the cup of acceptance. We were forgotten, disinherited in favor of the mud race.

“I saw that black lake yawning beneath me, a little bit wider with each passing day. We all did. And we could have