Demon

“She’s taking a few days off for personal reasons,” Helen said with a slight smile that seemed to say she knew exactly what those personal reasons were, that it was good of me to ask, though she had no intention of telling me.

As I turned at the door to thank her, I found the small floral back pillow abandoned on her chair and Helen coming toward me, her glasses swaying on their chain against her breasts. I could not remember when Helen had actually gotten up from her chair to hold the door for me and see me out. I could not remember the last time I had actually felt respected for my work as an editor or a writer.

But I liked it.

Inside the men’s room, Phil stared bleakly into the mirror as he washed his hands. He looked beyond tired, which was strange. Always upbeat, even through his divorce and whirlwind wedding and birth of his son only a year and a half later, he had been the first—the only one, actually—to invite me out after my separation from Aubrey. We had drunk a few beers together at a couple of Red Sox games, but it had felt mechanical, our arranged camaraderie, and I had politely declined his invitations since.

“You all right?”

He nodded. “A lot happened while you were gone.”

“Yeah?” I asked, trying to sound interested. “Helen said Sheila took a few days off. Is she doing all right?”

Phil sighed, tugged a paper towel from the dispenser. “She went to the hospital for alcohol poisoning a few nights ago.”

I stared, my stomach contracting in on itself. “What?” In my mind I calculated the days, thinking back to the night she called. I felt guilty and not a little reprehensible.

“She’s going to be all right, though I guess it was close. If Dan hadn’t come back to pick up Amanda’s epilepsy pills, who knows.”

“I can’t believe it. It’s so uncharacteristic of her,” I said woodenly. “It’s the last thing Dan needs right now.”

Phil looked at me strangely. “She’s going through a tough time right now, Clay. People do stupid things at times like this.” I didn’t know whether he meant to insinuate it or not, but I remembered my own drinking after Aubrey left.

“I guess you’re right.” But I didn’t believe our situations were similar at all.

“We’ve been helping with the kids so Dan can get some work done.”

Now I understood the look of fatigue. Sheila’s three children were, if I remembered correctly, between the ages of two and eight.

I almost said to let me know if I could do anything to help, but I stopped. “I’m sorry to hear all of this,” I said instead.

“Hey, I meant to tell you, your manuscript is something. You need to get that thing finished, man, because I can’t wait to see how it ends.”

Me, too.

MY VISION SPECKLED AS I paused on the first floor, midway up from the basement laundry. My legs felt swollen, tight, and wooden. I caught my breath.

I need to get more exercise. And while that was true, I also knew I was neither overweight nor terribly out of shape. When I was done with this manuscript, when I finished and it was out the door, I would see a doctor.

As I let myself back into my apartment, I wondered again if Lucian, once he had accomplished his mission, would disappear from my life. Or would he loiter, watching me without my knowing it, as he had on the T? There was a time when I could not imagine enduring his intrusions. Now I found I could not imagine a life without them.

That night I stayed up well past two o’clock working on my book.

By the time I went to bed, I tallied more than 300 pages, over 85,000 words—a perfectly respectable length for a book. It needed nothing now but an ending. But my calendar remained empty.

Our time was getting shorter, he had said. Then where was he?

TWO DAYS LATER SHEILA’S desk stood empty. Not only empty of Sheila herself and the perennial cardigan on the back of her chair but of the framed photos of her family, the pencil holder her son Justin made out of a frozen juice can, the painted rock frog paperweight with googly eyes and Caleb’s name carefully painted on the side. Only her candy dish remained.

When I asked Phil what had happened, he said she had given her notice, that she was taking the kids and moving to South Carolina where her parents had retired to a golf course.

“Has anyone called Dan?” I felt vaguely like a schmuck. I should have done it myself, had thought I should many times.

“I’ve tried, but he won’t answer. I don’t think he wants to talk.”

I knew that feeling. And I didn’t blame him.

FOUR DAYS. IT HAD been four days.

That evening I tried to work in spite of my gnawing anxiety and annoyance, but there was nothing more to add to the manuscript. I felt powerless, creatively stunted, and my calendar remained empty.