Page 69 of Succubus

“You seem different,” says Dee. We’re sitting on the porch bench watching Ella play on the pebble path with a set of fairy dolls Mom got her. It’s an unseasonably warm Saturday and leaf blowers drone an uninspired mating call to one another. The echinacea at the bottom of the chipping wood steps has finally succumbed; only a few faded pink petals cling to the dark porcupines of the cones.

“Do I?” She’s right, I do seem different.

If I keep sleeping with Joel, how far will it go? This is what I’ve been wondering. What will I be able to do? I’m intrigued and a little afraid, trying to imagine. And when I try too hard, I start missing Grub with a sharpness that cuts right through the hard shell my mind has crawled inside. I can almost hear his voice skidding with excitement as he theorizes about what my power might do. As he speculates on what he might do with his own, if he could find a way to channel it usefully. Maybe, he used to say sometimes, he could convince himself to care about some horrible dictator. Or just, like, his smarmy English teacher. If only he could depress the right people.

“I mean— ” Dee squints at me as though she isn’t sure how to phrase it. Which isn’t like Dee. “Okay,” she says, “I don’t know. It’s weird. You seem really full of energy, and that’s good. But there’s this . . . pull. Like I feel like you’re sort of brighter when I look at you, like you’re radioactive. I don’t know. It’s freaking me out a little.”

“Yeah, I feel great,” I say. “Maybe my sad diet’s finally working. Less inflammation, probably.”

She nods quickly. “That’s amazing.” And then, after a few seconds, “Damien is leaving.” Damien is her immediate boss.

I look up and she reads my expression.

“Yeah.” She swigs the rest of her espresso. “It would go to me.”

“That’s a big deal, Dee.”

“A lot more money. A little more travel.”

“How do you feel about it?”

But we both know: She can’t wait.

“We’re talking about moving the office. I’m voting for closer to the train. I think it’ll happen. That’ll cut my commute a little at least.”

“That’s amazing, Dee.”

“Are you happy here, T?” It’s abrupt. She looks uncomfortable, having asked it. “I mean—I should ask you: Is this an okay life for you?”

“Are you okay with me being here?” I ask back.

She nods emphatically. “Of course! I don’t know what I’d do without you. But . . .”

I wait.

She taps her empty shot glass—the one she uses for espresso—sets it down on the stone ledge, and fiddles with her silver pinky ring. “You might want . . . something more? At some point. For yourself?”

I bite my lip.

She blinks, looks away. “I know what you told me. But then you said— ”

“You don’t believe this is enough for me.” I swat at what is hopefully the last mosquito of fall and realize a second later what Dee means. I’d said Joel had broken up with the imaginary other woman. I’d said I was thinking about dating him. My lie to cover up the reality of Joel trying to kill me. Of me trying to kill Joel.

“T . . .”

“It’s okay,” I say quickly, wanting to move on.

But she says, “I haven’t asked about Joel. You don’t want to talk about him. I know.” She holds up her hand, preempting me. “But it’s made me wonder. You seemed like you were really thinking about trying something there. That seemed like a good sign.”

Crap.

I redirect. “It’s a good life. Ella’s been doing so well. We have the group, Ms. Nancy, all our routines. Those tigers.” Ella loves the tiger statues on campus—she has named her favorite pair Claire and Della, and she climbs on their backs and pretends to ride them in the summer, when the college students are gone. “And I have my business.” If I ever go back to it. “I know all the OBs, and Lillian. . . .” My favorite home-birth midwife. “And I love this house!”

As if on cue, Mom flushes the toilet and the brown house washes itself clean, finishing with a satisfied trickle, settling in the wake of her footsteps returning to the living room. Her Inner Peace in a Bikini (weight loss and meditation) podcast goes back on at full volume.

“It does feel like home, doesn’t it?” Dee says.

I nod.