AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Here,” I said, taking pity on her predicament, “let me help you with those.”
“Omigod, you’re a lifesaver sent from heaven!” she declaimed dramatically, casting her big blue eyes upward. She was dressed for dramatic gestures—in a sweeping bell-sleeved kimono and a long flowing skirt—not for moving. Her wispy blond hair was pinned up in a clip that fell out twice before we made it up to her office with the collapsing boxes.
“Thank you so so much!” she said, spilling the contents of her box onto a pile of more newspapers and magazines spread out on her office floor. “I’ve been collecting all the journals and magazines that have reviewed my book this year and haven’t had a second to organize them all.”
“Wow,” I said, looking appreciatively at the pile.The New Yorker,People, andVanity Fairwere mixed in with literary journals likeThe Hudson ReviewandBluelineand writing magazines likePoets & WritersandThe Writer’s Chronicle. I looked up from the pile to a stack of books on her desk: multiple copies ofPhoenix—Coming Up from the Ashes.
“You’re Phoenix,” I said, feeling a little odd using the single name, but like Cher or Sting, that’s all she went by. “I’ve read about your memoir.” So had most of literate America. A harrowing tale of growing up with child abuse and incest in a dirt-poor Appalachian hollow,Phoenixhad been featured on dozens of talk shows and gotten a rave review from aNew York Timescritic who was better known for excoriating her subjects.
“Oh, have you?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. I heard the Southern accent now and remembered she was from North Carolina. “Everybody’s been so sweet. It’s very gratifying, you know, when you write something as hard to write as my book was and then people are affected by it. Some of the messages I get on my website just make me bawl like a baby!”
“I guess your honesty about your own travails encourages your readers to open up about their own hardships,” I said, thinking that whileSex Liveshad gotten me a fair amount of publicity it at least hadn’t gotten me a string of confessional emails.
“Exactly!” Phoenix nodded her head eagerly. “You must be a writer, too, to understand that.”
I admitted I was and introduced myself. She claimed to have heard of my book, but not to have had a chance to read it since she’d been so busy touring for her book this year. She demanded I get a copy of my book from my office so we could exchange signed copies (“The truth will set you free!” she wrote, drawing a little picture of a plumed bird on fire beside her signature.) and that we make a date to “get good and plastered” the coming weekend before classes started. She was teaching a writing seminar. “I just know once I get involved with my students I won’t have a minute for myself—that’s just the way I am!”
I left her introducing herself to Frank Delmarco (“A big strong man like you wouldn’t mind carrying up a few teeny-weeny boxes for me, would you?”) and made my escape. I was now really and truly exhausted. I was so tired that when I let myself into my house I couldn’t face one more flight of stairs. I collapsed on the couch in the library, not even bothering to draw the blinds against the late afternoon sun, and fell into a deep sleep.
I must have slept for several hours because when I woke up the room was nearly dark. The last of the sun bathed the couch in liquid amber and shadows stretched long across the library floor, almost, but not quite, reaching me.
Come here, a voice from inside the shadows said.
I’m still asleep, I told myself. I’m still dreaming.
Come here!
The voice was harsher now. Gone was the gentle oceanic murmur of last night. But there was also something desperate in it. He couldn’t reach me in the light. He hadn’t grown that strong.
I will once I feed on you again, the voice whispered.
I shivered, not from fear—but from desire at the memory of those shadow lips suckling me last night. I could feel myself going wet already just at the thought of him—
But it wasn’t ahim;it was a thing waiting to feed on me and even if it was only a dream-thing I had to assert myself. Didn’t I?
I reached behind me for the lamp, remembering only as I touched it that I hadn’t plugged it in yet. The shadows stretched closer. The voice commanded me again.Come here!He was getting angry. I swung my legs around and planted my feet in the swath of sunlight. The wood felt warm. Solid. Was I really dreaming?
Yes, only dreaming, the voice said, coaxing now.But such a lovely dream. Come to me!
The dreamswerelovely…well, last night’s dream had been. But still some shred of consciousness told me that there was a limit. That if I let this thing into the daylight I might never wake up from those dreams.
I stood up and followed the path of sunlight across the floor to the wall switch. I flicked it on.
When I turned back I half expected him to still be there—my moonlight lover—glowering at me with disapproval for my disobedience. I could feel his anger prickling the hairs at the back of my neck. I spun around but the room, awash with electric light, was empty.
