daniel j davis

I had ten minutes until dinner. I was standing out in what passed for the cold in Alabama. I stood in the the little balding hump of earth between my apartment building and the next. I used to take my dog out to take dumps here. I would literally have killed—I thought this to myself every night the first few nights—I would literally have killed someone in order to get my dog back from her, just to have something alive beside me on the couch.

Mara had been harassing me on the phone for the last five minutes.

“You can’t do this, Noah. You can’t go.”

“I’m already here.”

“If you go in that apartment, you might not come back out. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Okay.”

“Noah, listen to me.”

“Why should I listen to you? When have you ever endured anything like this? Ever? Since time began, you’ve been—what? Chilling out playing harps on clouds? You’ve got no idea what it’s like to love someone like I loved her; you’ve got no idea what it’s like to be betrayed like I am; and you’ve got no idea what it’s like living after that.”

“It’s dangerous to get involved with someone so soon after, and you don’t know anything about her, and she’s—”

I sighed. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to walk through this door and cook dinner for a pretty girl, and we’re going to talk about books or watch a movie or something, and it’s going to feel good and scary, and maybe for a few hours I can stop thinking about how panicked and empty I’m going to feel when I go to sleep.”

“Noah, if you do this, I don’t know if I can respect you.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

I hung up and slid the phone in my pocket and turned around to face Red Mountain. It sloped up behind the dull mustard retaining wall; it sprouted dark, dripping trees choked with kudzu. Flickering streetlamps tossed shadows in. The shrubs moved. Eyes reflected moonlight. The rain droned and flooded potholes. I saw that red streak on the traffic bollard from where she backed the Honda up too fast and gave the thing a permanent tilt. I imagined seeing it now: I imagined her slipping the keys in at 2 a.m. two months ago, breathing fast, looking over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t awake, to make sure he didn’t see her, to make sure she didn’t have to face him and have his face call up remembrances: the first cheat, the first move, the first apartment, the first night, the first vows, the first kiss, the first meal . . .

The first meal.

I knocked on Lily’s door. I thought: “This is the first meal.”

She opened the door wearing an apron over tshirt and jeans. She was holding a spatula that had never been used. There was nothing cooking. She just held it up and looked at me.

I pretended to cough. I had to get a hold of myself.

“Looks like you’re ready,” I said.

“I don’t know.” She cocked her head. “It all seems so complicated. I might have to take notes.”

I stepped in and slipped off my sandals. “You get the groceries I asked for?”

I took in the place while she rattled them off: it looked like nobody lived here. There was no furniture; there were no entertainment systems. There were only books, newspapers, candy wrappers, and boxes of V8 and ramen. She had all her cookware laid out for me: one skillet, one saucepan, one (held) spatula, and one bag of assorted plastic cutlery courtesy of Sam Walton.

“You certainly haven’t cluttered the place up,” I said.

She shrugged and started pulling everything out of the fridge.

“So is this going to be good?” she called over her shoulder.

“Of course it is,” I said. “Hand me the coconut milk. I’m about to open a can.”

She told me about classes and professors while I dissolved curry blocks in boiling milk. I tried not to talk about pizzas or grad school or her. The rice was almost done. We talked about Milton some. I recited half of “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.” I kept studying her hair. I kept thinking that she smelled like my first girlfriend. When I looked into the sauce, I could see the curve of her mouth there. I felt nervous and blissful and self-consciously confident.

We ate and talked some more. We sat on the floor, backs to the wall, legs crossed, identical. Our eyes circuited from short meetings to the view of the drizzling night through her sliding glass door. With every sentence we exchanged, my hidden mind switched from sunburst to gloom and back and back and back and back.

Sunburst: this person finds me entertaining enough to remain in my presence. She occasionally touches me on the arm and laughs at the mildly amusing things I say.

Gloom: it’s just because she doesn’t know me yet. She knew me for three years and ran away like I was kitten-raper moonlighting as a senator.

She saw through my evasiveness. She dropped her fork in her curry and straight up asked me:

“So are you married?”

And I told her. I told her everything.

“It’s awesome that you’ve already got all this furniture here, man.”

Noah slid the glass door open and watched a bright orange pickup creep closer to his apartment. It was heaped with junk.

“Yeah,” Noah said. “I’ve got pretty much everything except beds. Y’all brought beds, right?”

“Kinda.” The wispy hipster shrugged. He was wearing a Hellsing shirt and glasses. He leaned against the brick wall outside Noah’s apartment and motioned for the truck to come nearer the curb.

The truck stopped, and two other guys got out. The driver wore plaid and jeans. He had a beard. He played football. It was his truck. It was his bright, bright orange truck. It rode low.

“Hey, man!” He shot out his hand. “I’m Wilson.”

“Noah. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Vincent!” the other guy called out. He was crawling around inside the cab trying to find something.”

“Noah!”

“Good to meet you!”

“Same!”

Wilson peered inside, looked over his shoulder at the truck. “So where you want this stuff?”

Noah shrugged. “Anywhere. My room’s around the left corner, but everywhere else is fair game.”

The hipster stepped inside and smiled. He kept his arms folded, of course. His name was Colton.

“This is going to be so third world.”

“Yeah,” Noah said, “and if it doesn’t work out—”

Colton interrupted. “No. I mean I like it.” He drummed his fingers on his arm. “Now which part of the floor am I going to be sleeping on . . .”

Noah went around to the other side of the truck, where Vincent was just wriggling out. He was wearing a coral polo; his hair was immaculately fauxhawked. A torrent of biology and chemistry textbooks spilled out onto the asphalt after him. Noah scooped up an armload and headed inside with him.

“So how do y’all know each other?”

“Highschool,” Vincent said.

“Oh yeah? Where?”

Colton threw down his cot in the corner. “Just this little Christian school in Magnolia.”

Noah stopped what he was doing. “The Gilead School?”

“That’s it,” Wilson said. He was carrying about thirteen different gaming consoles. “Home of the Judges.”

Noah shook his head. “You know Asher Sterne? And Judith Rockwell?”

“Pssh. Yeah. How do you know them? You go there?”

“No,” Noah said. “I’m not from around here. They’re just—acquaintances.”

The four worked in silence for a while. Noah got tasked with stuffing DVDs into his makeshift cinderblock entertainment center. When he came across 300, it triggered a thought.

“Hey, you guys like Zack Snyder, right? You know he’s got a new movie coming out?”

“Frickin GRIMDARK man!” Wilson was euphoric. “That’s going to be so leet.”

Colton looked at the ceiling, ran the numbers. “So 300 was awesome, right?”

“Right.”

“And GRIMDARK‘s in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, right?”

“Right!”

“So that means it’s going to be 133.333333333 times more awesome than 300.”

Vincent sighed. “We were actually planning on going to see it when it opens tomorrow. You want to come?”

“I don’t know,” Noah said. “I definitely want to see it, but it’s hard to tell about my schedule sometimes.”

Noah grunted to his feet and surveyed the room. He nervously spun his wedding ring around his finger. Wilson saw it.

“You married?”

“Um.” Noah breathed; he could feel his hands starting to shake. “Kinda.”

“She here? I mean, if it’s not a good time—if she’s in the shower or whatever—not that I’d—or, you know—we could come back. Or whatever.”

“No,” Noah said. “She’s not here. She left me.”

“That sucks, man.” Vincent had already alphabetized his books. “How long has it—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, alright? Is it okay if we don’t talk about it?”

All at once, jumbled: “Yeah, man, sure, dude, yeah, man, cool.”

“So, uhhhh . . .” Colton fumbled. “So what do you do? Like, for money and stuff?”

Noah snorted. “I deliver pizzas.”

“Sweet! You can get us a special, right?”

Noah managed to smile. “Yeah, I think I could swing that.”

“You got to go in today?”

“Nah. I took off.”

“So you want to hang out?” Wilson brought in a whole crate of ramen. “We’re going to play some D&D tonight, and you could—”

“You had to come right out and say that, didn’t you?” Colton sighed. “Not even give him a chance to think we’re normal?”

“Sorry, guys. Got plans tonight. In fact,” Noah looked at his phone, “I’ve got to be going now. Got an errand or two. Nice to meet y’all. Lock up if you leave.”

Noah exited to a chorus of sure things and yeah dudes. He slid in his car and cranked up NPR till he got sick of it. He switched to local talk until he got sick of it. Then silence. The machine rattled across potholes. He drove down dead ends; he reversed out of them. He idled beneath the shadows of rusted roofs. He watched minutes tick by in the center of abandoned lots.

His was trying to find a lead, but he couldn’t think. When he closed his eyes, he heard her voice; when he kept them open, he saw her naked on their bed. He wondered if Mara had been right. He wondered if he should have talked to the guys about it. But even thinking about that made his stomach punch against his chest.

He felt like time was going faster. All afternoon, there was nothing: a mother in Southtown beating her kid, a cop squirming atop a homeless guy, a fat old prostitute in yellow bike shorts. The only monsters he saw were human.

On the way back, the speedometer never crested 35. Noah felt no need to be anywhere. Tomorrow, he would deliver pizzas to Medicare beneficiaries in tanktops and oxygen masks. Tomorrow, he would ingest a calzone at 1 and excrete a calzone at 6. Tomorrow, he would make change. Tomorrow, he would sit on the couch. Tomorrow, he would sleep, and he didn’t care if he woke up for another one.

Noah sat outside in a dirty folding chair. The sliding glass door choked his laptop’s power cord. The streetlights were out again. Moths flapped around his face instead. The glow of his laptop was the only light; keystrokes and moth wings were the only motion.

His eyes glazed over interminable lines of Tablet records. He queried goblin* and troll* in every permutation. There was no pattern: a cross-species freak alliance for hazy purpose. Noah sipped his Moses & Coke and thought.

Headlights flared to the east. Noah’s pupils shrunk. Volume cranked up on footsteps. It was a woman. It was the woman: the girl from before, the student with black hair and Milton. Her arms were twigs, and Noah looked into her eyes and wanted to tell her everything. Noah wanted her, as a representative of the gender, to understand. He wanted her, as a stranger, to tell him he was a good husband.

“Hiya, Neighbor.”

Her voice sounded like it should. Noah swallowed. He set down his drink. She was carrying plastic bags.

“Grocery shopping?”

“Mmhmm.” She held up a crackling package.

“Ramen? Really?”

“I’m in college. What did you expect?”

“Don’t you cook?”

“This isn’t cooking?” She snorted. “So you can cook?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Asian stuff mostly.”

“I’m half Chinese, you know.”

“How about that?” Noah’s eyes traced her hands. “So you eat that with chopsticks?”

“No thank you; I use plastic forks.”

“Plastic.”

“So I don’t have to do dishes.”

Noah smiled. “You’re pitiful. You should have real food sometime.”

“I don’t exactly have a lot of money with which to buy this real food.”

“Well, neither do I, and I don’t buy it. I make it. So what’s your excuse?”

“Maybe I never learned,” she said. “Maybe Mommy didn’t think I’d be the marrying type.”

“Maybe you should learn.”

“You going to teach me?”

“Maybe.”

“When?”

Butterflies. Noah held himself in his chair.

“How about tomorrow night?”

“Sounds—”

Noah’s phone buzzed in his pants.

“Just a second.” He answered without looking. “Hello?”

It was Mara. “Noah, I wanted to talk with you about—”

“Can we do this another time?”

“Why? What have you got to do?”

“I’m talking with someone.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes he is!”

The girl was all giggles. Noah sighed.

“A girl?” Mara said.

“Listen, Mara—”

“You be careful, Noah. I don’t want you getting involved—”

“Your concern is noted.”

Click.

“Heartbreaker.”

Noah couldn’t stop looking at the highlights in her lips.

“No, the other way around.”

“You going to tell me about it?”

“Not now.”

“Tomorrow night, then. Oh, and my name’s Lily.”

She sauntered off. Noah watched her. Her hair was luminous and black, and, as she faded into shadow, he wanted to wind it around his fingers and find a strand of it curled upon his couch.

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.
(I Corinthians 10.11)

When I got in that night, I decided I’d better call my parents to tell them about the car. It turns out that situations like this is what insurance is for. Who knew? Yes, everyone. But, for some reason, I’ve never been able to bring myself to consider any course of action that might possibly involve (a) paperwork or (b) official interaction with a person I don’t know.

But, while my financial situation wasn’t quite as dire as I’d feared, I still had to get a car. I didn’t feel like catching a ride with anyone—especially Mara—so I hoofed it a few blocks to the nearest used car lot. And that’s where I found it: 1992 Honda Civic, dull red, manual transmission.

Small? Check.
Trunk storage for longsword? Check.
Cheap? Double check.

I got the keys and started thinking. I wanted to find out (a) what the goblins were up to, (b) why they had a troll, and (c) who all of them were working for.

See, Team Moria isn’t exactly flooded with self-starters. Goblins and trolls don’t form partnerships. They’ve got one leader: someone who happens to be a little brighter and a little more depraved than all the others. Sometimes a lot more. I needed to discover the chain of command.

On the way back to the apartment, I passed under the fateful overpass. I drove slow. I peered. But nothing. I started thinking maybe it was just chance that I met them there. They might not even be based out of Southside.

Mara rang me as I was pulling into the complex.

“You get it?”

“Yeah.”

“And did you post that ad?”

“Yes.” I made sure she heard the sigh.

“Just think: Noah with a bunch of crazy roommates! Maybe you can start a band or paint each other’s toenails or—”

“Is there a reason you’re calling me, Mara?”

“Just checking in.”

“Why? Don’t you have more important things to be doing?” She didn’t respond. “I mean, I don’t mind the company sometimes, but I’m just not sure I deserve so much angelic attention.”

“I’m worried about you, Noah.”

“Here we go.”

“Noah, listen: I’ve been around since day 1, and I’ve seen a lot of people go through things like this—”

I threw the handbrake and sank into the seat. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Maybe you don’t. Did I ever tell you about John Wicker?”

“Enlighten me.”

“He was in the first generation of Anointed,” Mara said. “He was like you. He was your age, your personality. His wife was the only thing that mattered to him; he adored her completely. He got married at 23, just like you. He was happy and had no idea something was wrong. But his wife couldn’t take it. She couldn’t handle her new husband being—what he was. She wasn’t a believer in the first place. She left him a year later and told everyone he’d cheated on her. She did it just like that—no warning, all of a sudden. He came home one night, and she was gone. He killed himself three months later.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

“You understand,” Mara said.

“I sure do.”

In the dark they dig through houses;
by day they shut themselves up;
they do not know the light.
For deep darkness is morning to all of them;
for they are friends with the terrors of deep darkness.
(Job 24:16-17)

It was too bright when I woke up.

The brightness was neon yellow; so I knew Mara was in the kitchen scrambling eggs.

I don’t like scrambled eggs. She knew that.

“Can’t you knock?”

She kept scrambling.

“How do you want them?”

“Not scrambled,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Too late.”

“Yeah, I know.”

That’s how it always happens.

But I ate them anyway. They were dry but tasted better mouth-soaked in coffee. Black.

Mara pointed her fork at me. “So what are you going to do?”

I looked for my wife’s hair on the other side of the couch. It wasn’t there anymore.

“You need a car to deliver pizza,” she said.

“I know.”

“So?”

I stared at the oily patches swirling on the pitch surface of my drink. “My boss will met me borrow his for a while.”

“That’s not a solution.”

“Nope, and I’m pretty sure he keeps his weed in there too.”

“Can you get another one?”

“What you mean?” I said. “Buy one?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

She sipped her coffee-infused sugarmilk. “You could ask your parents for money.”

“I already owe them 3k.”

“You could ask the church.”

“No one there knows me.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Mine. Still doesn’t change the fact.”

“You have any friends here?”

“Not really.”

“Guess you’re out of luck then.”

“Guess so.”

I sulked. It was 9.36a. My shift started at 11. My ride was troll-crushed. Trolls—there’s an idea.

“Hey, do trolls have money?”

“What?” Mara squinted at me. “Like Federal Reserve Notes?”

“Whatever. I’d prefer gold or silver or guns or jewelry or something.”

She shook her head. “Afraid you’re out of luck there. Trolls are bashers, not savers.” She drummed her fingers on the faux-wood coffeetable. “You could move back home, you know.”

“I can’t go back.” I felt my insides tighten. “I’d look like such a failure.”

“You’d just look like what you are—whatever that is.”

“And there’s the problem.”

“Hey!” Mara said. “Roommates! If you got a couple people helping you out with the rent—”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“There’d be too much to explain.”

“Like what?”

“So, Noah, what do you do? Why do you live alone delivering pizzas? Got a girlfriend? Watch Seinfeld? Why do you leave in the middle of the night carrying a sword and come back covered in black blood?”

Mara shrugged. “Just tell them you LARP.”

I went to get myself more coffee.

“What are you scared of?” she said.

“Them.”

“Why?”

“They’re other people.”

“But you said you don’t have any friends here.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that. I don’t want them. I don’t like people. I don’t like talking to them. The only person I liked was my wife. She was the only person I needed to like. I talked to her. That was good and full. That was what I wanted.”

Mara held out her hands. “See? Doesn’t that feel better?”

“What?”

“Talking to someone about it.”

“I’m not talking to someone about it. You’re not even human. You don’t count.”

“Your roommates would be human.”

“Ideally.”

“You could talk to them.”

“No thanks.”

“Well,” Mara said, “I don’t know how else you’re going to get money with no time or effort or embarrassment.”

Neither did I.

And her streams shall be turned into pitch,
and her soil into sulfur;
her land shall become burning pitch.
Night and day it shall not be quenched;
its smoke shall go up forever.

From generation to generation it shall lie waste;
none shall pass through it forever and ever.
But the kaat and the kippod shall possess it,
the yanshuph and the raven shall dwell in it.

He shall stretch the line of formlessness over it,
and the stone of the void.
Its nobles—there is no one there to call it a kingdom,
and all its princes shall be nothing.

Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,
nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the haunt of jackals,
an abode for yaanah.

And wild animals shall meet with hyenas;
the hairy one shall cry to his fellow;
indeed, there the lilit settles
and finds for herself a resting place.

(Isaiah 34:9-14)

The boss let me use his ride to finish my shift. I was too nervous about wrecking it to do any more recon. I kept my eyes on the road.

The sun was falling as he counted out my share of the day’s money.

“You got a ride home, bro?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Thirty-seven bucks.” He shook his head. “You’re gonna catch it when you get home, man. The wife’s gonna be pissed about the car.”

“Guess I’ll have to sleep on the couch for a few nights,” I said.

The sidewalks sweated under me. I saw into an empty kitchen and missed making dinners for two. I saw a college girl in slutty shorts walking her dog, and I felt lust and fear and despair.

No one’s eyes caught mine; I kept checking my uniform to make sure I wasn’t in the spirit world.

The pavement distended and cracked as I climbed the hill. Weeds burst through the road; eyes of stray cats glowed from shadows. The old houses leaned together, and their windows were dark. I smelled oil and thought I was traveling through ruins.

My phone vibrated.

“This is Noah.”

“Hey, son. Just get off work?”

“Yeah.”

“So how’s—hang on—Mom wants to know how you’re doing.”

“Fine.”

“He says he’s doing fine.” Pause. “She says to ask you how you’re really doing.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” Crosstalk. “Listen, son, do you need anything? If you’re short on money—”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask that kind of stuff.”

“We just care about you, son.”

“I know.”

“And that’s why I really want you to consider coming home. You don’t have anything to stay for in Birmingham anymore. You’re all alone, and you’re just going to get more depressed. Listen, I’ve been there; I know what it’s like. You need to talk to someone, son. You can’t—”

“I’m fine.”

He snorted. “Okay. I can tell you’re not in the mood to talk.”

I grunted.

“Well, talk to you later, then. Call us sometime.”

“Yeah.”

“Love you, son.”

“Bye.”

The thunder started when I made the last turn. Lightning struck over the mountain, and rain soaked me through. I heard wings and the screech of an owl. It was night.

The big breezeway light buzzed and flickered. I brought my keyring in front of my face so I could make out which was which, but I stopped. I still had the key to her ignition. It rested there beside mine, and their movement as I held the ring was gentle and slow, and when they came to rest and clicked apart I stopped breathing, and my stomach and my chest felt like they grinding themselves into the concrete. I felt like I’d forgotten a baby in the backseat in the summer heat.

That’s when I saw the girl on the stairs. She must have seen me go pale and dumb, and she looked at me between my keys and smirked.

“Something wrong?”

“Everything,” I said.

I couldn’t look away from her: slender frame in tight black tshirt and skinny jeans, straight black hair to her ribs, its shine reflecting a distorted replica of myself and everything around me. She was sitting on the steps, knees to her chest, reading a pocket-sized Milton.

She kept that smirk going. “Guess things can’t get any worse then, can they?”

“No,” I said after forever. “I guess not.”

She got up, clapped the book shut without keeping her place, and slunk up the stairs.

“Goodnight,” she said.

I could still see her lips five minutes after she’d shut her door.

I had to clear my head. I plopped on the couch, booted up the laptop, and poured myself a drink. My conversation with Dad reminded me of something: I checked my bank account balance.

I lifted Moses off the divorce papers and poured myself another.

Something off-color caught my eye on the other side of the couch: a single strand of her hair, short and black and brittle. It seemed very far away. I stared at it until I don’t remember when.