Spirits

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 25

Jack sprawled on his couch and recounted for Millie the brief conversation, his voice getting angrier as he did so.

"He kept saying 'thanks for coming' and 'I knew you'd come someday' as if it was somehow MY responsibility to seek out HIM. All those years he knew where I was and made no effort."

"And he told you he was just obeying your mother's wishes?" Millie asked.

"Which was bullshit, because that's not exactly what she said, and even if she DID say that, what about after she was fucking DEAD? He was there at the gravesite and could have just walked right over. Or he could have come to the house the next day."

"How soon after that did you move away?"

Jack shrugged. "Actually, I left right after the burial." Then he looked up at her. "You're not taking his side, are you?"

She shook her head, tears on her cheeks. "But it's possible he tried eventually, and by then it was too late."

"It's definitely too late. I had that man almost completely forgotten and reduced to a footnote in my life."

"I'm sorry, Johnny," Millie cried, throwing her arms around his neck. "This is all my fault."

Jack's anger was immediately gone, and all he could think of was Millie, her body wrapped around his, wearing that tiny little dress. His left hand was on her back and his right was on her bare left shoulder. Her face was in his neck, warm and wet with tears.

"None of this is your fault," he said, gently pulling her head back until they could see each other's eyes. He had just enough time to think that they might kiss, when she kissed him. He knew at once this was no friendship kiss. It was a real kiss and it went on for a long time. When she finally broke it off and their eyes met again, he said, "I feel a lot better now," and she laughed and started kissing him again.

"I've been wanting to do that a long time," she whispered in his ear.

"Not as long as I have," he whispered back.

For the next 30 minutes, all they did was kiss like teenagers, neither trying to escalate the encounter. Eventually, Millie giggled and said, "Do you still want to go to the festival?"

"I don't think it will be nearly as much fun as this, but okay."

They spent the next two hours arm in arm as they strolled around the Square listening to live music and feasting on whatever odd little items the food trucks had to offer. Jack barely registered any of it and was only aware of Millie by his side in her teeny tiny yellow dress. He had completely forgotten the encounter with his father and was acutely aware that he had never in his life been this happy.

And then they were at her parked car, kissing again, and then she drove away and Jack drifted back to his building, hardly needing the elevator to reach the 9th floor.

That week was the best week of his life. Each day at work, he and Millie found little moments to kiss in stairways, and each evening they made dinner together at his place or hers, kissing and talking in an effortless romance.

And yet all they did was kiss, and hold each other and laugh. They drank wine, but not a lot, and afterwards, when he was alone, he did not feel much craving for more. Even Molly was nearly forgotten.

On Tuesday, they had dinner at her place, which he was seeing for the first time. It was a bungalow in one of the city's reviving historic neighborhoods. It was small inside but had a roomy front porch, and her small backyard was very private thanks to tall trellises covered with English ivy. Even so, there was plenty of sunlight and she had bright-colored flower beds and a stone fountain that made a gentle bubbling sound. As she led him on a garden tour, he felt overwhelmed by the glow of her face and hair and skin in the sunlight surrounded by flowers. And he thought: So this is what joy feels like.

As the next weekend approached, they both seemed ready to go to be next level. "I think we should have a sleepover," Millie whispered in his ear as they kissed at the top of the back stairwell at the paper. This was one of their favorite locations because the sixth floor was always locked. The door led to the roof and was seldom used except by the building maintenance team. People sometimes emerged from the 5th floor, but they always went down. No one looked up to see the couple embracing on the landing above. They had to be quiet, though, because the brick and metal stairway echoed like a tile bathroom. Millie's giggles and even the smacking of their lips seemed to carry.

"Your place or mine?" he whispered back, wishing it was a more clever line.

"Yours."

Friday afternoon, she left a little early, telling him she would be at his place by six. At the appointed hour, she tapped on his glass door, and there she was in another tiny summer dress, smelling fresh and squeaky clean.

Jack has gotten takeout food and opened a bottle of champagne. While waiting for her, he'd had one stiff vodka tonic to fortify himself for what he felt confident would be a seamlessly smooth sexual experience between them. His past difficulties in that area seemed no longer relevant. Everything was different with Millie.

He had left all the lights off, so part of the apartment was bathed in early evening sunlight while the corners of the rooms were already in shadow. They did not eat much, but took sips of champagne and then shared the liquid in bubbly kisses. Her dress and his shirt came off in the kitchen, and she was wearing only panties as they made their way down the dim hallway, his hands touching her bare nipples for the first time.

Before they reached the edge of the bed, he had an erection, but he did not feel his previous desperation to put it to work before it went away. He wanted the timing to be perfect and was not at all worried about staying hard. Her panties and his sweatpants came off magically, and their bodies glided together into the cool white sheets, glowing in the fading light.

But as they embraced, a tiny speck of doubt began to form in his brain. It was time to take action, and he positioned himself over her as they kissed deeply. She seemed lost in passion, wanting to devour him with her mouth as she spread her legs and pressed herself upwards against him. It was time. They were going to do it. He was going to have sex with Millie Jenkins. Jack was still hard but no longer certain if it would last. He felt the tip of his penis go inside, and her warm, wet snugness began to envelope him. But then he realized she was punching him in the ribs and telling him to get off. In a panic, he rolled away from her, and she was wrapped in a sheet, sobbing.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," he said over and over. "Whatever I did wrong, I'm sorry!"

"It's not your fault," she cried. "It's me." Wrapped in the sheet like a Greek statue, she got out of bed and ran from the room. Jack slipped on his sweatpants and followed, finding her curled up at one end of the big leather couch.

He sat next to her and squeezed her foot through the sheet. "Please talk to me," he said softly.

After a long pause, she started to talk, "When I was married to Todd, we were both pretty messed up because we had both dropped out of college, both of us sacrificing the life we had planned. He was on a football scholarship, and I was in the theatre program, imagining myself in the movies someday. And now we both had given all of that up because I was pregnant. But then I wasn't pregnant anymore, so we might have gone on as we'd planned, but it was too late. We'd already scheduled the wedding and told everyone. Our parents didn't want us to back out.

"And so we stayed together and kept trying to have a baby because that's what we were supposed to do. It's what everyone wanted, including God, it seemed. Or maybe he didn't because we kept losing them. I was keeping track of my ovulation, so we knew when that window was, and we had to have sex, whether we felt like it or not. And when it was time to do that, Todd started to get really aggressive, and I was trying to get myself ready, but he didn't want to wait. He just wanted to get the job done. It felt like rape, even though we were married and I wanted to get the job done too. But he was angry and forceful, and it would hurt because I wasn't ready yet, and that seemed to make him angrier.

"I could tell he was relieved when I told him I wanted a divorce. I moved back in with my parents for a few years after that, and it was a while before I had any interest in dating again. But eventually I did, and that felt fine — until things started to get physical. As soon as he, you know, tried to have sex with me, I would have a panic attack. Like I did just now.

"I haven't had many relationships since then, but whenever things advanced to a certain stage physically, this would happen and the relationship would sort of wither away after that. I thought it would be different with you, but I guess I'm just . . . broken."

Jack chuckled and Millie raised her head to stare at him, not expecting this reaction. "I reckon this means we're made for each other," he said, "because I'm broken too."

It was a topic he had never wanted to discuss with anyone, but he felt relieved telling Millie. That night they slept on the couch together, and in the morning he woke to see that the sheet had fallen away and she was sleeping next to him, completely exposed, her little tuft of red-orange pubic hair glowing like fire in the morning light.

She woke and kissed him, then said she had to pee and walked off to the bathroom, leaving the sheet behind. He gathered it up and tossed it and her discarded dress through the bedroom door and then went to the kitchen to get the coffee started. He watched as she walked back to the living room, and then she was in the kitchen with him, still gloriously naked. She briefly put her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, "Someone seems to have stolen my wrap."

"It's a bad neighborhood," Jack said. "Lots of property theft." He could smell that she had brushed her teeth, which made him self-conscious about his own. Plus, he really had to pee.

"Coffee?" he asked. "I bought Half and Half just for you. And I have all the fixings for ham and cheese omelets."

Millie seemed to consider the situation as she poured herself a cup of coffee. "Can I help you with the omelets?"

"Absolutely," he said. He got out a cheese grater and a small cutting board. "Why don't you start with this, and I'll be right back." He hurried to the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth, then rushed back as quickly as he could because it occurred to him that it would be a shame to miss seeing Millie operating a cheese grater while naked. He did make it back in time to catch a few seconds of the resulting boob movement associated with that task.

Millie caught him looking as she finished and blushed a little as she said, "What?"

They worked together making the omelets and then carried their plates and coffee cups out into the main room. Jack had an antique wooden card table with a couple of straight-backed chairs near one of the windows.

"Nobody can see me, can they?" Millie asked.

"Nah, the other buildings this height are too far away. They'd need a telescope."

"It certainly is a fabulous view."

"It sure is!" Jack said, laughing.

"You know that's not what I meant," she said. "But thank you."

After a while, Millie's nudity was almost, but not quite, ignored as they talked about many ordinary things. There was a pause in conversation as they both finished eating and looked out the window. He could see in her face that she was trying to formulate how to say something in particular, and he could guess what it was. She finally said,"Have you thought any more about--

"My father?"

"I wasn't sure if that topic was off limits."

"No, it's not off limits, but also no, I haven't thought about him at all."

"I have."

Jack looked at her in surprise. "God, I hope this conversation isn't about to get creepy."

"No, silly, I'm writing a paper on the Question of Suffering, and--"

"I don't think that dude is suffering," Jack said. "He has really good scotch, for one thing."

"It's not literally about suffering, but the existence of suffering – philosophically speaking – if an all-powerful, all-caring God supposedly exists also. Sometimes it's called the Question of Evil."

"You're getting warmer."

"Well, the question is how can god be all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving and yet there is still evil and suffering. Why would such a God allow that? And there's an obvious answer – He can't, and therefore doesn't exist. But the assignment is to write a 'theodicy,' which is a theological argument saying that yes, He could. Church theologians have been doing that for millennia, so various arguments have been made. But a day or so after you told me about your father, I had a different thought."

"I can't wait to hear this," Jack said. They were both finished eating, so he gathered their plates and they walked together into the kitchen.

"You said your father had tears in his eyes and seemed sincerely overjoyed to see you."

"He did seem sincerely touched, yes."

"So he cared about you. And he knew where you and your mom were living all those years, driving by the house and even seeing you a few times."

"Yep. Father of the Year."

"He cared about you, knew where you were, and had the power to go knock on the door. Yet he didn't."

"No, he didn't. Are you working toward a point?"

"I'm sorry. Is this upsetting you?"

"Not at all," Jack said, smiling. "Trust me, I don't care about his existence on this planet enough for any random fact about it to upset me." This was true, but Jack was also enjoying the moment too much to care about much else. Millie was pacing back and forth in his living room completely naked, waving her arms as she orated and sometimes doing a little bounce on her feet whenever she came to an exclamation point. Jack particularly enjoyed her exclamation points because the accompanying hop would send her breasts into a little dance. He wondered if anyone had done a doctoral dissertation on the physics of that movement.

"I'm just saying one could argue that some version of that God exists, but is flawed," Millie was saying. "Maybe he CAN be all-powerful, all-knowing and all-caring, yet still fail to end suffering because he is flawed in some OTHER way."

"Isn't God supposed to be perfect?"

"That's an assumption that might not be correct."

"Okay, well, if God is so great at those three things, in what way can he be flawed?"

"Well, we established that your father DID care about you, DID know about you, and DID have the power to knock on your door. What other personality flaws did he have that prevented him from doing so?"

"He was an alcoholic and he was a coward. For starters."

"So could God be flawed in those ways also?"

"I guess, but what's the celestial equivalent to alcoholism? Is that why we have black holes?"

"I don't know yet, Johnny, I'm still formulating the idea." She had come to a stop in front of a very large mirror with an ornate frame that Jack had found in an antique store. She was fussing with her hair and glancing at him through the reflection. He came up behind her and put his hands on her hips. He began gliding them up and down her front from her nipples to her pubic hair. "Be careful down there," she said.

"I won't go inside," he said as his finger traced the line of her vagina. "Is this okay?"

She reached her hands up behind her head and clasped them behind his neck, arching her back and giving his hands unhindered access. "You could go down a tiny bit deeper."

He did, and his fingertip slipped between her lips and became warm and wet. He slid it upward to her clitoris. "Is this okay?" he asked again.

"Fabulous," she whispered.

His left hand cupped her breast, and he kissed her neck, keeping his eye on the mirror because she was still looking back at him. "Talk more of that theology to me," he whispered. "You know it makes me hot."

She giggled. "No commentary, please. Just focus on your task."

"Yes, ma'am."

"It's a Be Here Now moment."

"Feels like more of a Be Down There moment."

"Shhhh."