Spirits

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 35

Jack whirled around as she came running up behind him, her face shiny with tears and sweat. He pulled off the headphones and clicked off the Walkman.

"I thought you were ignoring me," she cried, now standing in front of him on the sidewalk, her hair darker in the hazy humid air and plastered wetly to her skull. "I've been chasing after you, but I can't run in these stupid heels, and I kept calling your name, but you wouldn't turn around. I thought you were too mad to talk to me." Fresh tears ran down her cheeks.

"I was never mad at you," Jack said. "You were mad at me."

"I don't want to be mad at you anymore." She threw her arms around him and they held each other tight as other pedestrians walked around them. "I'm sorry I'm so sweaty," she whispered in his ear.

"Want to come upstairs? I have air conditioning."

"I could use a shower."

"I have one of those too."

Five minutes later, they were in the shower together, washing each other with soapy hands, and then they were in his bed without drying off, making love to each other in ways they had learned to do.

As they lay holding each other afterward, the sheets and pillows damp, Millie said, "Thank you for saving my journal all these years."

"That's a charitable way to put it. I invaded your privacy and stole a copy of your journal."

"You were only 15 and it was more than 20 years ago," she said, looking up at him. "Besides, you were hopelessly infatuated by me."

"Well, that part is definitely true. And I still am."

"So I forgave you pretty quickly for that part, even though it was the worst of it, but then much more recently, you started posting these 'Molly' stories based in part on my journal. That wasn't 20 years ago when you were a kid."

"That's true. I'm guilty of that."

"But I decided to forgive you of that too because although I did recognize myself in it, I don't think other people would. And when you started doing that, you probably figured you'd never see me again."

"Again, you're being charitable," Jack said, "but I will gladly accept any charity you're willing to grant."

"But THEN, Johnny, after you DID meet me again, AND after we became a couple . . . you kept writing that story, and you didn't tell me about it."

"Millie, I--"

"Shhh," she said, holding a finger to his lips. "The fact that I'm naked in bed with you right now is a clue that I've forgiven you for that part too. You wrote me a lovely letter, which made me cry, in which you told me a lot of stuff about your life that I didn't know, and you profusely apologized for that specific thing in particular. And besides, if I was going to break up with you over this, there was another obstacle."

"Um, which was . . ."

"That I'm in love with you."

Jack held her close. "I love you, too. Always have." As he said these words, Jack felt an almost forgotten sensation. Tears welled up in his eyes and dripped out onto one cheek. He wiped it away before she could see.

"And even though what you did was wrong, the end result of it is that you preserved the only copy of what I burned a month later. And now that copy has miraculously found its way back to me. Reading it really brought back a lot of feelings and memories from my life back then. It's kind of a gift."

"I'm glad there was something good that came of that," Jack said. "But I want you to know that when I first got those photos, there were parts of it that I couldn't read because your writing was so small. So, I didn't know until years later that you had been thinking about. . . . hurting yourself."

"I'm not sure how serious I was about that, but you'd think that part would've been what my mother focused on when she read it. But nope, she didn't even mention that. All she cared about was my wicked sexual thoughts."

There was a pause, and then she said, "The past couple of days, reading my journal and your letter, all I could think was that it's a good thing we found each other again. We were both pretty messed up, weren't we?"

"We were," Jack said, "but I have recently been reminded that a lot of people in this world have it worse." Here he told her what he had just learned about his grandmother from Mrs. Catherwood.

"Oh my god," Millie exclaimed at more than one point in the story. "That's so sad -- but also amazing."

"So, compared to what she experienced," Jack said, "you and I turned out sort of OK, don't you think? We just have a few limps and missing pieces."

She laughed. "I wondered if you'd notice I posted that."

"To be honest, I kept calling up the site because I was afraid you were going to expose me and tell Molly's readers who I really was."

"Ooh, that's an idea."

"Forget I said that."

"I wouldn't do that to you, Johnny. And besides, I like Molly and I wouldn't want to shatter that illusion. She's the cooler me in another dimension."

"I wouldn't say she's 'cooler' exactly. She just didn't have to go through what you went through. It's the advantage of being a fictional character."

"Well, I really like her," Millie said, "and I am absolutely amazed that she sprang from your brain."

"I found her in your journal."

"Maybe you found part of her there, but you really developed her personality." Millie tapped her finger on his forehead. "Is there a female version of you in there?"

"She's just a fictional character," Jack repeated.

"But she's also part of you in some way. You know, I have a theory about gender."

"I'll bet you do," Jack said, laughing. "Tell me your theory," he added, hoping this meant they would be talking about some abstract idea and not about him anymore.

"Well, there are things that we used to think of in an either-or kind of way. Like a person was either autistic or not autistic, either an alcoholic or not an alcoholic. But we're learning that those things are more of a spectrum, and different people are just at different places on the spectrum."

Jack would have agreed with her about there being an alcoholism spectrum, but he didn't want the conversation to go in that direction. "So are you saying there's a gender spectrum?" he asked instead. "Like bisexuality?"

"Yes, but the bisexuality spectrum is about what gender a person is attracted to, but there's also what gender a person feels that they are themselves."

"So, like transsexuals?"

"Right. So at the far end of the spectrum, there are people who feel so certain they were born in the wrong body that they seek out hormone and surgical treatments."

"Like Christine Jorgensen and, who was the other one, Renee Richards."

"And then there are people on that spectrum that like to dress up as the other gender but not actually change their bodies."

"I've never been able to relate to that sort of thing," Jack said, wanting to go on record on that point. "Can you?"

"Not really. I suppose I'm on the bisexuality spectrum somewhere, but as for my own gender--"

"Wait, what?"

Millie laughed. "No, dear, if you are suddenly wondering, I have never engaged in lesbian sex."

"But you feel--"

"It was just a little kissing."

"Wait, what?"

"Try to stay on topic, Johnny."

"But you said--"

"I was trying to work my way back to Molly."

"Molly? Because. . . that character is bisexual?"

"No, because she's part of you, Johnny, and perhaps when you wrote in her voice, you were tapping into another part of your internal self on the gender identity spectrum--"

"I wouldn't describe it as--"

"Not seeking to change your external self or even dress differently as someone farther to the other end of that spectrum might do, but just giving the female part of yourself the freedom to express herself through your storytelling, and--"

"Millie, I am not on any damned gender identity spectrum!" Jack insisted and then tried to hide his alarm with an easy laugh meant to convey that he was amused at how wildly wrong she was.

In their time together, he and Millie had already shared their deep feelings and painful childhood stories, and in doing so, he had talked about growing up feeling that he was an incomplete human being who had to fabricate the missing parts of himself and then pretend to be that whole person -- whose name was Jack.

That much was certainly true, but he might have also said that he felt a similar connection with Molly. It wasn't that she was part of him, but rather that he was part of her, just as he was part of Jack. His connection to Jack was stronger, of course, because he had spent half his life inhabiting that character -- and of course, they shared the same outward appearance.

When he wrote about Molly and the other women who seemed to live such rich lives in his stories, he did sometimes imagine being them himself -- and that was . . . oddly fulfilling. But of course, he would only fantasize about such things and would never try to actually become a woman in real life. For one thing, he knew that no amount of medical intervention could possibly transform his large, manly body into anything remotely attractive in female form.

But what kind of body would he choose if, for example, he were living in a sci-fi future where people could manifest whatever physical form they wanted, or if he were in the Afterlife filling out the reincarnation paperwork for his next life? Fortunately, he did not need to actually answer those questions because he did not exist in those realities. He existed in this one right here -- the one with Millie in it -- and he was more than satisfied with that choice.

The Millie in his reality, however, was still looking at him expectantly, apparently not fully satisfied with his casually dismissive laugh. "Okay,” he finally said, "I suppose I can't say for certain what crazy shit may be going on in my Freudian subconscious, but as far as I can tell, all I did was write about a fictional character that I based on your journal. She's you, not me -- the future version of yourself that you imagined when you were 18."

"Perhaps,” Millie said, now snuggling up against him under the sheet, "but gosh, I sure don't recall imagining spankings in my future."

"Well ... I suppose I may have ... embellished the story a little," Jack admitted. "For dramatic purposes. Was that part freaky to you?"

"No, it was fun! It probably would have seemed freaky if she was actually being hurt or dominated, but Molly was clearly in charge the whole way. She was . . . putting on a show. I love that about her. Heck, now I kind of regret telling her readers she was too busy to post anymore."

"You can change that if you want. The username and password are in your hands. She's your character now."

"I think she's half me and half you. But even if I wanted to continue her story, it's too late -- I already told them she and Jaye broke up."

"She may be part of us both, but from now on only you get to decide what happens to her. You could let her story end where it is, or if you wanted to you could write an ending chapter to that story. You could even start some other adventure for Molly if you wanted to. She's entirely in your hands."

"Well, now that you mention it," Millie said. "I do have some ideas."

"Really? Well, I would love to hear those ideas," Jack said. "But first, can we go back to that part about kissing? Who were you kissing?"

She looked at the clock. "Let's talk about those things tomorrow."

"Ooh, I'll be it was cousin Debbie at church camp!"

"For now, I shall let you imagine what you will," Millie said, getting out of bed and shaking out her now-rumpled business suit.

"I already am," Jack said. "So why were you all dressed up today?"

"Oh, I finally had my meeting with the VP from Corporate."

"You showed him your presentation?"

"Yep."

"Well, how did it go?"

"He was very nice, asked good questions in all the right places, and he told Max he was lucky to have me on his team."

"That all sounds good."

"And then he gave us his presentation in which he explained what Corporate has already decided to do."

"Uh-oh. What's that?"

"Well, their first goal I agree with, which is simply getting the daily news stories on the Internet, plus making it possible to post breaking news stories during the day at the same time as TV and radio. We all want to do that, but when I asked whether access would be limited to our subscribers, he said it would all be free because . . . well, I'm not sure why exactly, but I think they just don't take this Internet stuff very seriously so they're just seeing it as a bit of marketing."

Millie was dressed, and Jack walked with her to the elevator and down to the street.

"And okay," she went on, "I guess it's not my job to decide that, but then he was talking about having all the reporters find something additional each day they could write a little story about – lesser news that wouldn't make it into the paper, but just so they'd be putting stuff out throughout the day. So I chimed in to make the argument that although we would naturally want to post actual breaking news when it happens, that instead of just cranking out more mid-level 'news,' that we could use that staff time to build out the kind of long-term encyclopedic reporting that I was promoting."

"How did he respond?"

"Mostly nods and smiles and vague praise for my very fine effort. I was half-expecting him to call me 'little lady' and pat me on the head."

"Well, but they might still–"

"But THEN, he started talking about enabling readers to add their comments to stories and maybe even submit their own stories. And now I've lost Max, who is also enamored of that idea. And I said look, I realize that sounds like it would be a great thing, and it would be a great thing except that the people most likely to participate aren't as civic-minded and thoughtful as you may imagine them to be."

It was evening, but still humid, and as they crossed the street, they could see the setting sun between buildings.

"For example, we already have a feature on the editorial page, called 'My Two Cents,' which is exactly what they say they want -- a comment from a reader about some issue in the news. We publish a phone number that goes to a recording, and each caller has 30 seconds to say their opinion on something. The problem is that a sizeable percentage of those messages are hard-core hate speech. Whenever we do a page one feature story on someone who is black or Asian or Jewish or god-forbid gay, we will receive dozens of really ugly messages on that line. Those are the worst, but there are a lot of others in which people are just spreading rumors that we've already established are not true. Someone on the Editorial Page staff has to slog through a lot of those before finding one we can put in print.

"So if we're going to enable readers to comment on stories, we need to invest staff time into managing that and not just let it happen. I argued that we could handle reader comments the way we do letters to the editor. We read those carefully before we publish them, we do not allow these contributors to lie or misrepresent the facts, and we require them to use their actual real names and not some anonymous screen name."

"How did he respond to all of that?"

"More nods and smiles, and assurances that they'll take that into account. And then we ran out of time and the meeting was over."

"I hope you win them over," Jack said. "Whether they take your specific suggestion or not, from a business perspective the Web could potentially be a big threat. We make most of our revenue from grocery and retail advertising because right now we're the best way for those companies to reach their audience. But what if in the future every household has a computer? What if our advertisers decide they can reach their audience directly and don't need us?"

"Well, that's a cheery thought," Millie said as they reached her car. She put her arms around him. "Here we've just made up, and I spent the whole walk talking shop."

Jack kissed her. "Honestly, I'm just glad you're talking to me at all. You can talk about Catholic iconography if you'd like."

"Be careful what you wish for," she said. "And remember, you're on probation, so no more secrets."

"No more secrets," he repeated. "So how long am I on probation?"

She caressed his cheek. "With good behavior, 20 or 30 years might do it."

After she drove away, he went back to his apartment and resisted the urge to make himself a celebratory drink. That night, when he got into bed, he looked up at the ceiling and whispered, "Thank you."