Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

Startled, Conny stared at him for a few moments. Then she took off her clothes. He watched her with an expression of gratitude. Naked, she climbed into bed with him. He laid his head on her breast and idly ran his fingers over her stomach, her hip, her other breast. After a time his hand lay still and his breathing deepened.

Conny watched the last light fade and the room pass into night, not wanting to move. She heard Geoffrey come back into the house. She listened to the heavy tread of his boots to the kitchen, then back into the living room. Finally, he came into the bedroom.

“Conny…?”

“He’s sleeping,” she whispered.

“No,” William said. He lifted his head. “Join us, Geoffrey. Please.”

“You told me to get out.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Please.”

Geoffrey drew himself up.

“Conny?”

“Please,” she said.

Geoffrey undressed in the doorway. As he did, William’s fingers began moving again. At first Conny was more surprised than excited. But his fingers slipped between her thighs and she moved her legs apart to give him access. This time she did not simply lie open for him. She reached beneath the thin leg he had thrown across her thigh. He sucked his breath between his teeth.

Then Geoffrey stood by the bed. She could not see his face and she doubted he could see her well by the dim light through the open door. She brought her free leg up and kicked the sheets down.

“Please,” she said.

William scooted to the far side of the bed. Conny rolled toward him and kissed him. The bed shifted as Geoffrey lay down. She felt his hand on her hip. She raised her leg and Geoffrey’s fingers slid inside her. She pushed back toward him and he pressed against her, kissed her shoulders, her neck. Conny caressed William and he bent toward her and traced the shape of her breast with his mouth.

Then William reached across her and grabbed Geoffrey’s arm. They all stopped, for the moment making a tableau, a kind of completion. Conny bit her lip to keep from crying.

“I love you both,” William said. “I’m sorry it hasn’t come out better.”

Above her in the dark the two men hugged each other, briefly. She eased onto her back, opened her arms wide, and embraced them both.

MAY, 1936

She looked up at the sudden stillness. For a long time she did not want to look at him. She held the handwritten page before her, pretending to herself that she was simply appreciating it, that it still meant so much to her that she could find nothing to say. But the silence stretched and she set the page aside and looked at him.

There was no way to divide the time into infinite sections, no way to prevent herself from coming to the point of knowing that he was gone.

At least his eyes were closed. He had always been afraid of dying with his eyes open. He could never explain it clearly to her, the only thing he had ever failed to put into words, but it had to do with dreams and darkness and being caught in the wrong reality.

Conny closed the chest and went to tell Geoffrey that William was dead.

Geoffrey sat staring out the window. The mourners had all gone, few as they were. Conny knelt beside him and touched his hand. Dry and papery.

“What now?” he asked.

“We go on.”

“With what? I haven’t felt much this last year. A few times.” He looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Will it be like this from now on?”

“I don’t know.” She patted his hand and stood.

The chest was by the fireplace. Conny broke twigs and piled them onto the ashes of the last fire, then set four good-sized logs on top of them. The dried sticks caught fire easily and soon the logs burned, too. She sat on a footstool and watched the flames lick the air.

“Did you ever wonder what it would’ve been like if it’d been me you met first and married?”

“No.”

Geoffrey stood nearby, hands in his pockets, staring into the fire. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

“All right.”

He hesitated. “Conny… do you think when I get back… maybe…”

“We’ll see.”

He nodded and backed away. A few moments later Conny heard the door close.

She sighed and opened the chest. It seemed to have grown larger over the years. The pages were an inch away from filling it completely.

She understood Geoffrey’s frustration, but it was a frustration they shared. Neither of them had felt any desire for nearly a year. Not since that last night, when William had surprised them both. They talked about that night sometimes, as if it marked history for them. Conny supposed that it did.

In the morning William had been feverish and blood flowed from his mouth. They finally got him to see a doctor. Tuberculosis. As if hearing it made it real—more real than it had been—William grew weaker and sicker. Geoffrey and Conny had done their best to take care of him, but there was little they could do. William still refused to go to a sanitarium. He wrote little. Friends sent cards, a few sent money.

Geoffrey was afraid. He did not want to leave her, but without

William—without William’s scratching and scribbling—he thought she might leave, or that he might.