Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

Lightning flickered again, followed by a shudder of thunder. He counted the number of seconds between them. Twenty. The lightning was approximately four miles away. Close enough to fry a hard drive. He saved the map of the watershed, and disconnected the computer and printer. Then he made himself a cup of hot tea. He was still freezing, probably running a fever. He’d take two aspirin and go to bed.

The wind rose in a high whine, almost a cry, then dropped again, pulling the storm down from the skies. Needles of rain hurled themselves against the house, then sank into the earth. He heard one of the blue wooden shutters blow open and slam back against its frame.

The cat, he thought. She was still out there.

He started toward the porch to call her in then stopped as he reached the screen door. What if the woman was still in the garden?

There is no woman, he told himself. But he could not make himself step outside. He called the cat from the porch. He called for a good three minutes. And when she didn’t answer, he went back into the house, shut off the lights, and got into bed.

He lay there, conscious of the hollow next to his hip where Seena liked to lie. Every night, seconds after he got into bed, she’d curl up beside him. This was the first time in the year since he’d gotten her that he’d gone to sleep alone. He missed her warmth. He made himself concentrate on the sounds of the wind and rain, and let the storm lull him to sleep.

She had told him that she wouldn’t stay. She didn’t bother to mention that she would also return. But she knew he would wonder and when his fear had waned, he would secretly hope. And so she would let him hope for seven nights, until the moon waxed from a bone-white semicircle to a full silver sphere.

He didn’t let himself think about her at first. He was disturbed only by the fact that the female cat hadn’t come in for breakfast that morning, nor was she there when he’d returned home from an afternoon of meetings. He wondered if she’d found a way over the garden fence or perhaps burrowed beneath it. He hoped she hadn’t been too badly frightened by the storm. And that she’d managed to keep herself safe from the roaming bands of coyotes. She was a smart little animal, he reminded himself. Cats were, after all, natural survivors.

That evening, just to be sure he sweated out any toxins from the previous night’s strange malaise, he ran six miles. He returned home slick with sweat and reassured by his own strength. A blinking light in the study caught his attention. He pushed the answering machine’s PLAY button and a woman’s voice spoke, “Enrique, it’s Liora. I just got back into town, and I’ve brought you a souvenir…”

Liora was an Israeli archeologist, doing research for the university. They’d met on campus last fall when both of them cut out early from a mind-numbing faculty meeting. He’d gone out with her only a few times before they made love, after which he’d explained quite clearly that he didn’t do commitment, ever. He was always honest with them; it was for their protection, really. She had met his announcement with a sleepy yawn and then explained that she would be working on a dig in northern Mexico for the next six months. He hadn’t really expected to hear from her again. Now he welcomed the idea of seeing her, a real, flesh and blood woman, one who happened to be very good in bed. The perfect prescription to banish last night’s crazy fever dream. Sometime during the day he’d decided that the problem was he’d simply gone too long without sex.

Liora declined the invitation to come to dinner at his house. Instead they met two nights later at a coffeehouse near the university.

She sat at a table in the far corner, making notes in a small spiral-bound notebook, her duck, black hair gathered in a silver clasp at the back of her neck.

She glanced up when she saw him approach and smiled. “Holá, Enrique, cómo estás?” she said. Liora’s family were Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain. She spoke Hebrew, English, Greek, and Spanish, with English being the only language in which she had a noticeable foreigner’s accent.

“Okay,” he replied, sitting across from her. “How was Mexico?”

“Good,” she said, accepting his decision to conduct the conversation in English. “Actually, better than good. The dig is going well. We’re finding even more than we’d hoped.” She was wearing a faded blue denim shirt, her skin dark against it. A thick silver hoop hung from each ear.

“Finding,” he echoed. “Does that mean you’re going back?”

She nodded. “The rains. We had to take a break. There’s serious flooding right now.” She gave him a wry smile. “The people in the villages there could probably use your help, though I doubt they could afford you… Have you been busy?”

He told her about the summer grad classes he was teaching, about his various consulting jobs. How he’d built detention basins for flood waters by redesigning the local golf courses.