Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

She got out of the car, all six-feet-four of her, and he grabbed his bag while she dismissed the driver. She looked serene and untouched in the shade of the porte-cochere, like some kind of flavored ice impervious to melting; it was the white linen suit with that swirl of a skirt that did it, he thought, and he regretted it. Too bad she dressed for the climate, too bad she couldn’t wear that black leather thing she’d worn sometimes in New York, plunging neckline and hem up to there; with her coloring, it was spectacular.

The fact was, thought Bailey, as the car pulled slowly out of the porte-cochere and made its way down the gravel drive, you could analyze this relationship any way you liked; but the plain truth was that he was a thirty-five-year-old man who’d never gotten over his crush on Julie Newmar as the Catwoman, back at the age of twelve.

“I like it,” he said, skidding his duffel across the floor. Everything was clean and open; terra-cotta tiles, white shutters, and the breeze off the ocean running unobstructed over the hilltop through the bank of windows and French doors. He walked through a doorway and found himself in the kitchen. “Nice,” he said, looking around at the cupboards and the clean wall of whitewashed stone that held the oven. He opened the refrigerator, grinning. “I guess we better send out for some orange ju—” He stopped.

There were two gallons of Tropicana in there, one of them already opened. Nearly empty, in fact. Being Bailey, he couldn’t stop himself from checking the date, from lifting the used carton to see how light it was.

He shut the door. “Who’s the lucky guy?” he asked, his voice suddenly gone toneless.

Lilidi put her briefcase down on the table. She turned, not hurrying, and looked at him without expression. Bailey said, “Is he still here? Are we going to be bunking together like good campers?”

Still no anger from Lilith; just that careful, judging look. Bailey heard the echo of his own voice hang in the silence and felt like an idiot. Of course there had been someone else, there had been a lot of someone elses over the last five years. It was a necessity. He’d just never run into such timely evidence before.

Damn fine work, Bailey, you’ve managed to be stupid and offensive simultaneously.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in another tone entirely. “It’s none of my business who else you choose to see. I’m being a jerk. Can we ignore the last thirty seconds?”

She hitched herself up on the table. “Come over here, Bailey, so I can explain something to you.” He came; at the periphery of their personal space, he hesitated, and she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in. He felt her calves pressing into his ass and her odd, faintly spicy bream on his face, like the wind through an orange grove. “Nobody else counts,” she said, “now that you’re here.” She kissed him then.

Bailey’s head started to buzz. No more polite dishes of cool strawberries, lips against alien lips; this was imperative and absolute, a single-minded dipping into the water of the soul. Christ, he thought, as he felt her tongue seek him out, ten months. How could I forget what this was like?

There was a voice, and he felt a start run through the body holding his. Lilith pulled away and he stepped back, slightly disoriented. He looked for the interruption: a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, Hispanic-looking, in wrinkled white trousers and a cotton shirt. He stared at Bailey hard, then spoke to Lilith in Spanish, clearly registering a complaint. The marks on his neck showed black against the olive skin.

Jesus! He really is still here, thought Bailey. This was not her style at all.

Apparently it was not her idea, either; now she was answering him in Spanish, curtly, and with the faint discomfort of one who has been forced into a social faux pas. The kid answered her back, gesturing with his arms, a defensive whine in his tone. I’m sure that’ll go over real well. Bailey leaned back against the refrigerator, folded his arms, and waited to see how the play turned out.

“Basta!” said Lilith then. She sighed and looked to Bailey to see how he was taking it. He raised an eyebrow coolly: Your business, right?

She smiled, the irony not escaping her. “Perhaps you’d like to throw him out?” she suggested.

He felt a grin break over his face and shook his head in delighted disbelief. You don’t have to do this just to make me feel better. But what the hell…