Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link Page B

One of Fawn’s favorite books. This is a kid in his twenties. Good-looking in a familiar way. (Although is it okay to think this about another guy when you’re both naked? Not to mention: who looks a lot like you did once upon a time. Why not? We’re all naked here.)
    “I know you,” the kid says.
    The demon lover says, “Of course you do. You are?”
    “Ray,” says the kid. He’s
maybe
twenty-five. His look says: You know who I am. “Meggie’s told me all about you.”
    As if he doesn’t already know, the demon lover says, “So what do you do?”
    The kid smiles an unlovely smile. Scratches at his groin luxuriously, maybe not on purpose. “Whatever needs to be done. That’s what I do.”
    So he deals. There’s that pot in Meggie’s dresser.
    Down at the lake people are playing volleyball in a pit with no net. Barbecuing. Someone talks to a camera, gestures at someone else. Someone somewhere smoking a joint. At this distance, not too close, not too near, twilight coming down, the demon lover takes in all of the breasts, asses, comical cocks, knobby knees, everything hidden now made plain. He notes with an experienced eye which breasts are real, which aren’t. Only a few of the women sport pubic hair. He’s never understood what that’s about. Some of the men are bare, too.
O tempora, o mores.
    “You like jokes?” Ray says, stopping to light a cigarette.
    The demon lover could leave; he lingers. “Depends on the joke.” Really, he doesn’t. Especially the kind of jokes the ones who ask if you like jokes tell.
    Ray says, “You’ll like this one. So there are these four guys. A kleptomaniac, a pyromaniac, um, a zoophile, and a masochist. This cat walks by and the klepto says he’d like to steal it. The pyro says he wants to set it on fire. The zoophile wants to fuck it. So the masochist, he looks at everybody, and he says, ‘Meow?’ ”
    It’s a moderately funny joke. It might be a come-on.
    The demon lover flicks a look from under his lashes. Suppresses the not-quite-queasy feeling he’s somehow traveled back in time to flirt with himself. Or the other way round.
    He’d like to think he was even prettier than this kid. People used to stop and stare when he walked into a room. That waslong before anyone knew who he was. He’s always been someone you look at longer than you should. He says, smiling, “I’ll bite. Which one are you?”
    “Pardon?” Ray says. Blows smoke.
    “Which one are you? The klepto, the pyro, the cat-fucker, the masochist?”
    “I’m the guy who tells the joke,” Ray says. He drops his cigarette, grinds it under a heel black with dirt. Lights another. “Don’t know if anyone’s told you, but don’t drink out of any of the taps. Or go swimming. The water’s toxic. Phosphorous, other stuff. They shut down the muck farms, they’re building up the marshlands again, but it’s still not what I’d call potable. You staying out here or in town?”
    The demon lover says, “Don’t know if I’m staying at all.”
    “Well,” Ray says. “They’ve rigged up some of the less wrecked bungalows on a generator. There are camp beds, sleeping bags. Depends on whether you like it rough.” That last with, yes, a leer.
    The demon lover feels his own lip lifting. They are both wearing masks. They look out of them at each other. This was what you knew when you were an actor. The face, the whole body, the way you moved in it, just a guise. You put it on, you put it off again. What was underneath belonged to you, just you, as long as you kept it hidden.
    He says, “You think you know something about me?”
    “I’ve seen all your movies,” Ray says. The mask shifts, becomes the one the demon lover calls “I’m your biggest fan.” Oh, he knows what’s under that one.
    He prepares himself for whatever this strange kid is going to say next and then suddenly Meggie is there. As if things weren’tawkward enough without Meggie, naked, suddenly standing there. Everybody naked,