Flytrap

by Stephanie Ahn

  “What, they don’t even give you a real desk?” I say.

  “Sometimes I have a real desk, it just depends on what classroom I’m using for the hour. And you don’t get to complain right now, because apparently your need to see me was so urgent you couldn’t wait until my lunch break.” Half-standing, he scoots his tiny desk forward until it bumps up against another one, and sits down. “What’s up?”

  I laugh, even though the sound catches as a croak in my dry throat. “I’m just here to ask you about some stuff.” I attempt to sit across from him, tugging on the back of a chair before realizing that it’s attached to the desk by a metal bar. I sit down. Brian and I both look ridiculous, me shooting up from my little chair like a beansprout out of a tiny pot, Brian’s bulk spilling over the sides like a heavy cactus.

  “Shoot. Just make it shorter than an hour, that’s when the boss lady shows up and she doesn’t like visitors who aren’t paying.”

  “Is she running a college prep academy or a brothel?”

  “Hey, I just work here.” He pops the lid off his coffee to blow into it, saying in between puffs, “So, the thing you have to ask—does it have anything to do with why you look like you’ve been hit by a truck?”

  I rub at my dry eyes, the movement irritating my rubbery cheeks and triggering a flare-up of achey tension in my temple. I’ve changed into my usual uniform of slacks, boots, shirt, tie, and black coat since seeing Gael, but presentation can only do so much to compensate for a looming hangover. I try to choose my words carefully, but I’m too tired.

  “So I think… it’s back.”

  “What’s back?”

  Him. “My… issues. You know, from about a year ago.”

  Brian pauses. Takes another sip of coffee, prompting me to pull my thermos out of my coat to do the same. “Like a relapse?”

  My hand brushes the pill bottle that weighs heavily in my pocket. “That might be a good word for it, yeah.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do? If you need someone to keep an eye on you, Deborah and I can—”

  “You didn’t have a baby back then, dude. Besides, it was beyond generous of Deborah to help at all last time. She didn’t even know me.”

  “Woojin—”

  “—I’m asking for a different kind of help. I’m trying to figure out why it’s happening again, and you might know. Because you were one of the only people I talked to back then.”

  Brian opens his mouth like he’s going to argue more, but frowns instead. “Makes sense. Do you think it could be about… you know… your friend?”

  “Joy?”

  The flash of Samael’s knife. Blood welling up through broken skin. Freezing steel chain at my throat. A body in a dark basement, slumped like a mannequin, skin milk-white and criss-crossed with cuts.

  Joy.

  I think about her properly, feeling the ice-cold knife of fresh grief in my chest as I do. It was even colder just a few weeks ago.

  “No, I don’t think it’s because of her. Some shit went down that day, and I miss her, but… she’s in a better place now.”

  A voice on the wind, something more than human.

  Thank you for bringing her back to us.

  Brian’s eyes bulge like a cartoon. “Excuse me? Did I really just hear you say that? Don’t tell me you’re going Christian on me. Again.”

  I wave him off, one hand rubbing my eyes. “Oh, shut up. All I’m saying is, if the universe takes care of anyone after they die, they’d take care of Joy.”

  I know how this works. Things will never stop reminding me of her. But maybe, one day, when I see a window display she would have liked or a joke on TV I would have texted her about, I’ll just dwell on it silently, internally, and it won’t hurt.

  Not as much, anyway.

  “Woojin-ah. You don’t get over things just because you say you’re over them. That’s not how brains work.”

  “I know. But…” If being skinned alive and holding my dying friend in my arms didn’t bring back my demons a month ago, it’s strange that it would do so now. Demons aren’t like rogue brain chemistry. They have intent, and they follow through. He’s not back by some accident or coincidence. My gods, I wish he were just a trick of the light I could therapize and medicate out of existence. But I didn’t know what my spleen looked like before he showed me. Didn’t know how many times you have to break an arm to twist it in on itself in a knot.

  I shake my head. “Look, just trust that I know more about this situation than you do, okay?” I don’t mean to be brusque about it, but it just comes out that way. Thankfully, Brian seems to understand. He taps the tabletop in thought.

  “You tried talking to your sister?”

  “She’s out of town for her job. I don’t want to bother her.” I’m not lying, Luce really is in San Francisco for a Council assignment. But also, I can’t talk to her about this. She doesn’t know about… what Brian knows about. Ironic, because Luce is the one who shares my knowledge that demons exist at all, and Brian’s a math tutor.

  I spin my thermos around on the desk, thinking. “Hey, Brian. Do you remember, back during the whole thing, how I would call you and stuff? Do you remember anything I told you? I’ve got whole chunks of memory missing. I need a refresher.”

  Brian clicks his tongue, pointing finger guns at me. “Ah, you’re asking the right person. I have near-photographic memory.”

  “What does photographic memory have to do with remembering phone calls? And it doesn’t count if it’s ‘near’ photographic.”

  “Alright, fine, I don’t remember everything. But most times you weren’t speaking clearly, anyway. I think you’d call from payphones a lot? Three times out of four I wouldn’t recognize the number you called from. You’d call in the middle of daylight, begging me to talk to you, to keep you awake. That he—he was coming for you. That he was already with you. That he was just waiting for you to fall asleep.”

  I wince. “That… sounds not-good.”

  Brian’s earnest face becomes shadowed. “Yeah, imagine how fucking scared I was to hear it.”

  I duck my head, sighing, my hands in my hair. “You were right to be. I’m sorry. And I appreciate it. Everything you did.”

  There are slight bags under Brian’s eyes as he smiles. “Apology and appreciation accepted. Actually, I have something—this one time, you said you’d gone to see someone, but they wouldn’t tell you—a name. Well, you specifically said, ‘They all know his name, but they won’t tell me.’ A gag order, you said. I was almost relieved, thought you were in some legal trouble. Legal trouble, I understand. All that other stuff…”

  My neck jerks with the force of a memory, and I almost spill my thermos. Phone pressed against my ear with one shoulder, spitting curses as I shakily poured hydrogen peroxide over a stab wound in my hand. Forced into lucidity by the pain, slipping back into deliriousness from the sleep deprivation. Samael, I had gone to see Samael that day, to ask him the name of the demon living in my head.

  “They know but they won’t tell me,” I’d hissed into the phone. “They all know his name, but there’s some kind of block, like they’re all scared. Samael’s the only one who’d tell me but fuck him, fuck him, fuck him…”

  He’d offered the name, then demanded that I spy on my sister for him—I’d refused. So he’d pinned my hand to the table with a knife.

  Man, I’m glad that fucker’s dead.

  I must look distracted, because Brian checks his watch. I shake myself out of it. “Thanks, dude. I think I got something I can use. Once this has blown over, I’ll give you a call. I’ll come over to your place, do dishes for Deborah or something, yeah?”

  “If there’s any way I can help—”

  Someone knocks at the glass windows on the wall leading back to the hallway. They gesture for Brian with a sheaf of papers. He walks outside, and I hear him go, “Do I really have to photocopy thes
e? Aren’t you the secretary?”

  “I’m the data monkey and the boss’s daughter, not the secretary. Photocopy your own cheat sheets.”

  Brian shakes his head, chuckling, then beckons for me to join him in the hallway. As we walk to the photocopier in the foyer, he asks, “Like I said. Anything I can do?”

  I quirk up one side of my mouth. “Just tell Deborah and Leona you love them, okay? It makes me feel better to know you’re all doing alright.”

  He shrugs, sorting through the papers in his hands. “That sounds kind of weird, but I get it. I’ll tell Leona her favorite ajumma asked about her.”

  “Wha—hey! I’m not an ajumma!”

  He leans on the photocopier as he scans the first page, looking like he should be chewing a pink wad of bubblegum. “You are to her. She thinks anyone who’s not three is a hundred years old. Just be grateful she doesn’t think you’re a witch, she’s been scared of the old white woman next door ever since she watched Snow White.”

  That catches me off guard. Laughter bursts from me like a gunshot, so loud that I see the not-secretary startle, then glare at me through another window.

  Brian turns his back to me as he switches out the paper in the scanner. “By the way, am I imagining it, or did you have a baby sister back in Korea a little older than Leona?”

  My breath catches. I stare at the shifting folds of Brian’s shirt. “I… don’t know what you’re talking about. You must be imagining it.”

  “Ah yeah, I probably am.”

  I force a smile. “Some photographic memory you got there, nerd.”

  He puts up a hand, pointer finger raised. “Near-photographic.”

  As the photocopier continues to chugga-chugga-chugga like a furnace-powered train, I fidget with the hem of my coat. “Hey, for real, I’m sorry for the trouble. I know you and Deb wanted things to be quiet.”

  Brian’s arms move to pick up another paper, then still. He turns slightly toward me, not enough for me to see his eyes. “Actually, I, um, could use the distraction right now. A coworker invited me to a thing. At a, um, horse racing track.” I open my mouth to speak—he cuts me off. “—I said no, obviously. But I still got… you know.”

  “Aw man, I’m sorry. But you said no, so that’s good, right?”

  He bobs his head, mechanically, like he’s trying to convince himself. “Yeah. Deborah’s got parental controls on all my shit. She won’t stop me from betting online, but she’ll know if it happens, and that’s enough for me to get my shit together.”

  I squeeze his arm and hold out my hand for the papers. He silently passes them to me, and I take over the photocopying. “She loves you, dude.”

  “I know, and I love her too. Ah, speaking of… love.” He makes his way to the other side of the photocopier. When I shut the lid of the scanner, he’s right there leaning on his elbows, his chin innocently in his hands. I stick my finger in his face as blue light shines from the photocopier.

  “Oh no. No no no. We are not doing this.”

  “How’s your love life been?”

  “Pretty damn peachy, go screw yourself.”

  I reach for the Copy button, and he sneaks his arm around me to punch it first. I curse.

  “Ooh, you sound tetchy. What’s her name, and did you at least leave first this time?”

  Lilith, but that’s not even her real name. “I left first, obviously,” I lie airily.

  I open the scanner lid, and he hands me a new sheet of paper. “Oh please, you’re not a player, you’re a serial monogamist.”

  I squint. “I’m a what now?”

  “You jump from honeymoon phase to honeymoon phase like you’re playing Frogger.”

  “Just because you got Deborah pregnant out of wedlock—”

  “—which I still consider to have been the grandest accident of my life.” He presses the Copy button again. “I committed too hard too fast without even meaning to, and it actually somehow worked out. You, on the other hand… you’re always trying to be in a relationship, but once you have one, you just can’t stick with it. I think your record is, what, half a year?”

  Six months we’ve been together. That’s longer than most of your relationships, innit?

  The memory of that voice stabs through me, leaving me sucking in breaths like I’ve been knocked to the floor. I mumble something just to keep up the conversation, about my last thing having been barely a fling.

  “Well, if you’re interested in getting back in the game, I know someone who’s willing.”

  I struggle to focus on Brian again. It helps to grab the rest of the papers out of his hand and slap him with them. “You absolute asshole, did you set me up on another blind date?”

  He laughs, ducking the papers. “No, I just found someone who would go out on a date with you! If you agreed to it.”

  I raise the papers again—

  “She’s Korean.”

  “She’s—what?” That surprises me so much I get knocked out of my own head, in a pleasant way. He takes the papers from me and calmly resumes photocopying.

  “She’s a Korean lesbian. I met her through a mutual friend, turns out we used to go to school together. She’s pretty chill, I know you’d like her.”

  I pout. “What, so you just walked up to her and said, ‘Hey, I’d like to set you up with another Korean lesbian friend of mine, you mind?’ ”

  “Of course not. I was tactful, I brought it up casually.”

  I heft my thermos. “I’m going to pour hot coffee on you, I swear.” I pause. Brian stares expectantly at me. “…What’s she like?”

  His boyish grin could light up a cellar. “I’m not telling you.”

  I feel my face screw up and I let it happen, even though I feel like a whiny kid. “What? Then how am I supposed to decide if I want to date her?”

  “See, if I don’t tell you about her, then she becomes a mystery. And because you’re curious to a stupid degree, you have to solve the mystery, by meeting her.”

  My jaw is stuck in an underbite from the unfairness of it all. Damn Brian, he knows how to get me. “…Okay, fine. As long as you gave her the same treatment.”

  “Nah, I told her everything about you.”

  “What?”

  He finishes copying the papers and starts walking back to his classroom. “She’s available for dinner tonight, actually,” he calls over his shoulder.

  I dog at his heels. “No fucking way. Tonight? Really?”

  The not-secretary pokes her head around a corner to hiss, “Language, please!” I wave a silent apology to her. Brian is still talking.

  “Tonight or Thursday, depending on when you can make it. I mean, if you can’t make it, that’s fine.” We get back to his classroom, and he stops at the door to look me up and down. His forehead crinkles in sympathy. “You do look like shit…”

  As he puts the papers on his desk, I think about the pill bottle in my coat, how small it is, how I’ll have to ration the doses to keep myself awake. I think about overwriting the crawling of bugs on my skin with someone soft and warm and comforting. Even the barest possibility of a distraction is welcoming.

  “…I can clean up in five hours or less,” I find myself saying. “I’ll be there.”

  Brian claps his hands in front of him, but he’s pretty meaty, so it sounds more like a BOOM than a clap. He’s chortling, so pleased with himself, and I flick him on the nose for it. He doesn’t care, nearly bowling me over as he swings an arm around my shoulder.

  “Aw man, I’m excited for you!”

  “You mean, you’re excited to be the best man at a wedding that’s not going to happen.”

  “Hey, you never know. Oop, I think our hour’s almost up.”

  I’m already walking toward the exit, trailing him behind me. “Don’t worry about it, I have to go meet someone else anyway. Text me her number?”

  His grin is shit-eating. �
�No, I think I’ll give her your number instead. It’s more polite.”

  “Fuuuck you.”

  I get lost once while trying to find the exit, and Brian grabs me by the shoulders and forcibly points me in the right direction. I flip him off; he laughs. As I leave the elevator, the security guard looks up from his post.

  “Are you a stude—”

  I sprint out of the building.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Little Boy Who Lives Down the Lane

  I could be in a movie right now, standing on a vast sidewalk in Times Square, giant LED billboards grinning down at me from above, the crowd of late Christmas shoppers around me suffocatingly thick and not a single person giving a shit about me. People who call themselves “real New Yorkers” say that “real New Yorkers” avoid Times Square like the plague, and that you can always tell apart the tourists because they’re staring up like hungry baby birds. I stand in one place for two minutes just to watch a Coca-Cola ad on the big screen. It features horses, for some reason.

  I make my way to the Toys”R”Us—former Toys”R”Us. Right now it’s nothing more than a metal and glass monstrosity, a never-ending grid of empty windows, having the audacity to take up precious rental space without advertising a movie or brand like all the other surfaces. There’s a weird energy about the place, this sort of “aww” about its closing, but not much desire to do the work of bringing it back. With the number of googly-eyed tourists around, probably nobody even knows there was a famous Toys”R”Us here. I know I didn’t, not until my first month living here when Luce dragged me in to find some collector’s Barbie with fully articulated joints. Eventually she’d had to drag me back out—I was too busy destroying some twelve-year-old in a remote-control car race, then leaning over the balcony with my magic glasses on, watching laughter come off the Ferris Wheel as sunny yellow sparks.

  But that’s all gone now; Toys”R”Us is just one more corporation defeated by rising rent, one giant capitalistic entity cannibalizing another. And here I am, standing in the ruins of that battle. It feels… weird. The sidewalk buzzes with some kind of magic, and not the kind I capture in jars at baseball games—something bigger, more unfathomable, that scares me.