The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  “You’re English? You don’t even have an accent. English,” I sighed, “and a knight. No wonder you’re so romantic and sexy. Oh wait,” His lips moved to my shoulder and my questions began to leave my brain. “Wait, why is your name French?”

  “Long story. Shut up and kiss me,” He said, with a hot English accent.

  “Oh my God! Could you always sound like that?”

  He laughed and pushed me down.

  “Wait! What have you been doing for the last eight hundred years?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you. The rest is inconsequential.” He bent my arm so that my fingers touched his neck, while he kissed toward my wrist.

  “But you lived through the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and two World Wars. Don’t you have anything you want to say about it?”

  He raised his head and turned to me. “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

  I didn’t believe him, but neither did I ask anything else of him for the rest of the morning.

  After dark we drove to my dorm, so I could study and change clothes. Cristien dropped me out front then went off to find parking. I was waiting for the elevator when Reese and Mikayla walked in. I hid my hand behind my back.

  “Hey, Alexa,” Mikayla called. Her voice was filled with concern for me like usual. “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “You finally got contact lenses?” she asked. “Good for you.”

  “Uh, Lasik,” I said, looking away.

  “Is that why we haven’t seen you around?”

  That’s when I waved my hand in front of my face like the queen of England.

  Reese screamed and knocked Mikayla out of the way.

  “Let me see.” She nearly ripped my finger off. “Oh my God. That thing is huge. Look at it, Mikayla!”

  “Wow,” Mikayla said. “I bet it’s more than four carats.”

  I took my hand back as the elevator doors opened. I stepped inside. Mikayla and Reese followed and were blinded by the dance my ring made in the light.

  “Ouch,” Mikayla said. I covered my ring, and she rubbed her eyes.

  “Sorry,” I told her.

  “So, what happened?” Reese asked, excitedly.

  I gave them all the details.

  “So, Romantic,” Reese smiled.

  “He should have put your ring in the glass, or had a skywriter, or did one of those balloon trips,” Mikayla said. “That would have been cooler.

  “I think he did it perfectly,” I told her, a bit offended.

  “Did you set a date?” Reese asked.

  “We’re just going to city hall next weekend,” I said.

  “That soon?” Mikala asked.

  “You’re not going to have a big wedding?” Reese cried.

  “Cristien doesn’t want to wait any longer.”

  The elevator opened to our floor.

  “But what do you want?” Mikayla asked.

  “I don’t care, big, small. It’s not about that for me. I’m just so happy I found him.”

  Well … congratulations,” Reese said, as she went toward her room.

  “Yeah. Congrats,” Mikayla echoed, before following her.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling like our paths were diverging, that our friendship was somehow ending.

  When I opened the door to my room, Cristien was sitting on my bed waiting. I forgot my sadness and smiled.

  “You came through the window again? You can use the lobby now,” I told him.

  “Old habits,” he said. “Call your mom.”

  I had to procrastinate. “Guess who I saw downstairs?”

  A threat entered his eyes. He tilted his head.

  “Reese and Mikayla,” I told him. “They loved the ring.”

  “Was Mikayla envious?” he asked, smiling.

  “She was dying of envy. You should have seen her face.”

  “I wish I could have. Now, call your mother.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking out my phone, then putting it down again. “Wait. If my mom asks about you, what should I tell her?”

  “Anything. It doesn’t matter. Stop stalling.”

  “I’m not stalling. I have to get my lies straight. You’re English. Your parents are?”

  “English.”

  I could see a vein rising in the center of his forehead, “Where do you work?” I asked, nonplussed. My mother would have been throwing things by now.

  “IT company.”

  “Which one again?”

  “She’s going to ask that?”

  “She might.”

  “Call.”

  “Okay. One last question,” I said, hoping he would bite.

  “What?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “How did you meet Lance?”

  “Your mother is going to want to know about Lance?”

  “No, I want to know.”

  “Alexa, you are trying my patience.”

  “My mom doesn’t get home from doing the laundry tonight until seven. It’s ten to seven. You might as well amuse me.”

  “I don’t believe you. I believe she’s home right now. Or you would have told me this before.”

  I shrugged. “I forgot.”

  “Fine,” he said, “Seven, but that’s it, Alexa.”

  “Sure,” I said, hoping the story was long. “How did you meet him?”

  He stuck out his jaw, stubbornly.

  “Oh come on, please?” I said.

  He moved around, “It’s not an exciting story.”

  “So?” I prompted, smiling. As long as it was long.

  “Okay, Abe, that sniveling coward, said Lance was feeding in our territory without my permission.”

  “Your permission?” I asked, surprised because I saw something fiercer than usual in his eyes. I saw something of the warrior.

  “I’m eight-hundred-years old,” he told me coolly. “I don’t ask much, only a little respect from my lessers.”

  “Lessers?”

  He shrugged. “I’m the oldest here. This is my territory. No one is foolish enough to cross me. The one or two who have paid dearly and set an example. Manhattan’s my fief. Abe was a trespasser himself. When I caught him, he was screwing the life out of a girl; he begged me not kill him, swore never to kill again. He was so pathetic. I should have ended him then. I knew the churl would betray me one day,” he said, frowning. He gazed at me, thinking.

  “Go on,” I said eagerly. He couldn’t stop now. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “By the way, he’s gone. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I said. Then I thought maybe I should have been by his tone. Was that why I never slept in my room anymore? I started to ask when Cristien began again.

  “He promised to serve me. It stroked my ego. I gave him a place to live, clothes. I think I was lonely.”

  Cristien’s eyes began wandering around. I tucked my phone under my pillow. “You still haven’t said when you met Lance?”

  A smile crossed his perfect lips. “Abe saw him in our territory. The milk-blood came crawling back to me afraid to even say anything to him. Oh, he was so brave in his talk with me, using all kinds of racist slurs. Filthy coward.

  “Anyway, I wanted to see what he was talking about. I assumed I would find Lance in flagrante, but he was dancing the night away at a club. It was the seventies. Everyone was free and having fun but me and Abe, I think. Lance’s nonchalant life intrigued me. He lived with the humans, talking to them, eating and drinking. He didn’t kill them. I walked up to him.

  I was the only Caucasian in the club. He looked me up and down, and knew what I must be immediately. He told me we should go outside. A lot of the other people wanted to go with him, but he stopped them.

  “I told him he was in my territory. He nodded, not contradicting me, then asked if I had ever been in the club he was in. I said no. He asked if I had intentions of going anytime soon. I said no. He asked if I saw his point. I did. We both laughed.
He told me his name. I told him mine. I told him how old I was.

  “He shook his head. ‘You’re how old, and you’ve never been to a club?’ he asked. I told him I didn’t go out. He asked me why not. I really didn’t know. I did know I liked him, his wit and the fact that he had balls of steel. ‘You like going to clubs. Take me,’ I told him, ‘and you can feed here all you like.’ He didn’t say anything. He watched me. ‘You have a place?’ I asked him then. ‘Not much,’ he told me, ‘a crap building where I crash. I don’t need much,’ he said. ‘How about you stay with me. My building has lights and heat, and a bed.’ He asked why I was doing this. I told him I didn’t know. It was an impulse thing.

  He came home with me that night. He liked the apartment so much, he’s never left. We bought it and the two adjacent ones when they turned the place into condominiums. We’ve gone out every night since. That’s how I met you. Like I told you everything has been leading me to you. All roads lead to Rome.”

  Mom and Dad

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Call your mother, Alexa,” Cristien ordered, not smiling anymore.

  “Okay,” I said, still not moving an inch.

  He leaned forward. I puckered my lips for a kiss, but he went around me. He reached past my side and got the phone out from under my pillow. He held it in front of my face. I dialed under his observant eyes with my stomach begging to abandon ship like a panicked rat. My mother picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ima,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and calm. I looked into Cristien’s excited face. It was the only thing stopping me from running and screaming from my room.

  “Hi, Aliyah, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, attempting to laugh. Cristien gestured that I should hurry along to the good part. I waved him away.

  “Why are you calling so early in the week? You need money?”

  “Oh, no. No, I met a nice boy and . . .”

  “Remember, Aliyah, school first,” she told me automatically. The TV was playing in the back.

  “Of course,” I sighed. Cristien began signaling wildly. I ignored him. “Well, I thought I’d come home this weekend anyway.”

  “Need to catch up on some studying?”

  “No, I missed you.”

  “I miss you too, dear. I have to go. My show is coming on, see you Friday. Remember to bring your laundry this time.”

  “Okay, see you,” I said, hanging up.

  “You met a nice boy? That’s the best you could do?” He asked.

  “What did you want me to say, ‘I met a nice eight-hundred-year-old Christian incubus’?”

  “Something in between might have been ideal. And something about your being engaged would have been perfect.”

  “I’ll get there. I’ll get there.”

  “By Friday?”

  “Oh ye of little faith,” I said, then grabbed my books and sat at my desk. I really did have to finish a paper and study for tomorrow’s classes.

  Cristien was good. He relaxed on my bed reading my Literature of Love text while I worked. He even reviewed my paper and turned a disorganized C+ to a brilliant A paper. At one o’clock, we winged it to his car. I slept over at his place. In the morning, I changed and attended classes. We had lunch and dinner together and after drove to my dorm. Then that evening, it was time to call my mother again.

  Cristien gave me a big thumbs-up while I dialed. She picked up on the second ring this time.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Ima,” I said perkily.

  “You sound happy.”

  “Yeah, I got an A on my paper,” I lied. I hoped to get an “A” on the paper I just handed in. Cristien nodded approvingly at my groundwork.

  “That’s good, dear.”

  “And I really like that guy I told you about,” I said smiling at Cristien. He kept nodding.

  “Who?”

  “The one I told you about. We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now.” More nods from him.

  “Really?” she said, finally sounding like she was listening to me.

  “Yes, I really like him.”

  “You said that already, Aliyah. So, when did you meet him?”

  “On Valentine’s Day.”

  “I thought you went to the library.”

  I thought quickly now. “I did. I met him there.”

  “Library?” Cristien mouthed. I shrugged.

  “So, what school does he attend?”

  “He works for an IT company.”

  “What was he doing at your library?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Research,” Cristien whispered. “Research.”

  “Doing research,” I echoed, giving him the thumbs-up before it dawned on me that he could hear what was being said by my mother. Before I could react, my mother spoke again.

  “How old is he?”

  I looked at Cristien. He shrugged this time.

  “About twenty . . .” He had a job and a place to live. I added a few more years: “five. Twenty-seven.”

  “He’s older than you,” she said disapprovingly.

  “But that’s good because he has a job and a house and a car.”

  “That’s good for him. Don’t you think he’s a little too old for you?”

  Boy, if she only knew how too old he really was.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, dear, what can you offer him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again.

  “You don’t know?” Cristien asked, surprised. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  I made a face and turned away from him. He pulled me around, scrutinized me for a few seconds then got mad. He put his hand out for the phone. I shook my head.

  “Hang up,” he said. I slammed on the mute.

  “You wanted me to talk to her,” I told him, “so, let me finish this, okay?”

  He was still angry, but he nodded once sharply. I turned off the mute.

  “You know how men are,” my mother was saying. “You have to have a degree or an education for them to be interested in you. A man like that will outgrow you quickly; then he’ll leave you. You’re a child compared to him. You have nothing to offer yet. Wait until after college, then be with someone your own age. It’s better that way, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Alexa! Say something to defend yourself,” Cristien hissed. I covered his mouth.

  “Aliyah?” my mother said.

  “Sure mom.”

  Cristien got up and started pacing the narrow floor of my room, one to four, forward, one to four back, all the while talking under his breath.

  “When you come home this weekend, we’ll discuss it,” she told me, which meant she would spend every waking hour of those three days making me regret I ever met him.

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  “You’re not going home this weekend, or ever again,” Cristien told me when I hung up. “Why do you let her talk to you that way? You have so much to offer. I’m the one who has nothing. You’re brilliant and gorgeous. Anyone can see how great you are.”

  “Thanks,” I said, still feeling crappy, like I was the thing stuck to the belly of the lowest snake.

  “You’re not going to let her upset you, are you?” he asked, taking my hands.

  “No,” I said, not meeting his eyes.

  “Listen, I’m counting on you. So far, mom two, Alexa zero. But I’m still rooting for the home team. You can do it.”

  “We could not tell her,” I said, hopefully.

  “No, I changed my mind, you’re not backing out on me now,” he told me. “I’m meeting her on Friday as your fiancée and that is final. She’s going to see that ring and choke on it like Mikayla did.”

  “She just wants me to finish college. I’m the only one in my family to ever get this far.”

  “College? You have an eternity to finish college.”<
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  “Yeah, but only this semester to disappoint my mother.”

  “How could you disappoint anyone? Only a fool could be disappointed in you. College or no, you’re priceless,” he smiled.

  “Thanks,” I said, but I still felt bad.

  “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere but here.” He opened the window.

  I smiled, and we jumped. We spent the night on the wing going where I could never go before. I think a couple of people saw us, but this was Manhattan. They just blinked and kept going.

  Wednesday we slept most of the day. I think I was turning into a succubus. I could hardly keep my eyes open all morning. Cristien made breakfast for us around five-thirty at night. I did my work at his house. I called my mother from there on Thursday night for the final time. I sat on his couch with my legs crossed, the top one bouncing up and down. Cristien sat by me, arms folded.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Ima,” I said warily.

  “Oh, hello,” she said cautiously. “Are you still seeing that man?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking into Cristien’s eyes.

  “Really?”

  “I think,” I began and then changed it: “no, I know I’m in love with him.”

  “But you’re so young. You don’t know about men yet. He’s just toying with you.”

  “He isn’t,” I said. Cristien squeezed my hand.

  “That’s what you say now. Then he’ll leave you like your father left me. Have you been studying? I bet you haven’t.”

  “Yes. I told you I got an A on my paper.”

  “But what about the other subjects? How are you doing in Chemistry and Biology?”

  “A’s, I think.”

  “You think? Maybe you should stop going out with that man and pay more attention to your work.”

  Cristien reached over and put his hand on the phone. I held on.

  “I am,” I said, struggling to keep the receiver to my ear.

  “Aliyah, this is no time to lose focus,” my mother warned.

  “I’m not,” I said, pushing Cristien’s hand away.

  “I don’t want to see you fail and have nothing in the end like I did.”

  “So, I’m nothing?” I asked, finally after all these years.