Chapter 19
Jared
Jared was surprised how quickly Banch found something to wear in the department store. She went into the changing room with black boots, a white off-the-shoulders mesh dress, and knee high stockings. She came out happy and didn’t need to try anything else on or vacillate between wardrobe choices. Perhaps just being in clothing other than her uniform was enough, but it was definitely a different experience for Jared. His mother, and even Kaitlin, as tom-boy-indifferent as she was about clothes, had always made the women’s department a trial of forbearance, and the boredom of waiting around through countless changing room visits and then to not buy anything at all—well, it used to make Jared wish for an immediate store evacuation switch.
Earlier, while waiting for Banch in the changing room, the other shoppers moving so slow they might as well have joined the mannequins, Jared’s thoughts had turned to Kaitlin. It hadn’t been the goodbye his best friend deserved. He hoped, so, so badly, she might understand why he pushed her away. She deserved much more from life. He’d relied on her just like he had on his parents and he’d stifled her happiness with his weakness. It made him sick with grief, but strangely happy he’d finally set her free.
In the end, all she had to lose were a few fingers.
He’d flinched at the thought.
A moment later, Banch slid out from behind the door’s white curtain and his heart just about seized. It could have been any outfit. It could have been any moment. But this outfit and this moment conjured its own unique electricity. Beautiful. The word didn’t service the person who stood before him at all. Not in the least. Everything about her spoke volumes of femininity, but there was also such power there, nothing fragile or vulnerable. Where she stood was the center of Jared’s universe, of every universe; all else became lonesome planets revolving around such a pure focus, and he was grateful for orbit, for the warmth of this sun.
“I want make-up,” she said.
“Are you kidding?” He laughed incredulously. He was still stunned. The smoothness of her legs, neck, and the slope and divide of her breasts. Her hair, while a bit messy from the day’s travels, still draped over her shoulders in ribbons of delicious color that his eyes could happily devour for days. “Like you… even need make-up. You don’t, Banch. You really, really don’t.”
“I want to try some. Can your knees hold out or do you need to find a place to sit down?”
“Oh yeah, yes, of course. I’ll be okay. Let’s go check it out.” He searched around and spotted a glassy, well-lit area across the store. “That’s probably a good bet. I think the stuff is over there.”
She slipped her arm through his and Jared warmed from his chest all the way to the ends of every hair on his body. They walked not far before Banch stopped at a kiosk with themed stationary. She picked up one with seagulls and the ocean. “We’ll be at the beach soon. Hey, does one of these remind you of Fatso?”
Jared chuckled. “Sure. My first good friend. Silly little boy that I was.”
“You were sweet. You still are.”
He bowed his head in embarrassment while she took out one of the card stock and ran her thumb over it in circles. “These are nice. In the Free Zone, when I was sent on an errand for the Assembly, I visited the parchment maker Felderman. He showed me his process, and I had the privilege of handling some of his new products. You can taste and smell the ideas printed on his stationary, almost feel them in a way. I think you’d like the experience.”
“Sounds like dropping acid or something.”
Banch hummed in agreement and put the box of cards back. “I suppose it would! Only the senses aren’t really confused by chemicals. In the Deeper Unseen they are united in a most natural way.”
“I wish I could go there.”
“Only some places,” she pointed out. “And you would have the same problem I do here, which is you’d need to keep close to the ground or risk losing residency.”
“So no road trips in cars for me in the Deeper Unseen, I guess.”
“We don’t need vehicles. Traveling is a matter of touching the world with your eyes.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not something you can easily understand.”
“Agreed!” Jared grinned.
Banch smirked and bumped him playfully with her shoulder.
“Are you worried about your other assignments?” he asked. “All those people you should be sending on their way to the Light right now? Leaving them just to come help me?”
“There are a lot of good people,” she replied. “And plenty of good banshees as well. I’m not worried. They’ve taken up my other assignments without reservation. My kind treat our job like a necessity of living, like a biological process, not an obligation. One doesn’t curse the thin air in the mountains; you just breathe deeper and move with more purpose. I would do the same for any one of them, and have, many times.”
“So if your honored job is that second-nature, why didn’t you just send me on my way, as planned? Why not let me get taken? I’m just one of many. What for, Banch?”
“Why?” She raised an eyebrow full of glittering stars.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because this.” She pulled him over and crushed her lips into his. Jared held her and ran his fingers down to the small of her back and gripped there as she hungrily sucked his lips and tasted his tongue. When she drew away, nothing existed around him except their eyes locked on each other. It was a brief moment, them staring at each other, but he was fine with that. More than fine.
“So, okay?” she said.
He smiled. “You’re crazy, but okay.”
“I know, right? You so aren’t worth it.”
“Hey!”
She pulled him along. They passed a couple mannequin sets and he noticed Banch slowed at each one before stopping to study one particular lingerie piece. She shook her head. “You humans sure do love your tits, don’t you?”
Jared shushed her and she gave him a sly glance. “Uh, time’s nearly at a halt, nobody’s going to hear us, Uptight Timmy.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “But still, come on.”
“You aren’t such a prude at home watching on the computer—”
“Buhbuhbuhbuhbuh,” he shouted and put his hands over his ears.
She giggled, tightened her grip on his hand, and dragged him forward. He couldn’t help himself and had to ask. “Did you… really watch every time?”
“Yep!” she said proudly.
Jared grabbed his face in shame.
“Oh, now this I can get behind though,” said Banch.
He looked up at an ad poster: a woman’s mouth with dark purple lipstick at the partition of her lips.
“The mouth and tongue. Now those are truly amazing things.”
Jared snorted. “So is that what your kind obsess over?”
“No, it is the music that emerges from the mouth. The meaning of the sound, the feeling derived there. The voice makes it.”
He cleared his throat. “So what’s your taste in voices? Bass?”
“Oh, that’s personal.”
“That’s personal?” he asked, amazed.
“Yes sir.”
“Alto?”
“Personal!” she reaffirmed, and put a finger to her lips. “I remember before your voice changed. I still hear that little boy sometimes when you speak. And I can also hear the man you want to be.”
He grew uncomfortable and gestured to the counter. “Okay, enough picking on me. Here you go. Make-up galore.”
She went to the racks and searched around. Behind the counter a woman with a retro rockabilly hairdo pointed somewhere to another customer, a woman in her fifties wearing a beige pea coat. Banch took in the range of cosmetics before her.
“Anything strike your fancy?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’m not certain. I don’t know what would look good. Can you pick something?”
Jared backed up. “I don’t—”
“Stop being so damned scared about things. Pick something!”
He chose a brownish red lipstick and handed it to her. She gazed at it for a long while.
“Different color?” he asked.
“No, I just… what if it makes me look ugly to you?”
Jared straightened. “Then I’m an absolute dick. Ain’t gonna happen though.”
The banshee smiled, but set the lipstick back on the counter. “On second thought, I don’t want to be different to you. I want you to remember me like this.”
“Okay, Banch, okay. Like I said, you need nothing.”
She held up a hand. “Let’s go on to the hotel. I want to lie beside you in a place where lovers go. This is a gift and I want to enjoy it as long as we can.”
Jared didn’t have a chance to answer before she was heading for the exit. Quickly, he swept the lipstick off the counter and stuffed it in his pocket.
* * *
Jared fiddled with the hotel’s computer and hoped he was making progress. It was difficult leaning over the receptionist with her hands poised over the keyboard; he almost sensed her fingers creeping toward the keys at a snail’s pace.
“Wish there were just real door locks like back home,” said Banch. She leaned against an ornate stone fireplace in the lobby.
“I almost got it,” said Jared. “Nice. This is the only suite they have on the first floor. What name did you give him?”
When she didn’t answer, he looked up. Banch was grinning ear to ear. “Betty.”
He chortled. “Really? Betty who?”
“Kare, of course.”
“Of course,” he replied and shook his head, smiling. He pulled up the reservation and it prompted him to swipe a card for the room. “Boy, I wish you’d known this scream from the beginning… takes a lot of pressure off us.”
“You and I both. My twin didn’t know the Swelling Scream—I wonder if she’ll ever apply it?”
“She comes from a hard reality. I’m sure it’ll come in handy.”
Banch said nothing and it wasn’t the first time he felt small compared to her wisdom. She could have pressed him to know more about the twin, but she didn’t. He always asked a million questions, but sometimes silence was called for instead. He wanted to learn that, even if he only applied it for the next few months before it was done.
He just wanted to be a person like Banch.
Jared searched for the key cards and found a box under the desk. Swiped one. Room 125, the screen declared. He held the card up dramatically. “I’ve done it!”
Banch pushed off the wall and slapped both of her hips. “Never doubted you!”
The room was a short walk past the elevators, with only one turn down a T-section hallway. He had to turn the card over several times before he managed to engage the lock. Upon opening the room, he felt a gust of frigid air coming from the air conditioner. Someone had set it very low. They walked in and both took a look around. It probably wasn’t the hotel’s nicest suite, but it didn’t bother Jared and he doubted Banch cared either. The size of the space was impressive though. Several cylindrical ceiling lamps hung over the vast ceiling like glowing paper sushi rolls. A chocolate egg-shaped table sat in the center of the living room area with burgundy couches surrounding it. The walls were painted dark brown and the carpet, with its kaleidoscopic designs, had gold and rust colored fibers. Several trays of complimentary cheeses, crackers, hard candy, and assorted flowers had been brought in and set around the room.
“I like it!” Banch cried out and clapped her hands. “Open that champagne, unless… do they have beer? I never got one at the restaurant.”
Jared searched the fridge. “No, just the bubbly. What a jip!”
“Damn. This would have been a good occasion for you to have a beer, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so.”
“You guess so? Come on, Jared! You haven’t had sex in ages.”
“What? We’re, you, me, we’re? What?”
“Don’t be dense. We could have rested anywhere. Isn’t this what people do? Go to hotels? When did you last lay with someone? That Denise woman with the kids?”
Jared sighed. “I keep forgetting you know everything.”
“Saw everything, but I don’t know everything. Big, big difference.”
“Okay.” He set the champagne down on the kitchen counter.
“Sorry.” Banch batted her eyelashes. “I won’t mortify you anymore.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I ask something though?”
“I think you will, no matter what.”
“Why’d you leave Denise? I never understood that. I know you say you aren’t into kids, but from an external view, it seemed like you really cared about her and would have been willing to do anything to make it work.”
Jared bowed over the kitchen drawers to look for a corkscrew. “The kids were nice. Michael and Michelle. They were actually better than nice—great, as children go.”
“Am I ruining this?” asked Banch. “You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to.”
Jared found a corkscrew in with the oven implements. He waved it at her. “Absolutely not. It’s fine.”
He stared at her, unblinkingly, and then had to remember what he’d been trying to do. He hurried to the champagne.
Banch picked up on this and her mouth hitched at the side in a devious fashion. “So you want me pretty bad? Don’t you?”
He squeaked, “I don’t know… what you mean.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “You gonna break open that bottle or stand there clutching the corkscrew?”
He returned to the bottle with focused diligence, and began stripping off the black foil wrapper over the cork. As he embedded the corkscrew’s point, he had a few flashbacks to his parents. His mom always had him open her wine for her. The secrecy she shared with him, and the secrecy his father shared with nobody, gave him pause.
“Denise…” he said, not looking up from the bottle, “was a wonderful woman. She only wanted someone to love her in the way she was prepared to love. Her kids came first but she was dedicated to making her partner a top priority as well, one of the treasures of her life.”
“Then what happened?” Banch slowly approached, arms folded over her chest. “Even Kaitlin was fond of her, from how I saw it. And she’s pretty critical.”
“Yeah, she definitely was.” Jared tensed. He wanted Banch so bad and felt he might undo everything in only a few sentences, speaking of someone else he once had feelings for. “Remember when I lost her son Michael at the park that one time? I’d been the one watching him.”
The banshee stood behind him. Her breath on his neck was gentle. She glided her hands over his shoulders and hugged him around the neck. “Yes. You were scared when he went missing.”
He turned to face Banch. “It was more than that. I loved that kid. That boy, his sister, and their mother… and even though it wasn’t a big deal, I knew that somehow, in the future, I’d lose one of the kids again. I knew I wasn’t enough. I would fail them. Being a father wasn’t something I was born to do, I guess.”
Banch pressed her lips together thoughtfully and then said, “And now Denise is remarried.”
Jared’s eyes warmed. “Yep,” he replied.
Putting a slender finger under his chin, Banch lifted his eyes to hers. “You poor baby. Do you need me to hold you?”
They embraced. It was different than in the department store. Jared’s emotions raced ahead of his body. Holding her was more unreal than anything that had happened today.
“Do we have to… be careful? I don’t have anything with me. I just, I mean, oh God, sorry—”
Her moist, hot lips touched his neck and sent a thrill through him. “Thank you for asking, but though I have a human form, I cannot bear children.”
“Why is that?”
She squeezed him. Her entire body fit into his and both their hearts thundered together, his with its unn
atural, awkward rhythm, and hers with pounding strength.
“The old Kings, when they still used their voices, spoke of humankind often and it affected the Deeper Unseen. The human form, the body, was a motif there, from buildings, to biology, to the cosmos. This was no exception with my kind. We are born from Symphony Roses, and when the wind howls through their flute shaped blossoms at the exact, perfect pitch, we begin to grow within them. We spend our childhood snuggled in the petals, suckling nectar, learning the billions of strings in our throat, practicing like a musician might for the performance of her life. Once we find the ending of every progression, every chord, every emotion contained therein, the ending of what we are, the Divine note, we can crawl out of the rose’s cup—the Mother’s Cup—and that’s the day we commence our duty to the dead.”
“Do you have a belly button then?”
Banch tittered at his unexpected question and took his hand, placing it up under her new blouse. “Why wouldn’t I?”
His finger traced the circular knot of flesh in her abdomen.
“You weren’t born from a human body.”
“That doesn’t matter. When the Old Kings thought of our kind, at our inception, they imagined a woman who nobody would fight death over, someone a soul would willingly surrender for. Some see us as mothers, some see us as lovers. But all are taken with us.”
Jared took a trembling breath in. “They did a good job with that.”
“I’m glad you approve.” She drew away and stared him in the eyes. “We can’t go on the bed. It’s elevated.”
He took her behind the neck and felt his hunger build beyond capacity. “We wouldn’t make it there anyway.”
He brought her face into his and they consumed each other. After kissing, becoming so dizzy, they collapsed near the couches. Banch’s mesh dress stretched and ripped and all her new clothes, along with his, ultimately went to all corners of the room.
She was above him when she climaxed.
He had been in another place.
Another time.
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