Chapter Ten
July 4, age 20
I’d never been patriotic, but that didn’t stop me from loving Independence Day. The midsummer holiday was a deliciously warm reprieve from the Thanksgivings, Christmases, Valentine’s Days, and birthdays that usually came with bulky coats, icy roads, and a frosty layer of snow. Burgers, hot dogs, lakes, rivers, boats, beaches, sunburns, country music, themed bikinis, cut-off shorts, and copious amounts of alcohol coated America’s favorite excuse to get drunk and play with fire.
I’d wandered away from the bonfire, leaving a handful of people I knew from overlapping humanities classes, and a gaggle of people I didn’t, to remain engaged in whatever mating rituals ensued when two or more drunk college kids hung out over the summer. The bonfire was too far from the beach, and as we were on one of the largest freshwater lakes in North America, I was fairly certain I’d be able to see the fireworks reflected in the water.
It was stupid, but so were some of life’s best things.
And then, there were the colors.
God, I loved fireworks. They were the sort of thing my peers had outgrown as the years ticked on, but some of my favorite childhood memories took place on the Fourth of July. We were poor, but the sky belonged to everyone. Anyone who could lay down a blanket on a grassy knoll or park a truck with an unobstructed view had front-seat tickets to a kaleidoscope of joy.
Some hissed and spun in tight, golden corkscrews before erupting in pinks, greens, and blues. Some left long, palm-tree-like streaks across the sky as gravity claimed their colorful embers. Others were short, crackling bursts. Once in a while, a firework would erupt in coordinated shapes, like hearts, stars, or rosettes. Some were light-blue jellyfish. Others were pink chrysanthemums. But my favorite, without fail, was the fountain.
Metallic, glittering starlight would twinkle and fall to the earth, and I’d close my eyes and make a wish. The lakes were too large to possess the glassy quality one found in postcards or picturesque landscape calendars, but I could still make out the glistening colors in the choppy, dark waves. The soothing rush as wave after wave lapped upon the sand was vastly preferable to whatever Toby Keith hit blasted in the background. I wanted to put as much space as possible between me and the dumbass who’d been trusted with the aux.
“You’re kind of far from the party, aren’t you?”
“Caliban!” I exclaimed. I stretched out my hands for him like a toddler who wanted to be picked up.
“And a little drunk,” he said with a smile. He had the most perfect white teeth I’d ever seen. Everything about him was chiseled from the same pale, perfect marble, from his shock of hair to the strength in his hands. Michelangelo himself couldn’t have carved anything so beautiful if he’d spent his life trying. He didn’t belong on the same freshwater beach as tank-top-wearing college bros with beer bongs and flip-flops, let alone the same planet.
“I was hoping you’d come find me,” I said. I tipped back the dregs of the sweet, cotton-candy-flavored punch from my red cup and tossed it onto the ground.
“No need to litter,” he tsked. He picked up the cup and made indentations in the plastic with his fingers. A moment later, it disappeared in a burst of black glitter, as though it had never existed. He extended his hand.
“Am I next?” I asked, referring to the cup.
“I’d sooner die than let harm befall you,” he swore.
“How gallant.” I hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but I was growing a little tired of gallantry. Every penis-owner at the party had been trying to get laid, hurling sloppy pickup lines at anyone who would listen, and then there was Caliban, ever the gentleman.
“I could use a drink. Want to return to the party?” he asked.
His request was both odd and irrelevant. I plucked a flask from my back pocket and handed it to him.
He took a swig and made a face. “Is this apple moonshine?”
“We call it Apple Pie,” I replied. “Everclear, spiced rum, apple cider, sugar, and cinnamon. And since when do you…?”
“What? Interact with your environment? Is it freaking you out?”
“A little.”
He’d never been inappropriate with me, which I found downright offensive for an imaginary friend. If he were a figment of my imagination, shouldn’t he be catering to my every whim? Perhaps it said something about my self-esteem that even my delusional coping mechanism allowed little more than the chaste, borderline-familial comfort of a man who respected firm, platonic boundaries.
Not tonight. It was a holiday, goddammit, and I wanted him to flirt with me.
“If you’re going to share my booze, you might as well hold my hand.”
He looked at my outstretched fingers as if they were curious antiquities and he the archeologist.
“That depends,” he said, and I heard the conspiratorial tone of an impending deal. He loved his trades. “You’ve convinced yourself I’m not real, and I won’t try to talk you out of it. But just for tonight, let’s play pretend. I’ll hold your hand, and you indulge in the fantasy that I’m here in the flesh.”
My hand dropped limply to my side. I cast a quick glance at the men walking hand in hand in our direction.
“I’ll look insane with my arm outstretched holding air,” I said quietly.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But it’s a holiday. Indulge your deviant fantasies, and let’s see if anyone gives you a funny look. Perhaps we’ll just be another couple on the beach.”
My lip twitched at the word. Couple. Of course, I’d thought of him romantically. He could have been an asexual accountant I only saw during tax season for platonic exchanges, and I’d still daydream about ripping his clothes off and wondering if his skin tasted as good as it smelled. I was sure he didn’t mean it. If I’d made him up, he should at least be an active participant in my orgasms.
He stretched his hand toward me. Fireworks continued to crackle, waves continued to gently kiss the shore, and the couple continued to walk toward us, but he did not budge.
“Okay,” I agreed. My voice lacked conviction, but I extended tentative fingertips, slipping them into his cool, strong palm. “Tonight, we’re just a man and a woman.”
“Something like that,” he said with a smile. “Give me more of that horrible drink.”
I handed him the flask once more. “I didn’t realize your tastes were so elitist.”
“I prefer gin,” he said. He returned the flask to me after another swig, and I tucked it into my back pocket. My hands dangled, free for grabbing, as he was a real man who might catch my hopeful signals.
Drink preferences aside, tonight, he would indulge me. Tonight, my lustful waking dreams could explore the barest edges of my uncontrollable feelings for this perfect, striking man, and I would play a little game. We were two people walking on the beach. We could pretend to be anyone. Maybe we were communist spies, reporting our findings to Mother Russia. Maybe we were science buddies quizzing one another on DNA architecture and whether we had a social obligation to keep bioethics every bit as rigorous as our technological advancements. Or maybe—and I was inclined to go with option three—I could pretend that Caliban was my partner, my boyfriend, my lover.
Then again, hand-holding was a solid first step, but parents held hands with children and drunk girls held hands with strangers as they led one another to the club bathroom, which robbed the gesture of its intimacy.
The pair of men passed, and two sets of eyes went to us. Well, they went to me, one man smiling, the other openly gaping, but I allowed myself to pretend that they perceived Caliban, too.
“Happy Fourth,” I greeted the men.
“Happy Fourth,” they replied in automatic unison, one tripping over his own feet as they stumbled to get one last ogle before continuing on down the beach.
“Did I spill something on my shirt? Why were they looking at me like that?”
“They were looking at us ,” he corrected. We walked the next two hundred feet in blissful silence, leaving footprints in the sand, our eyes on the moon, the stars, the festive explosions. There was a chance I was buzzing on alcohol, but the fuzzy dopamine sure felt a lot like love. I was content to spend the walk in silence when he spoke again. “Could we…do something? Just you and me?”
Please, god, let this man ask to fuck me on the beach.
I cleared my throat. “What do you have in mind?”
There was something reserved about his question. With halting uncertainty, he asked, “Would you just sit here for a while and watch the fireworks with me?”
“I…Aren’t we already watching the fireworks?”
He tried to smile, but the skin around his eyes remained tight. “I mean, can we keep going as we are? Acting like we’re real, that is. Just tonight.”
I couldn’t explain the strange pain that needled me in the heart as I held his gaze. Quietly, I replied, “Just tonight.”
Caliban took a seat on the sand and patted the space beside him. He planted a palm near my hip, and I relaxed into the space between his arm and torso, tucking my head beneath his chin. We tilted our faces skyward and watched the sky like any other couple quietly observing Independence Day.
“You know what I like about the stars?” he asked.
I turned to watch his face, waiting for him to continue.
“They’re the same everywhere. They have different names, but it’s the same moon and its phases, the same constellations, the same tidal pulls and powerful birth charts.”
“Sure,” I conceded, though I didn’t seem to feel as strongly about it as he did. “I guess there’s something unifying about looking at the same moon in China and Greece and Brazil.”
“No, I mean…” His smile returned as he shook his head. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Sometimes, in moments like this, I miss being in the church.”
“I make you miss…the Bible?” He sounded more amused than I understood.
“No.” I pushed his arm. I hoped he found the gesture playful, but I had no idea how to flirt with him. Most men were so simple. Caliban was a locked box within a vault within a concrete brick, as far as I was concerned. I expanded, “I just miss the sort of catch-all gratitude that came with having a single source for everything. I miss being able to look at a sunrise and thank God. I miss being sad or sick or scared and knowing exactly who to pray to. And tonight, it would be pretty fucking nice if I had someone to talk to.”
“Talk to me,” he said.
“No,” I amended. “I mean, I’d love to have someone to thank for bringing us together. It used to make me feel lighter to look at the fireworks and thank a deity for a beautiful show, for perfect weather, and for the chance to cuddle on the beach with someone I…”
His sharp intake of air caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure what I’d said wrong, but I bit my lip before I put my foot in my mouth.
I’d been talking to Caliban for four years. I knew the cadence of his voice inside and out. And I knew when he was keeping something from me. There was discomfort in his wording as he said, “Have you explored any other pantheon?”
I slipped out of my flip-flops and dug my toes into the sand. “What, like, worship Hecate instead?”
“Well, sure, she’s an oddly specific example, but yes. If you’re missing a sense of something greater, have you entertained the idea that maybe it’s because, well…there’s something greater?”
I used my toe to draw a heart in the hard-packed sand. A sidewise glance told me he wasn’t paying attention to my buzzed attempts at beach-faring courtship. A quote clanged around in my head. “Yeah, yeah, C.S. Lewis said something about that. I was a big Narnia fan.”
“What did he say?”
I cleared my throat and did my best impression of a British man: “If I find in myself desires that nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
The rhythmic firework display increased in tempo. We had to be nearing the grand finale. I cuddled into him, my boyfriend for the night, real or imagined, and watched the colorful explosions in awe.
Caliban’s single, soft laugh was too somber for the occasion.
I squeezed his forearm. “Hey, what’s on your mind?”
“He was smart,” was all he said. “Lewis, that is. You read a bunch of his books, didn’t you?”
“I did indeed, fiction and nonfiction. Your drunken date in the Daisy Dukes is a well-read lady. Remember Screwtape Letters ? That book about demons writing back and forth to each other?”
Another laugh. “Yes. Precisely like that. The man was something of a demon lover.”
I giggled at the thought, then supplied the only tidbit I knew on the topic. “Lewis was quoted a time or two saying he had an unhealthy taste for the occult.”
“At least his logic was sound,” Caliban replied. “You can’t have one without the other. If you believe in Heaven and its King, then you believe in its adversaries. Though its portrayal of said adversaries might be somewhat biased.”
“Well, can you blame them? History is written by the victors.”
“I wouldn’t count their chickens just yet,” he said under his breath, but not so quietly that I didn’t slip it into my bank of odd Caliban tidbits. I collected memories of him like they were arcade tickets. Perhaps one day I could cash them in for a real boy.
I didn’t want to ruin the mood, so I did my best to return our banter to irreverence. “Great, so, on America’s birthday, my primary takeaway is that I should pray to Hecate and that demons are real.”
“Hecate, sure.” He hummed as if racking his brain. “Or Frigg, Frejya, Skadi, Sif—”
“Are you just listing Nordic goddesses because of my surname? That’s not very America’s Birthday of you. Shouldn’t we be setting up altars to Columbia and whatever other colonizer goddesses of manifest destiny?”
“We’re missing the finale,” he said. He gave my hip a squeeze as the fireworks erupted in all directions, smothering the sky in smoke and color and light.
The thunderous pops had ceased, leaving us alone with the distant twang of steel guitars and songs about drinking with the boys and killing your husbands.
I wasn’t ready to leave. Getting up would mean leaving Caliban, and tonight was so, so rare for us. I almost never indulged my delusions enough to relax and have fun. I could sit here in the dark if he could, though I’d prefer to fill the sky with rainbows. Maybe I could stretch it out, just a little longer. I’d been doing preliminary research on the Nordic pantheon for a writing project, and if it encouraged him to stay, I’d gladly talk about Scandinavian nations and Vikings and powerful hammers and Ragnarok if it meant he would stay.
“I get it, you know,” he said at last. I caught the way his frosted lashes fluttered close, each white hair brilliant in the moonlight, as he spoke. “I have one person to thank for every good thing in my life, and it’s you.”