“I’m going to be straight here, okay?”
“You were being crooked before?” he said.
“I may be sleeping with Aubrey,” I said. “I’m kind of into him. And if that’s a problem for you—”
“It isn’t,” Ex said.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
He was lying, or if he wasn’t, he was fooling himself. Ex shook his head, then plucked a black band from his pocket and tied his hair back in a severe ponytail.
“I know what Chogyi Jake told you,” he said. “The first thing he did this morning was come to me and confess.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him,” I said.
Ex held up his hand.
“I wish he hadn’t done what he did. I think he’s wrong about the motives behind my… poor behavior. I don’t need you to feel anything in particular about me,” he said. “I’m a grown-up. I’ll handle it. I only need you to treat me with respect.”
“I can do that,” I said, then a moment later, tapping on the doorframe, I added, “if you can do the same. The part where you dis me in public for not being able to control my sexuality?”
“I project a little sometimes,” Ex said, blushing. “Karen… Carrefour messed with my head. I was talking about myself more than you. I just didn’t see it at the time. I’m not as good a person as I would like to be. But I’m trying, and I’ll get better.”
“Pax, then?”
“Pax,” Ex said.
A little knot of anxiety I hadn’t known was there loosened in my chest. The gang was back together, and all was right with the world.
“Come on down to the coffee shop?” I said. “Planning session.”
Aubrey and Chogyi Jake sat at the small table near the street talking passionately about which Stephen Chow movie was better. Bright, complex Dixieland jazz played on the speakers, just the way it had, it seemed, for years. I sat down, and Ex sat across from me. Chogyi Jake’s smile passed between us before returning, satisfied, to Aubrey.
“All right,” I said. “Carrefour is thwarted. Sabine is… well, still possessed, but at least by a demon she knows. Karen Black is being nursed back to health. I declare our work here done.”
“About time,” Aubrey said with a lopsided grin. “What’s next?”
“Portland, Oregon,” I said.
Chogyi Jake’s eyes narrowed. I could almost hear him thinking.
“Did Eric have property in Oregon?”
“Condo in Eugene,” I said. “Nothing in Portland.”
“So what’s there?” Aubrey said.
“Mfume’s history,” Ex said, darkly.
“Pink Martini concerts,” I said. “Powell’s bookstore. It has also been alleged that there are some excellent microbreweries. And most important? Eric didn’t have property there. We’ve been busting hump for months because I was thinking there was somebody I was supposed to be, and you guys were all too polite and supportive to rein me in. Well. I’m reined in now. I’ve always wanted to go to Portland. I’ve never been. And I say we’re taking some time off.”
“Oh thank God,” Aubrey said, sagging back in his chair. Ex chuckled, and Chogyi Jake smiled his constant, authentic, gentle smile.
You really need to find out who you are, Daria Glapion had said to me once, not very long before. Sitting there with my friends around me, I thought I was making some progress. I wasn’t the girl who’d smart-mouthed her father into apoplexy before Sunday services, I wasn’t the sad-sack college dropout whose friends had left her behind, I wasn’t the demon huntress I’d tried to be with Karen Black. And if I also wasn’t sure yet who precisely I was becoming, at least I understood now that the only wrong answer was to hold too tightly to what I thought I was supposed to be. It was a start.
Only it turned out that wasn’t what she’d meant at all.
