Innocency (Act II)

“I don’t know how much longer it’ll hold,” says the gaunt man sitting at one end of the long low sofa.

“And then it’ll start happening again?” says the man with the gun, standing in the low wide doorway to the porch. Outside the wind’s a low and constant wash of sound unbroken by any patter of rain. The woman huddled at the other end of the sofa says, “What was it you said you had parked outside?” Her shoulders bare she’s wrapped in a particolored quilt, her long hair straight and black and loose.

“An angel,” says the man with the gun, and Jessie says “Oh God.” She’s sitting on the floor to one side of the doorway under stained and faded snapshots of various angles and corners of the room about them, each one hazed by wisps and tendrils of smoke that seem to eddy in the uncertain light. Her grey chauffeur’s jacket unbuttoned, sagging open, a scrap of black lace stuffed in one clenched fist. “Ain’t about you,” says the man with the gun. “We here for the sorcerer. Soon as I get him, soon as we’re gone.”

“He isn’t here,” says Jo. Still in her satiny black slip and her black jeans by the porch railing, leaning against one of the peeled and polished branches that serve as columns, arms wrapped about herself.

“He is,” says the man with the gun. “You.” He waves at the gaunt man on the sofa, who says “Michael St. John Lake.”

“Okay. You his wife?” waving it at the woman at the other end of the sofa.

“No,” she says, and the gaunt man says “I’m not married.”

The man with the gun says, “This your place?” to Michael.

“Yes.”

“The fuck is it? What did it do to me?”