Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link Read Free Book Online Page A

bedside table. There is Perez Hilton, Gawker, talk radio, YouTube, Tumblr. There are GIFs.
    You will always be most famous for playing the lead in a series of vampire movies. The character you play is, of course, ageless. But you get older. The first time you bite a girl’s neck, Meggie’s neck, you’re a twenty-five-year-old actor playing a vampire who hasn’t gotten a day older in three hundred years. Now you’re a forty-nine-year-old actor playing the same ageless vampire. It’sgetting to be a little ridiculous, isn’t it? But if the demon lover isn’t the demon lover then who is he? Who are you? Other projects disappoint. Your agent says take a comic role. The trouble is you’re not very funny. You’re not good at funny.
    The other trouble is the sex tape. Sex tapes are inherently funny. Nudity is, regrettably, funny. Torn foreskins are painfully funny. You didn’t know she was filming it.
    Your agent says, That wasn’t what I meant.
    You could do what Meggie did, all those years ago. Disappear. Travel the world. Hunt down the meaning of life. Go find Meggie.
    When the sex tape happens you say to Fawn, But what does this have to do with Meggie? This has nothing to do with Meggie. It was just some girl.
    It’s not like there haven’t been other girls.
    Fawn says, It has everything to do with Meggie.
    I can see right through you, Fawn says, less in sorrow than in anger. She probably can.
    God grant me Meggie, but not just yet. That’s him by way of St. Augustine by way of Fawn the makeup artist and Bible group junkie. She explains it to the demon lover, explains him to himself. And hasn’t it been in the back of your mind all this time? It was Meggie right at the start. Why shouldn’t it be Meggie again? And in the meantime, you could get married once in a while and never worry about whether or not it worked out. He and Meggie have managed, all this time, to stay friends. His marriages, his other relationships, perhaps these have only been a series of delaying actions. Small rebellions. And here’s the thingabout his marriages: he’s never managed to stay friends with his ex-wives, his exes. He and Fawn won’t be friends.
    The demon lover and Meggie have known each other for such a long time. No one knows him like Meggie.
    The remains of the nudist colony at Lake Apopka promise reasonable value for ghost hunters. A dozen ruined cabins, some roofless, windows black with mildew; a crumbled stucco hall, Spanish tiles receding; the cracked lip of a slop-filled pool. Between the cabins and the lake, the homely and welcome sight of half a dozen trailers; even better, he spots a craft tent.
    Muck farms! Mutant alligators! Disappearing nudists! The demon lover, killing time in the LAX airport, read up on Lake Apopka. The past is a weird place, Florida is a weird place, no news there. A demon lover should fit right in, but the ground sucks and clots at his shoes in a way that suggests he isn’t welcome. The rain is directly overhead now, shouting down in spit-warm gouts. He begins to run, stumbling, in the direction of the craft tent.
    Meggie’s career is on the upswing. Everyone agrees. She has a ghost-hunting show,
Who’s There?
    The demon lover calls Meggie after the
Titanic
episode airs, the one where
Who’s There?
’s ghost-hunting crew hitches a ride with the International Ice Patrol. There’s the yearly ceremony, memorial wreaths. Meggie’s crew sets up a Marconi transmitter and receiver just in case a ghost or two has a thing to say.
    The demon lover asks her about the dead seagulls. Forget theMarconi nonsense. The seagulls were what made the episode. Hundreds of them, little corpses fixed, as if pinned, to the water.
    Meggie says, You think we have the budget for fake seagulls? Please.
    Admit that
Who’s There?
is entertaining whether or not you believe in ghosts. It’s all about the nasty detail, the house that gives you a bad feeling even when you turn on all the lights, the awful thing that