Practical Demonkeeping

as smooth as if you’d spackled them,” the clerk had said. He’d been a drywall man moonlighting at the cosmetic counter and was not yet versed in the nomenclature of beauty. Two capfuls of Herbal Honesty, a fragrant mix of organically grown herbs harvested by the loving hands of spiritually enlightened descendants of the Mayans . And last, a squeeze of Female E , vitamin E oil and dong quai root extract, to bring out the Goddess in every woman . Rachel had given her the Female E at the last meeting of the Pagan Vegetarians for Peace when Jenny had consulted the group about divorcing Robert. “You’re just a little yanged out,” Rachel had said. “Try some of this.”
    When Jenny finished adding all the ingredients, the water was the soft, translucent green of cheese mold. It would have come as a great surprise to Jennifer that two hundred miles north, in the laboratories of the Stanford Primordial Slime Research Building, some graduate students were combining the very same ingredients (albeit under scientific names) in a climate-controlled vat, in an attempt to replicate the original conditions in which life had first evolved on Earth. It would have further surprised her that if she had turned on a sunlamp in the bathroom (the last element needed), her bath water would have stood up and said “Howdy,” immediately qualifying her for the Nobel prize and millions in grant money.
    While Jennifer’s chance at scientific immortality bubbled away in the tub, she counted her tips, forty-seven dollars and thirty-two cents’ worth of change and dollar bills, into a gallon jar, then marked the total into a logbook on her dresser. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Her tips and wages provided enough to make the house payment, pay utilities, buy food, and keep her Toyota and Robert’s truck in marginal running order. She made enough to keep alive Robert’s illusion that he was making it as a professional photographer. What little he made on the occasional wedding or senior portrait went into film and equipment, or, for the most part, wine. Robert seemed to think that the key to his creativity was a corkscrew.
    Keeping Robert’s photography business buoyant was Jennifer’s rationalization for putting her own life on hold and wasting her time working as a waitress. It seemed that she had always been on hold, waiting for her life to start. In school they told her if she worked hard and got good grades, she would get into a good college. Hold, please. Then there had been Robert. Work hard, be patient, the photography will take off, and we’ll have a life. She’d hitched herself to that dream and put her life on hold once again. And she had kept pumping energy into the dream long after it had died in Robert.
    It happened one morning after Robert had been up drinking all night. She had found him in front of the television with empty wine bottles lined up in front of him like tombstones.
    “Don’t you have a wedding to shoot today?”
    “I’m not going to do it. I don’t feel up to it.”
    She had gone over the edge, screaming at him, kicking wine bottles around the room, and finally, storming out. Right then she resolved to start her life. She was almost thirty and she’d be damned if she’d spend the rest of her life as the grieving widow of someone else’s dream.
    She asked him to leave that afternoon, then called a lawyer.
    Now that her life had finally started, she had no idea what she was going to do. Slipping into the tub, she realized she was, in fact, nothing more than a waitress and a wife.
    Once again she fought the urge to call Robert and ask him to come home. Not because she loved him—the love had worn so thin it was hard to perceive—but because he was her purpose, her direction, and most important, her excuse for being mediocre.
    Sitting in the safety of her bathroom, she found she was afraid. This morning, Pine Cove had seemed like a sweatbox, closing in on her and cutting off her breath. Now Pine Cove and the world seemed a very large and hostile place. It would be easy to slip under the warm water and never come up, escape. It wasn’t a serious consideration, just a momentary fantasy. She was stronger than that. Things weren’t hopeless, just difficult. Concentrate on the positive, she told herself.
    There was this guy Travis. He seemed nice. He was very good-looking, too. Everything is fine. This is not an end, it’s a beginning.
    Her paltry attempt at positive thinking suddenly