Practical Demonkeeping

used to say, meaning it was too sexy.
    He stared at them in fascination, caught by the reality of his fear like a deer caught in car headlights. The man turned to say something to Jenny, and Robert caught his profile. It was the guy from the nightmare, the guy he had seen in the Slug that afternoon.
    He couldn’t look any longer. He lowered himself to the ground. A knot of sad questions beat at him. Who was this guy? What was so great about this guy? What does he have that I don’t? Worst of all, how long has this been going on?
    Robert stumbled away from the house toward the street. They were sitting in his house, on his couch—the couch he and Jenny had saved up to buy. How could she do that? Didn’t everything in the house remind her of their marriage? How could she sit on his couch with some other man? Would they screw in his bed? The ache rose up in his chest at the thought, almost doubling him over.
    He thought about trashing the guy’s car. It was pretty trashed already, though. Flatten the tires? Break the windshield? Piss in the gas tank? No, then he would have to admit to spying. But he had to do something.
    Maybe he could find something in the car that would tell him who this home wrecker was. He peered through the Chevy’s windows. Nothing much to see: a few fast-food wrappers, a comic book on the front seat, and a Haliburton suitcase on the backseat. Robert recognized it immediately. He used to carry his four-by-five camera in the same model suitcase. He had sold the camera and given the suitcase to The Breeze for rent.
    Was this guy a photographer? One way to find out. He hesitated, his hand on the car door handle. What if the guy came out while Robert was rummaging through the car? What would he do? Fuck it. The guy was rummaging through his life, wasn’t he? Robert tried the door. It was unlocked. He threw it open and reached in.

20
EFFROM
    He was a soldier. Like all soldiers, in his spare moments he was thinking of home and the girl who waited for him there. He sat on a hill looking out over the rolling English countryside. It was dark, but his eyes had adjusted during his long guard duty. He smoked a cigarette and watched the patterns the full moon made on the hills when the low cloud cover parted .
    He was a boy, just seventeen. He was in love with a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl named Amanda. She had down-soft hair on her thighs that tickled his palms when he pushed her skirt up around her hips. He could see the autumn sun on her thighs, even though he was staring over the spring-green hills of England .
    The clouds opened and let the moon light up the whole countryside .
    The girl pulled his pants down around his knees .
    The trenches were only four days away. He took a deep drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out in the grass. He let the smoke out with a sigh .
    The girl kissed him hard and wet and pulled him down on her .
    A shadow appeared on the distant hill, black and sharply defined. He watched the shadow undulate across the hills. It can’t be, he thought. They never fly under a full moon. But the cloud cover ?
    He looked in the sky for the airship but could see nothing. It was silent except for the crickets singing sex songs. The countryside was still but for the shadow. He lost the vision of the girl. Everything was the huge, cigar-shaped shadow moving toward him, silent as death .
    He knew he should run, sound the alarm, warn his friends, but he just sat, watching. The shadow eclipsed the moonlight and he shivered, the airship was directly over him. He could just hear the engines as it passed. Then he was bathed in moonlight, the shadow behind him. He had survived. The airship had held its bellyful of death. Then he heard the explosions begin behind him. He turned and watched the flashes and fires in the distance, listened to the screams, as his friends at the base woke to find themselves on fire. He moaned and curled into a ball, flinching each time a bomb exploded .
    Then he woke up.
     
    There was no justice; Effrom was sure of it. Not an iota, not one scintilla, not a molecule of justice in the world. If there was justice, would he be plagued by nightmares from the war? If there was any justice would he be losing sleep over something that had happened over seventy years ago? No, justice was a myth, and it had died like all myths, strangled by the overwhelming reality of experience.
    Effrom was too uncomfortable to mourn the passing of justice. The wife had put the flannel