Floyd lost his virginity at a Renaissance Faire. Separated from his friends, dressed as a knight, and drunk on hard lemonades, he rested on a log beyond the lantern glow of the tents. Through the slit visor in his closed helmet, he saw other revelers sauntering between campfires—baristas and divorcees—clad in furs and implausible leather armor. At a noise, he turned.
Something moved in the purpling darkness beneath the ponderosas. At first he thought it was Bob Blass from the office trying to scare him again, but it was a woman. She stopped, stared for a long moment, a smile on her lips. Despite the dark, he could see her face as though it was lit from within by a candle: beautiful.
She strode toward him, barefoot on the pine needles—her black dress breaking character, but he didn’t care. With each step she took, he was willing to give her more of himself. Until she stood before him, her charcoal eyes and lips the color of a freshly killed deer’s liver were all he could comprehend. Before he knew what was happening, she pressed her lips to the visor. As he drunkenly tried to remove the helmet—there was a buckle somewhere—she had pushed him to the ground, her curled fingers clawing off pantaloons. She hiked up her dress to her hips, and he forgot about the helmet. When it was over, she kissed the cold metal and ran into the forest.
The following morning, as everyone loaded their cars and ate cold leftovers at picnic tables, Floyd kept finding excuses to search for the woman. Had he been that drunk? Despite the hangover, he emptied water jugs and helped a group of barbarians load their Suburban.
He found her near the porta-potties, crouched on a stump like a gargoyle. Her dress wasn’t black but a deep shade of green, the same color as her eyes. Her mouth hung open and tears that reeked of fresh pinesap streaked her face.
She seemed sad.
Floyd offered her his hand. After staring at the grove for four breaths, she took it. He told her his name. She sniffed his chest. When he opened up his Jeep, she climbed in, curled up on the back seat, and fell asleep. On the way back to West Central, he took the corners gently so as not to disturb her. She awoke as he unloaded camping gear. For the first time, she looked uncertain. He asked if she was hungry and managed to coax her into the house.
Inside, she went to the bathroom. Floyd, excited and embarrassed, scooped up laundry, video games, and a month’s worth of takeout. He crammed dirty dishes into the dishwasher and oven. After a while, he knocked on the partly open bathroom door. She was standing in the toilet, pointing into the bowl with a frown. The water was gone.
To help her wash her feet off, he showed her how to use the bathtub. She startled him by lying down in the cold water. They shared a long, uncomfortable look as the tub filled nearly to the edge, the folds of her dress wavering like seaweed. Her hair wasn’t hair at all but fine, long feathers or leaves. Encouraged, Floyd leaned in to kiss her, but she slapped him so hard that he bit his tongue.
Retreating to the kitchen, he got a beer to cover up the taste of blood. On the news, he checked if anyone matching her description had escaped from Eastern State Hospital. What if she had mental problems? He thought; could he go to jail? Finished with his beer, he found her in the backyard staring at the moon, her bare toes planted in the lawn.
Turning off the stove light, he dragged the recliner into the kitchen and finished off two more beers. He drowsed as he watched her through the slider.
Sometime in the early morning, he woke to her straddling him. She lifted the back of his head and gently put the helmet on. He hadn’t noticed it before but she smelled like fresh cedar bark; her skin as delicate and velvety as moss beneath his hands. As they made love, she whispered in a language like stones being rubbed together. Afterward, she fled to the bathtub where she had constructed a nest out of three half-dead spider plants, ash from the fireplace, and a couch cushion.
And it went like that for a while.
She would spend all day refilling the bathtub while he was at work. When he got home, he would watch her stare longingly at the moon until he passed out. In the small hours, he would awake to the helmet and the odor of pinesap. Her breath reminded him of the air from a cave—cold, wet, and mineral-laden.
A few weeks later, he had a few friends over to drink and talk about cinematography. Halfway through the first movie, Floyd noticed that Bob Blass was missing. He found Bob in the backyard, one of his chubby hands massaging the back of her arm. Before Floyd could cross the lawn to hit him, she kissed Bob on the mouth. Bob scream unfurled into the shush of leaves as he unfolded into a ponderosa pine tree.
It was then that Floyd realized that she loved him, that she had been protecting him all along. He kissed her hand and she touched his neck. That morning, before she left the crook of his shoulder, he gave her his grandmother’s ring, which she put in her mouth.
When he awoke, she was gone. He found her in the yard next to Bob Blass, her trunk as big around as Floyd’s arms.
He stopped inviting friends over after that.
The following spring, a little girl in a pale dress was at the back door. She had her mother’s eyes and his mother’s face. He let her in. She built a nest in the bathtub. Floyd showed her how to use the spout. From the kitchen, he listened to her refill the tub every hour as he eyed the trees in the yard and considered buying an axe. A couple weeks later, he bought the girl a portable DVD player for the tub, but she showed no interest. He did manage to get her to sit at the kitchen counter while he picked at his dinner, but she never did speak or answer to the name he had given her.
Loneliness had wormed a root into him. Most nights, he sat at the base of his wife’s trunk wearing the helmet and recalling the rough sound of her lips against the steel. By the fall, the girl had used up so much water that she was a teenager now, moodily standing in he backyard all night in a green-dress. Her lips as red, waxen, and fatal as a toadstool.
When the girl began to disappear for longer periods, he knew it was only a matter of time. So one morning before sunrise in the backyard, he took the girl in his arms and whispered her name. Getting to his knees, Floyd asked his daughter for the only thing she could ever give him—a kiss.
