For the fourth time in his life, Jake smelled bubble gum. He looked around, just to be sure he hadn't mistaken it for a normal bubble gum smell. He stood stiffly between two tall rows of bookcases, which meant that he was not in a candy store. He wasn't even in the section of books that were written about bubble gum. And this smell crackled like static when he breathed it in.
Jake was pretty sure that he was about to die, but he shifted his stack of books to his other arm, walked to the end of the row of shelves, and peeked around to be sure, first on the right, then the left. No children or baseball players, gum-chewing or otherwise, could be seen or smelled. An old woman selected a yellowed book and moved away, but other than the sound of her hip-replacement shuffle, the library was still.
Yet the dusty book smell was every moment more overwhelmed by the sticky pink scent of bubble gum.
He tried to hum a song, a Christmas carol, sure that the sound of any voice would keep him from freaking out. He used to drive Rachel crazy with his Christmas carols, and he'd stamped out that habit so long ago that he couldn't bring a single tune to mind.
Jake turned back around, knowing what would be waiting with dark eyes and perfect peach skin between the two walls of books. He could feel the deep, thrumming anxiety in his chest that meant the other world was near. He felt it even more strongly than he would have if she had been trying to hide.
There was nothing he could do, of course. Thirty years of running and hiding from them had taught him that running and hiding only worked half the time. The other half, you were possessed or electrocuted or shoeless unless you had power of your own or some knowledge of the pest. And Jake, having nothing else, knew more about pixies, brownies, fauns, centaurs, mermaids, and chimaeras than Homer did.
He knew a few useful techniques, too, one of which was supposed to help you determine whether you were dreaming or awake, so you could judge whether to transform into carnivorous robot or hide behind something. The technique required that you ask yourself, "What did I have for breakfast?" Unless your dream involved breakfast, your dreamself can rarely remember. The inability to answer such a simple question will help your dreamself realize that the trees about to eat you exist only in the deep pocket of your subconscious that feels guilty for eating broccoli.
However, on other occasions, your dreamself may reply, "Yogurt and granola, but I think that's rather irrelevant just now," in which case you may be trapped in a cave by sharks carrying briefcases until your alarm clock buzzes. Or worse, your dreamself doesn't answer because you're not asleep.
Jake, disturbed by the sudden appearance of the most lovely and sensual woman he'd ever seen in or out of his dreams, thought with hope, "What did I have for breakfast?" His dreamself hit the snooze and rolled over. His awake self answered, "Cocoa Puffs with Lily," then proceeded to swear.
Between the high shelves, the woman took a step toward him, her eyes on his, her long white-blond hair hanging straight to her thighs, one of her long legs visible through the slit in her scarlet gown.
Bubblicious, he thought crazily.
"Listen," Jake said, clearing his throat, "I think you're a very nice girl and all, but I really have to…"
One shoulder of the dress slid down on her arm. Had he been saying something? He wasn't sure. The tip of her tongue wetted her lip. The sound of her quick breath lingered in his ears. Two, three steps closer. The shelves around her seemed dry and colorless and uninteresting now, like the flat, vague backdrops in photographers' studios. She opened her mouth wide enough, he thought, to swallow him whole.
A massive biography of T.S. Eliot slipped from his hand, landing on the little toe of his right foot with such force that he was sure the toe had been severed. Jolted out of his stupidity, Jake dropped the rest of his books, forced his eyes from the beautiful creature and, staring down at the lumpy, ancient carpet, ran, limping slightly, from the library.
Damn it. He'd really wanted to read that biography.
Fifteen minutes later, Jake rushed up four flights of stairs and stumbled into his apartment, double-bolting the door, as though that had ever helped, before falling into his lumpy gray recliner.
"You didn't bring back any books," said E. E, who lay sprawled on the couch, holding the remote control in one hand while the other scratched his bare, skinny stomach. His light brown hair looked unwashed and uncombed as usual, but he hadn't left his socks in the middle of the floor, a rare blessing. He took in Jake's sweating face and blank expression. "Dude, did you finally get it on with Elspeth Mader?"
"No," Jake replied, feeling a little gloom now amid the terror and adrenaline. He leaned forward to massage his calves. Ms. Mader's skin was the color of soft serve chocolate ice cream. He'd never found any other way to describe it, and he had never been able to keep it from his mind when he saw her. He had hardly been able to restrain himself from licking her shoulder the last time she came to work in a sleeveless blouse.
"No," he said again. "I ran into a siren."
"That's why I don't go to libraries. Especially on Mondays."
"You don't go to libraries because of sirens?"
"And vampires. Termites. Very dangerous places, libraries," E. E. said. "Lily left this morning?"
"Yeah. Rachel came to get her before work." The pleasant, though unsettling, image of Elspeth Mader was replaced by one of his lovely brown-eyed wife. A picture of her wavy blonde hair and her heart-shaped face flashed in his mind like a slideshow of the dozens of photographs in every room of the house they used to share: Rachel in a ponytail and college sweatshirt, Rachel winning a cross-country event, Rachel in her wedding dress, Rachel holding newborn Lily, Rachel in the garden with her rose bushes, Rachel teaching Lily to read.
Lily was Rachel in miniature—angelic blonde with wide, kitten eyes.
"I think we've finally reached an agreement about—" Jake clenched a fist "—visitation. Two weekends a month. It's not enough."
"Of course you feel like that. You are a good dad." Before Jake could react to the shock of the compliment, E. E. continued, "It's about the only thing you're good at."
E. E. began changing channels again, and Jake went to his room. His alarm clock said it wasn't yet eight p.m., but he dropped onto his bed anyway, chose a book from the stack on the table beside his bed (Rachel had the nightstands, the dressers, their king size bed, and thirteen other pieces of furniture that he never thought he'd miss), and read until he fell asleep, still dressed in his suit pants and shirt. His almost black hair, which he'd meant to get cut weeks ago, tickled his eyelids until he sleepily brushed his hand over his face.
Jake had encountered, or almost encountered, sirens three times before.
On Jake's only childhood visit to Olympus, he had walked past a window and breathed in the bubble gum smell. Sure that he had just passed a candy store of mythic wonderfulness, he walked back to the window, but his father took his hand and hurried him away.
Then when he was seventeen, he had gone into the kitchen for a soda and found the siren standing just inside the doorway. He was an inch away from her when he realized she was there, and she had her arms around him before he could think to run. His mother, Delilah, came into the room just as the siren was pressing her lips to his. Delilah grabbed her by the hair and punched her face. The siren was so surprised that she didn't protest when Delilah pushed her out the door. Jake tried to follow, but Delilah grabbed a bottle of vanilla extract and held him down while she poured it into his mouth, commanding him to swallow. He still didn't know if it was the vanilla itself or the gagging that had made him reasonable again.
The third siren sneaked into bed with Jake while Rachel was up comforting the crying newborn Lily. He thought it was Rachel at first, curling against him and wrapping him in her warm arms, but even half awake, he recognized that smell, and there was something un-Rachel about those soft, eager hands. Jake got to his feet and reached for the bedside phone in one fast, panicked movement. He called his father, who arrived in moments, wrapped his arms around the terrified siren's waist, and vanished silently. Rachel never knew.
But there were hundreds of other stories, and Rachel knew too many of them.