“Say, what are you doing for Halloween?” asked Trent when I answered the phone. Stella had some academic thing all night, he explained, and he needed me to take Simon Trick-or-Treating while he stayed home and dispensed candy. “I can’t very well have Simon collect a bag of goodies while our house is the only dark one on the street—the other parents in the neighborhood would ostracize us for a year.”

“I’d love to, dear,” I said, “but I have no way of getting out there. Avie’s got theater that night and her own gala parties into the wee hours. I don’t drive, you’ll recall.”

“Can’t you fly?”

“Trent, I haven’t flown since the summer,” I said. “The only action Ms. Megaton Man’s seen since I’ve been back in Detroit is getting her costume dry cleaned, then hung right back up in the ol’ closet. I’d feel too rusty to trust myself.”

“I can see that,” said Trent. “That’s a shame—you know how Simon misses you. Maybe I can get someone to give you a ride out; I can give you a ride back. Can you be ready to go by four?”

“Sure, but who …?”

“Fine, then someone’ll swing by. See you then.”

***

I wondered for a moment who from Detroit would be going out to Ann Arbor. Preston? Daddy? Alice2? All were friends of the Extended Nuclear Family that consisted of the former Megaton Man, the See-Thru Girl, and their darling three-year-old Simon, whom I sorely missed. But I had my work cut out for me. I had class all morning and early afternoon, and I simply had to tackle my own homework and TA grading in between. By the time I got home, I barely had time for a shower and putting on some fresh jeans—my fat ones still felt tight—sneakers, and a new Warren Woodward University Warhound hoodie I bought, just to show my Arbor State alums I had grad school spirit.

Just as I was reaching into the fridge for a cold bottle of pop to take with me, I heard the honk of a car pulling in behind our apartment in the alley.

“Just a minute,” I said. I grabbed my book bag of readings—just in case, and went out the back door.

On the landing of the little wooden back porch, I stopped short as Avie’s orange Pacer pulled into the usual parking spot reserved for it. Who was behind the wheel but Dana Dorman—the Youthful Permutation known as Domina—decked out in her usual skimpy attire consisted of studded leather G-string and halter top, choker, headband, red leather gloves, and flowing, sheer silk batwing-tipped cape.

“You!” I said. “At least you’re dressed for Halloween. As always.”

“Do you want a ride or not?” she asked through the rolled-down window. “We’re going to be hitting rush-hour any minute.”

“Yeah, but … how are you driving my sister’s car?”

“I borrowed it, of course, and had to return it anyway,” Dana explained. “Without her permission, like three days ago. Don’t you two ever look out your back window?”

Avie and I had been so busy at school, and in such a rush, we usually came in and out the front door on West Forest Avenue, the side of the apartment that much closer to campus.

“I guess not,” I said. I threw my bag in the back seat. “Drive on, James … better you than me.”

Once we hit the freeway, and after I’d tuned in appropriate local rock station, Dana asked, “So what’s wrong with you? Don’t you fly anymore?”

“I could ask the same of you,” I said.

“Are you kidding? You want me flying over your little midwestern metropolitan area on a sunny afternoon like this, in broad daylight? I’d tie up traffic for hours.”

Dana was right; she did have a smoking hot body that was likely to cause accidents.

“You’re right,” I said. “I forgot vampires don’t like the sun. What have you been needing a car for? I should think your life is pretty much confined to Big Beaver Road these days.”

As soon as I said that, it made me uncomfortable. Here I was with a former lover who gave the most excellent head I’d ever experienced, and I had to bring up beavers. Luckily, Dana’s not too swift when it comes to humor and double entendres.

“I’ve been doing public appearances at malls and shopping centers for extra money,” explained Dana. Apparently, ICHHL seemed to have an unlimited budget for scientific gadgets, and the Troy+Thems got free room and board, but if they wanted spending money they had to earn it—which was no better a deal than when they lived at the church. “Soren got me the gig through his contacts in the front office.” Soren Sneed, a walking saber-tooth tiger and Dana’s teammate known as Sabersnag, served as the animal-costumed mascot of the Motor City Saberteeth, the local minor league mushball team. “He knows the circuit from doing kid’s birthday parties and so on. The kids are out of control, but the money’s decent. In fact, I’m hosting a screening of Rocky Horror in Yspilanti later tonight, after I finish Trick-or-Treating with the Son of Megaton Man.”

“Wait—you’re going Trick-of-Treating with Simon?” I asked. “But you just said you can’t stand kids.”

“I get along with Simon all right,” said Dana. “I lived at the house for several months, remember. He’s not a bad kid; he’s at that charming stage for a male-child—before all little boys turn into seething, rapist monsters.”

“But what am I going to do?”

“I don’t know, give candy out with Trent, then haul his ashes. That’s your business.”

I didn’t mention to Dana that I’d recently stopped into my campus counseling center to discuss my sexual addiction; I could just imagine what she’d make of that.

“But I’m not seeing Trent,” I said. “That’s over.”

“Whatever lies you hetero breeders need to tell yourselves,” said Dana. “I just assumed the two of you were planning to hook-up while the old lady was out of the house.”

***

Simon waddled down the stairs in an alligator costume, the closest thing to a dinosaur, apparently, that Stella could artfully adapt from an available paper pattern. It was pretty convincing. He clutched an orange plastic pumpkin bucket when Dana and I entered the front door.

“Aunt Dana! Aunt Clarissa!” said Simon. I had been demoted to Second Aunt.

“Oowee, you look great!” I said.

“You ready for the Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging?” asked Dana.

Trent was pouring bags of candy into a big bowl on the coffee table in the living room. “Thanks for doing this, Dana,” he said. “Simon, have fun—and remember, don’t eat anything until you get home and we’ve had time to check it.” It was unlikely Simon would be able to unwrap any candy with his padded alligator claws.

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“Okay, Dad,” said Simon, saluting with the flashlight. “See you later.”

Domina didn’t want to tie up traffic, I thought, as I watched her walk down the sidewalk in her half-naked dominatrix costume. But she sure didn’t mind giving every young father on Ann Street a hard-on.

I threw my bookbag on the sofa. “Is there anything I can do? Looks like you have the record player and decorations all set up.”

“No, just man the spooky music when the time comes.”

“Isn’t it early for Trick-or-Treating?” I asked.

“First, all the children meet over at the preschool for songs,” said Trent, “before they march through the neighborhood. It’s an Ann Street Historic District tradition. The whole thing’s over before it even gets dark, I understand. You want a quick bite to eat?”

“Sure,” I said. We retired to the kitchen.

“I’ll bet Stella feels terrible, missing Simon’s first Halloween,” I said, as Trent pulled sandwich fixings out of the fridge.

“Believe me, she gets plenty of firsts in, parenting-wise. She’s thankful for any opportunity not to be Mommy.”

I sat at the kitchen table and watched in amazement as Trent fixed us both sandwiches and heated up some soup, set out dishes on the table, and served us both.

“Look at you, Mr. Mom,” I said.

“It’s second nature,” said Trent. “You should have seen me in the days of baby formula and diapers. I got amazingly efficient at it.”

I had seen some of the early, fumbling attempts myself while I lived on Ann Street.

“So, what’s Stella got going on tonight?” I asked.

“Oh, some departmental thing. You know the sort. Some egg-headed symposium or other. It’s incredible, the things she talks about now—way over my head. I can’t keep up.”

“It’s phenomenal,” I agreed, “how the See-Thru Girl went from virtual airhead to over-educated intellectual. Amazing what can happen just from reading a book.”

“We’ve had a few of her colleagues over to the house,” said Trent. “They go on for hours—words I’ve never heard used in conversation before.”

“You need the Zane Hancock Guide to Linguistic Criticism and Hypothetical Terminology, fifth edition,” I said. “It’s like the all-purpose manual for grad-school hyper-intellectualism.”

“We sell a lot of those at the bookstore,” said Trent. “It’s supposed be a dictionary, but I need a dictionary just to use it.”

***

Just as we were putting the dishes in the sink, we heard voices at the front door calling out, “Trick or treat!”

“We don’t even have the scary music on yet,” I said.

We handed out candy till the cows came home. I could tell which fathers escorting their kids had caught a glimpse of Dana by the bulge in their pants. There were going to be some mommies in demand later tonight after the kids were put to bed, I thought.

Domina and the dinosaur—I mean alligator—marched back up the sidewalk just as it was turning dark and the street lights were coming on. Simon’s pumpkin bucket overflowed.

“We sang songs and bobbed for apples, and reached into dark boxes and felt human brains and eyeballs,” said Simon.

“Cauliflower and grapes,” explained Dana. “The girls at the preschool had some nice activities set up—even I got a little nostalgic for childhood myself.”

Dana had to dash off to her movie-host appearance, and Trent got Simon out of his costume and into his jammies. “Will you read to me before bedtime, Aunt Clarissa?” asked Simon, proffering a stack of illustrated storybooks.

“Sure thing,” I said. We read Higgly Piggly and the Boiling Vat of Bubblegum. I was surprised at how much of the alphabet Simon already recognized and could name. “You sure are the child of a couple in a college town,” I said.

After Trent put Simon to bed, he said, “I can drive you back to Detroit now, if you need to get back. Stella should be home before too long …”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You can’t leave Simon alone in the house—imagine, taking a risk like that after inspecting the kid’s candy with a magnifying glass. No, don’t worry; I’ll just crash here on the sofa. I should still have some sweats up in the attic.”

***

“Maybe I am a sex addict,” I said out loud. This was while Trent was inside me.

He stopped his thrusts, opened his eyes, and looked down at me.

“This isn’t sex, Clarissa; this is just … two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while expressing some affection.”

We had gone from “fooling around” to full-on vaginal intercourse, but still were able to deny that it was actual sex. I forgot Trent lived with Stella, Master of Euphemistic Denial. I wondered if his platonic parenting partner used similar language when she was just so pent up she couldn’t stand it anymore, and just needed a man—any man—to fuck her brains out.

“Is something wrong, Clarissa?” Trent asked. “Would you rather just … talk? I’ve gotten rather good at that, too …”

“No,” I said. “Keep going. Are you sure don’t have a condom, though?”

“Sorry,” said Trent. “I just bought a box, but I left it in my locker at the bookstore.”

I didn’t even want to ask why he kept condoms at work but not at home.

“On second thought, maybe you better do me up the ass,” I said. “Storyville birth control, you know. And … talk dirty to me. I like it when you talk dirty to me.”

“Okay,” said Trent. “But I’ll have to keep it down; Simon’s asleep.”

***

I remembered my first impression of New Orleans: a vast graveyard on the outskirts of the city that looked like it belonged in Paris. My Daddy, Cray Bellisle, drove me and Mama down from Detroit in a Dodge station wagon, some twenty hours—non-stop, I believe, because it was still the 1960s and integrated couples didn’t have too many safe lodging options. Avie wasn’t born yet, and I couldn’t have been more than four.

“Is there anyone we know buried here?” I asked.

Daddy laughed. “No, sweetheart,” he said. “My folks were too poor for a fancy place like this.” His family’s graves were out in the bayous somewhere. The granite monuments that looked like architecture would have cost his kin a year’s earnings or more, he explained. “These are all folks from the nineteenth century, all high-class Creole from up Canada way.”

I remember noticing how Daddy’s accent had changed during the drive, from northern midwestern to a southern, New Orleanian drawl. He now spoke in a sweet, homespun Cajun dialect.

We never saw Storyville—which was long-gone by then anyway, the victim of urban renewal and housing projects—or for that matter Basin Street, Bourbon Street, or the French Quarter—any of the typical tourist sights of New Orleans on that trip. That only came later, after Avie was born. But we did take a strange trip outside of town.

We visited an old woman who lived on the edge of the bayou, although she was no relation to Mama or Daddy, as far as I knew. Her house from the outside was little more than a shack, but the inside was clean and comfortable, and filled with rich, inviting things. There were books, although she was blind, and pictures on the walls, and a tablecloth on a round table with a crystal ball. She wore her hair natural, in what we would later call dreads. She looked at me through sightless, cataract-whitened eyes.

“This chile ain’t none o’ yours,” she said, turning between my daddy and me.

“Non, Maman,” replied my father. “But I’s married to her mother, whom I love dearly.”

“Who’ her father?” asked the old woman.

“He’s gone,” answered Mama. She did not elaborate.

“You have ’nother on the way,” said the old woman.

Mama felt her tummy. “I do?” She wasn’t even aware that she had already conceived Avril, my half-sister.

The old woman turned her attention back to me.

“You got some future ahead o’ you, young lady,” she said. “Many future. Plusieurs futurs.”

Had we traveled all the way from Detroit just to see a blind, old fortune-teller?

“Merci, Maman Voudoux,” I remember Daddy saying.

***

Afterward, Trent and I lay there, holding each other.

“At least you’re still living in Ann Arbor,” I said. “Wasn’t Stella talking about the possibility of another university for grad school?”

“She was, but she’s got it too good here,” said Trent. “A generous stipend, a superstar advisor, and don’t forget her old man’s still a big name in the department. Also, she didn’t want to disrupt Simon’s childhood.”

“Yes, but doesn’t she have to sleep with her advisor?” I asked. “That Terrell Smythe gives me the creeps.”

“No, he’s got some half-Asian Canadian, one who studies photography and its effects on perceptions of postcontemporaneity, keeping him busy semester.” From what Trent described, this Livonia Alexie was worse than any pseudo-intellectual he’d ever met—and he’d run into his share, working at Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore. I gathered Stella and Smythe had had a reckoning—she laid down the law and made it clear she wasn’t going for an affair with her advisor, after spurning several of his advances, a stance backed up by her aforementioned father, Seymour Starlight.

“But Smythe certainly doesn’t mind letting people think he’s sleeping with his best-looking grad student,” said Trent, chagrined. “Apparently, it feeds his insatiable ego. Man, you should have heard the bunch of them talk Hypothetics when they practically convened their own symposium down in the living room a few weeks ago. Him and that Livonia chick—between the two of them, I don’t know who talked longer, or used more incomprehensible double-talk. I can’t stand him or any of his grad students, male or female.”

I wondered if that included Stella, since she was one of his grad students.

We lay there quietly listening as Stella came through the front door, did a few things downstairs, then climbed up the steps. Across the hall, she looked in on Simon.

I wondered what it would be like having my own baby. I felt my tummy. But if I ever conceived a child, it wouldn’t be that particular night.