Raven Leilani
Act of God
The night he met her, he was sitting alone at the bar, watching a silent stream of the news in which Venus turned at the end of a long diamond chain, though all earthly attempts to correct its orbit had failed. She was seventeen. The unfortunate affectation she had of throwing her head back when she laughed made him feel like she would be dishonest, if ever there came a time he could touch her.
The night they met, she lifted her hand to his mouth before even knowing him, and when he kissed it, he could only think that he was going to be a father in two months, and incidentally this girl was going to be eighteen in exactly that time, and he already had suitcases packed for if the child was even a ray of a girl like this.
The night he relented and took her out, the moon had degraded to an ashen stone. The air was hot, thick with Venus. They drove around with the AC all the way up. He told her how much he paid for the car, he told her that his wife had gained 15 pounds. He let her drive, he let her not wear a seatbelt and convince him not to either, though he had been afraid of dying since he was fifteen. And without even the faintest whiff of drama or irony, she said she didn't care if she died.
They drove around for a while, before the car broke down a mile outside of the city. When he opened the hood, the engine gave a long smoky sigh. The paint was melting off of his car. When he got back in, she had taken all of her clothes off.
"I'm going to be a father soon," he said then, looking only at the center of her
16 | Psychopomp Magazine