Chapter 26: No One is Better at Exorcism Than Me!
The Southern California night was warm and close, the kind of warmth that settled into your skin and stayed there.
An Indian man moved quickly down the sidewalk, suitcase in one hand, a small child's hand in the other. His steps were fast — faster than they needed to be for a casual walk. His eyes darted, just slightly, to the shadows behind him.
And there was good reason for that.
About a dozen meters back, moving at a careful, unhurried pace through the pools of streetlight, was Rango. Cigarette clenched between his teeth, hands in his pockets, jaw tight.
He genuinely could not wrap his head around this.
They had agreed — or at least, Rango had assumed they had agreed — that things would pick up where they'd left off. That after years apart, after all the distance and silence and everything that had happened in between, there would be time to figure it out. Together.
He'd never been naive enough to think she'd just sit at home waiting. He wasn't that guy. Even back in Africa, when he was sleeping with gorgeous South African women on the weekends, he'd told himself it was fine — told himself she was probably having just as much fun in Los Angeles, that the guilt didn't matter because they were both just surviving.
But married?
That was a line he hadn't expected her to cross.
And not just married. Married to an Indian man. With a kid.
Rango's jaw tightened. He bit down on the cigarette butt and kept walking.
The image of Gloria with some Indian guy, on a bed somewhere, laughing, happy, completely moved on —
He shook his head. Shoved the thought down. Kept his eyes on the man ahead of him.
A few minutes later, the Indian man slowed. Turned a corner. And Rango, following at a distance, rounded the same corner and stopped.
A residential street. Quiet. The kind of Southern California neighborhood where the houses were small but well-kept, one- and two-story bungalows set back from the sidewalk behind little patches of lawn and the occasional palm tree. Warm light spilling from windows. A dog barking somewhere, far off.
None of that was what made Rango stop.
What made him stop was the tree.
An oak — old, wide, its branches spreading out in every direction like outstretched arms. And covering those branches, dozens and dozens of them, fluttering gently in the night breeze, were yellow ribbons.
Ribbons. Everywhere. So many of them that in the glow of the streetlamp, the tree looked like it was made of gold. Dazzling. Almost aggressive in its brightness.
Rango stared at it for a long moment.
Ahead, the Indian man had already reached the front porch of a small two-story house — the one with the oak tree in the yard. He was trembling. Actually trembling, visibly, with the kind of full-body nervous excitement that only happened when someone was about to get something they'd been desperately hoping for.
He knocked on the door. Hard. Fast. The knock of a man who couldn't wait one more second.
Rango, moving on instinct, slipped sideways into the shadow of a hedge and pressed his back against it. Invisible. Watching.
The door opened.
A woman stepped out onto the porch.
And Rango's stomach dropped.
She was stunning. That was the first thing — the thing that hit you before anything else. Almost perfect, in the way that some people just were — the kind of face and figure that made you stop and stare without meaning to. Dark hair, sharp features, a quiet intensity that radiated off her even in silhouette.
Gloria.
His Gloria.
She was right there. Standing in the doorway of someone else's house. And the Indian man was right there too, on the porch, looking up at her with an expression of pure, trembling hope —
Rango's chest tightened. Something cold and heavy settled in his gut. He exhaled slowly through his nose and started to turn away. He should go. He should leave right now, before he saw anything else, before —
And then another woman walked out of the house.
Dark-skinned. Indian descent, like the man. A little shorter than Gloria, with a warm face and kind eyes that were currently bright with tears. She pushed past Gloria on the porch and ran — down the two steps, across the small yard — and threw herself into the Indian man's arms.
They held each other. Hard. Tight. The kind of embrace that had years of distance packed into it.
And between them, the little boy looked up at the woman and said, in a voice that cracked with excitement:
"Mom!"
Rango froze.
He stood there, half-turned to leave, and watched the scene play out in front of him.
Oh.
Oh, I see.
The Indian man's wife. The woman he'd been desperately trying to get back to. The one he'd brought his son across the country to find.
It wasn't Gloria.
It was her colleague. The woman Gloria lived with. A neighbor. A friend. Someone who happened to live in the same house, or next door, or —
The pieces clicked into place, one after another, like a combination lock tumbling open.
Gloria wasn't married. Gloria wasn't with anyone.
Gloria was just here. In this yard. Watching her friend reunite with her husband, and her expression — the one Rango could see now, clearly, from his spot in the shadows — was a complicated, aching mix of joy and envy and something lonelier than either.
A few years ago, Gloria had a boyfriend too. A childhood friend. They'd grown up together, gotten into the same university, been the couple that everyone around them looked at and thought yeah, that's the real thing.
And then, less than a year in, he'd dropped out.
He'd left her a letter. Wait for me, it said. When I've made enough, I'll come back. I'll marry you.
And then — nothing. No calls. No visits. Just the occasional letter, weeks or months apart, written under a fake name, mailed from places she couldn't find on a map.
Years passed. The letters kept coming, but they got less frequent. And Gloria kept waiting, in the quiet hours, reading them over and over in the dark, and wondering how much longer she could keep doing it.
She really didn't know.
Gloria turned from the reunited family, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand, and started walking back toward the gate. Toward the street. Toward home, wherever that was from here.
And Rango stepped out of the shadow.
He didn't say anything at first. Just stood there, under the streetlight, hands in his pockets, cigarette gone cold between his fingers.
Gloria saw him.
She stopped.
For a long, long moment, neither of them moved. The warm California air sat between them like something solid.
Then Gloria's lips parted.
"Ran..." Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "...Rango?"
Her eyes were enormous. Disbelieving. Like she was looking at a ghost — like she was looking at something she'd given up on, and it had just walked back into the light.
Rango smiled. Spread his arms wide, easy and open, the way you did when you were coming in from a long cold and wanted someone to know you were finally, actually, here.
"Hey," he said.
Gloria stared at him for one more beat.
And then she ran.
Not gracefully — not the way it happened in movies, with the slow motion and the wind in the hair. She ran the way real people ran when they hadn't seen someone in years and their body was moving faster than their brain could catch up. Skirt lifted in one hand, the other reaching out —
And Rango thought, unbidden, of Forrest Gump and Jenny at the Washington Monument. That scene. The running. The reaching. The years of distance collapsing into a single moment.
Except he was pretty sure he was playing a very different role in this version of the story. More Jenny than Forrest, if he was being honest with himself.
Gloria reached him.
And slapped him across the face.
Crack.
The sound was sharp and clean in the quiet street. Rango's head snapped sideways. His hand came up to his cheek — slowly, automatically — and he blinked, staring at her.
"Gloria —"
Crack.
The second slap landed on the same cheek, harder than the first, with enough force behind it to actually sting.
Rango's expression shifted. The guilt and the softness that had been sitting on his face a second ago hardened into something sharper. He pointed at her, jaw set.
"If you hit me one more time," he said, flatly, "I'm not going to be polite about it."
"You bastard!"
Gloria's face was a mess — tears and fury and relief all fighting for space at the same time. She pointed at him with a shaking finger, and her voice cracked on every other word.
"You disappeared! For years! Not a single call — not a single word — you just left and I didn't know if you were alive —"
"Gloria, I —" Rango started, and then Gloria was on him.
She kissed him. Hard. Desperately. The way someone kissed when they'd been holding it in for too long and the dam had finally broken. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her hands locked behind his neck, and she pressed into him with a force that said years and longing and don't you dare disappear again all at once.
Rango caught her — one arm around her waist, the other sliding up to cradle the back of her head — and kissed her back. Deep. Slow. The guilt that had been sitting in his chest all night didn't disappear, exactly, but it transformed into something warmer, something that felt more like gratitude than anything else.
He shifted her weight against the wall, pressing her back against it gently, and held her there. Her lips on his. Her fingers in his hair. The warm California night wrapped around both of them like it was trying to keep them close.
"Go inside," Gloria murmured against his mouth, breathless, half-laughing, half-crying. "Now. Please."
Rango didn't need to be told twice.
He lifted her — easy, one arm under her knees — and carried her toward the front door at a pace that suggested he'd been thinking about this for a very long time.
Behind them, the Indian man and his wife and their little boy stood on the porch, staring at the two of them disappearing into the house, with the kind of unified, bewildered expression that only came from watching something you absolutely did not expect to see tonight.
(Gloria's character is inspired by the role played by Jennifer Connelly in The Hot Spot, the 1990 film — a woman defined by quiet strength, longing, and the kind of beauty that commands a room without trying.)
The next morning.
Sunlight crept through the gap in the curtains — thin, golden, lazy — and landed directly on Rango's face.
He groaned. Raised one hand to block it. Blinked, slow and heavy, and turned his head to check the clock on the nightstand.
Noon.
He stared at it for a second. Noon. He hadn't slept past eight in months. This was the longest, deepest, most completely unconscious sleep he'd had since coming back to North America.
He let out a long breath and let his head sink back into the pillow.
Then his gaze drifted down.
Gloria was curled against him — tucked into the curve of his chest, one arm draped loosely across his ribs, her face pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Her hair was a mess, tangled and sticking to her cheeks in places where the sweat had dried overnight. There were marks on her neck — faint red lines, the kind that showed up after a night where neither person had been particularly careful about being gentle. And on her collarbone, just visible above the edge of the sheet, a bruise that was already turning purple at the edges.
Rango looked at himself. Scratches on his arms. On his chest. Down his sides. The kind of damage that looked less like it had come from a fight and more like it had come from someone who had been clawing at him all night and enjoying every second of it.
Christ, he thought, with something between amusement and mild alarm. I look like I lost a round with Freddy Krueger.
He reached out, carefully, and brushed a strand of hair away from Gloria's face. His fingers were gentle — barely there.
Gloria stirred. A small frown creased her brow, and then her eyes opened — slow, hazy, the kind of half-awake that took a few seconds to fully arrive.
She looked up at him. Blinked. And then a small, warm, slightly embarrassed smile spread across her face.
"Morning," Rango said, quietly.
Gloria hummed — a soft, lazy sound — and pressed closer to him, rubbing her cheek against his chest like a cat finding the warmest spot in a patch of sunlight.
Then, after a moment, she looked up. And the smile faded, just slightly, replaced by something more serious. More searching.
"Are you leaving?" she asked. Simply. Directly. No preamble.
Rango shook his head immediately. "No. I'm not leaving. And I'm not going to leave again."
The words landed the way he meant them to — firm, clear, no wiggle room. Gloria studied his face for a beat, looking for the crack in it, the qualification, the but. She didn't find one.
She smiled again — wider this time, relieved — and leaned up to kiss him. Quick and warm.
Then she settled back against him and started talking. Quietly at first, then with more momentum — the way people talked when they'd been holding things in for a long time and finally had someone to say them to. About the years he'd been gone. About what had happened. About leaving her old job — the one at the company downtown, where her boss had made her life a living hell in ways that went well beyond demanding overtime.
"I quit," she said, and there was a quiet steel in her voice when she said it. "Found something better. A used car dealership, actually — small place, out here. The owner's decent. Pays fair. It's not glamorous, but it's mine, you know? I built it from nothing."
Rango listened. Nodded. And when she mentioned the harassment at the old job, something in his expression went very, very still — the kind of still that people who knew him well recognized as dangerous.
But he said nothing about it. Not now. There would be time for that conversation later.
Instead, he shifted, propped himself up on one elbow, and looked at her with something warm and slightly guilty in his eyes.
"Gloria. I made a lot of money while I was overseas. And I bought a place — a house, in New York. A real one." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Come back with me. Both of us. We'll figure the rest out together."
Gloria's eyes went wide — bright, surprised, hopeful in a way that made her look younger than she was.
"New York?" she repeated.
"New York," he confirmed. "And I'll invest in whatever you want to do next. No strings. Whatever makes you happy." He paused. "Didn't you always say your dream was to open a flower shop?"
The way her face changed when he said that — the way the hope in her eyes sharpened into something almost fierce — told him everything he needed to know.
But then she hesitated. Bit her lip. And shook her head, just slightly.
"I want to. God, I want to." She pressed her forehead against his shoulder. "But my boss — the one at the dealership — he's been really good to me. Genuinely. And one of the other girls who works there has been sick lately, and we're already short-handed. If I just up and disappear right now..."
"Sick how?" Rango asked. "Like, flu sick? Call-in-sick sick?"
Gloria was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice had changed — quieter, with an edge of something that wasn't quite fear but was close to it.
"It's been going on for days now. And it's not... it's not normal sick." She swallowed. "Her face has changed. Her voice doesn't sound like her anymore. She says things — horrible things — and she doesn't remember any of it afterward. It's like she's..." Gloria trailed off, and her eyes met Rango's with an expression that was caught halfway between embarrassment and genuine dread.
"It's like she's possessed," she finished, barely above a whisper.
Rango sat up straighter. Something lit up behind his eyes — the same spark that showed up whenever something supernatural crossed his radar. Alert. Interested. Hungry.
He reached out and tilted Gloria's chin up with one finger, so she was looking directly at him. And he smiled — confident, easy, the kind of smile that said this is exactly my department.
"Take me to see her," he said. "Later today. If she's really possessed, I can handle it."
Gloria blinked. Stared at him. "You? You can handle it?" She shook her head slowly, incredulous. "Rango, you're not a priest. You don't do exorcisms. What are you going to —"
"Trust me," Rango said, and leaned in close — close enough that Gloria could see the absolute, bone-deep certainty in his expression.
"Nobody," he said, quietly, "is better at exorcism than me."