Maeve Fly

Maeve wakes up to a lot of blood in her house. She realizes that it is coming from her grandmother’s cat, Lester. She takes him to the vet. While she sits in the waiting room, the hospice agency calls. Maeve tells them that she is not interested in continuing to work with them after Hilda vanished and asks them to forward her grandmother’s records.

The vet comes out and calls Maeve into his office to look at x-rays. Maeve can clearly see the outline of Hilda’s finger in her cat’s stomach. The doctor tells her that Lester the Cat will be fine after surgery but that Maeve should not let him wander outside anymore because of the strange things animals find out there.

At home, Maeve receives the paperwork from the agency about her grandmother. She realizes just how much care she will have to give her. She reaches out and touches her grandmother’s skin, feeling her pulse, then immediately withdraws her hand. She thinks of how foreign it feels to touch her grandmother, comparing it to “touching the doll in the vines” (104).

Maeve thinks back to a day last year before her grandmother got sick, when she and Kate went to a bar together inside the park. As Maeve looked around at the other park employees, she thought about how difficult their job is. They play a character for the entire day, use a different voice, and always have to make the public happy. On that day, a woman came to her and Kate and cried about the death of her child. Kate asked Maeve if she ever thought about what happens to people when they die. It made Maeve realize that Kate is dealing with a grief in her life that she has never shared with Maeve.

In the present, Maeve and Kate go to watch Gideon scrimmage with his hockey team. Kate explains the rules. She then expresses concern over Gideon, who has been acting differently since moving out to LA. He got a huge contract and bought an expensive house but has been acting “erratic.” She is worried about how he will fit into the new team.

Kate tells Maeve about Jared. He was Maeve’s first real crush in high school and Gideon’s best friend, but he died. His death brought Kate and Gideon together, but it also still affects them both. Maeve thinks how this helps to explain Gideon’s moments of “darkness.”

After the scrimmage, Maeve, Kate, and Gideon sit together at a bar in the arena. Kate steps away to answer the phone, then comes back and excitedly tells them that Derek got her a part in a movie. She leaves them, and as Maeve feels her own desperation at losing Kate, she realizes that Gideon is angry.

Gideon leaves for a few minutes then comes back and gets Maeve. He takes her through the locker room and out onto the ice, where he has laid out a carpet that reaches into the center of the arena. He puts on his skates as Maeve walks out on the carpet. He gives her a hockey stick and instructs her on how to hit a puck. She tries, but it barely moves, and she grows annoyed at being there.

Gideon then asks her what she does with all her rage. He uses hockey as an outlet for his, but he does not understand how she can survive with so much rage inside her and no release. She starts to argue, but Gideon insists that she try channeling her anger into the puck. She thinks of everything that is upsetting her—Hilda, her grandmother, Kate leaving—and then strikes the puck, sending it across the ice and into the net. She thinks of how incredible it makes her feel, as good as when she kept hitting Hilda with the mace.

She and Gideon then kiss. They take off their clothes, and then Maeve tells him that she wants to have sex on the ice. Gideon obliges. As they have sex, Maeve is consumed by “need and want” (127). She bites at his face and grips his neck, willing herself to forget everything that is bothering her. At the last moment, she reaches up and pulls out his front tooth, which was loose from the fight in the scrimmage.

A few days later, Maeve sits in the Tata Tiki Lounge reading. She still has Gideon’s tooth, which she takes out of her pocket and places in a jar of teeth, which are probably fake, sitting on the bar. She gets a text from Gideon and hesitates, then agrees to meet up with him again. She suddenly has a strong feeling that she is being watched. She looks around the bar and sees another doll in an alcove by the door. She feels overwhelmed with “terror.”

She examines the doll. It has four eyes and teeth made from human fingernails with chipped red nail polish. Its body is that of a plastic squirrel. There are a few strands of human hair wrapped around it. She stares at it for several minutes, thinking how “it is so beautiful [she does] not know what to do with [herself]” (133).

She asks The Bartender who put it there, and he doesn’t answer, instead shrugging. She angrily demands to know who else has been in the bar, but The Bartender just gives her another drink.

On break, Maeve wanders around the park. She thinks of how Kate is not with her because she is busy with her new acting role. She is concerned because she spotted bruises below Kate’s neck, but Kate dismissed her when she tried to ask about them.

Maeve ends up at one of her favorite rides—a water ride that soaks the people when they hit the bottom. She likes to stand above it on the bridge and look down at the patrons as they get wet. She thinks back to the day she came here alone when her grandmother first became ill. She stood alone until Kate joined her, then she broke down in tears. Kate comforted her and even skipped her audition to stay with Maeve while she grieved.

As she continues to walk through the park, she sees a little girl dressed as the same character she plays—the ice queen. The ice queen is one of the most important characters at the park. She attributes it to the fact that she is inherently dangerous—unlike other princesses. Because of the ice powers that she struggles to control, she is both a princess and a “villainess.”

When Maeve turns to walk back, she spots Liz in civilian clothes outside the park’s nicest restaurant. When Andre walks up, Liz excitedly greets him. Maeve wonders if something romantic is going on between them, but she puts it in the back of her mind for now.

Maeve sits in a bar with Gideon. She battles with her desire for him, wanting both to have sex with him again and to leave him. She also struggles with caring for her grandmother now that she no longer has a nurse. Every time she is forced to touch her—to bathe her or change her catheter, for instance—she feels as though she is violating her.

Maeve is distracted by a TV that flashes announcements for local bands and events. One of the bands is using an old photo of her grandmother. She is dressed as a Playmate, sprawled out on a Mustang, and made to look like a corpse. She’s unsure how she feels about the photo but notes the band’s date and venue.

Gideon pulls her out of her thoughts by asking her to tell him the story of Jack o’ the Lantern—the folktale from which the jack-o’-lanterns displayed on Halloween got their name. Maeve tells him about an evil man named Jack, who had an alcohol use disorder. The devil decided to take him to hell, so he visited him on earth. However, Jack convinced the devil to let him get drunk one last time. When he went to pay, Jack had no money, so the devil—impatient to return to hell with his prize—turned himself into a coin. Instead of using the devil/coin to pay the bill, Jack put him in his pocket along with a crucifix, refusing to let him out until he promised to let Jack have 10 more years on earth.

Ten years later, the devil visited him again. The devil realized that he had come to like Jack and considered him his friend, so when Jack asked for a pear to eat before going to hell, the devil complied. This time, however, Jack trapped the devil in a tree with holy water. Jack made the devil promise to never take him to hell. The devil was hurt, thinking that he would not be able to spend eternity with his friend, but he had no choice but to agree.

Eventually, Jack grew old and died. He tried to go to heaven, but the angels would not let him in because of his sinful life. He went to hell and spoke with the devil, deciding that eternity with his friend would not be so bad. However, the devil could not let him in, as their bargain guaranteed that Jack would never be allowed into hell. Instead, the devil gave him a single flame to light his way, then dug up and carved out a pumpkin to put it in. To this day, Jack is said to wander with his flame.

When Maeve finishes, Gideon asks her if that story is why she likes Halloween so much. She tells him that “everyone wears masks. But one night a year, they do it openly” and “the hidden parts of the world are exposed” (146).

Maeve goes back to Gideon’s house with Gideon and the bartender, Claire. They go to his basement and drink while listening to Halloween music. Sheb Wooley’s “The Purple People Eater” starts playing on repeat. Maeve asks Gideon if he has any games for them to play, and he comes back with a bag of random objects, including dice, playing cards, a board game that involves princess jewelry, and sex toys.

A while later, Claire has been tied down to the pool table, and her mouth is gagged. Gideon uses a vibrator and performs oral sex on her. Maeve instructs him to use a candle, and he pours wax over Claire, who moans in pleasure. Maeve then builds a small tower with playing cards on Claire and tells her that she cannot knock it over—no matter what Gideon does to her. However, as Gideon continues to pleasure her, she eventually knocks the tower over.

Maeve then finds a bag of Kate’s old things nearby. Inside she finds a curling iron. She pushes the curling iron inside Claire as “punishment” for knocking over the cards. Claire begins to panic and tries to yell, but Maeve ignores her. She talks about what would happen if she turned the curling iron on and plays with the cord. She repeatedly looks at Gideon, who simply sips his drink and does not react. As Maeve gets closer to plugging the iron in, Claire cries and continues to try to yell. However, Maeve realizes that Gideon is bored. She wonders if he is just pretending not to care so that she won’t plug the iron in, but she can’t control her pure rage at Gideon’s indifference. She forces herself to calm down, then tells Gideon that she is bored and wants food.

After Maeve and Gideon finish eating, they clean up the kitchen, while Maeve pointedly ignores him. She goes back downstairs and unties Claire. She starts to yell at Maeve, but Maeve responds with indifference, asking Claire what she is so afraid of. Surprised and unsure, Claire quickly leaves.

When they are alone, Maeve is unsure how to feel about Gideon. She is “disappointed and intrigued and aroused and still wary” by the indifference that he showed earlier (155). She tries to ask him about it, but he interrupts her to tell her that he has something to show her.

Gideon takes her to a room at the end of the hall. He had it made into a Halloween room, with fog, real gravestones, fake blood, a coffin bed, and more. Maeve is extremely moved, realizing that he may have done it just to have a place to have sex with her but still in awe of his kindness. Most of all, she cannot believe that Gideon actually “surprised” her. She kisses him, then the two have sex throughout the room. Their time together culminates in him producing a soft-boiled egg which he inserts inside her. Throughout, Maeve “think[s] of nothing. Nothing except this body, this room […] of [her] dreams with this man who is perhaps more, perhaps much more, than [she] gave him credit for” (158).

When Maeve and Gideon first had sex in his basement, the song “Be True to Your Ghoul” by The Ghouls played over the speakers. Since then, Maeve hears the song in her head as she lives her life over the next couple of weeks. She continues to care for her mother at home, she notes how Kate and Derek start appearing together at movie premiers—with Kate getting more and more bruises, and she and Gideon continue to have sex in different places throughout the city, often with a bartender or several of his fans. She also continues to ruin people’s reputations online, noting how she managed to “expose two pedophiles and an incel,” as well as “two people who are completely innocent” (160).

Maeve and Gideon walk through the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Maeve asks him how he feels about the city now. Instead of answering, he grabs her from behind and pulls her against him. She notes how “shockingly” strong he is and finds it both “terrifying and thrilling” (163). As he kisses her, he admits that he “loves” every part of Los Angeles.