Requiem for the Devil

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “You sure you trust me to drive this thing?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Besides, if you wreck it, I can always replace it with one of the two others in the world just like it.” I got in the car.

  Gianna opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat.

  “Ohhh,” she said. “It just feels like power. The way the seat’s shaped, the steering wheel, the gear shift—oh, look at that dashboard.” Her hands skimmed over the instruments like a water bug over a pond. She pulled them back as if she had been burned. “Let’s get something straight here. I am not impressed with . . . impressed by . . . with . . . material things. Wow.”

  “It has an engine, too, which will go a long way towards getting us to where we’re going.”

  “Right . . . right. Okay.” She turned the key in the ignition. The car roared to life. “Oh, my God. You do have a lot of faith in me, don’t you?”

  “Not faith—confidence.”

  “Good. Let’s go.” She put the car in reverse, then looked at me. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “We have dinner reservations at the Four Seasons at eight-thirty, but I thought we’d hit that little martini bar around the corner first.”

  “The Four Seasons? Again, wow.” She began to back out of the parking space again, then stopped. “Um, since we both earn a salary, I think we should—”

  “Relax,” I said. “It’s my treat tonight.” She started to protest. “In exchange for your services as a chauffeur.”

  “It’s a deal. Just sit back and enjoy the ride, sir.”

  “I already am.”

  We left the Jaguar at the Four Seasons. Gianna placed her hand on the car’s roof in a silent thank-you-goodbye before joining me on the sidewalk.

  “That was incredible,” she said. “A completely frivolous expense, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean, one payment on that thing could feed a family of four for two months.”

  “If they had steak every night.”

  “So officially I feel tainted and offended.”

  “Get used to it. I have.”

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  “Martinis?”

  “Okay.” She took my arm again, and we walked to the next block and into the martini bar. The magenta-haired hostess put down her cigar and showed us to a table by the window, which stretched along an entire wall. Each tiny black table was trimmed with a strip of neon. Ours was red.

  “Wow.” Gianna ran her finger along the glowing line. “How do you think they get that in there?” She looked up at me. “That was a really stupid question, wasn’t it? I should begin drinking as soon as possible to justify my idiotic remarks.” A waitress arrived, and Gianna placed her order. “Bring me something red, to match the table.”

  “Cinnamon martini okay?”

  “Right.” Gianna looked at me and made a frightened face.

  “How about you, sir?”

  “Let me try the blue one.” The waitress left. I turned to Gianna. “So when’s your next performance?”

  “A long time, thank God, to give this town a break from that absurd form of torture. See, the other members of that band are my three brothers, and they all live out of town. Okay, here’s the lineup. Pretend you’re interested. Marcus, he’s the oldest one, he’s thirty-eight, a social worker up in Baltimore. He’s the only one of us with any musical talent.”

  “The piano player.”

  “You noticed. Matthew and Luke, they’re twins, thirty-seven. They run an animal shelter outside of Philadelphia—that’s where I’m from, by the way. It’s one of those humane shelters where they keep them forever, kind of like a nursing home for animals. Matt and Luke are kind of weird, like they share a brain or something. They finish each other’s sentences, for instance, and they married another set of identical twins in a double wedding five years ago. They don’t have any kids yet, because they’re devoted to their business.

  “And then there’s me. I’m thirty-five, and also married to my career. It’s funny, the only one of us who wants children is Marc, and he’s gay.”

  “Do your parents know?”

  “They know, but they pretend they don’t,” she said. “At least they’ve stopped asking him when he’s going to get married.”

  “So when you turned down countless proposals from Mr. Vanilla . . .”

  “My folks were . . . concerned, to say the least, about their dwindling chances for grandchildren. They didn’t understand. Not until later, anyway.”

  “Why? What happened later?”

  The waitress arrived with our martinis. Gianna took a sip and changed the subject. “What about you? Family?”

  I thought of Beelzebub. “I have one brother, younger. That’s all.”

  “Your parents are dead?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never had a mother—that is, I never knew her.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Bob—my brother—and I were raised by our father.” I rolled the olive against the inside of my glass. “He was a father and mother to us. Things were good until . . .”

  She leaned closer. “Until what?”

  “As an adolescent, I was . . . you might say I was the rebellious type.”

  “I can imagine.” Gianna’s mocking smile faded. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “There came a time when I . . . when I did something that so infuriated my father that he cast me out of his home. My brother chose to follow me. Our father hasn’t spoken to us since.”

  “No kidding. Where is he now? Your father, I mean.”

  “He could be dead for all I know.”

  “How terrible,” she said. “But what could you have—I mean, what did you do to make him so angry? You don’t have to answer that.”

  “It’s okay.” I stared past her at the black-and-white-checkered wall across the room. “I just . . . I just didn’t want to be like him. Or rather, I did want to be like him, wanted to be him even, but there was already one of him.” I looked at her. “Do you follow me?”

  “I think so.” Gianna rested her chin in her hand and squinted at me.

  “Let’s just say he didn’t appreciate my outlook. The family wasn’t big enough for both of us.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “Bob was an opportunist. He cast his lot with the one he thought would prevail in the end. It was his mistake, one I shouldn’t have let him make. I’ll never live that down.”

  “I don’t get it,” Gianna said. “A lot of fathers aren’t crazy about how their children turn out. But that doesn’t mean they have a right to banish them like that. Your dad sounds like a tyrant, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” I smiled at her and drained the last of my martini. “I also don’t mind not living in his shadow anymore. My brother and I have made good lives for ourselves on our own. He works for me now. Hopefully you’ll meet him someday.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Bob’s a bit startling,” I said.

  “Like you?”

  “No, more like you.”

  “Oh. Neat.” She shuffled her glass on her cocktail napkin. “Do you miss him? Your dad, I mean?” She looked at my face, then at her watch. “Whoa, emotional land mine. Let’s go eat.”

  I loved the way Gianna held a glass of wine in between sips, as though it were an extension of herself. Her thin wrist bent as far as it would go, curving the glass back towards her body, where it almost touched her shoulder.

  “It may surprise you,” she said, “that being a public defender was a thankless job. The people I represented for the most part didn’t seem to care whether they went to jail or not. Their time on the outside was more like a vacation than a way of life. Then of course there was the sneering DA on her crusade to rid Philadelphia’s streets of every last scumbag.”

  “So you thought lobbying for the poor in a Republican Congress
would be less frustrating,” I said.

  “I wanted to affect the big picture. The individual faces were too painful, so I abandoned them.”

  “Abandoned them? You may help more people with one law passed or prevented than you did during your entire stint as a lawyer.”

  “That’s the theory, anyway.” Gianna swished her bread through the escargots’ remaining garlic butter. Her self-righteousness had faded into humility, and I decided to reverse the flow.

  “Doesn’t it burn you up to know that you’re giving so much to society when other people just take?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “But that just means I need to do more to compensate for those who can’t contribute.”

  “I’m not talking about the poor. I’m talking about rich assholes like me, who won’t leave this world any better than they found it and will probably make it a little worse. How do you feel about taking up our slack?”

  She swallowed her mouthful of bread. “Is this a trick question?”

  “No. I’m just amazed that people like you are willing to essentially give out interest-free loans with no payment-due date. We’ll never repay you—or society.”

  Gianna studied me for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m not worried about you. I just do what I need to do to let me sleep at night. I try not to judge others.” I raised my eyebrows. “Okay,” she said. “I am very judgmental, and I condemn all of you rich assholes for not doing more.”

  “That’s better.”

  “At least you’re honest,” she said. “There’s not a sanctimonious bone in your body, I can tell. Unlike most of the people I work with.” She took a sip of water. “Unlike me.”

  “I bet that even with all you do, Gianna, you still can’t sleep at night.” She frowned and glanced away.

  “Oh, look,” she said, “it’s three of the Ways and Means Committee members and that lady from the Brookings Institution. I went to policy school with her.”

  I turned to look at the entering group. They saw us and waved before sitting at a table halfway across the restaurant.

  “I wonder what they’re talking about,” Gianna said.

  “At the moment, probably us.”

  “No, you think?” She gasped. “Jesus God, I forgot it’s Monday. They might think this is a business meeting.”

  “So?”

  “My organization can’t afford the likes of you. We’re supposed to be grassroots. It’ll ruin our image.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Give me your hand.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll prove to them this isn’t business. Give me your hand.”

  “No.” She put her hands under the table out of reach.

  “Look, Gianna, obviously appearances are as important to you as they are to everyone else in this town.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t care what they think,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to powder my nose.”

  “Of course.” I stood to excuse her. As she passed me, I touched her elbow. “Gianna?”

  She turned. “Yes?”

  I kissed her on the cheek, not too quickly. “Nothing. Have a good powder.”

  After dinner we danced.

  In motion she was more intoxicating than any wine. The blood rushed to my head as she spun around me, and for a few moments, the world revolved around some point between us, where gravity ceased its battle. I could taste her sweat in the air.

  Then we moved together, our gazes locked as tightly as our grasp, guiding each other with eyes and hips. Strand by strand her hair fell free, until it slithered over her face like a thousand black snakes.

  Holding her close was a relay point, where one desire rested only to launch another, stronger one. If I could not have her tonight, the consequences to the natural world would be blistering. I imagined the Tidal Basin cherry trees lighting like match sticks in the first hours of my frustration conflagration.

  At 2 A.M., the dance club’s cruel house lights ushered us out into the night. We walked to the parking lot swooning.

  Gianna lifted her hair off the nape of her neck to cool herself. “I don’t have to tell you that was wonderful.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said, “but go ahead anyway.”

  She laughed and let her hair fall in her eyes. “You’re a magnificent dancer, Louis.”

  “So are you.” I held up the keys to the Jaguar. “Would you like to drive again?”

  “No, thanks. I’m still too hazy from the drinking and dancing. I’d probably put us in the Potomac.”

  “You don’t live near the Potomac.”

  “But you do.” Gianna opened the car door and looked at me. “Let’s go see your swanky little flat.”

  I nodded and got in the car. My throat tightened. This was real, this was actually going to happen. As I adjusted the seat to accommodate my body’s proportions, I thought how they compared to hers, how her legs and arms were surprisingly long, and I imagined how they would feel wrapped around me.

  “Are we going or not?”

  I realized I had become briefly frozen in fantasy. I looked at her.

  “Yes.” I jerked the car into gear and screeched out of the parking lot. The car tore through the now-quiet back streets of Georgetown, barely slowing for stop signs. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gianna tighten her grip on the door handle. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t usually drive like this.”

  “Right.”

  By the time we pulled into the circle in front of my building in Foggy Bottom, I was able to take several deep breaths to rein in my slavering lust—at least to the point where I could help Gianna out of the car without yanking her arm off. The doorman nodded to us as we entered the building.

  “That guy just gave you a look,” Gianna said when we were in the lobby.

  “What guy?”

  “The doorman. He gave you a knowing look.”

  “Did he? I didn’t notice.”

  “You must bring a lot of women here.”

  “Actually, I don’t. That’s probably why Charles gave me a look.” It was true. It was usually less complicated to have sex with a woman at her place, then leave while she slept. Sleeping people provide much less resistance to memory wipes.

  We entered the elevator, and I inserted a small key next to the top button, which read “P,” and pressed it. Gianna wore a mask of casualness.

  The twelve floors seemed to crawl by as the tension in the elevator grew. I tried to avoid rocking on my heels, tapping my feet, or spinning my keys, any sign that might reveal my impatience—or perhaps nervousness.

  At last we reached my apartment door. My fingers flew over the security keypad, entering a complex series of codes.

  “It’s quite a fortress,” Gianna said.

  “Paranoia is one of the side effects of being fabulously wealthy.” I opened the door, turned on the foyer light, and let her step through ahead of me. “But I find that it’s worth it.”

  We entered the hallway, which was still dim in spite of the overhead light. I removed our coats and hung them in the closet, then led her into the living room. Gianna let out a low whistle of admiration.

  “Look at that view.” She swept to the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the balcony. “This is incredible. It’s like I could reach out and touch the Washington Monument, even though it must be what, a mile away?”

  “Almost.” I joined her at the window and placed my hand lightly on her neck, at the edge of where her hair fell. She turned to me.

  “Look, I don’t trust rich people,” she said. “Either they inherited the money, which means they’re spoiled, or they earned it, which means they’re ruthless.”

  My gaze matched hers. “I earned it. Trust me.”

  “Hmm.” She looked away and caught sight of the piano behind us. “Louis, you didn’t tell me you played.”

  “It was a surprise.”

  “Would you play something for me?”

  “Perhaps later.” I took her hand.

  “W
hat’s in there?” She pointed toward the dark library.

  “That,” I led her into the library and turned on the light, “is where I worship.”

  Her reaction to the towers of volumes filled me with an almost crippling passion.

  “Wow.” She broke away from me and ran her hands along the shelves. “I think I just died and went to Heaven.”

  “You might say that knowledge is my religion.” I caressed the worn edges of an early Euripides collection. “And this is my shrine.”

  Gianna spun in a circle and craned her neck. “I almost expect to see clouds covering the top shelves, like they go on forever. It looks like you’ve read all these books, too.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Why else would I have them?”

  “To impress people.”

  “I don’t care to impress anyone. I just like to be surrounded by thoughts. See, Gianna, I believe that the human brain is potentially the single most powerful force on earth. The tragedy is that so many people let their minds atrophy. They mire themselves in mediocrity and forget what truly amazing beings they can become. But I can tell you’re not one of those people.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “And that’s why you wouldn’t marry Mr. Vanilla, even though he would have made you moderately happy.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being moderately happy.”

  “Nothing wrong at all. It’s good enough for ordinary people.”

  Gianna looked down at the table between us and spied my papers and stacks of books left over from the other night. “What are you working on here?”

  “A small research project. Just a passing fancy.”

  Gianna examined the titles of the volumes. “Very eclectic mix of sources, I must say.”

  “It’s a complex topic. Many layers to peel away. I may never find the answers I’m looking for, but I think the search will be very rewarding.”

  She looked up at me, then flinched.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She laughed a little. “It’s just that I keep forgetting what huge eyes you have.”

  “Mmm. The better to . . . well, you know.” I slid around the end of the table to her side.

  “Of course. The better to seduce me with.” She turned to the shelf behind her and straightened a Henry Miller novel. “But you can forget about that, mister, because it is I who will seduce you—when the time is right, of course.”