Requiem for the Devil

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “Your twisted logic won’t convince me to sentence another human being to death.”

  “You don’t need my logic to convince you. You’ve got the facts, the history of this man’s life, a life devoted to bigotry and ignorance, a life that’s better off ended before he does any more damage. Right?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not up to me to decide who dies, no matter how tempting that power may be.”

  I realized then that I would not win this argument with words. I took a deep breath.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I forget sometimes that we’re not in the same boat.”

  “We’re not even floating on the same sea, Lou.” She turned to leave, then stopped. “Just give me some more time, okay?”

  “All right. Whatever you need.”

  “Thank you.” When Gianna reached the door, she looked back at me for a moment, then left.

  I picked the newspaper off the floor and carried it to my desk. I punched the redial button on my phone, then finished the number with a final digit. Rimmon, my personal physician and most stealthy assassin, answered on the first ring.

  “Good morning, boss. May I take your order?”

  “Good morning, Rimmon. I’ve got a high-priority job for you today.”

  He listened to my demand. “Ooh, I love the public ones,” he said. “Nothing like watching your handiwork on the evening news, is there? I don’t suppose I can ask what prompted this request?”

  “No.”

  “Just checking. Whether it’s all part of the master plan, or just a passing whim, I’m here to serve. I’ll get right on it.”

  “You’re a gem, Rimmon. Have fun.”

  34

  Ne Perenni Cremer Igne

  I decided to spend the evening at one of my usual haunts, Capitol Hill’s hippest political watering hole, a favorite hangout of bright-eyed congressional staffers and lobbyist flacks. I had insinuated myself into one of the prettier groups and was debating Keynesian versus neoclassical economics with a couple of energetic young professionals when one member of the group darted up to the table, his pitcher of beer sloshing onto his tie.

  “Guys, you won’t believe this. Check out the news!”

  The bartender turned up the television, and the pub quieted to hear about the sudden death of a senior senator, who had been stricken with a brain aneurysm in the congressional men’s room.

  When the main broadcast was over, the news team began a brief retrospective of the senator’s career and mentioned that a more in-depth look at the man’s life would appear on the ten o’clock news magazine.

  “Holy shit,” said the Milton Friedman devotee sitting next to me. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, and me without my tap shoes,” muttered the woman next to him. The other people at the table gaped at her. “Come on, let’s not be hypocrites,” she said. “He’s done a lot to make our lives miserable the last few years. We’re all better off, whether we’d like to admit it or not.”

  “I think the man deserves a toast,” I said, “no matter how we felt about him.”

  This gesture seemed to unite the group, and we all raised our glasses. Before I tilted my head back to drink, however, I saw a figure in the doorway of the bar. She stared at me with cold fury.

  “Excuse me.” I rose from the table.

  “See you later?” the senator-hating woman asked. I didn’t answer as I passed her chair on the way to the door.

  “Hi,” I said to Gianna. She did not return my ingratiating smile. “I guess you heard.” She didn’t reply, but fixed her eyes upon mine until I looked away. “You want me to get a table?”

  “I hate you.”

  “Or we could sit at the bar.”

  “Did you hear me?” Her voice was low and rumbling, like a Rottweiler’s growl. “I said I hate you. You’re an evil, wretched creature, and I curse the moment I met you. I should have stayed in bed that day, I should have slit my own throat, rather than let you touch my life.”

  “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “No, you didn’t. You knew I’d be angry, but you had something to prove. You’ve proven what a despicable, loathsome being you are and always will be.” She turned and walked out of the bar. I followed her.

  “I did this for you, Gianna. It was what you wanted.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? All you understand is power and desire. You want something, and you just take it, because you can. But a man is dead now, and it’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s not. You didn’t do this, I did. You wanted him to disappear, but you didn’t want it on your conscience. You didn’t have the courage to let your soul take the fall.”

  “Courage?! Courage to ask my boyfriend the Devil to kill someone for me?” She threw up her arms. “That doesn’t take courage. It was harder for me to tell you not to kill him.”

  “But I gave you what you wanted without you having to be responsible. It’s a win-win situation.”

  “Not for him. He’s still dead.”

  “So?”

  “‘So?’ How can you think that a person’s life is so insignificant?”

  “Listen.” I turned her to face me. “You are alive. You are mortal. You don’t realize how small a life is compared to what lies beyond. Many people say they believe in an afterlife, but no one knows for sure if there’s anything other than the darkness and silence of a corpse. For you there is no fate worse than death, because you cannot begin to comprehend the unbearable beauty of Heaven.”

  “Whatever lies beyond, life is still precious.” She began to walk away again. I stayed a few paces behind her. We covered almost a half a mile before she slowed to walk next to me.

  “Can you forgive me?” I said. She didn’t answer. “I was trying to help. Besides, I needed to show you that I still am who I am, and you can’t change that. But I feel like I’m evolving into something else. That terrifies me.

  “Being evil is all I’ve ever known, Gianna. With all my power, it’s so easy to just say ‘fuck it,’ and do whatever I feel like. There are no consequences for me—until now, that is.”

  “So I’m the superego you never had,” she said. “That’s fun.”

  “Gianna, I need you. You may be my only chance.”

  “Chance at what? World domination?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?” She stopped and turned to me. “What other goal could you possibly have?”

  “I—” I lowered my eyes, afraid to voice my deepest hope.

  She waited for me to speak, then whispered, “You told me that I can’t save you. You’ve shown me that you can’t be saved. But do you really believe it yourself?”

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  I sensed that if I touched her then, I would either keep her or lose her forever. The tips of my fingers brushed against hers. She winced but did not move away.

  “I wish I could see what you’ve seen,” she said. “Maybe then I could understand why you’re so awful.”

  “No, you still wouldn’t understand, and it would probably drive you mad.”

  “Can you show me? Just a glimpse?”

  “No, I can’t do that.”

  “You’d kill for me, but you won’t let me inside your own mind?”

  “That’s right,” I said, “because that vision could hurt you.”

  “So be careful, then.”

  I sighed. “You’re a real Pandora, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I want to know. I want to see.”

  “Your thirst for knowledge is too much like mine.”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  I looked around at the busy street. “Not here.”

  We entered my living room. I went to the bar and pulled out a bottle of brandy and a small glass.

  “You should probably have a drink first,” I said. “It’ll help you relax.” I poured her a shot, hesitated, then added another one. She downed it in two gulps.

  “Okay, let’s get started.”<
br />
  We sat on the couch, and I grasped her wrist to feel her pulse.

  “Now just relax and look into my eyes, Gianna. Tell me if you feel like you’re going to die.” She nodded and blinked with anticipation. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, they had become unlocked windows to my memory.

  Her pupils grew wider and wider as she was drawn into the darkness. I let her push her way through at her own pace, and hid only the most gruesome portions of my existence. I carried her back through time and shared with her my few triumphs and countless defeats. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her teeth began to chatter.

  “Do you want to keep going?” I said.

  “Y—yes. Don’t stop.” Her whole body was shivering now, and her forehead was wet with icy sweat. I fought to control my own emotions as I relived the first days after the Fall—the despair, the rage, the brief moments of repentance. The solitude.

  “Show me . . . before,” she said.

  I gripped her hand so tightly I feared I would crush her slender fingers in my palm. At her first glimpse of Heaven, my original home, she drew in a sharp breath, as if she had been stabbed.

  “So . . . beautiful.” In the next instant, Gianna’s pupils constricted to pinpoints. She screamed.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and felt her collapse in my arms. Her heart flailed against her chest. She panted and heaved like a resuscitated drowning victim.

  “W—was that . . . was that . . . ?”

  “Yes,” I said, “it was.”

  She let out one last sigh, then fainted. I laid her body back on the couch and stroked her hair until she entered a deep, dreamless sleep. I fetched a stack of blankets and covered her with them. When she had stopped shivering, I sat in the chair opposite the couch and watched her sleep.

  Gianna did not stir until the first red light of dawn bled onto the walls of the room. She coughed once, turned on her back, then sat straight up. I jumped.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  She turned to look at me, then with an unwavering gaze upon my face, rose from the sofa, came to me and crawled into my lap. Her eyes, which seemed to reflect a faraway light, devoured mine.

  “Do it again,” she said.

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “I want to see again.”

  “Gianna, you practically went into cardiac arrest the first time. No, it’s not safe. I shouldn’t have even done it once.”

  “Oh, but you have to. Please.”

  “I said no.”

  She slumped to the floor at my feet and clutched at my shirt. “Yes!” The tears began to fall again. “Please, Lou, you’ve got to show me—”

  “Why?”

  “I have to see Him again!”

  I gaped at her. “Him? You have to see him again?” I shoved her hands away from me and stood up. “You’ll see him soon enough.”

  She covered her face and moaned.

  “I don’t understand.” I moved away from her. “I’m with you every day and night, I show you how much I adore you, I lay the fucking world at your feet, and you still love him more than me?”

  “How could I not?” She lifted her palms. “If I loved you more than God, I’d be as doomed as you are.”

  “Then why are you even here, Gianna? Why don’t you just run along and let What’s-His-Face keep you warm at night?”

  She lurched to her feet. “Why can’t you just say His name? Why can’t you call Him God?”

  “Because I am forbidden!” Her glare dissipated, and her jaw dropped. “Yes, forbidden,” I said. “Forbidden to speak to him, forbidden to invoke him, forbidden to utter even his stupid little name. That’s how cut off I am.”

  Gianna sank back onto the chair and hung her head. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I always thought you were just . . .”

  “What? That I was just being obnoxious?” She nodded. “I was being obnoxious,” I said. “We all mock what we can’t have.”

  She pulled her knees to her chin. “When I was . . . inside of you last night, I saw . . .” She was shivering again. “I saw it all . . . what you went through . . . and felt it with you.” She gazed up at me. “How did you endure? The rejection, the hopelessness . . .”

  “I found comfort in evil, in whatever small acts of defiance I could accomplish, and in the camaraderie of my fellow rebels. I grew accustomed to the despair, because it was all I knew. Until I met you.”

  “When we first made love,” I said, “really made love, I mean—not that act of pure carnality in my library—I saw something . . . something that had been beyond my reach for as long as I could remember. It was more than a memory, more than a vision. It was like being . . . there again.” Tears chased each other down my face. “Gianna, this love between us could . . . it could change everything.”

  I knelt in front of her, wrapped my arms around her legs and pressed my cheek against her knee. “I need you, Gianna, but I fear I’ll destroy you. I fear he’ll come between us, that he’ll punish me for being so happy. He’s a jealous god, and if you ever loved me more than him—”

  “Shhh.” She wove her fingers through my hair and kissed the top of my head. “Lucifer, if God sees into people’s hearts, and I think He does, then He already knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “He already knows that I love you more than anything.”

  She pressed her cheek against mine so that our tears became one smooth, wet smear. Then she kissed me, a kiss that burned with the desperation known only to those on the border of salvation and damnation. At that moment, I wasn’t sure on which side of this boundary either of us stood.

  She rose to her feet and took my hand to lead me to the bedroom.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Yes. Only . . . let me . . .”

  I closed my eyes and didn’t move while she undressed me and covered my body with the tenderest of kisses and caresses, searching out the ribbons of pain and despair that still dwelled in every cell. Gianna made love to me all morning, in the soft glow of the winter sun.

  We didn’t speak the rest of the day, only remained near one another, united by a silent wonder. Inside of me, stirring near the back of my rib cage, was a scrawny little scrap of a feeling I’d heard humans call hope.

  “Gianna, wake up.”

  I shook her shoulder in the dark. She stirred and stretched, then fell back to sleep. I jostled her again.

  “Gianna, wake up, I have to tell you something.”

  “Wha—?” She rolled over to face me. “What is it?”

  “I’ve decided to quit.”

  “Huh? Quit what?”

  “Quit being the Devil.”

  She rubbed her nose. “And do what instead? Sell insurance?”

  “Anything. I want us to have a normal life.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “I just want to be Louis Carvalho, the man you fell in love with.”

  “But that’s not who you really are.”

  “I can reinvent myself,” I said. “Humans do it all the time, why can’t I? All I do is play a role, like you said, an increasingly obsolete one. I can’t play that role anymore. Not as long as you’re in my life, which I hope will be as long as you live.”

  “What about afterwards?” She sat up. “What about after I die, what will you do then?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “What if it’s not that long?”

  “It will be,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve dreamed it, your death, more than once.” I reached up and touched her chin. “You’re very old, in this dream, and still very beautiful. There are young people there, and it feels like they’re our children.”

  “Are your dreams premonitions? Do they always come true?”

  “Not always. But this one feels true.”

  She leaned back on the headboard. The city lights sneaking through the window glinted in her eyes. “So you spend the next fifty years pla
ying house until I croak, and then what will you do for the rest of eternity?”

  “Grieve,” I said.

  “Won’t that get tiresome?”

  “I don’t know.” I sat up. “Look, Gianna, I don’t know what I’ll do for the rest of eternity. I may pick up where I left off the day after your funeral. But for right now I don’t want to come home to you and not be able to talk about what I did at the office.” I touched her arm. “Can you really expect to keep loving me if you knew that every day I was working to increase suffering? Wouldn’t you rather I do something good, or at least something neutral for a while?”

  “Only if it’s your choice,” she said. “I don’t want you to sacrifice too much for me. You’ll only hate me later.”

  “I can’t hate you.” I rested my head in her lap and wrapped my arm around her hip. “Especially since I’ll be sponging off you until I break into the music business, which shouldn’t be too long, since I have lots of contacts there.”

  “Would you promise me something, Louis?”

  “Anything.”

  “Promise me that after I die, you’ll consider using that door? The one to Heaven?”

  I squeezed her. “Ever the lawyer, even in the middle of the night. Sure, I promise I’ll consider it. What the hell.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me all of this again in the morning, because I still believe I’m dreaming.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it,” she said. “If you change your mind between now and then, just don’t say anything. I’ll think it was a dream.”

  “Okay.”

  In the morning, I rose early, set the alarm for Gianna, then left for the office by daybreak. Next to the coffee pot I left her a note that read, “Had to leave early to clean out my desk and check the want ads. Love, Louis.”

  35

  Mors Stupebit et Natura

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Beelzebub stood in my office doorway, his arms folded across his chest.