Sympathy for the Devil

by Christine Pope

  At any rate, I didn’t see the harm in having lunch. Maybe we could have a rational, adult conversation in which I told him that I’d rethought the situation and decided I couldn’t see him anymore because I wanted to pursue a relationship with the Devil.

  On second thought….

  “Okay,” I said, after a pause I hoped he hadn’t noticed. “Do you want to pick me up, or should I just meet you someplace?”

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said immediately. “I thought we could go over to the Beverly Center or something — maybe California Pizza Kitchen?”

  Danny loved CPK. I could think of several other places in the vicinity that I’d rather go, but after my past few days of grand dining, I was willing to be magnanimous.

  “Sounds great,” I replied. “Is twelve all right?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

  I made an affirmative sound and then hung up. I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of him actually showing, let alone on time. Probably better to bring along a Lean Cuisine to throw in the freezer in the break room at work, just in case. Also, I’d make a point of meeting him out in front of the building. I didn’t want him bumping into Jacqui and maybe earning me some more grief when I returned to the office. She kept hoping he was permanently out of the picture, and I didn’t want to disabuse her of that notion.

  Besides, by the time lunch was over with, it was entirely possible that Danny and I would be through.

  I didn’t hear from Luke at all on Monday, which worried me. Not that I was really expecting another vase full of roses, but I thought he’d at least call or email after I got home. Nothing though, and I felt a pang as I closed up my MacBook Air and went into the kitchen to make myself a salad for dinner.

  Wow, you’re some independent modern woman, I thought. I hoped that by mocking myself I might get my sense of perspective knocked back into place. Can’t you even go a day without some contact from Luke without feeling like you’ve lost your last friend?

  Apparently not; after all the goings-on of the week before, my cozy little apartment had begun to feel downright confining. Nothing satisfied — not checking out the usual online sites I visited, or the book I had been reading, or even the hundred-plus cable channels that still couldn’t offer anything to distract me. My mother probably would have told me that I needed to take up some sort of handicraft, something to occupy my hands when my mind didn’t want to cooperate with anything else. But I’d tried to learn how to crochet when I was in high school and hated it, and sewing had never appealed, either.

  Instead (and this should have been a clear signal of how desperate I was feeling), I called my sister.

  She seemed surprised to hear from me. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Um, sure,” I responded. “I was just wondering if you’d told Mom.”

  Lisa didn’t bother to ask about what. “Yes,” she said. “I talked to her this afternoon, in fact.”

  “Oh,” I said. “How did she take it?”

  “About the way I expected. She said something about Traci becoming more evolved as a person once she became a mother, and then she said she was sure Dad must be thrilled.”

  Typical. I almost wished my mother had ranted and raved; it would have seemed a more normal reaction to me. “Well, that’s healthy,” I ventured.

  “No,” said Lisa, sounding very cool, very flat, definitely unlike her usually sparkly sales-superpower self. “I don’t think it is. She has serious denial issues. But she’ll never admit it — she’ll just keep going on about how having a cleansed colon is somehow the key to enlightenment. Or whatever.”

  That bitterness was not Lisa at all. Although I’d had no reason to disbelieve what Luke told me about my sister and her husband trying to get pregnant, it wasn’t until I stood there and listened to her monotone delivery that it really came home to me he’d been telling me the truth.

  “Um — ” I hesitated; Lisa and I had never been ones for personal conversation. “Are you okay? Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “No,” she said immediately. “I guess I’m just tired. I took two new listings today, and I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

  She was lying — getting new real estate listings usually charged Lisa up the way a jump would rejuvenate a tired battery. But I knew better than to challenge her on it. The lie was her way of telling me to back off.

  So instead of saying anything else, I just told her, “Well, thanks for talking to Mom. I’m glad she handled it so well.”

  “Better than some people,” Lisa said cryptically. “Listen — I’ve got to go. My work cell is ringing.” And she hung up.

  I sat there for a moment, staring down at my phone, then sighed and set it on the coffee table. With a feeling of futility, I picked up the remote control for the TV and began flipping through the stations, all the while telling myself I didn’t miss him. Not really. Not that much.

  When I came into work the next morning, though, I found a small brown-wrapped parcel sitting on my desk. Puzzled, I picked it up and turned it over. There were no UPS or FedEx labels on it, nothing to indicate where it had come from…which probably meant only one thing.

  Trying to keep an idiotic grin off my face, I rummaged through the top drawer of my desk until I found a letter opener. Then I cut through the clear packing tape and carefully unwrapped the heavy brown paper. Once I pulled it away, I saw that it had concealed a book. An old one, too, judging by the scuffed leather binding. I turned it over in my hands to read the gold lettering on the spine. Faust, it said, then, in a slightly smaller font, Goethe.

  Inside was a note, wrapped around a heavier piece of card stock. I thought it might amuse you to get a little background, the note read, written in Luke’s heavy black hand. Highly inaccurate, of course, but a worthy diversion for an evening.

  I pulled out the little card and realized it was a ticket — a ticket to the L.A. Opera performance of Faust for this upcoming Saturday night.

  Opera? Was he serious? I’d always thought of opera as an acquired taste, one I’d never bothered to acquire. Compared to a lot of people in my age group, I actually had fairly eclectic taste in music, partly because my parents had played anything and everything as I was growing up. I couldn’t stand rap, and modern country left me cold, but otherwise I listened to everything from Elizabethan chamber music to Arcade Fire. I’d discovered that Middle Eastern music was a great background track for doing housework — you could really groove while pushing the vacuum cleaner around.

  For some reason, though, I’d never really gotten into opera. Isolated pieces, sure, but I’d never been able to sit down and listen to a whole opera all the way through. Still, even I knew that going to the opera was a big deal, a very high-end night out.

  This thought led me to the dismal realization that I had absolutely nothing to wear. Really, the world didn’t offer a heck of a lot of opportunities for dressing up these days. I had one plain black sheath I’d bought a few years back, since Jennifer had convinced me every woman needed to own a Little Black Dress, but that was about it for evening attire. And my LBD, while a very nice Jones New York piece, just didn’t seem quite festive enough for the occasion.

  I checked my watch. Nine o’clock. Nina should be up and around by now, although she usually didn’t have to start work until ten.

  Her cell rang four times, and I worried that maybe she’d left it someplace or was in the shower or similarly unavailable. But she picked it up just before it rolled over into voicemail.

  “He wants to take me to the opera,” I said without preamble.

  “What — Christa?”

  “Yeah. Look, Luke is taking me to the opera Saturday night.”

  “Really? How Pretty Woman of him.”

  “Very funny. Any clothes advice?”

  “Where are your seats?”

  Fumbling a bit, I shoved the phone between my ear and shoulder and reached down to pick up the ticket.
I squinted at the tiny print and said, “Um…Grand Circle?”

  I heard Nina expel a breath. “Wow, this guy doesn’t mess around, does he?”

  “I assume those are good,” I said.

  “The best,” she replied. “It’s L.A., so you’ll see everything from jeans to tuxes, but if you’ve got seats in the Grand Circle for a Saturday night performance, I say you go red carpet.”

  “Red carpet?”

  “Gown. Important gown. No little black dress, no skimpy cocktail slip number. No way.”

  Great. Well, at least now I knew where the rest of the birthday money my father had given me was going to end up.

  “Hey,” she went on. “I’ve got to run a piece out to a client in West Hollywood today anyway. How about I meet you for lunch and we go shopping?”

  I’d actually feel a lot better having Nina along. Although she wasn’t exactly an opera devotee herself, I knew her father was a big fan and had season tickets. For all I knew, Luke and I might bump into Dr. Nomura and his wife in the Grand Circle. I sort of had a feeling that Nina’s plastic surgeon daddy didn’t exactly have season tickets in the cheap seats. At any rate, she knew how to dress for the opera, and I didn’t.

  “Sounds fabulous,” I said, trying not to sound too relieved. “You can keep me from making any horrible gaffes.”

  “Not a prob. I’ll be by a little before noon.”

  I said thanks and hung up, then picked up the book once more and really looked at it. The leather-bound volume had the faint musty smell I always associated with used-book stores; when I opened it, I saw the text was printed in both English and German on facing pages. I couldn’t tell a lot from the imprint, as it was solely in German, but I did see a date: 1895.

  Definitely not something Luke had picked up at the local Barnes & Noble. Feeling a little awed, I carefully wrapped the brown paper back around the book and then stowed it in one of the locking compartments that sat above my built-in desk. The opera ticket I slid into the bill compartment of my wallet so it wouldn’t get bent.

  The rest of the morning went by more slowly than I would have liked; I supposed I was just eager to get out and go shopping. After all, how many times in your life do you actually get to buy an “important” dress? Not many, unless you’re a celebrity who spends a lot of time on the red carpet.

  But the time passed, as it always did, and at about five minutes to noon I got a text from Nina that she was out waiting for me at the curb and to hurry so she wouldn’t get busted for double parking. I scooped up my purse and was outside at lightning speed, then squeezed myself into the front seat of her little BMW Z4. It was a cute car, but I still couldn’t comprehend why someone as tall as Nina would want something that low to the ground.

  “I thought we’d go to Loehmann’s,” she said. “The last time I was in there it looked as if they’d gotten another shipment of post-holiday evening wear, so I’m hoping we can get a deal.”

  I thought that sounded like a good plan, and told her so. Then I hung on for dear life as she squealed away from the curb and headed west on Wilshire. From there she hung a right on San Vicente, bringing us up to the Loehmann’s that backed up to the Beverly Center.

  We’d gotten there ahead of the lunch rush, but the place was still fairly crowded. Luckily, though, the racks toward the back where the formal wear was kept didn’t have quite as many women browsing through them. Deals are great, but if you don’t have any place to wear it, grabbing a five-hundred-dollar gown for ninety-nine bucks isn’t going to do you much good.

  I took one rack and Nina another, and we got down to work. Technically, I was a size six, but different designers sized their clothes differently, so we couldn’t judge just by what the tag said.

  Pushing aside a few items that looked like refugees from prom circa 1985, I came across a beautiful beaded Sue Wong number. I pulled it out for Nina to inspect. “What do you think?”

  She looked up from the rack she’d been digging through and frowned. “Nice, but everyone always wears black. Try to find some color.”

  Personally, I liked black. It was slimming, and since I was dark-eyed and dark-haired, it looked pretty good on me. But I knew she was right — every woman always went for black first, so it would be nice to find something in a different shade that would suit me.

  After pushing my way through some more gowns, I found something in a gorgeous dark teal that would have been perfect. When I pulled it out, though, I saw that it was just cocktail length, and I knew Nina had been hoping for a true evening gown. Still, it wasn’t bad for a second-string choice, so I draped it over my arm and kept working.

  Then I heard Nina say, “Oh — oh — ” And she lifted this amazing red number up for my inspection.

  “Weren’t you the one making Pretty Woman cracks?” I asked, although I couldn’t take my eyes off the gown.

  “This doesn’t look like that dress at all. Besides, red has always been great on you. And it’s a size six.”

  Well, that cinched it. I went over to Nina and took the dress from her, then headed over to the dressing rooms. I had to wait in line before I could even get in, but that was all right; somehow I knew this gown was The One.

  It could have been made for me. The shirring on the bodice molded to my curves and made my waist look incredibly small, and I loved the little godets around the hem. I looked at the tag. The label said “Vera Wang,” and it had originally retailed for almost eight hundred bucks. Now it was marked down to $199. I thanked my father mentally for the wad of birthday cash, since it would more than cover the dress and any shoes, etc. I needed to go along with it.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and gathered up my hair at the back of my head, testing how the gown would look with an up-do. The red seemed to bring a glow to my cheeks and made my eyes look velvety and dark. I couldn’t wait to see how the whole thing worked once I had a real hairstyle and a little more makeup than my customary mascara, blush, and lip gloss.

  Red’s my favorite color, Luke had told me that first evening. He’d probably believe I chose this gown specifically because of that. Well, let him. I knew it looked great, and that was why it was going home with me. Still, I couldn’t help thinking it would also work really well with the red satin underwear I’d bought at Victoria’s Secret...and I wondered whether Luke would get a chance to see that as well.

  While I was in the dressing room, Nina located a pair of strappy silver sandals for me, as well as a gorgeous pair of chandelier earrings.

  “No necklace?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope. Too much, with a pair of earrings like that. If you look at actresses on the red carpet, it’s either a great necklace and little studs, or big earrings and no necklace. Maybe a bracelet, too, but I didn’t see anything I liked. It’s all right. Just let the dress speak for itself.”

  Since Nina could probably teach Learning Annex courses on style, I decided to take her word for it. We tried to find a wrap that would work with the dress, but nothing seemed right.

  “I’ll just have to freeze to death, I guess,” I said after we gave up and I had gotten in line for the cash register.

  “Nobody freezes to death in L.A.,” Nina replied sensibly. “Besides, you won’t have to be outside all that much. Better to be cold than to wear a wrap that doesn’t work with the dress.”

  Of course, the standard mantra: style over comfort. But that was all right. I couldn’t help feeling a little spasm of excitement as I handed over the dress, shoes, and earrings to the cashier.

  By that point I was already running late, so there was no time to eat. Nina dropped me off back at work, and I went to my car first so I could hang the gown from the hook in the back seat. Then I scrounged my emergency container of yogurt from the refrigerator in the break room and went back to my office, tingling with anticipation and wondering if there were any way to speed up the week so Saturday would get here more quickly. Probably not — even for Luke — so instead I sent an email to the Gmail address he�
�d used before.

  Thank you for the book, I wrote. I’m really looking forward to the opera. I paused, thinking that sounded awfully formal and stilted. On the other hand, writing I’m dying to see you again wasn’t exactly a good idea if I were going to keep with the whole “playing it cool” strategy. Instead, I just wrote, I hope to hear from you soon, and sent the email before I could obsess over it anymore. After that, I picked up the layout that had come in while I was out with Nina and forced myself to concentrate on work, and not immediately pounce on my computer every time a new email message popped up. None of them were from Luke, however, and after a while I’d gotten myself back into a state almost resembling sanity.

  Almost.

  I went home in a mood dangerously close to a funk. It was wonderful to have received the book and the opera ticket, of course, but I would have liked a little more personal contact. Probably I was just being selfish — who knew what claims the Devil had on his time? — but I’d found myself craving even an email or a phone call the way a junkie craves his next fix. Not good, not good at all. I’d thought I was maintaining some sort of equilibrium — barely — but that seemed to have changed suddenly. Why?

  Because you let him hold you, you idiot, I told myself. Before that it was safely casual, despite his claims of wanting to kiss you, but after you realized what it felt like to have his arms around you, it wasn’t so easy to push him away, was it?

  So had I irrevocably screwed up? Had I passed the point of no return? And did I even care?

  I turned left onto my street and saw the red Jag sitting there…and Luke himself, lounging on the bottom step, holding a book and looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world. My heart jumped straight up and seemed to lodge in my throat.

  Somehow I managed to pull my car into the garage without smacking it into the side of the building. I debated as to whether I should leave the gown hanging in the back seat or not, but it was safely swathed in opaque plastic, so he wouldn’t really be able to see what it was. Hands shaking, I gathered it up, along with my purse and book bag, and went out front to meet him.