Cookbook from Hell Reheated

by M. L. Buchman

  “Works for me. Certainly an improvement on ‘spitting’ which was never one of my favorite images.” Michelle left her hair exposed to the precipitation that soon danced upon her long locks in clouds of sparkles. It made her appear magical.

  “Okay, let’s suppose, for a moment, that you really are the Devil.”

  “Okay, let’s suppose.”

  “Are you ‘That Evil one, Satan for ever damn’d’ that I’m always reading about?”

  Michelle’s sigh was long and drawn out. “I really hate Milton. If he ever gets out of Hell it won’t be my doing. No, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “How does it work?”

  “How much do you know about computers?”

  “Enough to run a profit-and-loss estimate before I purchase a manuscript and enough to lay out a book for press, unless your goddamn software decides to screw up my machine.”

  Michelle laughed. “My ‘god damn’ software. Damn god if you wish, but it is definitely not my software. Nor his. It pre-exists the both of us. Maybe only by minutes, but we definitely came along later.”

  They crossed the narrow park that divided the two directions of Ravenna Boulevard. A fancy name for two one-way streets connected by a wide median and a pair of bike paths. The gray skies glowered through the barren tree branches. No hint of sun penetrating the dark mantle of the heavens.

  “So how does it work?”

  “god can create anything he wants, and he’s damn good at it.”

  Valerie heard the strange mix of envy and admiration in the Devil’s voice.

  “But he sucks at making anything that actually works. He built volcanoes because he liked the bright colors, he missed that they poisoned the primordial atmosphere for the better part of a billion years. And the animals. I had to make half of them extinct just to put the poor things out of their misery. The platypus, I left that one as a practical joke that no one seems to appreciate, least of all the platypi themselves. And the poor mayflies, don’t even get to eat. Reproduce and die, that’s all they get, tell me why he thought that one up. Or praying mantises? Impregnate and then get eaten? If humans were praying mantises, I’ll bet that you’d be living in a whole different societal dynamic. And that’s just the normal stuff. The stuff that happens in places like Wall Street board rooms,” she shook her head as if shivering and sprayed a cloud of tiny raindrops. “That’s enough to make the rest of the animal kingdom look rational.”

  “So, God creates. And you?” Valerie stopped on the other side of the park to let a couple of cyclists whiz by, inches from their toes, before crossing.

  “Clean up after god. He can Create, though he rarely thinks before he does so. I have Modify and Delete privileges, so I’m the clean-up squad. Can you even begin to imagine how sick I am of doing that?”

  “Well,” Valerie stopped in front of the deli’s door. “There’s this author. She really—”

  “Fourteen billion years I’ve been doing this? Can you imagine that?” The acerbity and weariness in Michelle’s voice stopped her.

  It was a tone Valerie knew. Had felt inside without knowing how or why. When Landau finally achieved wholly intolerable status. When Mathilda unloaded yet another load of her personal crap in yet another interminable phone call. Except Michelle’s voice sounded much farther down the road to personal despair than Valerie had ever been, and she’d been pretty far down that road.

  “I believe you.” Valerie’s voice must have been little more than a whisper.

  “What?”

  “I believe you are who you say.” What all the statements about her being the Devil had not achieved since her arrival with Saint Peter, the sheer weariness of Michelle’s tone had proven.

  “I believe you are the Devil.”

  Michelle inspected her closely, then shook her head once, sharply, to dislodge the rest of the water which flew away in a vast rainbow, despite the still sunless sky.

  “Just like that?”

  Valerie shrugged, “Just like that. So, does the Devil eat bagels?”

  At that the woman smiled, really smiled. And a warmth washed over Valerie. Not the I’m-bowled-over-by-the-magnitude-of-your-presence, but the warmth of being-smiled-on-by-a-friend.

  “Yes, Valerie,” there was a lift in her voice that hadn’t been there earlier. “I do, though we’re a long way from New York.”

  Valerie smiled, glad to be able to share the surprise behind her uncle’s delicatessen door. “Not nearly as far as you think.” And she pulled the door open.

  # # #

  Michelle simply stood and stared. With each passing second she felt better, cozier, happier. There was something very odd about this restaurant, or maybe she simply hadn’t been to a good deli in too long. They always picked up her spirits. The smells of hot coffee, grilling eggs, and sizzling corned beef hash was breathtaking—except it gave breath, it gave spirit, rather than taking it.

  Valerie led her to the counter with all the ease of a close friend, rather than the awkwardness most mortals displayed around her. It wasn’t all that often that Michelle found a mortal worth the trouble of actually being interested in, but this woman had actually snagged her attention. Or had until they’d entered the deli. Now her stomach had all her attention.

  “Aunt Anne, this is my, uh, friend, Michelle. Michelle, this is my honorary Aunt Anne.”

  “Hi there.” And here was another woman who was something special. A centered patience just rolled off the woman in a palpable wave. There were people who went through life with all the naiveté of the newborn living their first life, and some who seemed to be older souls. This woman had roots that struck deeply into the earth.

  “Good morning, Uncle.”

  Even as Michelle turned to face the man, he fumbled on a pair of half-glasses for reading and smiled at her. Nervously.

  Odd. She usually made women nervous yet easily engaged men’s attention. Here it was all reversed. The women here she could happily spend a quiet evening with, discussing movies and getting to know them. The man shuffled off behind the counter and into the kitchen as if a pack of wolves were after him.

  She shrugged, not really caring. As long as she could get something tasty.

  “Here you go, dear.” The elegant Anne handed a large bag over the counter. “Breakfast for dinner. Half a dozen bagels, two sesame, two cinnamon-raisin, a whole wheat for you, and your boyfriend will want the everything-bagel in addition to the sesame.”

  “I… He’s not…”

  Michelle found herself enjoying Valerie’s complete discomfiture. Under her aunt’s steady gaze, the mortal had apparently lost the power of speech. So completely flummoxed that there had to be truth there. Truth that Anne had seen even if Valerie had not. Michelle would have to pay more attention. Human rituals around relationships were at least amusing.

  For reasons that passed her own understanding, Michelle stepped in to rescue the mortal by giving her a moment to collect herself.

  “We’d also like…” she addressed the woman behind the counter. There was something familiar about her. Like one of those people you should recognize, but they were so out of their usual context that you simply couldn’t place them: a movie star in the grocery store or a famous politician reading a novel on the beach.

  “Lox, cream cheese, and capers are already in the bag. The knishes will be a minute. Here,” she reached back to the small serving station behind the counter and handed across two over-sized mugs of coffee, already filled.

  Michelle was carrying the mugs over to a table, bemused to find herself sitting down before she quite knew what had happened.

  The mugs were very unusual. Not only hand-thrown and fired, but uneven. Not so much a child’s effort, but rather of someone in a great hurry. And old. Very old.

  “Uncle always jokes that these were originally used as torch quenchers at Jericho. That the Israe
lites would slip them briefly over the torches each dawn after marching all night around the perimeter of the city walls.”

  Michelle almost recognized the writing in the glaze, but she couldn’t quite place it. Then she tipped her head sideways, enough to see how it would look if the mug were inverted.

  “Simha. Joy,” her voice barely a whisper. “Ancient Hebrew.” She traced the characters again, unable to feel them through the crackling glaze. It would indeed read correctly if held inverted and slid over a blazing torch to snuff its flame.

  Valerie tipped her head sideways in imitation and stared at her own mug. “Really?”

  “Odd thing to wish at the walls of Jericho.”

  “Yes, that’s why I kept them,” a male voice at her shoulder.

  Michelle jolted in surprise. The uncle. Valerie’s uncle now stood close by their table. She hadn’t heard his approach. No one could ever sneak up on her. Ever. Not even when she was drunk and passed out. But he’d arrived without impinging on her consciousness and that was the weirdest part of this entire day.

  “I always appreciated the irony.”

  His voice was rich and friendly. His earlier nerves appeared to have disappeared as if they’d never been.

  “The Jews put every man, woman, and child of that evil city to the sword, except the family of a whore who had aided their spies, and yet ‘Joy’ was glazed upon their daily utensils. It reminds me that I don’t know best, no matter how much I think so. Had it been up to me, would I have condemned the city? I find the question keeps me from unwarranted action.”

  “And that was something you used to perform?”

  The man actually blushed. “In hindsight, my, em, actions have not always been as honorable as I would wish. To those I have offended, I try to apologize. To those I cannot address directly, I hope they feel my apology anyway.”

  Then, with ears gone bright pink, the man was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, leaving behind his enigmatic words and a small bag that smelled mouth-wateringly of hot potato knishes.

  “Your uncle is an odd man.” She glanced at Valerie who looked as puzzled as Michelle felt.

  “Not usually,” Valerie watched his retreating back a moment longer. “Let’s go. See if the guys are back yet.”

  “What about the mugs? My system needs this coffee.”

  “We can take them, I’ll bring them back later. He has an immense pile of them in the back.”

  When they stepped out, a final splash of the setting sun found a gap in the western clouds and lit Ravenna Boulevard.

  Valerie looked east to see if there was a rainbow over Lake Washington as there so often was.

  She didn’t spot it at first, but finally located it. Only…

  “Michelle. That doesn’t look right, does it?”

  Michelle turned to see what Valerie was looking at.

  To the east, a great arc of light spanned in exactly the curve of a rainbow. Even part of a second rainbow higher above it, but all the colors were just muddy shades of brown.

  “This doesn’t look good at all.”

  Chapter 19

  “So, you have to get back to Hell in order to run another trace on the software?” Eric shoved aside the remains of breakfast, swallowing the last of the two best lox and bagels he’d ever eaten. He slapped two sheets of paper in the middle of Valerie’s coffee table. They’d had breakfast for dinner in the living room because the work table was still buried in printouts and a dead computer.

  Michelle nodded slowly.

  “How do you, the Devil, normally get to Hell?”

  The woman frowned and he’d almost swear the room darkened. “I ask the software. Anywhere I want to go. It knows to listen for me, even when there is no terminal nearby. But it’s not responding.”

  Eric paused and studied Michelle and Valerie. There was something else going on here, something that was making them both nervous and unhappy, but neither were talking about it.

  He resettled the blue sweatband that he’d pulled on as a joke. Valerie had blushed the most brilliant color of pink when Michelle described how Valerie had grabbed blindly into his dresser drawer. Clearly whatever was bothering them wasn’t each other. They appeared to be getting along really well.

  “Right. And Peter, having been mortal, still always needed a terminal.”

  Peter nodded. He’d pulled on the bright orange woolen hat that Eric normally wore when playing Ultimate on cold winter weekends. At least his clothes fit.

  Valerie wouldn’t look at him, except when she thought he wasn’t looking at her. He had no idea what that was all about. His apartment had been somehow gross, had it? He couldn’t remember any disasters he’d left behind.

  “And you have a way to get us back to Hell without the software?” The Devil dragged his attention back from wherever it had gone.

  “Actually it was Peter’s idea.”

  “No, it was you who put the two together.”

  “I—”

  Michelle cut him off, “I don’t give a demon’s blessing if Jehovah himself thought it up.” She grimaced as she spoke God’s name. “What did you come up with?”

  Eric pointed to the two sheets, Valerie moved to read it as well. She rested a hand on the Devil’s shoulder as she leaned over, as a friend might. Her hair swept forward, framing her face in the warmest mahogany.

  And his world shifted.

  Valerie had been distant, so he’d done his best to switch back into employee mode. But that just wasn’t happening. And now, he just wanted to slip his hand into that shadowed space between hair and cheek. He wanted to lean in and taste those lips, still moist from where she’d licked aside the last of the cream cheese.

  Then her gaze shifted from the paper the Devil held, up to meet his. For the longest moment, her expression remained unchanged, regarding him frankly. He could no more look away than when the Buddhist Hungry Ghost had frozen him in place while stealing the software this morning.

  Valerie’s gaze didn’t vary. Except the eyes. He was learning to read those eyes and could see them processing something very intensely. Processing, going briefly cold as if she were about to chew him out for something, then thoughtful. The slightest tip of her head made caressing her cheek an even more enticing prospect.

  The last expression he didn’t quite catch. Something had shifted in her thoughts. Shifted to…he couldn’t tell. Then she smiled. A smile that smacked him right between the eyes and knocked him back in his chair.

  And he’d thought the Devil was powerful.

  # # #

  Valerie tried to bring her attention back to the pages Michelle was reading, but couldn’t quite do it.

  Few men really met her gaze, most either went down to her breasts or veered aside. Men didn’t like strong women, they only professed that they did. She’d thought Landau Fucking Mackenzie had been one such. It turned out he wasn’t all that interested in sex in general, and was simply too oblivious to think of looking away from her eyes even when emotions were running high. What had seemed like the perfect, sympathetic gentleman had in truth been an asexual, emotionally-crippled moron. It just took her twelve months of marriage Hell to realize that she wasn’t the problem, he was.

  E-Squared, no, Eric. Eric looked at her with frank interest. The awareness that had passed through her since Aunt Anne’s idle comment about “her boyfriend” was fast convincing her that she wouldn’t mind that. “Boyfriend” was an archaic term, especially for a thirty-year-old divorced woman, but it was strangely apropos.

  Well, she could try being a little archaic. Wouldn’t mind it a bit, when she thought of Eric. She hadn’t been with anyone since Landau, not that being with Landau had been all that much like being with someone.

  “You’re kidding me,” Michelle exclaimed and flapped the two pages of paper as if shaking them would alter their content.

 
Valerie refocused on the pages when Michelle stopped waving them about.

  A Recipe for Travel Far and Wide.

  The ingredients made no sense so she skipped over those and glanced at the other page. There were several headings, typical of recipe variations. There was one for darkest Africa, another for Uluru Rock in the middle of the Australian Outback that involved an El train, one for—

  Then her attention jumped to the last one.

  A Quick Trip to Hell.

  “Is it a recipe for how you can get back there?”

  Michelle turned to gaze at her and Valerie could feel a tightening across her shoulders.

  “This recipe says that it’s how we can all go to Hell.” Michelle’s forceful look made it clear that she was expecting Valerie to go along for the ride.

  Now her stomach clenched and she wished she hadn’t eaten dinner at all. Like she’d swallowed Paul Klee’s goldfish rather than some of the finest smoked salmon on the planet, and it was swimming about her innards looking for a way out.

  Chapter 20

  AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was rocking away on Valerie’s stereo, she didn’t even remember that she’d owned it. Two long lines of blue masking tape ran down her hallway toward the bedroom. They were placed so that they did the railroad track-perspective thing, coming to a point just at her bedroom’s threshold.

  Peter and Eric were consulting over the whether some potato chips salvaged from the floor of her kitchen were fried or baked as the recipe called for something fried. It also said, something chestnut, a lock of her hair that she’d have fought against if she hadn’t been so numb, numb like the stillness before a storm. Something shredded, the remains of the original cookbook that Valerie had torn into confetti in a fit of outrage sometime yesterday. And something died, not dead but died, a poor philodendron that she’d, with a complete lack of imagination, named Phil and then never watered again.

  “And we just walk down the path singing ‘Row row row your boat’?”

  “In the round.” Michelle looked down at the recipe again, then stuffed it into her back pocket. “It’s a good thing there are four of us.”