by Lia Romeo
“Shut up.” I throw a sugar packet at her. She retaliates by tossing the entire salt shaker across the table at me. I scream and duck out of the way, and the salt shaker bounces off the bench and rolls under the table.
Now more people are looking at us, including Nat’s bartender, Jimmy. “Sorry!” she mouths, and he hurries over to retrieve the salt shaker and bring us two more kamikazes, which we clink together and gulp down.
And then suddenly I’m thinking about Lewis and the money again. I probably wouldn’t tell Nat about it if I were sober—I don’t want her to think badly of him—but I’m tipsy and we’re already kind of on the subject. “There’s something else that’s weird,” I tell her.
“Yeah?”
“He, um . . . the other night . . . you’d left some money lying on the coffee table, and he—he wanted me to take it.”
Her perfect black brows crinkle together. “Why?”
“He wanted me to come to Vegas this weekend, and I told him I couldn’t afford it, and he—he wanted me to take the money to pay for a plane ticket. I didn’t!” I add quickly. “Obviously. But actually,” I continue, just now putting the incidents together, “that’s not the first time he’s tried to get me to do something . . . I don’t know . . . something I felt like I shouldn’t.”
I tell her about how he wanted me to leave Linda, and take her only client with me. Nat’s frowning, tapping her red manicured nails on the table. “So he’s trying to tempt you,” she says.
“Yeah, I—I guess. But what’s the point?”
Before she can say anything in response, Jimmy comes over and asks us if we want to come outside for a smoke break, and we follow him out to the tiny, ivy-covered courtyard behind the bar.
Outside, Nat and I shiver in our tank tops. Jimmy hands each of us a cigarette, and I idly touch my finger to the tip, to see if I can make it light the way Lewis does. “What are you doing, Luce?” Nat asks me.
“Oh,” I giggle. “It’s this thing Lewis can do. He can light cigarettes without a lighter—just by touching them. But I can’t do it.” I touch my finger to the tip and giggle again.
Suddenly Nat’s face changes. “Oh my God, Lucy,” she exclaims. She drops her unlit cigarette on the ground, takes mine out of my mouth, and grabs me by the wrist, pulling me inside. Jimmy stares after us in bewilderment.
Inside the bar, she pulls me into the tiny bathroom, smelling of urine and covered with graffiti, and locks the door behind us. “I just figured out what it is about Lewis,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Okay . . .”
“I mean you’re really not going to like it.” She takes a deep, dramatic breath.
“Just tell me. It couldn’t be that bad.”
“Well, Luce,” she says. “I think you’re dating the human manifestation of Satan.”
I burst into laughter. I’m bent almost double, clutching onto the edge of the sink, giggling. After a minute I get control of myself enough to look up at Nat, expecting her to be giggling just as hard as I am. But she’s not laughing. She’s not even smiling.
“I’m serious, Lucy,” she says.
This sets me off all over again. “You think Lewis is the—the—” I’m laughing too hard to get the words out.
“The devil,” she says. “Basically.”
I think I mentioned that Nat’s a big believer in the occult. On top of the weekly séances where she tries to contact her father, she’s also got a big leather-bound book that she claims contains spells, and more than once she’s driven Mel crazy by boiling up some foul-smelling concoction in our kitchen and then forgetting to clean the pot. So, coming from her, this actually isn’t all that surprising. She once dumped a guy because she was genuinely convinced that he was a vampire.
“Think about it,” she says. “He can light cigarettes just by touching them . . . and didn’t you say he had a closet full of fire in his apartment?”
“He had a fire in the closet in his apartment,” I say, finally getting the giggles under control. “It’s different.”
“And he keeps trying to tempt you into doing things you shouldn’t,” she continues. “Which is exactly what the devil comes to earth in order to do. It’s like in Faust. Or, um, ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster.’”
“I thought the devil came to earth to play fiddle in ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster.’”
“No, that’s ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia.’ ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’ is when the farmer sells his soul to the devil in exchange for seven years of good harvests,” Nat says.
“Oh yeah!” It’s enough to start me giggling again. “You’re totally right.” We’d had to read the story in an American lit class we’d both taken our sophomore year at Cornell.
“See!” Nat says. “He’s trying to steal your soul!”
This makes me laugh harder. “Let’s go back out,” I say. “This bathroom smells like pee.” I grab her arm and start to pull her out of the ladies’ room.
“I’m serious, Luce!” Nat says as I tug her towards the bar.
“Yeah, okay.”
Jimmy is back behind the bar, pouring vodka sodas for two blonde girls perched on bar stools at the other end. His face lights up when he sees Natalie again.
“Jimmy, get her another beer,” I tell him, resting my elbows on the sticky wooden corner of the bar. Ignoring the half-finished vodka sodas, Jimmy begins pouring Nat a pint of Smithwicks. The blonde girls wrinkle their noses in annoyance.
“I’m worried about you!” Nat insists. But just then “Build Me Up Buttercup” comes on the jukebox, and Jimmy, still ignoring the vodka soda girls, grabs Natalie’s hands and pulls her behind the bar to dance. One of the blonde girls pulls out a twenty dollar bill and waves it at Jimmy, but he’s got his hands on Nat’s bare back, left exposed by the purple silk scrap of material she’s wearing (“It would be trashy,” she’d said happily when we were getting ready that night, “but it’s DVF, so it’s okay”) and there’s no way he’s letting go. I look at the blonde girl and shrug, and she and her friend, exasperated, make a show of noisily slamming the legs of their bar stools against the floor as they climb down and head for the door.
Almost before the door has closed behind them, dancing has turned into making out, and it’s clear that Nat is going to be otherwise engaged for the rest of the evening. I’ve had enough to drink anyway, and my bed is starting to sound really attractive . . . though not as attractive as it would if Lewis were waiting in it. So I grab my cardigan and head outside to catch a cab home. I feel sure that Nat will have forgotten all about our conversation by tomorrow morning.
BUT WHEN I finally get out of bed around eleven a.m.—I’m making up for all the sleep I haven’t been getting with Lewis—Nat’s sitting on the couch with her legs curled under her, fresh-faced and dewy in a Cornell t-shirt and leggings. I know she had a lot to drink last night—more than I did—but she claims she doesn’t get hangovers. “You wouldn’t either,” she says, “if you drank as much as I do. It’s just a question of teaching the body to adjust.” She’s tapping away on her iPad, and she beckons me over to look at the screen.
“Coffee first,” I tell her, and set a pot to bubbling in the kitchen. Then I come over to the couch. “How was the rest of your night?”
“Great!” she says. “After Jimmy locked up we did it on the pool table. He may have a candle-sized dick, but he knows how to use it.” She sighs with satisfaction, then turns serious. “Now look at this.”
She’s pulled up Google, and in the search box at the top of the screen she’s typed the words “human manifestation of Satan.”
“Oh, no.” I drop my head in my hands as she scrolls through the first page of search results, websites asserting that the human manifestation of Satan is anyone from Hitler to Boy George to John Kerry. On the second page of results, she clicks on a site called everythingsatan.com. Heavy metal music begins blaring from the iPad as an image of a red, h
orned devil against a black background fills the screen. “Nat, it’s too early in the morning.”
“It’s almost noon,” she says brightly, but she clicks the mute button on the laptop. The giant horned devil onscreen has faded, replaced by a banner headline:
SATAN
a.k.a. Lucifer, Abaddon, Apollyon, Mephistopheles
Lord of Hell
My eye catches on the word “Mephistopheles.” “Mephistopheles” . . . “Lewis Mephisto” . . . okay, that’s weird. I’m about to mention it to Nat, but then I decide not to. She doesn’t know Lewis’ last name, and she doesn’t need any more fodder for her ridiculous theory.
“I don’t even think I believe in Satan,” I tell her. I was raised Catholic, more or less—my family was of Irish descent, so my parents took my brother and me to church on Christmas Eve and Easter, but that’s about it. Needless to say, on Christmas Eve and Easter there wasn’t much hellfire and brimstone preaching, so I grew up thinking about God occasionally and the devil not at all.
In college I decided I was an agnostic, mostly because Ben was, and that’s pretty much where I’ve remained. I’d be perfectly willing to believe in supernatural forces, whether for good or for evil—I just have yet to see any evidence that they actually exist.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe in him or not,” Nat says. “He’s out there.”
Below the headline on the webpage are a series of links:
Satan, Lord of Hell
Satan in the Bible
Satan in Fiction and Literature
Satan on Earth
Nat clicks on this last one, and the screen fills with text. I sigh, go into the kitchen, pour my coffee into my favorite Cornell mug, and then sit back down on the couch to read it.
Many people believe that Satan assumes human form from time to time, coming to earth to walk among us and lead us into temptation. Satan chooses vulnerable individuals and presents them with irresistible temptations, causing them to make decisions that will damn their souls to hell.
“Vulnerable individuals,” Nat says. “That’s you.”
“Shut up,” I tell her. But I keep on reading.
So what does Satan look like when he comes to earth? “The devil takes many guises.” However, sources tend to agree that Satan can be identified by certain characteristics, most notably his cloven hooves.
“See,” Nat crows. “Cloven hooves! That’s what he’s hiding!”
“You mean the socks?” I have to laugh. “Come on, Nat, that’s totally ridiculous.”
“I don’t know,” Nat says. “You’ve got to admit it kind of all adds up.”
“Um, yeah . . . to something that’s impossible.”
“You don’t know that. There are more things in heaven and earth . . . Anyway, there’s an easy way to find out.
“What?”
“Take off his socks,” she says. “Find out what’s underneath them.”
– 7 –
SUNDAY NIGHT, Lewis sends me a text from the airport.
Home in half an hour. Meet me at my place? ;)
I’m sitting on the couch with Mel and Nat, watching a Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon. Mel’s drafting a memo and doing crunches at the commercial breaks. Nat’s painting her nails. I’m just watching TV . . . well, watching TV and checking my phone every thirty seconds to see if Lewis has called and I’ve somehow failed to hear it.
When my phone finally does beep, I snatch it up from the coffee table, read the message, and break into a huge smile. “Somebody’s getting laid tonight,” Mel teases when she sees my face.
“Who, me?” Nat says absently. She’s absorbed in painting perfect white strips onto the tips of her nails for a French manicure.
“Well, probably,” Mel says. “But I was talking about Lucy.”
Nat looks up and sees me tapping furiously on my phone’s screen. “Ohhhhh,” she says, and gives me a significant look. “Well, just remember what we talked about.”
“What did you talk about?” Mel asks.
“Nothing,” I say firmly. Nat hasn’t brought up her Lewis-as-Satan theory since Mel got home this morning, probably because she knows Mel would ridicule her mercilessly for it. Mel is nothing if not practical, and Nat’s occult tendencies are alternately a source of amusement and exasperation. “It’s been lovely, girls, but I’ve got to change.”
In the closet, I take off my grey fleece sweatpants, pull my Cornell sweatshirt over my head, and slip into a pale pink lace bra and thong. I’ve always loved lingerie, even when I had no one to wear it for. I look at myself in the mirror on the back of my door, mentally cataloguing my flaws—my hair isn’t quite turning under at the ends the way I like it to, my arms are flabby, my stomach is sticking out over the waistband of my thong. I resolve to get back into my habit of daily crunches again. I pull on a black cowl-neck sweater and dark jeans, then add black boots and gold earrings.
I emerge, do a quick twirl for Nat and Mel, then grab my purse and head out the door. I know I should take the subway, but I’m too impatient, so I flag down a cab outside . . . and end up pulling up in front of Lewis’ building just as he’s taking a small roller suitcase out of the trunk of a black limousine idling at the curb.
His back is turned, so he doesn’t see me getting out of the taxi . . . and though I want to run up to him, I hesitate, because his face, as he reaches for his suitcase, is dark and foreboding. I wonder if he’s angry at something . . . his brows are drawn together, and I’ve never noticed how sharp the line of his profile is. He exudes an energy that’s almost malevolent, and for a moment, absurdly, I’m frightened. It occurs to me that I’ve never watched him when he didn’t know I was there before.
Then he turns and sees me, and a smile breaks over his face like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. It’s a smile that makes me see what he must have looked like as a little boy on Christmas morning. I break into a smile in return as I walk towards him, and he wraps his arms around me and kisses me lightly on the mouth. “I missed you,” he says.
“I missed you too.”
Upstairs, we start kissing as soon as the door is shut behind us. We tumble onto his bed, still kissing, and then he stops. “Wait,” he says. “I got you something.” He unzips the top compartment of his suitcase and pulls out a small, rectangular black box that says BULGARI on the lid. He flips it open.
I gasp. A beautiful diamond solitaire on a delicate gold chain winks up at me. I don’t know much about diamonds, but it has to be over a carat. “Are you serious?”
He smiles, gathers up my hair with one hand, and fastens the necklace around my neck. I take a few steps towards the mirror. Lewis’ bedroom is dark, but there’s a faint glow from the light in the hallway, which the diamond seems to reflect and concentrate back up onto my face.
“Wow,” I breathe involuntarily.
“Take off your shirt,” Lewis says in a low voice from behind me.
Still facing the mirror, I take off my sweater. I can feel his eyes on my back.
“And your pants,” he says. I unbutton my jeans, then step out of them. My body in the mirror is all pale skin and dark shadows. All of the flaws I’d noticed earlier are gone—I’m a sensuous silhouette of a woman, like something out of a movie, with the brilliant diamond winking around my neck.
“And everything,” he says, and I take off the pink lace bra and panties, and then, wearing only the necklace, walk slowly over to the bed. I begin unbuttoning his shirt. I can feel him aching to touch me, but he keeps his hands at his sides while I push the shirt back off his shoulders, then slide the sleeves down his arms and over his hands. He remains totally still as I unbutton his pants, and then suddenly, with a groan, he pulls down the zipper himself, kicks them off, takes off his black boxer briefs and pushes me down on the bed, where he proceeds to render me almost senselessly glad he’s back for the next two hours until we fall asleep, exhausted.
I usually sleep well at Lewis’ place—his king-size bed has plenty of
room for the two of us, and the eight hundred thread count sheets (I’m guessing, but they’re the softest sheets I’ve ever felt) don’t hurt either. But tonight my eyes snap open at four-thirteen a.m. The bedroom is dark, except for the glow of the city lights through the window, and on the other side of the bed Lewis is sleeping, his chest rising and falling with his quiet, regular breaths.
In repose, his face is peaceful and calm, his features symmetrical and sharply handsome. I spend a moment just looking at him, feeling a little shiver of remembered delight at the thought of his tongue on my skin. Then I roll over and pull the deliciously soft sheets close around me. Two and a half more hours until my alarm goes off.
But twenty minutes later, I still can’t sleep. Something is bothering me, and as I’m absent-mindedly fingering the diamond around my neck, I realize what it is. A necklace like this must have cost more than a flight to Vegas would have—probably two or three times as much. If Lewis had really wanted me to come with him, why hadn’t he just paid for my flight?—instead of telling me to take Natalie’s money to do it?
And suddenly I’m hearing Nat’s voice echoing in my head. “Take off his socks,” she’s saying. “Find out what’s underneath them.” Not that I’m actually giving any credit to her ridiculous theory. But I am curious about why Lewis wears his socks all the time, and just pulling one of them off would probably be a lot easier—and less embarrassing—than asking him about it. He probably wouldn’t even wake up . . . he’d think he just kicked it off himself when he woke up in the morning.
And if he did wake up, and asked me what I was doing, I could just say I was . . . well . . . I’m not sure what. There isn’t really a good excuse for taking off your lover’s socks in the middle of the night to see out if he’s got hooves underneath them. Except that’s not what I’m doing! Because that would be crazy. And I’m not crazy. Just . . . curious.
