Dating the Devil

by Lia Romeo

  “Lucy!”

  “What?” I suddenly feel like if I stay here another minute I’m going to start crying. I’m blinking furiously to keep the tears from coming into my eyes.

  “I know that . . . you think I’m a bad guy.”

  “I think that’s pretty much the general consensus.” Him being, you know, the Lord of Evil.

  “But I could be good to you.”

  “Oh, really?” I demand, suddenly furious. “Just like you’ve been good to me so far?”

  “I’ve tried to be,” he says. “I’ve tried to take you nice places . . . get you nice things. I don’t know what else you want.”

  “Maybe somebody who isn’t trying to get me sent to Hell!”

  “That’s my job,” he says. “And okay, maybe it started out that way . . . but as we started spending more time together . . . I, uh—I kept catching myself hoping that you wouldn’t take the bait.”

  “Why?”

  “So that I’d have to keep trying, and it would give me an excuse to see you again.”

  “And what about if I had taken the bait? Would that have been it?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I thought so, at first—that’s the way it usually goes. I . . . work on somebody, until I get them where I want them, and then I walk away. But I don’t seem to be able to walk away from you.”

  “Well,” I tell him, barely managing to keep the tremor out of my voice, “then I guess I’ll have to do it.”

  I open the door and start down the hall. In seconds, he’s out of bed, wearing only his boxers—and of course, his socks—and coming after me. He catches my arm and turns me around to face him.

  “Lucy, please,” he says. He’s so close that I can see his eyelashes, hear his heart beating, feel the heat of his skin, and involuntarily my knees start to tremble. I won’t let him kiss me. I can’t let him kiss me. If he kisses me I’ll be lost.

  He kisses me. I tilt my head back and part my lips, and then I’m moving my tongue against his, softly at first, then harder, biting at his lips, running my tongue along his teeth, mashing my mouth against his.

  We don’t even make it back to the bedroom. We sink to our knees, still kissing, and begin pulling off each other’s clothes right there on the hallway carpet. My shirt loses a few more sequins on its journey over my head. He takes off his boxers, then hesitates at his socks.

  “Keep them on,” I tell him. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  He nods, and leans in to start kissing me again . . . and for the next few minutes, I lose all restraint, all control, and all capacity to think about anything at all.

  – 14 –

  A HALF HOUR later, we’re sitting on the hallway carpet, both a little dazed, smiling sheepishly at each other. I’ve recovered my sequined shirt—now looking quite a bit the worse for wear—and my red lace thong, and Lewis is back in his boxers. And apparently, neither of us is quite sure what to say, because we’re looking at each other, half-smiling, then looking away again. Lewis is picking at invisible specks in the carpet.

  Finally he says: “Brunch?”

  Which is when I realize I’m starving. I hadn’t actually gotten around to eating dinner at the bar last night—apparently getting roofied will make you forget about things like that. And the thought of eggs benedict—warm eggs and thick, salty slices of ham on top of a toasty English muffin—is suddenly too appealing to resist. Brunch is harmless, right? At least considerably more harmless than what we’ve spent the last half hour doing on the hallway carpet.

  “Okay,” I tell him.

  We end up a Trinity, a restaurant/lounge near the water. It’s housed in a former bank vault, and it’s a popular happy hour destination for financial types. It’s almost empty now, though, and I’m glad, because in my wrinkly shirt, dangling half its sequins from threads and missing the other half, and my hair in a messy ponytail, I’m hardly fit to be seen in public. At least I’m not barefoot—I managed to locate the other one of my heels in Lewis’ front entryway. Lewis, of course, looks impeccable in a crisp blue and white striped button-down, jeans, and loafers, and I’m sure our waitress is wondering what he’s doing with me.

  I’m expecting him to try to talk about us again, but instead, oddly enough, we end up talking about my childhood. I mention that my mother used to make eggs benedict for all of us for breakfast on Sunday mornings, but she could never get the hollandaise sauce to come out right. I was shocked the first time I ordered it at a diner because the sauce wasn’t lumpy—I’d always figured it was just supposed to be that way.

  So Lewis starts asking me questions about my mom, and then about my dad and my older brother Jim, and soon I’m telling him stories—about how my dad, who was a classically trained tenor before he became a CPA, used to sing arias from famous operas while he was making dinner, but he’d always put in the family dog’s name instead of whatever beautiful woman he was supposed to be singing about. About the time Jim and I took the car—I was eleven, and he was fifteen—our parents were out to dinner with friends, and we thought we’d drive downtown and get a slice of pizza. But of course, Jim literally ran into a police car that was stopped at a red light, and we both ended up grounded for a month. About my favorite teacher, Ms. Kittredge, who told me when I was in fifth grade that I had a real talent for writing—which was what encouraged me to take English classes at Cornell years later.

  Lewis listens, laughs, asks all the right questions at the right time. I keep having the impulse to ask him the same questions—what about you?—what about your family?—but then catching myself. Even so, after two hours, when the remains of our eggs are congealing on our plates, I’m surprised by how disappointed I feel when the waitress comes by to give us the check. I’d forgotten how much I liked just sitting and talking to him.

  Lewis hands her his credit card, waving away my tentative grab for my wallet, and begins putting on his jacket. “So listen,” he says. “I’ve got this thing tomorrow night. Sort of a black-tie benefit—it’s at the Met. A business associate gave me a couple of tickets, and I need a date. So do you think—just as a favor to me, I mean—would you be willing to go?”

  A black-tie benefit? I’ve never been to a benefit before. Mel’s gone to a few, because Brandon’s mother is on the board of the ballet, and she always comes home with stories about sipping champagne with impossibly glamorous people like Naomi Watts or Tinsley Mortimer.

  But with Lewis? Despite the fact that he’s just saved me from being raped—or maybe worse—I can’t let myself believe that he really wants to be with me. If I let him back into my life, I’m sure that at some point he’s going to start trying to tempt me into doing something terrible again. So I can’t let him back in.

  But . . . after all, there’s not much he could tempt me into doing in just one evening. And maybe, like he said, he just needs a date.

  “I understand if you don’t—if you can’t—” he says, seeing me hesitating.

  “No,” I say quickly. “I—I’ll go.”

  “Good.” A relieved smile breaks over his face.

  “Except—” I say, suddenly realizing.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if I can. I don’t—I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “Oh,” he says, “that’s easy. Let’s see—the event starts at eight. Meet me at Barneys at three, and we’ll get you fixed up.”

  I’ve been living in the city for four years, and I’ve never set foot inside Barneys. Mel and Nat shop there sometimes, and I’ve stood outside, looked in the windows, watched the women in their fur coats, sunglasses, and tall leather boots push open the doors and stride confidently in. I can tell it’s the kind of place where the salesladies would look at me and wonder what I was doing there.

  “I can’t buy a dress at Barneys—I can’t afford—”

  “No, no, no,” he says, “I’ll get it. You’re doing me a favor—coming to this thing—it’s only fair.”

  He’ll get it? He’ll buy me a desig
ner dress? I have a feeling that I should not—should definitely not—allow him to buy me a designer dress.

  But.

  I mean, he’s right. I’m doing him a favor by going to the benefit. And he’s obviously got plenty of money—though I don’t know—probably don’t want to know—where it’s coming from. And it’s not like I can go to an event at the Met in my senior formal dress from college, which is stretch purple jersey with sparkles across the bodice, was purchased at TJ Maxx four years ago, and is the only long dress I currently own.

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” he says again, and holds the door for me as we walk out onto the street. I blink in the dazzling sunshine, so different from the darkness of the restaurant. Lewis puts out his arm and a cab stops almost immediately, and he opens the door for me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says. He doesn’t try to kiss me goodbye—which is good, because I wouldn’t have let him—but I can’t help but feel a faint, ridiculous pang of disappointment.

  When I get home, Mel and Nat are painting their toenails fuchsia on the living room couch. “Hey girl,” Nat says. “Where did you spend the night?”

  “Um.” I tell them the story.

  Mel and Nat are properly horrified by my attempted date rape, but less than enthusiastic about the idea of my going to the benefit with Lewis. “Luce, I don’t think—I mean, I really don’t think—that you should be getting involved with him again,” Nat says.

  “I’m not getting involved with him again. I just want to go.”

  “I’ve been to quite a few of those things. They’re really not that exciting,” Mel says.

  “Not that exciting? When you went to that benefit for the ballet last Christmas you told me you sat at a table with Ivanka Trump!”

  “Yeah,” she says, “but so what?”

  “So I want to sit at a table with Ivanka Trump!”

  “You don’t want to sit at a table with Ivanka Trump,” Nat says, “you want to sit at a table with Lewis.”

  “That’s not true!”

  Mel and Nat give each other a knowing look. “There’s a lot of great guys in the world,” Mel says, “and it just doesn’t sound like he’s one of them.”

  “Especially since he’s Satan!” Nat exclaims.

  “Or whoever he is,” Mel says. She’s apparently still holding onto the weird Gothic fetish theory.

  “I know. I’m not getting involved with him. We’ll go to this thing, and then . . .”

  “And then?” Nat says.

  “And then, that’ll be it,” I tell them. “And then I won’t see him again.”

  – 15 –

  AT TWO-FORTY-FIVE the next afternoon, I’m standing on the sidewalk outside Barneys on Madison Avenue. I’m well-rested (“I got roofied last night!” having proved an ironclad excuse, even to Natalie, as to why I should spend Saturday night on the couch at home) and ready to shop, and the couture-clad mannequins in the windows, dangling bright leather bags from their white plastic shoulders, only heighten my sense of excitement.

  But as I’m waiting for Lewis, I begin having doubts. All of the women going into the store are wearing heels and gold jewelry and enormous sunglasses with interlocking Cs or D&Gs or other letters that I don’t recognize but I’m sure denote famous designers on them . . . and they all have shining, tousled blonde manes of Blake Lively hair. I’m wearing jeans and boots and a black hoodie from Old Navy—and Lewis’ necklace, though I’ve tucked it underneath the long-sleeved thermal shirt I’m wearing underneath my hoodie. And even though I’ve blow-dried and flatironed my mousy brown hair, Blake Lively I’m not. Watching the shining heads going by, I find myself wishing I’d gone ahead and gotten highlights when I’d been thinking about it a few months ago. The two-hundred-dollar price tag had dissuaded me.

  But then I see Lewis coming down the sidewalk. He’s looking casually perfect in jeans and a navy blue Ralph Lauren sweater, and he starts smiling when he sees me. I start smiling when I see him too—I don’t want to, but I can’t help it—and we smile at each other until he closes the distance between us and leans in to give me a kiss—not on the mouth, but on the cheek. “You look nice,” he says, and somehow I believe him.

  He casually puts his arm around me, resting his hand on the small of my back, as we go up the escalators to the third-floor designer eveningwear collections. I want to pull away—it probably sends the wrong message, given that after tonight I’m planning never to speak to him again—but it feels like it would be awkward. Besides, part of me likes the sense of being chosen. If a man who looks like Lewis wants to put his arm around me—even if his motives leave something to be desired—then maybe I belong in a place like Barneys after all.

  And then we step onto the third floor, and the array of designer silks, satins, sparkles, and feathers spread out before us almost takes my breath away. “Wow,” I say involuntarily, and Lewis chuckles.

  “This thing tonight,” he says, “it’s going to be pretty fancy—so price isn’t really an object. Just find something you like.”

  “Um. Okay.”

  I don’t even know where to start, but fortunately a slim blonde salesclerk, with a French twist and sky-high heels, sees me fingering dresses helplessly and comes over to take us in hand. She sits Lewis in a chair outside the dressing room with a glass of champagne, and sends me into the room with a pile of dresses in rich jewel tones with labels like Azzuro, Armani Privé, Marchesa, and Azzedine Alaia. “Let me know if you need any help zipping anything up!” she calls to me from outside.

  Feeling slightly dazed, I step out of my jeans, thermal shirt, and hoodie and into the first of the dresses she’s selected, a long turquoise Marchesa silk gown, with turquoise beaded straps and a plunging neckline. It’s a beautiful dress, falling in smooth drapes to its beaded hem, but it overwhelms me—I look small and pale in the three-way mirror.

  The second dress is a sequined gold strapless Armani sheath, so heavy it almost stands up on its own. But when I try to zip myself into it, the dress bulges in all the wrong places, flattening my breasts but creating a roll around my waist. I take it off quickly.

  But the third dress . . . oh, the third dress.

  It’s a coral-colored, Grecian-style Dior gown that brings out the color in my cheeks. It’s strapless, with a bust that gives me enviable cleavage and a bow underneath it that makes my waist look tiny, and it flows in beautiful pleats down to the floor. It’s perfect. Lewis’ necklace rests delicately in the hollow of my throat, and for the first time in my life, I honestly feel like a princess. Maybe this is how girls feel when they try on their wedding dress for the first time.

  Lewis is on his iPhone when I come out of the dressing room, but he looks up and his eyes widen. “You look . . .” he says, and trails off.

  “What?”

  “I don’t even know what the word is. It’s a word that hasn’t been invented yet.”

  “Um. A good word that hasn’t been invented yet?”

  “Definitely.”

  “So . . . this is the one?”

  “I think this is the one,” he confirms.

  Just then the saleslady swoops back in—and stops short when she catches sight of me. “Oh!” she gushes. “You look amazing!” She goes on for a minute or two, but I’m only half-listening, feeling the heat of Lewis’ eyes. My mind flashes back to the hallway, yesterday morning—Lewis pulling my shirt over my head—no. Not going to think about that.

  “Okay,” I interrupt the saleslady, “I’ll go take it off now.”

  I go back into the dressing room, and (after admiring myself in the three-way mirror for another minute) unzip the dress and step out of it. And that’s when I look at the price tag. Four thousand dollars.

  Four thousand dollars? I’ve never even owned a piece of clothing that cost four hundred dollars.

  Quickly, I pull my jeans and my hoodie back on and exit the dressing room, leaving the pile of dresses draped over the stool inside. Lewis looks at me, perplexed.

  “W
here’s the dress?”

  “We’re not going to take it.”

  “You’re . . . not?” the saleslady asks, her perfectly arched brows drawing together.

  “Come here for a minute.” I take Lewis’ arm and pull him behind a rack of jeweled red Armani creations. “It’s four thousand dollars,” I whisper.

  “Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “I figured it was probably something like that.”

  “I can’t let you buy me a dress that’s four thousand dollars!”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? I don’t want to get into why not. I just want to enjoy tonight, seeing as it’s the last night we’re going to spend together. Which is why I can’t let him buy me a dress that costs four thousand dollars.

  “Lucy,” he continues, “if you haven’t figured this out yet . . . money’s not really an issue for me.” I want to ask him why—where the money’s coming from—but if he’s doing something awful like embezzling from old ladies, I almost don’t want to know. He must be able to read the struggle on my face, because he says: “It’s nothing like what you’re thinking. I—I’m a bit of a gambler, that’s all.”

  “What . . . kind of gambler?”

  “Cards, mostly,” he says, “though I’ve been known to bet on dogs, horses, even a game of pool. And I happen to be pretty good.”

  “How good?”

  He gives me the wolfish smile. “I won a hundred and forty grand in Vegas last weekend.”

  “A hundred and forty thousand?” I’ve accidentally raised my voice. Nearby, a blonde shopper with Chanel sunglasses perched on top of her head, Chanel ballet flats on her feet, and a giant black Chanel tote hanging off of her arm glances over at us. A miniature Pomeranian with a Chanel collar peers out of her tote, blinking sleepily.

  “I’ve been doing this for a few hundred years,” he continues. “Practice makes perfect. And of course, I . . . have a talent for reading human behavior.”