Unsoul'd (13 page)

"What do you mean?"

"I can't believe I'm gonna tell you this." She gazed at me from under heavily lidded eyes. Hangover eyes. Shame eyes. But also, far, far back there, mischievous eyes.
 

"Tell me."

"Everything was going great and he was pretty good and I was so drunk and high that 'pretty good' was really good and then he's like... He like says..." She blew her hair out of her eyes. "He wanted to come on my face."

Behind her, the devil chortled and mimed jerking off. I did my best to ignore him.

"How gross is that?' Fi said. "What possesses a guy to say that?"

"And on the first date, no less," the devil commented.

"Does he think I'm his fucking living, breathing porn movie or something?"

"Considering that you fucked him without knowing his name," the devil mused, "I'm gonna go with 'yes.'"

"Who knows what that shit would do to my skin?"

"It's actually--"

I managed to glare the devil into silence without Fi noticing. I wanted the conversation to be over. I also wanted it to keep going. And I also now couldn't get the image of coming all over Fi's face out of my mind.

"I let him come on my boobs instead. I guess he liked that. Seriously, what is it with you guys?"

"I don't know."

Why did I let Fi do this to me? Why did I let her come to my place and ramble about her life and tell me things I didn't want to know and badger me for advice and wisdom that I either lacked or didn't want to give? Why didn't I tell her to get out of my apartment, out of my life?

I didn't know. I felt strangely powerless in her presence, paralyzed into inaction by some combination of apathy and propriety. It felt like anything I did -- engaging her, discarding her -- would be wrong, so I took the path of least resistance and did and said as little as possible.

She deflated against the doorframe. I felt a completely inappropriate yet completely understandable desire to fold her in my arms and tell her everything would be all right. Idiotic. She wasn't my girlfriend anymore. And how the hell could I know if everything would be all right?

Fi flounced onto the bed with a groan and two warring impulses reared up in me like stallions and clashed forehooves. On the one hand, I wanted to shout, "Get off my bed! You don't sleep here anymore!" On the other hand, the sight of her in/on my bed again aroused not arousal, but rather a wistful sadness at what I'd lost.

And then she put her cheek to the sheets in precisely the same spot where I'd fucked Gym Girl not long before and with all my willpower, I just barely managed to suppress a burst of derisive laughter. The devil actually did a spit-take with his beer.

"Should I not be doing this?" she asked in that tone that said she expected me not to demur.

"Stay as long as you like," I told her, savoring a delicious irony that only I could taste.

"How are things with...what's her name? Mandy? How are things with Mandy?"

Fi had the ability to ask a solicitous question with the air of a corrupt defense lawyer.

"Manda. It's Manda."

"Sure. Sure. I knew that. How are things with her?"

"Fine," I said, not knowing if that was the truth or a lie.

"Do you think I'm a bad person? For going home with that guy?"

"Fi..."

"I know. I know. I need to stop fucking around and actually meet someone, but it's tough in this city. So is it so wrong to go home with a guy?"

"Probably not." As if I had the moral authority to judge.

"What about letting him come on my boobs? Was that OK?"

"Fi!" I actually laughed here.

"It made me feel skanky."

"She says that like it's a
bad
thing," the devil chimed in.

"You're both consenting adults."

"I still feel like a skank."

"The congealed jizz deep down in her cleavage sort of supports her on this one."

I thought I might throw up. Fi could tell there was something wrong with me and she sighed in that very special, very theatrical way she had. "You
do
think I'm a skank. God, I'm such a total whore. What is
wrong
with me?"

"There's nothing wrong with you," I assured her, not really sure myself and not particularly caring one way or another. I had had a sudden epiphany: Fi and I were over. For good. It was more over than over. It was beyond over. It was in that area of the relationship map where explorers of yore once wrote "Here be Dragons," a land hither and yon from which no one could return. I had never had the oft-spoken-of break-up sex with Fi, and I never would.

And I was fine with that. Though she was still undeniably sexy, my desire for her had waned, whether as a function of last night's romp with Gym Girl or Fi's own account of her night or the combination thereof. Looking at her, I now felt no more attached or drawn to her than I would to any other hot woman glimpsed on the street.

It was a pretty big moment for me. I didn't realize another was about to come.

Wherein the World Changes

After Fi left, the devil stayed out on the fire escape, claiming to be unfazed by the heat and humidity, a fact simultaneously obvious, clichéd, and revelatory. I stayed inside and paced.

"You're making me nervous," the devil chimed in. "Cut that out."

The thought that a mere mortal could make the devil nervous was laughable. I kept pacing.

"This is what happens when you lose your soul, isn't it? You become a cheater."

"Are you married to Manda? Committed to her?"

"I'm not
not
committed to her. We're not seeing other people."

The devil rested his now-empty beer bottle on the windowsill. "Get me another, would you?"

Grumbling, I fetched him another beer. "I gave you my soul and now you better live up to your end of the deal."

"Was that a threat?" he asked with idle amusement, taking the bottle.

I retreated to my desk. My superstitious ritual of going to Construct seemed juvenile all of a sudden. Maybe it was my success the previous night with Gym Girl -- it was as though my apartment (specifically centered in my bedroom) had become a sacred and mystical place, and my fingers flew on the keyboard with ease. It was going to be another multi-thousand-word day, and I was so used to my fecundity that this no longer amazed me. It seemed as objectively truthful as the fact that I'd bedded Gym Girl.

I put together a plate of cheese, crackers, and wasabi-roasted almonds to nosh on as I wrote, and the devil slipped into the apartment with a chaotic sort of regularity to swipe goodies with the air of a child who thinks he's getting away with something.

The phone rang. Caller ID said it was my father, making this a literally unprecedented second phone call in one week. Had something amazing happened in the world of hockey? Something he felt the need to share with me? Or, more likely, was he calling to see if I had any of Fi's used panties lying around, to give him that little push over the edge?

Reluctantly, I answered the phone, flipping a mental coin. Heads, he wanted to talk hockey. Tails, he wanted to talk...tail.

"Are you watching TV?" he asked, and the coin kept turning in the air. Could go either way: Hockey game or hot chick on the cell phone commercial.

"No, Dad." Coin still turning in the air, still indeterminate.

"I think they're talking about your book."

"That's impossible, Dad." My books don't get discussed on TV. Even my third book -- described as "sure to ignite controversy" by
PW --
ignited precisely no controversy. (It's tough to ignite controversy when no one buys the book.)

"Turn it on. You're the only Randall Banner who wrote
Flash/Back
, right?"

I sighed and hit the remote. "Yeah, Dad, but they're not--"

The coin finally landed. On the edge.

Wherein I Am Famous

Lacey Simonson was on my TV screen, as she always was, but this was Lacey Simonson as I had never seen her before. She was moving, for one thing.

For another, she looked like she'd been dragged through hell by her ankles. Her face was thin and drawn, her hair ragged and tangled, with a bald spot above her left ear. She licked her cracked lips over and over as she spoke to a group of reporters, wrapped in a rough gray blanket stenciled in yellow: "FDNY." A crawl at the bottom of the screen read:

LACEY SIMONSON FOUND ALIVE IN QUEENS PARKING GARAGE AFTER ESCAPING CAPTOR. IMPROMPTU PRESS CONFERENCE AT QUEENS FIREHOUSE.

But what did this have to do with my--

"...saved my life," Lacey was saying, her voice raspy and choked with emotion. "I read it over and over. It was all I had with me and it inspired me to--"

No. No way.

The crawl scrolled:

SIMONSON CREDITS NOVEL "FLASH/BACK" BY RANDALL BANNER WITH "KEEPING ME SANE" DURING ORDEAL.

I swallowed so hard that I thought my vocal cords might invert.

"--just so inspirational," she said, weeping. "I couldn't have survived what he did to me without--"

"See what I mean?" Dad said. "That's your book, right? I think I have one around here somewhere..."

"It's on the middle shelf on the bookcase in the living room," I told him absently, staring at the TV. They were re-running the same footage over and over -- it wasn't a live press conference. She had emerged and given a brief statement a half hour ago. But had the cameras...?

Oh, God. They had.

For a brief moment, the camera picked up Lacey's hand before it ducked under the blanket. She clutched a copy of
Flash/Back
like a teddy bear. And, bless her, it was in hardcover.

"Dad, I have to go. My call waiting is going nuts."

It was Sam, of course, who launched into a monologue before I could even say hello.

"You've seen? You've heard? If you haven't, turn on the news. Any channel, doesn't matter. Or go online. It's everywhere. I can't talk long because my phone is ringing like crazy and Fatima--" his assistant "--can't keep up on her own. God, Randall, I've never seen anything like this.
Flash/Back
is already going back to press. They have orders like you wouldn't believe. And they're doubling the print run for
Down/Town
. You won't be able to walk into a bookstore without being buried in an avalanche of your books, Randall. And the new one... The one you're working on. We're tearing up the contract. I've already got calls from Harper and Hachette. They want to buy out your contract. I've never seen anything like it. We need to do a deal. Fast. Send me a synopsis. Send me
something
. Oh, God, I have to go. That's our Hollywood guy on the other line. He's wetting his pants for you right now, Randall. You wouldn't believe it. And the publishers... They are horny for your new book. They are in lust with it and they haven't even seen it yet. They want to tie it down to the bed and do horribly kinky things to it. Get back to work. You're about to make a lot of money."

I never got the chance to say a single word.

I stared at my phone. It was buzzing again. My publicist. Or, I should say, the publicist at my publisher who handled my books in addition to the books of a dozen other authors.

And now Manda calling. I sent her to voicemail. Not because I couldn't talk to her after Gym Girl. But because I couldn't talk, period.

On TV, they kept showing Lacey tucking the book under the blanket, holding it like a totem or a protective amulet. My name scrolled under her. Over and over.

My phone still buzzing in my hand, I turned to look out the window. The devil lounged on the fire escape, occasionally hoisting his beer to his lips, an air of complete self-satisfaction wafting from him like a breeze.

"Did you do this?" I asked. I was too shocked even to be horrified.

He said nothing.

"Did you do this?" I asked again. Louder.

Still nothing. He drank more beer.

I couldn't bring myself to answer the phone. By now my publicist had gone to voicemail, too, but the phone kept buzzing, this time my mother. The voicemail icon showed five messages waiting. I couldn't bring myself to answer. I switched the phone off and put it on the table as though it had tried to bite me.

The video of Lacey shrunk into one corner of the screen and another corner became a bright red "INFOBOX."

FACTS ABOUT LACEY SIMONSON

• •
  Abducted on February 19
  
• •
  Sophomore theatre major at Rutgers
  
• •
  Originally from Lincoln, NE
  
• •
  Missing 153 days
  
• •
  Single abductor
  
• •
  Believed tortured and sexually abused
  
• •
  Escaped captivity when abductor suffered heart attack
  

There was more, but I couldn't see it, couldn't follow it. I looked from the TV to the devil and back. How much of this was him? Had he arranged for Lacey to be kidnapped months ago? For her to have a copy of
Flash/Back
at the time? I hadn't even offered to sell my soul until recently ago. How could he have known?
Had
he known?