Unsoul'd (27 page)

"Doesn't matter," a publicist said. "You start the buzz early. You set the expectations and the standards high from the beginning so that you're at the starting gate. Too early isn't early enough."

In the car on the way home with Kiki that night, I put a hand on her bare thigh, deliberately not moving it, thinking of how good it would feel to slide it up and under her dress, thinking of how good it felt knowing that I could, thinking of the Oscar.

"Is it even possible?" I asked her.

Regarding me in a slightly pitying fashion, she said, "Sometimes I forget you're new to the business. This is how they do things, Randall. The studio is totally aiming for the Oscars. They're putting all the pieces in place. A book that came out of nowhere to suddenly glom onto tremendous buzz. A real-life sob story hook. An actress known for shitty popular movies making her first 'quality' picture." Here she bowed a tiny bit, as best she could while sitting. "Will it happen? Who knows? But...possible? Hell, yeah."

"So I should buy a tux," I said, somewhat kiddingly, but thinking of my acceptance speech.

"We'll get you something appropriate to your status as my arm candy," she joked.

And that's when it hit me -- the
movie
might win an Oscar.
Kiki
might win an Oscar. The guy who wrote the
final
screenplay -- Del -- might win an Oscar.

But I wasn't going to win an Oscar. I probably wouldn't even be mentioned, except on the red carpet when they shot Kiki and me arriving. I knew how Hollywood worked; it would be "And here's nominee Kiki Newman, with her escort, Randall Banner. Hey, did you know he actually wrote the book this movie is based on?"

The book is always swallowed by the movie. The movie is always bigger than the book.

I enjoyed the ride home less than I thought I would.

Wherein Kiki Finds Out

One day, while I was taking a day off from the screenplay, noodling around on
Untitled Manuscript
out on the balcony, the devil dragged a chair next to me and plopped down. Without looking at my screen, he said, quietly confident, "Almost finished." Not a question.

Truth. Yes. Almost finished.

"Pretty much."

He held out a sheet of paper. I didn't have to look at it to know that it was our contract.

"What if I just don't finish the book?" I whispered. "You couldn't take it then, right?"

The devil smiled the patient smile of an indulgent parent. "Looking for loopholes? It's a pretty simple contract, Randall. Not much room for loopholes."

"But--"

"Remember, I told you at the beginning: This isn't like the myths and legends you people tell each other about dealings with me. This isn't a story. This is real. You've sold me your soul. Done."

"But what if I don't? What if I don't finish the book?"

The devil shrugged. "Then the contract applies to the next book. So--"

"--I would have to never write another book again." It was tempting. Between
Flash/Back
and
Down/Town
, I stood to make millions over the next couple of years, to say nothing of what I could make with the movie rights. And the foreign rights. Did I really
need
to write more books? What if I retired and just spent my days with Kiki? Would that be so bad?

"You know it would be," the devil said.

"I thought you couldn't read my mind," I mumbled.

"I can't. I'm smelling your fear and desperation and it tells me everything I need to know. This is one reason why I picked you, Randall -- your obsession. You know finishing this book concludes the contract, but you'll do it anyway. Because you believe this is an amazing book, and you won't let that go. You won't let it go unpublished. Your commitment won't let you. More importantly, Randall? Your
ego
won't let you."

"Is it going to hurt? When you take my soul?"

"Couldn't say. Never had one, so I don't know what it's like to lose one."

"But you've done this before. You've taken other people's. Did it hurt them?"

"They're not exactly chatty--"

"Did they scream?"

A small bowl of grapes glistened next to my laptop. The devil twisted two of them free and rolled them in his hand like Queeg's ball bearings before popping one in his mouth. He sighed heavily.

"Some of them. Not all. Not sure they screamed because it hurt, though. It's not like they were writhing in pain or anything." He suddenly perked up and said, brightly, "Writhing in pain! Hey, did you ever notice that if you subtract the H, for hell, from
writhing
, it becomes
writing
?"

Writing in pain.
"No, I never noticed."

"I would think you would have. Being a writer and all."

Just then, Kiki poked her head outside. "When did company come? I didn't hear the buzzer."

The devil cleared his throat and favored Kiki with a winning smile. "Good afternoon, Ms. Newman."

Kiki stammered, caught off-guard for the first time since I'd met her. She nervously rubbed her thigh. "Hello," she managed. "I didn't realize--"

"I'll be going now," the devil said. "It was good to catch up with you, Randall." He tipped his hat to Kiki. "Ms. Newman."

I'm not sure exactly how he left. To walk out the door, he would have had to have brushed by Kiki, and I know that didn't happen. All I know for certain is that an instant after the hat-tip, Kiki and I were alone on the balcony, staring at each other. She had gone deathly pale.

"I didn't know," she whispered, still rubbing her thigh. "I had no idea..."

"It's all right," I told her, lying easily and without conscious thought or decision. "It's all right."

I went to her and took her in my arms, a stupidly self-conscious male reaction, but she melted into me willingly, and I felt her tremble.

Or maybe that was me. A quaver of realization. The devil was right. I was going to finish this book, come hell or high water. Literally.

Wherein Kiki and I Cope

Together, we finished off two bottles of middling wine and several shots'-worth of excellent whiskey. At some point, Kiki handed me some smallish pills and told me to chase them with the whiskey. I asked what they were.

"Don't worry about that."

I didn't. I had enough to worry about.

Roughly twenty minutes after taking the pills, I wasn't so worried any more. The whole thing seemed funny all of a sudden. I couldn't stop giggling, which seemed inappropriate, given the circumstances, but I still couldn't stop. Kiki didn't mind. She lounged against me in bed, where we'd spilled some wine and whiskey, but it didn't matter -- Kiki had assistants and maids and cleaning people to take care of such things.

Nothing mattered.

We were giants.

"We're giants," I told her.

"We are," she said, and licked my shoulder.

Some new, alien variety of warm, fluid energy suffused my entire body. Where Kiki licked me, it went hotter, more intense. I felt as though all of my movements were in slow-motion, but that was all right. Even though my mind was moving at its usual speed, it was distracted by the pattern of slats on the A/C vent in the ceiling, by the twist of the sheet around my ankle, by the slight electrical buzz in the air. I had never noticed it before. Was it always there?

Everywhere Fi touched me, I was hot. When I touched her, the pads of my fingers went deliciously cool.

Wait. Not Fi. Kiki. I lifted my head, an effort that seemed almost infinite, and looked at her.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Why?" she asked, dreamily.

"Did I just call you Fi?"

"I don't know. I'm pretty high."

"Me, too."

"I bet if you came in my mouth, I would get even higher," she said, stroking my cock into hardness. I was harder than ever before in my life. Harder than a teenager in the morning. I was a rod of titanium.

Languidly, she made her way down the bed, never releasing me, for all the world appearing to pull herself along with my cock like a mountain climber with an ice screw.

"Hello," she murmured, speaking directly to my cock. "Hi, there. I'm Kiki." She placed a quick kiss on the head, a kiss I felt all through my body. Everything was shimmering and shivering. "I'm going to eat you up," she said. She slid me into her mouth and took me more deeply than ever before, her nose almost touching my pubic bone.

She gagged and pulled away. The room started spinning, in the best way possible. My body had faded away, all its nerves and sensations funneling away into my cock, which seemed to coruscate with sparks of delight.

Kiki took me in her mouth again, tried again to deep-throat me. Gagged again and pulled back.

"Careful," I whispered. I had more to say. That I meant "careful" she not choke herself. That she didn't have to deep-throat me. And more. But I couldn't speak.

"I need it," she said, and her voice was clogged and I looked down and as she took me in her mouth for the third time, I saw tears in her eyes. She widened her mouth into a painful O, cords on her neck standing out as she tried to devour all of me, take me deep, deep. Gagging again, coughing as she pulled off of me.

"Don't hurt yourself," I managed to say through the haze.

She gazed up at me, her eyes clouded with tears, her cheeks smeared with them, my cock in one hand and poised at her lips, simultaneously the sexiest and most devastated thing I've ever seen. "I need it. I need you. All of you. In me. I'm empty, Randall. Hollow. And you're not. Not yet."

She climbed up me, my cock dragging along her body with exquisite bumps of pleasure, and kissed me, hard, insistent. Angry, almost. I kissed back, brutal, hands roaming, squeezing her ass hard enough to leave bruises. She ground atop me, squirming, squealing into my tongue as she rode through an orgasm, then pulled partly away, gasping.

"I want to fuck you in the ass," I told her.

"You can't do that," she said, her lusting eyes belying her words.

I spun her over on her stomach with an animal ferocity and strength I didn't know I possessed. "Really?"

"You can't," she said.

I pushed into her with near-impossible slowness. "Tell me I can't again," I commanded.

"You can't," she groaned.

"Can't what?"

"You can't fuck my ass," she gasped as I fucked her ass with joyous abandon.

Wherein I Waken to a Surprise

The next morning, I awoke on the kitchen floor. The refrigerator door was open and a carton of milk had spilled all around me, soaking me. I was naked and a platoon of demolition experts had wired my skull with explosives and began depressing their plungers in sequence, sending a ricochet of unbelievable pain through and around my head as I tried to stand.

My cock felt like someone had shredded it.

As I stood, the sunlight pouring through the kitchen window spiked my eyes. I groaned, then recoiled at the sound of my own rusty voice. I steadied myself against the kitchen counter. I didn't know what drugs I'd done last night, but they had freight-trained me brutally. I felt lucky to be alive one moment, then dearly wished for death the next.

The clock on the microwave told me that it was nearly seven o'clock. Kiki's assistant would be arriving soon, and I couldn't have her catching me naked. Not again. My feet made whitish milk footprints with every step I took. I considered cleaning up the spill, but the idea of bending down made my head throb. Walking was enough for now. I didn't even bother to close the fridge -- it was in the opposite direction I needed. Let her assistant handle it; that's what she was paid for.

Out in the main hall, lying on the bottom step of the massive staircase, was Kiki, naked and curled in a quietly trembling knot as she slept. On the floor nearby was a dildo I can only describe as frightfully large. I had a vague memory of using it on Kiki, of her yelling at me, "Make it hurt!"

The night was a wicked and blurry sequence of incrementally increasing sexual gambits. We'd tried to hurt each other, then soothe each other, then hurt again. We had been beyond insatiable.

"Kiki?" I shook her by the shoulder, wincing in pain at the motion. "Kiki, wake up." I tried to remember her assistant's name and blanked. "Your assistant will be here soon. You don't want her to see you like this."

"...first time..." Kiki mumbled, her eyes -- crusty and blood-shot -- opening as if she couldn't believe she was still alive.

"What's that?"

"Wouldn't be..." She cleared her throat. "Ah, fuck. Fuck. Fuck and fuck and fuck, Randall."

Despite the enormous pain it caused, I crouched down and put my arms around her as she struggled into a sitting position. "I'm sorry," I said.

"Fuck," she said again, tonelessly. "It just doesn't matter, does it?"

I had nothing to say to that. I started to comb the knots and tangles out of her hair with my fingers, when I noticed something on my wrist just above the back of my hand. At first I thought it was a smear of wine from last night, but when I looked more closely, I realized what it was.
 

There, right where I normally wore a wristwatch, was a small, delicate, perfect tattoo. It depicted a single tongue of flame behind what appeared to be a wrought-iron gate left ajar.