Unsoul'd (6 page)

It made a horribly disturbing sort of sense, the worst of all the possible kinds of sense.

"So... You're saying I should cheat with her?"

The devil shrugged. "You have free will for a reason, dude. I'm just saying that if you
do
decide to cheat--" he stared significantly at Gym Girl's ass over his shades "--don't be too hard on yourself or on her." He thought for a moment and then grinned in what I would have thought to be innocent delight if I didn't know who and what he was. "Well, go ahead and be
plenty
hard on her, if you get my drift."

I looked at her ass again and grinned despite myself. "Hey, by the way, when are you going to make my book a hit?"

But the treadmill next to me was empty.

I shrugged and picked up the pace, running as if I could eventually catch the beguiling ass twitching before me.

Wherein I Have a Smoothie

Gym Girl emerged, hair still slightly damp, from the women's locker room; her face lit up when she saw me, and I thought again of the devil's admonitions and encouragements. He would not be a very good devil, I supposed, if he couldn't read people. Sense their desires. Intuit and divine their wants and urges. Then again, he would also not be a very good devil if he told the truth about such things.

The devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes
, went the old saying. Or was it not just an old saying; was the saying itself actually Scripture? I couldn't remember.

Anyway, I suppose sometimes telling the God's honest truth could be the most evil thing one could do. The fact that the devil clearly wanted me to cheat on Manda with Gym Girl and wanted Gym Girl, coincidentally, to cheat on her boyfriend with me meant that I couldn't allow myself to do it. My resolve was firm.

But that didn't mean I couldn't say yes when she asked, "Still have time for a smoothie today?"

Moments later, we were sitting under an umbrella at 2 Your Health, she with a mango/strawberry/guava smoothie, me with banana/coconut. As she reached up to tie back her hair, her white peasant blouse molded to the contours of her breasts for a delicious, indelible moment. Somewhere, I figured, the devil was laughing.

"How are things with Manda?" she asked and then pointedly sucked on her straw.

And here, I have learned, is the difference between men and women. Never mind the Martian/Venusian dichotomy of Gray's conjecture. Never mind the stand-up comics' laments about the asking or not asking of directions. Never mind any of it.

The difference between men and women is this: When a man is in a relationship and considering cheating, he wants to talk about anything in the world
but
his relationship. When a woman is in a relationship and considering cheating, she will gladly talk about her relationship, his relationship, whatever.

"It's because," the devil said, pulling up a chair to join us, "she wants you to understand that she's in a relationship, but it's not ideal. So she's open to something better, but she's not going to make the first move. Rather, for her, this
is
the first move. It's about as aggressive as most women get. She's saying, 'I'm desirable, and here's my proof, so why not do something about it?'"

I nearly choked on my smoothie.

"Are you all right?" Gym Girl asked, concerned. She looked right through the devil, at what must have appeared to her as empty air. "Is there a bee or something?"

The devil now whipped off his shades and leaned back in his chair, appraising her openly, his eyes traveling from head to toe and back. "You have good taste; I'll give you that. And, yes, I've made it so she can't see or hear me, and if you keep gaping at me like a redneck seeing his first black guy in a suit, you're going to have her thinking you're prone to seizures. Which is not sexy."

I blinked as though chasing away a sudden daydream and gave Gym Girl my full attention and my biggest smile. "Sorry. I got distracted for a second."

"She asked how things were with Manda," the devil said helpfully.

"So, Manda," I segued smoothly. "Things are fine."
Fine
was a nice, neutral word. It implied that I was capable of being in a relationship and that I valued my relationship, but not that I was so desperately in love that I wouldn't be interested in trading up, should it become a possibility. "How about you guys?"

She sighed a little more elaborately than necessary, causing shifting shadows along and beneath her peasant blouse. "I don't know. I mean, we sleep together more nights than we don't--"

Something I didn't really need to know.

"--but I'm just not sure we're connecting, you know?"

"Translation:" said the devil, "'I am a woman who likes sex, and I'm looking for better. Feel free to test this.'"

"That's too bad," I said. "You mean, uh, connecting physically or emotionally or--"

"I don't know," she said, while the devil stared at me, gape-mouthed. "We still talk and we have fun together, but there are times when I just don't know."

"Are you
insane
?" the devil demanded. "Why are you asking her anything other than 'My place or yours?'"

"How long have you guys been together?" I asked.

"About ten months," she said. "So it's serious, I guess, but I don't know if it can get more serious or not, you know what I mean?"

I didn't, but I nodded anyway.

"I'm going to show you what you're missing," the devil said, outraged, and in that instant, Gym Girl's clothes became completely transparent.

Not invisible; transparent. So I could still make out the general outline, including, now, her bra, but I could see right through it all. I swallowed hard and nearly choked again.

"Are you all right?" she asked. I couldn't speak; I must have been the only one who could see through her clothes because she didn't react to the sudden debut of her nipples. "Do you need some water? I'm going to get you some water." And then she stood up and I saw that she trimmed her pubic hair into a slender, decorative strip.

She walked inside to the counter, the devil and me watching as she went.

"Look at that ass!" the devil exclaimed. "That ass is
made
for fucking and yet you, my friend, are not fucking it. And those tits! Bigger than Manda's, more firm than Fi's... This is a win-win for you."

"I can't," I managed. "I can't cheat on Manda." I lowered my voice and leaned back, careful not to let anyone notice me badgering the empty chair beside me. "It's
wrong.
"

"Oh, it's
wrong.
I get it. Of course. How silly of me. And in the entire history of the world, no one has ever done anything wrong. And those that have always get caught and punished."

"Stop it."

"Maybe the
wrong
thing is staying faithful to a woman you're not even sure you love--"

"What are you
doing
to me?"

"Tempting you, duh. It's in the job description."

"Well, stop it. I'm not going to let you goad me into making a move on her."

"Why not? Why the hell not? What is
wrong
with you?"

"I have morals," I hissed to him.

"Says the man who sold his soul to the devil."

He had me there. But, I realized, I had him, too. "Exactly! You already
have
my soul! What else could you possibly want from me?"

"I don't have it yet," the devil said, and then disappeared again before I could say anything more.

Wherein I Double-Check My Contract

I had already taken a shower at the gym, but when I got home from my smoothie-break with Gym Girl (with her clothing having become opaque again once the devil vanished, I found I could speak intelligently again), I took another one.

A cold one.

A very, very cold one.

Manda would probably come over again tonight; my ego and my sanity could not survive another Night of Flaccidity. I needed everything in operating order and I wasn't going to ruin a bout of actual sex with another bout of fantasy sex, no matter how well-stoked my imaginary fires by the image of Gym Girl through her clothes.

(I really -- I noted to myself -- needed to figure out her name one of these days. There had to be a way.)

I stepped frigid and sodden from the shower and toweled off. What, I wondered, had the devil meant when he said that he didn't have my soul "yet?" I had signed the contract. So why hadn't he taken my soul? What was holding him back?

After getting dressed, I dug around in the pile of paperwork on my desk until I found my copy of the contract. It hadn't changed at all:

CONTRACT

I, Randall Banner, do hereby sell my soul to the devil in exchange for a hit book.

Underneath, two scrawls: Mine and the devil's.

There wasn't a lot of room for maneuvering. No fine print. Not even any lines to read between. So why didn't the devil own my soul yet? What was I missing?

I flopped down on the bed and held the contract at arm's-length, staring at it more than actually reading it, willing answers to tumble out of the paper and fall into my eyes, but nothing changed.

The devil's signature was totally illegible, but I couldn't imagine that this would invalidate the contract. If that was the case, then no doctor alive could ever be pinned down, contractually. I tried to piece out the scrawl, but could only locate what I thought was an
F
and something that looked like a
B
.

Lucifer? Beelzebub? Neither one fit. Both fit. Maybe it was
all
of his names.

We are Legion.

Ugh.

I put the contract aside and turned on the TV for background noise, but all I could find was a one-hour "docu-special" about the disappearance of Lacey Simonson. It was too depressing to watch, but I felt guilty at the prospect of channel-surfing away to find something to laugh at.

Finally, I decided that I needed to get out of the apartment for a while, so I headed to Construct with my laptop. Lovely Rita waved to me and I gave her all the change in my pocket, then spent the next couple of hours at a corner table, pretending to write, but in reality updating my website, composing blog entries, and obsessively checking to see if anyone had posted new reviews of my books on Goodreads.

There were no new ones, but there was an old one from a few months back that I'd somehow missed. It was a one-star review for my debut novel,
Night/Light
. It rambled for a while about how bad the book was and ended thus:

"...and while it might be petty to complain about the title on top of everything else, I have to: Nowhere in the book is a nightlight ever even
mentioned
. Did Banner read his own book???"

I gripped the edge of the table and commanded myself not to log in and click "Comment" and write something like:

"Dear Reviewer: The real problem with this book is that you are clearly not smart enough to read it. The title isn't
Nightlight
. It's
Night/Light
, and if you'd actually paid attention to the words while you were sounding them out, you would have realized that it refers to the dual nature of the protagonist's relationship to oh hell just go fuck yourself."

Manfully, I resisted.

On the way out of Construct, I gave Lovely Rita the change I'd accumulated inside. She smiled and said, "Bless you!" which made me feel surly for some reason. Maybe because a kind, docile old homeless lady could bless me as much as she wanted, but the fact remained that I had sold my soul. Just because the devil hadn't claimed it yet didn't change anything. I was impervious to blessings.

I was damned.

By my own hand.

Wherein My Agent Takes Me to Lunch
 

Maudlin and unproductive days followed, leavened only by hellos to and from Gym Girl at the gym, a phone call from Tayvon, and a night with Manda during which my previously unhelpful member recalled his duty and performed his primary (and most enjoyable) function with aplomb and vigor.

My agent, Sam, took me to lunch on a Wednesday at his favorite restaurant, an exclusive little bistro in the west eighties. Sam is roughly 927 years old, give or take a couple of decades. I believe it's possible he was, in fact, the very first literary agent ever.

He spent our lunch barking into his Blackberry and texting on his iPhone, usually alternately, but sometimes simultaneously. I ordered a pretentiously overpriced hamburger with avocado and some kind of pesto mayonnaise, with a side of truffle fries. I rationalized it away by reminding myself that Sam was paying for it. As the burger arrived, I remembered that he deducted expenses from my royalty checks, so really, ultimately, wasn't
I
paying thirty bucks for a burger and fries?

I chewed. Well, they were good, at least.

"How's the new book coming along?" Sam asked, taking a momentary break from his electronic manipulations to stuff some ahi tuna salad into his mouth. I wondered briefly if I would end up paying for that, too.

"Well, fine," I answered automatically, wincing deep inside.
Untitled Manuscript
wasn't coming along at all. It had hardly begun. I had half of a first chapter and some scattered scenes, nothing more. "It's a little slow early on, but it's coming together." The best lies are leavened with truth.