I signed my name under that. I felt a sense of triumph at having come up with something that would mean something to her. When I handed it back to her, she clutched it to her chest for a small, holy moment, as though absorbing something from deep inside. Then she flung her arms around me, to the delight of the crowd.
"Thank you," she said again, and I said "You're welcome," though perhaps "No, thank you" might have been more appropriate.
And then -- in an instant, like a character in a fairy tale -- she was gone, whisked away by her bodyguards, leaving only the memory of her hug.
And the unsettling emotions it produced.
Or rather, did not produce.
For when Lacey Simonson hugged me, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.
Wherein I Sign Books
Shortly thereafter, positioned at the desk on the platform, I began signing books, still internally in a roil over Lacey, or rather in a roil over not being in a roil over Lacey. If I'd had any doubts about the devil taking my soul (and I hadn't), they would have been answered by this.
Shouldn't I have felt something? She was responsible in no small way for my current fame and (hopefully) impending fortune. More to the point, she was a fellow human being who had suffered untold tortures and come through them as a result of -- she claimed -- the art that I made my life's work. She had given a wonderful little speech in my honor, had said heartfelt and passionate things about me and my work and yet, I felt as though I'd had no more emotional connection than with an ice cream sandwich.
I could not ponder long on this issue, though, as I suddenly had a new, more immediate issue: The book signing. My previous book signings had been similar to the old idiom about the nature of war: Long stretches of boredom punctuated by instances of sheer terror. In the past, my signings had been typically interminable hours of dull nothing (with the occasional passer-by asking, "You write books, huh?") rarely interrupted by a patron (usually a friend) asking to have a copy signed.
But this signing... This was truly worthy of the word "event."
I have no idea how many copies of the book I signed. No idea how many people actually stood on line and waited for me to scrawl my name across the title page. Sherrie stood next to me the whole time, diligently and with swift efficiency opening each new book to the title page to save me the effort. At first, it seemed an almost comical affectation on my part -- how difficult is it to open a book? -- but after the first fifty or so, I realized now much cumulative time and effort she was saving me.
When signing, I usually attempt to make my name somewhat legible (no one wants a book signed by R-squiggly line B-squiggly line), but my conscientious attention to detail quickly waned as the line grew longer and my hand grew more and more strained and soon I was signing a ragged uppercase R followed by a shaky line of indeterminate length and variance than could have simply been my first name or could have been first and surname. I had to forcibly remind myself to look up and make eye contact with each reader, to offer at least a grin and a "how are you?" to the strangers, of which there were many more than I ever could have hoped. Some strangers regarded me with that combination of eager familiarity and hopeful recognition that made me think I must have met them at some point in the past (or maybe even that very evening), so I was sure to smile extra-wide and say, "Good to see you!" feigning recognition and joy.
And then she was there. In my line. The last person I expected to see that night.
Gym Girl.
Decked out in a purple, spaghetti-strapped dress that must have been glued to her torso, her breasts crushed forward and together and up, practically leaping at me in invitation, her bare and sleek legs beckoning those of us -- meaning me -- who knew the delights between them. She put her copy of the book down before me -- Sherrie quickly flipped it to the appropriate page -- and said, leaning against the table, "It is so nice to meet you" in a voice that somehow invested the word "meet" with all manner of sybaritic undertones.
"Thanks for coming," I said, trying to keep the natural and understandable double-entendre from infiltrating my voice. I put my pen to the page and fortunately Sherrie just then said, "Spell your name, please?" as though I had neglected to ask, which I had, but not because I'd forgotten, rather because I already knew it.
"Abby," said Gym Girl, and spelled it for me. I pretended I'd never heard it before and flexed my sore hand and took my time giving her a proper and legible autograph.
"I've heard so much about his book," she said as I signed. "I just can't wait to read it. I've got all night. It's really great -- my boyfriend and my roommate are both out of town, so I have nothing to do. I can just curl up with this book all on my own."
"That's great," I managed to say.
"Good for you!" my publicist said, with something approaching wistful envy, making me wonder how long it had been since she'd been able to read a book for pleasure and/or how long since she'd been laid.
Aware of Manda standing not far away, I handed the book over to Gym Girl without allowing myself anything more than a momentary peek at her scrumptious cleavage. And then she moved aside -- swish of dress, toss of hips, Jesus -- and I was handed another book, another name, another scrawl.
Wherein I Fuck
Hours later, I stumbled into my apartment, drunk on booze and high on life (and probably buzzed from the energy shots I'd been surreptitiously slamming back in the bathroom in order to keep my blood moving). Manda was blindingly drunk as well, having positioned herself by the open bar. It was the best vantage point to follow Fi's movements through the crowd; she transitioned from sipping to drinking to outright guzzling glass after glass of Roger and Blake's good-ish chardonnay as the night wore on. We said nothing to each other as the door shut behind us, did not speak as our tongues found each other, as we fumbled for buttons, clasps, zippers, and buckles, kicking off shoes at the same time.
She spoke only to scream, "I love you, Randall!" in a voice I'd never heard before, and my heart tripped in panic, but her words had hardly been uttered before her hips intensified their rhythm, urging me on, and I obliged, slamming into her, slamming on her, coming so hard and so fast that I scarcely felt the orgasm and collapsed on top of her, twitching, breathing hard, our heartbeats off-syncopation. Our skin sweat-slick. Her breath in my ear with the throb of my own pulse.
She opened her mouth to speak -- I sensed it rather than saw it, my head resting between her breasts at the moment -- then said nothing. Was Fi ever that good? she wanted to ask, I somehow knew, and some part of me registered the psychological quirk that could lead to the equation:
CURRENT GIRLFRIEND + MEETING EX = MIND-BLOWING SEX
And then, as though turning a corner to a familiar street, I suddenly remembered--
I love you, Randall
--what she'd said. And what she really wanted to say right now.
Moments passed.
And still she said nothing. I rolled off of her and broke the silence with, "That was amazing," to which she smiled and giggled and said, "I think I'm still really drunk" before falling asleep, her hand clenched in mine.
I lay awake for no more than a half hour, the night's images flash-forwarding through my mind like TiVo in the hands of a spastic. My recent past was a stew of handshakes, low-cut dresses, glasses of wine pressed into my hand and thereafter delivered directly down my throat, women smirking that knowing smirk they have when they want you or want you to think they want you...
And Manda's orgasmic proclamation of love. What was I supposed to do with that?
I drifted off into a fitful sleep, dreaming that I was signing my name to a stack of thousands of books that kept trying to slam shut on me as I signed them. I had to sign faster and faster lest the books clamp down on my fingers and rip them off or mash them to pulp. My signature became more and more incoherent, a heart attack's EKG of lines and arcs as I furiously scribbled my name, desperate to finish just ahead of the hungry slap-slam of the book cover.
I woke up on my stomach, my
body weight pleasantly crushing a sensational stainless steel erection to the sheets. Still full dark outside. Manda sprawled next to me and I almost reached for her, but something made me roll silently away instead, slipping out of bed and reaching for my phone.
you home?
The response came almost as soon as the message was sent.
yes
I pulled on jeans and a shirt, grabbed my shoes and laced them up in the hallway. Crept down the stairs, miraculously not envisioning for a single instant how abjectly wrong this all was and how utterly it could backfire.
Outside my building, the devil sat at the wheel of an idling cab, a gray beret perched rakishly and a twinkle in his eye.
"Where to?" he asked. "As if I didn't know."
"This is a one-time thing," I told him.
"By my count," he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, "this is more like a two-time thing."
"I mean sneaking out like this. I'm not doing this again."
"Tonight is a special night," the devil admitted. I noticed with something like disconcerted amusement that the devil assiduously obeyed the traffic laws. "Not many nights you have three prime slam-pieces in the same room, all of them exuding fierce competition pheromones to try to out-seduce you."
My mouth turned down at the term "slam-pieces." "Do you have to talk like that? They're human beings, for God's sake. Not fuck-dolls."
"First of all," he said, glaring at me in the rearview mirror, "they're not human beings for you-know-who's sake. They're human beings for their own sake. Second of all, I'm just employing a convenient vernacular to express my opinion of your treatment of these ladies. I actually consider myself a feminist."
"Of course you do."
"Gloria Steinem is delightful. I spent a lot of time with her, back in the day. Who do you think gave her the idea to go undercover as a Playboy Bunny?"
"You did, of course."
"Of course."
"So...feminism is evil?"
He chuckled. "Dude. Please. Feminism is a redress for millennia of wrongs committed by one half of your species against the other."
"And you care about that because...?"
"Because it really fucks with you guys."
Fortunately, the devil knew a shortcut to Brooklyn Heights, and before I knew it, I was standing at Gym Girl's door and I didn't even hesitate before I knocked.
She answered the door in a transparent teddy, garter belt, strategically-ripped stockings, and absolutely no panties. She dragged me into her apartment and said, staring into my eyes with a troubling intensity, "You need to understand that I'm going to fuck you into oblivion and you can't stop me."
I didn't know what it would be like to be fucked into oblivion, but I decided right then and there that if it was going to happen to me, it might as well happen that night and with that woman. "I wouldn't dream of stopping you," I told her.
I had never been to Gym Girl's apartment before. She made certain that I became intimately familiar with the layout of the furniture -- bending over the back of the sofa to take me standing up. Shoving me into a chair to kneel between my legs and take my still-wet cock in her mouth. Sprawling on the throw rug, legs spread, knees bent, beckoning me to slide into my proper and reserved place. Thanks to my earlier dalliance with Manda, I possessed Viagra-like stamina and lasted through multiple bouts of fucking throughout the living room, a particularly imaginative and precarious five minutes on the kitchen table and, finally, a roaring explosive doggy-style finish on a bed in a bedroom that I later learned was actually Gym Girl's roommate's.
"It turns me on, fucking in someone else's bed," she murmured, her tone young and girlish and confessional. "I don't know why."
I wanted to ask if she'd ever done this before, despoiled her roommate's bed without her knowledge. Then wondered if she'd ever done it with her roommate's knowledge, perhaps with her roommate's willing participation. Because isn't that, after all, the dream (the clichéd dream, but the dream nonetheless) of most men?
"So that was your girlfriend," she said noncommittally, shattering the fantasy building in my mind and in my groin.
"Yeah." I pulled her to me. Planted a kiss on the top of her head. It felt good. Right. Maybe...
"And the other one was... Your ex? The crazy one?"
"Yep."
"I don't want you to think..." she drifted off for a moment, then, clearing her throat, continued. "I don't want you to think that I'm trying to pull you away from her or anything."
"Oh."
"It's just that... I don't plan on leaving James any time soon."
"I understand," I said, not understanding.
"We have a sort of open relationship," she explained, and I pondered exactly where on the spectrum of monogamy to outright profligate promiscuity a "sort of" open relationship placed her. And then I immediately wondered if I should have used a condom, the sort of question one tends to ask long after its answer is even remotely relevant.
"It's not like I make a habit of this," she said. "But he has his life and I have mine. And there are certain things I save for him. You understand."
Once again, I didn't precisely understand, though I confess my mind immediately commenced roaming the pleasure gardens of illicit sex, with brief though potent flashes of my short sexual history with Gym Girl. Given our own acrobatics, I wondered what on earth those "certain things" could be. There was a very, very short list of them and it shrank by one or two each time we joined genitals.
"You're awfully quiet," she said. "Are you upset? I would get that."
"I guess I wondered if it was just a one-time thing--"
"As I recall, it was more like a bunch of times," she said.
"Yeah. I know. I guess maybe... I guess maybe when I didn't hear from you, I figured it was over and then you showed up tonight..."
"I didn't hear from you, either," she pointed out. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," I said.
"Remember when you told me you sold your soul? Way back?"
The last thing I expected her to ask about. "Yeah."
"What the heck was that all about?"
I shrugged. "Just me being a writer."
"So, like, you meant it metaphorically?"
"Yeah."
"I thought maybe you meant... I thought you meant, like, selling out, you know? Like Down/Town would have a happy ending or something, unlike your other books."
"You've read my books?"
She grinned. "Of course I have."
"And you liked them?"
"I did. But you know, if you do 'sell out' or whatever... There's nothing wrong with a happy ending, Randy."
I'd never written a happy ending in my career. I wasn't sure I knew how. And now, without a soul, was it even possible?
"Do I seem different to you?" I asked her. "Compared to when we met at the gym, those first few weeks when we first started hanging out."
"Not really. Maybe a little more assertive."
"Assertive?"
"Assertive."
I bit my lip and told myself not to go on, but I couldn't help myself. "Not, like, bad or anything?"
She smiled at me. "Randall... We're all bad."
"Is that true?" I asked the woman cuckolding her boyfriend with another woman's boyfriend in her roommate's bed.
"It's the truth."
"The truth," I told her -- and it was a truth that I didn't know until I heard myself say it aloud -- "is that I sort of want to turn you over and rip off that nightie and fuck you again."
"You can't rip the nightie," she said in a tone of voice that told me that I could tear it to shreds.
I did.
Wherein I Attempt to Return
I was cock-sore and smelled like I'd been dipped in a combination of orange spice (Gym Girl's newest body lotion) and water, pyridine, squalene, urea, acetic acid, lactic acid, and more (Gym Girl's vaginal secretions). I half-expected the devil to be waiting for me in his cab when I emerged from her apartment bu
ilding coincident with the sun emerging along the Atlantic skyline, but instead there was only a homeless man pushing a grocery cart laden with plastic bags stretched sausage-casing-tight with bottles and cans, ambling up the sidewalk and whistling a tuneless rendition of something I eventually recognized as "Hit Me Baby, One More Time."
I made my way to the nearest subway stop, realized I'd left my wallet on my dresser -- four feet from a sleeping Manda -- and thumped my forehead against a grimy Brooklyn subway wall.
"Randy?" a voice asked. "Randy, that you?"
Lovely Rita had come up behind me, shuffling in shoes gone thin as socks.
"Sorry, Rita." I thrust my hands into my pockets as if to show how empty they were, how roomy. "Nothing on me. At all."
She frowned, an expression that served only to make her less lovely. "I ain't lookin' for a handout, Randy. Just surprised to see you here. So early." She squinted, uglifying herself further. "You lost?"
I actually found myself opening my mouth, ready to explain to Lovely Rita that I was not lost, but, rather stranded mere blocks from the site of my latest faithless liaison. And then immediately shut my mouth because...since when is any of that her business?
"Left my wallet at home," I managed at last, falling back on the humiliating (and stupid) truth.
Rita patted her breasts with an mien of such focused concentration that I thought perhaps she was working her way through the opening stages of a massive stroke. But a moment later, she groped inside her ratty shirt and produced a slightly bent MetroCard.
"Should be enough on here to swipe you in." She unbent the card and slid it through the turnstile. "Yep! Go on ahead."
I passed through the turnstile, numb with gratitude. I turned to thank her, but she just waggled her fingers in the air, grinned a partly-toothed grin, and said, "I be seein' you again!" before waddling off.
If I'd had money to give her, I would have. Not that it would have mattered. Charity to the contrary, I was going to hell when I died.
Was she a guardian angel? Sent by the devil to get me home? No idea. I raced for the subway.