"Hi, Dad," I said.
"How are you?" he asked.
"I'm good." I stood up. I always felt the need to pace when talking to my father. "Busy."
"Still writing books?"
I thumped my head lightly against the wall. "Yeah, Dad. Still writing books." I'd been writing professionally and exclusively for five years. I had sent my father hardcover editions of all of my books. Somehow he didn't get it.
"I was just calling to check in on you. See how you're doing."
"I'm good," I said again, circumnavigating my tiny apartment.
"Still not seeing that Fiona?"
"Right, Dad. Still not seeing Fiona. I'm seeing Manda now."
"That Fiona--" (for reasons I could never understand, Dad always called her "that Fiona") "--I don't mind telling you: She was one hot number. You did well there, I'll tell you."
"Uh...thanks?"
"I have to admit: I rubbed a few out thinking about her in that little denim skirt she wore that time I came out to visit."
"Actually, that's something you really don't have to admit, Dad."
I could almost hear his shrug. "I'm just saying. That Fiona was a hell of a little number."
"I'm aware."
"And you saw her naked!" He paused. "You did see her naked, right?"
I looked around the apartment. There on the kitchen counter was my big carving knife. It would look good buried in my skull right about now, I thought. The idea that both my father and I had masturbated to thoughts of my ex-girlfriend was just too much to handle. What was that even called? I don't think the Greeks had a tragedy for it.
"Dad, I'm not going to talk to you about seeing my girlfriend naked."
"Who asked you about that?" Dad roared, offended. "What kind of pervert do you think I am? She's not your girlfriend anymore. There's nothing wrong with talking about that. It's what men do. It's not like I'm asking about Amanda."
"Manda, Dad. And no, it's not what men do. Men do not describe their ex-girlfriends' bodies to their fathers so that their fathers can--" I couldn't believe I had to say it "--use them for wank-fodder."
"I don't know when you became such a Victorian," Dad complained. "You must get it from your mother."
"I must."
"Did you see the Canucks game?"
I had never in my entire life watched a professional hockey game. No, wait, I lie: I watched a game with my father one time when I was ten. He got us tickets to a Bruins game and we went together. It was supposed to be a bonding experience. I hated every last instant of it. Except there was one moment when a player's blood actually bounced on the ice. Apparently something to do with the temperature differential between freshly-shed blood and the cold rink surface. That image stuck in my head and I used it in my second book, where someone's hopes and fears are described as "bouncing in her chest like blood on hockey ice."
I confess to really liking that simile, as well as to being vaguely disappointed that no one ever points it out to me.
Other than that, I had never watched hockey and had absolutely no interest in it.
Which didn't stop my dad from asking -- every single time we spoke -- if I'd watched this game or another. I had learned from long, tortured experience that my answer was immaterial. If I lied and said I'd watched it, he would want to discuss it. And if -- as at that moment -- I said I hadn't seen it, he would...
"Oh, well, then let me catch you up..." And proceeded to spend the next infinity reliving the game for me, speaking of players and cities and teams and rules of which I had not the slightest understanding or interest, boring me to the point that I almost asked him to talk about jerking off to Fiona again. He finally wrapped up, saying, "...well, I guess I'll let you go now."
"OK, Dad."
"It's almost time for the news, and I have a special little bottle of something new waiting for the new anchorwoman."
"That's great, Dad. We'll talk again soon."
He hung up and I went into the bathroom to wash my face, wishing that I could somehow scrub all the way down to my brain, down to my soul (or whatever was in its place now).
Manda came by unannounced, a rarity in our relationship, but somehow -- despite the brain-bashing Dad had given me -- I was ready and hard for her, in fine form bed-wise.
I was thinking of Gym Girl the whole time.
Strange, I noticed in the afterglow, that I didn't feel guilty about it this time.
Manda mumbled sleepily and turned on her side. I stared at the ceiling for what couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds, considering my uncharacteristic lack of self-flagellation before dropping off into a blissful, perfect sleep.
Wherein I Make the Devil Happy
Never one for superstition -- my dalliances with the devil notwithstanding -- I still found myself the next morning in a state of steady sidewalk crack avoidance, lest I break my mother's back. Put more simply: I tried to remember everything I'd done the previous day so that I could replicate the day and -- hopefully -- the concomitant burst of literary fecundity.
Manda woke up before me, as usual, showering and sneaking out of the apartment before I'd managed to rouse myself. I lay awake in bed alone with a useless hard-on. Sometimes she stayed for a bout of morning glory, other times not. That day: not.
Which was fine by me. I had not begun the previous day inside Manda, so I would not start out this one that way, either. I crawled out of bed, considered -- briefly -- wearing the exact same clothes, like a baseball player who fears his streak will break if he changes his underwear or socks. Hygiene warred with superstitious caution for a moment, and hygiene won out, aided by the smell of my previous day's socks.
I headed for Construct, deliberately not stopping at the ATM so that -- as before -- I would be forced to buy more food than I needed with my credit card. The counterista was different today; I convinced myself that this wouldn't matter as I paid for my cup of coffee, three bottles of water, two bagels (no cream cheese), and walnut brownie (they had plain today, but I bought the walnut anyway).
My seat from the previous day was empty. I settled in. I opened the laptop.
Magic time.
A momentary, vertiginous panic settled around me like dew.
And then I shook it off and began typing.
"Going pretty well, huh?" the devil said.
I looked up. I thought mere moments had passed, but I had actually been writing for a good hour. Torn -- stop and talk? or keep going? -- I erred on the side of politeness.
"It's going really well," I told him. I suddenly became suspicious. "Is this your doing? Are you making it go so well?"
The devil chuckled. He broke apart the brownie and -- considerately -- began separating out the walnuts for himself. "No. Wish I could say it was. Believe me, considering all the evil shit I get blamed for -- most of which isn't even my fault -- it would be nice to get credit for something good for a change. But no. This is all you, brother."
I tapped some keys with satisfaction. "Why now? Why is it coming now?"
He waved a hand as though he smelled something foul. "How should I know? Despite your species' fondness for that loathsome phrase 'The devil made me do it,' I'm relatively powerless when it comes to you guys. I can affect your perceptions a bit. Make you see and hear things you wouldn't otherwise see or hear. But it's not like I can control you."
I snorted. "Right. Then why is history filled with examples of the devil tempting people into their own damnation?"
He leaned forward, genuinely angry for the first time since I'd met him. "Why? I'll tell you why. Because there's a huge fucking difference between me 'tempting' someone and me 'controlling' someone. Look it up in a fucking dictionary, Writer Man. You people will point the finger of blame anywhere but at yourselves. I've been a convenient target since Day One."
"Since the..." I couldn't believe I was actually about to say this. "Since the Garden of Eden, you mean?"
"Yeah."
In for a penny... "So that was a real place
? It really happened? Evolution is a lie?"
"Evolution is the complete truth." He popped a walnut in his mouth. "So is the Garden of Eden. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Surely you of all people understand the power of metaphor."
"I guess. So in that case, you are the source of all our woes. You were the serpent who made Eve eat the apple and--"
The devil roared with laughter, so loud that the other Laptop Warriors in Construct all turned around to glare at him with contempt. The devil ground his teeth and snapped to the nearest one, "Hey, Conner -- when are you going to tell your wife that you're gay?"
Conner blanched and folded up his laptop and fled to the outer room. Everyone else just stared.
"Anyone else want a dose of reality?" the devil asked, and all eyes returned to their screens.
"Is that guy really gay?"
"How should I know? He's confused. Feels way guilty about the way he looks at men, and I can smell guilt and confusion like a cat smells tuna, dude."
"I guess at this point, you're going to tell me that you invented gay people."
"Me? That is so homophobic of you. And heteronormative. Look, I'll cop to this much: If I had known how much misery, pain, condemnation, hypocrisy, and idiocy would be caused just because some of you people can't handle the idea of a dick in a man's mouth... I wish I'd invented gays. I had no idea it would be a problem at all. That was all the Old Man. You know what my problem is? My problem is that I give you people too much credit for being rational, compassionate creatures. I keep letting myself forget how craven and pathetic you really are."
"Thanks."
"Now where was I...?"
"You were laughing about the serpent in the Garden of Eden..."
"Oh! Oh, right." The devil shook his head. "Stop being so literal-minded. When the Old Man started narrating shit to Moses back in the day, I told him: 'Don't be so flowery and poetic. People are gonna take this shit literally.' And he was all, 'This is my Testament to my Creation. It requires a certain panache.'"
"God said 'panache?'"
"Well, yeah, only he said it in the Ineffable Language that preceded Babel. Because he's too fucking stuck-up to speak in the vernacular, which is why the sound of his voice fucking turned Moses into an old man before his time. Anyway, my point is this: You can't take that Biblical shit word-for-word. Take the serpent, just for starters. The serpent was a metaphor. I've never been a serpent in my life. I wouldn't even know how to turn into a serpent. And why in the world would I want to be a serpent?" He shuddered. "Gruesome little slithery, slimy fuckers. No, I wasn't a serpent, man. It was symbolic, me being a serpent. I just fucked her. That's what changed the world. Adam never tried anything but missionary and that just didn't do the trick for Eve. The first time I flipped her over and pounded her doggie-style, believe me, that opened her eyes. Believe me, that changed the world. She couldn't be satisfied with paradise after I showed her the pleasures of the flesh."
"Aren't you technically talking about my great-great-great-many-times grandmother?"
"Your great-great-great-many-times grandmother was hot. She was, by definition, the hottest woman in the world." He leaned back and gazed wistfully at the ceiling. "Best piece of ass I ever had. First piece of ass I ever had. I've spent millennia trying to replace that. Can't do it. Now that is what I call hell." He grinned at me. "But you know what I'm talking about, don't you?"
"What do you mean?" But I knew.
"You know." And with that, the devil did a new trick: His voice became Fiona's. "You finally found the perfect pussy, the perfect body, the perfect set of moans and groans you'd been looking for since the first time you yanked your crank back at age ten after seeing your first Victoria's Secret catalog. And now you've lost that and everything else is a poor substitute, isn't it, Randall?"
I don't know what bothered or shocked me more: His dead-on Fiona impression, that he knew exactly when I'd started masturbating, or that he was completely right.
"I really have a lot of work to do," I said, my voice hoarse.
He winked at me and scooped the remaining walnuts into his hand. "I know you do, baby," he said in Fiona's voice. "And I want you to keep working on that book." He stood to leave and his voice returned to normal. "It's gonna be huge..."
Wherein I Finally Do It
I made my way immediately to Construct's cramped, dank bathroom and splashed water on my face. The sound of Fi's voice... The devil's too-accurate assessment of my own strange psychic flaws and yearnings...
Most disturbing of all, though, was his parting shot, that my current work-in-progress would be "huge."
My stomach shook and vibrated like a washing machine agitator.
Of course, this is what I wanted. This is what I'd signed away my soul for. And yet for some reason, it hadn't felt real. Not when the words weren't flowing. Now the words wouldn't stop, and on top of that, the devil had sat across from me, eating walnuts and confirming our pact.
I caught myself in the cracked, tarnished mirror and realized I was smiling. Of course. The spin cycle in my gut? This wasn't caused by fear or anxiety. It was joy. Sheer, unadulterated joy, an emotion I'd not experienced in so long that I mistook it for something else, something dark. But I was happy. I was going to get what I wanted. A "huge" book.
Fucking-A.
I dried my face on the end of my shirt, Construct being out of towels in the bathroom (as per usual) and returned to my spot, where I gleefully, for the second day in a row, ejaculated more than ten thousand words onto the screen. By the time the sun had gone down, I was practically cackling in self-satisfaction. A part of me felt overwhelming compassion for the other keyboard-wretches, but a larger part felt disdain for them. Disdain for them and triumph for me.
On my way out, Lovely Rita offered her scary smile and a dirty, upturned and empty palm. I shrugged. "Sorry. Don't have anything today."
"That's OK," she said. "You're good for it."
That was true. I was. I felt only the slightest pang of guilt (wondering, briefly, if the devil could smell it, if he lurked nearby) and hustled homeward. On the way, I bumped into Gym Girl, coming out of Body by You. Today was my day to lift weights, her day to do pilates. We usually saw each other in the hall as I went from one weight room to another.
"Hey, partner!" she said brightly. "Missed you in there today."
And I missed your ass on the pilates mat, I thought. "Yeah, sorry about that. I was working."
"On the book?"
"Yeah."
"The one you couldn't work on before?" Her eyes lit up with a hope so selfless that it almost hurt.
"Yeah. Something just...clicked. Yesterday morning. I woke up and boom! It was happening."
"Our drinks the night before must have done it," she teased.
"Maybe it wasn't the drinks," I said. "Maybe it was the company." And immediately thought, Holy hell, what am I doing? There are ways for a man to say, "Maybe it was the company" that are not suggestive, flirtatious, or come-hither-ish. I had managed to avoid every single one of them. I was hitting on her, no question about it, and I hadn't even given it a second thought. I'd barely given it a first thought. I'd just done it. And why not? Was I married? Was I engaged? Had I even called Manda my girlfriend?
She shifted her gym bag on her shoulder and gazed at me levelly. "Maybe it was," she acknowledged. "Maybe I'm your Muse."
I didn't believe in Muses. But then again, until recently I hadn't believed in souls or the devil, either.
"In that case," I heard myself say, "I think I probably owe you dinner. Or at least a drink."
I had just asked Gym Girl out. There were no two ways about it. I had just asked her out on a date. She, with a boyfriend. Me, with a Manda.
"There's a place in Soho I've been dying to try," she said without the slightest pause. "Do you have time?"
"I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't have time," I said smoothly, perhaps more smoothly than at any other time in my entire life.
The n
ext thing I knew, we were on the F-train to Soho. She had her gym bag and I had my laptop bag and neither of were really dressed to go out, but we didn't care. The place she'd heard about in Soho turned out to be Asian fusion. The service was slow as a dying sloth, but we didn't care. The food took forever, but the drinks came lickety-split and soon we were having a drunken, terrific time.
"You know what?" I told her. "I just realized that I haven't left Brooklyn in, like, a month. So I really owe you for this."
"Oh, I get it," she said. "I do that, too. I'll look up and realize it's been forever since I've even left the neighborhood. It's so easy to just put down a taproot and stay, like, in those twelve square blocks. When I moved to Brooklyn, I told myself I wouldn't become one of those Brooklyn snobs, but, well... Here I am!"
"In Soho," I said drily, and she laughed and touched my arm for the third time that night, and I wondered about James and I didn't wonder about Manda.
By the time the food came, we were already giddily soused, and we fell on our meals in a ravenous, somehow sensuous melee, splitting dishes, holding forks out to each other, eating from each other's plates as though we'd been dining together for years. Once again, I insisted on picking up the check, and when I saw the triple digits there -- we'd had a lot to drink -- I heroically kept from expressing my surprise and instead simply tossed down my credit card as though I spent two hundred bucks on dinner and drinks all the time.
"We should do this again," Gym Girl said as we emerged into a perfectly cool July New York evening, that sort of cool that is perfect not merely for itself, but for its juxtaposition to the sticky heat of the earlier day. She was drunk. I was drunk. She was touching my arm, my shoulder, as though for balance. I offered to carry her gym bag, and she demurred and said that was sweet and squeezed my wrist.
We stood in the cool and in the awkward moment where we should really split off to our separate subway lines, and I was just about to suggest we split a cab back to Brooklyn when three clearly drunk college girls stumbled over to us.