It's Raining Men

by Jennifer Stevenson

  I sat and waited him out. Lido had said he was one-tenth Archie’s age. I tried to see that. He had the Mohawk and the ink and the pale, skinny, rocker-boy body of a young hipster. But the more I watched him, the less of a kid he seemed. His brown eyes had sad hound-dog pouches under them, his ears stuck out, and his ax-blade nose intensified his seen-it-all look.

  At length, he nodded. “I’ll take a chance on you.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “I was fourteen when my poppa cut my hair and took me out of the village, all the way to Pecz, to the job fair. He never knew I was gay. Neither did the woman he apprenticed me to.”

  “Apprenticed?”

  “Three hundred years ago that’s what you did with a useless kid who had no fucking common sense whatsoever.” He paused, but I hadn’t a clue how to react. “Hungary in that century wasn’t a friendly cultural climate for who I was. The demon I apprenticed to promised my father I wouldn’t be abused. She treated me well. I learned my trade, and I got paid and fed and educated and decent clothes and central heat and all the good stuff.”

  “But you don’t like women.”

  “I like women okay. I just don’t, like, like women.” He shrugged.

  I tried to wrap my head around the prospect of spending three hundred years lying about my sexuality. I couldn’t. “That must suck.”

  He made a “meh” face. “My arrangement with the guys means I can skate by on the minimum.”

  I frowned as a new question came to me. “How did Archie get to be a sex demon?”

  Lido looked at me through his long lashes.

  I pushed. “What can it hurt to tell me?”

  “You have no idea.” At my skeptical look, Lido turned his palm over on the table. “Either, let’s see, three options I think. No, four. One, he whammies you like all the others, and you forget anyway. Two, the decent-man spell works, and you forget, or else you just don’t care. Three, you get what you want, though I bet not, and it won’t matter. Four, you break his heart, and the shit hits the fan.”

  My heart thumped faster at the thought that Lido thought Archie might care enough about me to break his heart over me.

  And what did he mean, get what you want? I said, “It just occurred to me that a person doesn’t start out being a sex demon.”

  “Pest.” After another long stare, Lido shrugged. “Short version. He was a student in Greece. A slacker even then, but brilliant. His tutor was hugely ambitious. His tutor sold Archie’s designs for him, and then he started buying Archie’s designs and selling them as his own. Eventually he bought Archie’s name.”

  I frowned. “How could he do that? Archie wouldn’t like that.”

  “He liked it fine at the time. The tutor paid him a stipend, and Archie lived the slacker life, and every now and then he’d roll over in bed and design something fucking brilliant and roll back.” Lido shrugged. “Of course it was stupid, but he didn’t know then that he was gonna live forever.”

  “Fast-forward to that part,” I said, feeling sick.

  “This is that part.” Lido leaned forward. “The tutor signs a contract to design a temple in Syracuse dedicated to Aphrodite. He takes the money. He sends Archie the job. But Archie—”

  “Don’t tell me. He blows off the gig.”

  Lido bowed his head. “Exactly. The tutor ends up cobbling up something lame. The client is pissed. More importantly, Aphrodite is pissed. And when Aphrodite loses her temper—”

  A week ago, I would have said something like, But those gods weren’t real.

  Instead I said, “So Archie’s punishment was to be a sex demon.” I took in Lido’s warm, sweet, concerned face and I felt sorry for him all over again. “Why don’t you, I don’t know, try to reach Archie? You care about him.”

  “You are the most persistent fucking nuisance! I hope he knows what he’s getting into.” He threw a hand. “No, I don’t care. I hope you blindside him and take him down and hog-tie him to a bed and carry him off on your white horse to another world. Look, Chloe, he’s straight. I know I’m shit out of luck.”

  The more I looked him in the eye, the more I felt he was hiding something.

  Well, duh. If he’d been in the closet for three centuries and had kept that secret from his four horndog demon roommates, of course he was hiding stuff.

  Hiding the gay-sex-demon-in-the-closet thing, for starters.

  But more stuff.

  For one thing, he didn’t seem as upset as all that about his unrequited pash for Archie. What could be worse for a sex demon in the closet?

  I gave up. “What should I do?”

  “We need you to be nice to him.”

  I blinked. “That shouldn’t be hard.”

  “You’d be amazed.”

  There was quite an uproar in the lair when I got home from work Wednesday. As I climbed the stairs to the living area, I could hear the guys shouting in waves, urging and booing and hooting. What the—There was nothing on but golf at that hour.

  On the TV side of the kitchen-slash-TV-slash-game room, Lido was Wii boxing.

  With Chloe.

  Baz, Kama, and Veek were ranged around the Wii setup in their loungers. Kama was standing on the arm of his. Baz lay back at his ease with a beer and a bowl of pretzels. My lord sat on the edge of his seat, still wearing his white shirt with the cuffs rolled back from his tattooed forearms and his elbows on his knees, coaching Chloe. One of the many irritating things about Veek is that he looks better in a plain white dress shirt than I do. All except for Chloe and Lido, they were blowing weed using Baz’s hookah.

  Chloe had on a pair of Kama’s black silk boxers printed with gold pimpings, her own girlie bra, and one of my white beaters—the one Veek had mussed for me when he stomped me, the night I’d brought Chloe home.

  There was a lot more in that bra than I remembered.

  And I’d never gotten to see how lacy it was.

  Lido turned his head when I came in, and my lord leaned forward and yelled, “Allez!”

  Chloe sprang forward and sent a Wii straight right to Lido’s throat. On the screen, Lido choked and fell to his knees. In real life, he stood staring at me with his gloves hanging. She followed that with a series of windmill bops over the noggin that, while they did the real Lido no harm, looked amazing on the big gaming screen.

  Kama leaped in the air and did a backflip, hooting like an ape and making his Barcalounger bounce.

  Baz was looking at me.

  As silence fell, except for the buzzing of the damned gaming screen, which still wasn’t fixed, they all looked at me.

  Kama flushed guiltily and clicked off the game.

  Lido pulled Chloe’s Wii gloves off and slung them in the general direction of the wall.

  Veek got up and clapped Chloe on the shoulder. “Good work. But don’t wait so long next time. You had him ’alf a dozen times before you took your kill shot.”

  Baz just looked at me. Very deliberately, he opened his ugly trap, popped in a curly pretzel, and chomped it, grinning.

  Chloe was shaking out her hands. “That was fun! Did you see my straight right? I’d rather try it bare-knuckle, but Wii can’t handle it.”

  “I’m not letting you punch me with your bare hands,” Lido said, throwing his own gloves against the wall. “My fans would never forgive you if I showed up with my nose taped.”

  Chloe grinned at him, tossed her sweaty bangs out of her eyes, and rubbed herself down with a wad of paper towels Veek handed her. She said, “Gosh, can’t you get it to do more than those cheesy special effects Wii gives you? I thought you were magicians. When I punch a guy, I want to see blood.”

  Baz slurped his beer noisily and, when I glanced at him, he sent me a this-is-what-you’re-getting-into look.

  Kama picked up the remote again and began flicking through his vast store of video games. “Lido’s the software geek around here. We’re just trained dildos.”

  Veek snatched the remote out of his hand. “The politically corre
ct term is ‘pleasure appliances.’”

  “Want a round with me?” Chloe chirped, looking at me.

  My clothes tightened up all over. I was tongue-tied.

  She fluttered her eyelashes. “I wouldn’t dare ask you at the gym. You’d total me.”

  The room fell silent. All I could hear was the hum of the video screen and my own heart in my ears.

  Veek started up Grand Theft Auto.

  Baz reached out and took the remote from him. “Time for work, children.” He killed the game and set the remote on his lounger arm with annoyingly hyper-adult finality.

  Everybody groaned.

  I was so grateful to Baz, I nearly smiled at him.

  Baz got up, crossed to the kitchen side of the big room, and came back with a big black plastic garbage bag.

  “Is it that time of the month already?” Kama said disgustedly. He threw four empty beer cans and the remote into Baz’s bag.

  Chloe flopped down in my Barcalounger. “Is there a full beer anywhere?”

  Veek handed her a bottle from a six-pack of fancy microbrew at his feet.

  Lido put his potato chip bag into the garbage, fished out the remote, and restarted GTA. Kama grabbed the nearest joystick. He and Lido got into a wrestling match over it and tumbled to the floor.

  Baz finished making the rounds with his garbage bag, dropped it against the back door, and came back with his laptop. “Work, children.”

  I stood over Chloe, who was sprawled, ninety-percent legs, all over my Barcalounger. My fist tightened on my backpack strap. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” I said to her in an undertone.

  She smiled up at me. Her throat gleamed with sweat. “I have eight brothers.”

  I appropriated Kama’s lounger and slumped down beside her. “And this means what?”

  “They had their own lair in our barn. They would have loved this place. You have better toys. Although they had more porn.” She giggled. “I suppose that’s because you get more than they do.”

  I blinked. “We get more than anybody.”

  “They kept their eyes on the prize. You guys are probably too tired.”

  “Ouch,” Baz said, synching his laptop to the video array.

  “Harsh,” Veek agreed, laying his briefcase in his lap and flipping the catches. “But fair.”

  “Says the youngest guy in the room,” Kama said, shaking Lido off his neck with the joystick still clutched in both hands.

  Baz swiveled to kick the garbage bag behind our row of chairs.

  “Are you really the youngest?” Chloe twisted her neck around to look at Veek.

  “One hundred years only,” my lord said. With a gold Cross pen he pointed at Lido. “Three hundred.” He pointed at me. “Twenty-three hundred.” He pointed at Kama. “Four thousand, give or take a century, but he reincarnates from time to time, so ’ow can you tell?” With one Gucci-shod foot Veek nudged Baz’s Barcalounger over until it was lined up facing the video array with the rest of us. “Grandpère here claims to be nine thousand, but he lies.”

  I didn’t like how Chloe’s big eyes were drinking all this in. I put my hand over her wrist. “We all lie,” I warned her. “It’s the job.” My palm, touching her, tingled.

  This is all backward. She’s the one who’s supposed to be tingling.

  Baz launched the monthly report form on the video display. “Speaking of the job.” He wrapped his half-glasses on, one earpiece at a time, looking like a cross between a skanky albino drug dealer and a senior librarian.

  We groaned.

  Coolness, I thought. I get to watch sex demons filling out their paperwork!

  “It’s only once a month, and we get to keep the best gig in town,” Archie said to me.

  “Who’s first?” Baz said.

  Veek spoke up. “I met my quota last week.” Jeers met this announcement, and Baz made a cursor blink brightly on the far left video screen. I squinted. It showed an input form with about a jillion little blanks.

  Kama threw a crumpled beer can at the screen. “Your priest pimps for you, you make your quota. Big fucking whoop.”

  Veek smiled at him. “It is more efficient than running a copy machine for lawyers.”

  “We still,” Baz said patiently, “need input.”

  “I don’t get it,” I whispered to Archie. “If Veek doesn’t work for hell, why does he have a form in hell’s computer?”

  “He double-dips,” Archie said. “His lordship has a ghost account under a false Infernal Identification Number. He generously lets us count his scores in with ours. We do what it takes to inflate our bottom line.”

  I frowned. “I’m beginning to see why hell’s in trouble.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Baz said.

  The five of them settled into their Barcaloungers, except for Kama, who whined, “I can’t be creative without my lucky chair.”

  I should have offered to get out of Archie’s chair so Kama could have his, but I wanted to watch this. I just lay there, feeling like a cat on a pillow that knows darned well you want it to move, but it won’t budge.

  “Here,” Lido said, “I don’t need no steenking chair to be creative.” He got up and came to sit on the arm of my chair—on the side away from Archie. Kama appropriated his Barcalounger.

  Archie reached across and patted my hand. Possessive.

  I felt a happy little sigh bubble out of me and snuggled deeper into the Barcalounger.

  “Number one,” Baz said, in the voice of teacher bringing the kiddies back to the lesson.

  “Cheryl,” Lido said.

  I looked up at the screens. Slowly the letters C H E R Y L appeared in the boxes on the big form. “Well?” Baz said.

  Silence.

  “Grunebaum,” Kama said. The name appeared in the next box, letter by letter.

  Silence.

  “This sucks,” Kama said.

  “Redhead,” Lido said, in the bored, superior voice of teacher’s pet. “Works downtown as a health technician, which means she draws blood at a clinic for a living.”

  “Ooo,” Baz said, and typed it in.

  Silence.

  “God, you people are lame,” Lido said. “Fill it in yourselves. I can’t do everything for you.”

  “She’s forty. Bad teeth. Big butt. Great boobs.” This was from Archie. I looked at him sideways and withdrew my hand from his on the arm of the Barcalounger.

  He looked across at me. “Hey, it’s my job. You know that.”

  I wriggled up in my lounger so I could look along the line of loungers. “But you all sleep with all those women. Constantly.”

  “Yeah,” Kama said in a voice thick with satisfaction.

  “And you can’t be bothered to fill out these forms, like, the next day or something?”

  This got me five incredulous looks.

  “Who has the time?” Lido said.

  “Kills the mood,” Baz said.

  “That,” Archie said haughtily, “would be work.”

  “And this is an example of why hell is in such trouble,” Veek said in his deliberate voice. “You see, the Regional Office ’ave spent so much time studying their productivity levels and developing viral social media events, they ’ave turned their efforts inward. It is so much easier to ask themselves if they are doing the job correctly than…to do the job.” He gave me a gentlemanly smile.

  Kama interpreted. “They spend more time making themselves miserable than they do making people out in the field miserable.”

  Lido said to me, “All I can tell you is, if you’re sitting in the back of the limo with four naked groupies and a gram of cocaine, you don’t pull out a laptop and start taking their vitals.” He sent a glance of scorn around the Barcaloungers. “You guys are still the lamest things alive. Here.”

  He began rattling off Cheryl Grunebaum’s vital statistics, including cell phone number, address, and the sites of moles or marks on her skin.

  “Why do you give that?” I said.

&nb
sp; Archie answered me. “Used to be, witchfinders listed moles and marks on the body. Some brainiac down in the Regional Office decided it must be important. He’s never been in the field, of course.” He snorted. “All they think is, if the mortals do it, then we have to do it. So there’s a space on the form for moles and marks.”

  “I’m beginning to see why hell’s in trouble,” I said again.

  “Children,” Baz said.

  Everybody groaned.

  They finished the form by listing the unnatural acts they thought Cheryl Grunebaum, licensed health technician, would have performed if she had existed, and then everyone leaned forward and began chanting and shouting, thrusting their fists out.

  “One—two—three!” I saw they were playing paper scissors rock. They did a few rounds of this until Archie won, and his name was filled in on the form, and Baz said implacably, “Next, children.”

  “Archie always wins,” Kama grumbled.

  “He’s a mathematician,” the other three guys chorused.

  Archie relaxed beside me. I felt his hand touch mine again. A little tingle ran through me. Then he withdrew his hand.

  “Next,” Baz repeated, eternally patient.

  For the next two hours, they made up sexual encounters with imaginary women. Lido was by far the most inventive. I realized that this was an important contribution he made to the group, and now I knew exactly why he was so good at it. He was used to lying about his sex life. Their system allowed him to earn his keep while he avoided actually fucking women. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything else these guys had to do with their time. Or if, in fact…

  “How does hell pay you?” I said curiously, as they finished the erotic fantasy adventures of Ann Smith Nicole. They were seriously lame at names. “I mean, half of you have paying jobs.”

  “Quarterly electronic funds transfer,” Kama said, fishing for a beer. “It’s never enough.”

  “Too right,” Lido said. “Been thirty pieces of silver for, what, longer than I’ve been on board.”

  “Toys are expensive,” Archie said.

  “Price of silver keeps dropping,” Baz said.

  I looked at Baz, but he was staring at the computer screen, frowning slightly. “What does Baz do? What does Kama do? Anything?” I added, watching him where he lay in Lido’s Barcalounger.