“Can I see you again?”
“I don’t think so. I try not to date younger men.”
“I’m older than I look.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are, and you’re probably mature for your age, but even men my age aren’t mature enough, and that’s old enough to be president.”
I had wanted to win her over the modern way, by being charming and sweet and of course stunningly attractive, but there was no time for that. I touched her hand and stared into her eyes.
“Please.” I gazed past her retinas into her mind and searched until I found the right neuron to trigger. “I’d really like to see you again. I think we’d have a nice time together.”
Her face turned blank for a moment, then she blinked. “Um . . . okay.”
“What’s your phone number?” I could find it myself in her memory, but I didn’t want to poke around too much. She pulled her hand away.
“No, let’s just meet somewhere. Sunday. How about by the Reflecting Pool? One-thirty okay?”
“I’ll be there.” She turned to leave. “Hey,” I said, “you never told me your name.”
“If I decide to show up Sunday, I’ll tell you then.” She waved as she walked out the back exit.
A spurt of giggles shot from the front door behind me. I turned to see Beelzebub and Mephistopheles enter with three young women.
“Hey, bud,” said Beelzebub, “I know you were busy doing whatever, so I brought you your very own friend to keep you company. Say hi to Trish. Trish, this is Lou. He’s a little fucked in the head tonight, but I guarantee he’s worth the trouble.”
A short red-haired woman in a tight green sweater staggered forward. “Wow, you told me he was cute,” she said, “but I thought you meant like in a good-personality-type kinda way. Hi.”
“Hello,” I said.
“So, like, what’s your major?”
It didn’t usually matter that a woman was annoying, as long as she was weak-minded enough to bend to my will, which this one obviously was.
“Don’t take this personally,” I said to her, “but I don’t want you.”
“Huh?”
“Believe me, these two will occupy you more than you could ever imagine.” I turned to leave. Beelzebub caught my shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing, Lou? We went to all this trouble to find a girl for you.”
“I appreciate the thought, but I said I don’t want her, and I meant it.” I pulled my car keys from my pocket. “Here. Take the car. Don’t crash it. Good night.”
I left the bar and turned down the street toward home.
2
In Quo Totum Continetur
Unprecedented. Absolutely unprecedented.
I sat in my library, surrounded by stacks of books, hundreds of thousands, millions of words, centuries of human knowledge. On all sides of me stood walls of poetry, drama, astronomy, psychology, none of it worth the pulp on which it was written as far as helping me solve this mystery.
“Dammit!” I threw down my pen in disgust. It bounced off the top legal pad, which was filled beyond the margins with notes and equations. The midmorning sun trickled through the window, performing a slow waltz for the dust motes.
My mind would not let go of her song. Even as the rational portion of my consciousness focused on the written words, the faint, pulsing part of me continued to play the music and her voice in the background. At times it would get louder, and the pages would blur as I slipped into memory, then fantasy, playing the past off the future.
During one of these reveries, Beelzebub’s head appeared over a wall of books.
“Dude, you okay?”
“What?”
“I knocked,” he said, “but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“You didn’t knock, Beelzebub. You never knock.”
“Okay, but I was walking really loud.” He held up my keys and jangled them. “In your parking space and in one piece. Who says I can’t perform miracles, huh?” He dropped the keys on the table and pawed through a stack of books.
“Keats . . . Shakespeare . . . Kepler . . . Freud? What kind of research are you doing, Lou?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Beelzebub picked up one of the three legal pads filled with scribbles.
“After all this, you’re not sure yet? Have you been up all night in here?”
“Yes, why?”
“Man, you missed a great party. Trish took us back to her sorority house.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, you know that circus trick with all the clowns in the Volkswagen?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, they had this hot tub . . .”
“You must be exhausted.”
“All in a night’s work.” He fondled the cover of Antony and Cleopatra.
“Have you ever read that?” I said.
He snorted. “What do you think?”
“I think that before the advent of Sports Illustrated, you didn’t read anything but road signs.”
“Okay, just to prove to you that I’m not so stupid, I’ll read it right now.”
“Good. Have fun.”
He sat down, propped his feet on the table, and turned to page one. I moved the rolling ladder left of the fireplace, climbed it, and searched for the first volume of Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Within a minute, I heard pages flipping behind me. I turned to see Beelzebub looking for the last page before the appendices.
“They all die in the end,” I said.
“Oh. Oh, good.” He tossed the book back onto the pile. I resumed my search. He began whistling a recent dance club tune and drumming on the table to accompany himself.
“Do you want to help me or not?” I said.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Go get me a bagel. And some French roast coffee from that place across the street.”
“What am I, your intern?”
I glared at him. “Last night I let you have my car and an extra half a woman, and you won’t even get me a bagel?”
“Oh, yeah . . . sorry. You want fries with that?”
“Go.”
After he left, I climbed down the ladder and moved to the living room. If the answer to my dilemma lay not in words, perhaps it hid in music. I sat at the piano and played.
Ten minutes later, Beelzebub appeared next to me. My fingers rested for the first time since he’d left.
“What the hell was that?” he said.
“I don’t know.” I played a few more bars. “It just came to me.”
“It sounds weird. Different.”
“I know. It’s in the key of C. I’ve never written anything in the key of C before.” I continued, my fingers never approaching the black keys.
“Okay, Lou, step away from the piano now. You’re freaking me out.”
I closed the key cover and stared at my hands. “Me, too.”
3
Tantus Labor Non Sit Cassus
The sky was a sharp slate blue when I entered the Mall on Sunday afternoon. The feeble November sun pierced a flimsy layer of clouds.
I found her on a bench near the Lincoln Memorial end of the Reflecting Pool. She was reading the latest issue of the leftwing journal The Nation, her knees pulled up to provide both a shelf for the journal and a barrier against the breeze. I wanted to preserve this picture of her, absorbed and unselfconscious, so I waited before approaching her. Every half-minute or so she would tuck the same loose strand of black hair behind her left ear. I watched her until the need to have her eyes on me grew too strong to wait any longer.
“Now I’ve met both people in this town who still read that magazine,” I said.
She looked up. “I think the other one moved to a commune outside Poughkeepsie last week. Maybe he’ll send us a postcard.”
I returned her smile.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” She gestured to the bench. “Sit down?” I did. She studied my face and furrowed her brow. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you l
ook a lot older today than you did the other night.”
“When I go out at night I prefer to be filmed through gauze, like an aging movie star.” Actually, I had added a few tiny lines at the corners of my eyes and mouth, enough to place me plausibly on the edge of thirty.
“You should stick with reality. It looks good on you.” She raised the zipper of her jacket another inch. “But you probably hear that a lot.”
“Hear what a lot?”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Lou.” I reached for her hand. “Louis Carvalho. And you are?”
She hesitated, then grasped my hand. “Gianna. Gianna O’Keefe. Spelled like three syllables, pronounced like two.”
“Gianna. That’s an interesting name.”
“Yes. I’m part of a set.”
“How so?”
“I have three older brothers—Matthew, Marc, and Luke.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Yes, when I turned out to be a girl, my parents couldn’t decide what would be worse for me—feeling left out or feeling ridiculous. They chose ridiculous. Now we’re chronically Catholic and chronically cute. A fucking circus act.”
“At least you’re not bitter about it.”
“Right. Sorry.” Gianna rolled up her paper. “I get torqued up when I read about what those imbeciles on Capitol Hill are doing this week. But I probably haven’t known you long enough to talk politics.”
“You obviously haven’t lived in D.C. very long if you think two and a half minutes is too soon to talk politics.”
“I’ve lived here long enough. That’s the problem with this city. It either chews you up and spits you out, or it gets inside you and changes you until you’re as shallow as the rest of them. Either way you’re devoured.”
“Yes, but it’s the weekend now,” I took the paper from her hands, “and you know what weekends are for?”
“No, what?”
“For fattening up.”
“Excuse me?”
“So that when the bastards start to nibble away at you,” I said, “there’ll be more of you left over afterwards.”
Gianna took back her Nation. “Left over for what?”
“For whatever you like.”
“For whatever I like.” She placed the magazine inside her jacket and looked around. “I like ice cream. Let’s get some.”
As we meandered down the sidewalk, I stole glances at her face. Her intensity streamed from every pore. I had a sense that she was restraining this power somewhat; perhaps it had frightened others.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m still not wound down from the week. I suppose it’s a lost cause by this point.”
“It’s never too late to relax. And if today’s not enough, you’ll just have to take a vacation, starting now.”
“A vacation? That’s impossible.”
“It’s not,” I said. “Think about it. It is entirely possible that in two hours, we could be on a plane bound for Bermuda.”
She stopped. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m just saying that it’s possible, that the only barriers to doing it are the ones we choose to erect.”
“We just met.”
“Then we’ll just get ice cream.”
We walked on in silence. A few minutes later she said, “I kinda wish I’d said yes.”
“Yes to what?”
“To your Bermuda idea.”
“The offer stands.”
“No, it wouldn’t be the same,” she said. “A spontaneous proposition deserves a spontaneous response.”
“You gave me a spontaneous response when you said no.”
We reached the ice cream shop, which was empty except for a couple of coffee drinkers hunched over steaming Styrofoam cups.
“Let’s split something,” she said. “You pick two flavors. I like them all.”
I turned to the boy behind the counter.
“Except one,” Gianna added.
It was a test I could pass without the slightest peek into her mind.
“Give us two scoops of anything but vanilla,” I told the boy.
Gianna leaned against the freezer. “Very impressive.”
“I could tell you’re the anti-vanilla type.”
“Why not, with so many more interesting options?” she said. “I used to go out with a guy who always ordered vanilla. It wasn’t just ice cream. We’d go to the finest Italian restaurants in South Philly, and he’d order spaghetti and meatballs.”
“I can’t imagine that relationship lasted very long.”
“No, only about nine years.”
“Here you go, sir, chocolate peanut butter and pistachio.”
I looked at Gianna. “Now that’s a bowl of anti-vanilla.”
We sat outside at a tiny round white metal table, mostly out of the wind but in view of the huddled passersby who paused to stare at us before shivering and scurrying on. I allowed myself to feel the full force of the cold air, because sitting near Gianna made complete humanity and all its sensations alluring. Engrossed in her every gesture, I was forgetting who I was.
“Jesus loves you.”
A short, saggy-faced woman with huge glasses and a plaid scarf shoved a lime green flyer into Gianna’s reluctant hands. As she moved inside the ice cream shop, the woman nodded and repeated, “Jesus loves you.”
“Then how come he never calls?” Gianna said, only loudly enough for me to hear. “Sorry. Hope I didn’t offend you.”
“Your irreverence is refreshing,” I said.
“I spend all week watching every word I say, so my nastiness gets a little pent up.” She read the flyer. “‘Charles Darwin—the real father of Communism.’ No wonder these people don’t believe in evolution. It obviously hasn’t worked in their favor.” She crumpled the paper in her hands. “Sometimes religion can be so absurd, you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“What religion are you? I’m only asking because if I tell my mom we had sort of a date, she’ll want to know if you’re Catholic.”
“I’m not really any religion.”
“Are you an atheist?”
“Far from it. I believe in a supreme being. It’s just that the things I believe about him don’t fit into any religion that I can stomach.”
“Oh. That’s cool. At least you think about it. Lots of people inherit their religion and never even consider it.” Gianna scraped the bottom of the ice cream cup with her spoon. It squeaked, and she cringed. “I think it’d be better for people to be born with no religion at all and then later choose one, or more than one, that they feel most at home with.”
“You think you’d still want to be Catholic?”
“Definitely. It’s a very cool religion, as long as you can ignore the Pope.” She licked the back of her spoon. “I don’t think God much cares what religion anybody follows, as long as we’re basically good, which just about everyone is.”
“You’ve got pistachio ice cream in your hair.” I drew my fingers across the rogue strand and wiped it clean. She glanced in the direction of my hand.
“Yeah, well, you’ve got . . . you’ve got some on your . . .” Gianna touched my face near the corner of my nose. Her fingers were cold, and I had a sudden urge to put them in my mouth, and in other warm places.
She jerked her hand back and shivered. “I’m going back inside to get coffee. Want some?”
“Okay, I’ll—”
“No, you stay. I’ll take care of it.” She rushed into the shop without looking back.
“General, long time no see, sir.”
I turned to see Moloch, commander of my defeated army, dressed in his usual crisp fatigues with boots so shiny you could see your soul in them. He was saluting me.
“Moloch,” I said. “It’s been a while. At ease, please.” He maintained his position. Without standing, I returned his salute. It seemed to satisfy
him.
“Sir, we need to talk, if I may.” Moloch pulled a map from one of his thirty-two pockets and began to unfold it.
“Actually, Colonel, I’m in the middle of something here.”
“Yes, sir, but I thought you should know right away. I may have discovered a back door to Heaven.”
“What, another one?” I glanced back at the ice cream shop. Gianna was still in line.
“We’re positive this one’s real, sir. I’m still working on the numbers, but I think that with all the recent recruits, the stolen Russian fighter jets, and the element of surprise on our side, we could make another stab at taking back the Celestial City.”
“Right. Look, Moloch,” I patted his thick arm, “you keep working on that, but not a single movement without my permission.”
“Never, sir. We’ll speak again soon, I hope.”
“Certainly. Call my secretary and have her book us a couple of hours.”
“Will do, sir.” Moloch saluted me and retreated just as Gianna came out of the ice cream shop.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“Some Vietnam vet, just left the memorial. Wanted to educate me on the MIAs. They’re having a special ceremony Tuesday for Veterans Day.”
“Oh.” She handed me a cup of coffee. “Why did he salute you?”
“Habit, I guess. Are you feeling fatter yet?”
“Huh? Oh, that.” She blew on her coffee, then smiled and looked at me. “You want fat? I’ll take you to a place that floats in fat.”
We stood eye-to-eye on the escalator descending into the Metro station.
“So we’ve talked about politics and religion already,” she said. “Now for the icky stuff. What do you do?”
“I have my own firm, a combination think tank–consulting firm. We do government consulting, mainly in economics.”
She stepped back one escalator step and looked down at me. “Wait . . . you’re that Carvalho, of the Carvalho Group?”
“You’ve heard of us.”
“Are you kidding? You put out some pretty innovative stuff. It’s hard to figure out where you stand politically.”
“I like it that way. Gives us a wider potential client base.”
“Ah, a mercenary,” she said.
Requiem for the Devil Page 2