That took me off-guard, so I had to digest his reply for a few seconds before saying, “Okay, then…how did we get here?”
“I brought us here.”
“You…brought…us here.”
He shrugged. “It’s a little thing I do.”
“You…do?”
Up until that moment I thought he had dark eyes, since his hair and brows were such a deep brown, but as his eyes glinted at me I suddenly realized they were a very dark blue. A corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “It’s because I’m the Devil.”
Again, I could only stand there and stare at him, feeling as if somehow I had been made the butt of a colossal joke. Finally I managed, “The what?”
He moved across the living room, which was decorated with museum-quality ’60s-vintage modern furniture, and paused at the bar that separated the kitchen and dining room. “Cosmo?”
“Yes,” I said automatically. Right then the only thing in the universe I thought I had a firm grasp on was that I needed a stiff drink.
As if by magic a cocktail shaker appeared on the bar before him; he busied himself with pouring a measure of Grey Goose vodka into it, followed by the necessary cranberry juice and Cointreau. He transferred the resulting concoction into a martini glass, then came back around the bar and handed the drink to me.
I looked at it with some suspicion, but need won out over caution. I took a sip, then another. It was good.
“So you’re the Devil,” I said, in what I hoped was an off-hand conversational tone. He didn’t look particularly crazy, but that didn’t mean much. The evening news was full of people saying, But he seemed like such a normal person....
“Yes,” he said.
“And so you’re visiting L.A.?” I asked, thinking, Just don’t make any sudden movements, and you’ll be fine.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said hastily. Nutcases hated having their psychoses thrown back at them.
“This isn’t evidence enough?” He gestured toward the oddly familiar room in which we stood.
I hesitated. While I wanted to point out that he could have drugged me and brought me here, or that he could be another element in some elaborate hallucination, I didn’t want to upset him, either. Just because I couldn’t see any sharp pointy objects in the vicinity didn’t mean he couldn’t get his hands on something if necessary.
Realizing I still held the Victoria’s Secret bag, I wadded it up and shoved it inside my purse. There were just so many blows to my dignity I could take in one evening, and every time his eyes went to the shopping bag I wondered if he were imagining what sorts of unmentionables I had hidden inside.
“All right,” I said at last. “If you’re really the Devil, why go for something so — so — ”
“So what?” he asked softly.
“So typical,” I replied. “I mean, wow, you’re the Devil, and now you’ve got the ultimate L.A. bachelor pad from the movies or whatever. Do you really think this sort of thing impresses women?”
Dead silence. I swallowed, and wondered where the front door was and whether I could get to it quickly enough before he decided my rudeness deserved a quick evisceration.
Then he threw back his head and laughed. It wasn’t crazy hysterical laughter — he just sounded like someone who’d heard a friend tell a particularly funny bar joke. “I begin to see what He meant,” he murmured.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” For the first time I noticed he held a martini of his own. I hadn’t seen him mix it, but maybe he had a second cocktail shaker hidden somewhere on the bar.
Or maybe he really is the Devil, I thought, and he just conjured it out of thin air...because he can.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” he asked. Lifting his glass, he took a swallow of his own drink. Then he winked at me.
And the scene changed again. Somehow I managed to retain enough presence of mind to maintain a death grip on my martini glass. I blinked, and we were no longer standing in that overly retro-cool living room. Instead, my surroundings reminded me of a Tuscan villa — dark wood floors with faded but still costly oriental rugs, antiques in simple woods that matched the floors. At one end of the chamber in which we stood, a fire burned softly in an enormous fireplace with a surround of glazed red tiles.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Italy?”
“Hancock Park.”
Hancock Park was an extremely upscale part of Los Angeles approximately five miles east of where I lived in the Fairfax District. A hell of a lot closer than Tuscany, that was for sure, but still there was no way we could have gotten there in the blink of an eye, especially with rush hour crawling toward seven o’clock on the streets outside.
“I think I need to sit down.” I spotted a couch a few yards away and stumbled over to it, feeling as if someone had smacked me upside the head a few times with a baseball bat.
“Good idea.” He followed me but remained standing while I sank down onto the sofa. I felt the warmth of down-filled cushions support my outraged muscles.
Not knowing what else to do, I sipped at my drink again. Devil or not, he made a hell of a Cosmo.
“Better?” he asked.
“Nice house,” I said cautiously. “Is it yours?”
“It is now.”
I hated it when people made me feel stupid. Frowning a little, I asked, “What does that mean?”
“I mean that it was on the market, but with after-holiday sales sluggish as they are, the realtor had despaired and dropped the price. Lo and behold! She’ll come into the office tomorrow and find the offers all signed and countersigned, and the owners paid with a cashier’s check for the full asking price.”
“You can do that?”
He smiled at me. If it had been anyone else, that sort of smile would have made my knees melt. As it was….
“I can do anything I want,” he replied.
“Anything?” I asked. It came out more as a squeak. So much for the whole dignity thing.
“Well, almost.” The smile faded slightly. “I do have a few rules I have to follow.”
I wondered who would set rules the Devil had to follow, came to the immediate conclusion that it had to be someone Very Important, and gulped. In what I hoped were airy tones I commented, “But obviously they don’t prevent you from making real estate deals.”
“No, not that.”
Feeling a little braver — after all, he might be the Devil, but he certainly hadn’t done anything threatening so far — I asked, “So why are you here? And what does any of this have to do with me?”
For a moment he didn’t say anything. He turned away from me slightly and appeared to watch the movement of the fire in the hearth. Finally he said, “I needed to ask you something.”
That sounded ominous. Maybe he was under his soul-collection quota for the month. With nervous fingers I tucked a strand of hair back behind one ear. “Um — what did you need to ask me?”
The blue eyes met mine. If he were just a regular guy I’d met on the street, I would have killed to hear the question he asked next.
“Would you have dinner with me?”
Again I found myself momentarily struck dumb. Possibly I wasn’t acquitting myself too well — I, who had always prided myself on being good with words if nothing else — but then again, how many people can handle a dinner invitation from the Devil without feeling just a little over-balanced?
Eventually, however, my vocal chords decided to function again. “Why?”
He definitely had a smile that made you think maybe Hell had gotten a bad rap all those years. “It’s your birthday,” he replied.
“Well, when you put it that way,” I said. Then I thought, Oh, the hell with it...literally. “Dinner sounds great.”
The smile deepened. “I thought you might say that.”
It was too late to back out now. I just smiled back at him and hoped I hadn’t done something really, really stupid.
For some rea
son I’d thought he would simply whisk me away to a restaurant by the same precipitous eye-blink method he’d used earlier. Instead, he instructed me to wait for him at a side entrance of the house under a porte-cochere (which was something I’d read about but had never actually seen in real life). Then he pulled up in a massive hunk of impressively gleaming metal.
“What is that?” I asked, staring at the car. I’d never seen anything like it before in my life.
“Bentley Arnage,” he replied, opening the passenger door for me.
Well, damn. I was sure my car-obsessed father would have a fit if he could see me riding around in something like this. He drove an AMG-tuned Mercedes S-class and thought it was just about the pinnacle of automotive perfection, but this behemoth made my father’s Mercedes look like a Yugo.
“Nice,” I said, sliding carefully onto the diamond-upholstered leather seat. “Being the Devil must pay well.”
“It has its perks.” He shut the door after I seated myself; it closed with the sort of soft, solid thunk that only a very, very expensive car can make.
I sat there, taking in the scent of finely burnished leather upholstery, as he made his way back over to the driver’s side and buckled himself in. Then I said, “So you do get around like a normal person.” Pausing, I took in the opulent interior and added, “At least like a normal oil sheik or something.”
He chuckled, then put the car in drive. The only reason I could tell we were moving was that I saw the manicured front yard slipping past us as he pulled out of the driveway. “Although people do tend to be notoriously unobservant, after a while too much inexplicable appearing and disappearing can get one noticed.” He leaned over and touched a knob on the dashboard; the delicate sound of a string quartet began to play in the background. “Besides, I like to drive.”
Who wouldn’t, with a car like that? I thought that even being stuck in traffic on the 405 Freeway could be made bearable by sitting in a mobile Ritz like this mammoth piece of machinery. The gas mileage must suck, I thought, then, as if that makes a difference for anyone who can afford a car like this.
“I thought we’d go to Campanile,” he went on, pulling out of the exclusive subdivision where his home was located and onto Beverly Boulevard. “If that’s all right with you.”
It was more than a little all right. Although the restaurant wasn’t that far from where I lived, it certainly wasn’t the sort of place where I could afford to eat on a whim, and none of the guys I’d dated had the means (or the taste, I had to admit) to take me someplace like that. “Sounds great,” I managed.
He nodded, then pulled into the left lane so he could turn south on La Brea. Everything in his manner suggested that he’d done this a hundred times before, and maybe he had. Who knew how long he’d been loitering in the Los Angeles area, driving around in his luxo-mobile and observing the doings of lesser mortals?
That led me to wonder exactly what he was doing here and, more importantly, what on earth he wanted with me. I wasn’t anyone special, that was for sure. The fate of the planet didn’t rest on my shoulders; I wasn’t an activist or a politician or anyone with any real influence. There were probably a hundred thousand other young women of my age and basic physical type in Southern California, so what led him to hone in on me?
I shot a quick sideways glance at him as he expertly maneuvered the enormous car through the intersection just as the light turned all the way to red. One of the things that irritated me the most about Los Angeles was its complete lack of dedicated left-hand turn signals; you invariably had to wait until the last few seconds of the yellow and then floor it and hope no one who was waiting for the green light in the other direction had a trigger foot. But the Bentley obviously had an engine to match its impressive sheet metal, and I barely felt the acceleration as the car turned south, heading toward the intersection with Wilshire and the restaurant itself.
He didn’t look like the Devil. Then again, who knows what the Devil is supposed to look like? No horns, no tail, no pitchfork here. Even though a part of my brain kept protesting this must be either an elaborate hoax or some sort of drug-induced hallucination, that interior voice was growing fainter and fainter. For one thing, I’d experienced those unbelievable jumps in scene, and there hadn’t been any “lost moments” or breaks in continuity. One minute I was at The Grove, and the next I was standing in that flying saucer of a house in the Hollywood Hills. That didn’t meet my approval, and bam! I was planted in the living room of a gracious Mediterranean-style mansion miles away.
So I decided to go with it. Okay, he was the Devil, or at least some sort of being with powers so advanced they might as well be supernatural. He hadn’t given me one word of explanation as to why he’d sought me out in particular. I knew he had to be after me for some reason, or else why would I recall seeing him at various points in my life? That if nothing else clinched it; the first time I’d seen him had been more than twenty years ago, and yet he still looked to be the same age, late thirties, maybe forty at the most. The best plastic surgeons on the planet couldn’t accomplish such a dramatic preservation. Besides, people who’ve had a lot of work done have a particular look about them. I lived in Los Angeles, cosmetic procedure capital of the planet, and believe me, I’d seen more than my share of facelifts and Botox injections. You could just tell, no matter how good the plastic surgeon might be.
I didn’t see any of those tells in this man’s face, however. Oh, he was good-looking, no doubt about that. Not picture-perfect — his nose was too long, his mouth on the thin side, and you could even quibble that his eyes were set a little too close together. He had a good set of laugh lines around his eyes, and his skin looked lightly browned from the sun. It didn’t have that smooth, almost burnished look you get when you’ve been dermabraded and injected to within an inch of your life.
Eternal youth, or at least eternal prime of life? It didn’t exist, no matter what the cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies wanted you to believe. The man who sat next to me was the only person I’d ever seen who had achieved it…which meant he probably wasn’t a man at all.
I think I shivered. He must have noticed, because he asked, “Are you cold? Do you want me to turn on the heater?”
Shaking my head, I replied, “No, I’m fine. Besides, we’re almost there, aren’t we?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” He pulled the car into the suicide lane and waited for an opening in traffic, then turned into the driveway to the restaurant’s parking lot. A valet hurried over, looking a little wide-eyed. I supposed even at an upscale place like Campanile they didn’t see a lot of Bentleys.
The Devil tossed the keys to the valet as if he were handing over a Hyundai, then came around the back of the car to help me out. I wasn’t used to such gallantry; Danny invariably pulled his truck into a space, got out, and was halfway to our destination without checking to see whether I was following or not. A little awkwardly, I put my hand in the Devil’s, wondering if I were going to notice a spark or an odd rush of heat. Nothing like that, though — his hand felt human enough, although warm compared to my cold fingers.
And then he let go of my hand and led me out of the parking lot and into the restaurant proper. It was an amazing space, old brick that boasted a two-story atrium in the center and cozier side rooms furnished with intimate-looking tables. Even on a Tuesday night the place was crowded, but no waiting for the Devil and his companion — we were whisked away almost immediately to a booth off in a corner where we could be safely shielded from the noisier, more open parts of the building.
The hostess handed us our menus and departed, and I opened mine, forcing myself not to look at the prices.
“Wine?” he asked me.
“Oh…sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure what wine would do on top of the Cosmo I’d hastily gulped down a few minutes earlier, but what the heck.
“I’m partial to reds, but that depends on what you’re ordering — ”
“I’m going to get the prime rib,” I said ha
stily before I lost my nerve. Normally I would scan a menu and then pick one of the two least expensive entrées so I wouldn’t be overburdening my date, but I didn’t think that sort of discretion was necessary here.
“Excellent.” He folded his menu shut; as if in answer, a waiter appeared from nowhere, notepad in hand. Without looking up, the Devil said, “A bottle of the Chateau Neuf-de-Pape. We’ll both be having the prime rib.” He smiled slightly. “Medium rare, correct, Christa?”
I could only nod mutely.
“And rare for me,” the Devil added.
“Very good.” The waiter (who had to be an out-of-work actor, considering the perfection of his hair and teeth) jotted a few things down on his pad, then asked, “Any salad or soup?”
“Caesar,” I said recklessly. Normally I avoided that stuff like the plague, since the dressing was loaded with calories, but how often do you have the Devil treating you to dinner on your birthday?
Another knowing smile. “For me as well.” He handed the waiter his menu, and I did the same.
Then one of those awkward little silences fell, the type that inevitably crop up on a first date when you’ve gotten the business of ordering out of the way and aren’t sure where to go next. Of course, was this really a first date, or a date at all? Calling something a first date seemed to imply there would be more to follow at some point, and that concept was a little too strange for me to deal with at this stage of the game.
We were saved from making conversation by the return of the waiter, who set a pair of oversized wine glasses on the table and then struggled a bit with the cork before finally extracting it intact. After this procedure, he had a look of triumph on his face that led me to wonder exactly how long he’d been working as a waiter.
But finally the wine was poured, and the Devil and I were left to sit there and look at one another. I didn’t know what he saw in my face — I was just glad that I’d had the presence of mind to touch up my makeup before leaving the office that afternoon.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “So did you have this all planned? Or do you just keep a standing reservation here in case you find some random female you want to take out to dinner?”
Sympathy for the Devil Page 3