by Avery Corman
After dinner he hailed a taxicab and they went to a brownstone on East Sixty-first Street between First and Second avenues. He led her up the outside steps, through a narrow entrance foyer into the living room, an immaculately designed modern space with high-style Italian furnishings, a stainless steel mantle for the fireplace, and a striking collection of framed Berenice Abbott photographs on the wall.
“This place is wonderful,” she said. He guided her past a functional kitchen—we don’t cook here—into the second room on the floor, a den/library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, many rare book bindings on display, and a few more pieces, sofa, chairs, lamps, direct from Milan. “It’s like something out of Architectural Digest.”
“Thank you.”
“Really, all this from lecturing and from one book?”
“I’ve always been interested in design. As for the building, it’s owned by a European corporation. They have the ground floor for offices. Nobody is ever there. I’d like to call them Eurotrash, but why trash a benign landlord.”
“Can I bring dates here to hang out?” she said.
He laughed, led her to the sofa, and went to the center bookcase. On the mantle was an unabridged dictionary-size volume he brought over to her and placed on a white marble coffee table.
“Some cognac, another wine?”
She already had two glasses of wine at dinner, her maximum before she fell asleep before their very eyes.
“I’m fine. A Diet Coke, if you have it.”
“I’ll see.
A Diet Coke. How sophisticated is that? She guessed that right about then he had her down as little more than a teenager.
The Satan encyclopedia contained more than a hundred glossy illustrations, renderings of Satan over the ages, and a detailed history of Satan and satanism, including first-person accounts of interactions with Satan.
“There’s a perverse elegance here,” she said. “It’s a beautiful book.”
“Satan’s part of religious thought, even if you don’t take him seriously.”
“I’m a modern woman. I drink Diet Cokes,” she said, looking to defuse her drink selection. He was drinking cognac, elegantly. “How many copies of this are there, do you think?”
“About three in the world.”
“You could probably sell it and buy your own brownstone.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He had moved from a chair opposite the sofa, sitting next to her as she turned pages of the book.
It was like falling. And fast. He was kissing her, velvet lips, his lips on her neck, his hands confident; and swiftly, as though he would not allow a breath of protest, he had her clothing off, carrying her, kissing her all the way, to a bedroom she never really saw, the lights were out. But for the digital indicator on a clock, the room was dark. His hands and tongue were all over her, above and below.
“You have to wear something,” she managed to murmur.
“No problem,” he said as he caressed her with hands and tongue until she could barely stand it, he was still not inside her, and he had virtually brought her to orgasm, and then he was there, and it was slow, deep penetration, nearly beyond endurance. They were usually done before her; Michael, in particular, not a long-distance runner; but this man seemed capable of being in control and waiting for her, and then in a gasp, it was there for her, and only then, after her, did she feel as though it was over for him.
In repose, they didn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say, she was usually in some kind of control, and here she was out of control, played by him, confidently, this is what I can do for you, as though he had given her a drug. That was it, practically drugged by the sex. He was aroused more quickly than anyone she had ever been with, and still he took his time, brought her along with his caresses to the nearly unbearable until she had to have him inside her and then, finally, after his patience, the driving penetration caused her to cry out.
She slept deeply and when she awoke she didn’t know for the moment where she was. To add to her disorientation she never really found her bearings the night before, she never saw the room in the light, and now it was morning and the space revealed itself, a large bedroom with more ultra-chic imported Italian furniture, the room silver and white, shimmering silver drapes on the windows, and most notably, no sexual partner in view. The clock on a nightstand next to the bed read 6:53, at least not embarrassingly late, and in the odd modesty of these rituals, she looked around for her undergarments before trying to find him, remembered he had taken her clothes off downstairs, and then saw a neat pile on a chair, all her belongings, as though housekeeping had come in and cleaned up after, and a note sitting on top of the little pile. “Had to make an early flight. Off to Mexico City. Will call. You’re great. Richard.” Seduced and abandoned, she said to herself. She went into the exquisitely appointed bathroom, used the facility, rubbed some of his toothpaste around her mouth, rinsed, dressed, and left, catching a glimpse of herself in a store window on a street corner waiting for a cab, noting that she looked like the classic girl in a black dress early in the morning, on her way home from a sleepover.
Nancy was standing in the kitchen eating a yogurt for breakfast when Ronnie entered the apartment.
“Yes?” Nancy said, noting the night-before outfit.
“I never got home from Balthazar.”
“I see. Was it an intellectually stimulating evening?” she said.
“Best sex I ever had in my life. It was like I was drugged. I could be his sex slave.”
“That’s great and not great.”
“Left me sleeping, with a note.”
“A love note?”
“A travel bulletin. Off to Mexico City. What did I do here?”
“It’s too soon to tell.”
Richard sent a dozen roses, which arrived that morning, serving to ameliorate the cold and impersonal nature of the leave-taking. The card said, “Sorry about the departure. Will catch up when I’m back in town.” She jotted down his phone number and address on leaving, but what was she going to do, call when she knew he wasn’t there, write him a letter? She had one good way of reaching him and that was by e-mail, her original method of contacting him, and she sent an e-mail after editing it as carefully as if she were working on an article:
Thank you for the flowers. A fascinating night on many levels. I don’t usually do what I did but I’m not sorry I did what I did, if that makes sense. What does Mexico City mean, what are you doing there, when will you he back?
She figured he arranged for the flowers before his plane departed. Allowing the travel time to Mexico City, even if he checked his e-mail, and she didn’t know if he did, it wouldn’t be until evening before she heard back from him. She heard nothing from him for six days and then an e-mail:
Have been doing research in back country. Be back in New York three weeks. Will call when I get there.
Not signed “best” or “love” or “regards” or “stay well” or anything cordial, just “will call when I get there.” What was research in the back country? Was he the Indiana Jones of satanic cults, she wondered. It would be a month since their night together before she saw him again, assuming he did call upon arriving.
New York magazine did not hold the lamentable soccer piece against her, the editor acknowledging it wasn’t a good fit. They accepted her proposal for another piece about the Public Art Fund, an organization that placed art and sculpture in public places in the city. Almost immediately she found herself in a social quandary. A sculptor, Tony Weston, working on a large aluminum piece that was going in at the edge of Central Park near the Plaza Hotel, turned out to be a nice-looking, curly-haired man in his thirties; sports shirt, chinos, sneakers; prototypical good-looking artist type, articulate, amusing. After Ronnie interviewed him, he asked her to join him for dinner in the park, an offer that couldn’t have been more pleasant; they would pick up sandwiches and wine and sit on the grass. She said no. Politely, but no. House rule—she and Nancy were against sleepin
g with more than one man at one time. But was she sleeping with Richard Smith, was she waiting to sleep with Richard Smith, what was he to her, what was she to him? Trying to elevate their night together to the promise of something else, “on spec,” as she defined it, on the chance that it might work out with Richard, she said no to this perfectly acceptable person.
“Am I crazy?” she asked Nancy in their dining area. “I have nothing going on with this Richard Smith and I turn down a possibility with someone else?”
“You don’t know that. Your Richard—”
“Not my Richard—”
“This Richard obviously put his sting into you. Play it out. See if he shows up. If not, it won’t be the first one-night fling in the history of the five boroughs.”
She liked working on the Art Fund piece, enjoyed the people at the organization and the artists, and was motivated to do a good job to compensate for her woeful previous endeavor. Work was in the forefront again, no scary stuff from the cult, that was receding, old news. Not hearing from Richard was integrated into the rest of her life; she would give him another few days, three exactly, and then she would call the sculptor, find out if he still had any interest in seeing her.
“Ronnie, it’s Richard. Richard Smith.”
That was telling for her. He had been intimate with every contour of her body and he had to throw in his last name.
“Yes, well, I’m Ronnie Delaney.”
“I really meant to call, but it’s been madness. There’s this cult, a breakaway from the Catholic Church in Mexico, and I needed to see what they were doing. And they’re elusive.”
“What is it, a month since that night?”
“Is it? Ronnie, I’m not coming back to New York as I thought I would. I’m in New Orleans. For a conference. And they gave me a really good deal. I can have a guest, free airfare, expenses. How would you like to come down for the weekend?”
“I don’t hear from you all this time and you just—emerge—and invite me to New Orleans for a weekend?”
“Ever been here? It’s a great city. The Ritz-Carlton, front-line hotel. What do you say?”
They had no house rule covering it. Someone you’ve already slept with, whom you’ve been hoping will call, but were only prepared to give another couple of days before writing him off, calls within the time allotted and invites you to New Orleans.
“I don’t hear from you, then it’s ‘jump on a plane and come see me.’ Richard, I have a life.”
“I respect that. There’s a panel Saturday. Come for that. You could go back Sunday. It’s an open ticket. Good jazz, good eating. Please, Ronnie. We’ll have a great time.”
The panel was at Tulane University, “Satan in the Modern Age,” featuring Richard, a Catholic priest, and a local journalist who covered religious matters. The moderator was a professor of comparative religion at the school. The event was being held in a lecture hall with about three hundred students, faculty, and members of the public in attendance. Ronnie occupied a seat in the rear, fascinated with the discussion, a serious exploration of the possible existence of Satan; the journalist opposed to the notion, the priest in favor, and Richard taking a position similar to the attitude in his book, making the arguments and ultimately coming out in favor of the existence of Satan in a reasoned, intelligent manner. He was smooth, deft, as confident on stage as he had been with her.
A student asked a question from the floor following the discussion. “It doesn’t help, does it, when you have the green-eyed-monster version of Satan? Not very persuasive for someone interested in reality, as I’d like to think I am.”
Richard replied, “You’re quite right. Images of Satan, the green eyes, the horns, the tail, they’re artists’ conceptions, evolved over time. They have no more validity than God being a man in a robe with a white beard. In the modern world we understand God can be a spirit.”
The journalist, an intense man in his forties, said, “These spirits, as you put it, Mr. Smith, God and Satan, do they float around?”
Richard countered, “I wouldn’t say ‘spirit’ in the movie sense, like something you see in some kind of shape or form. Let’s think of God as a force, and Satan as a counterforce. In the Bible, Lucifer—Satan, if you will—was a high-ranking angel.”
The moderator offered, “Many scholars and laypeople prefer to read the Bible as literature, not fact.”
Richard replied, “But people who do accept the Bible as a kind of truth do so with a leap of faith. You don’t need a leap of faith to recognize evil in history. What I ask us to consider here today is that some acts of evil might not be an intrinsic part of human nature, but the result of an outside force.”
“On that note, we’re going to bring the discussion to an end. …”
Ronnie smiled out of respect for the cool manner in which Richard comported himself. She didn’t believe a word he said, but thought he owned the stage.
Back in New York, Nancy and Bob were dining in. Bob had made the dinner, ironically, with a recipe Michael featured on his cooking show, roast pork and beans.
“I liked Michael,” Bob said. “Too bad it didn’t work out.”
“Ronnie and I were in Tower and they were featuring a new album and it was the very Rosetta Dupree. Ronnie sampled the album in the store and here’s the bad part, she sings great. A husky, great voice, and you could see Ronnie’s face fall. Plus she looked good on the album cover, really glamorous.”
“If that’s what he was looking for, glamorous. Ronnie’s so pretty. Maybe not glamorous, but smart and a terrific writer. Guys are bad news.”
“Am I supposed to say not all guys?”
“What’s she doing this weekend?”
“She’s in New Orleans with Richard Smith, who gave her a quote for her piece on the cult, and he took her out, and they got it on, and he disappeared on her for a while, business travel or something, and now he invited her down there.”
“Let’s Google him.”
They went to the computer and found the same material Ronnie originally located, the Web site on the book and a series of listings of lectures and articles on satanic cults.
“Looks like he’s smart. Not too much on him personally.”
“That seems to be the situation. All she knows, I think, is that he isn’t married, or so he says.”
Nancy was not going to get into the amazing-in-bed portion, which would lead to a discussion of just what is good in bed, and the next thing Bob would be circling around on how he stacked up and you didn’t go there.
“Let’s keep an eye out. I’m going to want to check this guy out if he’s a keeper,” Bob said.
“You know, it wasn’t like she was in a bad relationship with Michael. He was terrific for her, until the day he wasn’t.”
“Men are bad news.”
“Not all men, honey,” she says, on cue.
After the panel discussion, Ronnie met Richard in the lobby.
“That went very well for you.”
“Lively, wasn’t it?”
He did not suggest they go directly to the hotel for sex, which she would not have objected to; he offered a little walking tour of the pre-Katrina French Quarter, and they paused along the way to observe street performers on display for the tourist trade. He knew his way around the area and led them to a raffish bar for oysters and beer.
“Wonderful.”
“Just an appetizer. This is a great city. Never been here?”
“I’m not the world traveler you are. What is this cult you’ve been tracking down and how do you do that exactly?”
“A foundation grant. It’s a group that adapts Black Mass rituals out of the old satanic playbook combined with Mayan symbols.”
“And you do what?”
“Document it. Videos. Interviews.”
“You are a true believer, aren’t you? ‘Outside force.’ Really now.”
“Just throwing out ideas.”
“Throwing out ideas? Are you backing off?”
; “Only a little. There’s no way to prove anything without that leap of faith.”
“Ideologically you’re turning out to be a good-looking Randall Cummings. Not that Randall Cummings isn’t good-looking. A better-looking Randall Cummings.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. “Relax a little before dinner.”
She was ready.
The sex was an intermingling of what she remembered from the first time with him and fantasized since, leaving her searching for the word to describe the state of lovemaking with this man, deciding it was something out of a perfume ad, and the word she settled on was “ecstasy.”
They ate dinner at a small Creole restaurant he knew on a side street just off the French Quarter, a brilliant meal, seasoned with his observations about New Orleans, of the early days when the music of churches, spirituals, funeral marches, black brass bands came together in a new musical form that didn’t even have a name at first, and then it moved north to Chicago along with the migration of blacks northward, King Oliver looking out for the young Louis Armstrong, at first in New Orleans, then summoning him to play in the Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.
“Who are you? You do God and Satan and Louis Armstrong?”
“I tend to lecture. I apologize.”
“Where are you from originally?”
“I was born here. In New Orleans. I was an institutional child.”
“Your birth parents?”
“Haven’t a clue. The people who adopted me were working people. I wasn’t brought up to be religious. They weren’t into religion. My father was a carpenter, my mother a seamstress. They died in a fire, visiting her sister. I wasn’t there. I was sleeping over at a friend’s house.”
“That’s so sad. How old were you?”
“Ten. I went back into the system, was in four different foster homes through to the end of high school, then after high school I basically self-educated myself, worked at odd jobs, one was with a newspaper in Yankton and there was the cult nearby I wrote about. One thing led to another and I became this expert on satanism.”