Dating the Devil

by Lia Romeo

  So maybe the way I’m feeling now is human nature too. Lewis as the devil is an abstract idea, and even though I know—I’ve seen the evidence—that it’s true, it’s still hard to imagine. But the fact that he’s just been using me is concrete and immediate, and leaves a taste of disappointment that mingles with the sour taste of leftover vodka in my mouth. I’d suspected that someone like him wouldn’t really be interested in someone like me, and I’d been right. I should have known it all along, and part of me did, but I’d let myself suspend my disbelief because I wanted to so badly.

  My head is throbbing, and I get up, go into the bathroom and shake two Excedrin out of the bottle. I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water from the Brita, then take it back to the couch.

  Nat is still sleeping peacefully on the living room carpet, her face bathed in grey light and her arms behind her head. Maybe I ought to be more like she is. I’ve been trying so hard to find someone who actually wants to be with me, and that obviously isn’t working. But the city is full of guys—every bar, every restaurant, every street corner—and at least a few of them would probably be willing to have no-strings-attached sex. And maybe it would be fun. Nat certainly seems to think it is. At the very least, it would have to be more fun than sitting here crying over Lewis.

  I toss the Excedrin in the garbage, pour out the water, and pick up the bottle of vodka instead. I’m ready to toast my new resolve, but when I unscrew the cap, the smell makes me gag, so I screw it on again.

  Instead I go over to Nat, bend down and shake her shoulder. She opens her green eyes and blinks sleepily. “Nat, hey, Nat, wake up. We’re going out.”

  – 10 –

  WHEN I GO OUT with the intention of finding a man to have sex with, I’m surprised by how easy it is. Normally I go out with the intention of finding a man not to have sex with . . . a man that wants to have sex with me, a man that I can suggest will have sex with me eventually, but only after he spends a respectable amount of time on me first. It’s a complicated game, trying to seem willing and available, but not too available, trying to find the right combination of words and touches and kisses that will say yes, yes . . . but not yet. I don’t realize how exhausting it is until I stop playing it.

  Nat and I shower, put on some makeup (I go heavy on the blush and the undereye concealer, since the combination of a sleepless night and vodka for breakfast have left me with an unfortunate resemblance to a corpse), and get dressed. I go for a black miniskirt, a low cut red silk blouse, and my leopard print heels, since I figure that’s how a girl who’s looking for a one night stand ought to look. And Lewis’ necklace—I can’t bring myself to take it off. I’m telling myself that it’s because the sparkle brings out my eyes, and not because he gave it to me. Nat, of course, looks amazing in jeans and a dark green ruffled tank top.

  She offers to call up a photographer she knows (yes, in the Biblical sense) and have him bring a friend, but I don’t want a setup. I want to go out, hook a man, reel him in, and then toss him back . . . all on my own. So we decide to go to a speakeasy in the East Village called Death and Company. I’ve never been there before, but Nat says they have delicious cocktails and even more delicious men.

  Just as we’re getting ready to leave, Mel comes in, takes off her cardigan to reveal the lacy tank top underneath, switches her black work tote for a green silk clutch and her high black heels for a silver pair of even higher ones, and announces she’s coming with us. She doesn’t usually go out on week nights, but she says it was a long day at work and she deserves to have a little fun.

  We’re in the elevator when I realize I don’t have a purse—and furthermore, that I last saw my purse on Lewis’ arm in the lobby. But when we get off the elevator, the doorman beckons me over. “I have your purse, Miss O’Neill,” he says, “And I have this.”

  “This” is the bouquet of flowers Lewis was holding when I saw him—an enormous armful of tiger lilies and orchids, bursting out of purple tissue paper and tied with a yellow ribbon. The ribbon loops through a plain white envelope with a card inside. I open it.

  I can explain. Let me try. Please.

  I crumple up the card and throw it in the brass wastebasket next to the desk. “Are you married?” I ask the doorman.

  “Yes . . .” he says, confused.

  “Take these home and give them to your wife,” I tell him, and I grab my purse and head out the door, Mel and Nat laughing and clapping. My purse is a big black leather tote, not really right for the tramp-on-the-town look I’m going for, but going upstairs to switch it for something smaller would have ruined my exit.

  The bar is all dark wood and dim lighting, and even though it’s a Monday night, all of the tables and most of the bar stools are full. And just as Nat promised, several of them are full of cute guys, after-work types in wire-rimmed glasses and business suits, just-out-of-college types in polos and khakis, and hipster types in horn-rimmed glasses and skinny jeans.

  I usually go for the preppy boys, but tonight I’m equal-opportunity, so when a shaggy-haired hipster sits down on the barstool next to mine, I ask him what he recommends from the cocktail menu. It’s eight pages long, and full of drinks with ingredients like elderflower liqueur and appleroot bitters, so it’s a legitimate question.

  He tells me that if I like gin, then I ought to try the Frisco Fizz, which features fresh squeezed lime and grapefruit juices and something called Dragon Tears. I order one, and Nat says: “Make it three!” and waves her credit card at the bartender before I can even open my wallet. “I’m paying tonight,” she insists when I try to give her money. The drinks are fourteen dollars, so I don’t really try that hard.

  Hipster Boy’s turned back to his friends while Nat and I have been talking, but after I get my drink he turns back around and asks me: “Do you like it?”

  The drink is delicious, fizzy and refreshing. “It tastes like a wine cooler,” I tell him, “but in a really good way.”

  He laughs. “What’s your name?”

  “Catarina,” I tell him.

  “Hi, Catarina,” he says. “I’m Steve.”

  And then we’re off on a conversation about the merits of different wine coolers—he likes Seagrams, while I prefer Bartles & Jaymes. This turns into a story about his high school graduation party, where he drank eight and ended up peeing on the kitchen floor in front of his parents, grandparents, and five year old twin cousins. He’s bought me a second Frisco Fizz at this point, and so I’m tipsy enough to find this story endearing.

  Besides, I like his t-shirt. It’s pale blue and vintage-looking, and reads: “I ♥ Crack” in giant black letters across the front. He’s got shaggy brown rock star hair, black skinny jeans, and a striped wool scarf draped casually around his neck. He’s cute, or at least on one-and-a-half Frisco Fizzes he is.

  So when he asks me what I’m doing after this, I screw up my courage and tell him: “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it involves you, a bed, and a pair of handcuffs.”

  I’ve never said anything like this—anything even close to this—before. I have to admit I’m a little surprised that the heavens don’t open and strike me dead with a lightning bolt . . . or that he doesn’t burst out laughing.

  Instead he just blinks at me. “Um. Are you serious?”

  I lean forward on my barstool, giving him what I hope is a seductive look, my breasts almost spilling out of my low-cut red silk shirt. “I don’t know. You want to find out?”

  And he leans in and kisses me.

  It isn’t like kissing Lewis. It isn’t a kiss that makes me forget where I am. I’m very conscious that I’m in a bar, and it really isn’t the kind of bar where you kiss someone, and Mel and Nat are probably watching . . . and I’m vaguely wondering when we’ll be done kissing so we can move on to whatever happens next. It’s like kissing everyone else I’ve ever kissed but Lewis, basically.

  But I try to put my heart—or at least my tongue—into it, and after kissing for a minute he pulls back, grins, a
nd says, “I guess you’re serious.” I’ve never seen anyone signal for the check so fast.

  Outside, he tells me he lives in Greenpoint, so I give the cab driver my address. We make out in the back of the cab on the way there, and I can’t help but compare it to that first cab ride with Lewis back to his apartment. It doesn’t compare very well. I feel vague stirrings of desire, but nothing more, and by the time we pull up in front of my building I’m starting to think I’d rather just go to bed than go through with this. I have to work in the morning, after all.

  But he’s here, and I can’t very well send him away now . . . so I take his hand and lead him through the lobby to the elevator. The doorman raises his eyebrows and winks at me as we go by, and it’s almost enough to make me feel like the sexy siren I was in the bar again. I put a little extra swing in my hips, conscious of Hipster Boy’s eyes on my tight black skirt as he follows behind me.

  “I kind of live in a closet,” I warn him as I unlock my apartment door.

  “That’s cool,” he says. “I kind of live in a warehouse. I’m a photographer.” He says it as if living in a warehouse and being a photographer naturally go hand in hand. “What do you do?” he asks.

  I don’t feel like talking about work, since that will just remind me that I have to be there in less than eight hours. So instead I pull him into the dark entryway of my apartment and kiss him. “This,” I tell him.

  “You do this a lot?”

  “Every night,” I lie.

  “Really?” he says. “I’m surprised. You don’t look like the type.”

  “What do you mean?” I protest. “I’m wearing leopard print heels!”

  “I know,” he says, “and they’re hot. But it’s not the heels. It’s your face.”

  “What’s wrong with my face?”

  “Nothing!” he says. “It looks—I don’t know. It looks sweet. Innocent.”

  “I’m not sweet and innocent,” I tell him, disappointed. Maybe with practice I’ll be able to do a more credible tramp impression. I lean in and start kissing him again, and, still kissing, we stumble into the closet.

  Almost immediately he bumps into the bed. “Ow!” he says, and I quickly switch the lamp on.

  “Sorry!” I tell him, as he sits down on the edge of the bed and starts rubbing his shin. I sit down next to him. “I told you it was small.”

  “That’s okay,” he says, looking directly at me. “It’s beautiful.” His voice is husky with desire, and the sound of it is almost enough to make me forget about Lewis for a minute. “Take off your shirt.”

  I unzip the side zipper on my red silk shirt, and pull it over my head. I’m wearing a bright green lacy bra underneath it, and he raises his eyebrows in appreciation.

  “You too,” I tell him, and he unwinds the striped scarf from around his neck and peels his t-shirt over his head. Stripped of his hipster uniform, he looks skinny and pale and very exposed, like a snail without its shell. I suddenly wonder if he’s even as old as I am. And if he does this sort of thing often. And if he sits in his apartment and looks out the window and gets scared of how big the world is sometimes. I switch the lamp off.

  “Come here,” he says from the darkness, and I grope my way back to the bed and across it until my hands, and then my lips, meet his. We start to kiss again, and we don’t stop this time—except for him to rummage through his wallet and pull out a condom. We kiss, and then we touch, and then we take off the rest of each other’s clothes, and then we have sex, and it’s not like sex with Lewis—it’s nothing like sex with Lewis—but it’s better than being all by myself in the dark.

  Afterwards he pulls me in close and cuddles awkwardly for a moment. I pull away before he does, grope through the clothes on my clothes rack until I find a t-shirt, and pull it over my head.

  “I guess I should get dressed too,” he says reluctantly.

  “You probably should,” I tell him. “Unless you feel like going back to Greenpoint naked.”

  “Greenpoint,” he says, and sighs theatrically. “It’s gonna take me so long to get home.” I’m not sure what to say to this, so I don’t say anything. “I’m so tired. I could just go to sleep right here,” he continues.

  “Um,” I say. “I have to work in the morning. And I can’t really sleep well with anyone else there.”

  This is a line that Nat uses on a regular basis. Coming from me, it’s a lie, of course. I love sleeping with someone else there. I love rolling over in the curve of someone’s arm, feeling the warmth of someone’s skin, feeling safe. Just . . . not with him.

  He sighs again, gets up and pulls on his jeans and his t-shirt. “Well,” he says. “Can I get your phone number?”

  I make up a string of numbers, and he punches them into his phone. “Do you spell your name with a C or a K?” he asks me.

  A C or a K? What? And then I remember I’d told him my name was Catarina. “Um. C?”

  “Cool. Well. How about I give you a call sometime this week?”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “That’d be great.”

  He leans down and gives me a peck, then retrieves his striped scarf from the floor and wraps it around his neck. I walk him to the door, open it, and keep a smile on my face until I shut it behind him.

  After he’s gone, I fish my phone out of my purse, set my alarm for eight a.m., then fall back into bed, still wearing the t-shirt, not even bothering to wash my face. I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep immediately.

  – 11 –

  I WAKE UP tired the next morning, but I’ve gotten used to waking up tired, my nocturnal activities with Lewis having seriously cut into my sleep time the past few weeks. After a shower, a bowl of corn flakes, and a cup of coffee I’m feeling almost normal. As I’m finishing up the coffee, Mel staggers in, still in her bathrobe, her usually sleek blonde hair snarled in tangles around her face.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I greet her. She’s usually gone before I’m even awake.

  “I was supposed to be at work at seven,” she mumbles. “Coffee?” I gesture towards the pot, still half full, and she pours herself a mug.

  “So how was the rest of your night?” I ask her.

  Mel rubs her eyes. “I have no idea,” she says. “I had six—no, seven of those cocktails?”

  Given that Mel weighs about a hundred pounds, I’m actually fairly impressed she’s even upright this morning. I want to ask her why she was drinking like that on a Monday night—she’s usually so responsible—but I can’t think of a way to do it without sounding critical, and I’m certainly in no position to criticize anyone right now.

  “How was yours?” she continues. “That guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?” She raises her eyebrows significantly.

  “It was . . . it was fun. Kind of.”

  And it had been. Kind of. At the very least, it had kept me from thinking about Lewis—or, okay, from thinking only about Lewis—for an entire evening.

  Mel runs a hand through her hair, causing the blonde tangles to stick up alarmingly in all directions. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the day at work,” she says. For Mel, calling in sick is not even an option. One of her coworkers was in the office the day after brain surgery.

  “Drink some water,” I tell her, “a lot of water.” I pour her a glass from the Brita and she drinks it down.

  “Okay,” she says, “I’m gonna go shower and make myself puke.”

  I look after her, worried. She really does look terrible. Then again, she runs marathons . . . she’s used to pain. I make a mental note to ask Nat whether she knows if anything’s wrong.

  After another cup of coffee, I head out the door to work. It’s one of those clear, brisk October days that makes you feel like raking leaves or going for a long run . . . not that I ever actually do either of those things. I’m thinking about last night . . . it didn’t make me feel bad, exactly, but it didn’t really make me feel any better either. It didn’t really make me feel anything.
And I don’t have any particular desire to do it again . . . with him, or with anyone else . . . well, except Lewis. I briefly fall into a reverie, imagining his hands on my . . . no. Not going to think about that.

  As I climb the stairs to the office, I try to ready myself for the disaster area Linda will have made of my desk. The desk is a mess, just as I was expecting—crumpled-up pieces of paper, empty file folders with their contents spread around my chair on the floor, and—inexplicably—something that bears a close resemblance to a hairball. I use one of the crumpled pieces of paper to drop the hairball gingerly into the trash, then set about restoring the file folders’ contents and placing them in alphabetical order back into the filing cabinet.

  After forty-five minutes, during which I’ve barely made a dent in the pile, Linda comes in, trailing scarf, papers, two different handbags, and a TJ Maxx shopping bag stuffed with the outfit she’s wearing to an industry function after work. “Hi, Luce,” she says. “Feeling better?” I assure her that I am.

  “I am so sorry about the mess,” she continues, “I just had to find the photos of the Kruger KleanAction—Parenting magazine wants to do a feature, isn’t that fabulous!” I assure her that it is.

  “Oh, and by the way,” she says, “there’s something on your desk.”

  Something on my desk?

  “A—I don’t know—a box,” she says. “It was there when I came in yesterday.”

  I plunge my hands into the pile of papers and dig through it until I feel the edge of something hard. I pull it out. It’s a bright orange box, trimmed in brown, and tied with a brown ribbon. “Hermes—Paris” is printed on the ribbon in white letters.

  “This is . . . for me?” I ask Linda. “You sure it’s not for you?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she says. “It was on your desk.”

  I untie the ribbon and gently lift off the top of the box. Inside is the most beautiful silk scarf I’ve ever seen.