Infernal Affairs

by Jane Heller

  “Bah-ba-rah,” he murmured as he stroked my hair, then kissed me. On my temples, my eyes, my nose, my chin. Mitchell had never kissed me anywhere but on my mouth, and even then the kisses were tight, dry, passionless.

  Sensing that there was virtually no resistance on my part, David raised my arms and gently lifted my sweater over my head.

  “They’re so beautiful,” he whispered after removing my bra and fondling my breasts.

  “You should have seen them a couple of weeks ago,” I blurted out, remembering that, before my miraculous transformation, my boobs had been the size of mosquito bites.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “Never mind. Just go on with whatever you were doing,” I said.

  He smiled and began to unzip my slacks. I stepped out of them and let them drop to the floor along with the rest of my clothes. All that remained were my panties.

  “I’m so glad this is happening,” he said softly as he pulled them off me. “So glad I can be myself, don’t have to hide anymore.”

  “Hide? What do you mean?” I asked as his fingers caressed my body. It was difficult to think, impossible to concentrate on anything but his touch.

  “And now it’s my turn,” he said, ignoring my question.

  He placed my hands on his chest as a cue for me to remove his red polo shirt.

  I took a deep breath as I helped him lift the shirt over his head. Then I ran my fingers over his broad, hard, hairy chest. I was almost sorry that it was dark in the room, despite the candles. It would have been nice to see David in the light, all of him.

  In the morning, I told myself. You can see him tomorrow morning. When you wake up together.

  He reached down to remove his jeans and underwear. I moaned at the mere thought of his nakedness against my own.

  At last he pressed himself to me, clasping my body to his, and kissed me on the mouth. It was a soul-stirring kiss, and I felt my legs buckle from the force of it.

  I placed my hands on his upper back, stroking it, rubbing it, tickling it lightly with my fingernails. Then I worked my way downward, along the curve of his spine, to the small of his back.

  “Ummmm,” he murmured, as I massaged him. “That feels so good.”

  And then I moved my hands downward still, to his buttocks. I was about to massage them, too, when I felt something whip across my wrists.

  “Ouch!” I said. “What was that?”

  David didn’t say anything. His eyes remained closed and he continued to hold me tightly around the waist.

  I shrugged and picked up where I left off, placing my hands back on his rear.

  Then whatever had whipped across my wrists the first time did it again. But this time, thinking the whole thing must be yet another of my neurotic delusions, I kept my hands where they were.

  Seconds later, something swatted at me again.

  “Hey! That hurts!” I said, pulling my hands away from David’s butt.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “It goes with the territory, I’m afraid.”

  “What does?” I asked.

  “Touch it,” he said. “I’d like you to touch it.”

  It wasn’t exactly an answer to my question but I just assumed David was in the throes of passion and was, therefore, too aroused to respond appropriately.

  “I think you should touch it,” he said again.

  I gulped as I guessed he wanted me to touch his “throbbing manhood,” as they say in romance novels. I closed my eyes and reached down to grab hold of it. It turned out to be smaller than I’d expected, but then it was only the second one I’d ever touched, so I didn’t have much to go by.

  “No, Bah-ba-rah. Not there,” David said.

  He removed my hand.

  Obviously, my inexperience was showing. I had done the wrong thing, touched the wrong place the wrong way.

  “Tell me how you like—”

  I was about to ask for David’s guidance when he said, “No. I meant, touch this. So you’ll be more comfortable with it. So it won’t frighten you.”

  Frighten me? So what won’t frighten me?

  Before I could speak, David had taken my hand and put it around his back, near his buttocks again, on his tail.

  On his TAIL?

  The man had a TAIL?

  “OH MY GOD!” I screamed when I felt the long, thin appendage that whipped back and forth, just the way Pete’s did. “What the hell is going on?”

  I wrenched myself out of David’s grip, hurried over to the lamp beside the bed, and turned it on.

  In the harsh reality of that seventy-five-watt bulb, I saw what I had touched, saw who David Bettinger really was, and then I fainted. Dead away. Just keeled right over. According to him, I was out for ten whole minutes and when I came to and took another look at that tail, I passed out again.

  Well, what do you expect? It isn’t every day that a woman is about to have sex with a man who is “anatomically correct” only by Satanic standards.

  David was filled with remorse for scaring me. Totally apologetic. He had his tail between his legs—literally.

  “I thought you knew” was his explanation.

  “Knew what?” I demanded. “That you’re the devil?”

  So Althea Dicks was right, I thought suddenly, remembering her ravings at Charlotte’s last Monday morning meeting. She had insisted that the devil was alive and well and living in Banyan Beach, that he had moved to town to bring damnation on us all. But Althea was such a grouch, a grouch who was always grumbling that this one was the devil and that one was the devil. Nobody took her seriously. Until now. Now, I took her very seriously. Now, the devil himself was right there in front of me, a blond god in jeans and a red polo shirt. Not only was he living in our quaint little town, in one of our finest rental properties—he was one of my customers! A person to whom I’d just sold a house! A man who made incredible roast loin of lamb!

  Oh, why did it have to be David? I thought as I began to cry. I’d had such high hopes for us.

  “I just can’t believe you’re the devil,” I said, shaking my head at David.

  He shook his head back at me. “I’m not the devil,” he said. “Any more than you are.”

  “Any more than I am? What are you crazy?” I had put on my clothes by this time and was standing by the front door, ready to bolt.

  “Sit down, Bah-ba-rah. Please.” He reached out to touch my shoulder but I wouldn’t let him.

  “You keep away from me,” I warned, then grabbed an umbrella from the brass stand near the door and waved it at him. “You keep far away.”

  He raised his arms in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. I’ll keep away,” he said. “Only please sit down and let me talk to you. Just talk to you. We have so much to say to each other, have so much in common.”

  “So much in common? You’re out of your mind,” I shouted. “Look at me. I don’t have a goddamn tail, do I?”

  “No,” David conceded. “But females don’t get the tail. Not usually. They get the Brussels sprouts breath but not the tail.”

  “The Brussels sprouts breath?”

  I gasped and felt all the color drain out of my face.

  He nodded.

  “Sit down, Bah-ba-rah,” said David Bettinger, as he motioned toward the living room sofa. “I’ll make us some coffee, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  “I’m not hungry,” I said when David offered me a slice of the key lime pie he had made for our dessert. It looked smooth, velvety, perfect. Nauseatingly perfect, just like David. As he set it down on the coffee table, next to the two mugs of decaf, I felt sick to my stomach, sick with the image of him and his…tail.

  “Oh, please try it,” he urged, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened between us. “I used real key limes.”

  “I’ll alert the media,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll change your mind in a little while. When you’re feeling less hostile.”

>   “Hostile? I’m not hostile. I’m…I don’t know what I am,” I said. “I’m in shock, I guess. Why else would I be talking to you? A normal person would have gotten the hell out of here.”

  “But that’s the point, Barbara,” said David. “You and I aren’t ‘normal’ people. Not anymore. We’re darksiders now.”

  “Darksiders? Aren’t they a brand of boating shoe?”

  “No, those are Docksiders.”

  “Oh.”

  “Darksiders are people who have gone to the side of darkness, to the side of the force of darkness.”

  “Please. Give me a break, would you? Just cut the woo-woo stuff and tell me what you mean.”

  “All right, I’ll put it another way. Darksiders are people who come to a point in their lives when they’re desperate—so desperate they’re willing to do anything for a little happiness, even sell their souls.”

  “Sell their souls? To the highest bidder or what?”

  “To the devil, Barbara. Darksiders are people who’ve sold their souls to the devil.”

  “You can’t be suggesting that I would ever sell my soul.”

  He nodded.

  “But that’s absolutely ridiculous,” I said.

  “Why?” said David.

  “Because I’m not the type, that’s why. I admit I’ve never been a particularly religious person. I don’t belong to temple and I haven’t celebrated Passover since my parents died and I’m guilty of using the lord’s name in vain now and then. But I’m hardly what you’d call a devil worshiper. I don’t even eat deviled eggs.”

  David smiled. “Eggs aside, you were unhappy, weren’t you? Desperate even? Willing to do anything for some improvements in your career, your social life, your appearance? Before your transformation, that is?”

  “My transformation?”

  “Yes. You know, before you became blond and trim and projected a sexier image. Some people ask the devil to give them more intelligence. Others wish for a happier family life. Still others, like you and me, ask to be made more attractive, among other things.”

  “But how did you know that I used to be…I mean, I never told you anything about a transformation.”

  He smiled again. “There’s no point in playing coy, Barbara. I’ve undergone a similar transformation.” He paused to hand me a mug of coffee, which I declined. “You didn’t really think I came out of the womb looking like this, did you?”

  “You didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody’s born this handsome. Now, I’m so handsome it embarrasses me at times.”

  I stared at David. “You’re saying you didn’t always look like you do now?” I asked. “The hair? The face? The body?”

  He laughed ruefully. “Six months ago, I was short and fat and bald and you wouldn’t have paid the slightest bit of attention to me. Unless, of course, you needed braces on your teeth.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “Before my transformation I was an orthodontist, Barbara. In West Palm Beach.”

  “An orthodontist? But you said you were in the import/export business.”

  “I thought the import/export business sounded more glamorous than orthodontia,” he admitted. “More in keeping with my new persona.”

  I continued to stare at David and tried to picture this golden boy, this blond Adonis, this sophisticated world traveler, as a short, fat, bald man who regularly stuck his hands into the mouths of middle-class teenagers in an attempt to correct their overbites.

  “Was anything you told me about yourself true?” I asked, recalling our previous conversations.

  “Well, I did go through a bitter divorce,” said David. “My wife left me for the dentist I shared the office with.” His expression darkened. He seemed to grow angry at the mere mention of his ex and he paused to collect himself. “Her name is Priscilla,” he said finally, his tone full of vitriol.

  “How long were you and Priscilla married?” I asked.

  “No, no. Priscilla is the dentist I shared the office with. My ex-wife’s name is Valerie.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  And I was. It’s devastating enough to have your spouse leave you, but to have your spouse leave you for your business partner, who happens to be the same sex as your spouse, puts an additional sting on cuckoldom.

  “I was in terrible shape after I found out about the two of them,” David went on. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t work. I let my practice slide, my friends slip away. Before I knew it, I was broke and alone.”

  “Broke? This house doesn’t exactly rent for peanuts,” I pointed out. “And you seem to have enough money to buy the Nowak house. With cash.”

  “I’m not broke anymore,” said David. “Just like I’m no longer short and fat and bald. Thanks to the devil, I won the Florida lottery.” He smiled. “The jackpot was nineteen million, remember?”

  “Yeah, about four months ago,” I said. “Some guy down in Palm Beach won the whole—” I stopped. “That was you?”

  “Yup. I wanted to be handsome. The devil made me handsome. I wanted to be rich. The devil made me rich. Very rich.”

  I didn’t respond. I was too busy recalling how I had wanted to be blond and thin and now I was; how I had wanted to sell a house and break my slump and then I did; how everything I had wished for had come true. Well, not quite everything. I was possessed by the devil. The devil, for God’s sake.

  “As I was saying, I was broke and miserable and so lonely,” David said, picking up the tale of his transformation. “I didn’t want to live.”

  “You contemplated suicide?”

  “I contemplated contemplating suicide, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean all right.” Only a couple of weeks before, I had considered whether or not to consider suicide as a solution to my problems.

  “I told you we had a lot in common,” said David, reaching out to pat my hand.

  I yanked it away from him before he could make contact. I wasn’t ready to embrace him as a soul mate. Not with the image of that tail still burning a hole in my memory.

  “So go on with your story,” I said. “Get to the part where you became a…a ‘dark horse’ or whatever you called it.”

  “‘Darksider,’” he corrected me. “Well, what happened was that I had gone into a major depression. My career was down the drain, my marriage was over and my self-esteem was nil.”

  I can relate to that, I thought. David’s story was beginning to sound eerily familiar.

  “One night, after a few stiff drinks, I took a walk in a thunderstorm,” he went on. “It wasn’t the smartest thing I could have done, what with all the lightning, but I really didn’t care. I wound up on Flagler Drive and sat down on a bench overlooking the Intracoastal. I stared out at the water, numb to the heavy wind and rain, numb to the fact that I was soaking wet, numb to the fact that I was behaving bizarrely.”

  “Go on,” I said with growing dread. It was as if I were the one telling the story, as if David’s foray into the thunderstorm were my own.

  “I looked up in the sky and began to cry,” he said. “I felt sorrier for myself at that moment than ever in my life. I railed against my situation, sobbed with the unfairness of it all. I don’t remember exactly what I said but I do remember that at one point I asked for help.”

  “The devil’s?”

  “Of course not. I assumed I was talking to God, even though I didn’t mention Him by name. How was I to know that someone else—something else—was eavesdropping?”

  I nodded. How was any of us to know?

  “So I blithely went along and asked—no, begged—for help,” David continued. “I said something like: ‘Please transform me from the unhappy, unlovable man I’ve become into the kind of man women drool over—rich, handsome, self-confident.’” He chuckled. “I even asked for this.” He sang a few bars of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” He wasn’t Tony Bennett, but he had quite a voice. “Before my transformation, I couldn
’t sing worth a damn.”

  I was amazed. “I didn’t ask for the voice but I got it anyway,” I said suddenly, thinking of the morning I’d discovered I could sing on key after years of tone deafness.

  “As I understand it, all darksiders get the voice, whether they ask for it or not,” said David. “Apparently the devil has an ear for music and sees to it that his agents can carry a tune.”

  “His agents,” I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief. “This is crazy. Absolutely crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “What happened next, after you asked for help?”

  “I said the magic words.”

  “Which were?”

  “I said, ‘I’ll do anything if you help me.’ I didn’t know it then, but by offering myself for service, I had made an inexorable bargain with Satan.”

  I’ll do anything if you’ll help me. The words reverberated in my mind. It was all coming back to me now. The booze. The thunderstorm. The ocean. My own plea for help. My own promise to do anything in return for a favor. I’ll do anything if you’ll help me, I had said, just as David had. I remembered it. All of it.

  “There was a loud clap of thunder that literally knocked me off the bench, onto the wet ground,” he said. “And then the strangest thing happened. The wind died, the rain stopped, and the night air became completely still. I looked up into the sky and I saw—”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” I cut him off. “You saw silvery objects that looked like stars but weren’t.”

  “Yes.”

  “They had eyes and noses and mouths.”

  “Yes.”

  “And one of them winked at you.”

  “That’s right.”

  I sank into the sofa and sighed. So I hadn’t been seeing things that night on the deck, hadn’t been having alcoholic hallucinations. David had seen what I had seen and now we were both darksiders.

  “What are those silvery faces anyway?” I asked him. “Or, should I say, whose faces are they?”

  “They belong to some of the devil’s pals from hell,” said David. “Whenever he takes a new darksider, he summons them up here to greet the person. I guess you could call them Satan’s version of the Welcome Wagon.”