by Zack Murphy
“Howdy Ma’am.”
“Well howdy yourself, stranger,” said Dana Plough, feeling weirdly tipsy off her glass of mineral water. ”And where might you have moseyed in from into this high-falootin’ party?”
Dana Plough could hear the words coming out of her mouth and was trying to cram them back as fast as they erupted, but for some reason this strikingly beautiful man who had sidled up to her was making her lips say things she only thought about while in the privacy of her own company. When she knew all the doors and windows were shut, when she was alone soaking in a bubble bath with her biggest vice, a sleazy paperback romance novel.
“Down South, Ma’am,” said the stranger, “Way down south.” With a wink and Cheshire cat grin that showed off his perfect dimples and a smile that would make avowed spinsters buckle at the knees.
“Oh my,” swooned Dana Plough, who all of a sudden found herself knee- deep in an epic Civil War novel. She used a cocktail napkin to fan the heat radiating from her blushing cheeks. This man could do things to me, things to me other ladies have said over lunch in tv shows about ladies who talk like ladies don’t, but most ladies fantasize about talking like with their friends about, she thought to herself.
“Can I get you a refill?” said the man, fixating his stare into the mirror behind the bar. It was a general rule in society that the more beautiful someone is, the less that person will ever look at anyone else besides him or herself.
“Oh no,” said Dana Plough, trying to pull herself together and contain her fertile reddening to a minimum, “I don’t really drink.”
“It’s not often in these immoral times you get to meet a virtuously restrained girl.”
She giggled, which was also something Dana Plough never did. She couldn’t help herself, this man made her giggle, and all things being equal he could probably get her to do more. “Oh, I’m not a nice girl; I just can’t handle my drink. I get a bit tipsy on one glass of champagne, and then you never know what I’m going to do!” and gave him a sly wink.
“Well then, I’ll ask again. Can I buy you another?”
“Sure, why not!” she threw her head back trying to look sexy and kicked her leg gently into the air accidentally hurling her pump clear across the room and beaning Mr. Bidwell in the head.
Her face collapsed into sheer panic as her boss turned around to catch her trying to hide her face in her hands. She looked up at the shockingly gorgeous stranger who had an almost supernatural way of making her weak in the knees and shrugged, “Well, I guess you can probably count primetime out.”
Three hours later they were lying on a bed at the Ritz Carlton Beverly Hills. As the three thousand thread-count sheets caressed her body like a million North American Wooly Bear Caterpillars, Dana Plough smiled like she had never done before.
“So, this is what sex is like?” she thought to herself. It’s not that she had never had sex before, being a world-traveling high-profile multi-media darling she had had sex plenty of times in her thirty-eight years on the planet [Five times with three different men], but this was something totally different. This was pure, unadulterated ecstasy. This was earth shattering, heart-pounding, knock down drag-out sex. And she was in euphoria.
Dana Plough was a good-looking woman, and good-looking women usually get what they want. Frigid good-looking women always get what they want because no matter how hard a man tries he’s never going to come out on top because he’s too scared to try. Dana Plough always got what she wanted. She never had to use sex to get ahead; she knew how much to give and when to snatch it away.
She was good at playing games and enjoyed the competition. She never needed sex; she never really desired it, like so many others around her did. These other women would sit around with friends while they gossiped about their latest exploits of carnal lust with the newly hired cabana boy or Richard from accounting, while Dana Plough would listen, silently amused by what these women would do for good roll in the hay and a little help on their tax forms.
What happened this night was totally different, she told herself, but who was she kidding? If anyone ever asked her where she had gone so abruptly during the party with that good-looking, dark haired guy with the killer dimples, she would speak of it and she would speak of it fondly.
“Wow!” she exclaimed and to get those words out was a struggle through the exhaustion.
“Did you have a good time?” said the handsome stranger who had taken her places people usually only get to go when they are performing high-wire circus acts or in certain Russ Meyer movies.
“I can’t believe I did all that. I didn’t think I had it in me.”
“Oh, I knew you could do it.”
“Oh yeah?” she said coyly, “And how would you know what I could do?”
“I’ve watching you for quite some time now Ms. Plough”
Dana Plough came down suddenly with a complete case of the “what have I done and how do I undo-it’s.” “You’re not some sort of crazed stalker, are you, because I warning you buddy-“
“No, no, not stalking. On the contrary, tonight was the first time I had actually seen your face.”
“Then how did you know what I could do,” she looked down at their naked bodies, “here?”
“Just because it’s the first time I’ve actually seen you, doesn’t mean our encounter hasn’t been fated for quite some time.”
“Oh God! You are a stalker!”
“Actually, you’re wrong on both accounts.”
Over the next few minutes there was a great deal of awkward silence, as Dana Plough tried to wrap her head around what her mystery man had just said, until finally, in a flash of unequaled clarity, she deduced what her new lover had just told her.
She searched for the right words to say, but nothing jumped to mind. She looked at the magnificent specimen of manhood lying before her and her heart melted. How could she possibly not come up with a commonsensical reason for just politely thanking her gentleman caller, getting dressed and leaving quickly and quietly like she had seen so many ill-conceived one-stands do on popular television shows and movies?
There are two ways to go when being presented with such an enigma as the one Dana Plough was facing; you could: a) scream bloody murder until someone from hotel management breaks the door down and you explain to him that you’ve just done it with Satan, cementing your stay for at least six months in the Rosemary’s Baby wing of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, or b) go with the flow and allow yourself to take what is in essence a very big check on a very big platter. Dana Plough opted to take the latter.
“So you’re-?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my.”
“Shocked?”
“A little.”
“But?”
“But nothing. I just got the best sex anyone in the history has ever had and it turns out it was Satan himself. But you know what? I don’t care.”
“Excellent.” Satan smiled and nodded to acknowledge her forward- thinking. Most women would be traumatized or horrified or both to find out that they were just taken to heaven and back by the Devil. But Dana Plough knew what a good business deal was, and there weren’t too many negotiating leverages better than being in bed (so to speak) with old fire and brimstone himself.
Dana Plough sat up and put her arms around his chiseled waist and nudged her nose into the side of his face. She knew that people often cuddled after sex. She had never been the canoodling sort, plus she wasn’t exactly sure what the post-coitus etiquette was after having relations with pure evil. But, she was either too dazed by the amount of fluids she had lost in the love-making marathon, or she was in absolute denial over the whole incident.
“Although I do feel a tiny bit bad.”
“And why is that?”
Dana Plough wasn’t a woman to let a good opportunity slip past her while other less qualified people slept their way to the top. “Well, I just allowed the Prince of Darkness to ravage my body, again and again, an
d I didn’t anything out of it.”
“I believe you did.” He smiled in a way that couldn’t be good for anyone involved, except for the smilee.
“Oh well, that. I know that. But-”
“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised in the not so distant future.”
“When?”
“Oh, I’d say about nine months.”
*****
The Death sat at his desk flipping through a pile of paperwork in an attempt to make himself look busy. It was always good to make the employees sweat a little while they waited, and the agent of Death formerly known as the Death of the West Coast of the United States including Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii was drenched.
It wasn’t as if The Death was mean-spirited, it was just that he had really wanted Barnaby to notice his new Kiss Me I’m Irish pin he was sporting, and was a little perturbed that his minion hadn’t commented on its delightfully humorous ironic statement [The Death was of course Latvian.]. After a few minutes The Death put down his papers and looked longingly at Barnaby and sighed.
It was never a good sign when The Death sighed, it usually meant there was something a-mess, and when The Death thinks there’s something a-mess there’s usually a very big clean up.
“Is everything all right?” asked Barnaby, knowing full well something was wrong. If something were right he wouldn’t be in an unscheduled employee evaluation meeting, he would be in Hell, aiding demons in injuring the damned souls of people who tailgated incessantly or who leaned on their horn in traffic jams when they knew damn well that traffic wasn’t going to move if they made a lot of racket, but did it anyway.
These people needed to be in Hell and they needed to be tortured and Barnaby loved to help in any way he could. It was one of life’s little pleasures. Sitting and waiting for the axe to fall was his own personal hell.
“So, how are you today Barnaby? Are you liking your new moniker?” asked The Death, hoping for a little recognition of his modern ways of doing business as outlined in 101 Ways To Get Your Business On The Right Track and Start Getting People To Like You.
“Well, I’ve only had it for five minutes.”
“But you are enjoying it?”
“Yes, very much so.” Barnaby hated small talk and when the boss wants to engage in small talk in a personal meeting it usually only leads to bad things like “The weather’s been awful this month, we’re going to let you go” or “The Boston Red Sox have a real good chance of going all the way this year don’t you think? And by the way I know your sleeping with my wife.”
Small talk frequently leads to big problems, and Barnaby didn’t like problems, he liked order. He ran a tight ship, get ‘em into the light, get ‘em out and let the lawyers deal with the rest. He ran his shift by the clock, as much as you can when dealing with people who didn’t want to see you in the first place.
Most people are opposed to being dead, and when they do die, it usually comes as quite a shock to them and they aren’t ready to let go of the miserable existence they’ve carved out for themselves. There’s usually a lot of crying involved and more whining than ever need be. But Barnaby liked what he did, though he could with less complaining and more of a can-do attitude about rushing straight on into the illumination of the spirit world.
“Can I ask you question? It’s rather personal,” asked The Death.
“Of course you can. You can ask me anything you want,” gulped Barnaby.
“Have you ever wanted to know what it was like to be mortal?”
Barnaby thought about this for a moment. He had considered on numerous occasions what it would like to be a number of different things, yet being human had never crossed his mind. Not even once.
“No, not really.”
“Great!” declared The Death, “You’re going to have a wonderful time being alive!”
*****
Jeremiah could have flown first class, but you didn’t get the full human experience sipping mimosas and eating freshly prepared cheese Danishes. There was a wonderful sense of belonging when flying business class; the screaming children, the rude flight attendants, the seats made for a 10 year old boy with amputated legs, these luxuries were what people didn’t want to pay for, but did anyway.
He sat between an American Used Car Salesman who spent the entire flight chewing his nails down to bloody stumps as he slammed back ten-dollar whiskey sours at a steady pace, and an eighteen-year-old university student from Scotland who was going to backpack across America to see if she could find herself.
Jeremiah really liked the young woman, mainly because she loved to talk. She regaled him for hours with stories of her small village just outside Aberdeen and how it was the most mind-numbing place on the face of the earth, filled with locals; each one more bizarre than the last.
This seemed like a fascinating place to live to Jeremiah, a village full of colorful folks doing off-color things, but mainly just sitting around telling stories for hours upon hours of how life used to be. This appeared like a town Jeremiah could really sink his teeth into and become a proper member of its society, but he was not an eighteen-year-old girl.
The plane was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean as Jeremiah listened to the girl tell him everything that was wrong with Europe and its line of wearisome, cold and emotionless people, and how America was the place to be if you really wanted to meet interesting and engaging people. America was a place where seemingly you couldn’t walk down any street in the country without meeting a dozen or so celebrities.
Apparently in America you become a celebrity almost by default as long as you are willing to make a complete ass out of yourself on a number of their television shows, where one can either become famous by living in a house trapped with eleven other strangers and yell at them constantly for a few weeks before giving into carnal obsessions in a dimly lit room you share with a neo-Nazi and a gay black republican, or by eating any number of animal entrails.
The plane landed in New York’s LaGuardia airport and Jeremiah said his goodbyes to the young woman. He wished her luck on her continuing journey, but she didn’t hear him as she was busy running through the airport chasing after someone she just knew must have been a person named Brad Pitt.
Jeremiah picked up his bags and headed for his new terminal. It would be a few hours before his flight to Los Angeles, the perfect time to find an airport bar and listen to what sordid stories drunken semi-celebrated intestine-eating Americans had to say over a pint.
He found a seat at the bar and situated himself so he could get a good view of the entire room. He perked up his ears and listened carefully to see if he could get anything that would help him better understand humanity. The American way.
*****
It was three p.m. and Dana Plough had just finished another rousing episode of her show Plowing Ahead with Dana Plough [Unoriginality was the trademark of GNAN show titles]. It had been another banner day of sticking it to the communists and hippies who were running roughshod over the values and dictums of civilized society and a pertinent part of the seedy underbelly of her America.
Her America was firmly wedged in a belief that the morals and prudence of the ill-remembered 1950’s were what the Founding Fathers had envisioned for the new millennium; a wholesome, god, mom and apple pie slice of Americana, where Leave It To Beaver wasn’t so much a sitcom, but a well preserved documentary of its time. People back then knew how to act and behave, even if it was the age of rampant color discrimination and segregation, McCarthyism, Herbert Hoover, the atomic bomb and the onset of Rock and Roll.
Dana Plough was going be a big part of taking America out of the twenty-first century, wrapping it up in a big bag of self-righteousness and time warping it back to the good ole days.
Dana Plough returned to her office, sat down at her desk, opened the bottom drawer and took out a large bottle of Poka Vsyo, poured herself a glass and drank. A knock at the door jolted her from her alcohol-induced bliss. As she popped a breath mint into her mouth she fought
with every fiber of strength in her body to sober up until the next drink. Juliet opened the door and walked confidently inside with a grin the size of the Grand Canyon plastered across her face.
“Ms. Plough?” asked Juliet as to not alarm her obviously sloshed boss.
“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, I just finished being on the air and I’m nine months pregnant.”
“Okay?”
“I’m not drunk!”
“Nobody said you were, ma’am.”
“But everyone was implying it. Weren’t you all?”
“Who did?”
“All of you!”
“I’m the only one here, ma’am.”
Dana Plough focused her gaze around the room to find to her surprise that the three or four young women who had come barging into her office was in fact one. “So you are,” she said, trying to muster the will to make her words seem like intelligent conversation.
“Um-”
“What?”
“Um-”
“Well, spit it already!” It wasn’t as if Dana Plough was a mean drunk; it was entirely the baby’s fault.
“There’s a, uh- Man here to see to you, but he doesn’t have an appointment.” Juliet knew what she liked in a man’s shape and there was everything to like about the shape of the guy waiting behind the door. She hadn’t been the president of Lambda Sigma Delta sorority because of her great homemaking skills.
She was made president because of her intrinsic nature to find any and every cute boy within a sixteen-mile radius of the campus and persuade them that the girls of LSD were ready for action. If she could give a lecture of what she wanted to get out of what was in the next room it would be: if you don’t want him, I know 101 ways to make a guy happy and sit up and beg for 101 more.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. But he’s very cute.”
“I don’t want to see any- cute?”
“Very.”
“Would you say he’s tall dark and handsome?”
“I would”
“Would you say he’s seductively handsome in a bad boy kind of way.”