“No,” I said, “I’m ready.” It wasn’t true. I figured he’d know that I was lying to be polite. Hopefully, this would let him know how much I liked him.
He grew wings and giant claws to hold me so the journey back would be faster.
“I love this,” I said. “We should fly more often.” He seemed unsure. I pressed the issue until he admitted that he doesn’t like to grow wings and talons. He thinks they make his head look disproportionate. I had been pinching my nose because of the smell, but I let it go before speaking. I didn’t want to sound like some annoying mother-in-law from New Jersey.
“I think you look really terrific,” I whispered, and his claw tightened just a little.
Later that week he and I had such a good afternoon that we decided to go ahead and make a night of it. I tried to bake him some scones, but we got to talking and I forgot the oven and they burned. I’m horrible at baking and cooking. It was a point of contention between my husband and me before I killed him.
“Let’s go back to my place,” he said.
In my old life (we’re encouraged to do that, to call it an “old life” rather than “life,” as though it was left behind rather than taken), I did not do many exciting things. I never went on a real vacation, for instance. And I only remember swimming once when I was young. I certainly did not have sex with the devil.
“Sex with the devil,” I said flirtatiously. I thought he’d like that but instead he completely clammed up.
Maybe because his house is not an evil dungeon. I expected, as many women might, a type of Transylvanian sex-lair. This is not to say I wanted to be tortured, but pain is different and more relative in Hell, less “ouch” and more “I guess I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
But his bedroom was plain and ancient. There was the usual smell of rot, which in Hell is not a visceral, unbearably fresh smell. Instead it’s like something died a while ago on its own and had never been found or cleaned up. It made me think of my husband. I imagined how much I’d freak out if the devil dragged my husband’s corpse out from behind the bed, or worse, if my husband was actually in Hell at that very moment, still bearing all the death-stains I’d given him, and he’d been following me and was going to jump out at us in the middle of our intimate evening and ruin everything.
“I’m glad he’s not here, but why didn’t my husband go to Hell? I asked. “I just always thought it would be the other way around, that he’d be in Hell and I’d be somewhere else.”
We walked into a small cave that had a single torch and a bed, and the devil lay down and then gazed at me. I took the cue and curled up next to him.
It’s amazing how perspectives can change. I was always on my husband to cut his fingernails, but the devil has the longest ones I’ve ever seen and they don’t bother me. They’re thick and very yellow—their color is very unimposing, like blood that has sat for several centuries whose weight has left only a quiet stain. They remind me a little of paper in a really old book.
“Your husband was mean, but he wasn’t evil.” The devil’s breath on my neck was hot and brothy. He kissed me, and it was like being kissed by a pot of soup.
“Are you saying I’m evil?” I was curious, not upset. Hell also has a Prozac effect—regarding nearly everything, I both care and don’t care at the same time. When you know you have an eternity to get over things, you tend to just go ahead and get over them.
“You did an evil thing,” he said in a fatherly and chiding way that I liked beyond words. “Everyone’s capable of doing evil things.”
When I took off my shirt his eyes grew panicked. For a moment I thought it was my weapon-breasts. “Will they shoot you?” I asked. “Or do they only do that when I’m angry?”
He got up and pulled a curtain across the opening of the cave, then moved towards the torch. “Devil,” I whispered, “what are you doing?”
“Don’t you want the lights out?” The way he said it, it wasn’t really a question.
“I want to see you,” I whined. In a way, this was the biggest part of the excitement. The devil is millions of folds that I know somehow unfold. He is the largest insect in the universe, and a dragon and a goat and a man and a beard and skin that has been burnt clean.
“I can’t,” he said. “Right now, I can’t.”
I thought Hell would be all give or all take. But there’s just not enough room to plunder. We’re all here; we all have to go to the same small bar.
Most importantly, we have to learn that we are wrong sometimes. That there was at least one time, in our old lives, when we were very wrong.
I nodded and he blew out the torch. I couldn’t see him but I could feel him swelling, becoming fifty shadows almost as big as the room. My hand had been on his chest when the torch blew out, and now I felt his skin begin to slide up under my palm like he was a magic plant growing and growing; soon my hand was on his hip.
I began to explore his bones with my hand; I felt far more bones than legs or wings. I tried to count with my fingers their hundreds of knobs and ends. He lay back down, though he hardly fit upon the bed, and coaxed me up onto him. His warm breath was coming from every direction at once.
“This part is a little normal,” he said. But it wasn’t true.
Afterwards he fell asleep quickly. I felt him shrinking back, his entire body receding and folding, everything tucking neatly into place. I listened to the deep years of his lungs and decided to have a cigarette. We are smokers, he and I.
It’s true, the lighter was cheating. “Respect his wishes,” I told myself, “haven’t you learned anything?” But I was too excited to learn.
When I clicked the lighter, years seemed to pass. I could see through all the parts of him. His skin now looked like a clear bat’s. In his wings, cells were beating far faster than I could see; behind his lids his pink eyes were spinning. His long tongue flickered in his mouth and his stomach was full of small limbs. He was a machine, a riddle. Looking at him, I felt that I was growing smarter every second. I was able to watch him like children watch fish.
Then he woke up and caught me peeking.
“I’ve been in love before,” I told him, meaning the other time was not one bit like this. I felt my ribs and my stomach begin to grow and unfold like his skin.
He shot me a smile. Don’t go getting swept away, it said, a grounding look to tell me that Hell is different from my old life, but not as different as all that. Not so different that I couldn’t get hurt, or hurt him. He let me look on just a moment more, then the flame was blown out by a wind that came from nowhere.
ALCOHOLIC
Although we broke up two months ago, I agree to be his class reunion date anyway. I buy a dress I can’t fill and stuff it. Upon picking me up, my breasts are the first thing he comments on. They look frighteningly geometric and remind him of earmuffs, or Princess Leia.
I had cut a tennis ball in half and put one side into each bra cup. More natural-looking materials were available in my apartment, but I’d had a vision: he and I at the end of the night, drunk and reenamored. I’d take off my shirt and they’d practically glow in the dark. “Let me squeeze those fuzzy lemons,” he’d say, and I’d laugh and he’d toss them across the room; we’d make love to the sounds of their bouncing.
Already it seemed that probably wouldn’t happen.
When I wake up it’s 3,000 degrees and morning. I vaguely remember being in a large punch bowl and the DJ saying something about me over the microphone. I’m in a hot car, his, covered in a film of fruit punch and grapefruit vodka. One of the tennis ball halves is gone from my dress. I look over and see it on the driver’s seat, filled with quarters and a napkin note in microscopic print: