Unsoul'd Read online

  "You've been sitting here for--"

  "Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and nineteen seconds, less my trips to the fridge." He belched. "You're out of beer. And chips. And hummus. And those little mini carrots. I didn't eat the carrots -- I just noticed that you're out of them."

  "Right. Thanks." I craned my neck to look at the TV and saw a commercial for the newest Kiki Newman movie. Kiki ran from a massive explosion, her lithe form barely confined by strategically-shredded khakis and a white t-shirt. "God, she's amazing," I sighed. "I would totally sell my soul to--"

  The devil clucked his tongue and waggled a finger at me. "You already signed the contract, buddy. If you wanted a rider to ride her, you should have said so before."

  "Fine, fine. But when do you start coming through for me?"

  "It's been twenty-four hours, Beavis. Besides, you haven't even written your next book yet."

  That was true. I was under contract to an obscure imprint of Random House for my novel-in-progress. "Lucky number six!" my agent was fond of chortling, swearing that my next book would be my breakout. I wanted desperately to believe him, but he had also sworn that my first through fourth novels would be my breakout, too. With my fifth novel coming out shortly, I was justifiably cynical on two issues: my likelihood of ever breaking out, and my agent's ability to scry the future.

  The commercial ended and one of those annoying newslets came on, fifteen seconds of news you can't use because there's no context.

  "Police announce no new leads in the case of missing Rutgers co-ed Lacey Simonson!" a newsdoll chirped, having clearly not received the memo that a missing co-ed was nothing to chirp about. "More news at eleven, or visit NewsChannel13.com!"

  "I feel so much more informed," the devil said. "Don't you?"

  "Is that you? Are you responsible for that?" I asked. It seemed likely, after all. At least as likely as the devil channel-surfing for Law & Order episodes in my apartment.

  "That's just like you people," he sniffed. "Blaming me for everything. Believe me, you guys are--"

  "Is this the part where you tell me that there's plenty of evil in the human heart and we don't need your outside influence to maim and murder each other?"

  "Well, it was going to be that part," he fumed. "You just can't let me have any fun at all, can you?" And then he stormed out.

  I actually said "Thank God" out loud before I realized that was sort of ironic.

  Wherein My Ex Stops By and Does Not Have Sex with Me

  The devil was eating cold cereal and watching an old episode of Three's Company when I woke up late the next morning. One of the perks of the freelance lifestyle is that I wake up when I choose. But usually I'm alone.

  "Are you kidding me? Seriously? This wasn't in the contract, this bit with you hanging around all the time and eating my food."

  The devil pulled a wounded face. "Dude, if it's bothering you, just say so. No need to drop a sarcasm bomb on me. I have feelings, too, you know."

  "You do?"

  He thought about it. "Probably not. But I simulate them pretty well. And you have hurt my simulated human feelings."

  "I apologize."

  He smiled and wolfed down a big, dripping spoonful. "There. Now was that so horrible? Oh, hey, by the way -- a package came a little while ago. I signed for it because I'm helpful like that."

  I wasn't expecting anything, so I made my way to the front door, where a large brown box squatted just inside.

  "You could thank me, you know," the devil complained. "And since when is your name Fiona Weller?"

  Ugh. Looking at the box, I saw that, yes, Fiona's name was on the label. "That's my ex-girlfriend." I called her and got voicemail. "Hey, Fi, it's Randall. That package from Amazon arrived. I'll be around today if you want to pick it up."

  I put down the phone, and turned around to the very disconcerting sight of the devil glaring at me in disapproval. The fact that the devil looked like a slacker hipster didn't make the glare any less disconcerting -- I knew it was the devil behind those lazy, cool-green eyes.

  "Why is your ex-girlfriend having packages sent here?"

  "She was out of town when it was supposed to--"

  "Uh huh."

  "Look, I'm not getting into this with you. It's complicated."

  "I bet."

  "Look, it's not a big deal. We're still friends--"

  The devil reared back and howled with laughter. "I love it! I love the 'We're still friends.' I wish I could congratulate whoever invented that. It's responsible for a nice, hefty chunk of human misery and deception. At least tell me that when she gets here, she's not just picking up that package, if you get my drift."

  A brief image of Fi's lean torso, sweat-glimmering in the half-light of the bedroom, blazed before my mind's eye so powerfully that I thought I could reach out and touch it.

  "It's not like that," I told him.

  He grinned. "But you wish it were. Good for you! You're letting her drop stuff off here; you deserve a little knob-polish for that."

  Another image: Fi's pert, heart-shaped ass turned up at me the one time--

  I shook my head. Was the devil doing this to me? Making me see these things? I wanted to believe he was -- I was proud that I had finally stopped fantasizing about Fi six months after our breakup -- but the truth was sadder, I suspected.

  I changed the topic. "What name did you use? When you signed for the package?"

  "I signed it 'Satan, Lord of Lowest Doom and Melancholy, King of the Nine Hells, Prince of Darkness and Eternal Woe, Infernal Master of Cold Flame and Absent Spaces.'"

  "Yeah, like there was room for that on the little signing pad."

  "No, you douchebag, I just signed your name." He glanced skyward. "Lord, what fools these mortals be."

  "Did you just quote Shakespeare?"

  "Who do you think gave him that line? Why don't you ever give me any credit for anything?"

  "I've only known you two days! I don't 'ever' do or not do anything!"

  The devil folded his arms over his chest and sulked. He sat that way for a while, as I puttered around the house, trying to scrape together breakfast from the devil's rejects. Fruitless. (Literally -- he had eaten my blueberries.) I had no choice but to leave the house to buy more food.

  "Will you be all right by yourself?" I asked, incredulous that I was leaving the devil alone in my apartment.

  "I was all right by myself in a lake of fire for millennia."

  I took that as an affirmative and headed to the store. When I returned, the devil was gone and there was a message from Fi that she was on her way over.

  For reasons I understand, but won't get into, I immediately set to straightening the apartment, then stopped midway through when I realized I hadn't showered, shaved, or even brushed my teeth in close to thirty-six hours. I scrubbed my teeth and took a quick shower that barely dampened my skin before I hopped out and dried off. By the time the buzzer sounded, I had managed to struggle into a pair of jeans and a clean-enough t-shirt.

  "Oh, there it is," Fi said, breezing in, as though there were anywhere else for the package to be. "Great, great, great!" She started tugging at the package flaps, then resorted to using her keys to score the tape.

  "Hi, Fi."

  "Hey. Hang on." She tapped her Bluetooth earpiece. "Hi, Max. No, no. Fifteen? Hell, no! Go to twenty and see what they say. OK, laters." She tapped the piece again and smiled up at me. "How are you, Randall? So you won't believe what's in here. One of my clients sent me a link to this article called 'Rise of the Little Blue Dress' and it was all about how blue is this season's black, which is cool because blue really, really works for me, you know? It's the eyes."

  Fi had frighteningly beautiful blue eyes.

  "So," she went on, "I read the article and they showed what's-her-name, the girl from the TV show, the one you liked, her, they showed her in this gorgeous blue dress and I was like, 'OK, I have to have that, like, yesterday,' so I ordered it right away. Didn't even think about it, whic
h is crazy because you should see my credit card statement. It's ridic. Anyway, this is it." She held up a blue shimmer that looked barely large enough to qualify as a dishrag. "Do you mind if I try it on?"

  A flash of her naked body staggered me. She was wearing a hoodie and baggy jeans, but I knew that body well enough that she couldn't hide it from my imagination.

  "Sure," I said a bit hoarsely. "Try it on."

  She disappeared into the bedroom and I stood there with the empty box and packing material, frozen in my own apartment, wanting to follow her in, wanting not to want to follow her in...

  A moment later, she removed the choice for me by emerging covered from mid-hip to bust in what can best be described as royal blue metallic liquid. In the unlikely event that I had forgotten the curve and slope of her in the past six months, I now had a live, three-dimensional refresher course.

  "What do you think?" she asked. "Not bad?"

  Even when we were together, even in the days when I loved her with all my (still un-mortaged) soul, I recognized and despised the way Fi constantly fished for compliments, as though desperate for recognition, approbation, validation. Fi was gorgeous. She knew it. She didn't need to hear it.

  Yet she did. "It looks nice," I told her, compromising between the truth and my desire to say nothing at all.

  "It does, doesn't it?" she asked, turning so that I could see the back.

  And her back. Which stunned me anew, not for the welcome sight of Fi's plump yet sleek derriere, but rather for the blossom of color and shape inscribed from shoulder blade to shoulder blade along the smooth, taut expanse of her naked back. The huge back tattoo showed an angel -- or a demon, I couldn't quite tell -- in mid-flight, stretching from right to left. A female form, with flowing silver hair, and exaggerated anatomy clothed in what amounted to a purple metal bikini. Resplendent, full-flare wings made of what appeared to be black leather feathers. It was as though Hieronymous Bosch had decided to draw manga.

  The tattoo did strange things to me. I had never been one for body modification (save for the misguided nose ring I wore for eight months in college), but the right tattoo on the right flesh could sometimes stir deep longings in me.

  Fi had the right flesh, and the tattoo made me suddenly yearn for her all the more.

  "That's new," I said off-handedly, lamely.

  "What?" She craned her neck, trying to look at her own back. "Oh, right. Yeah. I got that last month."

  It was huge. "Didn't it hurt?"

  "I don't remember, to be honest. I was totally baked. The whole thing's a blur."

  "But why--"

  "To celebrate."

  "Celebrate?" I did not want to ask, but did anyway.

  "Celebrate, yeah." She faced me again, hands on hips. "You really think this looks all right?"

  "It's great," I said, suddenly less interested in the dress and more interested in the celebration. "What are you celebrating?"

  "I didn't tell you?" Fi had a way of posing that particular question that made it impossible to determine if she was genuinely surprised with herself or simply overselling it to ramp up expectations. "I signed Kiki Newman."

  Fi was a Hollywood agent and a successful one at that. Successful enough that her agency let her work out of New York, not L.A., where she had a niche specialty in finding local stage talent and primping and grooming them to TV and movie stardom. Variety once did a smallish story on her headlined, "The Trend-Bucker." She earned way more money than I did, hence my move to the cramped apartment after our break-up. Fi still lived in our massive brownstone duplex, where I had paid a mere quarter of the rent. Landing Kiki Newman took her to an entirely different level.

  "I had no idea," I said as neutrally as I could, then smiled to show her how happy I was pretending to be for her.

  "It was all over the place."

  "I don't really keep up with the movie stuff anymore."

  "Right. Of course," she said, shrugging as if to say, Why would you?

  Because, yeah, why would I? I'd had a book optioned once -- years ago -- but that was it. The option money ran out long before the option itself. When Fi left me, any impetus I once had to keep abreast of the movie business left with her.

  Managing to avoid being entirely self-absorbed, Fi shouted to me from the bedroom as she took off the dress, asking how I was doing.

  "There's some buzz for the new book." I hated myself as soon as the words were out of my mouth. How many times had I answered that exact same question with that exact same statement, delivered in that exact same tone of faux confidence commingled with faux humility. There was no "buzz" for the new book, nor would there ever be, if the past was any indicator.

  I didn't mention selling my soul to the devil. How do you bring that up to someone naked in the other room?

  "I'll see if I can pimp it a little bit on the blog," she shouted.

  Fi had an incredibly popular blog -- "Why, Fi?" -- in which she held forth on matters not merely filmic, but also alcohol-related, Fi being something of a bartender savant. She's as likely to blog about the perfect martini recipe as she is about the next It Girl.

  It occurred to me after she left that Kiki Newman was more than Fi's newest and biggest client. She also held the number one spot on my list of Celebrities to Have Sex With. And Fi, of course, was deeply conversant with that list, the two of us having shared each other's numerous times over the course of our relationship. I had, to the best of my memory, been repeatedly and effusively honest about Kiki's physical charms. And about how badly I wanted to bone her.

  Oh, God. My ex-girlfriend was now representing my celebrity crush.

  Wherein I Make My Way Back to Construct

  Despite the food poisoning that had stolen a day of my life, I returned the next day to Construct. Maybe I was trying to show that Construct could not lay me low. Maybe I was just a creature of habit.

  Or maybe I was hoping for another bout of food poisoning, this one fatal.

  The devil did not show up at my apartment again, so that, too, played a role in my return to Construct.

  But the devil wasn't at Construct, either. Had I so offended him that he'd vacated my life permanently? Would he still live up to our contract? More importantly, why was I so disappointed that I couldn't hang out with the devil any more? Maybe because Fi's success-piled-atop-success made me eager for my own nigh-offensive level of triumph, which seemed not to be fast coming.

  There is nothing in the world worse than an ex on a meteoric rise. And nothing better to goad oneself to work.

  Still, I suffered a dissatisfying day at the keyboard, more noodling around than actually writing. I thought about the devil, about Fi, about Kiki Newman. About poor, lost Lacey Simonson. She was pretty and white, so she was on the news constantly.

  José the Faithful Barista was behind the counter and asked if I wanted my usual lunch, but while the thought of Construct's truly awesome four-cheese grilled cheese sandwich made my mouth water, the thought of José's hands on it so soon after the Bagel Incident made my stomach clench in memory.

  I left Construct early, having accomplished nothing of note. Lovely Rita stood by the door, so I gave her five bucks. She hung out near Construct and would run into the shop to let people know when their meters were running low. Someone started singing, "Lovely Rita, meter maid..." one day and it stuck. I figured it was good karma to toss some money her way, even though I didn't own a car. Usually it was just whatever change I happened to have with me, or a buck or two if I had no change. But it was one of those days when I needed the solace that only a self-affirming act of charity could provide, so I gave her the five. If I'd had a twenty in my wallet, I would have given her that. Hell, if Lovely Rita took credit cards, I probably would have charged her my limit.

  Lovely Rita, by the way, was absolutely not lovely. No one who lived on the streets as long as she had could be.

  "Thanks, Randy," she said, favoring me with a dirty smile. Dirty-as-in-not-clean, not dirty-as-in-salacious. The very
idea... Shiver.

  "You're welcome." In that moment, I almost just handed over my ATM card with the PIN, even though I didn't really believe in karma, good or bad. Still, it doesn't hurt to hedge your bets, right?

  Back home, I dumped the laptop on the sofa and flung myself right behind it. A wasted day, most people would say -- a grand total of about two hundred words written (not even a full page, double-spaced), and most of those words would probably be revised right out of existence in the second draft. But I had convinced myself that even days like this were worthwhile, that unproductive days cleansed the brainways and psychic paths through which I channeled my words. Without days like this, I would gum up the works and burn out.

  I told myself this, but I rarely believed it.

  Still no sign of the devil. I was beginning to think he'd snookered me, and was mildly surprised to find that the thought engendered no ire. After all, getting mad at the devil for lying would be like getting mad at, well, a politician for lying.

  Would his lie render our contract null and void? Did it even matter? I felt no different than I had before signing the contract, and I couldn't imagine that being unsouled (de-souled? soulectomied?) would be an unnoticeable phenomenon. As long as I still had my soul, I guess it was no big deal if he had reneged on his end of the bargain.

  Except...

  Except there was Fi, in her new dress, with her new tattoo. Fi, for whom everything worked out. Fi, laughing and trading tweets and links and bon mots with Kiki Fucking Newman. Fi, toasting multimillionaire clients and making seven-figure deals before getting out of her pajamas in the morning.

  Oh. Fi in her pajamas. A little shudder ran through me, its epicenter located in my groin. Fi -- when she bothered wearing anything to bed at all -- tended toward clingy teddies and boy shorts that showed off seemingly endless expanses of smooth, toned thigh. I really wished I hadn't thought of that just then, but I was done for. Fi, waking sexy and disheveled and reaching for her phone to call Kiki Newman...

  And that did it. Once Kiki Newman was in the mix, I was off to the races. Fortunately, there was a box of tissues nearby, so once I had my pants down, I didn't even have to move from my spot on the sofa.