Tim Pratt: Sympathy for the Devil

At the top of the stairs I stood still and waited till the next time it came.

It was down the hall in our bedroom. Zhunk. From where I stood I could see that door was open about a third and something white was on the floor just inside the bedroom. I couldn’t make out what it was. Tiptoeing down the hall, I kept trying to focus in on what that white thing was. It came to me in stages. A piece of clothing-a shirt-a white T-shirt. And just when I realized that’s what it was, I heard the other sounds. Sex. A woman having sex and liking it a lot.

Rae doesn’t like sex. That’s been the major problem in our marriage. Once in a while she’s sort of in the mood, but it’s like when you’re sort of in the mood for pizza but can easily do without it if there’s none around. I always got the feeling she’s doing me a favor when she said yes and I can’t tell you how dry and lonely that made me feel. She’s a woman I have always wanted to touch but is more than clear she doesn’t want that.

A T-shirt was on the floor and when I looked I saw writing on it and knew it said “Hard Rock Café.” It was my shirt but it was very big and Rae liked that so she often slept in it. Her sounds kept up and they would have made any man hot. I’d known them once but not for a long time. Still, I recognized them instantly. I walked as close to the door as I could and looked in.

My wife was on our bed naked, straddling a guy whose face I couldn’t see. She was working him so hard that their banging bodies made the bed slide on the floor. Zhunk.

Even when we did have sex, she’d never do it like that with me because she didn’t like me seeing her entirely naked. It was always in the dark and she’d wear some kind of clothes-a shirt or sweatshirt so she’d never be completely stripped. As if wearing something meant she was still distant from me and this act even when it was going on.

Did I watch? Yes. Did it make me hot? It sure did. I stood off to the side and watched her do whoever it was beneath her all the things I’d dreamt of her doing with me for as long as I could remember.

What had I given the Devil to come back here? Rae’s love for me. My love for her wasn’t enough, or so he’d said. So I said take hers then.

Our relationship wasn’t the best. We never had sex anymore, and we seemed to fight more than we should have. Still, I knew she loved me in her scared, mysterious way. I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me.

Sometimes. Plus there were other things she did that overall made up for what was missing. You get along and sometimes you get along so well that you don’t think about what you’re missing because you just love them there in your life, whatever way they’ve chosen to be.

As I stood there watching my wife fuck another man, I knew the Devil had changed the rules again: no dead people had moved into my house. No Casablanca backgrounds or jungles were needed here. Everything was the same except for the fact that my wife’s love for me was dead. What more proof did I need than what was right in front of me?

There was nothing to take. I turned and went back down the hall, down the stairs. I was planning to go right back out of the house but when I touched the front doorknob I stopped. I walked back to the kitchen without thinking, kissed that new refrigerator. The thing that had started all this in the first place. That was all I wanted to do before leaving but don’t ask me why. It just meant something to me and that was reason enough. I kissed our silver refrigerator and it was cool metal on my lips and then it was really time to go.

“Mr. Gallatin?” Beeflow’s voice.

I stood and stared at the refrigerator. “What?”

“If it’s of any comfort, he didn’t make this happen. It’s been going on for some time. Upstairs?”

“I know what you mean.”

“You were never supposed to know about it. She was always very careful and discreet. But when you offered it to him, when you gave up her love for you-”

“I know what you’re saying, Beeflow. I’m not that stupid. He shows me the truth, you show me the truth-both of you killing me with all this truth about my life. Was that the plan? Because what good does it do? Seeing the truth just shows you how wrong you were about things and how ugly they really are.”

“Sometimes. And sometimes it brings the genuinely good things into better focus.”

I threw up my hands in disgust. “I don’t want to hear any more. Okay? Don’t say another word.” I left my house for the last time and started walking over to the Brothers, not really knowing if what Beeflow had said made things better or worse.

But I didn’t have any time to think about it. Suddenly from down the street came all these screams and sounds of people running. Lots of people running. I’d just gotten to Brooks and Zin Zan when this crowd arrived. First came a bunch of men in Roman gladiator uniforms-swords, shields, sandals up to their knees, the whole bit. They came stampeding down the street slap-slap-slapping on their sandals. Every last one of them looked scared shitless. They all kept looking over their shoulders at what was after them.

When they were gone, a few moments passed and then came the second wave. Maybe a hundred wild-looking, screaming women in leather and animal skins, wearing headdresses made out of crazy-colored bird feathers, carrying spears and swords and all kinds of other ugly weapons, some of their faces covered in war paint, went barreling after those scared gladiators. It was clear they were going to catch up any minute.

After the last ones passed I said, “What the fuck was that?”

Brooks and Zin Zan started running after them. Brooks said, “Some dead fool chose the movie Hercules and the Captive Women to fill his house. But guess what-they escaped.”

“And we’re supposed to do something about it? Us? Just the three of us?”

We were already running after them when Zin Zan said, “Now it gets interesting.”

The Devil got a job tending bar at Mike’s Place. You’d think he’d be bitter about his change of fortune, but he just shrugs it off. He says a lot of big corporations have failed, and Hell, Inc. was no different, when you get down to it. As for exchanging seven figures annually for five an hour plus tips, he just laughs and says there aren’t a lot of places that will hire a guy with horns.

For his part, the Devil doesn’t discriminate. Used to be you just had to be sinful; now you just have to be thirsty. He says the only difference is that now the really bad ones get tossed out instead of in.

Not that a lot of people are eighty-sixed from Mike’s. It happens, of course-Mike doesn’t put up with fighting, for example. But he puts up with a lot. Too much, some of the waitresses might say. Like Ashes, who never lets a woman enter or leave the bar without putting his hands on her in some way. Or Little Tony, who sits in the corner talking to himself and never tips for his Diet Cokes. Or Beezle.

Beezle used to work with the Devil. I think we’ve all figured out his real name by now, but nobody cares to say it out loud. The Devil insists they aren’t friends, and talks to him as little as possible. Nobody talks to Beezle if they can avoid it. You see, Beezle takes the form of a giant fly, four feet high not counting the legs. On his barstool he looks like sort of a big hairy throw pillow with wings. He only drinks those blended frou-frou drinks, which the Devil hates making. Strawberry daiquiris, mostly. Beezle doesn’t have any fingers, so he picks up the glass with both of his front legs, takes a long sip from the straw, and sets the glass back down again. Twenty minutes later he’s ready for another.

On the surface, though, the waitresses have no reason to get so upset about Beezle hanging around. He always sits at the bar (at the same stool, in fact, and no one else ever sits there), and he never talks to anyone but the Devil-he doesn’t even come in on Mondays, when the Devil takes off and Mike’s pal Gabe fills in. He doesn’t smell any worse than anyone else in the place, and better than some. He doesn’t grab the girls and he doesn’t try to brush up against them when the place is crowded. He also doesn’t attract a lot of smaller flies, surprisingly.