The Devil's Work by Norman Szabo

THE DEVIL'S WORK


A cash security deposit to the sleazy landlord, a borrowed pickup full of bags and boxes, and barely time for John and Tessa to unpack their stereo before they leave on a 3-week tour with the Tri-State Performing Arts Company.

Now, two nights early, John comes home.

Inside, he finds the apartment newly painted white. The stereo, their piles of boxes gone.

'The fuck? The bastard re-let the place?'

A noise above. A light.

'Hello?' John goes upstairs. 'Jesus, there's been some kind of major screwup here...'

The bedroom is a trip: all white. Rugs and cushions and big fat candles. A floor-to-ceiling mirror, and a huge picture window somehow filled with daytime blue-sky clouds.

The girl is in a gold cocktail dress and maybe in her 20's.

She says, Hi.

'Yeah, hi. I'm John. Who the fuck are you?'

She says, You get lonely, John?

She says, You're married, right? And your wife's not here. You horny? You look horny.

She slinks up to him, turns, grinds her sweet ass against his groin.

She says, We don't have to go all the way, just as far as you want. You can stop anytime.

She unzips his fly.

'What the fuck is this? What you do with our stuff?'

He breaks away, checks the stairs, comes back.

No sign of the girl. A golden-collared cat bumps his leg.

'Holy fuck!'

His cellphone goes off. Tessa. He hears her but she can't hear him. He presses buttons, messaging, SOS, morse code, anything.

('OK I guess you're not there. What are those beeps? I'll try later. Love you.')

The girl again. She says, C'mon baby, you know you want me.

'Get away from me! The fuck you think you're doing?'

Big smile.

He throws a shoe at the mirror, cracks it. He hurls a candle through the picture window and puts the night sky back where it ought to be.

The room's empty.

He staggers down the dingy stairs, past the stereo and the piles of boxes and out the door and all the way to Buzz's coffee house. He stares in through the window. A middle-aged guy in evening dress sits with Mike and Al and Joline.

The guy says to Mike, You're Jewish, right? See, that's the thing. At night you're with your buddies and it's no big deal, but in the morning people wake up and think of you and it's "that Jew".

Joline hangs on his every word.

And the guy says to Al, And you, you're Greek.

'How d'you know that?'

He says, Same with you: "that Greek guy".

John stands impotent on the sidewalk. The words come out of him: 'Beelzebub, Naphraim, Mephistopheles...'

The middle-aged guy smiles and lipsyncs his hundred names. John sees his golden cummerbund. He sees him put his hand on Joline's thigh.

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