Boyfriend from Hell (6 page)

Richard was interested in the freelance writing life from her perspective. He told her his experience was slanted largely toward the academic side, papers in university publications. His book was published by Excelsior Publications, a small independent press. He was thinking of doing more general-interest writing.

She was conscious about speaking in a rush and tried to answer in measured terms, feeling a little young with him. He was as poised and soft-spoken as he was good-looking, and he stayed alert to her, as though she was the most unusual person for
him
in a long time.

“Something I’d like to show you,” and he removed from a black leather attaché case a rare book, wrapped in tissue. “Thought you’d be interested, unless when you’re finished with a subject you’re finished with it.”

She thumbed the pages of a book bound in rich brown leather with gold casing, the pages made of thick parchment paper, the text printed in French.

“It’s by an eighteenth-century monk from Rouen. Claimed he dined regularly with Satan and cooked dinners for him. Truly. This is a recipe book of their so-called meals together.”

“Fabulous.”

“After he wrote the book he committed suicide. Poisoned himself. Or maybe, as legend has it, he was done in by the big guy himself. A cult grew up around it for about twenty-five years or so, people who cooked from the recipes in the hope Satan would drop in on
them
for dinner.”

“Wouldn’t think he’d be a welcome guest.”

“To be in the presence of his power, I suppose. I’ve got another book, fascinating, too big to carry around. An encyclopedia of Satan, in German, published in 1860. Everything you always wanted to know about Satan but were afraid to ask.”

“That’s a peppy title for nineteenth-century German.”

“Title is simply
Satan,
and it has all known facts about Satan to that point. And personal appearances,” he said lightly, “as they were documented up to then.”

“Like a celebrity register.”

“Something like that,” he said, smiling. “Would you like to see it? Now, I mean.”

There it was, he was inviting her to his place. She did a quick tally as to how often she went to a man’s place this early on. Not often. Hardly ever. She had done so with Michael. It was the nature of their first date, she went to his apartment so he could prepare dinner for her. Richard Smith was such an adult compared to some of the men she had met, she hesitated to even think of this as “a date.” The first whatever-it-was and he was inviting her back. Was she actually interested in a Satan encyclopedia published in the nineteenth century after she had already written the piece on a satanic cult? Not exactly. She was a little more interested in seeing where and how this person lived.

After dinner he hailed a taxicab and they went to a brownstone on East Sixty-first Street between First and Second avenues. He led her up the outside steps, through a narrow entrance foyer into the living room, an immaculately designed modern space with high-style Italian furnishings, a stainless steel mantle for the fireplace, and a striking collection of framed Berenice Abbott photographs on the wall.

“This place is wonderful,” she said. He guided her past a functional kitchen—we don’t cook here—into the second room on the floor, a den/library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, many rare book bindings on display, and a few more pieces, sofa, chairs, lamps, direct from Milan. “It’s like something out of
Architectural Digest.”

“Thank you.”

“Really, all this from lecturing and from one book?”

“I’ve always been interested in design. As for the building, it’s owned by a European corporation. They have the ground floor for offices. Nobody is ever there. I’d like to call them Eurotrash, but why trash a benign landlord.”

“Can I bring dates here to hang out?” she said.

He laughed, led her to the sofa, and went to the center bookcase. On the mantle was an unabridged dictionary-size volume he brought over to her and placed on a white marble coffee table.

“Some cognac, another wine?”

She already had two glasses of wine at dinner, her maximum before she fell asleep before their very eyes.

“I’m fine. A Diet Coke, if you have it.”

“I’ll see.

A Diet Coke. How sophisticated is that? She guessed that right about then he had her down as little more than a teenager.

The Satan encyclopedia contained more than a hundred glossy illustrations, renderings of Satan over the ages, and a detailed history of Satan and satanism, including first-person accounts of interactions with Satan.

“There’s a perverse elegance here,” she said. “It’s a beautiful book.”

“Satan’s part of religious thought, even if
you
don’t take him seriously.”

“I’m a modern woman. I drink Diet Cokes,” she said, looking to defuse her drink selection. He was drinking cognac, elegantly. “How many copies of this are there, do you think?”

“About three in the world.”

“You could probably sell it and buy your
own
brownstone.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He had moved from a chair opposite the sofa, sitting next to her as she turned pages of the book.

It was like falling. And fast. He was kissing her, velvet lips, his lips on her neck, his hands confident; and swiftly, as though he would not allow a breath of protest, he had her clothing off, carrying her, kissing her all the way, to a bedroom she never really saw, the lights were out. But for the digital indicator on a clock, the room was dark. His hands and tongue were all over her, above and below.

“You have to wear something,” she managed to murmur.

“No problem,” he said as he caressed her with hands and tongue until she could barely stand it, he was still not inside her, and he had virtually brought her to orgasm, and then he was there, and it was slow, deep penetration, nearly beyond endurance. They were usually done before her; Michael, in particular, not a long-distance runner; but this man seemed capable of being in control and waiting for her, and then in a gasp, it was there for her, and only then, after her, did she feel as though it was over for him.

In repose, they didn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say, she was usually in some kind of control, and here she was out of control, played by him, confidently, this is what I can do for you, as though he had given her a drug. That was it, practically drugged by the sex. He was aroused more quickly than anyone she had ever been with, and still he took his time, brought her along with his caresses to the nearly unbearable until she had to have him inside her and then, finally, after his patience, the driving penetration caused her to cry out.

She slept deeply and when she awoke she didn’t know for the moment where she was. To add to her disorientation she never really found her bearings the night before, she never saw the room in the light, and now it was morning and the space revealed itself, a large bedroom with more ultra-chic imported Italian furniture, the room silver and white, shimmering silver drapes on the windows, and most notably, no sexual partner in view. The clock on a nightstand next to the bed read 6:53, at least not embarrassingly late, and in the odd modesty of these rituals, she looked around for her undergarments before trying to find him, remembered he had taken her clothes off downstairs, and then saw a neat pile on a chair, all her belongings, as though housekeeping had come in and cleaned up after, and a note sitting on top of the little pile. “Had to make an early flight. Off to Mexico City. Will call. You’re great. Richard.” Seduced and abandoned, she said to herself. She went into the exquisitely appointed bathroom, used the facility, rubbed some of his toothpaste around her mouth, rinsed, dressed, and left, catching a glimpse of herself in a store window on a street corner waiting for a cab, noting that she looked like the classic girl in a black dress early in the morning, on her way home from a sleepover.

Nancy was standing in the kitchen eating a yogurt for breakfast when Ronnie entered the apartment.

“Yes?” Nancy said, noting the night-before outfit.

“I never got home from Balthazar.”

“I see. Was it an intellectually stimulating evening?” she said.

“Best sex I ever had in my life. It was like I was drugged. I could be his sex slave.”

“That’s great and not great.”

“Left me sleeping, with a note.”

“A love note?”

“A travel bulletin. Off to Mexico City. What did I do here?”

“It’s too soon to tell.”

Richard sent a dozen roses, which arrived that morning, serving to ameliorate the cold and impersonal nature of the leave-taking. The card said, “Sorry about the departure. Will catch up when I’m back in town.” She jotted down his phone number and address on leaving, but what was she going to do, call when she knew he wasn’t there, write him a letter? She had one good way of reaching him and that was by e-mail, her original method of contacting him, and she sent an e-mail after editing it as carefully as if she were working on an article:

Thank you for the flowers. A fascinating night on many levels. I don’t usually do what I did but I’m not sorry I did what I did, if that makes sense. What does Mexico City mean, what are you doing there, when will you he back?


She figured he arranged for the flowers before his plane departed. Allowing the travel time to Mexico City, even if he checked his e-mail, and she didn’t know if he did, it wouldn’t be until evening before she heard back from him. She heard nothing from him for six days and then an e-mail:


Have been doing research in back country. Be back in New York three weeks. Will call when I get there.


Not signed “best” or “love” or “regards” or “stay well” or anything cordial, just “will call when I get there.” What was research in the back country? Was he the Indiana Jones of satanic cults, she wondered. It would be a month since their night together before she saw him again, assuming he did call upon arriving.

New York
magazine did not hold the lamentable soccer piece against her, the editor acknowledging it wasn’t a good fit. They accepted her proposal for another piece about the Public Art Fund, an organization that placed art and sculpture in public places in the city. Almost immediately she found herself in a social quandary. A sculptor, Tony Weston, working on a large aluminum piece that was going in at the edge of Central Park near the Plaza Hotel, turned out to be a nice-looking, curly-haired man in his thirties; sports shirt, chinos, sneakers; prototypical good-looking artist type, articulate, amusing. After Ronnie interviewed him, he asked her to join him for dinner in the park, an offer that couldn’t have been more pleasant; they would pick up sandwiches and wine and sit on the grass. She said no. Politely, but no. House rule—she and Nancy were against sleeping with more than one man at one time. But was she sleeping with Richard Smith, was she waiting to sleep with Richard Smith, what was he to her, what was she to him? Trying to elevate their night together to the promise of something else, “on spec,” as she defined it, on the chance that it might work out with Richard, she said no to this perfectly acceptable person.

“Am I crazy?” she asked Nancy in their dining area. “I have nothing going on with this Richard Smith and I turn down a possibility with someone else?”

“You don’t know that. Your Richard—”

“Not
my
Richard—”

“This
Richard obviously put his sting into you. Play it out. See if he shows up. If not, it won’t be the first one-night fling in the history of the five boroughs.”

She liked working on the Art Fund piece, enjoyed the people at the organization and the artists, and was motivated to do a good job to compensate for her woeful previous endeavor. Work was in the forefront again, no scary stuff from the cult, that was receding, old news. Not hearing from Richard was integrated into the rest of her life; she would give him another few days, three exactly, and then
she
would call the sculptor, find out if he still had any interest in seeing her.

“Ronnie, it’s Richard. Richard Smith.”

That was telling for her. He had been intimate with every contour of her body and he had to throw in his last name.

“Yes, well, I’m Ronnie Delaney.”

“I really meant to call, but it’s been madness. There’s this cult, a breakaway from the Catholic Church in Mexico, and I needed to see what they were doing. And they’re elusive.”

“What is it, a month since that night?”

“Is it? Ronnie, I’m not coming back to New York as I thought I would. I’m in New Orleans. For a conference. And they gave me a really good deal. I can have a guest, free airfare, expenses. How would you like to come down for the weekend?”

“I don’t hear from you all this time and you just—emerge—and invite me to New Orleans for a weekend?”

“Ever been here? It’s a great city. The Ritz-Carlton, front-line hotel. What do you say?”

They had no house rule covering it. Someone you’ve already slept with, whom you’ve been hoping will call, but were only prepared to give another couple of days before writing him off, calls within the time allotted and invites you to New Orleans.

“I don’t hear from you, then it’s ‘jump on a plane and come see me.’ Richard, I have a life.”

“I respect that. There’s a panel Saturday. Come for that. You could go back Sunday. It’s an open ticket. Good jazz, good eating. Please, Ronnie. We’ll have a great time.”

The panel was at Tulane University, “Satan in the Modern Age,” featuring Richard, a Catholic priest, and a local journalist who covered religious matters. The moderator was a professor of comparative religion at the school. The event was being held in a lecture hall with about three hundred students, faculty, and members of the public in attendance. Ronnie occupied a seat in the rear, fascinated with the discussion, a serious exploration of the possible existence of Satan; the journalist opposed to the notion, the priest in favor, and Richard taking a position similar to the attitude in his book, making the arguments and ultimately coming out in favor of the existence of Satan in a reasoned, intelligent manner. He was smooth, deft, as confident on stage as he had been with her.