Fiction : Savannah Guz
The redhead emerged from the back after his plate was cleared away. “I suppose you’ll want dessert.” He saw she was carrying a bottle of Benedictine and two cordial glasses. His mood suddenly brightened. She sat down and poured. “May I call you Stanley?”
“Well, actually, my name is Ed, but…”
“Stanley, have you accepted Jesus?”
“What?” He looked at her and blinked twice, hard, while letting out a rush of alcohol-fragrant air.
“Here, drink.” She nudged the full cordial glass towards him. “I want to know if you are a saved soul because I suspect not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His face turned a bit red, and he steered clear of the drink for the moment, but glanced at it twice, as if tempted.
“Come on, now. Wet your whistle. There’s nothing wrong with it.” She kicked hers back immediately and refilled her glass. “Stanley. I am here for a purpose.”
“What’s that?”
“Apparently, you don’t recognize me.”
“Well who the hell are you?”
“A minor devil.”
“Ha! Aren’t all women?”
“And because you feel that way, I have been sent in such a form.”
He blanched slightly. She heard him swallow. He looked around. “What?”
“This, of course, is not my natural state, although…” she extended a leg from beneath the table, rolled her ankle once, showing off her apparently expensive heels, and gazed at it with frank admiration, “I must say that I don’t mind it one bit. Stanley, I am one of the honeyed henchman, a minor demon of the larger infernal hierarchy. And this inevitably means that you are likewise insignificant.”
His lower lip plummeted. His eyes creased. “Insignificant?”
“Yes, Stanley. You. A nobody. Hard to take isn’t it?”
He turned red. “What do you want?”
“No, Stanley. The question is: what do you want? The world is your oyster. I know you are restless and unsatisfied. If you could have anything, what, tell me, would it be?”
“I….I…” he loosened his collar. His eyes cast themselves involuntarily skyward. He wondered if this was a figment of his imagination, a dream, if he had truly drunk too much and was now somewhere at a roadside motel actually sleeping.
“Drink.” She looked down at his still full glass and pointed.
He lifted the cordial glass and tipped it back. She refilled it for him.
“Well…”
“You are more indecisive than I had imagined. Men’s-men choose quickly. Herman Goering wanted power. Mussolini wanted a larger manhood.” She sniffed the air for a moment and returned her gaze to him. “But I smell a subjugator in you, Stanley. Am I right?” She leaned across the table and got close to his face, close enough so that he could see the perfection of her lipstick, smell the musky undertones of her perfume. She didn’t resemble any of the foul demons he’d been educated in Sunday school to recognize. She took his head in both her hands and whispered, “Or, Stanley, are you simply a coward? Is that it?”
He felt an excruciating swell of emotion come over him, and a sob exploded from his lips. He realized that he was actually blubbering. “I want….I want to be happy. I’ve never been happy.”
“I can tell you how to do this.”
“And then you’ll want my soul,” he sniveled.
“No, Stanley. No.” She offered him a voice of dulcet tones, but pulled him forward by his lapels. “Not if you do exactly what I tell you to do.”
He was silent, and she began, “I know who you are. I knew who you were when you came in. We’ve been waiting for you for weeks. You’ve written dreadful reviews about work done by my acquaintances, and this makes us very mad. Very mad, Stanley. You fail to appreciate the honest work that goes into running a restaurant, the worry that goes into seeing that livelihoods continue. And a single review by a fat, sloppy, miserable sap can cause people to redirect their paths. You must not make people so unhappy, Stanley, and you in turn, will benefit.”
The demon sat back, crossed her legs, and smoothed her hair. Ed slumped back into his chair, and gazed at his lap. Tears ran down his fat cheeks. His lower lips still protruded. “I’ll be better.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll be better. I will.”
“Good. We’ll be watching you, Stanley. One slip and…” She allowed this to remain open and elliptical. “Now, we’re closed for the evening. I’ll thank you to pay Doris at the front register. Should you want breakfast tomorrow, there’s a diner on Pickett Avenue. I hope you will reward it with the number of stars commensurate with the owner’s extensive efforts.”
“Thank you...” He ducked his head, as if expecting to be struck. “Thank you,” he repeated, lower this time, and ran for the register.
She watched him slouch toward the cash stand where Doris waited, unsmiling. He left Doris an overly generous tip and went out by the front entrance, making the miniature cowbell attached to the closing mechanism jingle.
As the lights went out inside the diner and the Armand’s sign flickered off, he heard, above the opaque Mid-Western silence, the sound of two people cackling and whooping. One of them sounded, Ed thought, exactly like a man.
Inside, Doris was doubled in two with laughter. Before her stood a man, who was bald, corseted, and heavily made up. He placed an auburn Victoria Principal wig on top of the Hobart floor mixer, leaving the dome of his naked skull to gleam in the kitchen lights.
Slapping her knee and then dancing around the mixer, Doris continued hooting. “You did it again, you old bastard! You did it again! I tell you, you should act.”
Outside, Ed looked off into the distance, still listening. Inside, Doris hunted for a fresh bottle of gin.
Savannah Schroll Guz is an art critic for Pittsburgh City Paper and writes a monthly column on newly released reference guides for Library Journal. She is author of The Famous & The Anonymous (2004) and editor of the theme-based fiction anthology, Consumed: Women on Excess (2005). She is currently at work on a novel.