“Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.”
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
“Okay, you win.”
Regina Wiley eyed an unfamiliar arrangement of rainbow-colored fireflies in the darkened room. Miniature bulbs strung across the top of an impressive bookcase fell in strands to the floor at either end like jerky illuminated sideburns. She regarded her husband from comfortable habit. Not counting past lives they had logged thirteen years of marriage, with no formal attention paid to Christmas; no tree, no carols, no midnight candlelight service. Old souls, in sync at the start, they declared New Year’s Eve to be their personal celebration. They fled from the yearend chaos of the city to raise gloved hands, tilt reddened chins and swig from a bottle of champagne—their gift to each other—as they greeted possibility on the cold, hard sands of Montauk. This year would find them again wrapped in the susurrus at land’s end, braced for the pulsing crescendo of the sea.
“The lights look great,” she cheered and immediately shuddered. There it was. That feeling of wellbeing that often unnerved her.
“I support sustainable marriage,” her husband quipped in a British accent worn at the heel after more than a dozen years in Manhattan. David Hawthorne knew he’d prevailed. He’d made the effort this year. Christmas was largely ignored at her request. Or rather, at her hedging a bet that if it were left up to him no move would be made. Two young cats skittered around his ankles, chasing the ethereal mouse. They had visited the shelter a month before. Just to look. Still, maybe, not quite over the passing that summer of her old cat. “We can call them fairy lights,” Regina supposed. “Besides,” David insisted, “It’s their first Christmas.”
David held fast to memories of his family in Leicestershire where he grew up; the clutter and sparkle of cheap decorations lovingly preserved, the mantle topped by miniature village scenes sunk into blankets of artificial snow. He remembered, fondly, the desiccated turkey and overdone veg, gorging on sponge cake soaked in sherry, and always feeling a trifle bombed by the end of the night. The three of them—an insular family—never tempted by the outcropping of aunts and uncles and cousins and always within taut personal boundaries. The death of his parents contrived to hold those memories in place.
Regina had an unholy attachment to family she longed to sever and could not. Christmas recalled a tree painstakingly trimmed that was all the more remarkable because her overdone father was blind drunk by the time he’d perch precariously on the hassock, and ever so delicately, like a sheepish driver submitting to a sobriety test, place the angel atop the tree. There was nothing remotely sweet about her mother who invariably threw up her hands and insisted on ordering in. Her sister—bitter and vengeful at predicted disappointment—tore through presents like Carl Orff’s angry dog. Regina’s parents were dead. Her sister’s life had been reinvented, Regina sidelined.
“I smell heat,” Regina sniffed. “What the…? Why do they do that? It’s practically like summer out.” “The radiators are off,” David reminded her. “I know. I know,” she huffed. “But it gets worse every year.” Regina hurried to yank the living room window open a few inches. “Can’t let the terrorists win.
“It’s Gabe.” David recognized the number, knew Regina was on the outs with the caller. “Let the machine get it,” she shot back. “I don’t have time for his ….” A dial tone signaled Gabriel’s retreat. “Still pissed at him?” “Maybe, I don’t know,” she softened, “but I don’t want to spoil the moment.” “Steady on. You know how he is,” David replied. “How he is,” Regina muttered, “is what pisses me off.”
After Regina lost her full time editorial position her husband put down his guitar to pick up the slack. David found work as a security guard. The pay was low but he was outdoors a good deal at a botanical garden in the Bronx and they needed the health insurance. It was only temporary they agreed. She’d met Gabriel Price when many with comfortable incomes were forced to recalibrate and take meaner positions with fewer incentives in the aftermath of 9/11. Gabriel was more than a decade younger than Regina. He blinked at her radical political views, critical and unwilling to take it all on until he recycled the information and tailored it to his peculiar proselytizing. From a Fundamentalist Christian family, he agonized over what was obvious, confiding in Regina, the older freelancer, with whom he felt ‘safe’. Although he was characteristically flamboyant among his social circle, and generally out with his coworkers, he feared the denunciatory edicts of his mother and the church back home in Louisville.
Earlier Regina and David had spent the day in SOHO at the offices of God’s Love We Deliver. They’d joined an amiable bunch of volunteers, many of whom they recognized from year to year. They stuffed paper shopping bags decorated by school children with gifts donated for the homebound. Regina knew it didn’t entirely define the holiday for her husband, but he loved the whole New York feel of it. On Christmas morning they’d meet at Cleo’s on Ninth Avenue, usually frequented by lifers in the theater. At an hour long before regulars took their customary bar stool sleepy-eyed altruists gathered around a fearsome mound of confection provided by a popular donut shop, and they downed steaming cups of hot coffee. Fortified by sugar and caffeine they’d head to their assigned neighborhoods to deliver those gift-laden shopping bags, along with a prepared holiday meal. They had—and would do so again—visited emaciated young men in tenement walk-ups, grizzled warriors in SROs, and resourceful old queens in rent-controlled apartments.
At Regina’s suggestion, Gabriel—not one to be left out—had also signed on to volunteer. He couldn’t do Christmas because he was flying home—of course—but he eagerly agreed to help fill the Christmas bags. For weeks around the office of a floundering magazine for women, where he and Regina freelanced, he babbled enthusiastically, basking in the attention he received for his ‘good deed.’ He’d failed to mention Regina’s part in it.
As the morning inclined toward afternoon, David had to remind Regina over and over what Gabe was like, that maybe it was a southern thing, his inattention to time. “To anyone else’s time,” she’d snapped, stuffing a bag. “Girl, you all need to get one of them cell phones,” she minced, making David laugh. Afterward, exiting onto Sixth Avenue on an unusually temperate winter afternoon, she recognized Gabe’s car at the curb. He waved frantically, laughing and mouthing the familiar ‘sorry’ refrain, beckoning them to the car. Breathless, Gabe leaned across to the passenger side window. “Oh my God!! You won’t believe what happened. I was so, so, so on time and then….” Regina studied her watch. He giggled, the prelude to wangling forgiveness. “Let me make it up. I’ll buy you guys a drink…?”
They had dismissed Gabe, pleading a prior engagement. Undaunted, he’d called after them: “Have an awesome day folks. Love ya!” Seemingly on the spur of the moment, David had stopped at a hardware store and purchased the fairy lights. “Tea?” “M-m-m, dunno, sweetie.” Regina stared at the rows of books shelved like subway riders in rush hour. “Is it too early for a drink?” she asked. “I’ll open a bottle,” he cheered. “Have a little celebration.”
Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate bubbled from the CD player and filled the room. David hollered from the kitchen: “Haven’t heard that in awhile!” Her personal timeline ran through the Beatles to Dylan, to the Sex Pistols, and a myriad of jazz and classical revolutions to rockabilly. Though nowadays she rarely listened to any music other than her husband’s.
Regina scanned the shelves. Her gaze traversed a lifetime of books, her old friends. She lingered on an author once read avidly, and reached up to stroke the thick spine of Flannery O’Connor before grabbing it off the shelf. “Born disenchanted,” she muttered. “What’s that?” David handed her a full glass. “Nothing,” she replied. “Well, I mean the lights look fab.” She smiled, more inwardly, but he got it. She raised her glass to him, to the lights. “Thanks for all this.” He nuzzled her shoulder, intuitive as ever. “Pecker up, lad. I’ll make us something to eat. Get that wine down your neck.”
It was a generational thing, she reasoned, her upset with Gabriel. She’d had many close gay friends in her life, still did. Years ago some, younger than she, had struggled painfully in a more hazardous environment. She became a confidant of sorts until they bashed their way out of the closet and she suddenly found she was no longer necessary. It was fine with her. She understood they needed to make their own path. Her close friends were older, bellwethers in their time.
Now was the time, though, you wanted someone serious and mad as hell—someone who puts aside feather boas and inconsequential personal drama. Gabe’s circle seemed so self-congratulatory, frothy, and liable to disappear when you needed them. She had to be honest with herself. She was angry with Gabe, not so much for his absence earlier, but for something that had happened less recently. Just before Thanksgiving he’d confessed to her that he dreaded the return home, how flustered he was, so closeted with his family. He and Regina talked for hours. She urged him to come out. Mothers need to know, she told him, and lies just made everyone sick. She knew. She had seen it in her own family.
He returned from the holiday in high gear, ready to take on the world. “Whew-e-e-e!” He was indeed born again. They were shocked, shocked! But he had prevailed. Then, in a heartbeat, he’d turned on Regina over some remark she’d made regarding the furor that had resurfaced of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. She’d cautioned against being deflected from even greater issues. “DADT’s lobbed around like a political football,” she said. His response was instant and lacerating. “You are a hetero! What do you know about it?” To her amazement he unleashed a tirade. “I’ll tell you what you know about it. Nothing. You know nothing about it!” She’d come home steaming. “You get too involved,” her husband chided.
Regina flipped through a hefty volume of letters. “You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you,” wrote Flannery O’Connor. Maybe she was just worn down by circumstance, unfairly harsh with Gabe. At least he was true to himself, not like that pastor who chastised his congregation for going to social networking sites, calling them ‘portals to infidelity.’ Later it was revealed that he’d had a three-way with his wife and a male church assistant. Gabriel didn’t apologize so much as seduce her with his capacity for fun. Better playmate than friend, she thought.
Caller I.D. prompted Regina to pick up the phone. Her expression caused David to lower the volume on Teresa Stich-Randall’s jubilation and he watched as the conversation played out. Regina replaced the phone in its cradle. It was late. Taxis were dear, but they would have to get a cab downtown from the Upper East Side to an address in the West Village. She advised David to bring his cell phone. “This is bad. This is very bad,” she murmured.
…
A thickset, unsmiling policewoman, someone Regina might describe as ‘butch’, stood sentry at Lucien’s front door in a nondescript reconverted warehouse on Greenwich Avenue. David liked Lucien Edwards well enough, though he saw his wife’s cousin rarely and had never been to his apartment. He knew the cousins had hit a speed bump some time ago and slowed the pace of their relationship. Regina presented the requisite paperwork from the local precinct. The officer, somewhat mollified, guided them under the taut strip of caution yellow stretched across the entrance. Inside, Regina and David moved stealthily through the gloom, museum-like as its place in her memory.
A muted yelp brought the policewoman to Regina’s side. “Sorry M’am. Didn’t they tell you at the precinct?” Regina averted her eyes from the mirrored walls reflecting a king-sized bed, from the tangle of faded satin sheets once the color of pomegranate enveloping the long, white limbs of her dead cousin. He was sprawled like an afterthought, one eye open, and mouth agape, unclothed but for black boxer briefs.
“They haven’t come yet,” said the officer. “It’s a bad night. Lotta parties.” Regina and David stared uncomprehending. “The Coroner’s office, they should be here soon. I’m only here because the Sixth is having their party. I was sent over from the 17th. “The seven…?” “Sutton Place. It’s pretty quiet over there.” “Oh,” said Regina, eyes downcast. “We just need to pick up some clothes for the, you know, the funeral.” She shivered and the officer acknowledged that she had earlier opened the windows. “He’s been here awhile.” Regina blanched. “I feel a little unusual.” David hurried Regina to the kitchen and ran cold water from the faucet. Alone they conversed in lowered tones. Regina knew they had more to do than gather a good suit, shirt and tie from her cousin’s closet.
Regina studied the dark eyes in the officer’s plainspoken face, an expression that was not altogether hard. “Listen, I need to ask you something.” She took in the close-cropped wiry hair, and masculine posture. There’s things….” “M’am,” the officer counseled, “Do whatever it is you needa do.” She gestured toward the VCR. “I’d start over there, with that.”
Her younger, more boisterous, and outspoken self had knocked around with Lucien. They were the oddballs in the family and their friendship was a kind of protest. He was tall and had a wicked laugh and he commanded a room. His pronounced jaw exaggerated by a delicately drawn line of beard that met a trim goatee at his chin. Though he was demonstrably out in the city, Lucien shrank into a straight man’s carapace around his widowed mother Eve. Regina guessed it was the same for him in the school where he taught music. He was organist and choir director at a church in the West Village, but Regina had little time for that aspect of him. She had been urged to a few of his concerts and always came away disconcerted at seeing her Aunt Eve, eager to reward herself with numbing cocktails at the Waverly Inn nearby. The strait-laced imperative of her aunt to “…show generosity of spirit and embrace the Lord,” drove her nuts. Eve was a bitter, close-minded, holier-than-thou propagandist and she repelled Regina. Prediction slipped off her aunt’s tongue like a satiated leech; burn in hell, a familiar conclusion. Oddly, Regina was still profoundly affected by an uncharacteristic wobble in her aunt’s voice when she told her about the detective’s call; that Lucien had not shown up at school. Her son was dead.
Fueled by gin and speed Lucien had revealed contents of a darker closet—bizarre things she’d gazed at wide-eyed and was sworn to secrecy. It was too much information, even for the free-spirited Regina. He’d boasted newly installed bedroom mirrors, satin sheets that, when lit from above, called up a burning bed. She didn’t understand and discomfort crept over her like sunburn. How could he do all that good work in the church, teach music to children and still…? “Because the church is the best place for Satan’s work,” he’d told her.
David was the catalyst to healing not so much a rift as Regina’s escape from Lucien. When he’d heard she was married Lucien insisted on meeting the lucky guy. They kept their meetings playful and in public, usually at Lucien’s favorite Spanish restaurant. Regina winced every time he’d ordered the Shrimp Diablo.
David announced that he’d found the trash bags. “Let’s get to it,” he directed. Resolute, they began with the videos and uncovered a large cache of Polaroid images. Very quickly they discarded the idea of sifting through the lot for anything that wasn’t questionable. There would be no keepsake photos for her Aunt Eve. They searched through the hall closet. She pulled a dress suit from a hanger, quickly picked a black tie from the rack. A collection of military caps was tossed into the trash; his leather motorcycle jacket left untouched. She peeked into the bathroom, at the walls papered with old Playbill covers, and she cleared the medicine cabinet.
In the bedroom Regina searched under the bed, careful to avoid looking at her cousin’s body and found nothing. At the officers direction she lifted the seat of a boxy chair at bedside and spying the contents in the false bottom she grasped the edge of the bed to sit down before hastily rethinking her miscalculation.
David dragged the trash bag to her and she hauled out whips, handcuffs, and leather masks, sex toys that were more frightening than playful to her. She interrupted his inquiries with “Don’t ask.” “Anyway,” David reasoned, “It was his life.” “Exactly,” breathed Regina. They rummaged through desk drawers. “Quickly,” Regina urged. “But we don’t want to toss anything his mother might need,” David suggested. “You know, bills and bank stuff.” He held up a sealed envelope marked: PERSONAL. “What about this?” Regina tore it open, fully suspecting the contents. There it was; instruction to destroy everything listed on the sheet of paper she held in her trembling hands. The false-bottom chair and the videos had already been taken care of. “Right.” She exhaled slowly. “Let’s start at the top.”
They were halted by lowered conversation in the front room. Two men, one doughy and pale, the other red-faced and thin strode into the bedroom like a silent comic duo. They nodded and quickly set about preparing the body. A gurney was retrieved. In a heartbeat her cousin was bagged and gone. The officer asked how it was going and Regina grimaced and showed her the list. “Okay, M’am, let me know if you need any help.”
Regina pulled back a length of black velvet hung from the ceiling that revealed a closet door. She stared at the doorknob. Her next move could pitch her down a very dark hole, a tainted Alice.
“Just let’s get on with it,” David urged as he ripped the cloth from its moorings and shoved it into a trash bag.
Religious vestments hung in the closet like forgotten extras in “The Exorcist.” Gingerly she pushed through them, revealing embroidered symbols she had shunted from memory a long time ago. On the shelf above stood engraved chalices and thick, black candles roped into bundles like dynamite. Sealed tightly in the kind of plastic bags that usually housed more innocent items, like sweaters and hats, were the books she knew to be The Satanic Bible and The Book Of Lucifer. Another held folders with pages and pages of liturgies and musical scores—her cousin’s handiwork—and she flinched when she recognized his feathery handwritten notes scrawled in the margins.
Like a curious child who had made a wrong turn in search of a candy house deep in a secluded forest, she imagined tearing away from the terrible scene as fast as her legs would carry her. A gentle nudge from David startled her as if from a nightmare.
…
David lifted the last of the trash bags into the hall. Regina and David watched as the officer sealed the apartment, and then lifted one of the bags, directing them to the elevator. “I can’t drop you anywhere. Regulations,” she told them apologetically.
Outside, David took the bag from her. They shook hands awkwardly, surrounded by the jumble of trash bags. “We need to—,” David started. “There’s a dumpster around the corner,” she advised.
Freed of their burden and clasped tightly to each other, Regina and David headed toward Christopher Street, seeing no one in the quiet neighborhood normally rollicking with tourists and hardcore inhabitants. They crossed Sheridan Square and spied an all night deli. “Coffee?” David asked. Regina answered quietly, “Yes, please.” They sipped tepid coffee in the flyblown interior, picking at a puck-dry round of coffee cake. “I’ll call him.” “Who?” David asked. “Gabe. I’ll call him after the holidays.” He asked what brought that on but she didn’t know. At the counter a disinterested clerk rang them up. His fingers shot from the register like it was white-hot. “Hola,” he whispered. “Number of the devil.” Regina stared, fascinated: $6.66. Before she could say anything David slammed a carton of eggnog onto the counter and the clerk readjusted the total. “There you go,” David declared. “We just beat the devil.”
The taxi sped uptown with the kind of abandon cab drivers embrace in the middle of the night. The radio was tuned to some talk show. Suddenly Regina sat up. “Shit!” David rolled his head, unwilling to come out of a comfortable slump. “What?” “The frig! I didn’t check that. God, there’s probably poppers in there.” Confused, David responded, “Popovers?” “No,” she replied. “You know, the disco drug.” David chuckled, “Too 80s. They don’t still do that?” Regina agreed, but imagined aloud her Aunt Eve uncapping a small brown bottle of liquid and sniffing out of curiosity. In the back seat of the speeding taxi they laughed and laughed and laughed.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS is an original short story by Linda Danz.
STORIES ON THE AMERICAN FRIEND Writers Guild of America, East #R28299
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The use of names of actual persons, places, and events is incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. © December 2010
