Demon

conversations from passing pedestrians and the cars on Massachusetts Avenue. In the distance a church bell chimed the half hour.

At length he said, “Elohim was my god before you ever existed. We called him that—‘Mighty God and Creator’—though the name implies so much more. I say this for you because the fearful names we have known since those first days cannot be formed by human tongues.”

I thought again of the barely perceptible lilt of his words that I had noticed earlier.

“El made a garden in Eden and lavished Lucifer with everything—all government, total power. He lived there like a favorite first son, the hawk to our sparrows, the jewel to our quartz.”

“So why did he make you? Especially if he knew you would turn out . . . like this.”

“I could ask you the same thing.” But he didn’t. “Why El made us, I’ve never known. One could surmise that El was lonely, but the fact is that he didn’t really need us. You, created in his image, might actually have more insight into that question than I do. We’re not so privileged as you in that way. As for me, my purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to worship, to praise, to wait upon the word of El.”

“That sounds really boring.”

“Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one’s created purpose.”

I couldn’t. “Why do you sometimes call him El—irreverence?”

“Here is where your language fails you utterly. El means ‘Mighty God’, though that does the meaning no justice. Elohim implies more, including plurality—‘the God of gods,’ you might say. Regardless of what you call him, he was all things to us then, which is very different from what he may be to you. Not a father—no, never that for us—but the reason for our very existence. The Great Initiator. Ever Enduring. Alpha and Omega.” The demon sighed. “As for us, we were a sight to behold, glorious, unequivocal, each of us distinctly individual but of one purpose. Shining, more than brilliant; we had spent a brief infinity reflecting Shekinah glory like so many polished mirrors. How radiant we were! It was my happiest, most glorious moment. For a small eternity—if you can fathom such a thing—I was happy.”

There was poignancy in the rich timbre of his voice. Walking with me like this, he might have been any man retelling the tale of a happy, thirty-year marriage before his wife died. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. “So why did you turn your back on it?”

He tilted his head skyward, narrowed his eyes. “I was promised more.”

We were on Brattle Street and had come to a drugstore advertising a post-Halloween sale. Masks hung in the window, a motley assortment of orcs, Klingons, zombies, and former presidents—the presidents looking too much like the zombies for any zombie’s comfort. In the corner a red-faced Satan peered out between Yoda and Spider- Man. The sight of it startled me, as though Lucifer himself, having heard his name, had come to eavesdrop on us.

Lucian stopped before the red face, the stubby, polyurethane horns that protruded from the forehead. He studied it so thoughtfully I wondered if it were possible he hadn’t ever seen one like it before.

“I remember the first time I ever saw a rendering of one of my kind,” he said, finally, seeming to gaze beyond the glass, beyond even the store. “Belial took me to see it with such passion and insistence that I expected a wonder, a thing of marvel—anything but the hideous vision before me with the man’s body and bird’s taloned feet. It was covered with fur like a mangy goat and had dark and hideous wings. I was stupefied and not a little offended. ‘What kind of abomination was that supposed to be?’ I demanded. Belial, finding this uproariously funny, bowed and pointed. ‘Behold, the fearsome Belial!’ he said, which was ridiculous, as he has always been beautiful.”

He turned a baffled look on me. “I thought your mad and genius artists were supposed to succumb to higher visions beyond the corporeal world. But there you are, still painting your devils red with horns, making Lucifer, our shining star, into a grotesque goat-man. And these are the images that remain to this day: ugly, marred, toppling from heaven, herded toward hell by the swords of shining blond men with stoic faces and bleached togas—Michael and Gabriel, I presume.” He turned away.

“Just think,” I said, in a moment of facetiousness, “you can dress up as a devil on Halloween and no one will recognize you.” I regretted my recklessness the moment I said it.

“Just think,” he said, too lightly, “you might pass me in the street and never know it. If I wished, you might even feel lust for me.”

He glanced sidelong at me, and I shrank back at the memory of copper hair, of a silver ankh swinging against smooth skin, pointing at the breasts beneath.

“Why do you show up like this, in these different guises?” I hated the feeling of being caught always unawares.

“I like the feel of trying them out,” he said, as though they were nothing more than new shoes or a bicycle.

I thought of the calluses on his hands, the telltale record of a history not his own. I wondered if they belonged to someone, or once had.

I shook the thought away. I might be a seeker, but there were some things I did not want to know.

ONE BLOCK FARTHER, LUCIAN stopped in front of a tea shop. “They have a good oolong here. Didn’t you take a fancy to oolong in China?” He pushed through the glass-paned door of the shop.

I knew I had never mentioned the trip I had taken nearly twenty years ago. I had fallen in love with the country, and, at one point in our marriage, even suggested adopting a baby from China.

Of course, that was all moot now.

In a show of defiance, I did not order oolong but decaffeinated Earl Grey. The demon, for his part, preferred jasmine.

The wall at the back of the shop was plastered with academic, activist, and personal notices, ads seeking dog- sitters and lesbian roommates and advertisements for Pilates instruction and colonic irrigation. Lucian was silent as he plucked the tea ball from his cup and set it aside on the saucer. It occurred to me then, with a sense of strange intuition and even stranger incredulity, that he was procrastinating.