Demon

Satan.

“I understand. I’ve—” I raked a hand through my hair. It needed a cut. “I’m just run down.”

“I’ve had one viable project of yours make it through the committee in the last three months,” she said.

That’s because the editorial committee can’t make up their minds. Despite my sick days and missed meetings, I knew for a fact I had three proposals stuck in committee limbo.

“I need a big project to fill a hole—something we can get into production by spring, summer at the latest.” She dropped her hands to her desk. “Do you have anything you can get me? Help me out here, Clay. I know Katrina’s been sending things your way.”

Don’t even suggest it, Clay. But I could think of nothing else. “Actually, Helen, I’ve been working on something,” I heard myself say. “A novel about a fallen angel—a memoir-style story told from the viewpoint of a demon.” Inwardly, I cursed myself.

“Clay”— a slow, appreciative smile eased across her features—“I had no idea you had gone back to writing.”

Since the failure of Coming Home, you mean.

“Sounds intriguing. Religious fiction is getting hotter, and you do know we get first right of refusal.”

I’m an idiot. “I know.”

“Give it to Phil or Anu, and we’ll take it to committee.” She replaced the glasses, sliding them down her nose.

“It’s not quite finished—”

“Just get us something to look at.” She smiled, a second reminder that the meeting was over.

I thanked her, eager to get out of her office, to figure out what I had just done. Eager to get on with the day and to my appointment that evening.

I passed Sheila in the hallway, and the sight of her startled me. She looked drawn, thinner than I had ever seen her, and I realized it had been weeks since we’d had a real conversation. I had never seen her look quite like this— she was practically gaunt, and her lavender twin-set matched the smudges beneath her eyes.

“Clay, how are you? I talked to Aubrey over the holiday. She said she saw you. And that you’re seeing someone.” She smiled slightly.

That struck me as hilarious—in a manic, high-pitched laughing kind of way. “It’s, uh, a casual thing. And you? How are you?” I thought of Helen and her “you look terrible.” Apparently it was going around; I had never seen Sheila look so unattractive. I had never seen her look unattractive, period.

She took a long, shaky sigh. “Oh, Dan and I are separated.”

“I’m so sorry.” I said it because it was the proper thing to say. It was the thing I had grown sick of hearing from others about this time last year. But I wasn’t sorry, not really. Despite her haggard appearance, I had a hard time summoning any compassion for her. Thinking back to what Lucian had told me, to the “have to see you” e- mail, I found my sympathies rested solidly with Dan. What was it with Sheila and Aubrey, the adultery twins? I should call Dan. I ought to be having this conversation with him.

“Yeah.” She glanced down at the papers in her hand. She appeared to have been en route to the copy machine. “It’s difficult. I don’t know what will happen.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do . . .” But not only was I sure there was nothing I could do—I was fairly certain I wouldn’t do anything for her if I could.

“I’m glad you’re seeing someone, Clay. I’m not sure Aubrey realizes yet how much she lost.”

I thanked her and excused myself.

Her words stayed with me the rest of the day, as powerful, almost, as Lucian’s.

I REALIZED AFTER MEETING with Helen that I might have a problem. I had just proposed a story based on the memoir that Lucian had apparently submitted—or gotten through otherwise demonic means—to Katrina. Maybe the stack of papers on my desk bore little enough resemblance to the scant pages Katrina had given me that it wouldn’t be an issue, but I couldn’t find the proposal she had given me to know for sure. And I did not like the idea that I was walking what felt like a thin ethical line, especially considering on whose behalf I walked it.

Closing my office door, I phoned Katrina, but she wasn’t in. Not wanting to draw more attention to the matter than necessary and not wanting to talk to her assistant, I sent her an e-mail asking for electronic copies of the proposals she had given me on her visit two weeks before.

That was all I could do. That, and worry.

THE AROMAS OF WARM bread mingled with garlic, salami, and olives. It had once been an endurance test for me to make it to Prince Street without getting sidelined by every temptation on Salem. When Aubrey and I used to come to the North End for dinner, we would stop afterward at the twenty-four-hour bakery to buy turnovers and semolina bread for lunch the next day. In our last year of marriage, we still perused these streets for new restaurants, but the discussions we once had over pasta and veal dwindled to the clinking chatter of our cutlery, and we often forgot the bakery.

On the corner of Prince and Hanover, I paused before the iron gates of Saint Leonard’s, which bore the emblem of nail-scarred hands folded in front of a cross. In the summer, especially on feast days, church ladies sold Saint Anthony’s oil and religious icons at a table around the corner. Tonight the heavy wooden doors beyond the gate were locked tight, as though against sin itself—in addition to editors who cavorted with demons and spent entire nights contemplating Satan. Standing before the crumbling plaster of the church, I felt like more of a stranger to that churchgoing world of my youth than I did to Lucian’s spirit-inhabited realm.

But most unsettling, I felt less and less a part of the secular world in which I lived.

It was nearly seven o’clock. I hurried down Hanover, the smell of the ocean briny in my nose. In summer the restaurants—barely more than little open-kitchen joints boasting no more than eight tables apiece—threw open their doors, spilling tables onto the sidewalk to catch the influx of tourists and saints’ feasts celebrants. Tonight they were closed up against the coastal chill, menus peering out from windows, the flames of tiny candles dancing on the tabletops inside.