The Devil’s Redhead

she seemed to say, or die trying. He reached across the space between them to remove a strand of hair which was glued to her cheek with champagne. Sensing an opening, she moved in and landed that first kiss. He felt her lips move against his own- warm, soft, like high school- the taste of her lipstick mingling with the smell of her hair and her breath and her sticky skin. Then came that liquid heart-stopping thing not even movies get right.

He made a few calls, and from a nameless friend wangled access to a condo up north, near the ski resort on Mt. Charleston. On the drive Shel put her feet up on the dash and let the desert wind run riot through her hair as she told him a little about herself. It was her second year in Vegas, she said, after ten years wandering around the desert southwest- El Paso, Tucson, Flagstaff, Lake Havasu, Bullhead City. She’d fled Odessa as a teenager, running away from what she called “a small-town roach campaign.” Then came the long hard haul of working her way up from waffle houses to roadside diners, cocktail lounges, racketeer-run deadfalls and the bleakest nightclubs on earth, a few of the topless variety- where dusty men came out of the desert at night to drink hard, say nothing and stare at you, like you were an angel, or a curse- starting as a skinny kid at minimum wage and ending a wise old woman of twenty-eight at a fifty-dollar table at Caesar’s.

“You know The Music Man?” she said. “There’s this song Professor Harold Hill sings, ‘The Sadder but Wiser Girl for Me.’ Always been my favorite part of the movie.”

Abatangelo let that sit for a moment, studying her in sidelong glances. Did I mention she was perfect, he thought, like a jailer whispering to the prisoner caged inside his heart. And her hair smells great.

“So what’s that make me?” he asked finally. “Some out-o’-town jasper?”

He gave it his best Robert Preston. Her brow furrowed as she tried to place the line.

“Oh, we got trouble,” she said at last, vamping.

“Terrible, terrible trouble,” he confirmed.

She dropped her head, giggling, and hugged her knees. “Oh please please please,” she shrieked, stamping her bare feet on the dash, “please don’t tell me you’re gonna fall for the fussy little librarian.”

The laughter in her voice, it was heat lightning, goofy, who-the-hell-cares. Like everything else about her.

“Librarian?” he said, coming back to it. “God, no. Might as well chase after my sister.”

He turned east off the highway toward the mountain and they pulled up to the condo just after two in the morning. The place was woodsy, plush and remote, with the forest dissolving on all sides into moonless black. Abatangelo retrieved a key from the hiding place he’d been told about, opened the door and switched on the light. Shel ventured inside on tiptoe, like a nymph in some French ballet, and glanced around.

“You could do terrible things to me here,” she said. “Cut me up like a chicken. Nobody’d ever know.”

Abatangelo, following her in, closed the door and tossed her the key- gently, so she’d catch it. “Gee,” he said. “We’ve only just met and you already know me so well.”

They spent the next three days holed up alone, curtains drawn, door locked, phone off the hook. Outside, in a freak spring heat wave, desert temperatures rose to record levels. Inside, they tumbled, roiled, laughed, clinging to each other, their sweat running milky and slick. Later, naked and tasting of each other, they’d lay there bleary on drenched sheets, staring at the ceiling fan in wonder.

From Vegas they flew to San Diego for the sake of the ocean breeze, taking a room at the Hotel Americana on Shelter Island. Here at last they began to show themselves in public, taking in the sights, the nightlife. From time to time Shel found herself glancing sidelong at this new man in her life, wondering, Who is this creature? How did he make it all happen so fast? In the looks department he was better than average, but not so slick he could gloat. He was tall, though, always a plus, with the kind of build only swimming provides. And my, but the man could swim. In the mornings she’d sit poolside in a hotel lounge chair as he swam laps, fanning herself with the breakfast menu and marveling not only at how gorgeous and strong he looked in the water, but how much she enjoyed just sitting there, watching him. I’m a schoolgirl at summer camp, she thought, lusting after the lifeguard.

Truth be told, she liked everything about him. He could be shy as a boy one minute and then click, the eyes came on, the mind snapped to and nothing got past him. They entered a room and heads turned, not because of one or the other, but the two of them together. Never happened like that before, she thought- maybe your luck’s changed, with men at any rate.

He had with him some serious-looking cameras, and Shel assumed he was a photographer of some sort. One with money to spare. He was generous with it, too, spending it on her with the giddy finesse of a man embarked on a winning streak. When she pressed him once- You do this for a living?- he offered a demented little grin and called himself an artiste mauvais.

“Oh, gee, well- doesn’t that just clear the whole thing up,” she said.

“Like Rimbaud,” he explained. When she just stared at him, he added, “French poet, disciple of Baudelaire. He gave up poetry and ended up running guns in Abyssinia.”

She sensed something in his voice. “You gonna tell me that’s what you do?”

It took him a moment to answer, and all he said was, “I don’t like guns. Don’t like what they do to people.” Smiling finally, he added, “And Abyssinia no longer exists.”

To change the subject, he told her he’d had gallery shows in Mendocino, Carmel; he’d joined a few group exhibits in Tahoe and San Francisco. He had a carrying case with him for his prints, and he took it out and showed her his work.

“Jesus,” she said, looking. He had a real knack for faces, an eye for contrast. He could capture the riddle in an empty street, an old man’s hat, a woman alone at a bus stop. “You’ve really got something,” she said. “These are good.”

He said nothing, just looked back at her with an impossibly sad smile, the kind to break a girl’s heart.

The following day, he came clean. They were sitting alone beneath a cloudless sky on the dock outside the hotel. Sipping champagne and nibbling on Korean barbecue, they licked the sauce off each other’s fingers, watching the yachts sail out past Ballast Point. Shel trailed her feet in the water, her back resting against Abatangelo who sat in a deck chair behind her. Using a yawn for subterfuge, he collected something from his pocket, reached around her, opened a black felt box with satin lining and presented his gift- a necklace of fine gold filigree, with an amethyst shaped like a wine-colored teardrop resting in a white gold setting.

“Holy… cow…,” she whispered, her hands held out, sticky with barbecue. “If that’s not for me, I’m gonna cry.”

She licked her fingers clean, reached up and gathered her hair away from her neck so he could put it on her. As he fastened the clasp at her nape, he said, “This stone, incidentally, has a story to it.”

She could tell from his voice there was nothing “incidental” about it, but before she could call him on it, he continued.

“The maiden Amethyst was wandering through the forest one day, when she stumbled on the tigers of Bacchus, sleeping in the sun. Before she could sneak away, the tigers woke up. She panicked.”

“Bad idea with tigers,” Shel guessed.

“You know this story.”

“Every girl knows this story,” she said. “More or less. Go on.”

“Amethyst ran. The tigers chased her down. They almost had her when she was spotted by the goddess Diana. Taking pity, and to save Amethyst from being torn to shreds, Diana turned the girl into stone.”

Shel turned to face him, squinting in the sunlight. “What, this goddess, she couldn’t just wave some kinda magic thingy?”

Abatangelo sat there a moment, considering it. “There’s no magic thingy in this story. Sorry.”

There it was again, she thought. That catch in his voice. The necklace wasn’t just a gift. It was a warning.

“This story,” she said, “you’re gonna get to the ending before you break my heart, right?”

He clicked the felt box open and shut, nervous. “Bacchus,” he said finally, “in remorse for what his tigers had done, poured wine over Amethyst. It didn’t bring her back to life, but it did turn the stone the color you see there.”

Shel nodded, then held the stone up to the sunlight to watch it flare. “Great story,” she said finally. “Spooky, but great. And I love my present. Thank you.”

“You are,” he said, “most definitely welcome.”

“That’s not the only story goes along with this present, is it.”

He looked out at the wide blue bay, dotted with sails, taking a moment to frame his thought. “I want to give