The Demonologist (3 page)

“Phenomenon?”

“If you will forgive my generality.”

“It all sounds very mysterious.”

“Necessarily so. As I mentioned.”

She continues to look at me. As if I have come to
her
with questions. As if it is she who waits for me to move us forward. So I do.

“You refer to a ‘case.’ What does it involve, precisely?”

“Precisely? That is beyond what I am able to say.”

“Because it’s a secret? Or because you don’t understand it yourself?”

“The question is fair. But to answer it would be a betrayal of what I have been charged to disclose.”

“You’re not giving me much.”

“At the risk of overstepping my instructed limits of conversation,
let me say that there isn’t much for me to give. You are the expert, professor, not me. I have come to you seeking answers, your point of view. I have neither.”

“Have you yourself seen this phenomenon?”

She swallows. The skin of her neck stretched so tight I can see it move down her throat like a mouse under a bedsheet.

“I have, yes,” she says.

“And what is your opinion of it?”

“Opinion?”

“How would you describe it? Not professionally, not as an expert, but you personally. What do you think it is?”

“Oh, that I couldn’t say,” she says, shaking her head, eyes down, as though I am flirting with her and the attention is cause for embarrassment.

“Why not?”

She raises her eyes to me. “Because there is no name for it I could give,” she says.

I should ask her to go. Whatever curiosity I held about her when I first spotted her outside the office door is gone. This exchange can go nowhere now but into some revelation of deeper strangeness, and not of the amusing anecdote variety, not something about a crazy woman’s proposal I might later repeat at dinner parties. Because she’s not crazy. Because the usual veil of protection one feels while experiencing brief intersections with the harmlessly eccentric has been lifted, and I feel exposed.

“Why do you need me?” I find myself saying instead. “There are a lot of English profs out there.”

“But few demonologists.”

“That’s not how I would describe myself.”

“No?” She grins. A show of giddy humor that is meant to distract from how clearly serious she is. “You are a renowned expert on religious narrative, mythology, and the like, are you not? In particular, the recorded occurrences of biblical mention of the Adversary? Apocryphal documentation of demonic activity in the ancient world? Is my research in error?”

“All that you say is true. But I don’t know anything about demons or inventions of that kind outside of those texts.”

“Of course! We didn’t expect you to have firsthand experience.”

“Who would?”

“Who would indeed! No, professor, it is only your academic qualifications that we seek.”

“I’m not sure you understand. I don’t
believe
.”

She merely frowns at this in apparent lack of comprehension.

“I’m not a cleric. Not a theologian either, for that matter. I don’t accept the existence of demons any more than that of Santa Claus,” I go on. “I don’t go to church. I don’t see the events in the Bible or any other holy document as having actually occurred, particularly not as they pertain to the supernatural. You want a demonologist, I suggest you contact the Vatican. Maybe there are some there who still take that stuff seriously.”

“Yes.” She grins again. “I assure you there are.”

“You work for the Church?”

“I work for an agency that has been endowed with a substantial budget and wide-ranging responsibilities.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

She leans forward. Her blunt elbows audibly meeting her knees. “I know you have an appointment. You currently still have time to travel to Grand Central to make it. So may I now deliver you my client’s proposal?”

“Wait. I didn’t tell you I was going to Grand Central.”

“No. You did not.”

She doesn’t move. Her stillness a point of emphasis.

“May I?” she asks again, after what feels like a full minute.

I lean back, gesturing for her to continue. There is no more pretending I have a choice in the matter. She has, in just the last moments, enlarged her presence in the room so that she now blocks the door as effectively as a nightclub bouncer.

“We will fly you to Venice at your earliest convenience. Tomorrow, preferably. You will be accommodated at one of the old city’s finest hotels—my personal favorite, if I may add. Once there, you will attend
at an address to be provided. No written document or report of any kind will be required. In fact, we ask that you
not
acknowledge your observations to anyone other than the individuals attending on-site. That is all. Of course, all expenses will be paid. Business class flight. Along with a consulting fee we hope you will feel is reasonable.”

At this she stands. Takes the single step required to reach my desk, picks a pen out of a coffee mug, and scribbles a figure onto the memo pad next to the phone. It is a sum just over a third my annual salary.

“You’ll pay me this to go to Venice and visit somebody’s house? Turn around and fly back? That’s it?”

“In essence.”

“It’s a hell of a story.”

“You doubt my sincerity?”

“I hope you’re not hurt.”

“Not at all. I sometimes forget that, for some, verification is required.”

She reaches into the inside pocket of her jacket. Lays a white business envelope on my desk. Unaddressed.

“What’s this?”

“Aircraft voucher. Prepaid hotel reservation. Certified check for a quarter of your payment, the remainder to be paid upon your return. And the address at which you are to be in attendance.”

I let my hand hover over the envelope, as though touching it would concede a crucial point.

“Naturally, you are welcome to bring your family with you,” she says. “You have a wife? A daughter?”

“A daughter, yes. I’m less certain about the wife.”

She looks up at the ceiling, closes her eyes. Then recites:

Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source

Of human offspring, sole propriety

In Paradise of all things common else.

“You’re a Milton scholar, too?” I ask when she’s opened her eyes again.

“Not of your rank, professor. I am an admirer only.”

“Not many casual admirers have him memorized.”

“Learned knowledge. It is a gift of mine. Though I have never experienced what the poet describes.
Human offspring
. I am childless.”

This last confession is surprising. After all the elusiveness, she offers this most personal fact freely, almost sadly.

“Milton was right about the joy of offspring,” I say. “But trust me, he was way off about marriage as being common with paradise.”

She nods, though seemingly not at my remark. Something else has been confirmed for her. Or perhaps she has merely delivered all that she was meant to, and is awaiting my reply. So I give it to her.

“My answer is no. Whatever this is about, it’s intriguing, but quite beyond my scope. There’s no way I could accept.”

“You misunderstand. I am not here to hear your answer, professor. I am here to deliver an invitation, that is all.”

“Fine. But I’m afraid your client will be disappointed.”

“That is rarely the case.”

In a single motion, she turns. Steps out of the room. I expect a cordial acknowledgment of some kind, a
Good day, professor
or wave of her bony hand, but she only starts clipping down the hall toward the stairs.

By the time I lift myself out of my chair and poke my head out the door to look after her, she’s already gone.

I
GATHER SOME WORK THINGS INTO MY SATCHEL AND MAKE MY
way back out into the heat to the subway. The air is more wretched down here, vacuum-sealed and sweetened by garbage. This, along with the human scents, each relating a small tragedy of enslavement or frustrated desire as they pass.

On the ride downtown I try to summon the Thin Woman, to recall the physical details of her person, so vividly present only minutes earlier. But whether it is the unsettling events of the day or some corner of my short-term memory gone on the fritz, she returns to me only as an idea, not as a person. And the idea is more unnatural, more frightening, in recollection than she struck me at the time. To think of her now is like the difference between experiencing a nightmare and telling someone in the bright safety of the morning about its meandering, foolish plot.

At Grand Central I rise up the escalator and tunnels that feed into the station’s main concourse. Rush hour. It feels more like panic than purposeful travel. And nobody is more lost-looking than the tourists,
who have come to witness the thrill of bustling New York but now stand merely stricken, clinging to their spouses and children.

O’Brien stands by the information kiosk beneath the gold clock at the center of the floor, our traditional meeting place. She looks pale. Possibly irritated, rightly, by my lateness.

She’s looking the other way when I sidle up next to her. A tap on her shoulder and she jumps.

“Didn’t know it was you,” she apologizes. “Though I should have, shouldn’t I? This is our place.”

I like that more than I perhaps ought to—the notion of “our place”—but write it off as merely an accident of words.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“You are forgiven.”

“Remind me again,” I say. “
Why
is this our place? Is it a Hitchcock thing?
North by Northwest
?”

“And you are my Cary Grant? A self-flattering notion. Not that the casting is so far off, so don’t pout. But the truth is I like meeting here precisely for all that makes it so
uncivilized
. The crush. The masks of greed and desperation. The pandemonium. Organized chaos.”

“Pandemonium,” I repeat absently, though too quietly for O’Brien to hear amid the hubbub.

“What’d you say?”

“It’s the name Satan gives the fortress he builds for himself and his followers after being cast out of heaven.”

“You’re not the only one who’s read Milton, David.”

“Of course. You were way ahead of me.”

O’Brien takes a step to look directly up at me. “What’s up? You look all wobbly.”

I think of telling her about the Thin Woman, the strange proposal delivered to me at my office. But there is a sense that this would be sharing a secret I was meant to keep—more than a “sense,” a physical warning, my chest tightening and a distinct squeezing around my windpipe, as though invisible fingers have passed through my flesh to silence me. I find myself murmuring something about the heat, my need for a stiff drink.

“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” O’Brien replies, taking me by the arm and leading me through the mob on the terminal floor. Her hand on my elbow a patch of cool on my suddenly burning skin.

T
HE
O
YSTER
B
AR IS UNDERGROUND
. A
WINDOWLESS CAVERN BENEATH
the station floor that, for whatever reason, lends itself to the eating of raw seafood and the drinking of cold vodka. O’Brien and I have spent our time here mulling over the state of our careers (mine hitting the top of its game, enjoying “leading world expert” status at almost every mention, and O’Brien’s writing on the psychological underpinnings of faith healing lending her recent semi-fame). Mostly, though, we talk about nothing in particular in the way of well-matched, if unlikely, companions.

What makes us unlikely? She’s a woman, first of all. A single woman. Dark hair cut short, blue eyes blazing out of a darkly Irish complexion. Unlike me, she comes from money, though of the unshowy, northeastern kind. A tennis-camp Connecticut youth, followed by a seemingly effortless gathering of high-powered degrees, a successful private practice in Boston, and now Columbia, where only last year she stepped down as head of the Psych Department to concentrate more on her own research. A winning résumé, no question. But not exactly the profile for a married guy’s drinking buddy.

Diane has never directly complained about our friendship. In fact, it’s something she’s encouraged. Not that this has stopped her from being jealous of our Oyster Bar celebrations, our midweek sports bar watching of hockey games (O’Brien and I are both now provisional Rangers fans, though born to other teams, she the Bruins, I the Leafs). Diane has no choice but to accept O’Brien, as to deny our friendship would be to concede that there is something Elaine gives me that Diane cannot. That this is true and plainly known to all three of us is what can make coming home after a night out with O’Brien especially chilly.

The thought that I might cut off our friendship as a peace offering to Diane has occurred to me, as it would to any husband in a
floundering marriage who still wants it to work, against all odds and good advice. And I
do
want it to work. I admit to more than my fair share of failings—the undefined pool of shade that lies at the bottom of who I am—but none are intentional, none within grasp of my control. My imperfections haven’t prevented me from doing everything I could think of to be a good husband to Diane. But the thing is: I need Elaine O’Brien in my life. Not as a chronic flirtation, not as a sentimental torment of what might have been, but as my counsel, my more articulate, clear-thinking inner self.

This may sound strange—it
is
strange—but she has taken the place of the brother I lost when I was a child. While I could do nothing to prevent his death then, I cannot now let O’Brien go.

What’s less clear is what she gets from our association. I’ve asked her, from time to time, why she wastes so many of her sparse social hours on a melancholic Miltonist like me. Her answer is always the same.

“I’m meant for you,” she says.

We find stools at the long bar and order a dozen New Brunswick malpeques and a couple martinis to get us started. The place is jostling and loud as the floor of the Stock Exchange, yet O’Brien and I instantly find ourselves cocooned in our shared thoughts. I begin by relating my encounter with Will Junger, adding some sharper put-downs to the ones I actually delivered earlier that afternoon (and leaving out the raw confessions of worry about Tess). O’Brien smiles, though she detects my embellishments (and likely my omissions, too) as I knew she would.