Unsoul'd (5 page)

"It's not the book," I assured him. "I'm not stressed about it. Well, no more so than usual."

"No good will come of it," he warned me.

"You keep saying that, but it's not going to stop me. And seriously -- this has nothing to do with the book. I've been doing this long enough that I can tell when a book is messing with me."

He shrugged. "I don't know... You still seeing that herbalist?"

A while back, I had complained of a strange, intermittent twinge in my back -- not even actual pain, just an odd sensation. Tayvon, who swore by the multitude of Eastern philosophies and medicines, had sent me off to an herbalist in a Chinatown alleyway, where I had spent over a hundred dollars in cash for three small pill bottles and instructions for their usage.

"Not for a little while," I told him. "My back's better now." And it was, though whether the Chinese pills had contributed to my recovery or not, I couldn't say. I felt vaguely ripped off, but couldn't prove anything one way or the other.

"You should see Li again. He's good."

I was beginning to regret confiding in Tayvon at all. I suppose I'd been hoping he would just chuckle, say, "It happens to all of us, bro," and move on. But he was taking this pretty seriously, which both annoyed me and freaked me out. I didn't want to make the trek to Chinatown again. I didn't want to shell out a hundred dollars or more for unregulated pills that may or may not help. It was like living a spam e-mail: Herbal Viagra! Herbal Cialis!

Maybe if I had told him about the masturbation session earlier in the day, he could confirm for me that this was no big deal. But I hadn't mentioned it because...how do you tell someone you masturbated so powerfully that it rendered your penis inert?

"I had a, you know, a boner when I woke up this morning. So, like, everything still
works
. It just didn't last night."

"Well, that's good. Did you make use of it?"

"She had to get up early for work."

"Ah." He tapped a finger against his glass of sparkling water. He had exceptionally long fingers, so long that they seemed to need an extra joint. "I don't know, man. Is there something psychological going on? You worried about something?"

"No more so than usual." Well, there was the small matter of the devil, but with each hour that passed without his presence, I became more and more convinced that I had imagined the whole thing, perhaps in a sort of feverish fugue state brought about by the poisoned bagel.

"Is it the girl? You just not into her any more?"

I didn't want to think that was the case. I liked Manda. I didn't know if I loved her -- partly because I just didn't know and partly because every time the thought hovered into view, I dodged it like a videogame missile -- but I liked her enormously. We had fun together, and not simply fun in the bedroom-romp sense. We liked the same movies and TV shows. We were similar enough to get along, but different enough that we didn't bore each other. Sexually, we were thus far unadventurous, but we'd only been sleeping together for a couple of months. There would be time to figure out who would get the sex swing installed in his or her bedroom.

Metaphorically speaking.

Unless Manda was into that. In which case, I suppose I'd give it a shot.

"You should look into acupuncture," Tayvon said. "It helped my hip last year, remember?"

I sighed. Yeah, I remembered. I also remembered that -- like Chinese herbalists -- acupuncturists weren't covered under my exceptionally shitty National Writers' Union health insurance plan. More out-of-pocket bucks for something that might or might not work.

"Or maybe it's all in your head," he went on. "Maybe you're thinking of someone else instead. Like that chick from the gym you told me about...?"

The gym... I checked my cell for the time. Shit! I was late. "I have to go," I told him, hopping up. I tossed a five on the table to cover my tea and tax and tip. "I gotta go."

"See an acupuncturist!" he shouted after me as I rushed off.

Wherein the Devil Returns at an Inopportune Moment

I made it to Body by You and raced into the men's locker room to change. It's not that I had a class to attend (I hate exercising in general, but I reserve my most fervent ire for group exercise), but that I had my own particular schedule to adhere to.

Which mirrored that of Gym Girl.

I didn't know her real name. More accurately, I couldn't
remember
her real name. She told it to me the first time we spoke and I promptly forgot it and there had never been a convenient opportunity to say,
Er, excuse me, but what's your name again?
Because once you've discussed the things we've discussed -- my dating life, my nascent relationship with Manda, my writing; her boyfriend, her family -- it's nearly impossible to go back to introductions. Someday, I hoped, someone else at the gym would mention her name. In the meantime, I just thought of her as Gym Girl. Which was probably sexist, but given that I was already objectifying her from the ends of her sexy, flowing (though sweat-dampened) black hair down past the luxurious curve of her lower back and over the delicate hump of her rump to the feet at the end of her dainty ankles, I would say that a sexist nickname counts as the least of my sins.

It all began about six months earlier, right around the time Fi left. I first noticed Gym Girl in the weight room, doing chest presses on the bench. There's nothing that makes a man feel more manly, I firmly believe, than lifting weights in close proximity to an attractive woman. It's not just the surges of adrenaline or the sweating or the grunting; it's also (maybe even mainly) that the average guy can lift so much more than the average woman that it makes him feel definitively above average. When a woman is bench-pressing forty-five pounds and sees you bench a wholly unimpressive one-fifteen or so, her perspective is not comparing you to other guys. She's comparing you to herself and is impressed by the unimpressive.

Bench-pressing a buck-fifteen in front of Gym Girl made me feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.

For a little while there, I simply noticed that she tended to do treadmill/elliptical work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and that she appeared in the weight room on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Almost unconsciously, almost without intending to do it, I altered my own workout schedule to match hers. For a few months, we gave each other the occasional nod or polite smile, but then one day -- shortly before I first met Manda, actually -- she left her plates on the bench press bar when she switched over to the hip adduction machine. I knew she was finished with the bench (by this point, I knew her workout routine as well as I knew my own), but I took the opportunity to approach her.

"Excuse me." I waited for her to take out her earbuds. "Are you finished with the bench?"

"Oh!" She grimaced. "Yeah. I'm so sorry. I should have put my plates back. I'll--"

"No, no," said chivalrous I, "I'll get it. It's no big deal." Translation: I am so strong and manly that moving weights is not a problem for me.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "Hey, I have a question."

"Sure."

"That thing you do. That one exercise that's sort of half chin-up, half-upside-down push-up... What's that for?"

"Well," I said, thinking quickly, "that works the back, really. The back and, uh, the shoulders a bit."

I had no idea what that particular exercise did. Tayvon had walked me around the gym one day, showing me how to use the machines and rattling off sets and reps. Since he is built like the love child of Michael Phelps and Taye Diggs, I listened obediently and asked no questions.

"That makes sense," she said thoughtfully. "I'm" and said her name and extended her hand.

I became aware of the fact that we were the only two people in the weight room. I introduced myself and shook her hand and the next thing I knew, we had been talking for at least a half hour. We waved hello in the cardio room the next day and she laughed and said, "Hey, looks like our schedules are in sync!"

Thanks to me, they were, and I did everything in my power to keep them that way. Hence dashing away from Tayvon to go to the gym, where I emerged from the locker room into the cardio room, to find that Gym Girl was on the treadmill today, along with a dozen other huff-and-puffers.

Glorious day -- the only open treadmill was directly behind Gym Girl.

I gave her a wave and a grin, which she returned, and then hopped on the vacant treadmill, which afforded me a distracting view of her rear. I had never really considered myself an ass-man, but Gym Girl's example of assery was enough to make me rethink that position. She peered back at me and I lifted my eyes in plenty of time, pretending to be absorbed in ESPN on the center monitor.

"Smoothies after?" she asked, her face and neck glimmering with a thin sheen of perspiration.

"Sure!" I said. It had become a sort-of ritual for us; once a week, we showered and changed and headed next door to the organic fruit stand, where they made grotesque smoothies that I was happy to pretend to enjoy.

I jogged lightly for a while, reveling in the smooth play of Gym Girl's buttocks in her skin-tight Lycra. It was hypnotic, like the road at night, or a scroll saw. I didn't even realize that the person on the treadmill next to me had been replaced until a familiar voice said, "How have you not closed the deal on this one yet?"

I blinked and shook myself out of my daze. The devil was on the treadmill to my right, walking a lazy one mile per hour, wearing a pair of baggy shorts, a loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt, dark Ray-Bans, and a white fedora with a black band, tilted at a rakish angle. He looked ridiculous and relaxed.
 

"Excuse me?" I asked, panicked that someone -- especially Gym Girl -- would overhear.

"You're excused. Why haven't you closed the deal on Ms. Ass 2013 over there?" He gestured, as if I hadn't gotten the point.

I swallowed hard and glanced around. So far, no one had noticed. "Ixnay on the--"

"I hate Pig Latin," the devil said, wrinkling his nose. "Don't worry -- I've got it covered. To the rest of them, you're just jogging along at an oh-so-impressive--" he craned his neck to read my treadmill "--wow, four whole miles an hour, and chatting with the guy next to you about ESPN."

"Oh." That was sort of cool, I had to admit. I told him so.

"Yeah, I know. I have tricks. Comes with the job description and the whole exiled-from-paradise vibe I'm working. I'll ask again: Why. Haven't. You. Hit that. Yet?" With a significant eyebrow-jerk in the direction of the Undulating Ass of Gym Girl.

"She's got a boyfriend."

"I find it interesting that you mention
her
boyfriend, but not
your
girlfriend."

"I don't -- I hadn't gotten there yet."

"Oh, forgive me," he said mockingly. "It's just that it sounded like a period at the end of that statement, not a comma."

"And Manda and I haven't even brought up the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing."

"You've been fucking her steadily for a couple of months. I'd say that puts you in boyfriend territory. But what do I know? I only
invented
relationships."

"Didn't God do that?"

He waved me off. "I don't have time to explain this to you. The fact remains: Why haven't you made the move? She wants you. It's so obvious."

I swallowed hard. My first instinct was to deny it, but the devil had only given voice to what I suspected already. Gym Girl's conversations with me, the eager look on her face when I showed up at the gym... These things had convinced me a while back that she was interested. So petrified was I of making an unwelcome advance, though, that I persuaded myself that I was wrong, that I was imagining things. She had a long-term boyfriend, for God's sake.

"People cheat," the devil said casually, as if he had read my mind. "It happens."

"Because of you, no doubt."

Had
he read my mind?

"I can't really read your mind," he offered, in seeming contradiction. "But I can read
you
."

"I don't get the distinction."

"That's not my problem. Now, I've done my share of tempting," he admitted with a humble air, "but when you folks stray, it's not all me."

"I know, I know," I said, feigning boredom. "We're just petty, pathetic animals, slaves to our baser instincts--"

"Sure, sure. That's true, too. But I wasn't going to say that. Sometimes it's you-know-who. The Old Man." He pointed straight up.

"
God
makes people cheat?"

"Your precious Almighty One set things up so that there's seven billion people on this mudball," the devil said with both patience and annoyance. "And then he tells you, 'OK, when you find a good one, pair up for life.' Do you know the odds, on a planet of seven billion people -- where you're separated from the rest of the population by thousands of miles, language barriers, and mismatched technology -- of that first or third or even tenth 'good one' being
the
one? It's like seven billion to one."

"I don't...think that's quite right. If you multiply--"

He waved me off. "Math's not my strong suit. My point remains: He's set you people up to fail. You
have
to cheat. The odds are against you. You all meet someone you
think
is perfect for you and then along comes someone who really
is
. It's not
your
fault. You didn't know. You
couldn't
know! You thought you were in love and doing the right thing, but you don't have any sort of baseline in your DNA that tells you what the fuck is the right thing to do. If you have a problem with cheating," he concluded triumphantly, "blame the Old Man. He's the one who built you people without the necessary emotional and psychic equipment."