We sat in silence, four in the waiting room, five if you count Iblis but let’s not, but then he said, For idle hearts and hands and minds the Devil finds a work to do, tell a joke or something. Blondie was peeling another orange, the slight shadow of stubble on his jaw reminded me of someone, not Deke, I couldn’t think who at first, but now I realized it was Jim he took after. I missed Jim, I missed you and Jim and Pinto and Chris and Greg and Lou and how I was with you in my life, who I was. My phone buzzed, a text from Odette that said, I’m waiting for you, fucker, accompanied by a picture of all five feet of her smiling, a loud new streak of red in her hair that matched her pants, arms akimbo, looking like a perfervid mini Superman, I couldn’t help myself, I began to laugh.
Many years ago we spent an evening at home trying to decide which superhero we were, she always wanted to be Superman, and I could never decide between Robin and Wonder Woman, I mean, Robin is ideal because he was always being captured by baddies and then rescued by Holy Rusted Metal Batman, Holy Buttfuck, Don’t untie me yet, we have a few minutes, but then who wouldn’t want the lasso of truth and Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman’s fiancé, who was willing to postpone the wedding ceremony until she made sure evil and injustice vanished from the earth, but how could two mini brown people like Odette and me be Superman and Wonder Woman? We drank, we dressed up, struck poses, drank, took pictures with digital cameras because that was before camera phones, we vogued, drank some more, until the Ecuadoran with arms akimbo and red panties was Superman, and the Arab with the ratty wig and tit-socks stuffed with basmati rice was Wonder Woman, and as soon as we convinced ourselves that we could pass, we passed out. Satan said, You never wanted to be Storm or Static Shock, no, you always wanted to be a white superhero, didn’t you, and moreover, you couldn’t be Robin because he was a pushy bottom and you were more pussy bottom, so no, it wouldn’t have worked, but nice try.
How do you explain Satan in a text? I wanted to, I wanted to tell Odette all that had happened, was happening. Patience, I texted, pressed the send button,
I will tell you all
I always do
You have been with me
Though this long and protean night
Will sing you my song
When I’m able to write a stanza again.
Her response was instantaneous, Which clinic you at, mariposa?
How could you forget the poem you carved into the wall, Satan said, you are the lord of weak remembrance, can I borrow your Sharpie?
No one else in the waiting room saw Satan walk to the distressed sign on the wall promising that the clinic would provide quality psychological services with compassion, dignity, and respect to its clients in a collaborative environment, and begin collaborating by writing Auden’s lines on the sign in smaller lettering,
For the Devil has broken parole and arisen,
He has dynamited his way out of prison,
Out of the well where his Papa throws
The rebel angel, outcast rose.
Remember, Satan said, how I made you memorize my verses, every line, word for word, by the light of the kerosene lamp in the old rectory, do you remember, I made you write down poems in dark ink, Baudelaire, Goethe, Milton, and Auden, I the Prince, I the chief of many throned powers that led the embattled seraphim to war. You’re wrong, I said, I didn’t learn that Auden poem by the light of the kerosene lamp, not that poem.
True, he said, it was not the kerosene lamp, which ran out on us the night we copied Danse Macabre, we had to borrow Sœur Marie-Claire’s cobalt blue oil lamp, you had only one matchstick left and if you blew it we would have been blind for the rest of the night, but you didn’t and the room bloomed around us with the shadows of all the books in the library, you wrote and wrote, and as you did I allowed to be audible in the rectory only the scratches of pen on paper, a sound just like Shemshem used to make while nosing around in the dark interiors of the kitchen wall, making a nest of shreds, first Auden, then Baudelaire’s litanies, Ô toi, le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges, me, the fairest of angels, you do remember, Satan said in my head, de profundis, clamavi ad te, fili mi.
I examined what he’d written, four lines jam-packed within the sign itself, not one word outside, easy for Ferrigno to wipe off, a new kind of poetry: Papa throws psychological services with compassion and the outcast rose in a collaborative environment. Odette sent another text and I replied right away, This mariposa will be all right, I thumb-typed, and I took back the Sharpie and wrote on the wall beneath the sign,
To become a butterfly
you must forget
that once upon a time
you were a caterpillar
But the life span
of a butterfly is short
a month a week
a day with no memories.
And Satan said, Not one of your best but not completely horrible, let’s work on it.