The day’s excitement had long since worn off. Other needs had taken their place. As the day started to fade, Greg had sensed the Devil slipping into his apartment. He had put down Desyat Negrityat and cracked open his Bible at Paul’s first letter to the Romans, reading the relevant verses again and again. But it wasn’t enough. The Devil kept coming, chasing Greg out of his apartment and into the Muscular Arms, where he’d hidden behind three or four vodkas.
The Devil, this time, had not been fooled. The Devil had found him. Forced him into a rideshare. Directed the driver across the Monongahela to the Southside Flats, just off of Carson Street.
And now he was standing in front of a battered wooden door, bass notes pulsing dully through the paneling. He pushed it open, his hearing swamped by the suddenly freed music. The bar was dimly lit and not yet busy. Tired of vodka, he ordered a cosmopolitan and parked himself in a booth. Looking around, he manufactured a last, hopeful delusion.
He was too old for this place.
And he had only one eye.
The delusion held for less than an hour. A young man slid into the booth beside him, smooth-skinned, with artfully gelled hair. He found himself gazing into a pair of crystalline, blue eyes.
‘Buy me a drink?’ he asked.
‘Sure. What are you having?’
‘That looks good.’ The young man pointed at Greg’s glass. Greg signaled the waitress for two cosmopolitans.
‘I’m Grant,’ the young man said. ‘You?’
‘Robert.’
‘Nice to meet you, Robert.’
The drink was not even finished before Grant’s hand found its way to the top of his thigh. And further. Air escaped from Greg’s mouth in a sibilant hiss. He leaned across, caressing the young man’s hair, feeling the heat of his muscled body against his, the uncoiling desire. Their lips touched. Firm. Greedy. Mouths opened.
The Devil sat beside them, watching.
‘I can’t do this,’ Greg gasped. He lurched up from the booth, unsteady on his feet. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry.’
He weaved across the now crowded floor to the bar, paid his tab, careful to look anywhere but the booth he’d just come from. As he did so, his gaze lit upon another middle-aged man in another booth, too drunk and too enamored of his own companion to pay attention to the world around him.
The recently bereaved Bryan Delcade. Without even thinking about it, Greg reached for his phone.