Frannie was silent.
“Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that, too? Have them just drool over you? Want you to the exclusion of everything – everything – else? Be blind to everything else but you? Blind to, oh … sports and religion and politics. And money? I’ve got to tell you, I just love it. I love it like napalm in the morning.”
Frannie’s jaw dropped. What? Randi goes to movies?
‘I mean, if I want to get laid, of course, I only have to pull out my phone, but sometimes, a little thing like tonight …” She lit another cigarette. “You know, it’s especially exciting when they try to touch me.” She exhaled at the ceiling. “They regret it, you know. I’m hot.”
She hooted, enjoying her pun.
“Eons and eons have passed and, I’ll be honest. I’ve never gotten used to this thing! Almost makes you believe in Her.’ She looked toward the ceiling again, briefly.
The velvet upholstery swished faintly as she slid a little closer.
“Really. Be honest now. Wouldn’t you like to be Delilah, Frannie? Jezebel? Helen of Troy? Marilyn?” She took a deep, luxurious puff from another Marlboro and picked a shred of something off the tip of her tongue. “Although Helen wasn’t that terrific, actually.”
Randi began reapplying her lipstick without even looking, and Frannie, who was beginning to think she was almost drunk enough to play along with all this, was momentarily envious. The thing seemed so deliciously … possible … just now.
Although, down below the alcohol, below the cerebral, there was something terrible squirming on its belly. And sneering.
Beside her, that husky voice dripped blandishments.
“Stick with me, Frannie dear, and men will ache for you, weep for you. Women will envy you.” (Ah, she did read minds) “You’ll know power and earthly success. You’ll be ravishing. Desirable. You’ll possess all that you’ve secretly longed for.”
Until this moment, Frannie could truthfully say she’d never craved physical beauty. And definitely not power. But here, in this moment, she sensed the tiniest yearning for both; a furtive tug of lust.
She hoped it didn’t show.
“And what do you want in exchange?” Frannie smiled. “My soul?”
“Exactly.”
She slid to the very end of the velvet seat. “You want me to agree to burn in eternal Hellfire?
“Isn’t that the usual deal?”
“Hellfire.” She repeated the word. And, shocking herself, she replied, “Give me a minute to think about it.”
But instead, she was madly thinking: I am so incredibly drunk to be sitting here on a seedy gambling boat discussing selling my soul to a peculiar – no, crazy – hairdresser. Another minute to think? What was there to think about? This discussion was insane.
Her skirt was uncomfortably caught between her thighs and she was mechanically pulling it free and pressing the wrinkles out when her eye was caught by the backs of her hands. Stanley was right. They were wrinkled and veinous and pocked with liver spots. And Randi’s repellent finger appeared in her mind just then, and as it appeared, the slot-machine bells pinged seductively, and then ebbed and faded away and vanished as something terrifying – something cold and sick – clicked on in her brain.
This was real.
Maybe.
Frannie fought back.
“You’re not really a ‘gatekeeper’, are you, Randi? That was a trick with the finger.”
“Aren’t I?”
“Well, okay.” Let’s be fair here, she thought. “Let’s say you are. But here’s the thing … I mean I believe in the soul, I think. I’m not sure, but I think I might. But I’ve never believed in Hell, really. So what I’m trying to say is …” Oh, God, Frannie thought, are we talking religion here? “I don’t think I believe in boiling pits of Hellfire or horned demons. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I ever have.’
Her companion sat, mute and watchful. Just as she’d been this morning when Frannie had melted down.
“I hope you’re not angry.”
No response.
“And although you may actually work for this … Mrs. Antos, was it?”
“Andros.”
“Who might be a devil, the Devil, even – I don’t think I’ll end up in Hell because, well … there isn’t one. And this thing that seems to be happening now probably isn’t real.”
She took a deep, liberating, breath, quite surprised at herself, although also a little bit proud of her newly hatched point of view. Not to mention this unfamiliar and, evidently, opinionated side of herself. She’d been kind of … leaking … the strangest things all day.
The voice beside her, friendly still, sounded darker, somehow, older.
“You don’t believe in Hell, Frannie? After Man – magnificent Man – has spent all these centuries inventing it, creating it, fleshing it out, so to speak?” Randi grinned, obviously amused by herself.
“Painting it in loving, sadomasochistic detail?” she went on. “Gleefully, gothically, enlarging upon its seductive torments? Sermonizing from altars and in the media about its imminence? Relishing it. Practically rolling in it. Selling the hell out of it.” Randi barked a laugh. “And Frannie Turner – Frannie-sad-little-housewife-Turner – isn’t convinced? Where’s your imagination? Your sense of sin?”
It’s real, Frannie decided.
“I don’t seem to have either, I suppose. Well, okay, sin, yes. I’ve sinned now and then. But not really, um … sinned, I don’t think. Not in your sense of the word.”
Lighting another cigarette from the first, Randi turned conversational.
“To tell you the truth, I understand your reservations. Our old Hell and those old sins haven’t actually been altogether satisfactory for the last few thousand years. We know that. After all, it’s an overheated concept, don’t you think? Not to mention all that inflammatory art!” She snorted delicately. “No. The thing is, we came to realize that people need to completely taste the reality of Hell, to feel its unbearable pain. That’s why Mrs. A has recently started offering these new, call them ‘designer’ Hells. Each one custom-tailored to the individual soul. She’s been tinkering with the idea for the last couple of centuries.”
“What do you mean? Custom-tailored?” Frannie asked, curious despite herself.
“Oh, you know. Take one, rather obvious, example. Your Facebook addicts. More than a thousand ‘friends’ and we condemn them to eternal solitude. And then there are all your lying politicians and on-the-spectrum engineers. They’ve both got to relive emotionally painful childhood events in perpetuity. A sort of reverse-PTSD. For English speakers under thirty, every ‘fuck’ has to be replaced by a three-syllable word, and right-wing newscasters have to interview gay soldiers and transsexuals for Eternity. (We’d teach them how first, of course. On-the-job training, as it were.) And then, of course, there are the super-rich.”
Randi’s eyes were jade now, greenly aglow in the shadows and smoke. Her body gave off a palpable heat (and an odor?). She was genuinely loving this.
“The super-rich are punished by a significant tax on each utterance of ‘my, me, or mine.’ And on every single reference to money. Don’t you love that? Or how about this? Pretentious film critics get strapped down in screening rooms where people text continuously and never turn off their phones. They’re also forced to view The Story of Mankind in endless loops. The screams!