Demon Box

“It was dark! I’ve got a shaky pen hand!”

“You were plenty legible the other afternoon,” I prompted. I wanted to keep her talking. I saw her cheeks color at the compliment, and she started rocking back and forth, hugging her knees.

“I was plenty ripped is what I was,” she said. “Besides, I recite better than I handwrite.”

She rocked awhile in thought, frowning straight ahead. The sun was almost out of sight in the ridgeline across the river, and the light in the room had softened. The chrome trim was turning the color of butter. All of a sudden she clapped her hands.

“Now I remember!” She aimed a finger at me. “Where I know your melancholy mug from: the dust jacket of your goddamn novel! So far-damn-out to you too!”

She started to rock again. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see her put her thumb in her mouth.

“I’m something of a writer myself,” she let me know, “when I’m not something else. Right now I’m an astral traveler on layover. Too far over, too, after two days of Miss Seal’s Bed and Breakfast.”

I told her she didn’t look nearly as far laid over as the others I saw up there. This made her blush again.

“I cheek the tranqs,” she confided. “I never swallow anything they give me. Watch—”

She felt around between her ragged deck shoes until she found a big shard of glass. She tossed it to the back of her mouth and swallowed. She opened wide to show nothing but teeth and tongue, then a moment later spat the shard tinkling across the new tile. “Want to know the reason they hauled me in here? Because I dropped three big blotter Sunshines and went paradin’ around the rotunda at the capitol. Want to know why I got so ripped? I was celebrating the completion of my new novel. Want to know the name of it?”

I told her that as a matter of fact I would like to know the name of her novel. I couldn’t help but feel that somebody was getting their leg pulled, but I didn’t care. I was fascinated.

“I called it Teenage Girl Genius Takes Over the World! Not too shabby a title, huh?”

I conceded that I’d heard worse, especially for first novels. “First your ass! This is my goddamn third. My first was called Tits & Zits and my second is Somewhere Ovary Rainbows. Shallow shit, those first two, I admit it. Juvenile pulp pap. But I think Girl Genius has got some balls to it. Hey, let me ask you something! My publisher wants to reprint the first two and bring all three out as a package. But I’m not so sure. What’s your thinking on that plan, as one novelist to another?”

I didn’t know what to think. Was she on the level or lying or crazy or what? She sounded serious, but that could have been like the frown. I couldn’t get over that feeling of a pulling sensation on my leg. I avoided her question with one of my own.

“Who’s your publisher?”

“Binfords and Mort.”

If she’d named off some well-known New York house like Knopf or Doubleday I’d have started shoveling pantomime manure. But Binfords & Mort? That’s a specialty house for high-class historic stuff, and hardly known outside of the Northwest. Would she pick such company to lie about? Then again, would they pick her?

“I think you could do worse than follow the advice of Binfords and Mort,” I averred, trying to probe her eyes. I couldn’t get past the glass. I’d have to try another test.

“Okay, Girl Genius, I’ve got one for you.”

“It’ll have to be quick, Slick. I think my chariot has just arrived.”

A black sedan had indeed just pulled up at the no standing curb. She must have heard it. An ambitious-looking young legal-type flunky got out and started for the lobby door.

“Quick it is,” I said. “I’d like to know what’s your thinking—just off the top of your I.Q.—on the Second Law of Thermodynamics?”

If I hoped to see her thrown by this, I was disappointed. She got very deliberately to her feet and stood in front of me. She bent her face down until it was almost touching mine. The thin lips were starting to stretch at the corners. The eager pad of driver’s footsteps stopped a few feet away but neither the girl nor I turned.

“Melissa?” I heard him say. “Everything’s cleared, Sweetie. Your father wants us to go to the Leaning Tower and order a couple giants—a pepperoni for him. He’ll join us as soon as he gets rid of that damned delegation from Florence’s fishing industry—they’re still singing the blues about the salmon regulations. How does Canadian bacon sound for the other one? It’s smoke cured…?

The lenses never wavered from me. But the lips continued to stretch, wider and wider, until it seemed her whole head might be split in half by her grin. The blush raged across her cheeks and neck, and her eyes flashed around their crystal cages like giddy green parakeets. She finally cupped her hand so we were shielded from the driver’s eyes.