The Bargain with Lucifer

Wendy walked in back of Paul as he looked at everything then he stood in front of the unfinished painting on the easel. Standing back, looking at what looked like a portrait of a man with a white hair and a beard, blue pensive eyes but noticed a lot of the face was in shadows. He looked at it, stunned at what he was seeing then turned and looked at Wendy.

"Is that me?" Paul asked.

I think so," Wendy answered. "I just wanted to paint a portrait, something I don't do but then after I saw you the other day, this is what happened."

"I'm flattered and surprised," Paul said, "but why?"

"I don't know, but when I saw you the other day, I not only liked how you looked, but I also sensed something wasn't right. You don't know me very well, but I am empathic. I can sense things about people and that's why half your face in shadows. Something dark is happening to you. I know it."

"Something dark," Paul asked, looking at Wendy then back at the portrait. "If anything, the opposite of dark is happening. I feel better than ever. I feel youthful, strong and you saw that woman get angry at me in the café, that's what's happening, suddenly women desire me. I have had more sex in the last couple of days than I've had in years. Excuse me for saying that to you, but you're wrong, nothing dark is happening."

"Why do you think that this is suddenly happening to you?" Wendy asked, looking into Paul's eyes. "What's different?"

"I can't explain it but until a few days ago, I was in bad shape. I thought my life was over. I felt life had passed me by, I was getting old. I don't know why I am confessing this to you, but I was sexually frustrated. You're going to think I'm crazy but I wanted young sexy women to look at me and desire me. Something I avoided when I was married and I was determined to be ethical as a teacher even when I had golden opportunities and now, I have more women after me than I can handle."

"You're a little devil, aren't you," Wendy said, playfully, smiling, looking into his eyes, nodding. "So you're taking advantage of your new lease on life."

Wendy's mentioning the devil startled Paul and he suddenly remembered Luke, or Lucifer and the potion he drank the other day, "Yes, I have a new lease on life, you could say that," he said, dismissing the incident in Luke's office as irrational. "I just decided to take the mask off and let my hair down," he paused and chuckled, "my thinning hair."

Wendy laughed and stepped closer to Paul and smiled, looking into his eyes, "So you took control of your life and now you are suddenly a stud," she said.

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I mean, it's true, things have gotten pretty wild."

Wendy put his arms around Paul's neck, pulled him against her, lifted her lips to his and kissed him, gently on the lips, moved one hand to the back of his head and kissed him harder, slowly opening his mouth. Paul kissed her back, wrapping his arms around her but sensed there was something different in the way she was kissing him, something warmer, tender, caring, unlike the way Mindy and Alicia kissed him.

"Do you believe in angels," Wendy asked after their lips parted.

"Angels?" Paul asked. "I don't think so. I don't believe there is such a thing as angels."

"Maybe you will find out there are," she said, then kissed him again, then took his hand and led him to the bed on the other side of the studio. She lay down and pulled Paul down next to her and kissing him, wrapped her arms and legs around him, embracing him in a tender, loving way that made Paul feel he was being made love to and not seduced. "I want to make love to you," she said. "You are a beautiful man, a wonderful poet and teacher. I could see by the way you looked at my paintings you are a lot more than a stud. You deserve a woman who can love and appreciate you."

"Really," Paul respond surprised and moved by what Wendy was saying, "Thank you for saying that."

"I mean it," Wendy said, smiling. When I saw you the other day at the café, I felt something and I haven't stopped thinking about you. That's why I started this painting, but I also sensed a dark shadow was over you."

After she said that they kissed each other, their lips opening each other's mouths, their tongues touching; their bodies moving as their passion grew. Wendy stopped and pulled her t shirt off and Paul did the same, also removing his jeans, while Wendy removed her denim skirt and panties and they were back in each others arms making sweet, tender love, moving slowly but soon, their passion grew more intense, moving faster, harder, building like the crescendo at the end of a symphony until they both had simultaneous orgasms that Paul knew were unlike anything he had ever experienced.

"That was wonderful," Paul said laying on the bed, holding Wendy in his arms as they cuddled, her head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of her soothing body and knew then, strike three had happened with Mindy. He also knew he didn't want to be in Alicia's bed. He wanted the feeling that Wendy was giving him and though he didn't quite believe it, he wondered if she was right, she was an angel letting him know what is possible.

For the next two weeks, Paul and Wendy were always together. She came to his apartment. He came to hers. He read his New Yorker at the café, enjoying watching her work. He wrote poetry every morning. He was happier than he had ever been and though he was cordial to Alicia when he saw her at the pool, she got the message, Paul was no longer interested in being seduced by her.

Rather than going to the pool, Paul began sitting in the park not far from the café, a place he had recently discovered and liked going there while waiting for Wendy. He liked sitting in the shade, reading, writing in his notebook, feeding pigeons, watching people.

One day, he thought he heard the sound of a motorcycle drive by and looked up and saw it stop by the entrance and recognized Luke walking towards him, saw his swagger, his long hair, the black vest and then he smiled and sat down next to Paul.

"Remember me," Luke said.

"Yes, I remember you. How did you find me?" Paul asked.

"Don't ask stupid questions," he said. "I've been keeping track of you and know what's been happening. Did you doubt my potion would work?"

"Your potion," Paul said. "I never believed in your potion."

"So you think you suddenly became this hot lover by yourself," Luke said.

"I have to admit my life has changed since I sat in your office," Paul said.

"Do you remember our deal?" Luke said, smiling at Paul.

"Yes," Paul sighed. "What about it?"

"Well, I think it's time for me to collect. You had your fun, now it's my turn," Luke said.

"What's there to collect?" Paul asked. "You know I don't believe in any of your idiotic notions about my soul and spirit.

"Is that so," Luke said, "Is that so," he repeated then laughed. He then stood up and looked down at Paul. "Well, I'll be on my way," he said and started to walk away then stopped and came back to the Paul. "Don't be surprised if that woman you've fallen in love with, the one who thinks she's an angel, breaks your heart."

Paul watched Luke walk away, stunned by his statement but then dismissed it as nonsense. He felt the bond that had developed with Wendy was strong and though she was twenty five years younger, he knew she loved him and he was more in love with her each day. He felt lucky to have her in his life and the thought that she would break his heart was ridiculous.

However, that night at dinner, Wendy told him she had news. She had to go back home to Ohio. Her mother was sick and she probably wouldn't be returning. She canceled her show at the Leighton Gallery. She then took his hand in hers and said, "I think its best that we break up. You have your life here, your job and I don't think I can handle a long distance relationship. Really, Paul, this is for the best."

"No, I don't want to lose you. You're the best thing that has ever happened to me."

"I understand how hard this is for you. It isn't easy for me either, but it's the right thing," she said, holding his hand. "I'm having all of my paintings shipped home. I don't have much else. I'm leaving in two days."

"Two days," Paul said. "This is all so sudden."

"I finished the painting of you and I want you to have it," she said.

"Thank you, Wendy," Paul said. "But I want you not the painting."

"I know," she said then kissed him, took him in her arms, embracing him and they made the most passionate love of his life. It was as if all their feelings for each other had been squeezed into a ball and she said she would always love him.

"Wendy, I am determined not to lose you," he said. "I will write, email, call you. I will always want you in my life."

"I won't respond, Paul. This is the end. This is the way I want it. This is the way it must be. Let's just have this memory."

That was the last night he saw Wendy. Two days later when he opened the door in the morning to get his mail, the painting was leaning against the door without a note. He looked at the finished painting and noticed that more than half of his face was in the dark shadow, but when he looked closer at the blue eyes in the light, there was a tear rolling down the cheek and a sudden sadness overwhelmed him and he felt his throat ache, holding back the tears that came to his eyes.

As the weeks past, Paul wrote letters but got no response in fact they came back undeliverable. When he tried to find her phone number, he couldn't find a number for a Wendy Paquin anywhere in Ohio and now all he had were the memories of the month they had together and the painting she left him. He felt his despair returning. He tried writing poetry but nothing came. At his feet, he had a wastepaper basket filled with rolled up sheets of paper. He stopped going to the pool and his tan became pale skin. When he saw Alicia in the hall, she smiled cordially, said "Hello Paul" but walked by him. He went to the Gilded Cage a few times and was glad not to see Mindy, but he also missed seeing Wendy at the counter and remembered that first day when she seemed so happy to see him.

That fall, he gave notice that he was retiring from the university. He said he needed more time to write even though he knew he hadn't written a poem in six months and didn't care any more. He knew the muse had left him. He didn't have the passion to be moved by anything enough to write about it. He felt tired, old, the world weariness that he felt the day he drove into the country and stopped at Luke's Bar and Grill was now dominating his days. Often he kept the curtains closed, the room dark, he never listened to his jazz or classical music, though he did indulge in many glasses of Jack Daniels. He had a pile of New Yorkers that came week after week but other than look at the cover, or thumb through to see if there was a cartoon that amused him, he didn't read the magazines and more often than not, fell asleep in the recliner, the empty glass in his hand.

He still thought about Wendy, remembered her passion and talent then the pain of her disappearing from his life made him want to shove the thought of her away. For some reason lines of poetry kept coming to him, lines from Mathew Arnold's "Dover Beach," and he found himself reciting them out loud in the darkness of his room:

Ah love, let us be true!

to one another! For the world which seems

to lie before us like a land of dreams,

so various, so beautiful, so new

hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

nor certitude, nor help for pain...."

He still loved poetry, even though he could no longer write it. He had lost his desire to be looked at by young women and when he did take walks and see someone he thought was attractive he didn't care whether she looked at him or not. It didn't matter. Though he rarely remembered dreams, he started have a reoccurring dream that woke him up. In the dream he was walking on a beach looking at the ocean, he was alone and he heard himself saying out loud lines from a T.S. Eliot poem: "I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me."

Those lines haunted him and he recognized that whatever romance, sex and love he longed for, those days were behind him. Now he was resigned to his empty existence and though he couldn't explain what had happened to him or what brought him to this place in his life, he knew he would never forget the afternoon he shook Luke's hand or the potion that tasted like root beer.