Sympathy for the Devil

Seventy-year-old Velma was inside her seventeen-year-old self, and there was no other way to put it.

She was hungry-couldn’t remember such an appetite. A three-egg omelet would be just the thing. But the refrigerator was empty. She pulled herself together and set out for the corner grocery.

“Good morning,” she said to the clerk, and jumped at her own piping voice, no longer lax with age.

She got the eggs, and then, as though from habit, found herself in the feminine hygiene section. She selected a box of tampons and some sanitary napkins-who knew; she might be needing them.

As she let herself back into her apartment, nosy Mrs. Knowles popped her head out across the hall. Their eyes met. Mrs. Knowles raised her eyebrows and started to say something. Velma just gave a little wave and went on in, as though she were, say, a long-lost grand-niece-she’d need a story of some sort. She couldn’t be a grandchild, because Mrs. Knowles knew full well Velma was childless, never married.

Never even a boyfriend, unless you counted a fling with a girl-crazy GI, home from the war after V-J Day. A boy named Charlie.

Charlie Riggs-that was the boy’s name. She’d completely forgotten.

She ate every bite of the omelet. Then she picked up and opened the box of tampons, fiddling with one of the new-fangled things, chuckling to herself: maybe she’d forgotten how. But then some things, as they say, were like riding a bike.

4

– Well met, Brother Bertillon. We don’t see many of you.

Bertillon mopped his angelic brow. He’d just arrived; the heat was already too much.

– Complaining, Your Eminence, or boasting?

– Hm. Touché. To what do we owe this honor?

– If you would have a look at this. And don’t tell me you can’t do it.

– Hm. Hm. Fifty-three years. Not one for the usual cha

Bertillon summoned a nonchalant earnestness, the kind most often invoked on Earth by the recipients of speeding citations.

– Age seventeen seems a suitable time to begin reapplying the lessons of life, does it not, Your Eminence?

His Eminence’s practiced gaze searched Bertillon’s for ambiguities, and found none.

– It might be arranged. Provided we have some… context.

– Come, Your Eminence. You merely require a pretext. And I am here to provide it.

– You would place your imprimatur on this?

– I would.

– I love it. The court is dense with intrigue, then?

– Alas, Your Eminence, the intriguing place is here. As even I concede.

– Do you. Your genius in certain prior matters has not gone unremarked here, Brother Bertillon. This place could be interesting indeed for a sympathetic Throne of your caliber.

– Thank you, but I lay claim only to empathy. My sympathies are not enlisted by this-chaos. Just look at this. How do you bear it, I wonder.

– Simple thermodynamics, Brother. And surely we’d find a niche to suit you: something on the… temperate side. But no matter. We are happy to help you lift the hem of Nature’s garment, or rend it. And what’s in it for you?

– My convictions. Between the hidebound heavens and these anarchic precincts, we lack a middle ground, a place for serendipity. In this, I answer to my conscience.

– Bravo, Brother. If there is one thing your colleagues fail to grasp, it is that we are all of us everywhere acting in good faith, are we not? We do have our differences. But they are strictly a function of…

– Temperature?

– Precisely. Let’s see what we can do.

5

Velma waited for the bus uptown. She felt fu

Besides, she felt like exploring.

Next to her on the bench sat another young girl. Her hair was black, like Velma’s, but the whole front half of it was dyed a deep ultraviolet, as though her brain were glowing. She had an earring in her eyebrow.

When the girl returned her gaze, Velma realized she’d been staring.

“I was admiring your blouse,” said Velma.

“This?” the girl said. It was a simple black cotton shirt.

“Yes,” said Velma. “Where’s it from?”

“Hell, I du

“Except the person wearing it,” said Velma. “Never forget that, dear.”

Two hours later, Velma emerged from Clothestime with a couple of bulging bags. She didn’t normally frequent the big malls, but now she strode past the Body Shop and the Jamba Juice, keeping pace with the ubiquitous kids, from whom she was indistinguishable.

The wind dropped a flyer at her feet. She picked it up:

COOLHOUSE

Thursday nights at Emerald City

… after hours…

DJ Spin Gen-F

99 Buzz Dr. Skill

Odd. She kept it, and headed home to model her new look.

“I want you to locate this man,” Velma said. She gave the detective, a Mr. Dietz, a piece of paper with the name “Charlie Riggs” and some sketchy biographical information-dates in the 1940s.

She was seventeen again-with the craziest itch to co

“Place of birth?” said Dietz.

“Well, he had a New England accent,” said Velma.

“What’s he to you?” said Dietz. “Grandpa?”

“An old boyfriend.”

Dietz reassessed her up and down, his mouth an inverted U of impressed surmise. “Good for you, Charlie. Wherever you are,” he finally said.

“Strangers in the night,” Velma said. “My only romance, I’m afraid.”

“Try somebody from your own mille

“I have no idea. Somewhere out West.”

Dietz studied the paper. “This kind of lead, we’ve got about a snowball’s chance, you should pardon the expression. But it’s your money, Miss Fish. I’ll take two-fifty up front, the other half on completion.”

Velma signed the check. She dotted the “i” with a cute little heart.

A few days later, Dietz called her in.

“Would that be Charles Gideon Riggs, born March 30, 1924, at Hingham, Massachusetts?”

“Hingham! Yes, that’s Charlie!”

“He’s in Arizona.”

“You found him?”

“And he’s not going anywhere. Spent the last four years in a Phoenix cemetery. Prostate cancer.”

“Charlie dead,” Velma said, and then blurted: “He got me pregnant.”

And she really hadn’t thought about it up until right then, as if suddenly permitted to think the miscarriage back into being: back into her own being, so long ago.

She looked back at Dietz, who registered frank disbelief. “And then what happened?” he said.

“I’m afraid I lost it,” Velma said. “Well. I owe you two hundred fifty dollars.”

“Right. And by the way, Miss Fish. That check you wrote? ‘Valued customer since 1957’…?”

“It didn’t clear the bank?”

“Sure, but-”

“Well, then,” said teenaged Velma Fish, “don’t sweat it, so

A few weeks later, well past midnight, she found herself in the warehouse district, standing outside a club where the music was a form of headache, pounding and booming and twittering-but sort of catchy, really.

She stood in line for half an hour, the only Earthling in the bunch, but Velma wasn’t bothered. She was comfortable in her own skin. That was one thing she’d learned in this life.

When she got to the door, she smiled at the big black man, who said: “Need some ID.”