Enjoying Breakfast With the Devil
A funny thing about the Devil is that he enjoys a hot breakfast at a greasy diner just like everyone else. Lots of salt and pepper on his hash browns, an obnoxious pool of Tabasco sauce seeping through the center of his eggs, and a hefty pour of cream and sugar into a large mug of black coffee.
I decided to just call him “Devil,” instead of pretending that he was someone else. The Devil and I met through my friend Lance. Lance owns a ferret and works as a bicycle mechanic. When I first met the Devil at a party at Lance’s house, I noticed that his feet were small. His clothes were kind of shabby, but at the same time it looked as though his outfit had been carefully put together. His hair was dark and messy, with a bald spot on the crown of his head. The Devil was somewhat unkempt, with a few days of beard stubble. But his teeth were sparkly white. I sensed that it required considerable effort for the Devil to look like a slob.
The Devil and I hit it off right away, talking about politics, girls, cars, football, and beer. The only true disagreement between the Devil and myself during our first encounter concerned which female news anchor had the most epic breasts. After much back and forth, the Devil conceded that the blonde weather girl at 11 PM deserved to be the epic breast champion of network news. That’s one of the things I admired about the Devil from the outset — he could admit when someone else was right.
It was getting late at Lance’s party, and it was time to go home, so I shook hands with the Devil and gave him my business card.
* * *
The Devil called me two weeks later and invited me to breakfast at this diner called “The Magnificent Llama,” on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach. I spotted him right away even though he was wearing a meticulously accessorized outfit with a scarf, a black button-down collared shirt, and tiny black lizard skin cowboy boots to protect his puny feet. His hair had been washed and he had shaved, which made him look younger but at the same time accentuated deep black wrinkles maneuvering about his face. We shook hands then sat at a booth with a celestial view of the Pacific Ocean.
The Magnificent Llama is a 50s diner with red vinyl booths. The walls are adorned with framed posters of Coca-Cola advertisements from the 1940s and 1950s. The old-fashioned ads show attractive women with perfect hair and makeup lounging poolside in conservative swimsuits. The women are casually sipping Coca-Cola through straws from a bottle, without a care in the world. The United States had just completed its mission of wiping the floor with the Nazis in World War II, and the only thing left to decide was which model Studebaker to purchase.
A young waitress with long black hair approached our table. The Devil complimented the waitress on her beautiful smile and dimples. She blushed. The Devil ordered breakfast for the two of us, then shooed the waitress away with the back of his hand.
We started chatting, but the Devil sensed something was wrong with me. He stopped talking and stared at me with a deep and strong gaze, calmly placing both of his hands onto the table, palms up.
“Place your hands on top of mine,” he said.
The Devil’s hands were smooth like calfskin. They were comfortably warm, too. I looked into his eyes as I grasped his hands, and a gentle calmness smothered me.
* * *
Within seconds, we were out of the diner. There were tall palm trees swaying back and forth, performing a choreographed dance. The wind blew strong and fast, but not a single hair on the Devil’s head moved. The Devil stood stone still and gazed at me. A spotlight moon held the two of us tightly together in an eternal pact. It was the middle of the night and millions of stars were shining, but the sun was also burning bright right there in the middle of the dead black sky. It was too dark to see anything, even with the bright sun and the spotlight moon, but I noticed green shadows scurrying back and forth along the beach.
The Devil handed me a comically large metal cup, and I drank something both sweet and bitter. I held hands with the Devil and we walked along the beach together, with the moon and sun shining on just the two of us in the dead of night like two spotlights on a stage.
* * *
As we were leaving the diner, the Devil gave me a great big warm hug.
“Let’s meet Saturday night at The Beatnik Bar in Newport Beach. There are plenty of eager and desperate divorced women there,” I said.
“Eager + desperate + divorced is the perfect combination for a woman. I’ll see you there,” the Devil replied with a sly wink.
I got into my car and drove to the exit to pay the parking lot attendant. I reached in my back pocket for my wallet and felt that it wasn’t there.
A deep, empty yearning gripped my insides and everything I looked at seemed to have a dark yellow tint. I felt as if I were falling forward with my hands tied behind my back. My face would be crushed by the pavement at any moment — a sense of falling off a bridge into infinity. I was filled with a horrific recipe of emptiness, fear, dread, hopelessness and longing.
It was then that I realized that not just my wallet was missing.
THE END
Read another fantasy tale by J. Lender here:
