The Devil and Danielle Webster (8 page)

“Angel Battle?”  I said incredulously.  “What are
you doing here in Bullhead City?”

“Miss Webster?  What are you doing here in
Laughlin?  We’re not in Bullhead City, we’re in Laughlin.  Um, aren’t
we?”

Daemon Lucifer looked younger and handsomer than ever. 
“I need you to babysit for awhile,” he said.

“Babysit?” I asked.  “Angel’s what, 17 by now?”

“I’ll be 18 next month,” she offered.  Angel was in a
powder blue sundress and
flipflops
.  She was
just as beautiful as I remembered, her large blue eyes wide, her long streaked
blonde hair cascading about her.

“I have some dealings with her mother to complete,” he said
in an undertone to me.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” I said.

“She’s a married woman.  Her husband’s the ward
bishop,” he said, assuming an air of outraged virtue. 

Tina overheard part of our conversation.  “What’s a
ward bishop?” she asked.

“My dad’s a ward bishop,” Angel said. 

“Mormon,” I said succinctly, hoping Tina would say no
more.  They don’t understand these things in Schaumburg.  “Everyone,
this is Angel Battle.  I’m not sure why she’s here, but she was one of my
students my last year of teaching.”  Quickly I introduced everyone else in
the room.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked again, dropping the
whole Bullhead City/Laughlin question.  No need to confuse her with a
discussion of state boundaries.

“Mom had to go to Las Vegas.  She had to go to the
Temple.”

“Temple?” Tina asked.

“Mormon,” I said again.  “There’s a big Mormon temple
in Las Vegas.” 

“So we had to go home through Laughlin,” Angel said,
innocently, “because she wanted to go to the casino.  Oh!” she said. 
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone that.  Can you forget that part?” 
She gave me her most appealing look.  

I couldn’t help asking.  “Didn’t she go to a casino
while you guys were in Las Vegas?”

“
Nooo
,” Angel Battle said, shaking
her head.  “She knows a lot of people in Las Vegas.  My dad’s not supposed
to know.” 

I could hear Doug start to chuckle, but Tina elbowed him in
the ribs.

“Is your mom still at the casino?” I asked.

“I hope so!” Angel said, giggling.

Knowing Angel, it had something to do with a boy.  “Is
Jesse up here, too?” I asked.  Jesse’s given name was Jesus, but that was
another difficult concept for Midwesterners.

Angel looked impressed in spite of herself.  “No!” she
said, going all wide-eyed again.  “Well, yeah,” she said.  “But don’t
tell my mom, Miss Webster.  My mom would ground me and take away my
iPhone
.”

“That would be terrible,” I said, trying my hardest to avoid
sounding ironic.

“I remember you,” said Patty.

“You do?” Angel said.  “I don’t remember you.”

“I remember hearing about you.”

“Oh.”

“Looks like our friend Mr. Lucifer has left us again,” I
observed.

“That’s not his name,” Angel said.  “That’s my seminary
teacher, Mr. Satin.”

“Are you sure that’s his name?” I asked worriedly.

“Of course I am,” she said, opening her big eyes even
bigger.

“You’re sure it’s not Mr. Satan?” asked Patty.

“It might be,” said Angel Battle.  “I don’t remember.”

Patty came over and whispered, “Is this the one who cheated
and then blamed you?”

I nodded.  Angel Battle was a factor in my decision to
leave teaching.  That last year, I’d had one class period especially full
of hellions, and Angel was arguably the worst.  The students were all in
special education, but too often, their lack of success by high school was not
because of dyslexia or a disability, but due to lack of work ethic and refusal
to take their education seriously.  For many of them, high school was a
place to stretch out in their chairs, talk to friends on the other side of the
room as I attempted to conduct class, text, make repeated trips to the
bathroom, and go visit the nurse with every possible health concern.

Angel liked to adopt the persona of a four-year-old when it
suited her.  She would all but grab her own crotch while saying, “I have
to go potty.  I really do, Miss Webster!  I’m
gonna
pee my pants.”  Such distractions multiplied by fifteen students could
take up huge chunks of class time which should have been devoted to, horrors,
improving their reading and writing skills. 

I had caught Angel cheating on a test.  In her defense,
most of them did.  The better test-takers often showed their contempt for
the whole educational process by keeping their tests in range of wandering
eyes, or saying with pretended naïveté, loudly enough for everyone to hear,
“The answer to number 10 is B, right?” and then grinning at me, pleased with
themselves.  Angel had erased her incorrect answers from underneath my red
pen, rewriting them after consulting another student’s test.  She claimed
I’d
misgraded
the questions.  I called her
mother and went to my administrator.  Angel was furious.  That was
the incident Patty recalled.

 “Why are you here, Angel?” I asked her now.  “Oh,
by the way, the bathroom’s right there.”

“Mr. Satin needed to talk to my mom—“

“At 4 AM?”

“Well, people stay up late when there are casinos,” she pointed
out.  “We’re leaving early tomorrow.  But mom wasn’t there.”

 “Oh,” I said. 
Hmm.

“I have to get back to my room.  I left someone there,
and Mom could be back any time.”

“Text him,” Patty advised.

“I think his battery needs charging.”

With a pop, the Devil was back in the room.  “She
wasn’t at the casino you told me to go to,” he told Angel.  “I need your
mom to sign something for me.  Can you have her sign something for me?”

“What, you want me to take it to her now?”

“No, just don’t forget to have her sign it when you see
her.”

“But Mr. Satin, I don’t have my backpack with me.”

Daemon Lucifer looked exasperated.  “You can just carry
it, can’t you?”

“Oh, okay.”

“Here it is.  She needs to sign it with tomorrow’s
date.  Can you remember that?”

“What is tomorrow’s date?”

“Just tell her you need her to sign it with tomorrow’s
date.”

“What if I don’t see her until tomorrow?  Do I say
tomorrow then, or today?  Can my dad sign?”

“No!” the Devil said with unnecessary heat.

“I can just sign it for her,” she offered.

“Don’t sign anything!” four of us said at once.  The
Devil looked at us with annoyance.

“Just take it with you,” he said.  “Tell her to sign it
with tomorrow’s date, that’s June 22.  I’ll come pick it up tomorrow
night.”

“We’ll be back home by tomorrow night.”

“So will
I
,” said the Devil.

“Okay,” she said, clutching the document.  “Can we go
now?”

They left.  It was nice to know that Daemon Lucifer
could leave via doors, just like any ordinary person.  But in 30 seconds,
they were back.

“Where did you drop it?” Daemon Lucifer was asking. 

“I think over there.”  There was the paper to be
signed, on the floor.

“Don’t drop it again.”

“I won’t.  Wait!” she had her phone out.  “Come
here, Miss Webster, you and me and Mr. Satin.”

“
Selfie
time,” I said to Patty,
rolling my eyes.  “I hate their phones.  Their phones are their
souls.  Try taking one away, and they go ballistic.  I was constantly
busting up photo ops in class.”

Angel was gloating over her picture.  A teacher who’s
been ‘
selfied
’ and looks ridiculous is worth a
moment’s giggle.  “Thanks, Miss Webster,” she said sweetly.

They left again.

They were back in another 30 seconds. 

Daemon Lucifer waved a paper under my nose.  “Is this
her mom’s signature?  She got it too fast—I think she forged it. 
Does it look like Angel’s signature to you?”

I saw a physician-worthy scribble on the signature
line.  “It could be her mom’s,” I said uncertainly.  I was feeling
bad for her mom.  Then on the date line, I saw in large childish print:
“p. 6.”

“Angel, you wrote your mom’s signature on here, didn’t you?”
I asked.

She opened her eyes wide again, and then opened her mouth—

“--You put ‘period 6’ here for the date,” I explained before
she could lie.  Your mom wouldn’t have done that.”

“Mom lets me sign things from school all the time,” she
argued.  “She won’t care.”

I shook my head at the Devil.  “Mr.,
er
, Satin,” I said.  “You should deal directly with
the parents.”

He sighed.  “Damn kids.”  Turning to Angel, he
said, “Third time’s the charm.  Come on, brat.”

“Bye, Miss Webster!”

They were gone.  This time they stayed gone.

“What was THAT all about?” Tina asked. 

“I honestly don’t think we want to know,” I said. 

“I took a class on the Mormons, once,” Doug said. 
“They have an unusual way of looking at the Devil.  He’s the brother of—“

“Doug, never mind,” I said.  “Honestly.  We’re all
sleep-deprived and this whole situation is surreal enough.”

“Second that,” said Patty.  “Check your texts.”

I picked up my phone just as a call came through.  I
must have missed it the first three go-rounds because the phone was
silenced.  It was Josh.

“What are you doing calling?”

“Sorry, I’m working graveyard shift.  I thought you’d
be up getting ready to drive
back
home.”

“Well, I am up,” I admitted.  “What do you need?”

“When are you picking up the kids?” Josh wanted to
know.  “I should tell you, Mike has been inviting a bunch of his friends
over to your house this afternoon.”

“Today?
  Why on earth today?”

“He says he wants to have a surprise birthday party for his
girlfriend.”

“A birthday party?
 
Today?
  If that isn’t Mike all over.  It’ll have
to be at your house.  I’m not sure when I’ll be home.”

“Danielle, Leann and I just can’t do that—“

Yeah, I could have guessed.  “Josh, you’re lame. 
You never want to do anything you haven’t planned three months ago.  I
don’t understand how your son can be so completely opposite.”

“Probably because he takes after his mother,” Josh fired
back.  “It was one of the most frustrating things about you.  You
could never make plans in advance!”

“You were the problem.  You run your life like
it’s
boot camp, and expect everyone else to do the same.”

“Life would be a lot simpler if it were run like boot
camp.  Leann and I both feel being organized is important.”

“That’s great, but really, Josh, if you haven’t figured it
out yet, life isn’t simple, especially once you have kids.  Have you ever
heard the quote, ‘Life is what happens while you were busy making other
plans’?” 

Daemon Lucifer was back.  “Do you need some help?” he
asked.

“With Josh?
  Always,” I
blurted without thinking.

The next instant, Josh, dressed in his tan corrections
officer uniform, stood before us.

“Oh, God,” Patty uttered.

“Hush,” I whispered.  “He’s so annoying that the Devil
may just let us all go, just to get away from him.”

“Danielle, you can’t do this,” Josh said angrily.  “I’m
supposed to be watching fifty prisoners right now.  If they decide to
cause problems, this will all be your fault.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.  “This guy did, do you know
him?”

“Oh, hey, Mr. Santana, I didn’t even see you,” Josh said,
holding out a hand. 

“Seriously, you know him?” I asked.  My heart
sank. 

“He’s the Warden,” Josh told me. 

The Devil winked at me and said, “Miller, you really need to
get back to your post as soon as possible.  But your wife—”

“Ex-wife,” we both corrected.

“—wanted to have an affair with—
“ he
stopped short. 
“Ex-wife?”

“Not a doubt of it,” I said.

Daemon Lucifer was clearly at a loss, at least for a second
or two.  Recovering himself swiftly, he said, “So her affairs are no
longer a concern of yours.”

“Not unless she’s having my wife and I look after the kids
on her day, just so she can act like a slut,” Josh said with gritted teeth.

“’My wife and me,’” I corrected automatically. 

“She needs to sign some paperwork with me in order to get
home,” the Devil (Mr. Satin? Mr. Santana?)
said
. 
“I understand there could be a delay on a birthday party?”

“Leann and I are not having a last-minute birthday party at
our house,” he stated flatly.  “We have plans for tonight.”

“Another nice dinner out?”
I asked.

“Maybe.
  It’s really not your
business.  But we just can’t have Mike’s friends over tonight.”

“’We just can’t DO that,’” I mimicked.

  Doug and Tina were watching all this uneasily.

“Josh, who don’t you know here?” I asked.  “You
remember Patty.”

“Please don’t tell me your mom is here somewhere,” Josh said,
turning pale under his tan.  I could hear Doug quickly suppress a chuckle.

“Hi, Josh,” said Patty.  “Help us get out of here, and
Dannie and I will have Mike’s party at her house.”

“That’s right,” I said, though I had no idea how he could be
of any help at all.  If he knew the Devil as the boss of the prison
complex, that didn’t bode well for his siding with me.  “And Josh, this is
Doug, my ex-boyfriend from way back, and his wife, Tina.  Doug’s the one
I’m supposed to be having a night of passion with, but it’s not working
out.” 

“Spare me the unnecessary information, Danielle,” Josh
snapped. 

“Please,” Tina agreed.

The Devil intervened.  “I’d like for Danielle to get
her business taken care of here just as much as you would, Josh, so she can get
home to take the kids.  After all,” he said piously, “this is her day to
have them.”

“Mr.
Satin
,” I said, emphasizing the pseudonym, “
you
are completely without honor.  You are beneath
contempt.”

“Danielle, you can’t talk to the Warden with such
disrespect,” Josh told me reprovingly.

“Danielle and her friends need to sign a document for me,”
explained the Devil.  “Until then, she, Doug and Tina are under house
arrest.”

“What?” exclaimed Doug and
Tina.

“Yeah, what are you talking about?” I said.

“You’re off the time grid, remember?  I’m just putting
it in a way Josh will understand.” 

“What about you, Patty?” Josh demanded.  “What’s your
part in this mess?”

“Oh, I’m just here to beguile the time with Mr. Blue Eyes,
here,” said Patty, tossing her head and smirking at Daemon Lucifer.

“Danielle, you come from a family of sluts,” he said
disgustedly.

“
Oooh
, I’m going to tell my mom
you said that.”  Even six years after the divorce, Josh had a healthy fear
of
Evie
.    

“Josh,” Patty said in a considering tone, “your problem is
that you need to be slutty sometimes.  Maybe then you wouldn’t be a bore
and a
douchebag
.  What DID you see in him,
Dannie?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” said Doug,
then
said “oomph” as Tina planted her elbow in his ribs.

“I married him because he wasn’t you,” I told Doug
flatly. 
“Nothing more and nothing less.”

“You two got married on the same day,” Patty volunteered,
probably hoping her tangent would avoid a budding argument.   “I
mean, you four.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Doug and Tina got married June 2, 1997, just like you and
Josh did.  I got invitations to both weddings.”

“You mean, you were IN my wedding,” I corrected. 

“Yeah, that’s right.  That’s why I couldn’t come to
yours, Doug,” she explained.  “I hope you got the check I sent you. 
I do know it was cashed.”

Doug and Tina were both a bit pink in the cheeks.  “You
were supposed to send out the thank-you notes to YOUR side of the family,” Tina
said in an accusing tone.

“No worries,” Patty said hurriedly.

“Mr. Santana,” Josh said, “What does Danielle need to do for
you?”

“She needs to sign this bill of sale.  I gave her a
night of passion and now she’s trying to get out of paying for it.”

“Paying for sex, huh, Danielle?
 
Isn’t there another word for that?”

“I wasn’t,” I said angrily.  “Your wonderful Game
Warden—“

“He’s Prison Warden, and watch how you talk about him—“

“He is trying very hard to GIVE me a night of passion, and
make me pay for it, and Doug and I want no part of it.”

“I don’t care what kind of spin you put on it.  He’s
the top Arizona Corrections Officer, and I trust his judgment over yours. 
If he wants your signature, sign the damn thing so Mike can have his party
tonight.”

“You have it all wrong,” I said.  Doug, Tina and Patty
all nodded in agreement.

“Those are the rules, Danielle,” he said reasonably. 
“I didn’t make the rules and you didn’t make the rules.  Our job is to
OBEY the rules.” 

“I’m not signing a thing until you get him out of here,” I
told Daemon Lucifer. 

He looked hurt.  “You were the one who wanted him.”

“I wanted help with him.  He’s a problem and a
stick-in-the-mud.”

Patty said mischievously, “Hey, Josh, I think your Mr.
Santana wants your signature on something.” 

“No, Patty,” Doug said.  “That’s just mean.”

“Wait,” said Tina.  “Maybe that would help us.”

“That’s right, Miller.  You’ve taken more than
half-an-hour for your lunch break.” 

“Will you sign off on my ERFELT, sir?” Josh asked
respectfully.

“What’s an ERFELT?” I wondered aloud.  Josh was in love
with acronyms and jargon.  He was always talking about his PRT’s and his
ACDUTRA’s. 

“Employee Request
For
Extended
Lunch Time,” said Mr. Lucifer/Satin/Santana.  He signed the form,
then
indicated to Josh, “Sign here.”

“Don’t sign anything!” Patty, Doug and I all said in a
rush. 

Josh shook his head, saying, “Danielle, just grow up. 
You should be worrying about Mike’s birthday party and letting me worry about
business.”  With that, he signed the ERFELT, thanked his boss, and
requested permission to return to duty.

The Devil looked at me, his eyebrows lifted in a
question. 

“Please,” I said.

“Sign whatever you need to, Danielle,” Josh warned me. 
“The kids will be walking back to your house about noontime.”

“Whatever,” I said. 

“It’s 5 AM,” said Patty urgently.  “Check your phone!”

I grabbed my cell in time to see the time stamp fade and
turn to 2 AM once again. 

“We’re on our fifth try to get this right,” I said grimly.