Soul for Sale Read online

  Three

  At her desk the next morning, Madelyn waited until Evelyn was tucked in her office, then checked uBuy.

  Two bidders appeared on her page, competing for her soul. She was about to run to the gift shop to tell Gwen when an email from Evelyn appeared: John asked the status of the report?

  She replied: I’ll have a draft to you this afternoon.

  The lack of a response from Evelyn was even more daunting. Best to get it done as soon as possible.

  All morning, she worked to pull the final information together: latest membership statistics, donation amounts by type, a list of upcoming exhibits and attractions that would lure more patrons to give generously and often. Someday, Madelyn hoped the Whitney Center’s small gallery would feature her art in an exhibit. She’d be the toast of gowned women and men in tuxes at the opening reception, modestly acknowledging their awed praise. Word of mouth would bring more visitors to ooh and ahhh, and ask, How much? She was sure that once the process began, it would be only a short time before she could devote all her days to her art.

  At noon, the Dragon Lady switched by, saying in a loud voice into her cell phone, but also for Madelyn’s benefit, “I’m on my way to the restaurant now. See you there.”

  Madelyn tensed, sure the Dragon Lady would at least breathe fire into her office as a warning against tardiness, but the metal door slammed shut at the end of the hall. She collapsed over her desktop in a heap. Try as she might to concentrate, bring her thoughts together in a cohesive, logical pattern, they evaded her grasp. She could almost hear their laughter as they scattered to the deep unreachable recesses of her mind.

  Sleep deprivation was the worst. The only redeeming grace of last night’s nightmares was that they included the beautiful stranger, sweeping in at the last moment to her rescue. Sweeping her up in his arms.

  Gwen stopped by, already wearing her coat. “Want to hit Second Street Wok?”

  Madelyn propped her head in her palm. “Can’t. I have to work on this damn report. I’ve wanted to get over to talk to you all morning. Love the outfit, by the way.” Fringe edged the bottom of her wraparound plaid wool skirt. Gwen always wore the coolest clothes.

  Supermodel-style, Gwen sashayed next to her desk. “Thanks. What’s up?”

  Madelyn brightened. “I forgot to tell you. I have such incredible news. Are you ready?”

  Gwen clutched the desktop in mock preparation. “Ready.”

  Slowly, her voice low, Madelyn says, “Two people have placed bids. Do you believe it?”

  Madelyn was surprised by Gwen’s noncommittal, “Yeah. Can I get you takeout?”

  Clucking her tongue, she fished a ten from her purse and asked for orange chicken. “Is that it? Just ‘yeah’?”

  With a shrug, Gwen grabbed the bill. “People will bid on anything. There are all sorts of crazies out there. So you need to be careful.” Her words hung in the air after she was gone.

  Madelyn shivered at the memory of the shadowy figure poised below her apartment window. All night, she’d imagined the building’s bumps and clicks to be the man trying to jimmy her door lock or window. Brutus had been restless all night, too, jumping from bed to window and back again. Sleep would be welcome tonight, if she could ever get this damn report finished and go home.

  Madelyn worked through lunch, then printed a draft report for Evelyn and e-mailed her a copy as a backup. The Schoolmarm always insisted on the electronic copy so she could tout to members how environmentally conscious the center was. But she carried the paper report with her as proof she worked constantly – in the office, at home, at lunch. Madelyn knew her own name would appear in small type as a “contributor” under Evelyn’s larger byline.

  The next afternoon, Evelyn the Dominatrix walked in and tossed the marked-up report atop her desk. “Please have a new draft to me first thing tomorrow. The deadline’s just two days away.” The pleasantness of her expression was a mask; Evelyn derived pleasure from others’ pain. Seeing Madelyn squirm and beg for mercy would satiate her perverse needs, and Madelyn was tired of being her pawn.

  Even though the time on her computer read four forty-one, she braced herself and smiled. “Will do.”

  Evelyn paused in the doorway. “I’m leaving for a dinner engagement. Have a good night.”

  “You, too.” She flipped through the pages; some notations asked for her to double-check statistics, find new ways to spin the numbers. It would take several hours, at least.

  After the sharp click of heels faded down the hall, Madelyn logged onto uBuy. The most recent bid stood at four hundred twenty five dollars.

  She rushed across the hall and into the gift shop. “Insanity!”

  Gwen continued reading her Lenny Bruce biography. “Are you for it or against it?”

  Two loud boys ran into the shop followed by a bedraggled young mom laden with backpacks, though the burden of the children seemed to drag her lower.

  Madelyn flashed her what she hoped was an encouraging smile, then walked to the glass display case. In a hushed tone, she elaborated. “I guess I have to be for it, if mentally challenged people continue to bid on my soul.” She withheld further information, enjoying her friend’s visible internal struggle.

  Gwen’s curiosity won out. “You’re kidding. How much?”

  She recited the figure, and Gwen’s mouth dropped open as her eyebrows flew up.

  Before she could verbalize her indignation, Madelyn assured her, “I’m going to contact the bidders. Tell them it was just a joke.”

  The boys twirled by in a laughing heap of tangled arms and legs. Gwen slid the basket of polished stones from the edge of the counter top. Past experience had taught her the joy young boys derived from spilling the stones on the floor, their tittering giggles pricking her anger to life as they watched her pick them up. “Why? It’ll be over tomorrow morning.”

  Madelyn straightened the Imax show brochures to appear busy in case the Dragon Lady’s meeting breaks early, or worse, was a ruse to catch the two goofing off. “Yes, and someone will have made the final bid by then. So I have to tell them now they’re not going to actually get what they paid for. I don’t want some idiot suing me.”

  One of the boys held his crotch and danced toward the woman, his face a mask of misery. With a wince, the mother asked, “Again? Come on.”

  Gwen smiled at her as they exited. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt. You probably should have posted a disclaimer in the beginning. Although you don’t suppose anyone could really be that gullible, do you? You never actually stated you’d perform in any way for the buyer?”

  Madelyn blurted, “Of course not,” but tried to recall the exact wording, whether someone might claim she had implied anything.

  Gwen set her book beneath the counter near her purse. “Don’t worry about it, then. Plenty of other people have posted off-the-wall listings. There was that guy that put his wife up for auction – didn’t he get away with it?”

  “No, I think the wife cooked or cleaned or something for the winner. Maybe she screwed him – no, wait, that was a movie. But wait,” she said with a smile. “What if it’s him?”

  “Him?” Confusion clouded Gwen’s face and skepticism lurked beneath.

  “The guy outside the coffee shop. The incredible one.” The one who’d taken up residence in her brain, she wanted to add, but didn’t want Gwen to think she’d gone completely crazy. The one whose face she saw in every man who walked by. The one whose warm arms she dreamt of each night.

  “You should be so lucky.” Gwen locked the register. “Let me know in the morning how it went. I’m going home.”

  “Lucky you,” she whined. “I have to finish up the membership report. Again.”

  Her friend’s shoulders lumped in sympathy as she shuffled toward the door. “Ohhh. Sorry.”

  “Not as much as me,” she called over her shoulder.

  Gwen slid shut the glass shop door and locked it. “Want me to bring you back a cappuccino? Today’s flavor is pump
kin.”

  “No thanks. I’ll muddle through.” Any other year, Halloween and all its attendant fantasies and flourishes filled Madelyn with glee. This year, not even pumpkin cappuccino could break her funk.

  Four

  At nine o’clock, Madelyn finally reached her apartment. Brutus meowed at her in accusation.

  “Sorry for being late, buddy, but I have to make sure that paycheck keeps coming, or else neither of us will eat.”

  As he lapped at the food she set before him, his purrs of acknowledgement comforted her. The thought of uBuy jolted her into action. She hurried to the laptop to log on.

  “Five hundred? Wow.” She typed a hasty disclaimer message and sent it to the two bidders. “This will stifle their enthusiasm.”

  For the next two and a half hours, she checked and rechecked the bidding progress, each time alarmed by the increasing amounts. When she climbed under her bedcovers at nearly midnight, the bids stood at more than six hundred dollars. “Well, I warned them. There’s nothing more I can do.”

  The faintest echo of laughter made her gasp, then slide the covers over her chin.

  Throughout the night, Madelyn wrestled with surreal dreams in which a war from another time or dimension raged on for hours outside her bedroom window. Two winged creatures like ancient gargoyles dove at each other from unimaginable heights and depths, hurling lightning bolts and breathing fire as their shrieks pierced the smoke-shrouded darkness. With jagged teeth and talons like scythes, they tore each other’s flesh as they collided mid-air. The light from the crescent moon pierced dark clouds swirling through the sky, alternately covering and revealing the moon. The screeches echoing across the sky made her want to scream, too. The apartment building shook and windows rattled in their frames with each slam of a gargantuan hooked tail or pointy-eared head.

  They locked together in battle. Slowly they descended, each struggling desperately against the other for victory, lower and lower until they disappeared into a smoky pit. Even asleep, Madelyn knew her fate rested with the victor. One creature emerged from the abyss. It made a tortured climb into the sky, then winged its painful way to the horizon and disappeared.

  Sweating, tangled in bed covers, Madelyn awoke. Brutus sat near her head, sphinx-like, staring at her. The clock read seven forty-eight.

  She kicked the comforter off. “Brutus! I’m going to be late!”

  The two-minute shower had never been as literal. In a quick cell call to Gwen, she apologized for not showing at the coffee shop. She raced out of her apartment. From the curb, she noticed the workmen: one uniformed man informed a neighbor the cable would be back on as soon as he could fix the damages on the pole, probably from a lightning strike. Two other men inspected the side of the apartment building, where a slanted indentation in the siding ran from ground to rooftop. From a telephone truck’s raised bucket, another man was busy at the pole across the street. Into his walkie-talkie, he said he was tired of having to clean up the mess from these crazy global warming storms. A man with a chain saw cut away broken branches of a tree. Two old women debated whether the damage was caused by a microburst or a supercell.

  Madelyn wanted to ask the women whether either had claws or horns.

  The bus stop was crowded at this time of the morning; one reason she liked to catch the earlier run. People jostled her while boarding; commuters were certainly more aggressive at this time of morning. Another reason to stick with her usual routine. Once she was seated, someone bent to sit in her seat, so she slid uncomfortably close to the overweight woman next to her, apologizing even as the woman’s obnoxious perfume made her gag.

  At her stop, she shuffled down the steps to exit. The driver pulled the lever to shut the door in her face.

  “Hey!” She whirled to glare at him.

  The driver opened the door as a man hopped inside and shoved past her.

  “What is with everyone today?” She stepped onto the curb and smoothed her wrinkled jacket. “I am definitely never taking this run again.”

  Three people made eye contact with her as she walked the block to the Whitney Center. The first was a homeless man sitting by the drugstore’s door. He reached his hand out to everyone else, but gave her a sad, knowing look, and made the sign of the cross. The second was a trim woman in a business suit, talking into an earpiece as her heels clicked along the pavement; while giving Madelyn the once-over, the woman narrowed her eyes and raised a brow like a feline ready to strike. Madelyn hurried past her.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed. A few times, a dark figure seemed to trace her steps, neither man nor woman, and no more than a shadow. She glanced behind her again and it stopped moving. The longer she looked, the dizzier she felt, as if she were peering into a black hole, into another dimension. She held her hand over her eyes, shut them to gain her bearings, then hurried on.

  The third person was the one for whom she’d been waiting. The man who’d lately occupied every thought of every waking moment, and every dream. Dressed in a black jacket, black jeans and black sweater, he stood watching her, across the street from the glass double-doors waiting to swallow her for the day. She stopped and returned his stare, joy filling her like helium. A passerby bumped her shoulder, but it barely registered in her consciousness. Her mind had a single focus. The air took on a hazy sheen that blurred everything but him. Her body grew heavy and stone-like, as if she’d become a statue. As if underwater, she floated toward him as the world swirled past, all its contents blended into muted striped colors.

  Car horns blared and tires screeched on asphalt. A driver leaned out of his car window and yelled, “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you blind? Wait for the cross signal, stupid!”

  In her mind, she told him sorry, but no words formed in her mouth. She stepped backward and stumbled up onto the curb.

  The opposite sidewalk was bare concrete connecting store fronts decorated with pumpkins, grinning ghosts and black cats wearing witches’ hats. A frantic glance to the north end of the street revealed a man and woman jogging. To the south, a young woman pushed a stroller. The street stood desolately empty. Even the autumn sunlight was strained, as if through a filter.

  Again, she could feel his lingering presence, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Like an old woman, she walked inside to her office, sat at her desk and stared out the window. The view appeared the same as always, but diminished somehow, lacking detail, as if the Great Master himself had only roughed it out, then abandoned the project, deciding it not worth His time.

  Behind her, Evelyn said, “You were due here fifteen minutes ago. I’ll let it go this time, but I expect you to make it up over your lunch hour. And make these changes as soon as you can, and get another draft to me this morning.” Papers rustled to her desk top.

  Madelyn contemplated the window ledge. A pigeon landed, angled its red eye at her, and strutted away. If she sat here long enough, maybe she’d turn to stone. The pigeon seemed to expect it.

  Fifteen minutes. If it would do any good, she would remind Evelyn of the three extra hours she worked last night. But it wouldn’t, so she didn’t.

  Evelyn’s voice sliced through her stupor: “Madelyn? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, of course I heard you.” Her own voice sounded unrecognizable, a flat, lifeless tone in place of her usual cheerful – whether forcibly induced or not – exuberance.

  “Excuse me?” came the incredulous, drawn-out reply.

  Evelyn’s cutting tone was a slap to Madelyn’s psyche.

  She rubbed her forehead and faces her supervisor. “I’m sorry. I’m not fully myself today.”

  Her supervisor stepped back. “You’re not getting the flu, are you? I’ve been immunized, as I do every year, but the morning news said that the Center for Disease Control had identified only two of the four strains circulating this year, so what good did it do me?”

  Evelyn’s cell phone chirped. She snapped it open and walked down the hall, an argument a
lready underway.

  Madelyn rested her head in her hand. If only she could go home, crawl under her covers and stay there.

  Gwen whispered from the doorway: “Where have you been?”

  Nowhere, she wanted to say, but lacked the energy.

  Gwen spoke in a normal voice; Evelyn must be gone from sight. “So what happened with the auction? And why are you still wearing your coat?”

  Her spine snapped straight. The auction. “Oh my God. I haven’t checked uBuy yet.”

  She switched on the computer and it whirred to life, its slow routine even more torturous today.

  Gwen checked the hallway. “I have to get back to the shop before the Dragon Lady returns. Let me know how it turns out.”

  Madelyn’s fingers flew across the keyboard as she logged in. The auction closed at three a.m., only five and a half hours ago. The final bid – the winning bid – was listed at six hundred sixty six dollars.

  Questions skittered across her mind: Why? Who? And most importantly, now what?

  In answer to the last, an e-mail from the victorious bidder awaited. She steadied herself, then opened it.

  He wanted to meet her. To see what he’d paid for. Tonight, at six o’clock, at Sal and Al’s coffee shop.

  Like an automaton, she typed the appointment in her online calendar and set a reminder. As if she might forget.

  Madelyn worked all morning with a single-mindedness she’d rarely achieved before. By noon, she’d completed all the changes to the report Evelyn had requested, and emailed the new draft to her.

  When Gwen asked her to go to lunch, she grabbed her coat. “Why not?”

  In the window of the Second Street Wok, a cardboard skeleton smiled, wearing a top hat and holding a cane. Before today, quirky decorations always made her smile, feel like a little kid again. She pushed open the door without a second glance at it.

  At their tiny table, she stabbed her fork into the chicken and bit. “This is so bland.”

  Gwen shot her a look of disbelief. “General Tso’s chicken?”