You don’t need to know what I was doing in a dark corner of a certain Copenhagen café at midnight, really, you don’t. And this place was one of the better ones, filled with old furniture and those glorious low, overstuffed Forties armchairs that suck you into their far too comfortable arms like a lover and are so very hard to get out of. Or out from underneath. Just like a lover.

I wasn’t drinking coffee, not at this late hour. A jewel of a ruby red glass of mulled wine glowed in the candlelight beside me. It had been that kind of evening, the kind that demanded the earthy fire of cinnamon and clove, so I sat there in my overstuffed armchair in the farthest corner of the nearly empty café, contemplating not much at all. It had been An Evening To Remember, the kind of evening that would put a smile on my face forty years from now.

The kind of evening, in other words, where I had been very, very bad and enjoyed every second of it, so much that if Santa decided I’d been too naughty for Christmas presents, I didn’t care. 

I came back from the bathroom and returned to my wine. How it happened, I can’t tell you. One minute, I was alone in my dark corner, a filthy grin on my face, and the next, suddenly I wasn’t. A man was sitting in the chair next to mine, so close I could kiss him if I wanted.

“What happened?” I said for hello. “You didn’t like any of the other chairs?” I swept out my arm, to indicate at least twenty other ones just like it, all empty.

His leather jacket creaked as he leaned forward. Now, I could see him clearly in the light of the candles on the table. He was about my age, not too much above my height, wearing jeans and boots, with shoulder-length hair and an obviously very vintage Misfits t-shirt underneath his jacket.  No visible tattoos, and that was unusual for the guys I normally hung out with. Something about this man, definitely. 

“Actually,” he smiled and leaned closer, “I came here to talk to you.”

“Me?” I hadn’t had that much to drink. “But I’m a nobody - just another face in the crowd. Why me?”

He smiled again, wider this time. “You’re a nobody now. But you have potential. You could Be A Somebody.”

“Really? Who are you to say?”

“Oh, I have many names. You know who I am. Look closer.”

I leaned forward now. His eyes were a liquid, limpid reddish brown, the kind of brown that could go either cold or warm in an instant. I could smell the scent of his leather jacket, and something else, something that reminded me of frankincense, but darker and more bitter, tantalizingly sexy and more than slightly dangerous. In a flash, I knew. I knew. 

Before I could stop myself, I said “Who would have thought that the Devil looks a lot like Glenn Danzig?”

Well, it was past midnight, and you can’t be a genius 24 hours a day.

He laughed. “It was the obvious choice. Besides, you have a thing for him, and he’s a good friend of mine.”

Now, I had to laugh. “I do. And I’m not surprised he is. But that still doesn’t explain why you’re here, with me of all people.”

“I’m here because of you. You know...” he leaned back into his chair. “Women are strange creatures. Most of them never aspire to much else besides ordinary lives and ordinary ambitions, but you do. I’ve been watching you for almost ten years now, and in that time, you’ve bloomed. Right around the time most women throw in the towel and give up the ghost, you didn’t. You suddenly realized just what and who you are, and decided to become precisely that. You started writing, which I’ve been waiting for since you were about fifteen, and you’ve become better and better. I know all about it - that novel you’ve been writing for the last seven years, that blog you think no one reads, but you write it anyway, because you can’t not write, because if you don’t, your head will explode. I know about that side of you that’s become darker and deeper these past years, that side that wants to rebel against convention and the constraints of middle age, the side of you that wants to do what it pleases, when it pleases and fuck the consequences. I know it all.”

“In other words...” I looked toward the ceiling and smiled at the memory of two short hours ago, “you know I’m not exactly Ms. Lily White.”

“Not even close.” He was inches from my face again. I was getting dizzy. If this had been Glenn Danzig for real, who knows what I would have done. Something that would not have involved old Forties armchairs, for starters. I have my ways.

“So now that you’re fully aware that I’m a thoroughly flawed and slightly despicable human being...” I began to say.

He lifted up his hand. “Flawed? Yes. Despicable - hardly. Underneath that hard, glossy blonde Lilith wannabe exterior lies a very different creature, and in between is that fertile volcanic field where you sow all your wild ideas, and some of them are very - wild.”

“You know that for certain?”

Instead of replying, he waved his hand in the air in front of him, and I was confronted with an HD 50” plasma version of precisely what I had been doing two short hours before.

Once again, I opened my mouth before I could stop it.

“Oh, man - sex and cellulite are such a bad combo!”

At least it made him laugh. “He never even noticed. Men never do. You certainly didn’t think about it at the time.” He pointed toward my wine glass. “You’ve forgotten about your wine.”

The glass was nearly empty only a short while ago, I knew. Now, it was fragrant and steaming, full of wine and spirits with a cinnamon stick to stir.

While I drank, the plasma screen vanished. Thankfully. At my age, a woman needs at least a few illusions to hold on to. 

“I’m here to make a deal with you.” I was getting dizzier, and it wasn’t just the wine. He was so close - far too close for comfort. 

“Dude, I’ve read Faust. Isn’t that rather old-fashioned in this day and age? I don’t believe in redemption, and I’m not even sure I believe in you as anything but a principle that defines your opposite, or else as an embodiment of my id. You know how it goes - where there is little faith...” I waved my hands and shrugged by way of explanation.

“Devils are a necessity. I know.” He laughed again. “This is nothing like Faust. I know you don’t believe in redemption, except in a personal sense, of course, and whether or not you believe in me as anything else but that Dood in your brain is completely beside the point. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you.”

“Me?” I wished I didn’t have a squeak in my voice, but alas, I did. I spat out a clove.

“You. I know talent when I see it. Right now, that talent is rather wild and woolly minded, dragging you behind it by its sheer force. That’s how I know you have it, and so many of them don’t, they just think they do. But you, woman - you can change the world if you want, and don’t tell me you don’t!”

“Well...” I floundered, “normally I prefer to do that one person at a time...”

He shrugged, a very New Jersey kind of shrug. 

“You know what you want.” Again, he waved his hand in the air, and I saw the 50” HD plasma again. I saw visions of sugarplums dancing in air, I saw  everything I could become, everything that would happen from the moment I walked out of the Crossroads Coffeehouse, I saw...

I saw it all.

I saw. The rock’n’roll me, the hackademic me, the me that wanted nothing more than to bang away on my laptop till the cows came home and change the world, too, the me that did what I did two hours before, doing that again.

I saw it all. 

There was a long moment where I sat and thought. 

This time, I was the one who leaned closer. I breathed him in, in that animal way women sometimes do, to gauge a guy they want to kiss.

“What,” I breathed into his ear, “do you get out of it?”

He grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me even closer. If this had been the mortal man, I would have been reduced to a sticky puddle in that armchair. I was three quarters of the way already.

If his grin were anything to go by, he knew it, too. Of course he did.

This was the Devil, after all.

“I don’t want your soul, sweetheart. According to St. Augustine, you don’t have one.”

I interrupted. “Fuck St. Augustine! He was a guy, what did he know?”

Then, I was startled into just what he’d said. 

“Then what do you want?”

“I want you to become. I want you to come into your true self. I want you to be what you truly, really are, instead of pretending to be something you’re not. I want to know that there are a few people in the world who have the guts and the courage to take their gift and follow it to the end, who dare to bring it out into the world and unleash it, and fuck the consequences. That’s what I want.” 

“If I don’t, or I can’t?”

Instead of an answer, he gave me another vision, another life, another choice to make. It wasn’t pretty, I’ll say that much.

“Here’s what I want.” He was still so close, still holding my shoulders, still making me tremble ever so slightly, perched on that razor’s edge of terror and desire. 

“Balance things out a little. A blog, a scene in your book. You know what you want to do, you know what you want to write. You know. One blog entry. One scene. Follow them both where they take you. Things will start happening, you’ll see.”

“But it comes with a price tag!” I objected softly.

“It always does.” He pointed toward that other vision, the one I didn’t want to see. “That’s the price you pay.”

“And I have to make that choice now?” I bleated.

Now, he grabbed me by my neck and breathed into my ear. “Yes.”

Three quarters of the way was so five minutes ago. I grabbed him by the neck and kissed him.

It was enough. For the first, the only and the last time in my life, a kiss was enough.

When we finally came up for air, he ran a finger down my neck. 

“Your wine is getting cold.”

“So it is!” I downed the glass, spat out another clove.

He was gone. The grandfather clock by the bar - likely another flea market find - struck midnight.

Wait a second. Surely, I had been there, in that chair, for more than half an hour?

He was gone, and I was dizzy all over again. There was a large bill, folded underneath the coaster of my wine glass. The candle on the table gave a loud fizzle, leapt up and died down again. On the chair where he sat mere seconds ago, there was an indistinct puddle of something black. 

I grabbed it. A Misfits t-shirt, very early Eighties vintage, the kind you couldn’t even find on eBay for love or a lot of cash these days. I buried my nose in it. Frankincense, and that something other, something otherworldly. Something that made me dizzier still.

I folded it up carefully and put it in my bag.

Midnight. Time to leave the Crossroads Coffeehouse, visions of sugarplums dancing in air.

(Thanks to the late Robert Johnson, whose “Crossroads Blues” provided the inspiration. And always, to the mortal behind the apparition!)