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The Devil and I don’t have a very good relationship. I think he’s a lousy bridge player, and he thinks I’m just a jerk. Of course, he could always bone up on a little more Jacoby. I guess that still makes me a jerk. Saturday nights have been our night together for close to six years now. I call them “date night,” which he hates, and if I liked him better I would start calling them “bridge night.” But I don’t like him, and I get a kick out of watching the big veins in his neck throb. What do you know? I suppose I really am a jerk. Jerk or no, I’ve been consistently whooping the Devil’s pointy-tailed backside for three years running. We’ve developed a little two-man bridge system for those times we can’t fill a table, and I can’t remember the last time he won two out of three rubbers. Don’t get me wrong; the Devil’s got to be in the top ten percent of players out there. He’s just not as good as me. Despite what you might think he doesn’t cheat. I’ve seen him flub a couple of draws from dummy that he never would have done if he could read my mind or could see what East was holding just once. I mean, who ruffs with the King? Please. We lost the Greater Hartford Tournament because he decided a try at slam with two solid losers he didn’t recognize, even though I did everything except hold up cue cards telling him I only had one ace and borderline support. It wasn’t even for the rubber. We could have taken the loss, let Robbie and his idiot wife, whose name I can never remember, have their piddling two hearts, then try for the next hand. Instead, the Devil plays an honest hand of bridge like a novice and Robbie and What’s-her-name advance to the quarters and we take an early dinner. “What do I have to do?” I asked him over rib eyes. The Devil prefers steak to just about anything else, and we have yet to go out to a dinner where there isn’t grilling involved. “Sorry, John,” he said, lifting up a section of medium-rare and chewing with his eyes on his plate. “‘Sorry, John,’” I said, doing nothing more than looking at him eat. “That was a big deal today. If we had won that we would have earned a table at New England.” “I blew it. I know.” “This was a shot at a National championship.” “I’m sorry,” the Devil said again. “God damn it!” I said, and I slammed my open hand down on the table so hard my fork jumped off the plate and danced to the edge of the table where it fell in my lap. “I’m tired of hearing that you’re sorry.” “Do you think it’s fun for me to lose, too?” he asked. He noticed the family in the booth next to us was staring. Every one of them was watching us argue. While I can forgive children for behaving so rudely, it amazes me when adults do the same thing. It bothered the Devil, too, because he held eye contact with the younger brother until the kid wet his pants.
 “Stop it,” I said. When the Devil turned back to me the child started to cry. His father hurried the boy away from the table. In just a moment or two the mom had paid the check and disappeared with the eight year-old. Now it was my turn to receive one of the Devil’s stares. He locked his eyes with mine and let the full weight of his blackness cross the table between us. It was not the first time he’d done so. Not the first time I had felt the panic rise inside me, the fatal loosening of my bowels. If I hadn’t been sitting I would have fallen down. “You can’t tell me what to do.” His voice was full of pitchfork tines and molten rock. “If I could you wouldn’t have asked those four clubs,” I choked out. Despite wanting to do nothing more than vomit up the bits of chewed meat in my stomach, I lifted the fork from my lap and stuck it into the steak. Feigning indifference, I cut off a piece and placed it in my mouth. It tasted like burnt flesh, but I chewed it up and swallowed it while the Devil watched.
 The Devil was on a hot streak. There’s a big difference between playing well and having the game handed to you on the deal. He’d draw the whole royal family with three retainers plus a pair of bullets and walk away with the rubber. Me, I knew right from the start that West better have the Queen or I was screwed. I’m not sure if the Devil knew the difference between lucky and good, but it’s all a moot point when three years of gaining points is erased in one incredibly lucky month. On the plus side, the Eastern Amateur Championship trophy sits on top of my curio cabinet, the one without the curios in it. He’d bid three No-Trump and make it easily, with three tricks to spare. Had he actually bid the slam I would have played it differently, but the bid was a gimmee and for the rubber and one more card it wasn’t going to make any difference. He smiled the whole time, a borderline embarrassed smile as if he couldn’t believe the way the cards were falling. “John,” he said as he scooped up the cards and shuffled them loosely in piano-player’s fingers, “I think I’m up.” “It’s close,” I said, my nose down in the spiral notebook we use to keep score. I hadn’t added the numbers in a very long time, having determined at least a year ago that I was up and going to stay that way. A month without a single rubber killed me. “No,” he said as the cards flipped together. “I think I’m up.” “I’m trying to count.” It was my way of saying, “shut up.” The Devil stopped talking, though he continued to shuffle the cards even after they were thoroughly mixed. He couldn’t help it. With a deck in his hands he just had to shuffle, and while I usually didn’t notice the sound, as I pushed numbers around on the notepad it sounded like raspberries. I did a quick double-check then put the pencil down. “What is it?” He cut the deck in half and held them slightly bent, as if trying to slowly break the backs of two miniature victims. “We’re even,” I said. “Blast.” He ejected the word like it was a hornet caught in his mouth. The Devil looked down at the cards he was torturing and let them slip together, layering them so perfectly they never doubled up. I have to give him credit for a couple of things. As much as I bust his chops about strategy he sure can mix a deck. And where another person might have asked, “are you sure?” or reached over to check the figures, he simply kept shuffling the deck. “I really thought I was up,” he finally said, and I felt his disappointment. “If you were I would have probably quit.” “I have been rather lucky lately, haven’t I?” And he smiled one of those wide grins that make you want to drive your fist through just to see how many teeth break. I sat there wondering how I could have lost all those points in such a short time when the Devil looked at his watch. “We’ve got time for another rubber,” he said. It was only ten, and we usually didn’t break up date night before eleven. “Okay.” I moved the notebook to the side. “Since we’re even and I’m feeling lucky, why don’t we up the wager?” We were playing for a dollar a point, not that I’m made of money or anything, but I have mentioned how bad a bridge player the Devil is. “Sure, why not?” I said. “We’ll play for your soul.” I stopped and stared at the pencil in my hand. Then I lifted my eyes without much moving my head. The Devil met my gaze and shrugged in a gesture that seemed like embarrassment. “Sorry, John.” His fingers riffled the cards. “I have to. It’s my job.” “I suppose I knew this was coming, but doesn’t it seem awfully cliché?” “All clichés start with an element of truth.” “Am I getting conned here? After all this time together is it going to come down to me getting screwed?” “John.” The Devil held the cards very still in his hands. “I think you always knew it would come to something like this. I’ve managed to put this moment off for as long as possible. Contrary to popular opinion I have a higher authority to which I’m accountable. I like you, John. I like our games together. I especially liked sitting across the table from you in Boston and winning that trophy, even if I didn’t hold up my end as high as you held yours. If I could make this offer go away I would, but I can’t.” I sat there angry, wondering why I had the feeling I was being jilted. “Do we have to play?” “No,” the Devil said a bit too quickly, as if he weren’t allowed to offer the information unless I asked. “We don’t. We could walk away equals, and we could never see each other again. As long as I made you the offer I’ll be square.” Equals. That was the word that clouded my judgment. The Devil made it pretty clear he wanted me to tell him to leave, and in retrospect I suppose I was only being manipulated. What’s that stupid nickname of his, The Father of Lies? Well, he didn’t tell me any lies, but what he said certainly made my decision for me. “Run ’em,” I said. “We need some ground rules first.” There was no more remorse in his voice. He was all business. “Five rubbers,” I offered. “Best points.” “Okay. But we need to figure out what you’re going to get.” The Devil paused. “A World Title? A million bucks? A queue of supermodel girlfriends? What’s it going to be, John?” “How about we play for your soul?” I’ve seen the Devil in just about every state there is. I’ve seen him humiliated, angry, delighted, and everything in between, except for one. Up until that time I had never seen him stupefied. “We can’t do that,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Why not? If I’m playing for mine why can’t you put yours on the table?” “Because I don’t have a soul, John. I’m not a person like you. I’ve never been alive. That’s how you get one.” “You’re not alive now?” “Not in the sense you are. I was created from the ether.” “So, how come we can’t play for your existence? That’s what I’m playing for, right? My eternal soul? You could put up the same stakes.” “That’s not the way it works, John.” “Then go screw yourself. There’s no way I’m playing for it all when you’re playing for something as lame as money or fame or something equally stupid.” “We don’t have to play at all.” “Oh, we’re going to play, and I’m going to kick your ass. But we don’t do diddly unless you play for the same kind of bank I’m playing for. Got it?” The Devil sat across the table and stared at me. His eyes told me he was somewhere distant, as if he had a cell phone in his head and was calling in for approval on this account. Eventually his eyes came back and joined me in the living room. “Okay, John,” he said as simply as he had ever said anything to me in the last three years. “Under those rules we can play.” “Then run ’em,” I said again. The Devil wasted no more time shuffling cards. He riffed them once then slid the deck over to me. I was in the habit of knocking the deck, but considering the wager I decided to cut them about a third of the way down. Halfway is for suckers. I could stack a pile of face cards halfway down a deck and alternate them with crap just looking for a good cut. If I’d get something on an off card I’d just bury one then deal away, but I had more respect for the Devil than something so cheap. Father of Lies. You would have thought I’d have been smarter. He fired off four quick stacks and we bid around to two spades, with me winning it easily. It was a tentative deal. I was two tricks over, and after I had scooped up the ten piles I wondered why I had been such a wuss. Four spades would have been the whole kit and kaboodle, yet I fell short, and when the Devil nailed three clubs like it was nothing I kicked myself in the butt even harder. We passed a round, house rules and all, then I called another wimpy two hearts and stuck it. Game one to the home team. I dealt them, and the Devil bid his way to three no trump without so much as flinching. I thought about doubling then thought about it harder and steered clear. Good thing, too, since he hit three like he knew the cards were going to fall that way. “That’s the first rubber,” he said. “This is the only time I can do this, John. You can call off the bet, and I won’t approach you again for the rest of your life.” “Bite me.” I have been more eloquent than that in the past. Nothing better was jumping to mind. The Devil dealt the next round, and we both had garbage. He passed, and I offered a one club, which he let through. Dummy revealed two aces and two more kings, so I wound up with ten tricks. The next go around he got to two hearts. Then back to me, and I worked up to three spades. “Double,” said the Devil. I really didn’t want to hear that, but I held my tongue on the redouble and played them out. Made the nine on a lucky heart split and took the second rubber. Then what do you know? Right off the bat I get a family reunion in diamonds, bid five, and make a small slam for the third rubber. I’d never seen the Devil sweat before. We’d been in some pretty tight situations, playing for some big prizes. Even at the Eastern AC with the trophy on the line he was cool under pressure. As I shuffled the cards I saw him reach up and pinch the bridge of his nose then run his fingers over his eyes. I may be a jerk, but I’ve still got my feelings. The Devil and I had hung around a lot. When we weren’t in the middle of a tourney we would talk over the cards. I told him about Marie and why we weren’t together any more. He told me about his job, and while the details horrified me I could sympathize with his complaints. Hey, his was a job like any other, with its ups and downs. I opened up with him just like I had with anyone else. We were friends. So when I saw him sweating, down two games to one, I wanted to take back the bet. It’s not that I didn’t want to win. I just didn’t want him to lose. Two minutes later I recanted every thought. It was my deal, so I don’t know how he did it. Perhaps it was one of those Devil things you read about. But however it happened I wasn’t dealt a single face card. My dummy partner had a bare king and a bare jack. Everything else between the two hands was dreck. The Devil opened with four spades, and I contemplated overbidding him and going down just so he wouldn’t take the rubber. The only thing that stopped me was knowing that I’d get dealt the same crap, and he’d take the rubber with me in the hole. There was no way I was giving up those kinds of points. He could have pulled cards from random out of his hand. All thirteen tricks went to his side of the table, and in a flash the games were even. “You cheated,” I said. “I did no such thing,” the Devil said with what could have been authentic indignation. “I would never cheat you, John.” “The odds against that hand are astronomical.” “It wasn’t even my deal.” “Don’t try that with me. You’re the Devil.” And then the bastard smiled. I’d gotten pretty good at reading his expressions over the years. More often than not he was like a regular guy: he frowned when he was mad or sad and he smiled when he was happy. This was one of those different kinds of smiles, like I’d caught him with his hand in the cookie jar but I was locked outside the house and staring through the kitchen window. “Did you think it was our unbeatable play that won that trophy?” he asked without looking over his shoulder at my cabinet. “Of course I can do the things you think I can. But I’m not doing that here.” “Bite me.” I really am a poet when I want to be. “You have to trust me, John. I’m not allowed to influence this kind of transaction once it’s begun. I can only affect events leading up to it.” I sat there looking at him for a few moments. “Am I a chump?” I asked. “Most people who deal with me are. They ask me for riches or a woman or a thousand different things they could have acquired on their own with only a little effort. I always play for their souls, an object that has no worth greater than itself. They have no idea what they’re doing.” He sighed. “Did I manipulate you into this game? Yes, I did. I should have done it a long time ago, before I came to think of you in terms other than an acquisition. Once I started, though, there was no way I could have backed out of it. It’s my job. I have to do it. “Are you a sucker for playing me? I don’t think so. You’re better than I am. But we go though streaks, you and me. Mine last for a couple of rubbers. Yours last for weeks. I’ve been hot, and you know it. I feel like I’m going to win.” I digested this for about ten seconds without saying a word. I held his gaze, and behind the face of the Father of Lies his words seemed sincere. “Am I a chump?” I asked again. “Yeah,” the Devil said without hesitation. “You’re a chump. I manipulated you into this game.” “I’m going to win.” “See? It is this belief that I’ve cultivated in you. Even when presented with the opportunity to back out of the contract you don’t.” “Try me again.” “I can’t.” “Go ahead. Or are you afraid I’m going to back out now, when you’re so close to my soul you can taste it?” “All right.” The Devil considered something then nodded. “ We’re tied at two games apiece. Effectively, we’re right where we started. I said I could only do it once, but considering the strangeness of this acquisition I’ll do it again. John, we can call this all off and go our separate ways. What do you say?” And I wanted to walk away. There was a line of thirteen stacks of cards in front of the Devil where I had none. I had been obliterated in the last rubber. It could happen again on the next deal, especially since it was the Devil’s turn to handle the cards. You’ve really got to believe me when I say I wanted to walk away. “Get stuffed,” I said. “Let’s play.” Really, I meant to walk away. The bastard hid the smile well; I’ll give him that. He scooped up all the cards and folded them over, ruffling them quickly and efficiently like someone who had done it a million times. He usually faced the two sets towards each other, but this time all he did was touch the corners together. I swear as they wove into one set the cards were perfectly placed: one from the left pile then one from the right on top of it, then one from the left and one from the right, until they were done. Then he pushed the cards together into one stack, cut them again and repeated the performance. I was screwed. I’d never been so thoroughly screwed before. The worst part of it was that I did all that screwing myself. I’m so stupid it makes me sick. I fanned my thirteen and took a peek at five of my dummy partner’s. I was strong in diamonds and had a bullet spade but little else. Eleven points was good enough to open provided the Devil didn’t. “One club,” he said. “One diamond.” The Devil didn’t even wait to consider it. “Two clubs,” he said, and I got to sneak a peek at one more card across the table. Seven of hearts, another loser piece of garbage. “Two diamonds,” I said, and wondered why I did it. The Devil looked at another of his hidden cards. He must have really liked what he saw. “Three no-trump.” It was a game bid. I had that ace of spades and my own ace and king of diamonds. That was three solid tricks. I needed to take five to set him. I couldn’t see how to get there unless something really nice was waiting for me in my partner’s hand and the Devil was unlucky enough to draw one of my worthless cards instead of that. Something told me he wasn’t going to be unlucky this hand. “Four diamonds,” I said. I wouldn’t make it, but it was better to go down and come back in the next couple of deals than let him take a swing at the rubber. The Devil reached over and took a peek at his last freebie. His smile was so wide I thought he was going to scratch his ears with the corners of his mouth. “Five clubs,” said the Devil, and it was his death sentence. I had three tricks solid. I could have doubled him and really sent him down like I had tied cinderblocks to his ankles. Instead I let him go for it. When he flipped over his dummy’s cards I felt my heart in his fist. Dummy was good in clubs with mid and high cards in everything but spades. There were none. I was still feeling good, though as I dropped the ace of diamonds. I scooped up some marginal cards and followed with the king where I won three more pieces of gup. And that was all I had. I couldn’t drop the spade winner with dummy right behind me looking for any excuse to make that three of clubs good. I looked for some options and decided I didn’t have any so I put one of my worthless hearts out there to see what happened. Dummy couldn’t cover, and the Devil played one of my dummy’s hidden cards underneath and took the trick with his ten. He played three rounds of trumps and ran both me and dummy dry, and it turned out my partner was out from the get go. The Devil had three more trumps in his own hand, and suddenly there was a ray of light. If the Devil had a spade anywhere in his hand it was a loser since he couldn’t trump me from dummy. That bullet was everything. And that’s what it came down to. The Devil had control the whole way, only once ruffing to dummy then coming right back with the trump. On the second-to-last trick I saw his last trump. I knew all four cards that were left and felt the horror of it. Devil’s dummy had the six of hearts. I held the bullet. There was a spade four and a diamond three left. The Devil flipped his last card face up, spinning it into the middle of the table. It was red. Diamonds was my bid. I had them. My dummy should have taken that last card. The Devil should have had the four of spades, and I would have covered it with the ace. The Devil should have had it. “Three rubbers to two,” he said. “You lose, John.” Why hadn’t I bid six diamonds? I would have lost, of course, gone down by four tricks looking back at the deal. But I’d still be in the game. Why didn’t I bid six diamonds? “What usually happens at this point,” the Devil said, though his words fell on my skin instead of my ears, “is that we let you ponder your actions for a moment or two before we take you away. Your body will stay right here, and it will appear to anyone that you suffered a massive heart attack. Take your time, John. I’m in no hurry.” Six diamonds. It was the obvious play. And I was going to say it, but something in the back of my mind told me not to. I thought I could take the three tricks. My hand was on the pencil, and I doodled with the numbers, tallying the points from the last rubber. I added them to the Devil’s total and thought again about how many points I would have been down if I had only bid that stupid six diamonds. Then I looked down at the score pad again and quickly checked the figures. “Are you ready to go?” the Devil asked. “Not really,” I said. “It’s not up to you, John.” “Oh,” I said perhaps a bit too smugly, “I think it is.” I spun the pad around and let the Devil look at it. “What?” “Have a look.” “So what? I beat you best of five games.” “That wasn’t the arrangement. We were going to play five games, sure, but it was for points not for games. Look again.” The Devil looked down at the pad and crinkled his brow. I think he really needed glasses because he always squinted at anything more than three feet away. Then he hunched over the pad and picked up the pencil. He added the figures as I saw the sweat form again on his brow, leaping to life like seedlings sprouting from the earth. When the pencil stopped moving I knew that he knew. “It was the double,” he said. “Yeah.” “I could have played the jack back to dummy. Then the hearts wouldn’t have mattered.” “I know.” “Twenty lousy points.” “Yeah,” I said again. Hey, Shakespeare’s dead. We sat there in silence for a while, a long while. “Now what?” I asked. “I’m not really sure,” said the Devil. “I guess I just go away.” “I don’t think that’s what I want.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, when you play for people’s souls what do you do with them?” “We put them in the fires.” “And that’s your decision, right? You could do whatever you want with them?” “I suppose so.” “Then I can do whatever I want with your soul.” It sounded pretty logical. “I’ll have to check with my boss,” the Devil said. “I can wait.”
That was eight years ago. The Devil still comes by on Saturdays, and we play our two-man games. Twice a month we get together with nine other teams and do some round robin. A few times a year we enter a tournament. We’ve won three, placed twice and been eliminated in the first round just as often. I’m told business goes on as usual without the Devil around to supervise things. Guess someone else took his job once it was vacated. Since the Devil doesn’t have a place to go to any more he rented a studio in the Village. He pretends to be an Internet entrepreneur, buying and selling rare wine vintages. Honestly, I don’t know where he gets his money, and I don’t care. I haven’t asked for any of it. I think it would be taking advantage of our arrangement. Tomorrow we go to Las Vegas for the Invitational. We’re flying first class and staying at the Grand, on him. I told him if we win I would relinquish my demand on him. He’s been studying like he’s cramming for finals. I’ve seen who we’re up against, and I don’t think we have a prayer. But I’m not going to tell the Devil that. I am such a jerk.
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