Practical Demonkeeping

for the shop vac to clean out her car. While she cleaned, she ran possibilities through her mind. Should she pick the most expensive restaurant? No, that might scare him away. There was a romantic Italian place south of town, but what if he got the wrong idea? Pizza was too informal for a dinner date. Burgers were out of the question. She was a vegetarian. English food? No—why punish the guy?
    She found herself resenting Travis for making her decide. Finally she opted for the Italian place.
    When the car was clean, she returned to the house to pick out what she would wear. She dressed and undressed seven times in the next half hour and finally decided on a sleeveless black dress and heels.
    She posed before the full-length mirror. The black dress definitely was the best. And if she splashed marinara sauce on it, the stain wouldn’t show. She looked good. The heels showed off her calves nicely, but you could also see the light-red hair on her legs. She hadn’t thought about it until now. She rummaged through her drawers, found some black panty hose and slipped them on.
    That problem taken care of, she resumed her posing, affecting the bored, pouty look she had seen on fashion models in magazines. She was thin and fairly tall, and her legs were tight and muscular from waiting tables. Pretty nice for a thirty-year-old broad, she thought. Then she raised her arms and stretched languidly. Two curly tufts of armpit hair stared at her from the mirror.
    It was natural, unpretentious, she thought. She had stopped shaving about the same time she had stopped eating meat. It was all part of getting in touch with herself , of getting connected to the Earth. It was a way to show that she did not conform to the female ideal created by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, that she was a natural woman. Did the Goddess shave her armpits? She did not. But the Goddess was not going out on her first date in over ten years.
    Jenny suddenly realized how unaware she had become of her appearance in the last few years. Not that she had let herself go, but the changes she had made away from makeup and complicated hairstyles had been so slow she had hardly noticed. And Robert hadn’t seemed to notice, or at least he had not objected. But that was the past. Robert was in the past, or he would be soon.
    She went to the bathroom in search of a razor.
    BILLY WINSTON
    Billy Winston had no such dilemma about shaving. He did his legs and underarms as a matter of course every time he showered. The idea of conforming to a diet soft-drink ideal of the perfect woman didn’t bother him in the least. On the contrary, Billy felt compromised by the fact that he had to maintain his appearance as a six-foot-three-inch tall man with a protruding Adam’s apple in order to keep his job as night auditor at the Rooms-R-Us Motel. In his heart, Billy was a buxom blond vixen named Roxanne.
    But Roxanne had to stay in the closet until Billy finished doing the motel’s books, until midnight, when the rest of the staff left the motel and Billy was alone on the desk. Only then could Roxanne dance through the night on her silicon chip slippers, stroking the libidos of lonely men and breaking hearts. When the iron tongue of midnight told twelve, the sex fairy would find her on-line lovers. Until then, she was Billy Winston, and Billy Winston was getting ready to go to work.
    He slipped the red silk panties and garter belt over his long, thin legs, then slowly worked the black, seamed stockings up, teasing himself in the full-length mirror at the end of the bed. He smiled coyly at himself as he clipped the garters into place. Then he put on his jeans and flannel shirt and laced up his tennis shoes. Over his shirt pocket he pinned his name badge: Billy Winston, Night Auditor.
    It was a sad irony, Billy thought, that the thing he loved most, being Roxanne, depended on the thing he liked least, his job. Each evening he awoke feeling a mix of excitement and dread. Oh, well, a joint would get him through the first three hours of his shift, and Roxanne would get him through the last five.
    He dreamed of the day when he could afford his own computer and become Roxanne anytime he wanted. He would quit his job and make his living like The Breeze: fast and loose. Just a few more months behind the desk and he would have the money he needed.
    CATCH
    Catch was a demon of the twenty-seventh order. In the hierarchy of hell this put him far below the archdemons like Mammon, master of