Saving Elijah

analysis.
    "You're not imagining very well, babe. What about your so-called best friend Julie? As far as I can tell, you lie to her all the time."
    I made myself look at him. "If I've lied to her," I said, "it's because I was trying to spare her feelings."
    "That's what people always tell themselves. But it's bullshit. I thought you were more honest than that, Dinah."
    "I've only lied to her because I know you don't like her. There. That's honest."
    But the truth was I was afraid he'd think less of me for still wanting to be her friend.

    *    *    *

    "Seth doesn't like me, does he?" Julie asked on the train ride home at the beginning of Christmas vacation.
    "What makes you say that?" I hadn't mentioned that, in addition to the books I needed to study for finals, I was lugging in my suitcase a pile of books Seth had given me that he said I had to read right away, including an 1808 translation of Goethe's Faust. The only decent translation, he said. As if he could read German, which I suspected he couldn't.
    She sighed. "This is me, Dinah. Do you suddenly think I got stupid? Look, I'm not saying I want to tag along every time, but he's a really cool guy, and his friends are really cool, too. You could invite me to some of the parties."
    "I'm sorry," I said. "Consider it done."

    *    *    *

    When I showed up back at Seth's place after Christmas break, having slogged my way through Faust (I had to eventually get a different translation to make heads or tails of it), there were two copies of his play on the kitchen table. The title page:

    THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN
A THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE
    by Seth Lucien

    "It's only the first two acts," he said.
    He wanted me to read with him, so he could hear what the dialogue sounded like aloud. But first he said he wanted to try out a new photographic technique. We smoked a bowl of hash, then he had me take off my clothes and he draped me in a very sheer piece of white material he got from the Playmakers. Arranging me on the stool in front of the camera, he then produced a ruby-colored glass stone on a chain, which he fastened around my neck.
    He turned the brass floor lamp off and the Tiffany lamp on, then snapped a few pictures. He put on the overhead light, a black light, stood back to assess the effect, tried the Tiffany with the black light. Finally he switched on every light in the room and moved around just like a prowling panther, snapping away.
    "You are very beautiful," he said when he was finished.
    I loved it when he told me I was beautiful. I felt vindicated somehow.
    After I got dressed again we read the play, a modernized version that took place on a college campus he called Walpurgis University, with a professor named George Faust, and a female student named Gretchen. I took the parts of God, Faust, and Gretchen; Seth read Mephistopheles' part. His play began like Goethe's, with a prologue in heaven, where God and the Devil are betting over whether Faust can be tempted to sell his soul. Some of the first part took its inspiration from Goethe also, with Satan appearing first as a poodle. Seth snapped his fingers and Meph trotted over, prepared as always to do his master's bidding, even to act.
    Two evenings later, we went to see the only movie we ever saw together, The Exorcist, which had opened that Christmas. I thought all that head spinning and green vomit was a little hokey, but Seth loved it. When we got back, Seth presented me with his photographs. I sat at his kitchen table and began to look through the set of 8x10 black-and-whites.
    "My God," I said, "I can't believe I posed this way."
    He smiled. "Relax. Your body is exquisite."
    At first I didn't catch it, but by the fourth or fifth photo I was noticing subtle changes in my face. By mid-stack I knew that whatever the technique was, it was aging me. Lines materialized, then deepened, around my eyes and mouth. I saw my hair go gray, my jaw line start to slacken, my neck and waist and hips thicken, my breasts sag, and sag, and sag. And in the very last I saw myself as an old, old woman. Practically a crone.
    "Pretty cool technique," Seth said. "Don't you think?"
    "Seth, what is wrong with you?" The photographs disgusted me. I got up to go.
    "Hey." He reached out. "I was just experimenting. I'll rip them up if they bother you so much."
    He picked up several photographs and with a flourish ripped them in two. Then ripped these pieces in four, in eight, in sixteen, and threw them in the wastebasket. He picked