All Black Ch. 01

"Wow," Angie thinks, "he's very tall" — and then she trips at the place where the black marble of the hallway meets the soft black carpet of his office, landing on her hands and knees just inside the doorway.

The assistant helps her to her feet as Mr. Black quickly walks over to see if she's okay, but their concern only makes her feel more humiliated.

"Miss Christescu, are you alright?" he asks, his voice startlingly deep and clear and dark.

Angie looks up at him, nodding, not trusting her voice, trying not to cry.

He's even more handsome in person than in the pictures: much taller and much, much stronger than she'd anticipated.

He's also even darker than she'd anticipated — the inevitable "pure dark chocolate" comparison flashes through her mind — but his skin and eyes radiate health and cheer and confidence, with a thick "Van Dyke" beard that gives him, Angie feels, an aura of authority and class.

Nor has she ever seen such obviously "rich" clothing, from his blue necktie to his shining black shoes, everything fitting him perfectly, obviously tailored to him.

"Actually she's Miss White, as we explained," his assistant informs him.

"Oh, right," he says, his voice betraying no disappointment. "This is the one."

"I'm so sorry," Angie whimpers.

"For falling?" he laughs. "It's my fault for not having that threshold fixed."

"Well, for that but also for not being Ana."

"Don't be sorry for that either."

"I can't help it," Angie laughs, dusting her hand off to accept his handshake. "You'd understand if you saw her."

"I doubt it," he says, looking in her eyes and extending his hand. "Shiva Black."

His hand is so strong but his grip is just firm enough to feel warm and reassuring.

"I'm Angie White, Angela, um, Angie."

"Miss White," he confirms.

"Yes. I'm Ana's, um, Miss Christe—, I mean, I'm Anastasia Christescu's roommate. She asked me to take her place because she's very sick. "

"I see. Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yes, I'm just — well, humiliated, actually."

With him smiling at her so kindly, and the hot-ass assistant gone, she feels comfortable admitting that to him.

"If you never suffer a worse humiliation, you will have lived a boring life."

"Okay," she politely pretends to agree.

"Have a seat then. We have perhaps ten minutes."

"Thank you."

As he walks in front of her with the long strides of a man who is intent on getting something done immediately, she looks quickly around his large office, noting that besides huge furniture and a collection of blue and green squares probably meant as art, he has an even better view of Liberty through the floor-to-very-high-ceiling windows.

He sits in the big black leather chair behind his desk and she sits in another big black leather chair in front of his desk. It almost reminds her of sitting in her father's recliner when she was a little girl.

Angie opens her notebook and remembers her problem. Or, at least, one of her problems.

"They didn't let me bring the recorder," she tries to explain. "I was going to record the interview but they didn't let me bring the recorder and I also forgot to bring pencils. And my pen broke the other day. Ink got everywhere so I don't have anything to write with."

"Do you want a pencil?"

"Yes, please, I'm afraid."

He gestures to a row of pencils laid neatly parallel to each other on his desk, but noticing that Angie apparently feels too timid to take one, he stands up and walks back around the desk to give one to her.

It's fancy: longer and thicker than a normal pencil, with a kind of rough grainy texture. She's not sure whether she likes it, but of course she immediately drops it and it shatters into hundreds of tiny pieces as if it were made of sugar.

"Oh no! I'm so sorry!"

Angie stands as if to try to clean up the pieces.

"It's okay," he stops her with a light, perhaps even accidental, touch on her forearm. "I have several more and we can have that cleaned up later."

"Thank you." She hears her own voice, small and timid. "Why did it...."

"Charcoal. I like charcoal pencils. They're actually just charcoal sticks with a thin paper coating, so they break all the time."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Mr. Black, but I'm not used to this. I assumed I would be able to just walk right in and see you but the security and everything shook me and I'm...."

"It's alright," he assured her, sitting on the front of his desk, towering over her. "Everyone's nervous the first time."

Angie glanced up at him quickly. Was that a double entendre? Can he somehow know she's a virgin?

"Coming to an office like this and meeting someone like me," he adds as if hearing her thoughts.

Rather than going back around, he sits down in one of the chairs on the same side of the desk as her. He crosses his long legs, revealing as his pants slide up a black and blue argyle sock.

It occurs to her then that their clothing kind of matches, that perhaps they share similar tastes. Then it strikes her that she's actually been admiring the decor of his building, and especially of his office.

"I understand you are to interview me for your college newspaper."

"Yes, The Catholic Republican."

"One of the more interesting oxymorons I've heard."

"Yes," she agrees without knowing why he regards it as an oxymoron.

"I could give you another pencil but would you prefer to have your recorder?"

"Oh, is that possible?"

"I think so. I'm the boss here so I can usually get what I want if I ask nicely enough."

He turns to press a button on a device on his desk. "Miss Dolingen?"

"Yes, Mr. Black?"

"Miss White had to leave a recording device with security. Could you have it brought back to her?"

"Yes, sir."

As he turns back to Angie, she realizes that "if I ask nicely enough" was a joke, and a funny one, so she laughs, and then she realizes she's laughing at the wrong time, and apparently for no reason, so her laugh turns to a choke, and she barely manages not to cough something horrible out to join the fragments of charcoal at his feet.

He offers her a handkerchief from inside his jacket, but she feels afraid to accept it.

"No, no," she politely lies, "I'm okay."

Then she regrets that too, fearing that declining it was rude. She doesn't know any of the etiquette.

"May I have a pencil too, actually?" she asks, trying to make up for it and then feeling still stupider. "I'll be more careful this time."

"Let's get to know each other informally while we wait," he suggests, replacing the handkerchief and handing her another pencil. "Are you a journalism major?"

"No, English."

"Ah, very good. Any favorite authors?"

"Hardy."

"Hardy?" he drawls, intrigued. "I would've never guessed. Why Hardy?"

"Have you read him?" she asks, surprised at his interest.

"Only Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. I was only a teenager, but they both affected me rather profoundly."

"Oh, wow, really?"

"Yeah. So why Hardy?"

"I guess it's because... I appreciate his ...."

She worries her answer will not please him, but she seems unable to think of a less offensive one, so she finally gives up and simply tells the truth.

"I guess it's his unflinching portrayal of the injustice in the world."

"His outrage," Mr. Black nods.

"Yes," she exults, happy that he has accepted her reason.

"The line we're supposed to recite is that he couldn't forgive God for not existing."

"Really?"

"That's what people say. I like the aphorism and rather admire him for earning it."

"Oh. Well I'm..., I mean, Saint George is a conservative Catholic college. We all have to believe in God."

"You have to, or you do?"

"We have to, I guess."

"I meant you, singular."

"Me?"

"I hope you intended 'We have to believe in God' as a cunning evasion."

"Maybe I did," she smiles, flattered and beginning to feel somewhat comfortable.

"Maybe you did," he teases, smiling back at her as if they've shared a secret.

She looks up at him — over at him but even sitting down at her level he's noticeably taller than she is — with intense gratitude.

How many times has she used that line without anyone picking up on it? Very few people seem prepared to suspect that a pretty little blonde girl might say something admirably clever.

But he did, and immediately.

"Aren't you a Muslim?" she asks, her curiosity running ahead of her sense of propriety.

After thinking for a moment, he picks up a file on his desk and shows it to her.

"Do you recall signing a non-disclosure agreement?"

She nods.

"And they explained the penalties of breaking it?"

She nods, dishonestly, and he drops the file back on his desk.

"So we're very strictly off the record now. It's just the two of us, a man and a beautiful young woman having a pleasant conversation, and no one except us will ever know what we say here."

Beautiful?

She looks at him with the question in her eyes and for a moment she thinks she sees the answer in his.

Then he removes all doubt, brazenly admiring her, his gaze flowing from her eyes down her body and back up into her eyes to confirm that he meant exactly what he said.

She's never experienced anything like this before: bold yet completely respectful appreciation for her body.

Until now, in her experience men's desire and men's respect have been incompatible. To have both at once is a delight she didn't even know was possible, and suddenly it seems to be exactly what she's always most deeply desired.

And to get it from this man — handsome, rich, powerful — confuses her so completely that she would probably have sex with him right now at this moment, utterly violating her own sincerely-held principles, partially because her mind isn't working well enough to think of what else she would do but primarily because she just wants more of his amazing attention and she would probably do anything to get it.

She thinks all that in an instant, but what she feels is her beauty opening to his attention like a morning glory greeting the warmth of the sun.

"I guess so," she agrees.

"Well, then, between us," he says, "I have been a Muslim, and I suppose I may still be, but are you familiar with the verse in your scripture about faith, hope and love?"

"Yes, of course. 'The greatest of these is love.'"

"Right. I hope that's true, because I have almost no faith and only a little hope, but if my love can make it true, it will be true."

"Wow," Angie nods, wide-eyed. "I think that might be exactly how I feel."

After a moment of thought, she concludes, "Yes, I think it really is."

She looks at him almost with awe. "But can I ask you something?"

"We're still off the record."

"Yes, of course." She'd actually forgotten about the interview. "Do you think Islam is better than Catholicism?"

"I should probably defer to the experts, but my guess is that if either one of them is true in the ways that matter, then they're both true in the ways that matter, and that we'll never know or understand how. But why do you ask?"

"Well, sometimes I think.... For example, do you know about..." — she hesitates, suddenly realizing that her example is sexual, but as before she can't think of anything to replace it with, and she feels comfortable with him, so she decides to just go ahead and risk it — "... the issue with condoms and AIDS in Africa?"

"I've heard of it."

"Do you think the Church is wrong?"

"I think so. Very horribly wrong. What do you think?"

"I think so too. But once we say the Church is wrong about that...."

She looks at him for assistance. She can feel a chasm about to open up, tearing her spiritual world apart, and he is the first person who she might be able to trust to talk about it with.

He only raises his eyebrows, encouraging her to finish her thought.

"... why would we say it's right about anything?"

"It's been wrong about a lot of things."

"Yeah," she realizes that she's known that all along. It was somehow so simple.

"Do you need it to be right about everything?"

"I don't know."

"What do you need from it?" he asks, gentle in the face of her looming crisis of faith.

"I don't know."

The device on his desk beeps, interrupting them. He stands to push the button.

"Miss Dolingen?"

"I have her bag, Mr. Black. I believe the recorder is in it."

"Good. Bring it in." He looks back at Angie. "Looks like our informal chat — and most of the time I have for you — is over."

The beautiful one in the slutty dress, apparently Miss Dolingen, enters the office, bringing Angie's entire bag, still sealed in plastic.

"Thank you," Angie smiles at her.

She smiles back, but her smile seems intended to satisfy Mr. Black rather than to be friendly to Angie.

"Anything else, Mr. Black?" she asks, and when he shakes his head she leaves.

Meanwhile Angie has been struggling with the plastic.

"Here," he says, reaching for it.

She hands it to him and he does something so shocking she can hardly believe her eyes:

He bites it.

He tears the plastic open with his teeth and spits a piece of it out on the carpet.

Then, as if he'd done the most normal thing in the world, he simply gives her bag to her.

"Thank you," she blushes, fishing around her bag for the recorder.

"You should probably get straight to the point," he tells her as she pushes the button to begin recording and looks in the notebook to see Ana's first question.

She clears her throat to sound formal on the recording.

"Mr. Black, you're very young to have achieved so much. I mean, Black Arts and Enterprises is sometimes called an empire. To what do you —"

She pauses, suddenly feeling the question is stupid.

"To what do I owe my success?" he asks encouragingly.

"Yes?"

She is asking him if the question is okay.

"To God, of course. Also my parents. The people who work for me. My teachers and coaches when I was growing up. But all that comes ultimately from God."

"From God."

Angie flips through Ana's notes, looking for a better question. When she finds one, she realizes she's been pinching the end of Mr. Black's pencil between her pursed lips — unsanitary, undignified, and even rather inappropriately sexual.

She glances up at him and she can instantly tell that he'd noticed.

Humiliation after humiliation.

He could probably rape me now, she thinks to herself, and I'd have to admit that I seemed to be coming on to him.

And then she realizes that, since he's so rich, he could probably get away with raping her no matter what.

But then she notices something about the tone of his answer. As soon as the interview began, she felt the difference. A sudden coldness. She wants to get the other guy, the warm, friendly guy, back, and since — despite all the stupid things she has done — he seems to like her, she decides to risk asking about it.

"Mr. Black, can I be completely honest with you?"

"I hope so. Why?"

"Because I get the feeling that you are not being completely honest with me."

He looks at her with an intrigued smile, and then looks pointedly at the recorder.

"Oh."

She shuts it off.

"Off the record?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Of course I'm not being honest with you. Why would I be honest with you?"

Well, she thinks, that is a doozy of a question.

She can't think of an answer before he goes on.

"What did you say you love about Thomas Hardy?"

"His unflinching portrayal of the injustice in the world."

"Yes, those were the words. Very well-chosen. Do you also want to be honest about the injustice in our world?"

She looks at him, confused and for some reason a little frightened.

"The secret of my success, as you put it, is that I'm honest about how our world works. I use my wealth and power to gain more wealth and power, which I will use to gain yet more wealth and power, and so on, as long as I live."

This stuns her.

The man makes no sense. How can one man believe all the different things he's said in the past five minutes? From faith, hope, and love, to wealth and power, wealth and power?

The intercom on his desk beeps.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Black, Jamie Johnson from the Times is here."

"Tell him he'll have to wait a few minutes. I'm unexpectedly busy now."

The interruption has given Angie time to think of a rebuttal.

"But you are so generous with charities. I read...."

He shakes his head.

"It's all just tax deductions, public relations, and classy events where I can meet starry-eyed young women."

"Like me."

"I wish," he snorts. "You are considerably more intelligent than most."

"Oh, no, really, I'm not," she blushes, denying not what he actually said but how it makes her feel.

"I think you are. Or perhaps the word 'thoughtful' would better describe what sets you apart. That's the impression you've made so far."

He confuses her, but he's called her "beautiful" and "thoughtful," even "intelligent," and he's the most amazing and wonderful man she's ever met.

Angie can't help herself. She smiles up at him, grateful for his approval, wickedly delighted, longing for more of it.

"Mr. Black, ...," she begins, terribly afraid but determined not to leave without at least asking, "can I see you again? I'd like to continue this conversation."

"I would too," he says, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

They look at each other for a moment, and that is the moment she falls over the edge, head over heels, helplessly in love.

But then it's over. He takes his hand away and begins issuing orders.

"Write up a draft of the article and bring it to me so that I can approve it before you publish it. You will regard everything we've said here as off the record, but I'll give you some good quotations to put in after I see your draft."

"Oh...," she says, startled by the sudden back-to-business tone. "What should I put in the article?"

"Whatever you want in it. If I don't like something, we'll throw it out anyway."

"Oh. Okay."

"Can you have it for me by tomorrow?"

Tomorrow, she thinks.

No, she can't come back to the city tomorrow. She'll have to skip two classes. Finals are only two weeks away and she needs to go to those classes.

So, no. Absolutely not.

"Yes," she says, trying but failing to think of something else to say.

Then she remembers, the word she was looking for was "no."

But it seems too late now.

"And then afterwards, would you like to join me for a cup of coffee? I know a good place near here."

"Coffee?"

He just looks at her.

"Hell, yes!" screams ninety-nine percent of her heart and soul and mind, but one percent, the boss percent, tells her that the answer is "no," and she knows it's right.

Coffee is a date. She's not even allowed to go on dates.

And she's nineteen, he's thirty-one. She cannot have a date with someone that old. Even coffee.

And he's Muslim. Everyone she knows will object. Her parents might actually disown her.

And on this date, she knows, if he tries to have sex with her, she will not be able to resist him. She won't even want to. She might even wind up trying to tempt him.

It was all good innocent fun before, but now she realizes it's real.

He must be evil. He's leading her astray. This must be some kind of trap. She has always been a good girl, she wants always to be a good girl. She has been seriously thinking about becoming a nun, for the love of God.

She looks at him, tries to look into him. He doesn't look evil. He looks beautiful. He must be good.

But she remembers something about Satan looking beautiful.

This man is Satan.

She's in love with Satan.