[This excerpt is a preview of a longer piece]

At a steakhouse in the city of Albuquerque, where cockatoos pecked crumbs from the patio bricks and lightbulb wires made burning hearts, the devils split a burrata.

The kitchen pixies had dressed it in goat’s blood, for the sweet tooth, and fig jam, for the hell of it. It begged to be savored, but restraint suited neither of the dining devils. They gobbled the cheese dish and let lie the others: foie gras, snake strips, garlic bread. These cooled and sagged over the red-check tablecloth, and the cockatoos circled like vultures.

Yet the devils did not rush. Debauch was their signature, their offering unto. The pip carnivores and envy-eyed sylphs, spying from geranium pots, could lick their teeth and wait for the scraps.

The devils always left scraps.

Nix moderation, frugality, and niggling functionalism. Things followed things, in the way of decadence, until one or the other, man or environment, exhausted. The catch here, of course, was the wicked pair never tired.

Young and good-looking, the devils staged themselves and the city patronized with gifts and groupies who aspired after the devils’ image. For nothing was so common, or lucrative, than the wish to be remarkable. The devils became a public project of sorts, subsidized because—

what else was sacred?  

Tonight the female lounged in a glamor of indolence. She wore a lapis choker and seafoam stilettos that bent her toes like rose stalks. Her skirt was glass and ice, matched by a net of diamonds in her raven’s wing hair. With her carob skin and starlight getup, she shone like a flake of obsidian.

The male had on joggers.

But they clung to the curve of his underthighs, which he deadlifted into shape not unlike an archer’s bow. His cutting jaw and imp-gold hair rendered any outfit, or none at all, a knightly collage of manly form and manly nonchalance. With such a physique, he spread awe and jealousy like mustard gas, and reveled in it.

As did his date. They came every Tuesday to Carmine’s steakhouse and held court at their streetside table, preening in the pageantry of their mixed vanities.

It seemed they waited, knowing or not, for some unsolicited thing to catch them by the throat.