Max "Bunny" Sparber

THE DEVIL STARED at me, eyes heavily lidded and sleepy. I had not expected him to look so cartoonish. He sat on the rock, seemingly made of bright red geometric shapes, his head a cluster of triangles: pointed ears, arched eyebrows, goatee. A tail flicked behind him, also red, also ending in a triangle. Finally, he spoke.

"Well?" he asked.

"I was told to come to the crossroads," I responded, and he rolled his eyes.

"Yes, yes," he said curtly. "The crossroads. There's a devil. So you want something from me, man?"

I lifted my guitar case. He eyed it suspiciously.

"What is that, a guitar?" he asked.

I nodded, and he shook his head.

"No, man," he said. "I don't do no guitars."

I didn't know what to say. "I was told--" I began, and he cut me off.

"You were told what? Go to the crossroads and the devil will teach you guitar?"

I nodded.

He shook his head. "Wrong crossroads, man. Wrong devil. Did you ask for specifics?"

I had to admit that I hadn't.

He nodded. "Yeah, there's your problem. You got to know what crossroads to go to."

I asked if he knew.

The devil shook his head. "Once, maybe, I could tell you," he said. "I know Levine used to do it. But he got sick of all the schmucks who just wanted to learn Heavy Metal riffs. I think he teaches Jews harp now. I got a postcard from him, but it's been, like, a year. Nowadays, who knows? I know a hell of a banjo teacher, though, if that's what you want."

I did not want that.

"Well, sorry kid. I don't know what to tell you." The devil shrugged and averted his eyes.

I set my guitar case down and sat on it, defeated.

"What do you teach?" I asked.

The devil looked back at me. He tilted his chin up, an unconscious gesture of defiance. "You want to know what I teach, man?" he asked. "I teach VCR repair."

I laughed, and he crossed his arms. "What?" he demanded.

"Is there much call for that nowadays?" I asked.

He sighed. "Not so much. Back in the Eighties, you could make a good living at it. Times change."

He kicked at the ground. "I should have taught myself to fix DVD machines when they came out. I was gun shy, man." He sighed. "I had wasted so much time learning Beta and Laserdisc. I thought, why waste time on this crap? It's just going to be another new technology that's here today, gone next week. By the time I realized my mistake, some asshole named Hinkle already had staked a claim. He's at some crossroads near Memphis, and I hear he's doing gangbusters."

"Maybe Blu-Ray?" I suggested, but he waved dismissively.

"Nah, kid, it will all be out of date in a few years. I can't just keep teaching myself technologies that are out of date before they even hit the market. Who is going to sell their soul for that? It used to be a real trick. They'd come to you and say, teach me the 8-Track, and sign a contract in blood, and then, a few years later, they would come back and say they were ripped off. And we would cackle at them and drag them off to hell, and part of their eternal torment was the knowledge that they had been fooled into learning something useless."

The devil shook his head: "Nowadays, well, people are too savvy, man. They want a guarantee in writing that if the current hardware becomes outmoded, they will receive free tech support as they train in on the next generation of electronics. Where's the fun in that?"

The devil exhaled a long, rattling sigh. "I tell you, man," he said. "It's depressing. Sometimes I actually think about just giving away my lessons in VCR repair, just to have something to do."

He caught a look on my face. It only lasted a moment, but it startled him. "What?" he asked.

I thought very hard before I spoke next.

Of course, eventually I did find the devil who teaches guitar. That's the legend you already know. His name was Bernard, and he was at a crossroads outside Waco, Texas. I signed a contract in blood, and he promised me 20 years at the top of the charts, and then he would come for me. I was gone for a month, and when I came back I could play guitar in a manner that had never been heard before.

Soon I was signed to a contract with Columbia Records, and I produced an unbroken string of hits. An unauthorized book about me printed every legend, every scrap of gossip, and every rumor. It listed the amount of money I was supposed to be worth, which was in the hundreds of millions. It listed every property I was said to own, including a 16-room mansion in the Hollywood Hills. It told of wild nights on my private Lear Jet, and in my stretch limo, and on my tour bus. It tallied up the damage I had done to hotel rooms, which amounted to almost $130 thousand. The book estimated how many groupies I had been with, and that number was almost 12,000. And the book mentioned a strange scar on the back on my right knee, which is said to be where the devil took the blood from me for me to sign my contract. Finally, the book guessed at the date when I would have to forfeit my soul.

The book was wrong about a lot of things. For instance, it overestimated the amount of damage I had done to hotel rooms, but understimated the number of groupies I had been with. But the book got the date of the devil's return right. May 8, 2006.

Bernard the devil was tall and caped, with long, curving horns that arched off his head like those of longhorn steer. He wore a blue spangled jumpsuit and wore a guitar strapped over his shoulder, and, wherever he walked, smoke poured around him, filling the air with the scent of incense. He came into my Hollywood mansion at midnight on the eigth of May and stood before my enormous bed, where I lay surrounded by 30 naked groupies.

"Bunny," he said, and then flipped his long hair with his right hand, an unexpectedly girlish gesture. "Your time has come."

I stood before him on the bed, the groupies cowering behind me, pressed up against the gilded headboard and crying in terror. "Bernard," I said, "I challenge you."

Bernard the devil smiled, revealing gold teeth. "I thought you might be so foolish," he answered. "Do you forget that I was your teacher? Do you think 20 years of playing on earth can beat an eternity in hell?" He unlsung his guitar from around his back, and then, cocking his shoulders back and spreading his legs, he played the most wicked riff I had ever heard.

"You want a challenge, then, boy, a challenge you shall have!" he roared. "I will make you my personal plaything in the underworld when I win. I will dine on your entrails every night."

I nodded.

He stared at me, and stroked his guitar, and waited. Finally, he seemed confused. "Where is your guitar?" he asked.

"Who said anything about guitars?" I asked, and then clapped my hands. Two servants entered the room, carrying a small table with them. They set the table before Bernard, who stared at it, and its contents, dumbfounded.

"What is this?" he asked.

"It's our challenge," I answered, and then set about repairing the first of the two VCRs on the table before me.

Read more of I'm Just a Bad Boy, a Fake Memoir.