What we have here is Nicholson trying to channel his character from The Shining and failing. Updike's story aims to shock middling-upper-class NYC society ladies, and tends to the banal; is there anyone left who can take this cartoonish misogyny, religious and sexual deviancy, for anything more than a feeble provocation? The narrative is stock: devil gets girls, devil loses girls, girls apply a supernatural restraining order on devil.
This positively discourages me from reading any Updike at all ever.