I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story (13 page)

In a way, God brought it all on Himself. (Of course He
brought it all on Himself Luce, you moron.) If he hadn't presented me with His actual absence things might have turned
out differently; but there I was - there use were, the thinkers
and speculators of the angelic host, managing quite well
without Him. It felt ... how can I put this? It felt like a holiday. Up until then I'd spent all that time (and this is still Old
Time, remember), all my time, in fact, sailing around Heaven
telling Him what a wonderful guy He was for allowing me
the privilege of sailing around Heaven telling Him what a
wonderful guy He was. I didn't know why, but it suddenly
seemed ... well . . . pointless.

When I had this thought (there were whole flocks of these
bright birds, now, whole experiments in jazz) even the Holy
Spirit left me alone, and I existed for the first time in a state
of brilliant, adamantine singularity. It was queasy and arousing. It was rugged and naive. It was daring and giddy. It was
glorious and - since I assumed it was the way He felt the
whole time - profane. Truth is, it was a huge rush. The crystallization of selfhood, the moment of realising that I was,
indubitably, myself, separate from anyone or anything, rich
with time and potent with the desire to spend it away from
home, to squander it, to lavish it on my own deeds and
desires, to set myself aside from God (aside theologians please note, not above), to wake up in the morning and think: Holy
shit, it's me! What shall I do today? A rush. The rush. Of all
time. In my long, scabrous, violent and filthy history of
moments I'd have to say that moment capped the lot. You
can't imagine it. That's not a criticism. I just know you can't
imagine it because I've made sure that separateness from God
is something you take for granted.

My murmur went through the host like the clap. It wasn't
until my spirit leaped onto its legs and went capering among
them whispering of all that time they d wasted that many of
them realised themselves truly free.

You can't blame me. I mean that literally. You're incapable
of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing
freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency,
liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you
know (come on, man, you've always known) that the idea of
spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is
utterly unappealing. You'd be catatonic after an hour.
Heaven's a swiz because to get in you have to leave yourself
outside. You can't blame me because - now do please be
honest with yourself for once - you'd have left, too.

Not that I was prepared for His anger, when it came. In fact
let me give you a tip: l)on't ever, ever think you're prepared
for God's anger. It happened so quickly. In Old Time we'd
say it took no time at all. Really no time at all. Suddenly, He
turned His presence upon us. Us. We hadn't even noticed up
until that moment that we'd started hanging around in a
group. I knew the game was up. He didn't say anything. He
didn't have to. He sent Michael.

`It's too late to change my mind, I suppose,' I said.

'It's too late to change your mind,' Michael said. 'Your
pride has set your course, Lucifer.' We could see them, then, the white-hot ranks massed behind him. Outnumbered us
two to one. Easy two to one. I could feel the Old Man's
barely contained rage like a swollen sky. Be strong, Luce, I
told myself. Be strong, be strong, be strong. You know what
it's like: a nauseous glory in your guts because now you
know you've Done It, now you know you're going to Get
It. The happy clarity of defiance. You're fey with it, addled,
tumbleweed light, ridiculously devil-may-care. Terror and
elation. We're doing it, I thought, we're actually doing it!

I turned and looked back from the threshold, chin up, the
high-diver's moment of pure being before the backwards
pitch and scribbled notation through space. Some moment,
that, the ether's quiver and torque, the brilliant ranks, time
holding its giant breath. I hadn't rehearsed anything, but I
did think, you know, a few fitting words.

`Well,' I began.

Then all Heaven broke loose, and before we knew it we
were fighting for our lives.

Say what you like about me, but don't say I can't wing it,
will you? I mean, would you have thought of that? The Devil
makes uvorkftr idle hands - even if they're his own. I'm not
overly ashamed to admit that until I met Harriet in the bar
I had no higher agenda than the exhaustive expenditure of
Gunn's mortal resources on excess: I've got a shocking weakness for scrambled egg with smoked salmon, fresh dill and
coarse ground black pepper, it turns out; I'm up to eighty
Silk Cut a day, but I'm pretty sure I've hit a plateau with
smoking; the bar staff ... know me, shall we say, and have
even officially added the Lucifer Rising - vodka, tequila,
orange juice, tomato juice, Tabasco, Tio Pepe, Grand Marnier, cinnamon and a pepperoncino chilli - to the joint's
unadventurous cocktail menu. I've ridden the tiger ra E'ed.
That tiger, it's rolled over on its blazing back and put up its
paws and just asked me to stop. Cocaine (two lines of which
form the tenth unofficial ingredient in a Lucifer Rising) has
found its feisty way up both ports of my hungry hooter, and
I've slogged (and whacked, and ploughed, and rootled, and
slurped, and chomped) my way through a good half of the
talent at XXX-Quisite Escorts - `girls with personality and
verve for the gentleman who demands excellence'. I)o I demand
excellence? Let me tell you, that excellence they've got on
offer at XXX-Quisite, it's excellent. I'm feeling ... Well, I'm
feeling good, you know? Violet-length bubble baths, ovenroasted quail, coke-dusted nipples and the odd
vanilla-flavoured vuly, altered states, clairvoyant cachet (I've
got a whole posse of admirers here now) and the strangely
reliable lust inspired by Harriet's past-it poop-chute - it's not
much compared to my Rwandan rumbles or Balkan brouhahas, you know, but it's something, it's shit} What else does
one do with one's finite body, with one's life on earth? I've
been dreaming of a vacation like this for billennia. And
now? - Oh glorious and bountiful serendipity! - Harriet,
Nexus Films, and Trent Bintock.

Trent's short film Including Everything won at Sundance this
season. And Cannes. It won at Los Angeles, too. And Berlin.
And everywhere else that mattered and everywhere else that
didn't. Trent, a twenty-five-year-old New Yorker of such gilt
and chiselled good looks as to amount to a self-parody, is
currently under contract to the remarkable Harriet Marsh of
Nexus Films. He looks like a cross between an aerobic
Apache and a Californian surf god. His fingernails and teeth
appal with a whiteness that would shame the snows of
Aspen. Trent, whose youthful brush with even modest celebrity has lifted him to heights of vanity that would make
Gunn look shy, is what you might call `poised' for conquest.
Harriet is going to launch him. Launching young men is one
of Harriet's pastimes; she considers herself a kind of watermark they'll carry out into the world, visible in future only
when the young man is held up against a strong light ...
The only thing missing from this picture is the picture. The
feature that's going to put Trent on Hollywood's A-list and a
planet-sized wedge into Nexus's coffers. The feature, the
picture, the movie, the film. The story. The one I pitched
post-coitally to Harriet over three bottles of Bolly and eight
lines of the Very Reverend Charles Cocaine.

Oh I know it's frivolous. So deshed frivolous. But once
Harriet took me seriously I couldn't but run with it. She
picked up the blower there and then. LA. Tokyo. Paris.
Mumbai. Twenty-five words or less? Less. ' "Lucifer",' she
said. `Creation. Fall. Eden - Julia - battle on Earth with
Christ. Effects up the arse. Controversy.' She capped the
pitch with pure anti-logic. `The most expensive film ever
made.' They loved it. You can't blame me, can you?
Obviously set the record straight before the end of time,
obviously unveil the Real Me - but think of the mercliandis-
ingT. That and we leak a story that now-reclusive scriptwriter
Gunn was Actually Possessed by Lucifer to write the script.
Bump off a couple of sour grapes critics to give the thing
some momentum. Maybe decapitate Julia half-way through
shooting and roll in Penelope Cruz. `... members of the
crew are beginning to believe the rumour that writer Declan
Gunn made some Faustian pact . . .' Lucifer's going to be the
pop culture icon for the final days of pop culture. And the
final days of everything else, now that you mention it. Move
over Madonna. The Caths, the Fundamentalists, the Baptists,
Jumpin' Jeehosophet's Witnesses - Christ, anyone who's anyone on the overlarge map of Christianity is going to be
picketing movie theatres worldwide. And the kids? The kids
are going to love it.

Honestly, I looked in the mirror this morning and
thought: You know what you are, don't you? You're cocky.
Your trouble, Lucifer, your irresistible and invidious trouble,
is that you've always got to go the extra yard. Not content to
accept Declan's soul self-delivered by the mortal sin of suicide, you want to put him back into play with a new set of
conditions that are going to freshen his appetite for life and
lead him away from the Old Mari all over again. `I had this
soul already,' you want to say to Him, between sips of Remy
and insouciantly expelled smoke-rings, `I already had it, but
I put it back. I'd like you to observe, Old Fruit, as, with his
new lease of life, snatched from the very doorstep of certain
Hell, your boy spends what remains of his liberty walking
straight back into my arms .. ' Confidence? This is nreta-
confrdence, Toots.

So there you have it. Coming to a theatre near you. What
kills me is this quaint business of me coming back here to
Gunn's hovel to write. Don't laugh. Can't squeeze a word out
at the hotel. I'm not complaining, really: the poverty of
Gunn's former life provides a titillating counterpoint to the
extravagant one I'm living on his behalf at the Ritz. A counterpoint in small doses, let me stress, in very, very small doses.

Life among the hotel's loaded suits me. I'm a Name: the
clairvoyant who pretends to be the Devil. Celebrity, you
see, on a scale I)eclan could (and regularly did) only dream
about. They're used to celebs there, obviously. Staff are prohibited on pain of dismissal from making a fuss. I mean
they're polite, of course - they are supposed to recognize
you - but none of that `Oh, Mr Cruise I just loved you in
the one with the retard' nonsense. Word of the Film Deal is out. There's a whispery buzz about us, me, Trent and
Harriet, when we park at the bar. The Lucifer Rising is the
best-selling cocktail in the house. I wake up these mornings
with a grin on my gob and pep in my prick. The sun comes
in the window and embraces me. Those champagne breakfasts Harriet insists on practically guarantee a Feelin' Groovy
sort of day. Gunn's bones seem finally to be coming into
some kind of right alignment. I sing in the shower (Giddupah giddorn up - like a sex-machine - giddorn up) and take the
stairs three at a time. This is how one should live. This, let
me repeat, is how one should live.

(You know, it's true. Work had really been getting me
down latterly. Of late. The predictability. The routine. The
absence of even the ghost of a challenge. With nice symmetry, my newly acquired corporeal threads provide
material for the analogy: I'd felt heavy, sluggish, fevered
now and then, stiff of joint, leaden of head, sour of guts,
immaterially peaky and generally under the angelic weather.
This getaway's just what I needed. A change, as they say, is
as good as a rest.)

The clairvoyance gimmick's magnetic. Jack Eddington
wants to give me my own show. Lysette Youngblood wants
me on the road with Madonna. Gerry Zooney wants me to
go head-to-head with Uri Geller. Todd Arbuthnot wants to
hook me up with his contacts in Washington. Who are these
people? They're members of my Ritz coterie.

`Do you have any idea, Declan, of the sort of money you
could make with this?' Todd Arbuthnot said to me last night,
after I'd told him a thing or two about Dodi and Di that
made his toenails curl.

`Yes, Todd, I do have an idea,' I said. `And do, dear boy,
please, call me Lucifer.'

They don't get it, the Devil thing. They write it off as permissible guru eccentricity. Needless to say, none of them
has heard of Declan Gunn. None of them has read Bodies in
Motion, Bodies at Rest. None of them has read Bonesliadonws.
Not that the obscurity credentials didn't come in handy with
Trent, who's a writing snob, when he's not out of his box on
drugs.

`Okay,' he said, coming up bleary-eyed from a toot in my
suite, where, by mutual agreement, our `development meetings' take place. Harriet was out. Dining with
microelectronics and pharmaceuticals. Outside the window
lit London beckoned. I get terribly excited once it's gone
dark. I get terribly excited while it's still light, too; but that
darkness, those winking city lights ... I've started going out,
you see. Going out, in London, at night, with money, drugs,
famous people, and extremely expensive prostitutes.
(Whereas Gunn used to go out, at night, alone, with hardly
any money, no drugs, no celebs, fail to pull, get denied sex
even after the capitulation and retreat to Vi's, then come
home, have a hungover handjob, a sob, a vomit, a cigarette,
and much mulling over just how close he was to having
altogether given up hope before falling into a troubled and
unregenerative sleep.)