The Weirdness (18 page)

“Just—wait—just do me one thing,” Billy says groggily. “You can change my mind about stuff, right? You can—what was it you said?—simple binary beliefs? You can change those?”

“I can,” Lucifer says, looking down at him.

“Well—can you—can you just change it so that I think that I’m making the right decision here? I’d really feel a lot better going into this if I knew I wasn’t—fucking up.”

“I don’t think you’re a fuck-up, Billy,” Lucifer says, with what sounds like real sincerity.

“No?” Billy says.

“No,” Lucifer says. “So rather than inscribe more beliefs into your tender brain, I want to simply urge you to stop second-guessing yourself, for once. If you look at your life, you’ll see that it’s never been your
decisions
that have pointed you in the wrong direction, but rather your
resistance
to your decisions. Every time. So: Trust yourself. And watch your fingers.”

And with that, Lucifer slams the door, and thumps a palm on the trunk of the cab, and Billy’s off, headed toward Chelsea.

Billy spends the ride looking out the window and mulling over what the Devil said.
It’s never been your decisions, but your resistance to your decisions?
It had a sort of horoscopy applicability that made it ring true at first, but the more Billy subjects it to careful scrutiny, the less he thinks it actually makes sense.

Stop second-guessing!
says the part of him that really wants to latch on to the Devil’s diagnosis.

But that’s just it
, says the more rational part of him.
Wasn’t your first instinct to just say no to the Devil? So agreeing, today
: that
would be the part where you’re second-guessing yourself. And that would make
this
batch of reservations technically third-guessing. The Devil didn’t say don’t
third-guess
yourself
.

Well
, he has to admit,
that’s true
.

“Okay,” says the driver, pulling up on the curb next to the gallery with the Styrofoam shapes in the window. “Here we are.”

Billy peers miserably out at the Seafood Warehousing building, which looks dense and imposing even when it’s not in its Warlock House form. He makes no move to get out of the cab.

“Hey,” he says to the cabbie, suddenly. “That guy I was with: he’s paying for this ride, right?”

“Yep,” says the cabbie.

“So if I wanted to go somewhere else? If I wanted to have you drop me off in Queens, instead?”

“Yeah, whatever, buddy,” says the cabbie. “I’ll take you all the way to Florida, just say the word.”

Florida!
thinks Billy, for a second.
That could be good!
But no. Instead he thinks of Denver.
You could go to her. You could go to her, and apologize, and explain. She would understand
.

Or you could go through with this plan
, says his internal counterpoint. He’s not sure if this counts as second-guessing, or third-guessing, or fifth-guessing.
You could save the world. Be a real writer. Have a different life
.

He remembers Lucifer saying
Do you think you don’t
deserve
someone better?

But I don’t want someone better
, he thinks.
I want Denver
.

Then go to her
, he tells himself.

And he’s about to tell the cabbie to take him to Queens when someone he recognizes walks by outside. Of all people. It’s Anton Cirrus, marching along with a businesslike stride, his trench coat billowing in the wind. Billy’s blood begins moving. He thinks the same word he thought last night at Barometer:
enemy
. He feels a sudden urge to confront Cirrus, to engage him in argument, to come out on top in some exchange of verbal jabs. To
win
, for once.

“One second,” Billy says to the cabbie. And he lets himself out.

“Cirrus!” Billy shouts at Cirrus’s back, which has gotten a good ten paces ahead of Billy by this point. “Anton Cirrus!”

Anton stops and turns, and when he sees Billy he wrinkles his face into a mask of distaste, as though Billy has just opened the conversation with a robust fart.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“Do you—” Billy begins, incredulous, and then rage throttles his voice and he goes silent.
I’m going to kill you
, he thinks.
I’m simply going to kill you
. “Yeah, you know me, you fuck,” he finally manages. “The storehouse of tired forms and stale devices?”

“Well,” Anton says. He manifests a plainly insincere smile.
“This
is
a pleasure. The great Billy Ridgeway, fresh off his triumphant Barometer reading, deigns to make a street appearance to the humble critic.”

Billy’s face burns at the mention of the reading. “I was interrupted,” Billy says. “It was just about to get interesting.”

“Please,” says Anton. “The story of how you met the Devil? Everybody has a story about how they met the Devil.”

Billy opens his mouth to reply, and then he pauses. He gnaws on Anton’s response for a second. Something seems off about it. Laurent said that the audience didn’t remember anything past the punch line of Billy’s joke. Therefore, Anton shouldn’t remember that Billy had even mentioned the Devil. And if Anton does know that Billy spoke about the Devil, then he must not have had his memory wiped. Which means—which means what?

Billy has no idea. But the discrepancy provides some kind of opening, in any case, so he lunges into it, making his voice go all fake casual: “Oh, you remember that? That’s very interesting. Not too many people remember that, I hear.”

Anton looks quizzically at Billy for a second, but then Billy gets to watch him have the realization that he’s tipped his hand somehow: he looks away, clicking his tongue minutely against the roof of his mouth, annoyed over having revealed—something. Billy’s still not sure what, exactly, he’s revealed, but seeing Anton pissed at himself is a little more information, a second slip, in a way, and Billy revels in receipt of it, finally having the opportunity to look stupid Anton Cirrus right in his stupid face and think
Not so goddamn smart now, are you?

So, Billy thinks, his interpretation shifting into overdrive, if Anton Cirrus didn’t have his memory wiped, that means—he’s working with the Right-Hand Path? But that doesn’t make sense:
Why would Anton Cirrus have preemptively panned the reading if he were working for the very people who set the reading up in the first place?

So if he’s not working with the Right-Hand Path—the so-called good guys—that means that maybe he’s—with the bad guy? With Ollard. Which squares all too nicely with why Anton Cirrus would be here, randomly outside of the magical tower that no one is supposed to know about.

Before Billy can get any further with this line of thought, Anton reaches into his pocket, gets his phone out, and begins working at the screen. Texting again, it seems, which makes anger flare up in Billy. Right at the moment when he’s about to tell Anton to knock it the fuck off Anton pockets the phone and speaks: “It was pretty stupid of you, you know, to point out the Adversary in a room full of Right-Hand Path goons.”

“You call it stupid,” Billy says, groping, a little out of his element. “I call it—unpredictable?”

Anton looks up, as if trying to tell whether or not Billy is for real. “Yes, well,” Anton says. He rocks back on his heels. “We’ll see where your unpredictability gets you. I got twenty bucks that says that in the end it will be indistinguishable from stupidity.”

“You’re on,” Billy says.

“Super,” Anton says.

They stand there, regarding one another silently, in a stalemate. Anton has about five inches on Billy, which gives his gaze a permanent sense of disdain; Billy tries to counter that with a particular jut of his chin that he hopes looks pugnacious. They hold their respective poses until the cabbie, having grown impatient with idling at the curb, leans on the horn. They both jolt. Billy wheels around and holds up a finger—
one minute
—and
returns his attention to Anton, who lets out a long, elaborate sigh.

“What are you doing here, Billy?” he asks, wearily.

“I could ask the same of you,” Billy says.

“You could,” Anton says. “Except there’s an important difference between you and me: I know what I’m doing here. And you clearly don’t.”

“Don’t I?” Billy says.

“No. You don’t. Go home, Billy. Go home and work on your shitty novel or your terrible short stories or whatever it is you’re working on.”

But I’m locked out
, Billy thinks, although he doesn’t say this. The cabbie gives a short, curt blast of the horn; Billy ignores it, keeping his eyes on Anton.

“Go home,” Anton says, a note of real entreaty entering his voice, “and be happy with your tiny little life. Because I guarantee you that if you continue with whatever it is you think you’re doing, your life is going to get a whole lot worse.”

“Uh.” Billy turns, the temptation to check on the cab having grown too great, and he watches it pull away from the curb, roll slowly around the corner, and disappear. “That’s what your mom said?” he rejoinders, distracted.

Anton Cirrus gives the long sigh again. Billy didn’t notice, last night, just how sad Anton’s eyes look behind the designer glasses. “I gave you my advice,” he says. “Do what you want; my conscience is clear.” He turns into the chilly wind and continues his brisk departure.

“Hey,” Billy shouts. “Hey, I’m not through with you.” But Anton doesn’t look back, and when Billy looks deep within himself to try to find the winning taunt, he comes up with absolutely nothing at all.

So then Billy is alone, standing on the sidewalk in front of Warlock House, doing the trick that allows him to see the single red door, wreathed in calligraphy. All he has to do is just take three steps, turn the doorknob, and let himself in.

Go home
, he thinks to himself, echoing Anton.
Just go home
.

You know what? Fuck Anton Cirrus
.

He takes one step forward.

Your life is going to get a whole lot worse
.

But maybe not. Maybe this is the point where his life gets better. He has a ward that protects him. He has a simple plan, unfuckable by design.

One way or another, my life will be different
.

He takes another step forward, grips the knob, turns it. The door, not locked, opens out, revealing a tiny, grim vestibule, the size of a closet, with some ordinary street dirt and paper trash collected in its corners. Set into the far wall is another door, this one lacking the ornate trappings of the outer one: no bloodred paint, no crawling glyphs, just a plain metal door. Not so scary.

And if you go through there and never come out?
Billy asks himself. He contemplates the prospect for a minute, tries to figure whether anyone would really even miss him. His dad, maybe. Everyone else? Denver? Anil and the Ghoul? Maybe he’s just depressed, but he can’t see them still thinking of him at all after a few weeks, a month or two at best. Springtime will return to the city, and as the snow recedes and drains away so will their memories of him; years from now maybe they’ll have a dim remembrance of a funny guy who maybe showed some signs of talent on occasion but never really pulled it together, who hung out with them for a while and got them to crack a smile every now and then, but not really the type of person who you miss, once he’s gone.

Okay
, Billy thinks.
You can do this
. Something rises inside him. Maybe it’s that animal part of him, the part that likes being bigger and stronger, that likes being powerful. Maybe he’s ready, at long last, for a fight. He takes a final step, into the vestibule. And then he crosses it, without hesitation, opens the metal door, and enters.

WELCOME TO STARBUCKS • CAHOOTS • THE PROBLEM WITH HARD-ASSES • WHEN NOT TO TIP • NOT OKAY • SOOTHING VOICE: ON • GROWING UP FASTER • HUMAN CUISINE IN TOTAL • NO MORE ORGASMS • PANDAS ARE BORING • CONNOISSEUR OF PAIN

He’s in a Starbucks.

Billy frowns. He double-checks, just for the sake of his sanity, looking back through the metal door he’s just passed through: he can see the dirty vestibule, and then the red door that leads back out to Chelsea. It’s still open a crack; he can still see a little sliver of street. And he looks back at the Starbucks. It looks exactly like every other Starbucks he’s ever seen: a counter with an aproned staff working behind it, busying themselves at various beverage-producing apparatuses. It has the same impulse items flanking the register: mints, CDs, individually wrapped madeleines that Billy has always been pretty sure are only there because someone in Starbucks’s upper echelons thinks that the Proust reference is clever. Soul music sung by a white British person comes out through unobtrusive speakers.

He turns and looks at the tables, to check out whether there’s a clientele in here or what. And sitting there in one of the big
overstuffed leather chairs, dressed in a tawny corduroy suit, holding what appears to be a Caramel Macchiato, staring right into Billy, is Timothy Ollard. Billy jumps.