The Weirdness (7 page)

On the platform he checks one final time to see if Denver has tried to reach him. He holds the phone in his hand for a good long time, willing it to do something. He resists the urge to dash it to pieces on the track. And then finally he shoves it back down into his pocket, and while his hand is in there he digs around through the trash he’s accumulated over the course of the day, and he pulls out Lucifer’s business card.

Lucifer Morningstar, Comprehensive Consulting. No number or anything. How the fuck was this even supposed to work? Not that he would call even if there was a number there. It’s been a bad day, everything important to him ruined and tattered, but even so, that doesn’t mean that he should just become Satan’s lackey.

You should have at least heard him out
, he tells himself,
just found out what he wanted you to do. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad
.

Maybe, maybe. But maybes do him no good now: his chance, whatever it was, has passed. Billy puts the card back in his pocket and gets on the subway and rides for three stops: miserable, racked
with regrets, but at least feeling certain that there’s nothing to be done now. He feels resolved, nearly calm. And perhaps it’s something about this near-calmness that causes him to be not exactly one hundred percent surprised when he climbs the stairs to his apartment and keys in to find the Devil sitting there, on the sofa, as though he had never left.

DIETARY CONCERNS • TWO REASONABLE GUYS • FOCUS • WHAT AQUINAS SAID • DORM ROOM WITCHES • SCARY ARCHITECTURE • BECKONING, TECHNICALLY • INFINITE FIRE IS BAD • THE ME GETTING KILLED PART • OH YEAH DON
’
T FORGET ABOUT GOD

“I want eggplant back, you bastard,” Billy says.

“I understand,” Lucifer says, holding his palms out. “Please be assured that my primary intention was not to cause you undue distress.”

“You didn’t
intend to
— You
vandalized
my
brain
and you didn’t think it would cause me
undue distress
?”

Lucifer shrugs. “Causing you distress was not my primary intention,” he reiterates. “Let’s call it a by-product.”

“What the hell was your
primary intention
?” Billy asks.

“I sought to provide something that would serve as a reminder of my visit,” says Lucifer. “I thought it would perhaps stimulate some curiosity in you, a desire to meet again.”

“A
reminder
?” Billy says. “You’re the fucking Devil; it’s not like I’m going to
forget
that we met.”

Billy slumps into the chair, across from Lucifer, back in the
positions they were in this morning. The setup is taking on a feeling of familiarity. Billy isn’t exactly thrilled about that. He does not want Lucifer as a roommate. He does not want his life to become some kind of theological buddy comedy.

“You gave me permission to adjust your beliefs,” Lucifer says. “I remained within the bounds granted me by that permission. Regardless, you will be pleased to learn that the effect is temporary. It was designed to last for only one exposure to the substance in question.”

Billy considers this. Sure enough, eggplant is beginning to seem good again. He thinks of his sandwich, back there on the table, going to waste, and he feels a vague sadness. His stomach growls.

“But,” Lucifer says. “You didn’t summon me here to talk about your dietary concerns.”

“Summon you?” Billy says. “I didn’t
summon
you.”

“Actually,” Lucifer says, “you did. You held my card in your hand and you experienced palpable regret that you didn’t hear me out. It’s a delectable emotion, regret. It reads very clearly. There is no mistaking it.”

Billy contemplates protesting this, but he knows that it’s essentially accurate and the idea of constructing a big front of fake outrage just seems too exhausting right now.

“Before this conversation continues,” Billy says, glumly, “I would like to get high.”

“That’s reasonable,” says Lucifer.

“Is it?” Billy says, as fishes a baggie of weed out of the accretion of junk on the table. “Reasonable? Really?”

“Reason is the servant of the passions,” Lucifer says.

“Uhhh, sure,” Billy says. “Why the fuck not.”

He finds his pipe, gets it loaded and takes a long draw.

“You want a pull on this?” he says, proffering the bowl to Lucifer.

“Normally I wouldn’t,” Lucifer says, “being here, as I am, on business. But—how did you put it? Why the fuck not? I admire this as a basis for decision-making. You have inspired me to follow your lead.”

“Mr. Reasonable,” Billy says, watching as Lucifer takes his own draw.

“
C’est moi
,” says Lucifer, after a long exhale.

“You and me,” Billy says. “Two reasonable guys.”

“Indeed,” says Lucifer.

“Having a reasonable discussion.”

“Precisely.”

That hangs in the air for a minute. Billy takes another draw. Lucifer stares off into space, his face eerily impassive, like something carved out of rock ten thousand years ago, before emotions were invented. It’s creepy. It kind of makes everything that Billy has done or seen or made or thought suddenly feel like piffle. He wonders how he’s managed, so far, to even
talk
to Lucifer, to just sit here, twice now, carrying on a conversation, like they really were two reasonable guys. Or two guys, at least.

A minute passes. The silence is really creeping him out now.
Say something
, Billy insists to himself. But now that he’s freaked himself out about even having a conversation he’s not sure what to say or where to begin. He feels like a fruit fly attempting to address a volcano.

Say anything
, Billy tells himself.
Talk to him like you’d talk to anybody else. You’re just two dudes, getting high. Maybe it
can
be like a buddy comedy
.

“So,” Billy ventures. “I got a question.”

“Shoot,” Lucifer says, without the expression on his face really changing.

“You brought really good coffee with you this morning.”

Lucifer says nothing for a long time. “That’s not a question,” he says, finally.

“Uhhh, sorry,” Billy says. “Question! My question was: I bet you can also get really good pot.”

Another lag. Billy waits, apprehensively.

“That is also not a question,” Lucifer says. And then another really long lag. And then, like an ancient machine starting up: “However, your assumption is correct. I rely upon a grower in Mendocino, when the situation calls for it.”

“Okay,” Billy says, relieved. “You have to get me some of that. I definitely want to try that.”

“I’ll consider it,” says Lucifer.

“I mean,” Billy says, anxious that maybe he’s overstepped his bounds. “Just to try it.”

“You would like it,” says Lucifer, peacefully.

“Good,” says Billy. “I like shit that I like.” He feels a little better. He takes a long blink. Geometric brocades shiver and furl behind his eyelids.

“Although I should point out that this,” Lucifer says, “is not bad.” Billy can hear him taking another pull.

“Yeah, my roommate has some connection,” Billy says. And he begins thinking about Jørgen. He frowns concertedly. He opens his eyes. He remembers Anil’s theory, the idea that Lucifer was actually just some out-of-town friend with Jørgen’s key, pulling an elaborate prank. It still doesn’t
feel
true, not even a little, but for Billy, marijuana has a way of making things that aren’t true seem
suddenly probable. So he offers some bait: “You know him?” Billy says. “My roommate? Jørgen?”

Having set this trap, he feels pretty sly, but Lucifer does not give any sign of recognition at the name. Something does happen, though. What happens is Lucifer’s face loses the dreamy vacancy it had mere moments ago; his eyes turn alert and fix acutely on Billy’s own. He abruptly appears to be no longer high: a little bit alarming given that Billy is still drifting in some entheogenic dreamtime halfway between Brooklyn and Shangri-la. Billy feels a little stab of panic, remembering exactly what is happening here: Lucifer is not his buddy, not a volcano, not an impassive stone face. He is some kind of straight-up other intelligence, thoroughly alien, like a great white shark or an evil clown.

“Billy, it is time,” Lucifer says, “to return to our agenda.”

“Um,” Billy says, his mind reeling at the thought of discussing anything resembling
business
. “Wait, right now?”

“There will not be a better time,” Lucifer says. He pulls his messenger bag into his lap and rips its Velcroed flap open.

Okay, shit. Billy has to concoct a response to this. But at the same time he remembers that he had a question on the table, something about Jørgen, that he never got an answer to. He could ask it again, it’s at least possible, and he knows he could follow the path of that possibility right into the future, the future where he is asking the question. He’s stoned, so he can see it, as an image. But then he sees the other possible avenue the conversation could take, hearing what Lucifer has to say, another path, and each path sends off finer path-shoots, branching into a plentitude of futures …

Jesus Christ, man, focus
, Billy thinks, while Lucifer begins to set up the computer. He rubs his face vigorously to clear his mind of the image of infinite fernlike branchings.
Focus
. The very word
itself makes his mind spin off down another avenue. He’s suddenly getting contemplative and abstract, asking himself
What is focus, anyway?

Focus
, he remembers from somewhere—a
Times
Style piece? a fortune cookie?—
is having the inner resolve to ask the most important question
.

So what’s the most important question, when you’re making a deal with the Devil? He thinks about this for a second, and realizes that the most important question he can ask is not about Jørgen. It is not even
Can you vindicate all the choices I’ve made in my entire life by the time I give my reading tomorrow?
The most important question you can ask the Devil is
How is this going to screw me?

Lucifer has completed booting up his ThinkPad and he appears to be launching PowerPoint.

“I have a question,” Billy says.

“Watch the presentation,” says Lucifer, through a veneer of patience that seems to be beginning to crack and peel. Billy imagines a black nebula of unearthly malice swirling behind it. “The presentation will answer many of your questions. It will also raise some new ones. I’ll be happy to address all your remaining unanswered questions at the conclusion.”

“But,” Billy says, gathering resolve. “No. I have a question.”

Lucifer sighs loudly, but he stops poking at the ThinkPad’s little pointing stick and trains his attention on Billy.

Billy does not ask
How is this going to screw me?
What he asks, instead, is “Is there a Hell?”

“Billy,” says Lucifer. He folds his hands in his lap. “I’m going to be frank with you. Just one hundred percent up-front. There
is
a Hell.”

“Oh,” Billy says. He presses his face into his hands and tries
not to envision horrible shit like being on fire. He’s seen a guy on fire before: an accident, at the first kitchen he ever worked in, and it left an impression on him, the impression mostly being: it’s not cool to be on fire.

“But Billy,” Lucifer says. “It’s not like people say. It’s not Hieronymus Bosch creatures and torture chambers. There aren’t saints looking down on you from above, enjoying the perfection of their beatitude by jerking off to the punishment of the damned.”

Billy raises his head out of his hands. “People say that?” he asks.

“Aquinas said that,” Lucifer says. A hitherto unnoticed bass note in his voice seems to subtly double, and his face contorts into an expression of what appears to be genuine anger. “That fat fuck.”

“Aquinas said
jerking off
?” Billy asks, a little spooked. This is the first time Billy’s seen an expression on Lucifer’s face that doesn’t look like it was learned from some kind of demonic field guide to human emotions, and he finds himself hoping that it’ll go away quickly.

“He didn’t say
jerking off
,” Lucifer concedes. “But he
implied
it.” His expression goes blank again.

Billy’s face goes back down into his hands. “So, what?” Billy says. “Is this the part where you tell me how awesome Hell is? That it’s, I don’t know, like I’m going to be getting hot oil massaged by virgins the entire time I’m there?”

“Billy,” says Lucifer. “You still appear to believe that I’m attempting to defraud you. That I am after something ineffable, that I want to lock you into some horrible cosmic payback. It will not be like that. This is simpler. Much simpler. I have a thing that I need to have done, and I can’t do it myself. If you do it for me, I shall ensure that your novel gets published. And then our obligations to
one another will be mutually concluded. I don’t get your soul. You don’t burn in eternal torment. You get to be happy, and I get to be happy. That is the extent of the transaction.”