I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story (14 page)

`Okay,' Trent said, stretching his bottom jaw and widening then contracting his sapphire eyes. `We start with just a
full black screen and a voiceover. No stars, right? I mean,
there wouldn't, would there, be actual stars?'

I rounded off my scheduling call to Elise at XXX-Quisite,
and put the phone down. Your verbal engagement on the
telephone - or in conversation with someone else, for that
matter - presents no obstacle to Trent. `There weren't stars,'
I said. `There wasn't anything.'

He looked at me for a moment very much in the manner
of a person about to pass into an inaccessible dimension of consciousness. Then he shook himself. `Right,' he said.
`Right, right, right. You were there. I forget.!

`What we've got to nail,' I said, lighting up one of
Harriet's left-behind Gauloises, `what we've really got to pin
down - because everything else will flow from it, you
know -'

`I know, man. Christ I know. .

`Is the moment I turn. The moment I rebel.'

'Run with it. Run with it.!

'Michael's just laid down that infamous accusation of
pride, right?' I sprang up from the bed and let the city's
lights catch me on Gunn's better side. `And I'm like ...
"Pride?" It's a whisper at this stage, a Pacino whisper:
"Pride?" But this is one of those whisper-builds-to-shout
scenes. "Is it pride to want a place of your own? Is it pride to
want to be independent?" Little by little louder, right? "Is it
pride to want to do something in the universe?" Louder: "Is
it pride to want to be somebody?" Louder still: "Is it pride to
want to live with dignity?" Then full fucking throttle: "Is it
pride to get sick of KISSING AN OLD MAN'S ASS?"'

Trent shook his head in ecstatic disbelief, like a sent musician. `Christ, nian you should take the fucking part,' he said.

I pointed at him with my cigarette. `You, dear boy,' I
admonished, `are an appalling flatterer.'

I can't tell you how good I was feeling. Looking at things
like daffodils and clouds is wonderful. Looking at things like
daffodils and clouds having just spent 0372 on dinner and
dropped two tabs of ecstasy in preparation for a five-hour
shift with XXX-Quisite's friendliest platinum blonde
double-act, that's really wonderful. I know what the majority of you think about all this. All this sex and money and
drugs. You think: people who live like that never end up
happy. You need to think that in just the way men with small penises need to think size doesn't matter. It's understandable. The rich, the famous, the big-dicked, the
slim-and-gorgeous - they incite an envy so urgent that you
can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live
like that never end up happy. Yes, you're right. But neither do
you. And in the meantime, they've had all the sex and drugs
and money. (Gunn, I might add, retained his carious
Catholicism largely because atheism would have forced him
to accept that nothing terrible was going to happen to
people like Jack Nicholson and Hugh Hefner and Bill
Wyman after they died - a proposition he couldn't have
borne.)

`How come no one's done this movie?' Trent asked. 'I
mean you'd think, right? Spielberg. Lucas. Cameron. Mind
you, the FX budget's gonna go through the fucking ozone
layer.'

'If we write it, they will pay,' I said.

'We do want effects, right?' Trent said. 'I mean, we're not
seeing this as some sort of Beckett existentialist struggle crap,
are we?'

'We want the biggest film since Titanic, Trent,' I said.

'And none of that "no big names" shit, either,' Trent said,
between toots from his own monogrammed spoon. `These
film school assholes who think it's a sin to use named talent.
That's so fucking uncool.'

'Can I fuck your buns, Trent?'

'I mean for Christ's - what?'

'Nothing. A verbal tick, dear boy. You're right. So uncool.
Harriet wants Julia Roberts for Eve.' I said all this and managed to keep a straight face. I'd like some credit for that.

'Too bad Bob De Niro already played Lucifer in Angel
Heart,' Trent said, rubbing the tip of his nose, furiously, as if
trying to erase it. 'And Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick.

Fuck, and Pacino just did Satan in that piece of shit with
Keanu Reeves.'

(Shall I tell you what the list of actors who've turned
down the chance to play me looks like? It looks short.)

`I)epp,' I said. `Keanu'd jump at it like a gibbon - but
we've got to have some fucking ability. We should think
about lining up sonic cameos, too. Maybe some rock
dinosaur with false teeth to play God. Robert Plant with a
beard.'

`Yeah, but do we even want a guy God?' Trent asked. `I'm
thinking more like hand-star-egg-eye-cosmic-dust-Giger-
secretion stuff.'

`I like the way you think, Trent,' I said. `I like the way you
think.'

All this has not been without effect on my relationship with
Violet, naturally. (Here's a question: do you think keeping
Gunn attached to Violet will be a good thing for him?)
Thanks to her never having read Bodies in Motion, Bodies at
Rest, I've had little trouble `reminding' her that it was the
story of Lucifer's rebellion, fall, and battle with Christ on
earth.

`It's going to be the biggest marketing campaign ever,' I
told her, over daiquiris at Swansong. I've kept quiet about
the Ritz. As far as she knows I'm still living at the
Clerkenwell pad. Essential, too, to keep her away from
Harriet and Trent - essential if I'm to sustain the illusion that
she'd get within remote imaging range of a part. So far the
prodigal spending - my wallet's attention deficit disorder -
has kept her enthralled; but it's only a matter of time before
she starts to expect the meet-and-greets, the air kisses, the
Midas touch handshake, the inevitable sack-negotiations.
Everything, down here, is always just a matter of Time.

'Harriet's got one of her people talking to McDonald's on
Thursday. The Mcl)evil. We're getting the "Quake" team
for the CI)-Rom game. Oh yeah - and we're going to do
collectable cards - the Fallen Angels. Like Top Trumps.'

`Top Trumps?'

`Harriet's already started cutting the smaller investors out
of the picture. Prince Faquit's just inked four-point-five over
oysters at Nor1. You can't believe how easy it is to get money
from people for film. As long as it's an incredibly large
amount, that is. Indies can't cover the grip's fucking pizza. I

'You did tell her about me, didn't you, Declan?' Violet
asked, having assumed that for the last few seconds I'd
decided to drop into an African language.

`Yes.'

'No, but I mean you did, didn't you?'

'I've told you. Eve.'

Violet, sitting with legs crossed and one stiletto hanging
off her toes, just went very still. Very present.

`Don't fuck about with me, Declan,' she said.

I put my hand on her knee. 'It's not my call,' I said. 'I
mean I'm not the casting director. They've got Hagar
Hefflefinger, you know. She's very tough. Very good. Tough
in a good way. Good in a tough way. The way casting directors have to be. So like I say, it's not my call. But it is illy
script - how would you feel about Salome, by the way?'

'Who?'

'Herod's daughter. A princess. Redhead, too, you know,
so I was thinking, obviously.'

'I knew you were lying.'

'What?'

'About the Eve part. You know I'm not a complete fucking idiot.'

Violet's nothing if not a quick assimilator. Initially, news of my restored Rodge was greeted with a dimpled smile and a
dash to the disgorged boudoir, where my girl administered
fellatio of such froth and dalliance that my eyebrows, raised
at its commencement, refused to come down until it was all
over. (Watching in the mirror turned out to be a bad idea,
what with Gunn's wayward gut and hairy legs, what with his
double chin, dugs, and jug-handle ears, what with his body
being a sort of anti-aphrodisiac - until, that is, I started
seeing the pornographic potential in our aesthetic discrepancies ...) But she's sharp. She's already started rationing her
favours. The splurge was to establish that her currency was
still good. Already, in the absence of an Actual Meeting
With the Producer and the Director, she's reined in her
spending.

`Violet,' I said. `Violet. If it was up to me - but listen.
Listen. I'm not the casting director, but I am having that consultation clause written in. Harriet's getting the contracts
drafted this week. But casting director or not - Hagar fucking Hefflefinger or not - Trent Bintock is the director of this
film and Trent Bintock thinks I'm a creative genius. If I tell
him we need to look at you for Eve - if I tell him we need to
look at you for Eve ... Do you hear what I'm saying?'

There had almost been tears. The jewelled eyes had filled
up. She closed them, now, for three, four, five seconds,
breathing slowly through her nostrils.

`Do you know who Harriet wants for Lucifer?' I said. `Do
you know who she was on the phone to last night?

Violet opened her eyes. We were in a familiar place now.
I was the dad who'd frightened her - for her own good -
and now, chastened, she was looking at me ready to be rescued from fear.

`Johnny Depp,' I said, quietly, then took a sip of my drink
and looked out of the window.

She put her head down for a moment of introspective
silence. When she looked up again, she wore a compact -
almost a bitter - smile.

`We've earned this, I)eclan; she said. `D'you know what
I mean? We've fucking earned this.'

There's a common misconception about me. It's a slander
spread by the Church, namely that if you make a deal with
me, I'll cheat you. Poppycock, of course. I never cheat.
Never have to. Ask Robert Johnson. Ask Jimmy Page.
Humans are so deaf and blind to the ambiguities of their
own languages, they concoct their wishes in terms so
permeable that I can always grant them in a way they never
imagined. I want to be as ivealtliy as my %at{ier. Fair enough.
Nelchael crashes the markets, Dad's bankrupt, and thanks
for the soul, brother. A boneheaded example, obviously,
but you'd be surprised how wide open you leave yourselves. (The punters who come off best with me are smart,
dirty rotten scoundrels to start with, willing to sign over
their afterlife care in exchange for the chance to become
even dirtier, rottener scoundrels while still rightside of the
grave.)

Any of these transactions is a no-lose situation for me.
Even if you get your deal double-entendre-proof, even if,
thanks to you dressing your heart's desire in a semantic
straitjacket, I'm compact-bound to give you what you want,
still, at the end of an incredibly short time (all New Time's
short time to me), I'm going to get my hands on your soul.
How can I put this? You really don't want that to happen.

You might be one of the genuinely smart and dirty rotten
scoundrels mentioned above, whose wish coincides with my overall design. You might, for example, want control over
people's minds, financial muscle, immunity from prosecution, access to kids, a personal harem, etc. Now if you really
are smart, if I think you've got it in you, I might just slot you
into a System. I'll make you a media tycoon, or a dictator, or
a cult leader, or a porn baron, or a drug tsar. As long as your
evil's got some scale, as long as it draws others in, and as long
as you're prepared to put in a bit of good old-fashioned
graft - well, you'll get what you wanted, the fame, the
charisma, the wedge, the place in history, the six-year-olds,
whatever. You get your kicks, I get a System operator, the
Old Man gets a migraine, and - thought I'd forgotten, didn't
you? - I get your soul when you die.

So let the holy fathers prattle of lies and betrayals. Truth is
I'm no welcher.

I have been done over once, mind you - a wretched
Spaniard by the name of Don Fernando Morrales, not long
before the close of the gorgeous sixteenth century. This
young man was a piece of work. The only son of wealthy
parents he spent the first years of his adult life racing through
his fortune on an extraordinary diet of booze, whores and
gambling. Built up quite a reputation for blasphemous
debauches and criminal orgies. A natural, as they say. I gave
him the odd nudge now and again when guilt tickled or
imagination flagged, but by and large he was a works-wellon-his-own-initiative kind of sinner. To be honest with you
I didn't think he'd see twenty-five, what with the poxy scags
and verminous rent boys into which he was dipping his
redoubtable chorizo, not to mention the growing number of
hacked-off dads whose daughters he'd rather irresponsibly
impregnated; but, incredibly, he just kept on rocking in the
free world until the money was gone. Now, as any suddenly
blinded peeping tom will aver, the flames of desire burn with twice the fierceness in the absence of the means of
gratification - and so it was with young Morrales, until
finally I decided to drop in, make a deal, put him once and
for all beyond the reach of redemption and his scrofulous
soul into the infernal account.