The Weirdness (27 page)

And he remembers that the owner didn’t come back to work for a long time after that; his wife and her sister took over the day-to-day operations of the place instead. Billy wonders what it must have been like for him, the owner, to know that he was at fault—at least partially at fault—for the accident. For putting his brother in the accident’s path. Billy wonders how you would live with that.

He looks at Anil, frozen in time. They have ten long years of friendship between them. Billy remembers the long month when he was trying to not get drunk every day; he doesn’t really remember it all that well but he does remember it, and what he remembers, mostly, is Anil being there, endlessly being there, bearing huge cartons of greasy Szechuan takeout which Billy would eat like it was the only thing to live for, reading Billy interminable segments of the
Mahabharata
, sitting with Billy at the tiny kitchen table and playing round after round of canasta. Canasta to 50,000 points, to 500,000 points. Epic games that did not ever need to end because the point was not really who was winning. The point, Billy knows, was to get Billy to look away from the void, the sucking void that he had been skirting the edge of for a year, watching in terror as more and more of his life got dragged down into its maw. If he could just look away, it seemed, he could be yanked out
of the range of the void’s inexorable pull. And he did, and he was, and in his heart he knows that Anil was responsible. Sometimes, in his rare moments of focus and quiet reflection, he thinks
Anil saved my life
. Sometimes he has a feeling that he is maybe obliged to
do something
with the extra life that he was gifted. You get one life for free, to do with what you will. Waste it if you want. But when someone goes to the trouble of helping you get a second life you kind of have an obligation to that person to do something good with it.

This, maybe, is as good a thing to do as anything. Someone saves your life, you save his. It seems fair.

And so he says to Lucifer: “Yeah. Sure.”

Lucifer nods the tiniest nod, indicating satisfaction at Billy’s choice, maybe even the faintest glimmer of something bordering on respect.

And without further preamble, Billy kneels. It’s sort of an astral kneel, or something, because he can’t move, because Lucifer is doing his thing with time, but Billy wills himself to kneel and can feel himself psychically go down in submissive prostration.

“Like this?” Billy says.

“That’s good,” Lucifer says. “Now, repeat after me. I, William Harrison Ridgeway—”

“I prefer Billy,” says Billy.

“I know,” Lucifer says. “But just this once. It’s important.”

Billy considers this. Sure. Why the fuck not. “I, William Harrison Ridgeway—”

“Do solemnly swear fealty to Lucifer Morningstar, Lord of Hell—”

“Do solemnly swear fealty to Lucifer Morningstar, Lord of Hell—”

“To whom I cede agency over my will and my being—”

“To whom I cede agency over my will and my being—”

“And whom I agree to serve as my master, and, in doing so, return to the purpose for which I was bred and born.”

“And whom I agree to serve as my master, and, in doing so, return to the purpose for which I was bred and born.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

And when Billy says that—that satanic amen—he feels something happen in him. There have been times in the past when he’s said
I just died a little inside
but he’s never actually felt it happen, not for real, not like this: he’s never actually felt a whole wing of his spirit—in this case, the entire part of him that wants to kick and fight and resist—just crumble and expire without so much as a gasp. He wants to feel sadness for it but he can’t even find the way to that anymore, as it would be in violation of his vow. He has returned to the purpose for which he was bred and born. He serves the Devil. Period. There is no reason to be sad about it. It is simply a valueless fact, like
70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans
.

“So,” Lucifer says. “Let’s get back to it, shall we?”

He releases the invisible mote of time he’d been holding onto and everything speeds up again. Anil, still ablaze, crashes into the wall. Lucifer slowly closes his open hand into a fist, and completion of the gesture utterly snuffs the hellfire, leaving nothing behind but a heavy pall of sulfuric reek. Anil keeps grappling with the extinguisher in its bracket for a second, not quite realizing that he’s safe.

“Anil,” Billy says. “It’s okay. The fire. It’s gone.”

Anil pauses, looks back over his shoulder, trying to get a look
at the extent of the scorching. His work shirt is ruined, but his undershirt only has a few quarter-sized holes in it, and the skin underneath seems fine. Still, it was close, and Anil’s face loses some of its color.

“Motherfucker,” he says, softly, sinking down into a crouch, resting his wrists on his knees. He looks like he might vomit.

“Anil,” Billy says, “this is Lucifer Morningstar, the Judeo-Christian Devil.”

“Nice to meet you,” Lucifer says.

Billy interposes himself between the two of them, crouches down to look Anil in the face. “Anil,” he says. “I have to go. I hope you could do me one last favor, though.”

Anil’s eyes are wide, lambent with the gleam of fear. Billy assesses that it will pass. He rummages in the pocket of his jumpsuit and finds Laurent’s card. He presses it into Anil’s slack hand.

“I need you,” he says, “to call the number on this card. Go to the address if you can’t get through. My dad should be there. Tell him I went with Lucifer. Tell him not to look for me.”

Anil gives one jerking nod.

Billy thinks for a moment. “I guess I have one other favor to ask as well. Sorry to keep adding them on. I’m still an asshole, I guess.”

Anil blinks out of his shock long enough to crack a smile. “You are,” he says. “But what? What is it?”

“Tell Denver. Tell her—tell her that I’m sorry.”

He still doesn’t feel any pity for himself—he still feels like his servitude to the Devil is an immutable fact—but he recognizes that sometimes the facts hurt people.
Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans
. There’s sadness in that, if someone you love has drowned in them.

“Billy,” Lucifer says, dropping his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “It’s time.”

“I know,” Billy says. He rises.

“Wait,” Anil says. “When are you coming back?”

But Billy doesn’t answer. He leads Lucifer out through the service entrance and they advance through a greasy back alley lined with rotting produce, making their way magisterially toward the street. Pigeons scatter before them.

Something occurs to Billy. “What about the others?” he says, helpfully. “They went to the Right-Hand Path headquarters. It’ll be harder to get them. They’re defended against you.”

“Billy,” Lucifer says. “When the Right-Hand Path catches me by surprise, they may be able to momentarily deter me. But when I come for them? In my full splendor? That is a moment when they stand revealed as the rank novices that they are. You worry about my ability to get the others?”

They emerge from the alley into the slanting sunlight of a late November afternoon.

“I got them first.”

And Billy sees, before him, gleaming golden in the light, double-parked on the sidewalk, hazards blinking, attended by a Traffic Enforcement Agent who is already printing a ticket for it, Jørgen’s Trusty Econoline Van.

Lucifer pushes the parking agent gently aside with the back of his hand. The agent turns, looking pissed, mouth already forming the first phoneme of what would surely be an impressive string of abuse, but Lucifer fixes him with a stare, a soul-accounting stare, and he is harrowed, shaken into silence. He moves back. He is maybe beginning to cry a little.

Through the windshield Billy can see Jørgen and Elisa. He can
see that somehow Lucifer has gotten them to swear fealty as well. Their faces are expressionless, calm. They have a job to do, and that is all.

Lucifer slides open the van’s side door. “I will return to you in two hours,” he says, placing both hands on Billy’s shoulders. “In that time, I task you with retrieving the Neko from Ollard’s tower.”

“I can do that,” Billy says, although he’s not actually sure that he can. But he knows this: He will go into the tower. He will fight Ollard. Maybe he will be tortured. Maybe he will be killed. Maybe he will win. The important thing is that he serve Lucifer, as best as he can.

“I believe in you, Billy,” Lucifer says. “Now. Go. Jørgen knows the way.”

Okay, then
, Billy thinks, as he climbs in the van and fastens his seat belt.
Back to work
.

ROOKIE MISTAKES • HOT HITS • A GOOD CALF • GERMAN PUNK REISSUES • SKEEVED OUT • OPENING A DOOR WITH YOUR EYES • IGNORING THE NUANCE • NOT KNOWING SHIT ABOUT SHIT • FORENSICS • ONE LAST THING

Traffic is bad, so it takes a while. Everybody and their sister is trying to get to the tunnel. Jørgen sits behind the wheel, plays with the radio, occasionally lets out a judgmental grunt, as though they don’t have traffic in Europe and the very manifestation of it is some kind of New World cultural failing.

Elisa joggles the rickety lever that controls the heat.

“Please do not touch that,” Jørgen says, tersely.

“I’m cold,” Elisa says.

Jørgen works himself out of his heavy leather coat and passes it over to her. She arranges it behind herself, slouches down into it, her head half disappearing into its depths. She sticks one leg out, plants her slippered foot on the windshield. Even from here in the back Billy can see Jørgen kind of tense up with the effort it requires to prevent himself from telling her to sit normally.

“We should have taken the subway,” Billy says.

No one answers him.

“The fate of the world hangs in the balance and we decided the
best way to spring into action was to crawl across town at five miles an hour?” he says. “Fucking rookie mistake.”

“It was Lucifer’s idea to drive,” Jørgen says.

“Yeah, well, he’s not exactly a local, is he,” Billy says.

Jørgen sighs and stabs at the radio, going back to Z100 for maybe the fifth time.

Billy slumps back down in his seat, looks out the window at the West Manhattan buildings. He looks at the slate-gray sky, wondering whether it’s about to ignite. Everything looks pretty much normal; no ominous portents. So maybe they have time. They’ll get there when they get there. He fiddles with a puncture wound in the vinyl of his seat, tries to see if he can fit his finger into it. He may have sworn fealty to the Devil, but the act seems to have left much of his personality more or less untouched, which means that he seems to be as free as ever to be distractible, fidgety, restless. He looks up at Elisa’s foot, at her ankle, at her calf. It’s a good calf. He finds himself kind of turned on.

Wow
, he thinks, as if realizing it for the first time.
I had sex with her
. He goes up a notch in his own estimation of himself. He knows he shouldn’t really feel good about it, given the fact that he’s technically still involved with Denver, sort of, maybe, maybe not—but, fuck it, after the day he’s had he feels like he wants just one moment to bask in the sensation of pure self-congratulation. The way things are going, it may be the last time he ever has the experience.

The only problem is, Billy’s not really very good at the self-congratulatory mode. He’s just not capable of looking at an attractive woman and thinking
that’s right, she digs me
. He’s just not that particular kind of dude. He can always find some way to doubt it.

In this case, of course, it’s easy. The sex he had with Elisa doesn’t
really fit with the kind of sex he usually has. The lead-up was all wrong. He and Elisa did not enjoy a meaningful gaze across a heap of half-consumed tapas dishes, no furtive hand-holding at the IFC theater, no lingering kiss at the steps of someone’s brownstone. It was just straight to the fucking. Hardcore animal fucking, in point of fact, which makes it all the easier to believe that he didn’t actually have sex with her. Not, like, her, For Real Her.
You had sex with some kind of hell-wolf thing that she was stuck inside
, he tells himself.

He notes that she hasn’t really spoken to him since.

He leans forward, sticking his head over the back of her seat.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey.”

“What,” she says. She does not turn around.

“Are we cool?”

“Are we cool?” Elisa repeats, soiling it somewhat with a note of incredulity. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Billy says. “We kind of—had a moment back there, and I was—”

“A moment?” Elisa says, the note of incredulity becoming more pronounced. “We didn’t have a
moment
. We fucked.”

Jørgen turns up the radio incrementally.

“Yeah, I know, I was there,” Billy says. “I just—I just wanted to make sure that—that it was okay.”

Elisa cranes around in her seat to look at him finally.

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course it’s okay. I told you before we changed that I was going to want to fuck you. And then we changed, and we fucked. End of story.”