The Weirdness Read online

  “I wasn’t sure that I was going to bring that up,” says the Ghoul, not unkindly. “I didn’t want to cast a pall over the evening unnecessarily. But you’ve seen it?”

  “I haven’t seen it,” Billy says. “But Anil guessed that it was probably out there.”

  “He guessed?” the Ghoul says.

  “I’m just an unusually perceptive motherfucker,” Anil says. He leans back, seemingly satisfied that his role in this drama is complete.

  “Interesting,” says the Ghoul.

  “I want to see it,” says Billy. “Can you get it up on your phone?”

  “I can. You’re not going to love it, though.”

  “I can take it,” says Billy.

  “A brave mind is an impregnable thing,” says the Ghoul, using his long fingers to complete a design on the glossy surface of his phone. Moments later, Billy is peering into its depths. It’s not YouTube he’s looking at. But he recognizes it, the pink of its banner is an instant giveaway. It’s Bladed Hyacinth.

  Why is he looking at Bladed Hyacinth?

  Bladed Hyacinth is a blog. It’s a literary gossip blog that they all read, a blog that they all are influenced by, even though none of them, no one they know, in fact, ever really wants to admit to being influenced by it, because then you would have to admit to being the kind of person who is influenced by Bladed Hyacinth, which none of them want to be. But the bottom line is that once Bladed Hyacinth says you’re cool then everyone kind of tacitly admits that you’re cool, and if Bladed Hyacinth says you’re over, then you’re over.

  “Why are you showing me this?” Billy asks. It isn’t really a question. The Ghoul has directed him to a Bladed Hyacinth posting entitled “Tomorrow’s Ingot Reading a Nonevent.”

  “Oh no,” Billy says. Horrified, he looks at the byline. His heart sinks to see the name of Anton Cirrus, the founder and editor in chief of Bladed Hyacinth, the most notoriously mordant member of the loose gang that runs the site. They all want to believe that Anton Cirrus is a guy who feels vengeful toward all writers because he can’t write, but word is that he has the talent to back up his acerbic nature. The latest gossip reports that he’s just signed a six-figure deal with Knopf, for a memoir. Nobody seems to know anything about Cirrus’s early life but somehow the memoir is already rumored to be “explosive.” No one knows what exactly stands to be exploded, or why, but the book already has an aura around it, whispers about how it’s going to change everything. “Asshole Writes Incredibly Good Book, Dismaying Observers” is not exactly stop-the-presses-type news for anybody sitting at this table. But seeing said asshole mention the Ingot reading gets Billy on full alert.

  He reads:

  Recently at the offices we received notice of an approaching reading at Barometer, last year’s literary-tavern-of-the-moment, tied to the upcoming release of the debut issue of The Ingot. The invite promised an evening of “the best innovative new writing,” and we confess to having felt a momentary stirring of hope, despite the fact that we have come to believe that promises of this sort—having been offered so many times, by so many similar comers—border now on the unfulfillable. But we did not recognize the names prominently featured on the invite—poet Elisa Mastic and fiction writer Billy Ridgeway—and we here at the Hyacinth aspire, always, to retain an open mind. Perhaps, we thought, perhaps these two truly do represent the best innovative new writing. Certainly the possibility is there, in an uncertain world. We concluded that more research was in order. We were able to track down Ms. Mastic’s first book—Sanguinities (2010)—and a smattering of short fiction that Mr. Ridgeway has published in a set of small magazines that do not merit recounting here. We sat down, braced for amazement. Sadly, our optimism was unfounded. Our research revealed that Mastic and Ridgeway do not, in fact, represent a new guard of innovative writing, but are merely the latest pair to stumble, wide-eyed, into the ravaged storehouse of tired forms and stale devices. These creators have yet to realize that they are offering us not wonderment but familiarity, familiarity of the most familiar form, and that by so doing what they have brought upon themselves, editorially speaking, is our contempt. Thanks for the invite, Ingot, but we find ourselves in a position where we must decline.

  And, with that, Billy thinks Anton Cirrus thinks I suck.

  “What does it say?” says Anil, craning in to get a look. Billy lets the phone go out of his slack, defeated hands.

  “The ravaged storehouse of tired forms and stale devices?” Billy says, from memory. He seems to have memorized the entire thing with only a single read, as though it has been branded into his mind. “It basically says that I suck. Am I wrong here?”

  “You’re not wrong,” Anil says, staring numbly into the screen.

  “Anton Cirrus,” Billy says, “just said that I suck.”

  And he’s right, Billy thinks. All that time, all those hours spent in front of the computer, practicing, doing the work, and in the end all it will ever mean is that I just suck more and more profoundly.

  “This could be one of those things,” the Ghoul says.

  “What things?” Billy says, hollowly.

  “Any publicity is good publicity?”

  “No,” Billy says. “This isn’t good publicity. This is bad publicity.”

  “As long as they spell your name right …” Anil says.

  “Are you kidding?” Billy says. “Anton Cirrus just told, what, twenty thousand of the most influential readers in the country that I suck. Is this—is this the first thing that comes up when you Google my name now?”

  “I don’t know,” Anil says, fumbling with the phone.

  “Google it,” Billy demands.

  “Don’t Google it,” says the Ghoul. “Just leave it alone.”

  “Give me the phone,” Billy says.

  A brief scuffle ensues, ending with the Ghoul’s phone firmly in the Ghoul’s bony grip.

  “Just let it go,” says the Ghoul.

  “I don’t believe it,” Billy says, although he clearly does. “I suck.”

  No one seems to be in the mood to correct him. They all stare awkwardly off in different directions for a minute and then the food hits the table. Billy gazes dispiritedly at his eggplant Parmesan sandwich. He doesn’t want it.

  “You should eat,” says Anil, after a minute.

  “I don’t want to,” Billy says.

  “Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” Anil hazards.

  “Fuck you,” Billy says, but he takes the point. He lifts the sandwich to his mouth, and bites in. Something is wrong, though. It tastes disgusting.

  “Eccch,” he says, around the bolus of food in his mouth. “This is wrong.”

  “The sandwich is wrong?” says the Ghoul.

  “It’s disgusting,” Billy says. He thrusts it toward Anil. “Taste this.”

  “I don’t know why you persist in thinking of me as the kind of person who would taste something prefaced with It’s disgusting,” Anil says.

  “It’s just—I dunno,” Billy says. “It just tastes off. Will you just try it? I’m having the kind of day where I need a second opinion to make sure I’m not going crazy.”

  Anil shrugs, leans over and gives it a bite. Chews, swallows, makes a thoughtful face. “I don’t know,” he says. “It tastes normal to me. What’s off about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy says. “The eggplant just tastes disgusting somehow.” And then he realizes what has happened.

  “That fucker,” he says, rearing to his feet. “That soulless, blackhearted motherfucker.”

  They assume he’s still talking about Anton Cirrus, and they try to calm him, but by this point Billy is inconsolable. He throws some money down on the table and storms out, leaving his sandwich uneaten, making a beeline for the subway. He wants to go home. He wants to go home, throw himself down onto his bed, and cry. Or at the very least smoke some of Jørgen’s weed and watch some online video, disappear into Argentium Astrum if he can get it to stream right.

  O
n 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.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WAVING GOODBYE FOREVER

  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, remember
ing 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.”