Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

“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.

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 .