Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

“You envisioned a future for yourself, then, didn’t you?” Lucifer says.

Billy had. That senior year of high school was when he first started drinking coffee, and he remembers hooking up a Mr. Coffee in his room at home, up on the third floor, and he would wake on cold mornings before the sun was up, before he’d need to trudge to where the school bus would pick him up, and he would sit at his desk, in a ratty plum-colored bathrobe, drinking coffee and smoking his first-ever cigarettes and clacking out pages, and he would feel certain that, in some important way, he was making a template for the rest of his life.

He also remembers selling that typewriter, five years ago, on eBay, a hard month, between jobs, remembers the good feeling of an extra hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, even though it disappeared quickly into a few overdue bills, a new shirt for a job interview, groceries, beer, condoms, smokes, a couple of books.

Lucifer goes on: “You aren’t allowing yourself to feel that hope again, that ambition, Billy. I promise you the kind of future you really want and you throw it away in favor of take me back to three days ago ? What did you have three days ago that you won’t have in the future that I’m offering you? A job? Another shitty job? Your wallet ? Your keys ? These things are all replaceable: a few days’ hassle, nothing more. Your friends? You’re thirty years old, Billy Ridgeway, you don’t get to be thirty years old without passing through times when your friends are mad at you. It’s passed before and it’ll pass now. A girlfriend? Denver? You think she won’t come back to you when your novel gets published?”

“Maybe not,” Billy says.

“Maybe not,” Lucifer says, his voice down to a soft hiss, almost drowned out by the rumbling traffic nearby. “But don’t you think you would be able to find someone better ? Do you think you don’t deserve someone better?”

“I like Denver,” Billy says. He does not say love .

“Think, though, Billy, think about other women. Think about the women you didn’t pursue in the past because you thought they were out of your league . Think about being in the league that they’re in.”

“That’s—” Billy says. “That seems creepy and wrong.”

“Wrong? You deserve it, Billy. You deserve to be up a notch by now.”

“I don’t,” Billy says. “I don’t deserve it. I didn’t do the work.” He remembers the speech he gave himself yesterday. “If I want that? The future you’re describing? With the book, and the — the women and stuff? If I want that future, I have to get there on my own.”

“No one gets there on their own, Billy,” Lucifer says, his normal tone of voice returning. He draws back from Billy, hooks his thumbs into the heavy lapels of the peacoat. “That’s not how it works.”

Billy considers this.

“Besides,” Lucifer says. “If you do this, you’ll have saved the world. I would hope that you could categorize whatever ancillary benefits might emerge as things you had earned .”

“Maybe,” Billy says. “But what exactly would I be doing? I still don’t get that part. How exactly would I be getting the thing from the dude?”

“Let’s get off the street,” Lucifer says. An expression of deep appetite spreads across his features. “Have you had breakfast? I know a place.”

They end up taking a quick cab to an Algerian creperie. They settle in on tufted ottomans and a lean man with the most impeccably groomed mustache Billy has ever seen brings them an octagonal tin samovar of what Billy can immediately tell is really good coffee. After his first sip, Lucifer begins speaking with more animation than Billy’s ever seen in him.

“Until Ollard dispels all the seals,” Lucifer says, “the Neko still, in some real sense, belongs to me. I can sense it. I can’t tell you exactly where it is, but I can tell you that it is likely underground.”

“Like buried?” Billy says.

“Not buried,” Lucifer says. “More like in a basement. So you won’t need to waste time going through the upper levels of the tower. You get in, you go down.”

“How am I even going to get in in the first place? If I were, in fact, to actually agree to go in.”

“What do you mean?” Lucifer says. “You’ve seen through the cloak. You go in through the door.”

“Okay, but, seriously, am I crazy to think that Ollard might just not, you know, be a hundred percent cool with me just walking in there and taking his cat?”

“My cat,” Lucifer says. “But no, he probably won’t be.”

“So what do I do? When he tries to stop me?”

Lucifer shrugs. “You fight him.”

“I fight him?”

“You fight him like the fate of the world depended on it.”

“You have the wrong guy,” Billy says. “I haven’t thrown a punch in, like, ever.”

“This might help,” Lucifer says. He reaches into the pocket of his coat and takes out a little cylinder of self-defense spray, which he slides across the table. It has a key ring on it.

“This?” Billy says. “Is it magical?”

“No,” Lucifer says.

“So, really? That’s the entire plan? Walk in the front door, pepper-spray Ollard, grab the cat and run?”

“Billy,” Lucifer says. “It is dangerous to overplan. Plans, by definition, are rigid, and it is to our advantage to remain as fluid as possible. Thus, as you said: you walk in the front door. You find the Neko. If you need to, you fight Ollard. If you encounter any difficulties, simply retreat, and you and I will make a new plan that accounts for whatever difficulty we have encountered. That is the plan. Simplicity, Billy. The great virtue of a simple plan is that it leaves one with fewer, far fewer, things to fuck up. You can do this. Now: eat.”

Billy’s savory lamb crepes hit the table, and he wolfs them down. They are the best thing he’s eaten in days, weeks maybe, and he feels a sudden swell of gratitude. He remembers Anil’s gag from the other night: a small, good thing in a time like this . But there’s something to that. Good food: that alone maybe makes the world worth saving. His mood picks up a little. Maybe the Devil is right; maybe he can do this. He stifles a belch with his napkin.

“Okay. Okay,” he says, in a very small voice. “I have to tell you, though: I’m scared . I saw that tower. It’s scary.”

“Well,” says Lucifer. He takes a sip of coffee. “It’s designed to look scary. It’s an illusion.”

“It’s a really fucking good illusion,” Billy says.

“Yes,” Lucifer says, “because Timothy Ollard is a really fucking good illusionist.”

Billy frowns, tries out an alternate wording, frowns again. He takes the tiny pepper-spray canister into his hand.

“You’re afraid,” Lucifer says, after watching this for a minute, “that Ollard is going to kill you.”

“Yes,” Billy says, a little relieved to have it out there, on the table.

“The You Getting Killed part,” Lucifer says. “You see? I remembered that.”

“Awesome?” Billy says.

“Ollard will not attempt to kill you. It’s a delicate time for him; while he works on the Neko he needs to lie as low as possible. Using magic to take a human life is — attention-getting. Disruptive. Sloppy.”

“But what if he doesn’t use magic? What if he uses, like, a shotgun?”

“Even sloppier,” Lucifer says.

“Sloppy but possible.”

“Not possible,” Lucifer says. “You have forgotten the details of our arrangement. You will be provided with a ward that will leave Ollard unable to harm you, by magical means or otherwise. Speaking of which.”