Robert Butler - Hell

He is pacing and twitching around the bedroom floor, he realizes. What further consequence is there to fear when he has already been dismembered and incinerated and acidly dissolved? Pain is life here. There is always the reconstituting to be available for more pain. His hands fly into the air, clutching at nothing. He says aloud, “Pain pain pain fuck fuck fuck.” A figure is in the bedroom doorway. He stops. Anne watches him, her brow furrowed. Her T-shirt is blank. Pure white. Wordless.

“What is it?” she asks, softly.

He could tell her now, what he knows about minds in Hell. But maybe it’s only his own. Maybe he’s special. Maybe he’s unique. To make her think she can think might be dangerous for her.

“It’s time to go to work,” he says.

“You’re special now,” she says.

He starts. Did she read his mind? No. He realizes she’s referring to his apparent minionhood.

“No reason to be anxious,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says. “No.”

“I’m sorry for biting,” she says.

“It’s okay.”

“My head is on.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“I’m sad,” she says.

Hatcher’s hands fly up again. He twitches. But in excitement now. He might be able to do something about her sadness. If he finds a way out, he will take his Anne with him.

A few moments later Hatcher is standing in front of the open closet, a little surprised at how reluctant he is to even temporarily remove his blue jumpsuit, when Brünnhilde begins to sing again, in his pocket. This time, however, she is rendered by Michael Jackson in a seriously inadequate falsetto interrupted shortly by a banging of metal and guttural German cursing — interpretable, if Hatcher were so inclined, as Wagner flailing away at the King of Pop, who is dressed in full Brünnhildean armor for his ring-tone recording session. Hatcher answers the phone. It’s Beelzebub again, who says, “Business suit, comrade. And wear your new tie,” and he’s gone.

Oops. Hatcher feels as if his mind was just read. He flushes as hot as a sulfurous rain. But. But. All that really suggests is Beelzebub knows about Hatcher’s minion suit. It would be a simple thing that he was told. Bee-bub and Old Scratch surely are both adept at guessing what their subjects are thinking, like bebangled fortune tellers in a carnival. Beelzebub knows in conventional ways that Hatcher just got home and how he was clad. He knows Hatcher’s facing the choice of doing the news in anchorman suit and tie or the minion uniform. In spite of the little scare, Hatcher still believes he’s right about omniscience. And now he even thinks to try a first test of Satan’s omnipresence. Hatcher lifts his face and says aloud, “Fuck you, Bee-bub.” He waits. Nothing happens. “Fuck you, I said.” Nothing. “And your boss too. Fuck you, Satan.” He gives the finger to the north, south, east, and west, to the ceiling and to the floor. He braces himself. Nothing.

Hatcher takes a deep breath. The fear is subsiding. He’s cool as mortal life inside. And now Beelzebub’s throwaway bit of fashion advice finally registers on him. What new tie? Hatcher steps into the closet doorway and peers inside. Hanging directly in front of him on a hook in the shadows of the back wall is a tie. He puts his hand to it and takes it out. It is powder blue. It’s official. He takes off his jumpsuit of exactly the same color and rolls it carefully and tucks it deep in an upper shelf corner of the closet.

The writers’ neighborhood is on the way to Broadcast Central and Hatcher is making good time along the edge of the throng in the Parkway. The smell of sulfur is still strong in the air, but the puddles in the street have vanished — reconstituted — and the city is teeming in a way that feels almost comfortable to Hatcher in its tortured normalcy. He has a little bit of evidence that not only is Satan not hearing everything, he’s not seeing everything either. Hatcher thinks about Virgil. The poet guide is a good place to start in his quest for Hell’s back door.

Along the street, a few of the transitory bookstores are open, and as Hatcher is wondering how to go about looking for Virgil, he sees a hand-lettered sign in a bookshop window: SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY. He stops and goes in.

The bookshelves here are full, unlike those in most of the shops along the street, though Hatcher does not glance at the titles. He is immediately struck by a figure sitting at a desk at the back of the shop, a small woman with thick, wavy hair cut off at the collar of a tattered brown velvet jacket. In a sitting area near the desk are a couch and several chairs, all empty, all canary yellow or avocado green Naugahyde, gashed and covered by what appear to be piss stains. Before Hatcher wanted to be Walter Cronkite, he wanted to be Ernest Hemingway, so he instantly recognizes Sylvia Beach. He approaches her.

Sylvia looks up at him. “Are you a writer?” she asks, rising from her chair a little in hopefulness.

“No,” he says. “Sorry.”

She sinks back down.

“Well,” he says, “I published a memoir once, partial, from childhood to forty or so, but I didn’t actually write it and it was full of invented anecdotes.”

Sylvia furrows her brow and cocks her head.

“The writer called it ‘creative nonfiction,’” Hatcher says.

“I don’t understand that term,” Sylvia says.

“I hear he lives in this neighborhood.”

“I hear there are many writers around here.”

“Oh yes.”

“They don’t come in.”

“This is Hell, Ms. Beach.”

“I only get book reviewers. They come in and sit around, and they all seem unaware of who or where they are. I don’t know them. They clearly read too fast and in the wrong frame of mind. They miss so much. Perhaps that’s why they’re here.”

“You haven’t had any writers at all?”

“Herman Melville came in.”

“Have you seen Virgil?”

“He’s working on a new novel.”

“Melville?”

“Yes.” Sylvia shrugs. “He can’t get past the first sentence. ‘Call me E-mail.’”

“The old-timers have trouble adjusting.”

Sylvia waves her hand vaguely at the shelves. “No wonder they stay away.”

Hatcher looks at the shelves. Each of the books, throughout the shop, has the same spine, a familiar segmented stacking of rectangles, differing only occasionally in color.

“Every volume I have. Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. It’s all I can get.” Sylvia begins to weep softly. “Is it because of Adrienne, do you suppose? That I’m here, with these?”

“Adrienne?”

“Monnier. The woman I was with for many years.”

“From all that I can tell…”

“My father the pastor…”

“…it would have been no different if she’d been man.”

“…perhaps he was right.”

“Your father’s probably here too. There seems to be a multitude of reasons, for all of us.”

Sylvia is crying harder and Hatcher steps close, puts his hand on Sylvia’s shoulder. She looks up. “You wouldn’t recognize Adrienne if you saw her? No, of course not.”

“No.”

“How about Ernest? Hemingway. Is he here?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Jim Joyce?”

“I haven’t seen either of them.”

“Perhaps they’ll find me.”

“Only if they can inadvertently bring you pain, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I’m used to that,” Sylvia says. She pats Hatcher’s hand.

He says, “Virgil is here.”

“Of The Aeneid ?”

“And The Inferno .”