Robert Butler - Hell

And Hatcher moves past the Hoppers’ door.

He opens his own.

Anne is standing in the center of the floor, facing him, and she is also naked.

“Is someone here?” Hatcher says, his mind following by a few beats the instant suspicion of his body, a few beats in which Anne’s face darkens.

“No,” she says.

“What is it?” he says.

“My head is on,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Are you glad?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have furry wings,” she says.

“That’s good.”

“It is?” The darkness is gone from her face. Her eyes fill with tears.

“Yes. Very good.”

“I am small and dark.”

“That’s very good too.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I know what she is.”

“I had to go,” Hatcher says.

“Yes,” Anne says. “I believe that.”

“But it still hurt you?”

“Did it?” she asks, seeming not to have thought of this.

“Apparently so.” Hatcher is struck by how he seems attuned to her, seems to be saying the right things for once.

“Perhaps worried me,” she says.

“Worried this way,” he says, gently, nodding at her body.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m naked.”

“I’m naked too,” Hatcher says.

“I noticed,” Anne says.

He comes near to her. But they don’t touch. It’s this next step where things always somehow go wrong.

Anne says, “But she came here so openly. I know she can do that because you’re dead. But there seemed to be more to it than she was a fan of yours from TV and happened to be in the neighborhood.”

Hatcher hears Anne’s voice starting to ice up. He could try to press forward with regards to their mutual nakedness, but the trouble has already begun and he knows it would quickly go very bad. So he says, “She had information I needed, information I couldn’t figure out how else to get. I didn’t anticipate what the price would be.”

Anne cocks her head at him.

“You can believe this too,” he says.

“What kind of information?” she says.

He plays his trump card. “Henry’s whereabouts.”

Anne stiffens, though her voice goes soft. “My Henry?”

Hatcher pauses a moment to absorb the body blow of that possessive pronoun. But he can’t simply endorse it. “Henry VIII, former king of England,” he says softly.

“You did that for me?” she says.

“Yes.”

“Why? I know this drives you crazy.”

“If it’s what you need.”

Anne lifts a hand and lays her palm on his cheek. For a moment he thinks that they will have sex now and it will be good. But the gesture is simply gratitude, he quickly realizes, and the sudden, visible heaving of her chest is about something else.

She drops her hand from his face. “When can I go?”

Hatcher hasn’t thought this out. He knows where Henry is and he knows she could never get there on her own.

“I’ll have to go with you.” This actually sinks in only as he says it.

“Now?” she says.

Hatcher, for several reasons and in several ways, is suddenly feeling thoroughly drained. He has gone weak in the legs and heavy in the chest, and he says, “I’ve had a bad night.”

“Then when?”

“I have to lie down now.”

“When can we go?”

“After the evening news,” Hatcher says.

This arrangement, uncomfortable for both, floats between them for a long moment. Then Anne says, quite softly, “Thank you.”

And Hatcher has never been sadder that the sex between them has never been good.

When Hatcher arrives at Broadcast Central, he heads toward Beelzebub’s office. It can’t be avoided. He needs a car. He strides along the corridor and he’s hoping mightily that Lily is on a sex break. He does not want to face Lulu’s sister today. He turns in at the door of the outer office and Lily is there, eating from a box of what one would normally assume are chocolates — small balls, some dark, some milk, some white — but, as has been previously noted, this is Hell and this is a succubus, and so when she smiles slyly at Hatcher and offers one, he declines with something less than gracious reluctance.

“Pathetic,” Lily says, and it’s clear to Hatcher she’s referring to more than his refusal of a treat.

He just keeps on moving, toward Beelzebub’s inner office. The number-two demon sees Hatcher coming and he rises from behind his desk. “Hello, my boy. I’m very pleased with the J. Edgar stuff. I do like a good epiphany, you should excuse the expression.”

“Thanks,” Hatcher says.

“It’s Clinton airing today?”

“Bill. Yes.”

“And the other Clinton?”

“She’s coming up.”

“Splendid. Do they blame each other?”

“No.”

“Ah. Too bad.”

“I’ve found out where Henry VIII is located,” Hatcher says. “I’d like to do him. He’s got lots of reasons to understand why he’s here, but it’ll be interesting to see which ones are on his mind.”

“Well well well,” Beelzebub says. “Your girlfriend’s old flame. That should be painful for you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Good. You intrigue me, McCord.”

“I need a car.”

“You got it. I like what you’re doing with this series. Self-reflection is hell.” He chuckles.

Beelzebub doesn’t go out of his way to give compliments, and hearing this one gives Hatcher an idea. So he says, “You want me to clear each one with you? There are sometimes targets of opportunity.”

Beelzebub gives this only a flicker of a thought. Hatcher feels keenly the power of his secret: this is going to work because Bee-bub can’t imagine Hatcher feeling free to have a covert agenda inside his head.

“I’ll put Dick Nixon at your disposal for the series. Anytime.”

Hatcher restrains his elation, but he does flip Beelzebub a jaunty little salute, in effect dismissing himself.

Beelzebub raises a hand to stop him. “One other thing. You’ve got a new entertainment reporter. He’s been cooking for a while, but I think he’s ready for work. He was the mastermind behind an Internet gossip site specializing in Manhattan media gossip. Then he moved up to celebritygenitals.com and was shot dead by a rapper with a tiny dick.”

“Who is he?” Hatcher says.

“I’d rather not say. He can still only remember his screen name, and I’m enjoying that.”

Having been stopped once, Hatcher waits. Beelzebub says, “Go. Go.”

Hatcher does. Lily is staring thoughtfully into her box, and he tries to move by her quickly and quietly. But as he’s passing, Lily lifts the box toward him. There are only two left. Milk chocolate balls. She says, “Please.”

He hurries past her, saying, “No thanks.”

“They’re presidential,” she says.

And Hatcher, who should be interested in the way the nation went immediately after his demise, hustles down the hall trying to think of anything but.

In the commercial break just before the Clinton “Why Do You Think You’re Here,” Hatcher ponders how painful it might indeed be, later this afternoon, when he takes Anne to Henry. But he also finds himself wondering if he might get a little spiritual credit for the act, something to begin to qualify him for a one-way ticket at the next Harrowing. That thought immediately seems pathetic to him, but it lingers, working on him, nonetheless. It’s why he’s seeking out his wives, after all, and he’s already planning to use the car to find another one, Deborah, who is nearby.

And now he’s back on air and he’s introducing the Clinton piece, and his mind is so thoroughly his own again that he can exercise a talent from his mortal professional life: he can roll out the appropriate broadcast-ready words from his mouth while his mind is somewhere else entirely. So as he does his introduction flawlessly, his thoughts slide back to how pathetic he is trying to do a thing or two to qualify himself to be taken out of Hell, and then he thinks no, it’s not pathetic at all, it’s another example of his self-important arrogance, that he expects to make a couple of selfless gestures and muscle ahead of all the great religious figures waiting in line to get out of Hell.