Eventually, Living Water Ministries just set up a full-time Pill Channel, and people watched it like a Saturday-morning cartoon.
Good, thought the Devil. As long as they weren’t watching the news.
MOST OF A YEAR went by.
The Devil found himself very busy.
The war was scary and expensive. You had to work hard to keep it going, especially when it obviously wasn’t accomplishing anything.
There was television, and Jenna. Three years he had been dating America’s favorite bad girl. Three very public years. One time they had even been filmed—badly, at night—making love in a Malibu swimming pool. Jenna’s CD sales exploded. John Scratch remained a mystery. He kept claiming to be the president of France. Fans blogged that he probably looked great naked. His popularity grew. So did the popularity of the actual president of France.
WHENEVER POSSIBLE, the Devil found himself in New York, at Memory’s bedside.
At first, he thought she might wake up. When she didn’t, he remained at her bedside anyway, and didn’t allow himself to wonder why.
Was it guilt? Was it love? He didn’t dare think about it. Didn’t dare think about her voice, or her eyes. He didn’t dare think about the simple satisfaction of holding her on the couch in front of the TV, and the odd human feeling that she was his.
He wasn’t the only one watching over her.
Right after the towers fell, television had taken a renewed interest. Memory Jones! Faded rock star, TV star, Internet sensation, forever young, forever Woodstock, one of several famous names in the World Trade Center that day. Their interest faded quickly, but now, after a year, they were back.
A celebrity in a coma was one thing.
A celebrity in a coma that went on and on was a story that went on and on.
Purple Airplane CD sales went through the roof. Her picture began to appear on T-shirts, with a dreamy psychedelic halo and Xs over her eyes. She became a cult icon. Young people with confused lifestyles and nothing better to do traveled to New York and tried to sneak up to her room.
Eventually, both TV and the Internet started a full-time Coma Channel, streaming a live camera feed from Memory’s bedside. They kept a running clock in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, ticking off the months and days and hours and minutes and seconds Memory Jones had been under.
Fine, thought the Devil, half asleep, just off camera. Whatever distracted them.
MONTHS PASSED, AND a whole new war started.
A war there was no good reason for at all, based on shadows and lies, and nobody even protested very much.
They had a whole new kind of satellite TV by then, with so many channels people could hardly see straight. A war was just one of the choices on television.
Cooking shows were big that year, too.
34.
“It’s That President-of-France Guy Again!”
Los Angeles, Spring 2003
THE ALL-CELEBRITY NEWS CHANNEL was the Devil’s idea.
If the TV people were obsessed with Memory in her coma, he reasoned, they’d be even more obsessed with celebrities who were awake.
“People perk up when the news is about celebrities,” he whispered into a studio exec’s ear.
“Yeah?” said the executive.
“They’re not threatening, see, because they don’t actually affect people! Celebrities can get arrested, start charities, beat up paparazzi, get drunk and naked in public, and it won’t change your life.”
“Fuck yeah!” cried the executive.
And so the All-Celebrity News Channel was born.
ONE OF THE first items on the All-Celebrity News Channel turned out to be John Scratch.
“Look!” viewers said. “It’s that President-of-France-guy again. Jenna Steele’s boy toy.”
“He’s not really the president of France,” more alert viewers argued. “That’s just some shit he tells people.”
“Who is he, then?”
No one knew.
Viewers were tired of not knowing who, exactly, John Scratch was. They wanted answers.
Jenna’s studio people knew that if viewers wanted to know something, you could turn that into money. So three executives in shiny, fashionable shirts came to Jenna’s condo one night and offered John Scratch his own television show.
The Devil was a little fuzzy-headed. He and Jenna had fallen asleep watching the Foreclosure Channel, and the doorbell awakened them.
“My own TV show about what?” asked the Devil.”
“Doesn’t matter,” they told him.
“You’ll think of something, baby,” sighed Jenna, still curled up on the white leather couch.
He thought of something.
“I WANT YOU to sponsor my show,” said the Devil to Fish.
They were batting a beach ball around in a hot tub at the Never-ending Mexican Party.
Fish was an official preacher now, with a degree straight off the Internet. “What’s your show about?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” said the Devil. “There’s some new miracle pill I keep hearing about. I saw it on your morning show.”
“The White Pill,” said Fish, nodding. “It’s like white noise for your neurochemicals. Makes you feel content. Not high or anything. Just content.”
“It’s a lobotomy in a prescription bottle,” said the Devil.
“I should get out of here,” said Fish. “Seriously. This is no place for a preacher.” He got up.
“Sit down.”
Fish sat down.
“I want the White Pill to sponsor my show,” said the Devil.
Fish nodded. “Think It Over. That’s what you’re calling your show?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I‘ll have to pray on it,” said Fish. “But it should work fine, I think—”
The Devil tuned Fish out.
He imagined jumping up and down on Fish until Fish came apart. He pretended to listen, with a weird little smile on his face.
35.
Fish Is Raptured or Something
San Francisco, 2003
WHAT HAPPENED TO FISH, when it happened, happened fast.
It started with a tornado in Faribault, Minnesota. A bad motherfucker straight out of The Wizard of Oz, it ripped through the biggest neighborhood, killing two hundred people. Whole families were buried.
The Devil, when he saw it on TV, up late at night with a bowl of ice cream, a joint, and a pack of Rolaids, had to put down the ice cream and sit with his hands to his mouth, eyes filling. Those poor people, those families (Jesus, he was getting soft).
He changed the channel, and there was Fish, preaching.
The Devil picked up his ice cream, but didn’t take a bite just yet.
He listened, and couldn’t believe what he heard.
“There’s victims,” Fish preached. “Sure there are. There’s crime victims and disease victims and mad cow disease victims and just all kinds of victims. But you got to have eyes to see God’s will! Sometimes being a victim is God’s way of bringing a message. God’s way of saying you have strayed. God’s way of saying: ‘Danger, you poor, blind sinful worm!’”
The Devil put down the ice cream and hit the joint.
“Now, we bleed for those families out in Minnesota. But we’ve got to look with hard eyes and say, ‘Why?’ It’s that age-old question, ‘Why does God let bad things happen to good people?’ And the answer is as plain as day, plain as Judgment Day: Maybe they ain’t good people.”
“Fish,” sighed the Devil. Could anyone possibly be such an asshole?
“Lest we forget, it was Minnesota that said a teacher had to teach evolution, even though he knew it was a crock. Tonight, Minnesota has reaped the whirlwind. Mourn the dead in Faribault, but know they only got what they deserved. Amen.”
It wasn’t the first time an evangelist had said mean things in the name of God.
There were preachers who said that the people who died in the World Trade Center deserved what they got because Ame
rica tolerated fags. He thought about preachers who said people deserved tragedy because they got pregnant or went broke, and it made him want to vomit.
The Devil decided the world had put up with Mark fucking Fish long enough.
He clenched his fist, and on the screen, Fish went up in a ball of blue fire. The TV audience just barely had time to see his hair turn to smoke before the flames swallowed him up.
The Devil sat there for a while. He didn’t finish his ice cream.
Fish, he thought. You poor, stupid asshole.
He felt like crying, but he didn’t. He sat, tired but sleepless, watching infomercials instead. He ordered an egg slicer and a pinkie ring.
FISH, THE TELEVANGELIST community decided, had been Raptured.
Chosen early, and taken up. Everyone had seen it. Fish had gone to Heaven right there on TV. Amen.
Zachary hadn’t been watching the “Rapture” broadcast, but he’d seen it replayed on the Web.
If it could happen to Fish, it could happen to him.
And in the back of his mind, he thought, Maybe the best defense is a good offense, but he tried to pretend he hadn’t thought it, or hadn’t heard himself think it.
36.
Rising and Vanishing Almost Politely
Hiroshima, Japan, 1945
THE WARS ON TV reminded the Devil of other wars he had seen. Bigger wars. Not long ago, in Europe. He started dreaming about them, more and more.
The Devil had been a busy fellow during the Big One.
The world had needed a good convulsion, and boy, did he deliver.
He was everywhere.
On all sides, he had commanded and followed. He had crouched in the bellies of submarines. He had wooed sweethearts left behind. He had grown Victory gardens. He had watched from the London streets at night as the bombers bombed and made the great city a rubble pile. And he had ridden with Patton, and dreamed with Patton of the great conquerors and ancient times. He had stood with Patton amid ruins he remembered when they were built new. He liked Patton.
Half of the world had been smashed to rubble, and still the war wouldn’t end. It kept rolling and eating, until the only thing left to do was build a weapon as horrible as the war itself.
One final atrocity. Something they would look back on and call monstrous.
Thing was, it was going to be beautiful, too, and damned if he was going to miss it.
HE DID NOT FLY with the bomb across the sea. He did not want to meet the men who dropped it, or know their names.
On the day they dropped the bomb, he was a Japanese man on a Japanese bridge near a Japanese church by a Japanese river when the warplane appeared in the sky.
There had been one air-raid alarm already that morning, and with the all clear sounded, the people of the city were reluctant to race back inside. They were reticent. Many of them looked up at the bomber once, and did not see it anymore, or wish to.
The Devil thought perhaps he might see the device fall, see it leave the belly of the flying machine, but he didn’t, and it took him by surprise like everyone else.
A FLASH like nine Heavens.
He saw a man seated in a doorway disintegrate and fly away in a cloud of ash or vapor. He saw many such, many instant ghosts, and he saw how the light photographed them on walls, on the sides of a passing—now burning—trolley.
This was what the end of the most terrible war looked like. A sunny day left out in the sun until it brightened beyond meaning.
People were the worst of gods and the worst of animals combined.
Perhaps this kind of violence was the only message they would ever really understand. Something so terrible they would never want to see it happen again. Maybe they would be less warlike now, because they had finally become frightened of themselves.
It would be so human of them, wouldn’t it? To be thrust into goodness by something vast and evil.
Did he feel guilt? A little. Mostly he just hoped it would work, that this would be the turning point the world needed. He burned with it, black-eyed and howling, urging it on: the mighty flash, the shock wave, the firestorm, and the burning river.
Half of the city stopped and was gone. A great crowd of the dead, rising and vanishing almost politely.
37.
Those Games Are About Jesus
San Francisco, 2003
ONE DAY, ZACHARY BULL HORSE had chauffeur duty. It was his turn in the evening to pick up the neighborhood kids from one particular house, and drop them all off at home.
When he arrived to pick the kids up, he stood in the hallway just off the playroom, and watched while three boys and two girls, all jacked into one Bullhorse Tech game box, finished playing Revelation Ninja 4. Then they all held hands in a circle and prayed. The game told players that once you got past the third level, Jesus might grant you a wish.
Feeling queasy, Zachary cleared his throat and said, “Let’s go, gang.”
He had to say it three times.
“WHAT DID YOU WISH FOR?” he asked Seth, when all the other kids were dropped off.
“More wishes,” said Seth.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Zachary walked into the lair of the money guys, and said, “How big a hit will we take if we ditch the faith-based assassin games?”
The money guys were eating donuts. One of them almost choked.
“Too big,” the money guys answered. “Jesus, Big Zach, what—”
“HOW big?”
“They’re our largest single inventory,” said the department head. “If we don’t sell them—”
“Stop selling them,” said Zachary. “I’m telling you.”
The money chief gulped. “We’ll have to take that to the board,” he said.
Zachary made a farting noise and said, “Do it.”
THE BOARD MEETING was a satellite extravaganza, with members and their cell phones scattered all over various golf courses. It took five minutes.
Hell, no, said the board, they weren’t going to eat that much inventory! Besides, the games were about Jesus. What would it look like if they canceled a bunch of Jesus games?
“You text those assholes back,” Zachary told the money guys.
“And tell them to be here—actually here, in the boardroom at Bullhorse Technologies, in the real world—tomorrow by noon.”
Twenty-six hours later, a very pissed-off board was seated around a heavily waxed, artificially stressed table.
They offered no reverential hush when Big Zach walked in.
“What’s this about, Bull Horse?” barked a cowboy type wearing a turquoise tie ring.
“Shut up,” Big Zach barked back.
And he stood there glaring at them.
“I’m sorry, Zach,” someone said. “It’s just too much money.”
A long silence.
“I quit,” said Zachary.
The silence lived on.
Then there was an explosion, naturally.
“But you’re the brains of the operation!”
“But you personally own thirty percent of the stock!”
“Besides,” said the cowboy type. “It won’t change anything. Those games will still be sold.”
“Probably,” said Zachary. “But they will be sold without my further participation.”
“You can’t,” they all said.
“I can,” he said. Then he turned and walked out the door with his head high and a big fat smile on his face.
DRIVING HOME, Zachary listened to the radio news.
The star of a popular TV show was spotted on the beach without makeup.
A former president’s daughter had sustained a spider bite, and was coping.
At home, Zachary went straight to April Michael’s room. He pressed his forehead against the tank. It felt cool. It felt nice.
Then he made his way upstairs to Seth’s room.
Zachary had been happy when he left the boardroom, but now his eyes clouded again.
It wasn’t enough. Things would have to change all over.
He stared at the San Francisco 49ers helmet printed on Seth’s bedspread. He stared until the helmet didn’t look like a helmet anymore, the way things do when you stare at them.
One small step at a time, he thought, and he fell asleep like that, with his eyes open.
38.
An Already Pretty Embarrassing Life
Los Angeles, Fall 2003
THINK IT OVER would be filmed live, when possible.
It began with a knock on a door.
The door was opened by Scott Newill, an average-looking man who happened to be out of work. He was married to an average-looking woman he’d met in college. They were both forty years old.
Scott Newill gaped at the cameras and the Devil, and said, “You’re that Scratch guy.”
And Scratch, looking impossibly cool in a designer suit and wraparound shades, said, “That’s right, Scott. Can we come in and have a word with you?”
And Scott Newill said “Yes,” and they all went in and sat around the living room and had a talk.
It went like this:
Scratch showed Scott Newill a photograph, an elementary school photograph over thirty years old (the TV audience also got a look at the photograph, at Scott Newill when he was a wimpy little seven-year-old, and they laughed in their two million living rooms).
“Do you recognize this guy?” Scratch asked, showing him a second photograph.
Newill hesitated.
For the first time he looked like he wished Johnny Scratch and his people, including the two million, had gone somewhere else.
“That’s Phil Hilbert,” said Scratch, “isn’t it? The bully who used to beat you up every day, I mean every single day, when you were in second grade?”
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