by Dick Denny
Thank the Father and Uncle Lew she laughed. “That’s borderline creepily sweet. Well, what about meeting your nephews?”
“You’re too hot. You ponder that fact and I’ll let you extrapolate the rest of the reasoning.”
She sipped her coffee then her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth with her hand as she set the mug down. “Geez, coffee almost came out of my nose!”
I laughed.
“It’s not funny!”
I laughed harder.
“You’re a jerk,” she huffed, and scowled at me so intensely that it was comical.
“Would it help you forgive me if I paid for your fucked up non-donut European pastry and coffee?” I tried to smile as sweetly as she could and failed miserably, but it made her scowl turn to a smile and she chuckled while playfully rolling her eyes.
“Yes.”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out my folded in half thin wad of bills and put enough down to pay for the drinks and scones. We stood and reflexively Gretchen looped her right arm through my left as he walked down the road to the car. I’d parked it right in front of a hydrant. I could see the meter-maid—or whatever they called them nowadays, I’m getting too old to learn new terms—punching tickets out on her hand-held thing-a-ma-bob. The car behind mine had a ticket, the car in front of mine had a ticket. The Mike Lowery Ferrari. Tickets equaling the amount of fucks I give about jaywalking: de nada.
I held the door for Gretchen not because I was a gentleman, but because I reckoned it’s what a gentleman should do. Climbing behind the wheel I could smell the leather and the definitely making up for something the car exuded. The engine roared into life.
“You starting to like the car?” Gretchen asked as she adjusted the controls for the built-in seat warmers.
We roared out onto the road, and I did it without managing to peel the tires again. “I would have liked the last of the V8 Interceptors a hell of a lot more.”
“Well,” Gretchen reached over and patted my hand on the gearshift consolingly, “if it makes you feel better I’m pretty sure this Ferrari is more expensive than a heavily modified 1974 Ford Falcon with a custom grill, roll cage, fake supercharger, and fifty-five-gallon gas tanks strapped to the back.”
“Thanks.” I managed to deftly weave the car through the light traffic of Sunday evening. All in all, it’d been a relatively productive day.
“Oh,” she bounced in her seat. “I forgot the bomb strapped to the gas tanks, too. As cool as a booby trap would be on a car, with your luck I don’t think you really need extra things that could blow up around you.”
I chuckled, but it was really just puffs of air coming from my nose as my lips didn’t part, but I did smirk. “You’re probably on to something there.”
“So, what are you thinking?” she asked as she studied my profile as the streetlight started coming on.
“Just wondering.”
“What?”
“Did you fill up on scones?” I asked as I glanced over and saw her shake her head. “What do you want for dinner then?”
“Eat out or cook something back at the office?” she asked.
“I’m good for either.”
She pondered for a moment. “We could stop at the store and get a couple cans of SpaghettiOs or two boxes of toasted ravioli. Which would you prefer?”
I smiled. “I got good company so I really give zero fucks about the food.”
She smiled and went back to examining the car. “This thing has a CD changer.”
“Anything in it?” I’d never had a CD changer. Then again I’d never had a Ferrari before either so it was a day for new things.
You know what you never hear about in the bible? The older brother’s wives; most of them don’t even have names. I’m not gonna go off on some feminist BS about lack of representation in the world’s most popular religions, but I will say this. Anyone ever hears my story, they’re gonna hear about Gretchen. She’s why I’m better off than all those dudes that got the raw end of the stick in the Holy Bible.
She randomly selected a disk and a track. The speakers started blasting the heavy guitar and piano of Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell. “Well,” she said what I can only describe as haunting optimism, “either Gabrielle either knows her audience or she’s definitely trying to tell you something.”
Chapter Ten
Sorry, We Didn’t Make Enough For Company
“Youth Gone Wild” Skid Row
The office, back in the room where Gretchen and I lived, had a mini kitchen. The oven worked but the stovetop didn’t. So I stood at a hot plate stirring the SpaghettiOs with meatballs in the one pot that we owned, with one of the two spoons we owned. As soon as the pot’s contents were hot enough I was going to pore it equally (more or less) into the two bowls we owned. We also owned one pan, a pizza pan for oven stuff, two plates, two forks, and a butter knife we’d pass back and forth to one another. The only glasses we owned were tumblers for booze.
Behind me, I heard the simulated gunfire. “I thought you were going to play Gears of War III.”
“I was,” she replied distractedly.
“That sounds like a Covenant plasma rifle.”
“Yeah.” You could hear the focus in her voice.
I watched the SpaghettiOs start to bubble again so I stirred it. “Why the plasma rifle?”
“I’m saving my energy sword.”
“So you’re playing the Arbiter?”
“Yep.”
“So why are you playing Halo 2 as opposed to Gears of War III?” I asked as I reached up into the cabinet and pulled down both of our bowls. One was a cobalt blue fiesta ware, the other was plain Coronet white. I set them down and went back to give the pot another stir.
“I don’t think I can emotionally handle Gears right now.” There was a wavering in her voice that made me want to walk over and hug her. But I also didn’t want the SpaghettiOs to get stuck to the side of the pot, so I kept stirring. “How’s dinner?”
“Just about done.”
I smiled as I heard her call frag out then heard the sound of a plasma grenade exploding from the game. As capable as Gretchen was and how handy she could be in a scrap, it was easy to forget that she wasn’t a trained soldier. There were things in a fight she was extremely lacking at training and experience.
Two months ago we’d ended up on the unsafe end of a scrap with a couple of dock workers. So I ended up making entry into a room unbeknownst of the fact that Gretchen had tossed in our last flash-bang seconds before. I was practically standing on it when it went off and I got knocked the fuck out. So since then, we’d been working together to get her trained in calling frag out if you were tossing a grenade or flash out if you were lobbing a banger. In movies, people would just holler grenade, but that was reserved for when grenades were coming at you.
I didn’t hold a grudge about her rattling my noggin with the flash-bang because I knew she felt bad about enough on her own so there was really no reason for me to hold a grudge.
“So, why don’t you think you can handle Gears right now?” I asked as I gave the pot one last scraping stir.
“I’m not ready for the Dom scene.” I could hear the pain in her voice. The problem with rereading a book, rewatching a movie, replaying a video game is you know what’s coming and you can’t change it, no matter how much you want it to change. It leaves you with a degree of mental impotence without any kind of mental Viagra that can cure it. So instead of dealing with the emotion of the truly Epic Dom scene in Gears III, Gretchen had tossed in Halo 2. It made sense, and I respected it.
I turned the hotplate off and poured and spooned SpaghettiOs with meatballs into the two bowls. It poured more or less evenly between the two. I might have had one or two more meatballs than her, but I also had six or seven inches and sixteen years on her, too. I picked up the bowls and started walking to the bed where it was pushed against the windowed wall. I half-hopped half-plopped next to her and we used it as a place to sit since we’d d
itched the old pull-out couch. I handed her the fiesta ware bowl and a sleeve of saltine crackers. The problem with saltines was you couldn’t seem to buy the single sleeve anymore, you had to buy the whole box of four. The bad news was we tended to be wasteful or they’d go stale before they could all be eaten. The good news was we each got our own sleeve and didn’t have to share.
Gretchen and I shared our thoughts, our bed, our bodies, our care, and cheesy enough, our love; but sharing food was beyond a goddamned line that we refused to freaking cross. She’d have her plate, I’d have mine, and never the two did meet.
“Did you get me a spoon?” she asked as she paused the game and sat the controller down.
“Shit.”
She smiled. “I got it.” She hopped up and sauntered across the room and came back with the other spoon. I was using the one out of the pot. “Thanks for cooking.” She took a spoonful as she walked back to the bed.
Using a hand-powered can opener to open two cans of SpaghettiOs with meatballs, dumping and scraping them in the pot, heating it up, and putting in bowls was our equivalent of “home cooking.” The secret was when you turned the can upside down to use the can opener to pop a hole in the bottom of the can so air could equalize and most of the SpaghettiOs and meatballs simply slide out into the pot. That trick saved me literal seconds of spoon-scraping time. Life is short.
I used my spoon to push a meatball and some SpaghettiOs onto half a cracker. Then I just popped the whole cracker in my mouth as Gretchen sat back next to me. I proceeded to use crackers as an edible utensil whereas Gretchen pushed crackers into the SpaghettiOs along the edge of the bowl letting the cracker get mostly soggy in the sauce before alternating between two spoonfuls then one cracker.
I was about halfway through my bowl when I heard a knock on the outer office door. I looked to Gretchen, she held her fist up. I sighed and did the same, we pumped them three times then she threw paper and I threw rock. She laughed and wrapped her hand around my fist and gave it a squeeze. I hopped up taking my bowl and a couple of crackers with me and headed out into the outer office and then opened the door into the hall.
He stood there in the dark blue three-piece suit with the light blue shirt, dark tie that was either a dark blue or a black—I couldn’t tell—and the tan trench coat George Smiley had worn in several scenes in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. His smile was genuine and infectious. He glanced at the bowl in my hand. “Catch you at a bad time?”
I finished chewing and swallowed. “I could think of worse ones.”
His smile broadened. “I was hoping you’d have trousers on. May I come in?”
I stood to the side and called out. “Hey, Gretchen, Lucifer is here!”
I heard her feet hit the floor and come running into the outer office. “Lucifer. God, I’ve missed you.” She set her bowl on my desk and ran over, giving him a hug then blushing. “Sorry about the God thing.”
He gave her a squeeze. “It’s all right, I’m used to that kind of thing. I think if either one of us got offended easily we wouldn’t associate with Nick.”
Gretchen laughed, and even though it was at my expense it wasn’t mean.
Uncle Lew looked at the bowl, then me. “I really didn’t mean to bother you during dinner.
I shrugged. “We had a decent day and thought we’d celebrate.”
He laughed. “This is why I like you, Nick.”
I shot him a confused look.
“That bowl, this evening, is why Heaven is afraid of you and those under me don’t understand you.” Lucifer took his coat off and hung it on the coat stand by the door. “You’re incorruptible because deep down you’re content.”
Gretchen seemed to chew on that a minute while I finished my bowl and set it on the desk next to Gretchen’s. “Nick wants things,” Gretchen offered in my defense.
Lucifer smiled that ever-charming smile that seemed to light up whole rooms. “Such as?”
Gretchen started holding up a finger with each point on the list she was pulling from thin air. “Mel Gibson to get his older-guy-action-movie comeback. George Miller to finish his wasteland trilogy before he dies. Donald Glover to reboot Beverly Hills Cop. After that, for Hollywood to stop rebooting crap. A true-to-the-novel Starship Troopers movie.” She held up her other hand to keep counting. “Libertarians to get their shit together, even though he knows they won’t because they’re Libertarians. First-class airfare for a two-week butler package vacation at Sandals Montego Bay, Jamaica—”
“Wait…how do you know about that?” I interrupted.
She giggled and shrugged. “I’ve been working as a private investigator for the past six months?” That got a laugh out of Lucifer.
She shook her head a bit, causing her hair to wave. “No, seriously. Since you don’t look at a lot of internet porn—well, embarrassing porn anyway—you never clear your browser history.”
Lucifer chuckled knowingly then looked at me. “Point is, neither side really has anything you want they can give. Meaning they can’t get leverage on you, Nick. You seem to be a man with nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and that’s a man who can’t be controlled.”
I chewed on the way he phrased that, like he knew Gabrielle had been by and I’d asked for Jammer back. Jammer wasn’t coming back, neither side could, or would, do that. Jokers to the left of me, poets to the right, I guess.
“You are the distillation,” Lucifer continued slowly, making sure I could keep up, “of nothing to gain, and nothing to lose. Thus, you’re the big variable in everyone’s equation.”
“That a good or bad thing?”
His smile dimmed slightly. I might not have noticed had I not known him my entire life. “It’s neither good nor bad. It simply is what it is.”
There was a tonal shift in the room and we all felt it.
“So what can we do for you, Lucifer?” Gretchen asked cautiously as she walked around and sat at her desk the way she did at client meetings.
Lucifer knowingly looked to me. “So, I hear you’ve had a conversation with Baalberieth?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to nod, but I think I did a little. “Do we have an easier name to call him?”
Lucifer held his hands out placatingly. “He told you to call him Uncle Bear, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”
Lucifer laughed. “Understandable, and I don’t blame you on that account.”
“So,” I said cautiously. It’s like we were all dancing around a hat with no idea what was under it. “Sorry we didn’t make enough SpaghettiOs.”
For an instant Lucifer laughed and I couldn’t help but think of him as Uncle Lew, my dead mom’s big brother. He put his hands on his knees and stood from the chair. His gaze bounced between Gretchen and myself. “I think we both know I didn’t come here for dinner. But me coming here was easier than asking you out to Sheol House.”
“Easier for us, anyway.” Gretchen nodded in agreement. “But one is definitely nicer than the other.”
“I humbly accept the compliment.” Lucifer’s smile was anything but humble.
“So what do you need, Lucifer? Why did you come on out this way in the first place?”
Lucifer smiled. It was sad and longing, but it was a smile. “We need to talk.”
Chapter Eleven
It Didn’t Come With An Instruction Manual
“My Own Worst Enemy” Lit
We need to talk is a phrase that has never led to anything good. A relative you never met died and left you millions… You’ve contracted a rare disease whose only side effect is your penis is going to double in size… You get to spend the evening hanging out with Freddie Mercury and David Bowie—it was just a joke, they’re really not dead… We should do more anal… The tests say you should be drinking more… Ancestry.com has proven you’re really fourth in line for the British Crown and as the Archduke of Some-Made-Up-Sounding-Place, you have a castle and a shit-ton of money…
None of these have ever followed u
p “we need to talk.”
We need to talk means you’re about to lose your significant other and an overly healthy portion of your stuff.
We need to talk means you’re going to have sores in a place a person really doesn’t want sores.
We need to talk means you have an unplanned kid coming, or the kid you raised was actually someone else's problem.
“Hey, Fill-In-The-Name, you got a second?” means you have a promotion or bonus. “Hey, Fill-In-The-Name, we need to talk” means you’re fucking fired.
So if you’re ever in the situation where your uncle, who happens to be Lucifer, says “We need to talk,” you can bet your ass clenches up tight enough to turn coal into goddamned diamonds.
I waited a second to see if he’d smile and chuckle a “…just kidding,” but that didn’t happen. Then again, when have I ever been that lucky?
I glanced over to Gretchen—well, okay…once.
Lucifer let the We need to talk hang in the air with the annoyingly patient calm of an immortal.
I finally broke the thick silence with the equivalent of a Shakespearean sledgehammer. “Okay?”
“How was your conversation with Baalberieth?” His tone was off-handed. The problem with picturing your uncle, the capital-D Devil, as the most skilled and subtle actor of the 20th and 21st centuries combined, is he can say a whole lot with an annoying little.
“Yep.” I walked over and plopped behind my desk. I reached in the drawer and pulled out two tumblers and the rapidly depleting bottle of the Macallan.
“He still on his ‘Cain was a great man’ kick?” Lucifer leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and fingers delicately intertwined.
“More or less.” I poured two fingers into each of the tumblers before corking the bottle, then seeing how little was left I just poured the rest into the two glasses. I popped the cork back into the empty bottle and tossed it at the trash can by Agnes’s desk. It missed with a thud and clattered back against the wall behind her chair.