The Weirdness

by Jeremy P. Bushnell

  “There is one technique which might meet your needs,” Lucifer says. “I can simply make you believe me.”

  “You can make me,” Billy says. “Tell me how that’s going to work?”

  “It’s simple. Imagine a light switch in your brain. A light switch has two positions, on and off.”

  “I’m familiar with the concept.”

  “Little beliefs in your brain work the same way. Like a vast set of little switches. You prefer chicken. You prefer pork. You like eggplant. You don’t like eggplant.”

  “I do like eggplant,” Billy says.

  “Wonderful,” Lucifer says, giving Billy a full-on smile which lasts exactly a second, then vanishes. “However, if I reached into your brain and flipped that switch, your liking of eggplant would cease. Whether you treat any individual utterance as true or false is a simple binary belief, a switch. And I can change those.”

  “So if you can go into my head and change shit around, why haven’t you done that already? If you can just make me believe you, why didn’t we just start there?” Billy says, annoyed with himself that he’s even dignifying the argument this way.

  “It is intimate. People typically do not wish to have an intimate procedure performed on them without permission. The procedure does not strictly require consent, but consent facilitates the experience.”

  “You sound like an R-rated hypnotist,” Billy says. “You’re supposed to be the goddamn Devil, and you care about whether you have permission to change people’s minds?”

  Lucifer produces no evident reaction.

  “Fine,” Billy says, out of patience. “You have my consent. Go on ahead in there. Touch my brain. Make me believe you.”

  “I shall,” Lucifer says.

  Great, thinks the Safety Manager. Here we go.

  Billy hears something. A tiny pop, like somebody had been shuffling their feet on carpet and then poked him in the back of his head. And something happens in his skull. Something shifts, grinds, as though his brain is a pile of rocks and one, deep in toward the center, has just disappeared. And suddenly something is different. He doesn’t see the guy across from him as just a guy anymore, or even as a potentially-dangerous crazy guy. He sees him as the physical embodiment of a grand architecture of evil. The Devil. The Prince of Darkness.

  The first thought Billy’s new brain has is: Holy fucking shit.

  The second thought is: Call 911 now.

  Billy rears upward in the armchair.

  “One moment,” Lucifer says.

  Billy’s busy patting down his pockets in search of his phone and he doesn’t quite hear that. He finally wrangles the phone out of his jeans, but his motor control has gone completely wack: instead of opening the phone’s flip-top he manages to flibber the gadget right out of his hands. It caroms off the wall and vanishes entirely from Billy’s perceptual awareness.

  Billy turns to Plan B.

  Plan B is to get the hell out of here. He considers making a run straight for the window; smashing through it, barefoot; and plummeting two stories to the street below. We can survive it, insists the Safety Manager, who has pretty much gone crazy from overwork at this point. C’mon! Let’s go!

  “One moment,” Lucifer says again, rising from the couch and extending his palm toward Billy. “This requires adjustment.” And Billy hears a lot more of those static-electricity pops, less like someone shocking the back of his head and more like someone peeling a synthetic shirt off of a blanket when they’ve both just come out of the dryer. The rock pile in his head grinds some more.

  “Ugh,” says Billy. He drops into a huddle. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleanup,” Lucifer says. “Tidying.”

  “No,” Billy says, although the shower of spark sounds is already beginning to subside.

  “Do not panic,” Lucifer says. He is speaking a little absently and he has a look of partial concentration on his face, like somebody working a Rubik’s Cube. “I’m just reducing some of the secondary effects: The anxiety. The adrenal residue in your limbic system. I’m grooming your neural pathways.”

  “I withdraw my consent,” Billy says, miserably. “Get the fuck out of my head.”

  “This is the easy part,” Lucifer says. And sure enough, if Billy were really to be honest, he’d have to admit that this part feels comparatively gentle, maybe even kind of good, like the feeling you get when you smell a cinnamon bun somewhere nearby.

  Slowly he gets back to his feet, dusts himself off.

  He looks at Lucifer, tries to see him again as he saw him a moment ago—magnificent, fearsome—and he can’t quite muster it. Whatever Lucifer just did in the cleanup, it made him go back to just looking like a sort of ordinary dude. An ordinary dude who Billy believes to be the Devil. Intellectually, Billy understands that he should still be spasming in the grip of vast cosmic terror but the part of him that was able to do that seems to have burned out. But still. There’s no possible way he can be safe right now.

  “Um,” Billy says, patting himself down again for his phone, only half remembering that he dropped it. “I still kind of feel like I should call 911?”

  “Certainly that is your prerogative,” Lucifer says, although he sounds a little bored by the prospect. He bends down, picks Billy’s phone up out of the corner, and hands it over.

  Keeping one eye on Lucifer, Billy flips open the phone and punches a nine into it. He pauses there, taking a moment to rehearse exactly what it is he is going to say. The Devil’s in my apartment?

  What would the cops do if they even showed up? Mow Lucifer down in a hail of bullets? Billy guesses that if it was that easy to get rid of the Devil, someone in the long history of humanity would already have done it by now. And when he actually tries to play out how it would go in his mind, all he can foresee is himself getting shot in the kind of inevitable mix-up that always seems to befall him. He ponders for a long moment and finally claps the phone shut again.

  “Come,” Lucifer says, returning to his seat on the couch. “Sit. Let us talk.”

  Billy cautiously settles back down in the armchair. He picks up the coffee and takes another sip. It’s cold.

  “Okay,” Billy says. He crumples a little, recognizing defeat. “You want to talk? Let’s talk.”

  “Fantastic,” says Lucifer. He leans over the side of the couch and hauls a messenger bag up into his lap. He pulls open the bag’s flap, a tremendous roar of rending Velcro powerfully reminding Billy that his hangover has not gone away. What the fuck. The Devil can groom his goddamn neural pathways but doesn’t bother to clean up his hangover while he’s in there?

  Lucifer produces a beat-up ThinkPad from his bag. Billy notices that part of the casing is patched with electrical tape. He tries to imagine the Devil using tape.

  “I’ve prepared a PowerPoint presentation that will cover the basics of what I wish to discuss with you,” Lucifer begins, opening up the ThinkPad.

  “Stop,” Billy says. “PowerPoint?”

  “It’s my preferred medium,” says Lucifer.

  “No,” Billy says. “Just no. You want to talk? We can talk. But I’m hungover, I’m annoyed, I’m still kind of losing my shit, I’m not watching a freaking PowerPoint presentation.”

  “PowerPoint is actually quite unfairly maligned,” Lucifer says. “In the right hands, it can produce presentations that convey a lot of information and border on the beautiful.”

  “Look,” says Billy. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t know what you want, and—I mean, if we’re just two dudes hanging out, talking, then I can maybe deal with hearing what you have to say. But otherwise—”

  “Yes, fine,” Lucifer says, a touch of irritation creeping in. He shoves the laptop back into the messenger bag. For a second he looks really pissed and then his features clear, his expression reverts back to neutral.

  “Billy Ridgeway,” he says, in the affectless tone that seems to be his default. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “I gotta be frank,�
�� Billy says. “I sort of feel like the choice move here is just to say no right out of the gate.” Another sip of the cold coffee. He wants a refill but feels like now is not the time to get up and go back into the kitchen.

  “I wish for you to do something for me,” Lucifer says. “It is a simple task which will require a minimal amount of your time. In exchange, I will do something for you.”

  Billy’s prepared to reiterate his choice move line, but then he allows himself to grow intrigued. “You’ll do something for me? So, okay, wait. Exactly what?”

  “I can see to it that your book gets published,” Lucifer says.

  A tiny burst of excitement spikes within Billy, which is almost immediately swallowed by a yawning chasm of skepticism.

  “Which book?” Billy says, cautiously.

  “The novel,” Lucifer says. “There are people I can get to publish the novel. Short stories, though—that’s a tough sell.”

  “A major publisher?” Billy asks.

  “I am prepared to promise you a major publisher and a five-figure advance.”

  A five-figure advance! Billy thinks, even though a quick mental process in which he tacks zeros onto a one helps him to remember that the figure he’s envisioning might only be $10K. So, he thinks, suddenly canny, let’s deal. And then he realizes what he’s doing.

  “Wait a second,” he says. “This is some kind of make-a-deal-with-the-Devil-type shit.”

  “Technically,” Lucifer says, “yes.”

  “This is one of those things where I end up saying Oh, tell me more and the next thing I know I’m signing away my soul.” He doesn’t actually believe in the soul, but he does know that if the Devil shows up and asks you to sign yours away, you should probably say no.

  “Billy,” Lucifer says. He offers the patronizing, patient smile again. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not interested in your soul.”

  “You’re the Archduke of Lies,” Billy says. “How can I possibly believe you?”

  “Souls are like ideas,” Lucifer says. “Everybody has one that they think is worth something.”

  “Yeah, no,” Billy says.

  “But—”

  “Just no. I don’t feel safe around you and I sure as hell don’t trust you. And although your offer is very intriguing—and I would love to see my work in print—so if you know anybody and feel like putting in a good word for me …” Noting that he’s beginning to backslide, he makes the decision to just shut up.

  “Let me tell you what you’d have to do,” Lucifer says, smiling with the radiant false force of a salesperson.

  “I don’t care what I’d have to do,” Billy says. “It could be the simplest thing imaginable. Something I was going to do anyway. Go to the bathroom, take a leak and two aspirin. Then, bam, you’re a famous writer. I’d still say no.” As he says this, he feels a pang deep in his chest, like a piece of gravel hitting a bell, and he realizes that it may not, in fact, be true.

  He thinks for a minute about how his life would change if his book got published. He contemplates the feeling of validation he’d enjoy. The ability, at least for a little while, to say You were right to do this. To give up time every day, precious time, the resource that other people seem able to turn into billable hours or functional relationships, to working on putting words together, to making declarations about people who don’t exist, to saying that they did things they didn’t do. To spend money on books instead of clothes or a haircut. To fail out of school because he spent a semester trying to teach himself Polish in order to read a Stanislaw Lem collection he’d bought at a bookseller’s kiosk in Greenpoint (and, not incidentally, because he used Krakowianka, a Polish blackberry vodka, as his primary study aid). If he were holding his book in his hand he’d be able, for once in his life, to look at all his choices and say You were right. What would that feel like? Billy doesn’t know. He would like to know.

  But he does know one thing. He knows that if he says yes, in this way, under these circumstances, and he gets what he wants, he won’t exactly be able to say that he earned it. And he wants to earn it.

  And so Billy decides. He says, “This discussion is over.” He rises. “Thanks for the coffee.” He heads for the kitchen to get that refill he’s been wanting, leaving Lucifer sitting, blank-faced, there on the couch.

  After a minute, Lucifer rises, straps the messenger bag across his chest, dons a pair of aviator sunglasses, and fishes the business card out of the junk on the coffee table. He meets Billy in the kitchen on the way out.

  “I’m disappointed,” he says.

  “And if you were my dad, that might matter to me,” says Billy. Call your dad back, says Billy’s brain.

  “I’ll respect your wishes,” Lucifer says, ignoring the retort, “and be on my way. Do keep my card, though. In the event that you change your mind.”

  “I very much doubt that I’ll be changing my mind,” Billy says. But he pockets the card.

  “Good day to you, Billy Ridgeway,” Lucifer says. Billy half expects him to disappear in a great cloud of violet smoke, but he heads out the front door like a normal person.

  Billy gets a great flash of jubilation as soon as the door latches. I was tempted by the Devil, he thinks, and I walked away. He suddenly realizes that Denver was wrong—he’s not a chronic fuck-up! This is proof—ironclad, dishwasher-safe proof. He has the moral high ground and he intends to hold it. He notes a few little shoots of regret and doubt fringing the edges of the high ground, but, hey, who cares, that’s normal.

  Another sip of the really good coffee. He notices that Lucifer left the beans. This day is going to keep getting better.

  He takes a leak and two aspirin. And in the blessed dark of the bathroom, for which his hangover is grateful, he decides to keep going on his winning streak. He’s going to get Denver on the phone. If he can look the Devil in the eye and emerge unscathed then surely he can work things out in his personal life. He feels good. He feels confident. He flips his phone open and eyeballs the time.

  “Son of a bitch,” he says.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PROFOUNDLY SUCKING

  IDEAL DESKS • BLACK SHIRT AND KHAKIS • THAI FOOD AND BOURBON • NOT CHARLIE OR CHUCK • DRUNK SENIOR EDITORS • A FUCK-TON OF HINDUS • JESUS, TAXES, PEDOPHILE • POSSIBILITIES OF AN UNCERTAIN WORLD • BAD PUBLICITY

  I wish that I was the kind of person who owned an appointment book, Billy thinks, as he frantically grubs around in the bottom of his closet, looking for the button-down shirt that completes his work uniform. He’s never owned an appointment book but he pictures it as this serious leather-bound thing, sitting on his desk. In this fantasy, his desk is nothing like the desks he’s ever actually owned—desks which quickly go invisible under unmanageable mountains of unopened mail and tech cables—it is instead one huge square slab of monochromatic wood, with nothing on it except this imaginary appointment book, his laptop, and maybe some interesting artifact. A piece of river stone. And, in this fantasy, when people approach him with some kind of demand on his time, he simply says I’m not sure if I can see you right now. Let me check my appointment book. And he can flip it open and examine the day dispassionately and say Ah, yes, today is no good. Today I shall be selecting pieces of fiction for tomorrow night’s reading and then I must depart for my shift at the sandwich shop. Perhaps next Wednesday? And then he wouldn’t have days like today, where somebody shows up and devours his available time, and then the next thing he knows he’s on his knees, in the closet, pulling shirts out of a heap, hoping he can make it to work before Giorgos decides to fire him.

  He finally finds the black button-down he was looking for. It hasn’t been washed anytime recently but fuck it, the dictum says black shirt and khakis, he’s never heard Giorgos say The black shirt shall smell fresh or The khakis shall not bear mayonnaise stains that could be mistaken for semen.

  Bang, he’s out the door, down the stairs, through the vestibule, and out into the cold, clear Brooklyn morning. Running for his life,
or at least the version of it where he has this job and lives in this apartment.

  If Billy loses this job he won’t make rent. In fact, even with the job it’s often a struggle. That $12.50 an hour adds up pretty slowly. He’s had months, plural, where he’s had to turn to Jørgen for a little financial help. Billy thinks on this for a moment as he angles through a cluster of kvetching grandmothers and it occurs to him that if Jørgen doesn’t return before the end of the month then he’s going to have to cover the entire rent himself. This is not actually a possibility. Just call him, Billy thinks, as he barrels past discount electronics shops and the bagel place that he likes. Denver was right. You should just call him.

  Denver. He imagines the thought of her name stopping him dead in his tracks. (In actuality he is already stopped by two elderly Romanians who have chosen to use the sidewalk to angrily negotiate the sale of a pair of ancient Nintendo Entertainment System consoles.)

  The point is: he misses Denver. And as he gets around the Romanian guys and heads into a final sprint toward the subway stop, he thinks about her, he reflects back on the normal times, the downtime, the evenings that he’d spent with Denver just flumped out in his bed, eating Thai takeout, drinking some incredible bourbon that she’d brought over, watching stupid YouTube videos on her MacBook, listening to her plot out a piece of conceptual video art that she wanted to make out of uploaded footage of cats, seeing her smile at his jokes. Pressing his face into her shoulder as the hour grew late. Not having sex kinda ’cause of Jørgen and kinda just ’cause they were both too sleepy. The memory is a lamentation. Right now he feels like he would do anything even to be not having sex with Denver.

  Too bad she figured out that he was a fuck-up.

  But no, he tells himself. You’re not a fuck-up. You met the Devil and you walked away. That proves something. She’ll see when you tell her.

  But how can he tell her?

  And then, right as he reaches the subway stop: inspiration.

  He has it.