The Weirdness

by Jeremy P. Bushnell

  “You probed me?” Billy says.

  “Yes,” Laurent says.

  “You probed me with the Internet?” Billy says.

  “No,” Laurent says. “We used magic. The Internet isn’t the important part, you see, Billy. The important part is that we had your attention. That’s what Cultural Production—my department!—is all about. People who are on the Board tend to have somewhat … predictable tastes. We generate content that strives to appeal to those tastes. When your attention is on our content it opens up a conduit that we can use for certain ends. Including, well, probing.”

  “Wait, though, you probed me?”

  “Think of it as a diagnostic. We were able to run some checks on you, basic, very basic. We were able to establish that we weren’t dealing with a possession scenario or a black curse. Once we ruled those things out we decided that it was important to meet you in person, see if we could figure out exactly what was going on with your position on the Board. You presented us with quite an opportunity, Billy, quite an opportunity. We needed to—branch out. To diversify! To create something, or at least the appearance of something, with a little bit more literary flair. Think of it as our way of trying to get to know you a little better.”

  “The Ingot. The reading,” Billy says.

  “Correct,” Laurent says. He taps his nose once, mirthfully. Something begins to curdle within Billy.

  “So The Ingot doesn’t exist?”

  Laurent shrugs. “It exists as much as any literary magazine that hasn’t brought an issue to press can be said to exist. You could approach it as a philosophical question, very philosophical.”

  “So the reading? You set that up to—lure me in?”

  “To observe you,” Laurent says. “We didn’t realize, though, that the supernatural attention around you was approaching a major spike. A Category Six Adversarial Manifestation? That’s just … that’s just off the charts, really.”

  “So you didn’t invite me because you thought I was a good writer? Because you were … a believer? In my work?”

  “Billy,” Laurent says. “I’m sure your work is fine. But clearly there are more important things operating at the moment than your respective level of talent or lack thereof.”

  “So, wait,” Billy says. He clenches his eyes shut and presses on them with his fingers. “You’re telling me you didn’t even read my work?”

  “Not read as such,” Laurent says. “No.”

  Billy can feel the little badge of honor, the one he affixed over his heart last night, being pried away. It hurts. Even on top of everything else, that still manages to hurt.

  “Well,” he says, “at least you’re honest.” Only not really very honest, he thinks to himself, and at that moment he makes up his mind to go. He has a life that needs fixing.

  “I want my stuff,” he says.

  “I can’t do that,” Laurent says.

  “You can.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “We threw it away.”

  “You threw it—? Where? Here?”

  “Not here,” Laurent says. “You have to understand that it would be foolish to retain those materials here, on-site. Their presence would—”

  “Shut up,” Billy says. “Just tell me where.”

  “Our team probably put them right in the Dumpster. Behind Barometer.”

  “I have to get over there.”

  “By now,” Laurent says, “I’m sure they’re—”

  “Shut up,” says Billy, staggering to his feet. “How do I get out of here?”

  “You said you’d hear me out,” Laurent says.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Billy says. “Thanks, but I really do believe that I have.”

  He looks around for an exit. He spots a glowing red sign; he spots a door set into a cinder-block wall, and he sets off toward it.

  “We won’t keep you here against your will,” Laurent calls after him.

  “Because it would be wrong,” Billy says.

  “We won’t keep you here against your will,” Laurent continues, “but I want to be clear that it’s not safe for you out there. The Adversary has an interest in you and we don’t know why. He’ll come after you again. He won’t stop until he’s gotten what he wants. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can bargain with him. The only thing you can do is hide, and the only place you can hide is with us. We have a secure room. We could make you comfortable in there until we get your new identity set up—”

  “I don’t want a new identity,” Billy says, turning to look Laurent in the face. “I like my life. Or at least I did, before you clowns started to mess with it.”

  He is a little bit surprised to realize that he means this.

  Laurent regards him with a look of inconsolable disappointment. Billy turns to go. He has his hand on the door when one final question occurs to him.

  “Actually,” Billy says.

  “Yes?” Laurent says, eagerly.

  “What about God?” Billy asks. “If the Devil exists, that implies the existence of God, right? And you guys know about the Devil, you have fancy names for when he appears and all that, so: What about God? Do you know about God?”

  “I’m glad you asked that, Billy,” Laurent says. “We have some of our best people working on that problem, the Absent Benefactor problem. We have a machine. It’s got these meters on it, lights, it’s fantastic, just fantastic.”

  “A God machine?” Billy says.

  “A God detector,” Laurent says. “Banks of lights. I think there’s, I don’t know, 777 LEDs. Magnificent to behold. It’s on constantly. Staffed round the clock. It’s designed so that if we detect Benefactor activity the thing will go off like a Christmas tree, if you’ll pardon the joke. I can take you up there, if you want, it’s on three, in our secure room. You could have a look.”

  “Does it ever—has it ever lit up?”

  Laurent’s smile fades. “No,” he says.

  “Then it’s just a box, isn’t it?” Billy says, with no small sadness.

  Neither of them says anything for a moment. Finally Billy turns again, to go, this time for real.

  “At least take my card,” Laurent says. “So that when things get really bad you have a way to get in touch with me.”

  “I don’t want your card,” Billy says. “I just want cab fare.”

  “I’ll give you one if you take the other.”

  And this, at last, is a proposition to which Billy can agree.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THIRD-GUESSING

  WHEN NOT TO TIP • LEAVING YOUR MARK • YOUR DIGGING THROUGH GARBAGE GAME • DESTROY ALL GOLFERS • BEAUTIFUL MACHINES • SIMPLE PLANS • MAGIC VS. SHOTGUNS • COMPOST FLAVOR • GOING TO FLORIDA • NOT GOING HOME • INTO THE VESTIBULE

  Before long Billy’s back in Brooklyn, at Barometer. He opts not to tip his cabbie, which he feels pretty bad about, but at least it leaves him with three bucks in his pocket. Three bucks is not really enough to do much on if he can’t find his shit, but he’ll at least be able to get a MetroCard, or use a pay phone: reach someone, begin explaining things.

  The numbers of everyone he knows, of course, are stored in his phone.

  As he hurries around to the weedy alley behind Barometer, hobbled by the insistent pressure of his bladder, he tries desperately to remember Denver’s number. He cycles through all the Queens exchanges he can recall in the hopes that one might jog his memory. 264? 267? For some reason, the number that keeps bobbing up, unbidden, is the Ghoul’s: it has a certain playful rhythmic character that keeps it bouncing around in Billy’s skull, like a billiard ball ricocheting around a china shop, annihilating every other phone number Billy has ever known.

  Once he’s marginally shielded from the street, he’s finally able to take that piss. He luxuriates in the experience. It may be the grandest piss he’s ever taken. In a burst of exuberance he opts to write his name in giant cursive across the pavement: he gets all the way through BILLY and about
halfway through a magnificent R before he finally empties out. Mine, he thinks with satisfaction, as he looks over the result.

  Okay: Take a Piss is officially off his list. Now for everything else. Let’s see: Denver hates him, everyone else thinks he sucks, he’s losing his job probably right now, he’s locked out of his apartment, he can’t afford his rent, Jørgen’s still missing, and, oh yeah, the world is still supposed to perish by fire.

  First things first. Phone, wallet, keys. Hope you brought your Digging Through Garbage game, he tells himself grimly as he advances on the Dumpster, you’re going to need it.

  He doesn’t actually need it, he quickly learns, because a long iron security bar prevents the Dumpster’s lid from being opened more than a single inch, keeping out the curious, the needy, and the desperate alike. Turns out Billy actually needed to bring his Lock-Picking game. He doesn’t, of course, have any Lock-Picking game to bring.

  He tries to open up the Dumpster again. He checks the lock, as if he’ll notice something about it he didn’t notice the first time. He considers going around to ask someone from the Barometer staff, explaining the situation, asking whether he can use their key, until he remembers that they don’t open until six.

  Fuck it, he thinks, not for the first time today. I’ll just wait. Some kind of Plan B dimly takes shape in his mind, wherein he hauls ass across town and shows up to work, but the idea of showing up to work three hours late and out of uniform just to find out whether or not he’s been fired is too demoralizing to really constitute an option.

  So. He looks for a place to sit, a milk crate or a cardboard box, and, finding nothing, he just leans up against a utility pole.

  He stands. He waits. He shuffles. He longs yearningly for the distraction of a cigarette. After three minutes, he’s cold and bored, wishing for something to happen.

  And that’s when the Devil appears at the mouth of the alley, wearing a hefty black peacoat over a vivid shirt of electric blue, an acute contrast against the grays of the November morning. For a moment Billy is actually glad to see him, an impression that is dispelled the second Lucifer throws his arms wide in a gesture that strikes Billy as being about as welcoming as a carnivorous plant slowly peeling itself open.

  “Billy!” Lucifer says. “Good morning!”

  He strides into the alley, takes three steps and then pauses at Billy’s signature, written in cooling piss. He stares blankly at it, as if it is a message that he cannot quite decide whether to decode. Eventually he takes a cautious step around it and proceeds on.

  Once he’s close enough, he repeats the arms-thrown-wide gesture. It does not improve with proximity. Billy edges away a bit. Lucifer holds the gesture for a second, then lets it devolve into an elaborate shrug, and from there into a tiny act of grooming: he picks a fleck of ash from the peacoat’s heavy cuff.

  “Hi,” Billy says, when he’s through.

  “It is good to see you again, Billy Ridgeway,” Lucifer says. “How are you?”

  “Kinda shitty, actually,” Billy says.

  “Oh?” Lucifer says, although he sounds bored, and his gaze flicks away to something else. “What is the trouble?”

  “Well, let me see,” Billy says. “Oh, yeah, I was Tased last night, for starters,” he says, although as this complaint leaves his mouth he recalls that Lucifer was Tased last night, too, and doesn’t seem inclined to whine about it. He wonders, briefly and unhappily, whether the Devil is a better man than he.

  “Ah, yes, that,” Lucifer says. “The Right-Hand Path does enjoy its little toys, it is true. A nasty assortment of people. You know what they did to me last night, after they had me down?”

  “No?” Billy says.

  “They burned me alive. In the basement. A classic Manifestation Disruption maneuver, really, right out of their manual, but I would have liked to have pointed out to them that there’s a way to do it without savoring the ghoulish aspects with such evident relish.”

  Billy blinks. “You seem to have recovered well.”

  “We must not dwell on the past,” says Lucifer. “Let us look forward instead. You’ll recall that you pledged to have developed a response to my proposition by this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Billy says, frowning. He always forgets that his stalling mechanisms have a finite life span.

  “I think,” Lucifer says, and then he pauses, composing the utterance. “I think that we have reached a rather specific point, Billy Ridgeway, a juncture, if you will. At this point, you must look within yourself, deeply, and ask yourself which future you want. A future in which—”

  Billy doesn’t need to hear the rest. He has an answer. He hasn’t looked within himself all that deeply, not deeply at all, really, but he can find this answer in the shallows, and he feels certain that he won’t get a better answer at the end of a more careful and sustained reflection.

  “I just want my life back,” Billy answers. “Future? Shit, at this point I’d be happiest if I just got to go back to what my life was three days ago. Where I don’t have to deal with Timothy Ollard, or the Right-Hand Path, or, well, or you. Where I have a job, and some friends, and my wallet, and my keys, and maybe a girlfriend if I play my cards right, and don’t have to worry about everyone in the world being burned alive. So if there’s some funky satanic thing you can do with time, I’m going to ask you to do it, cause I just want to go back.”

  Lucifer gives him a long look. “No you don’t,” he finally says.

  “I beg your pardon?” Billy says. For all Lucifer’s odd misrecognition of certain social graces, this is the first thing he’s said that Billy’s actually taken some level of offense to.

  “You think you want to go back to that life,” Lucifer says. “It seems safe and familiar. But Billy.” He leans down a little, gets his face closer to Billy’s, and begins to speak more softly. “I want you to really think for a minute, about what you really wanted for yourself, once upon a time, before you told yourself that it wasn’t possible, before you tamed your hope and your ambition.”

  “Okay?” Billy says, and his mind goes completely blank.

  “You’re not doing it,” Lucifer says. “I can tell, just from looking at you.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Billy. I want you to think. I want you to think back. Not back to three days ago, but back to when you were sixteen. In Ohio. I want you to remember your first job. What was your first job. Tell me.”

  “My first job,” Billy says. “I worked at the driving range.”

  “You worked at the driving range,” Lucifer says. “What were your job duties?”

  “My—job duties? Uh. I drove a golf cart back and forth, collecting balls. For like hours at a time. It was a pretty shitty job.”

  “That’s right, Billy,” Lucifer says. “It was a shitty job. You didn’t even like golf.”

  “No. I hated golf. And I hated golfers. I used permanent marker to make a T-shirt that said DESTROY ALL GOLFERS. And they didn’t like me either. They used to aim for my cart while I was driving around out there.”

  “Of course they did,” Lucifer says. “My point here, Billy, is not to ask you to relive whatever you suffered at the slings and arrows of the ignorant, but rather to remind you of the reward that awaited you at the end of that summer. Your girlfriend of the time was saving up to take a trip to Zurich and your best friend was saving up to buy his first used car. You were also saving your money, Billy. Do you remember? Do you remember what those long hours on the golf course bought you?”

  “Yes,” Billy says, quietly, after a minute of looking down at his battered canvas sneakers.

  “What was it?” Lucifer says, his voice almost a whisper now.

  “It was an Olivetti Valentine S,” Billy says.

  “An Olivetti Valentine S,” Lucifer repeats. “A typewriter. You didn’t need a typewriter. Your family had a computer. So why did you buy an Olivetti?”

  “It was—” Billy says, his mood sullen, complexly tangled. “It was a beautiful machine.
”

  “That’s not why,” Lucifer says. “If you wanted a beautiful machine you could have saved for a Harley-Davidson. You could have saved for a Braun stereo. But instead you saved for an Olivetti typewriter. Tell me why, Billy.”

  “Because it’s—”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because,” Billy says, “because real writers used typewriters.”

  “That’s right,” says Lucifer.

  Billy remembers the draft of an early first novel that he wrote on that typewriter, his senior year of high school and first year of college, this thing about the murder of a young man in a quiet rural town. He still has it in a box somewhere, terrible, probably, but he finished it, three hundred pages hammered out on that Olivetti, and he remembers the feeling of confidence and authority that came from using that machine to make marks on paper. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to produce those feelings so sustainably.

  “You envisioned a future for yourself, then, didn’t you?” Lucifer says.

  Billy had. That senior year of high school was when he first started drinking coffee, and he remembers hooking up a Mr. Coffee in his room at home, up on the third floor, and he would wake on cold mornings before the sun was up, before he’d need to trudge to where the school bus would pick him up, and he would sit at his desk, in a ratty plum-colored bathrobe, drinking coffee and smoking his first-ever cigarettes and clacking out pages, and he would feel certain that, in some important way, he was making a template for the rest of his life.

  He also remembers selling that typewriter, five years ago, on eBay, a hard month, between jobs, remembers the good feeling of an extra hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, even though it disappeared quickly into a few overdue bills, a new shirt for a job interview, groceries, beer, condoms, smokes, a couple of books.

  Lucifer goes on: “You aren’t allowing yourself to feel that hope again, that ambition, Billy. I promise you the kind of future you really want and you throw it away in favor of take me back to three days ago? What did you have three days ago that you won’t have in the future that I’m offering you? A job? Another shitty job? Your wallet? Your keys? These things are all replaceable: a few days’ hassle, nothing more. Your friends? You’re thirty years old, Billy Ridgeway, you don’t get to be thirty years old without passing through times when your friends are mad at you. It’s passed before and it’ll pass now. A girlfriend? Denver? You think she won’t come back to you when your novel gets published?”