by Glen Duncan
‘What we’ve got to nail,’ I said, lighting up one of Harriet’s left-behind Gauloises,’ what we’ve really got to pin down – because everything else will flow from it, you know –’
‘I know, man. Christ I know . . .’
‘Is the moment I turn. The moment I rebel.’
‘Run with it. Run with it.’
‘Michael’s just laid down that infamous accusation of pride, right?’ I sprang up from the bed and let the city’s lights catch me on Gunn’s better side. ‘And I’m like . . . “Pride?” It’s a whisper at this stage, a Pacino whisper: “Pride?” But this is one of those whisper-builds-to-shout scenes. “Is it pride to want a place of your own? Is it pride to want to be independent?” Little by little louder, right? “Is it pride to want to do something in the universe?” Louder: “Is it pride to want to be somebody?” Louder still: “Is it pride to want to live with dignity?” Then full fucking throttle: “Is it pride to get sick of KISSING AN OLD MAN’S ASS?”’
Trent shook his head in ecstatic disbelief, like a sent musician. ‘Christ, man you should take the fucking part,’ he said.
I pointed at him with my cigarette. ‘You, dear boy,’ I admonished, ’are an appalling flatterer.’
I can’t tell you how good I was feeling. Looking at things like daffodils and clouds is wonderful. Looking at things like daffodils and clouds having just spent £372 on dinner and dropped two tabs of ecstasy in preparation for a five-hour shift with XXX-Quisite’s friendliest platinum blonde double-act, that’s really wonderful. I know what the majority of you think about all this. All this sex and money and drugs. You think: people who live like that never end up happy. You need to think that in just the way men with small penises need to think size doesn’t matter. It’s understandable. The rich, the famous, the big-dicked, the slim-and-gorgeous – they incite an envy so urgent that you can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live like that never end up happy. Yes, you’re right. But neither do you. And in the meantime, they’ve had all the sex and drugs and money. (Gunn, I might add, retained his carious Catholicism largely because atheism would have forced him to accept that nothing terrible was going to happen to people like Jack Nicholson and Hugh Hefner and Bill Wyman after they died – a proposition he couldn’t have borne.)
‘How come no one’s done this movie?’ Trent asked. ‘I mean you’d think, right? Spielberg. Lucas. Cameron. Mind you, the FX budget’s gonna go through the fucking ozone layer.’
‘If we write it, they will pay,’ I said.
‘We do want effects, right?’ Trent said. ‘I mean, we’re not seeing this as some sort of Beckett existentialist struggle crap, are we?’
‘We want the biggest film since Titanic, Trent,’ I said.
‘And none of that “no big names” shit, either,’ Trent said, between toots from his own monogrammed spoon. ‘These film school assholes who think it’s a sin to use named talent. That’s so fucking uncool.’
‘Can I fuck your buns, Trent?’
‘I mean for Christ’s – what?’
‘Nothing. A verbal tick, dear boy. You’re right. So uncool. Harriet wants Julia Roberts for Eve.’ I said all this and managed to keep a straight face. I’d like some credit for that.
‘Too bad Bob De Niro already played Lucifer in Angel Heart’, Trent said, rubbing the tip of his nose, furiously, as if trying to erase it. ‘And Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick. Fuck, and Pacino just did Satan in that piece of shit with Keanu Reeves.’
(Shall I tell you what the list of actors who’ve turned down the chance to play me looks like? It looks short.)
‘Depp,’ I said. ‘Keanu’d jump at it like a gibbon – but we’ve got to have some fucking ability. We should think about lining up some cameos, too. Maybe some rock dinosaur with false teeth to play God. Robert Plant with a beard.’
‘Yeah, but do we even want a guy God?’ Trent asked. ‘I’m thinking more like hand-star-egg-eye-cosmic-dust-Giger-secretion stuff.’
‘I like the way you think, Trent,’ I said. ‘I like the way you think.’
All this has not been without effect on my relationship with Violet, naturally. (Here’s a question: do you think keeping Gunn attached to Violet will be a good thing for him?) Thanks to her never having read Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest, I’ve had little trouble ’reminding’ her that it was the story of Lucifer’s rebellion, fall, and battle with Christ on earth.
‘It’s going to be the biggest marketing campaign ever,’ I told her, over daiquiris at Swansong. I’ve kept quiet about the Ritz. As far as she knows I’m still living at the Clerkenwell pad. Essential, too, to keep her away from Harriet and Trent – essential if I’m to sustain the illusion that she’d get within remote imaging range of a part. So far the prodigal spending – my wallet’s attention deficit disorder – has kept her enthralled; but it’s only a matter of time before she starts to expect the meet-and-greets, the air kisses, the Midas touch handshake, the inevitable sack-negotiations. Everything, down here, is always just a matter of Time.
‘Harriet’s got one of her people talking to McDonald’s on Thursday. The McDevil. We’re getting the “Quake” team for the CD-Rom game. Oh yeah – and we’re going to do collectable cards – the Fallen Angels. Like Top Trumps.’
‘Top Trumps?’
‘Harriet’s already started cutting the smaller investors out of the picture. Prince Faquit’s just inked four-point-five over oysters at Non. You can’t believe how easy it is to get money from people for film. As long as it’s an incredibly large amount, that is. Indies can’t cover the grip’s fucking pizza.’
‘You did tell her about me, didn’t you, Declan?’ Violet asked, having assumed that for the last few seconds I’d decided to drop into an African language.
‘Yes.’
‘No, but I mean you did, didn’t you?’
‘I’ve told you. Eve.’
Violet, sitting with legs crossed and one stiletto hanging off her toes, just went very still. Very present.
‘Don’t fuck about with me, Declan,’ she said.
I put my hand on her knee. ‘It’s not my call,’ I said. ‘I mean I’m not the casting director. They’ve got Hagar Hefflefinger, you know. She’s very tough. Very good. Tough in a good way. Good in a tough way. The way casting directors have to be. So like I say, it’s not my call. But it is my script – how would you feel about Salome, by the way?’
‘Who?’
‘Herod’s daughter. A princess. Redhead, too, you know, so I was thinking, obviously.’
‘I knew you were lying.’
‘What?’
‘About the Eve part. You know I’m not a complete fucking idiot.’
Violet’s nothing if not a quick assimilator. Initially, news of my restored Rodge was greeted with a dimpled smile and a dash to the disgorged boudoir, where my girl administered fellatio of such froth and dalliance that my eyebrows, raised at its commencement, refused to come down until it was all over. (Watching in the mirror turned out to be a bad idea, what with Gunn’s wayward gut and hairy legs, what with his double chin, dugs, and jug-handle ears, what with his body being a sort of anti-aphrodisiac – until, that is, I started seeing the pornographic potential in our aesthetic discrepancies . . .) But she’s sharp. She’s already started rationing her favours. The splurge was to establish that her currency was still good. Already, in the absence of an Actual Meeting With the Producer and the Director, she’s reined in her spending.
‘Violet,’ I said. ‘Violet. If it was up to me – but listen. Listen. I’m not the casting director, but I am having that consultation clause written in. Harriet’s getting the contracts drafted this week. But casting director or not – Hagar fucking Hefflefinger or not – Trent Bintock is the director of this film and Trent Bintock thinks I’m a creative genius. If I tell him we need to look at you for Eve – if I tell him we need to look at you for Eve . . . Do you hear what I’m saying?’
There had almost been tears. The jewel
led eyes had filled up. She closed them, now, for three, four, five seconds, breathing slowly through her nostrils.
‘Do you know who Harriet wants for Lucifer?’ I said. ‘Do you know who she was on the phone to last night?
Violet opened her eyes. We were in a familiar place now. I was the dad who’d frightened her – for her own good – and now, chastened, she was looking at me ready to be rescued from fear.
‘Johnny Depp,’ I said, quietly, then took a sip of my drink and looked out of the window.
She put her head down for a moment of introspective silence. When she looked up again, she wore a compact almost a bitter – smile.
‘We’ve earned this, Declan,’ she said. ‘D’you know what I mean? We’ve fucking earned this.’
There’s a common misconception about me. It’s a slander spread by the Church, namely that if you make a deal with me, I’ll cheat you. Poppycock, of course. I never cheat. Never have to. Ask Robert Johnson. Ask Jimmy Page. Humans are so deaf and blind to the ambiguities of their own languages, they concoct their wishes in terms so permeable that I can always grant them in a way they never imagined. I want to be as wealthy as my father. Fair enough. Nelchael crashes the markets, Dad’s bankrupt, and thanks for the soul, brother. A boneheaded example, obviously, but you’d be surprised how wide open you leave yourselves. (The punters who come off best with me are smart, dirty rotten scoundrels to start with, willing to sign over their afterlife care in exchange for the chance to become even dirtier, rottener scoundrels while still rightside of the grave.)
Any of these transactions is a no-lose situation for me. Even if you get your deal double-entendre-proof, even if, thanks to you dressing your heart’s desire in a semantic straitjacket, I’m compact-bound to give you what you want, still, at the end of an incredibly short time (all New Time’s short time to me), I’m going to get my hands on your soul. How can I put this? You really don’t want that to happen.
You might be one of the genuinely smart and dirty rotten scoundrels mentioned above, whose wish coincides with my overall design. You might, for example, want control over people’s minds, financial muscle, immunity from prosecution, access to kids, a personal harem, etc. Now if you really are smart, if I think you’ve got it in you, I might just slot you into a System. I’ll make you a media tycoon, or a dictator, or a cult leader, or a porn baron, or a drug tsar. As long as your evil’s got some scale, as long as it draws others in, and as long as you’re prepared to put in a bit of good old-fashioned graft – well, you’ll get what you wanted, the fame, the charisma, the wedge, the place in history, the six-year-olds, whatever. You get your kicks, I get a System operator, the Old Man gets a migraine, and – thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you? – I get your soul when you die.
So let the holy fathers prattle of lies and betrayals. Truth is I’m no welcher.
I have been done over once, mind you – a wretched Spaniard by the name of Don Fernando Morrales, not long before the close of the gorgeous sixteenth century. This young man was a piece of work. The only son of wealthy parents he spent the first years of his adult life racing through his fortune on an extraordinary diet of booze, whores and gambling. Built up quite a reputation for blasphemous debauches and criminal orgies. A natural, as they say. I gave him the odd nudge now and again when guilt tickled or imagination flagged, but by and large he was a works-well-on-his-own-initiative kind of sinner. To be honest with you I didn’t think he’d see twenty-five, what with the poxy scags and verminous rent boys into which he was dipping his redoubtable chorizo, not to mention the growing number of hacked-off dads whose daughters he’d rather irresponsibly impregnated; but, incredibly, he just kept on rocking in the free world until the money was gone. Now, as any suddenly blinded peeping tom will aver, the flames of desire burn with twice the fierceness in the absence of the means of gratification – and so it was with young Morrales, until finally I decided to drop in, make a deal, put him once and for all beyond the reach of redemption and his scrofulous soul into the infernal account.
I’ve looked back since and known that I must have been in a funny mood. It was a bad pain day, yes – sometimes I can barely manage the raised eyebrow and devilish grin – but something else, too . . . A shade of melancholy, perhaps? A sense that my best days were behind me? That the challenging work had already been done? (Foolish, in hindsight, given my achievements of the last 400 years, but I’m prone to moments of doubt just like everyone else. And I’m not talking little or nagging doubt. I’m talking crippling, existential, what-on-earth-is-the-point-of-it-all doubt. There have been days when I’ve just had to lie in a darkened room.) Anyway the point is that for whatever reason I wasn’t quite myself when I visited Morrales in the ritual room of one of his occult amigos, who, at Morrales’s insistence, had gone to the bogus and completely unnecessary trouble of’summoning’ me. Do please note those inverted commas, to signify facetiousness. You don’t, darling, ‘summon’ Lucifer. He’s not a fucking butler. Lucifer visits you. That’s all. If I feel it’s going to be in my interest to have direct dealings with you (and you really better hope I don’t) then I’ll come whether you attempt to ’summon’ me or not. If I don’t, no amount of spooky chanting, bare bums, sinister beards, fellated goats or murdered chickens is going to make the slightest difference, except to your carpet. Don’t get me wrong: you’ll have a blast. It just doesn’t work.
Damn these digressions. How did Gunn – how does one, ever finish anything? Morrales’s chum, one Carlos Antonio Rodriguez, was one of those chickenshit dabblers manifestly in it for the carnal extravagances. He’d argued long and hard with Fernando that the conjuring of His Satanic Majesty was both difficult and highly dangerous, but had finally – seeing that if he didn’t comply there was a good chance that Fernando would stick his sword through his, Carlos’s, head – capitulated and begun. He wasn’t ready for me when I appeared. (I’d consulted the manifestations wardrobe: yes, something . . . traditional, I think – although I’ll tell you for nothing, love, those cloven hooves are strictly bedroom.) I could tell he had a good couple of hours’ worth of incantatory twaddle lined-up, and the truth is I couldn’t sit through the Latin. Gave him quite a turn. So much of a turn, in fact, that he bemerded his hose and ran screaming from the room, leaving me alone with Fernando.
Don Fernando Morrales. Oy. Always when you least expect. . . sorry. Talking to myself when I should be talking to you. (You. I know who you are, you know. I know where you live. How does that make you feel? Secure?) Fernando, when all’s said and done, had some fucking cojones on him. He was scared. He was . . . ah . . . perspiring – but he held it together long enough to get through the negotiations. No surprises there: I’d get his soul, he’d get a wagonload of money, fatal accidents to an arm-long list of real and imagined enemies, and a lot – really an awful lot – of unhygienic nookie. So I dictated the wording of the contract and told him to open a vein for the bloody signature. (It’s not the piece of paper, obviously, which in any case I can’t carry back with me into the ether; it’s the act of signing. Blood seals it. That’s the way it’s always been. Ask Jimmeny. You can destroy the contract, materially – everyone does – but it won’t make a difference come time for collection. I can promise you that.) Anyway Fernando had just rolled up his sleeve and was inspecting his forearm for a safe spot to make the cut, when – God knows what put it into his head to do such a thing – he asked me straight out if it was true that I’d been present at the Crucifixion. When I told him yes, of course, he asked me, rather absurdly I thought, if I could draw a likeness of what I’d seen.
I should, strictly speaking, have searched Morrales’s soul a little more thoroughly. That was carelessness on my part, I admit. I was feeling peculiar. The pain was banging away like an autistic kettle-drummer and my heart . . . my heart . . . Oh all right not my heart, but it was one of those weird days when I could barely concentrate on what I was doing, when the blood-spattered and corpse-littered wake of my busy life tugged at me like a c
onundrum. How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the morning! Sometimes I let that run through my head and it’s the sound of a triumphal trumpet. Other times it just makes me terribly sad. Fernando – God knows why – had quoted it in an undertone, a whisper mortal ears wouldn’t have heard. (Isaiah wasn’t even talking about me when he said it. He was prophesying the fate of Merodach-baladan, who was not, as you might be thinking, one of the Harlem Globetrotters, but the King of Babylon. It’s just that sometimes human utterances accidentally align with the truths of Heaven and Hell. When that happens, the phrases stick in history like burrs.)
I did it telekinetically, the quill inked with Morrales’s blood. Never knew I had any artistic talent until that drawing emerged on the back of the unsigned contract. Never knew I was. . . you know . . . creative. Got lost in it, the challenge to keep the line honest, the strange state of suspension between absolute concentration and absolute blankness (it’s a Zen thing, apparently), the momentary dissolution of the boundary between subject and object, the fleeting transcendence of self. You know there are drawings that seem to say so much in so few lines? This was one of them. On top of all my other knacks and talents, I was supernaturally good at droring.
Too good for my own good, as it turned out. When I turned my attention back to Morrales I saw he was weeping piteously and tearing out hanks of his hair. He kissed the image (I’d been a bit flattering with Junior’s hairdo and beard, if you want the truth, but then so has practically every other painter in the history of art), wailing now as his tears mingled with the blood: Vade Satana: Scriptum est enim: Dominum Deum tuum adorabis, et illi soli seruies . . . Vade Satana . . . Vade Satana! Which, for the Classically challenged among you (that’s pretty much all of you, these days) translates as: Begone Satan: for it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.