He’s counting hairs on the back of his hands when some change in sound and motion makes him look up. He feels heavier as he struggles to his feet and presses his back against the wall. He shuts his eyes and feels for changes in the elevator’s motion. A soft chime sounds and he opens his eyes. The down button is no longer lit. His knees buckle with returning weight as the elevator slows and stops. He watches himself watching. No fear and neither arrogance. Not impatient but not calm. He looks like someone begging at the back door. Well, that’s what I am. Sing for my supper.
The door glides open and wipes him away. He looks out on an executive office, Danish Modern furniture, high ceilings, lots of right angles. Well-appointed in muted gray and russet with teal accents and brightly lit in afternoon sunlight streaming in from the lightly tinted glass that takes up all the back wall. Basking in the sun outside the window is Los Angeles.
THE VIEW IS from on high and facing south. Niko sees the tangled bands of Harbor, Golden State, and Santa Monica freeways. Something wrong though. To his left stands the ranked array of downtown skyscrapers through which he was ferried by the Checker Cab, chasing Jem a life ago it seems. Library Tower rises pale green above the other buildings. In the distance straight ahead lies the long geometry of LAX. Beyond it angled coastline. Past that he can even see the outline of Catalina Island. In the middle distance the miniature downtown of Century City, and immediately before him Beverly Hills. But to the right are the Hollywood Hills, the three domes of the Griffith Observatory, the crooked teeth of the Hollywood sign. He shouldn’t be able to see all of this at once from the same window. And certainly not from this high up.
No cars on the freeways. No motion on the streets. No toy planes stacked up for LAX approach. No street traffic or police helicopters. Ten million people gone.
Nonetheless as Niko looks out on his adopted city a sudden knife of homesickness slides between his ribs. I want to wake up in our bed with Jem beside me. I want to make her a cup of that nasty lapsang souchong tea she drinks. I want to be stuck in traffic on the 405. I want to hear the breaking waves on Malibu and watch the sun sink toward Japan. The living map of half his life is spread before him, so unexpected and heartbreakingly real that Niko simply stares until nearby motion brings him back.
Behind a curved executive desk is a black leather swivel chair, and Niko has a moment as the chair turns toward him to discern with fevered distinction the desktop cluttered with papers, opened envelopes, Post-Its, a pencil cup holding scissors and a letter opener, stacked in and out trays, an Apple laptop, an intercom phone, a cherrywood display rack holding antique fountain pens, a placard reading THE LUCK STOPS HERE. A moment as the chair turns toward him to note the room is strident with the ticking of an unseen clock. An awful moment before the chair turns around in which he knows who he’ll see sitting in it.
Niko stares at retro shades above a perfect grin. “Niko-mancer. What took you so long?”
NIKO PICKS UP his guitar case and leaves the stinking elevator. It closes silently behind him. He firms his grip and heads slowly toward the son of a bitch behind the desk. He wonders how he feels.
“Sit down, sit down.” Phil waves at one of the chairs facing his desk and presses a button on his intercom and says, “Salome.” A door opens and a sad abomination enters the room. Long and tan and lean and lovely, a naked pair of woman’s legs strides across the plush gray carpet with a jingle of bells. The pubis is sparse haired, the wide hips end bluntly at the waistline. A silver edged glass tray rests on top. A woman sawn in half and made into furniture. The tray bears a Waterford ship’s decanter filled with gently sloshing brown liquor, a matching oldfashioned glass, a matching ashtray holding a book of matches and a pack of Swisher Sweets, a baggie of white powder, a floral patterned silver teaspoon, and an antique glass hypodermic syringe with fingerloops on the barrel and plunger.
Niko stares as the human serving tray stops beside him. Several toes have silver rings. An anklet of little silver bells jingles and the liquor in the clear decanter sloshes gently with the legs’ faint tremble.
“Go on,” says Phil. “The whiskey was distilled at Old Oscar Pepper; the china white’s uncut. The Swishers, well.” He shrugs. “I’ve got some killer Dunhill Cabinetta Robustos over here, but to each his own. Go on, help yourself.”
Niko finds he is not too exhausted or indifferent to hate. He knows Phil expects him to refuse out of pride or defiance or unwillingness to feel obligation. Instead he sets down his guitar case and pulls out a chair and sits down heavily and pours himself a stiff one and then opens the pack of Swishers. Phil watches like a man watching a woman undress for him as Niko knocks back the whiskey and lights a cigarillo and reads the matchbook cover as he smokes. Enjoy Travel Luxury on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
“People who collect those, you know what they’re called?”
“Yeah, I know.” The happy burning in his gut. That’s the best god damned rotgut he’s ever tasted and he’s tasted a lot. The cigarillo, well. It still feels good. He puts the pack in his jacket pocket and is startled to feel something already there. Oh right, the magnetic keyholder.
Phil just can’t take his eyes off him. “I gotta tell you, Niko-pedia, you just keep on surprising me.”
Niko blows smoke Phil’s way. “Makes two of us.”
Phil glances at the baggie on the tray. An eyebrow raises above the rim of his shades.
Niko shakes his head. “I know when to stop.”
“Do you.”
Niko says nothing. He polishes off the doubleshot of whiskey and finishes his smoke. The unseen clock counts down the time. The whiskey goes to work and by the time he finishes the cigarillo he’s buzzing like a bumbly bee and who the hell cares. Maybe that’s the way it ought to be right here and now.
When the cigarillo is down to its final inch he stubs it out in the ashtray and looks at Phil.
The human serving tray turns and jingles from the room.
Phil watches Niko watch the legs stride off. “Perfect isn’t she? You can set your drink on her and fuck her at the same time.” He slaps the desk again and laughs. Sees Niko isn’t going to play along and nods. “You want to get down to business I suppose.”
“My business is with your boss. You’re a glorified mailman.”
“Well that’s a little problematic, Niko-lonic.”
“I don’t care. You know how this all goes down.”
“Oh I do indeed. It’s an old song and we’ve all heard it a hundred times before. And after all this time and all these tries you never learn.”
Niko stands to leave and Phil stands too. The air turns ugly. Niko senses that the walls and the desk and the view are all props for his benefit. That just beyond them decimating chaos lies waiting to tear through. But the game they’re playing has been played enough to have become a ritual and the players myths. He is certain Phil will abide. Perhaps is even constrained to somehow.
“I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to play for your boss.”
Phil’s grin is perfectly insincere. “Then let’s take you to him.” He steps away from his desk but then remembers something and presses the intercom. “Mr. Alighieri, push my appointments back—” he looks Niko up and down and then glances at his huge Rolex “—an hour. Got that?”
Terrible raw screams come tinny and distorted from the intercom. Phil grins at Niko as he comes around the desk. “We’ve got him translating Dan Brown into terza rima.” He gestures at the elevator standing open for them. Niko hesitates and Phil touches his elbow. “You’ve got to trust me, Niko-mander. You got nowhere else to go.”
Niko glances sidelong at Phil’s inscrutable shades. He doesn’t trust the son of a bitch as far as he could throw a fit. But Phil’s right. He has nowhere else to go. He has almost literally hit bottom. In his experience what you likely find there is a shovel.
He pulls his arm from Phil’s grasp and picks up his guitar and steps into the elevator. Maybe this has all been willed. Maybe as the priso
ner of myth there is only one outcome and my choices matter not one bit. But I’m damned if I’ll be led.
THE URINE STINK is gone. The button no longer has a down arrow but a large B. Phil presses it and the mirrored door closes and the car starts down. Niko and his nemesis in this small plunging room.
“Mind if I ask you something?”
Niko shrugs.
“Why do you do this to yourself? I mean it’s clear to me that even you don’t believe in this anymore. You’re just going through the motions.”
Niko stares at empty space beside his bedraggled reflection. What is there to say. What difference could it make.
Phil shrugs and looks up at the ceiling and nods. “Just curious.”
The elevator slows and stops and opens onto a bright white corridor. Phil gestures after-you and Niko steps into a long white hallway set with black doors.
Phil searches his coat pockets as he walks ahead of Niko. “It’s funny. These deals, these contracts. They’re all sucker bets, you know that?” They stop before a featureless black door and Phil pulls out a ring of long oldfashioned iron keys. “The people who sign have the talent not to need them.” Phil selects a key and inserts it into the door. “I mean, you think we give you that?” He smirks and glances at Niko. “A guy either hears the music or he doesn’t. All we do—” he twists the key “—is open doors.” He pushes the door and it seems to disappear as it opens in on blackness. “And you all sell out so cheap.” He turns toward the room. “Hey Lou. Brought you a visitor.”
Niko hears scrambling and heavy puffing and a certain rustle he has come to recognize as leather wings.
“Go ahead,” says Phil. “He’ll love seeing you. No one ever comes here.”
“After you.”
Phil grins. “You gotta have more faith, Niko-statin.” He steps into the room and darkness swallows him. After a moment Niko leans his guitar case against the white wall and walks in after him. His shadow falls into the trapezoid of doorway light. All he sees is white floor unidentifiably stained and the ghost outline of Phil nearby.
Rustling wings again. Something large moves in the darkened room and by the time he registers its motion it has rushed into his little island of light and he is all enfolded by its wings. He staggers back and raises his hands to strike the reeking thing that whimpers as it holds him slobbering. It’s huge and muscular and dark with skin the texture of a shark. Still holding him it slides down his body’s length to kneel before him sobbing loudly. Great convulsions heave its muscled back. It cries his name in a voice that stirs dim recognition buried deep within his cells like the encoded cancer trigger that is humanity’s heritage. A primordial self has argued with this voice. Nations have fallen beneath its easy guile. The strong and crumpled figure hugs Niko round the knees like a mournful child and a horntip rasps his jeans as the sorry creature turns its face up to him. Even in the scant light Niko sees the goldleaf shine of its goat eyes, the glint of tear tracks on the jetblack leather face.
Niko reaches out, he cannot stop himself, he reaches out and pats the Devil on the head.
The dark beside him laughs. “Now isn’t that sweet?”
Niko cannot look away from the idiot madman grinning up at him with a cannibal’s drooling mouth of sharpened teeth. “What have you done to him?”
“Me? Not a thing, Niko-lepsy. Poor bastard’s crazy as a shit-house rat.”
The Devil cries and cries at Niko’s feet.
“It was the job. The old bat just wasn’t cut out for it in the long run. It all got to him.”
Niko looks toward where Phil’s voice emerges from the darkness.
“Nobody did this but him. Scout’s honor.” He shakes his head at the pathetique before him. “He was the fairhaired boy before he got handed this gig. Never got over getting the boot. Used to pine all the time. That Milton, he had him pegged. All heart, no brain, attention span of a gnat. Took everything personal.”
Niko wants to push away from the ruined glory of the abject figure before him yet he also wants to give it what mortal comfort he can provide. As the fallen god that Geryon showed him chained to the mountain had radiated patience, so this creature radiates sorrow. Infinite grief from eternal sundering, sad and passionate as a graveyard statue. And truly deeply mad.
“You want to know why your old story always played the way it did?” the disembodied voice continues. “There’s your answer. Mr. Passion. Mr. Impulse Buy. Every time, you come down here and you want to make a deal. You grind away at the poor sap until he gives in and lets you play. You’re so blindly hopeful and he’s such a sucker for anything that lets him feel something. It’s pitiful to watch. And of course your music nails him every time, because the spongehearted son of a bitch would cry if a butterfly kicked him in the head. So he hands you back that whore you just can’t live without and you and Resurrection Barbie skip on out of here, Jack and Jill go up the hill like their asses are on fire. But whatever mask your punkass soul is wearing there’s always a catch and it’s always the same. Don’t look back. Just like Lot’s wife in my favorite bedtime story. Three simple words, no big deal. And even though you’ve committed more violations than a priest at a whorehouse to come down here, and welshed on an agreement and then even dickered a new deal, even after you get what you want but don’t deserve and head on out of here, you still go right ahead and fuck the dog. Don’t you, Niko-lama? You just have to look back and screw it up. You want to know why, Niko-wafer? Because you’re a loser. A fuckup wetbrain hophead loser.”
Niko crouching looks into mad goldleaf eyes. The Devil smiles, the Devil drools, the Devil croons his name. Niko’s very soul shudders. “Well. Thanks for the newsflash.” He touches the Devil’s cheek and the Devil nuzzles his palm. Tears spring to Niko’s eyes. Why this should be tragic he doesn’t know but it is. It is. He feels he’s present at the fall and plunder of some great and frightening empire. Niko firmly pats the great dark burly shoulder. The gesture of a man bidding farewell to a horse about to be put down. Gently he unfolds the shuddering wings from around his legs and unclenches the enormous hands. Stands and pulls the Devil upright. Nods up at that hopeful insane face and then turns toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asks the darkness.
“To get my guitar.”
“No can do, Niko-naut.”
Niko stops with his back to Phil as a black flower blooms in his chest. “Crazy or not,” he tells the bright white hall, “my deal is with him.”
“Your deal is with whoever’s in charge.”
Niko looks at his shoes. They’ve sure covered some ground haven’t they. “I thought you were just a messenger.”
“We all have our public face. Don’t we, Niko-modius?”
Niko turns back toward the room. The Devil huddles just beyond the doorway light. Phil’s form is convoluted dark before him. “So the inmates have taken over the asylum.”
“The inmates are the asylum, Niko-varitch. Always were. Let’s just say there’s been a corporate restructuring at the executive level since your last little venture down this way. Carpe nocturnum, and all like that.”
“And you won’t let me play for him. Is that it? It’s all been just some big joke.”
“Oh no no no. I wouldn’t let you come this far for nothing. Who am I to mess with a tried and true old story? Everything’s the same. The masks may change but not the play. You’ll still have your little audition. And if your music does its thing well hey. We’ll hand the man his Kewpie doll. It could happen.”
Mephistopheles steps into the light and smiles. “But you won’t be playing to win him over. This time out you play for me.”
XXI.
NOTES ON HER SLEEPING
THIS TIME THE elevator’s single button bears an L and when it opens Niko looks out on the sterile and depopulated lobby of an office building. Phil walks briskly through the lobby without waiting for Niko, and when Niko emerges from the building blinking in the bright Los Angeles afternoon Phi
l is standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and looking bored. Hot dry clear late summer day. Niko begins to sweat under the first sunlight he has felt in a long long time. The air smells like nothing at all, and that is pure perfume. Niko puts his hands up to it. Wants to linger here and gape at the unbelievable fact of Los Angeles around him, a city become near mythical as the reality of Hell usurped it.
Then he sees what waits for them at the curb. “No way. Fuck you.”
Phil smirks and pulls out a pack of nicotine gum. “Now now Nikotchka. I went to a lot of trouble to get just the right venue for your little show.” He unwraps a stick of gum and throws the wadded wrapper to the sidewalk. “We gotta get there somehow, Nico-rette.” He folds the gum in half and puts it in his mouth and offers the pack to Niko.
Who ignores it. “If your elevator can open out on this it can open on wherever we need to go.” He means to sound angry but he hears the note of desperation in his tone.
“All part of the act, Niko-matic. If you can’t stand the heat.” He shrugs and smacks his gum.
Niko scowls and knows he has no choice. He’s come here making demands. If he wants Phil to abide by them, he’ll have to accommodate Phil’s whims in return. They both know he’s standing on shaky ground.
Niko turns toward the curb and hoods his eyes against the glare. For a moment the only three sounds are the intermittent wind, the wet smack and pop of Phil’s gum, and the subtle purr of a rare and immaculately maintained twelve-cylinder engine as the Black Taxi idles by the curb with the Driver holding open the suicide door.
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