“You’re not wrong,” Anil says, staring numbly into the screen.
“Anton Cirrus,” Billy says, “just said that I suck.”
And he’s right, Billy thinks. All that time, all those hours spent in front of the computer, practicing, doing the work, and in the end all it will ever mean is that I just suck more and more profoundly.
“This could be one of those things,” the Ghoul says.
“What things?” Billy says, hollowly.
“Any publicity is good publicity?”
“No,” Billy says. “This isn’t good publicity. This is bad publicity.”
“As long as they spell your name right …” Anil says.
“Are you kidding?” Billy says. “Anton Cirrus just told, what, twenty thousand of the most influential readers in the country that I suck. Is this—is this the first thing that comes up when you Google my name now?”
“I don’t know,” Anil says, fumbling with the phone.
“Google it,” Billy demands.
“Don’t Google it,” says the Ghoul. “Just leave it alone.”
“Give me the phone,” Billy says.
A brief scuffle ensues, ending with the Ghoul’s phone firmly in the Ghoul’s bony grip.
“Just let it go,” says the Ghoul.
“I don’t believe it,” Billy says, although he clearly does. “I suck.”
No one seems to be in the mood to correct him. They all stare awkwardly off in different directions for a minute and then the food hits the table. Billy gazes dispiritedly at his eggplant Parmesan sandwich. He doesn’t want it.
“You should eat,” says Anil, after a minute.
“I don’t want to,” Billy says.
“Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” Anil hazards.
“Fuck you,” Billy says, but he takes the point. He lifts the sandwich to his mouth, and bites in. Something is wrong, though. It tastes disgusting.
“Eccch,” he says, around the bolus of food in his mouth. “This is wrong.”
“The sandwich is wrong?” says the Ghoul.
“It’s disgusting,” Billy says. He thrusts it toward Anil. “Taste this.”
“I don’t know why you persist in thinking of me as the kind of person who would taste something prefaced with It’s disgusting,” Anil says.
“It’s just—I dunno,” Billy says. “It just tastes off. Will you just try it? I’m having the kind of day where I need a second opinion to make sure I’m not going crazy.”
Anil shrugs, leans over and gives it a bite. Chews, swallows, makes a thoughtful face. “I don’t know,” he says. “It tastes normal to me. What’s off about it?”
“I don’t know,” Billy says. “The eggplant just tastes disgusting somehow.” And then he realizes what has happened.
“That fucker,” he says, rearing to his feet. “That soulless, blackhearted motherfucker.”
They assume he’s still talking about Anton Cirrus, and they try to calm him, but by this point Billy is inconsolable. He throws some money down on the table and storms out, leaving his sandwich uneaten, making a beeline for the subway. He wants to go home. He wants to go home, throw himself down onto his bed, and cry. Or at the very least smoke some of Jørgen’s weed and watch some online video, disappear into Argentium Astrum if he can get it to stream right.
On the platform he checks one final time to see if Denver has tried to reach him. He holds the phone in his hand for a good long time, willing it to do something. He resists the urge to dash it to pieces on the track. And then finally he shoves it back down into his pocket, and while his hand is in there he digs around through the trash he’s accumulated over the course of the day, and he pulls out Lucifer’s business card.
Lucifer Morningstar, Comprehensive Consulting. No number or anything. How the fuck was this even supposed to work? Not that he would call even if there was a number there. It’s been a bad day, everything important to him ruined and tattered, but even so, that doesn’t mean that he should just become Satan’s lackey.
You should have at least heard him out, he tells himself, just found out what he wanted you to do. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad.
Maybe, maybe. But maybes do him no good now: his chance, whatever it was, has passed. Billy puts the card back in his pocket and gets on the subway and rides for three stops: miserable, racked with regrets, but at least feeling certain that there’s nothing to be done now. He feels resolved, nearly calm. And perhaps it’s something about this near-calmness that causes him to be not exactly one hundred percent surprised when he climbs the stairs to his apartment and keys in to find the Devil sitting there, on the sofa, as though he had never left.