The Weirdness(19)

“You brought really good coffee with you this morning.”

Lucifer says nothing for a long time. “That’s not a question,” he says, finally.

“Uhhh, sorry,” Billy says. “Question! My question was: I bet you can also get really good pot.”

Another lag. Billy waits, apprehensively.

“That is also not a question,” Lucifer says. And then another really long lag. And then, like an ancient machine starting up: “However, your assumption is correct. I rely upon a grower in Mendocino, when the situation calls for it.”

“Okay,” Billy says, relieved. “You have to get me some of that. I definitely want to try that.”

“I’ll consider it,” says Lucifer.

“I mean,” Billy says, anxious that maybe he’s overstepped his bounds. “Just to try it.”

“You would like it,” says Lucifer, peacefully.

“Good,” says Billy. “I like shit that I like.” He feels a little better. He takes a long blink. Geometric brocades shiver and furl behind his eyelids.

“Although I should point out that this,” Lucifer says, “is not bad.” Billy can hear him taking another pull.

“Yeah, my roommate has some connection,” Billy says. And he begins thinking about Jørgen. He frowns concertedly. He opens his eyes. He remembers Anil’s theory, the idea that Lucifer was actually just some out-of-town friend with Jørgen’s key, pulling an elaborate prank. It still doesn’t feel true, not even a little, but for Billy, marijuana has a way of making things that aren’t true seem suddenly probable. So he offers some bait: “You know him?” Billy says. “My roommate? Jørgen?”

Having set this trap, he feels pretty sly, but Lucifer does not give any sign of recognition at the name. Something does happen, though. What happens is Lucifer’s face loses the dreamy vacancy it had mere moments ago; his eyes turn alert and fix acutely on Billy’s own. He abruptly appears to be no longer high: a little bit alarming given that Billy is still drifting in some entheogenic dreamtime halfway between Brooklyn and Shangri-la. Billy feels a little stab of panic, remembering exactly what is happening here: Lucifer is not his buddy, not a volcano, not an impassive stone face. He is some kind of straight-up other intelligence, thoroughly alien, like a great white shark or an evil clown.

“Billy, it is time,” Lucifer says, “to return to our agenda.”

“Um,” Billy says, his mind reeling at the thought of discussing anything resembling business. “Wait, right now?”

“There will not be a better time,” Lucifer says. He pulls his messenger bag into his lap and rips its Velcroed flap open.

Okay, shit. Billy has to concoct a response to this. But at the same time he remembers that he had a question on the table, something about Jørgen, that he never got an answer to. He could ask it again, it’s at least possible, and he knows he could follow the path of that possibility right into the future, the future where he is asking the question. He’s stoned, so he can see it, as an image. But then he sees the other possible avenue the conversation could take, hearing what Lucifer has to say, another path, and each path sends off finer path-shoots, branching into a plentitude of futures …

Jesus Christ, man, focus, Billy thinks, while Lucifer begins to set up the computer. He rubs his face vigorously to clear his mind of the image of infinite fernlike branchings. Focus. The very word itself makes his mind spin off down another avenue. He’s suddenly getting contemplative and abstract, asking himself What is focus, anyway?

Focus, he remembers from somewhere—a Times Style piece? a fortune cookie?—is having the inner resolve to ask the most important question.

So what’s the most important question, when you’re making a deal with the Devil? He thinks about this for a second, and realizes that the most important question he can ask is not about Jørgen. It is not even Can you vindicate all the choices I’ve made in my entire life by the time I give my reading tomorrow? The most important question you can ask the Devil is How is this going to screw me?

Lucifer has completed booting up his ThinkPad and he appears to be launching PowerPoint.

“I have a question,” Billy says.

“Watch the presentation,” says Lucifer, through a veneer of patience that seems to be beginning to crack and peel. Billy imagines a black nebula of unearthly malice swirling behind it. “The presentation will answer many of your questions. It will also raise some new ones. I’ll be happy to address all your remaining unanswered questions at the conclusion.”