The Weirdness(50)

He remembers Lucifer saying Do you think you don’t deserve someone better?

But I don’t want someone better, he thinks. I want Denver.

Then go to her, he tells himself.

And he’s about to tell the cabbie to take him to Queens when someone he recognizes walks by outside. Of all people. It’s Anton Cirrus, marching along with a businesslike stride, his trench coat billowing in the wind. Billy’s blood begins moving. He thinks the same word he thought last night at Barometer: enemy. He feels a sudden urge to confront Cirrus, to engage him in argument, to come out on top in some exchange of verbal jabs. To win, for once.

“One second,” Billy says to the cabbie. And he lets himself out.

“Cirrus!” Billy shouts at Cirrus’s back, which has gotten a good ten paces ahead of Billy by this point. “Anton Cirrus!”

Anton stops and turns, and when he sees Billy he wrinkles his face into a mask of distaste, as though Billy has just opened the conversation with a robust fart.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“Do you—” Billy begins, incredulous, and then rage throttles his voice and he goes silent. I’m going to kill you, he thinks. I’m simply going to kill you. “Yeah, you know me, you fuck,” he finally manages. “The storehouse of tired forms and stale devices?”

“Well,” Anton says. He manifests a plainly insincere smile. “This is a pleasure. The great Billy Ridgeway, fresh off his triumphant Barometer reading, deigns to make a street appearance to the humble critic.”

Billy’s face burns at the mention of the reading. “I was interrupted,” Billy says. “It was just about to get interesting.”

“Please,” says Anton. “The story of how you met the Devil? Everybody has a story about how they met the Devil.”

Billy opens his mouth to reply, and then he pauses. He gnaws on Anton’s response for a second. Something seems off about it. Laurent said that the audience didn’t remember anything past the punch line of Billy’s joke. Therefore, Anton shouldn’t remember that Billy had even mentioned the Devil. And if Anton does know that Billy spoke about the Devil, then he must not have had his memory wiped. Which means—which means what?

Billy has no idea. But the discrepancy provides some kind of opening, in any case, so he lunges into it, making his voice go all fake casual: “Oh, you remember that? That’s very interesting. Not too many people remember that, I hear.”

Anton looks quizzically at Billy for a second, but then Billy gets to watch him have the realization that he’s tipped his hand somehow: he looks away, clicking his tongue minutely against the roof of his mouth, annoyed over having revealed—something. Billy’s still not sure what, exactly, he’s revealed, but seeing Anton pissed at himself is a little more information, a second slip, in a way, and Billy revels in receipt of it, finally having the opportunity to look stupid Anton Cirrus right in his stupid face and think Not so goddamn smart now, are you?

So, Billy thinks, his interpretation shifting into overdrive, if Anton Cirrus didn’t have his memory wiped, that means—he’s working with the Right-Hand Path? But that doesn’t make sense: Why would Anton Cirrus have preemptively panned the reading if he were working for the very people who set the reading up in the first place?

So if he’s not working with the Right-Hand Path—the so-called good guys—that means that maybe he’s—with the bad guy? With Ollard. Which squares all too nicely with why Anton Cirrus would be here, randomly outside of the magical tower that no one is supposed to know about.

Before Billy can get any further with this line of thought, Anton reaches into his pocket, gets his phone out, and begins working at the screen. Texting again, it seems, which makes anger flare up in Billy. Right at the moment when he’s about to tell Anton to knock it the fuck off Anton pockets the phone and speaks: “It was pretty stupid of you, you know, to point out the Adversary in a room full of Right-Hand Path goons.”

“You call it stupid,” Billy says, groping, a little out of his element. “I call it—unpredictable?”

Anton looks up, as if trying to tell whether or not Billy is for real. “Yes, well,” Anton says. He rocks back on his heels. “We’ll see where your unpredictability gets you. I got twenty bucks that says that in the end it will be indistinguishable from stupidity.”

“You’re on,” Billy says.

“Super,” Anton says.

They stand there, regarding one another silently, in a stalemate. Anton has about five inches on Billy, which gives his gaze a permanent sense of disdain; Billy tries to counter that with a particular jut of his chin that he hopes looks pugnacious. They hold their respective poses until the cabbie, having grown impatient with idling at the curb, leans on the horn. They both jolt. Billy wheels around and holds up a finger—one minute—and returns his attention to Anton, who lets out a long, elaborate sigh.