“What are you doing here, Billy?” he asks, wearily.
“I could ask the same of you,” Billy says.
“You could,” Anton says. “Except there’s an important difference between you and me: I know what I’m doing here. And you clearly don’t.”
“Don’t I?” Billy says.
“No. You don’t. Go home, Billy. Go home and work on your shitty novel or your terrible short stories or whatever it is you’re working on.”
But I’m locked out, Billy thinks, although he doesn’t say this. The cabbie gives a short, curt blast of the horn; Billy ignores it, keeping his eyes on Anton.
“Go home,” Anton says, a note of real entreaty entering his voice, “and be happy with your tiny little life. Because I guarantee you that if you continue with whatever it is you think you’re doing, your life is going to get a whole lot worse.”
“Uh.” Billy turns, the temptation to check on the cab having grown too great, and he watches it pull away from the curb, roll slowly around the corner, and disappear. “That’s what your mom said?” he rejoinders, distracted.
Anton Cirrus gives the long sigh again. Billy didn’t notice, last night, just how sad Anton’s eyes look behind the designer glasses. “I gave you my advice,” he says. “Do what you want; my conscience is clear.” He turns into the chilly wind and continues his brisk departure.
“Hey,” Billy shouts. “Hey, I’m not through with you.” But Anton doesn’t look back, and when Billy looks deep within himself to try to find the winning taunt, he comes up with absolutely nothing at all.
So then Billy is alone, standing on the sidewalk in front of Warlock House, doing the trick that allows him to see the single red door, wreathed in calligraphy. All he has to do is just take three steps, turn the doorknob, and let himself in.
Go home, he thinks to himself, echoing Anton. Just go home.
You know what? Fuck Anton Cirrus.
He takes one step forward.
Your life is going to get a whole lot worse.
But maybe not. Maybe this is the point where his life gets better. He has a ward that protects him. He has a simple plan, unfuckable by design.
One way or another, my life will be different.
He takes another step forward, grips the knob, turns it. The door, not locked, opens out, revealing a tiny, grim vestibule, the size of a closet, with some ordinary street dirt and paper trash collected in its corners. Set into the far wall is another door, this one lacking the ornate trappings of the outer one: no bloodred paint, no crawling glyphs, just a plain metal door. Not so scary.
And if you go through there and never come out? Billy asks himself. He contemplates the prospect for a minute, tries to figure whether anyone would really even miss him. His dad, maybe. Everyone else? Denver? Anil and the Ghoul? Maybe he’s just depressed, but he can’t see them still thinking of him at all after a few weeks, a month or two at best. Springtime will return to the city, and as the snow recedes and drains away so will their memories of him; years from now maybe they’ll have a dim remembrance of a funny guy who maybe showed some signs of talent on occasion but never really pulled it together, who hung out with them for a while and got them to crack a smile every now and then, but not really the type of person who you miss, once he’s gone.
Okay, Billy thinks. You can do this. Something rises inside him. Maybe it’s that animal part of him, the part that likes being bigger and stronger, that likes being powerful. Maybe he’s ready, at long last, for a fight. He takes a final step, into the vestibule. And then he crosses it, without hesitation, opens the metal door, and enters.
CHAPTER NINE
THE LOOSENING
WELCOME TO STARBUCKS • CAHOOTS • THE PROBLEM WITH HARD-ASSES • WHEN NOT TO TIP • NOT OKAY • SOOTHING VOICE: ON • GROWING UP FASTER • HUMAN CUISINE IN TOTAL • NO MORE ORGASMS • PANDAS ARE BORING • CONNOISSEUR OF PAIN
He’s in a Starbucks.
Billy frowns. He double-checks, just for the sake of his sanity, looking back through the metal door he’s just passed through: he can see the dirty vestibule, and then the red door that leads back out to Chelsea. It’s still open a crack; he can still see a little sliver of street. And he looks back at the Starbucks. It looks exactly like every other Starbucks he’s ever seen: a counter with an aproned staff working behind it, busying themselves at various beverage-producing apparatuses. It has the same impulse items flanking the register: mints, CDs, individually wrapped madeleines that Billy has always been pretty sure are only there because someone in Starbucks’s upper echelons thinks that the Proust reference is clever. Soul music sung by a white British person comes out through unobtrusive speakers.