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The Weirdness(9)

By:Jeremy P. Bushnell


“Ugh,” says Billy. He drops into a huddle. “What are you doing?”

“Cleanup,” Lucifer says. “Tidying.”

“No,” Billy says, although the shower of spark sounds is already beginning to subside.

“Do not panic,” Lucifer says. He is speaking a little absently and he has a look of partial concentration on his face, like somebody working a Rubik’s Cube. “I’m just reducing some of the secondary effects: The anxiety. The adrenal residue in your limbic system. I’m grooming your neural pathways.”

“I withdraw my consent,” Billy says, miserably. “Get the fuck out of my head.”

“This is the easy part,” Lucifer says. And sure enough, if Billy were really to be honest, he’d have to admit that this part feels comparatively gentle, maybe even kind of good, like the feeling you get when you smell a cinnamon bun somewhere nearby.

Slowly he gets back to his feet, dusts himself off.

He looks at Lucifer, tries to see him again as he saw him a moment ago—magnificent, fearsome—and he can’t quite muster it. Whatever Lucifer just did in the cleanup, it made him go back to just looking like a sort of ordinary dude. An ordinary dude who Billy believes to be the Devil. Intellectually, Billy understands that he should still be spasming in the grip of vast cosmic terror but the part of him that was able to do that seems to have burned out. But still. There’s no possible way he can be safe right now.

“Um,” Billy says, patting himself down again for his phone, only half remembering that he dropped it. “I still kind of feel like I should call 911?”

“Certainly that is your prerogative,” Lucifer says, although he sounds a little bored by the prospect. He bends down, picks Billy’s phone up out of the corner, and hands it over.

Keeping one eye on Lucifer, Billy flips open the phone and punches a nine into it. He pauses there, taking a moment to rehearse exactly what it is he is going to say. The Devil’s in my apartment?

What would the cops do if they even showed up? Mow Lucifer down in a hail of bullets? Billy guesses that if it was that easy to get rid of the Devil, someone in the long history of humanity would already have done it by now. And when he actually tries to play out how it would go in his mind, all he can foresee is himself getting shot in the kind of inevitable mix-up that always seems to befall him. He ponders for a long moment and finally claps the phone shut again.

“Come,” Lucifer says, returning to his seat on the couch. “Sit. Let us talk.”

Billy cautiously settles back down in the armchair. He picks up the coffee and takes another sip. It’s cold.

“Okay,” Billy says. He crumples a little, recognizing defeat. “You want to talk? Let’s talk.”

“Fantastic,” says Lucifer. He leans over the side of the couch and hauls a messenger bag up into his lap. He pulls open the bag’s flap, a tremendous roar of rending Velcro powerfully reminding Billy that his hangover has not gone away. What the fuck. The Devil can groom his goddamn neural pathways but doesn’t bother to clean up his hangover while he’s in there?

Lucifer produces a beat-up ThinkPad from his bag. Billy notices that part of the casing is patched with electrical tape. He tries to imagine the Devil using tape.

“I’ve prepared a PowerPoint presentation that will cover the basics of what I wish to discuss with you,” Lucifer begins, opening up the ThinkPad.

“Stop,” Billy says. “PowerPoint?”

“It’s my preferred medium,” says Lucifer.

“No,” Billy says. “Just no. You want to talk? We can talk. But I’m hungover, I’m annoyed, I’m still kind of losing my shit, I’m not watching a freaking PowerPoint presentation.”

“PowerPoint is actually quite unfairly maligned,” Lucifer says. “In the right hands, it can produce presentations that convey a lot of information and border on the beautiful.”

“Look,” says Billy. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t know what you want, and—I mean, if we’re just two dudes hanging out, talking, then I can maybe deal with hearing what you have to say. But otherwise—”

“Yes, fine,” Lucifer says, a touch of irritation creeping in. He shoves the laptop back into the messenger bag. For a second he looks really pissed and then his features clear, his expression reverts back to neutral.

“Billy Ridgeway,” he says, in the affectless tone that seems to be his default. “I have a proposition for you.”

“I gotta be frank,” Billy says. “I sort of feel like the choice move here is just to say no right out of the gate.” Another sip of the cold coffee. He wants a refill but feels like now is not the time to get up and go back into the kitchen.