Thomas tilted back in his office chair and enjoyed the dry, toasted bagel. This was the only carb he allowed himself. Let the other politicians get fat; he’d do P90X and eat mostly protein and then let’s see who wins at the beauty contest of life.
He finished and let his feet fall, feeling his mind revving and lunging, ready to chew up the day ahead. He woke his computer and went first to email. He was happy to see at least five emails related to his newly created blog. He had a PR agency ghostwrite it for him. He wasn’t worried about the agency letting it slip that he wasn’t the author of his posts; the owner himself, Sal, did the writing and Thomas had him on a very short leash. He knew exactly where his skeletons were.
Sometimes Thomas thought that was one of the best things about being a lawyer…the leverage it generated.
He opened the email alerts to comments on his blog and his mood soured. That little cunt was still at it. Would she ever get the hint and back the fuck off?
She’d posted three of the five comments:
[Evigan Partners] New Comment on: Taxed by Taxes. User Carrie Walsh commented: OMG Thomas, you are sooooo rite! My paretns pay taxes and they are all ways complaining!
[Evigan Partners] New Comment on: Safer Streets. User Carrie Walsh commented: Were I live its mexicans that r making it sooo unsafe for every 1 espeshilly girls like me! ;)
[Evigan Partners] New Comment on: Safer Streets. User Carrie Walsh commented: Mexicnas should be shipped back 2 costa rico or wear ever they are coming from! Leave us ‘pretty girlz’ alonnnne!!!1!! ;)
Thomas sighed and logged into his blog and systematically deleted her posts, his face set in grim lines of barely controlled fury. He hoped no one had seen them. He would talk to Sal, the owner of the PR firm, about setting up a system that would send Sal alerts every time a comment got posted so that he could check them and take them down immediately, if required.
He’d also have to do something about Carrie, but it wouldn’t be easy. Thomas knew her childish, semi-literate jabberings were actually a carefully conceived cover for her intelligence and brutally cold nature. In his opinion, Carrie was a psychopath, but by now, he’d almost forgotten the amount of fear she drove into him.
He’d briefly considered banging her after the trial was over. She had a certain trailer park babe attractiveness that drew him, but thank God, he’d never acted on it. He couldn’t imagine how clingy–or possibly deadly–she’d have been if he had.
He’d have to contact her, take her out and try to make her see reason. He couldn’t have her dogging him around for the rest of his career. She was too much bad luck and too many bad vibes in one scary little package.
* * *
The Devil stood on the 600 block of Market Street and considered his options. Traffic was very thick and the city had already developed a pissy smell, though the spring day was mild. It seemed to blow primarily from the subway tunnel yawning before him. The smells and sounds, the anonymous and aggressive pedestrians, all gave him a sense of being back in Hell. It made him very uneasy.
On top of that was the nagging certainty that he should not have left Kelly.
He had two addresses in his pocket–one for Carrie Walsh and one for Thomas Evigan, but the Evigan address, at least, was out of date. He couldn’t be sure of the Carrie Walsh one. The clerk he’d talked to hadn’t any idea where Thomas Evigan had gone after leaving his Philly practice in the blaze of Walsh-case-victory glory.
“I heard he went somewheres out near Trenton, maybe, somewhere like that. Central Jersey, who knows? On to bigger and better things, I guess. Guy was kind of a dick, really. But I guess that’s how you make it big around here.”
The clerk was heavy-set and glum. He’d just learned that his job was being terminated at the end of the month. Money was tight in Philly and times were tough and maybe he shoulda stuck with his first idea to drive one of the city busses. Oh well, too late for that, now. He’d sighed, looking at the skinny junkie at his window. Guy wanted that scumbag Evigan’s address? Let him have it! Probably this guy was a former client of his anyway. He wants that baby-killers address? No problem! He looks like trouble and that cold-hearted bitch could use some trouble…deserved it, really, for what she’d done.
“They’re supposta send it in if they changed their address and there’s no change form in her file. Course, lots of ’em don’t bother. Guess they don’t care to see what the courts have to send ’em.”
Carrie had been put on probation, a condition of being found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child–the only thing the jury had found her responsible for. That probationary period had lasted four years. She might have gone anywhere in the last year.
But, the Devil decided, it was a better lead than the address for Evigan. He’d find Carrie and see if he could track Evigan down through her.
He turned and descended the subway’s concrete steps. It was dank in the tunnel; the air as stale and fetid as that in a mausoleum. The people waiting on the platform were washed out by the grayish-yellow glow of the tunnel overheads. They stood, mute and still, like stunned cattle, their eyes deep black sockets in their heads. They looked like the forerunners for an army of the dead.
A snake of unease slid up the Devil’s spine as his feet hit the platform. He scanned the huddled forms lined up before him. Something was not right here. His mind went, unbidden, to Kelly. The space before him became indistinct, unimportant. He ruminated on his love for her, for that’s what it was: love.
Then he shook his head, realizing.
“Hello, Sitri,” he said, and waited for the demon to reveal himself.
Two of the huddled forms on the platform stepped apart. Sitri stepped between them and stamped his foot, one hand on his hip, the other twisted into the air in a ‘ta-da’ gesture. He was a very powerful demon and his presence alone could strengthen interest into blinding, deadly obsession. That’s why he’d thought so strongly about Kelly.
The body Sitri occupied was that of an older man in his seventies. He had theatrically flowing white hair and the eyes in his seamed face were a cold blue-gray. The body was tall and trim and moved with the gracefulness of a much younger man.
The Devil nodded in acknowledgement.
“Hello, Sitri,” he said. “I must say that I am surprised to see you.”
The demon smiled widely, breaking his borrowed face into deep fissures, the wrinkles folding in upon themselves like a gravity defying mudslide.
“Lucifer, old friend,” Sitri said and stepped one small step, sliding a foot forward along the concrete and clicking his heels sharply together…ssss, click! “I’ve been hearing odd tales from down below.” He glanced at the nails on his right hand and took another small step closer…ssss, click. “Very odd, indeed.” He dipped long, white fingers into the inside pocket of the sport coat he wore and extracted a brown cigarette even more slender than his fingers…ssss, click.
“Stand where you are, Sitri; come no closer,” the Devil’s voice dropped, becoming soft and sinuous, twined with steel tendrils of warning. If Kelly were present, the feeling of impending danger would have slid once again into her mind. The crowd at the platform shuffled and uneasy moans broke from several mouths. Then they were still.
Sitri looked up, eyebrows raised as he fished a lighter from his front pants pocket. He tilted his head to light the cigarette, his eyes never leaving the Devil. Fresh smoke drew a curtain over his features and then cleared. Sitri was smiling, the cigarette clamped in his teeth.
“Lucifer, what’s the trouble? Afraid I’ve come to collect you?” he said and spread his arms wide, palms up.
The eyes of Mark’s body were fixed and heavy lidded. The Devil had become still but taut; slow, deep breaths expanded Mark’s chest. He curled his hands into loose fists and bent slightly forward. His eyes never left the demon before him.
“Come on, then,” the Devil said, now his voice all menace but undercut by an eagerness that would have stopped a mortal’s heart. “Let’s get this over with.”
Sitri threw his head back and laughed, hands on his hips. The laugh was full and throaty, but the Devil heard the thread of unease tied up in it.
“Lucifer, please!” Sitri said, wiping tears from his eyes. He chuckled and shook his head. “Look at you! So ready to fight! My goodness, Lucifer…I don’t want to fight you…” Another step–ssss, click– “I want to help!”
The Devil’s stance did not change but his eyes hardened as a smile came and went on his face like a vicious rumor. “I’m not Lucifer any longer, Sitri. Call me Satan.”
“I’m serious, Lucifer. Just listen to me, would you? And stop glaring. It makes me nervous.” Sitri said and crossed his arms at his chest. “I know what you’re trying to do. You know I can help with the cunt.” Sitri disliked women. He had no greater pleasure than to coerce them into revealing their secrets and then mocking them for it. Sitri was the bad boyfriend, the mean daddy, the degrading boss.
“Let’s catch this train,” Sitri said, snapping his fingers. The crowd of people on the platform started, like dreamers coming up from a bad one, and the train could be heard in the tunnel. “We’ll talk, all right, Lucifer? Just talk.”
The Devil looked from Sitri to the awakening crowd. The riders glanced around, but avoided eye contact with each other. They hefted briefcases higher and pulled jackets closed at their throats. One young woman fumbled her Starbucks and when it hit the platform she burst into tears like an overly tired child. Each would have difficulty shaking the feeling of nightmare that had passed over them this morning.
The Devil nodded at Sitri and Sitri smiled.
“You’ll not regret it, Lucifer,” he said. But the Devil wondered, nonetheless.
* * *
On the train, no one sat near them. The commuters crowded, herd like, at the opposite end of the car. Sitri smiled at them, a smile wide and dead as a crocodile’s and they shuffled uneasily even though none had looked his way.
“Disgusting,” Sitri said. He hated humans and only came above to seed dissention and lower self-esteem.
The Devil sat back and tilted his head against the window, closing his eyes. He was calm, but not at ease. He’d have to keep his guard up.
“Why do you despise them so much, Sitri?” he asked. He was hungry again. This body burned fuel as fast as he could fill it.
Sitri shook his head, not taking his eyes from the crowd.
“They have too much. They don’t deserve any of it,” he said. “They all deserve Hell.” The bitterness thickened his voice. The face he’d borrowed drooped into soured lines. The Devil glanced at him with one eye. Sitri looked tired as well as old, not even as spry as he’d been ten minutes before on the platform.
“That’s not for us to say,” the Devil said.
Sitri cocked his head and looked askance at the Devil.
“Funny thing for you to be saying, Lucifer, considering where you sit right now.”
The Devil only nodded, closing his eyes again.
Sitri cast his attention back to the commuters.
“You know more will go to Heaven than not. Stinking it up. Ruining it. Undeserving shits that they are.” His eyes raked the commuters and they swayed, not in time with the rolling train, but blown by Sitri’s scorn. “How they can be given Paradise when I…when we…” His hands closed into fists and more than one person felt their heart first constrict and then jump about wildly like a caged rabbit poked with a sharp stick.
The Devil put his hand on Sitri’s arm. He felt the familiar depression like a black wave, full of stinging, ruinous salt. He’d not felt so badly since his first five hundred years as Hell’s infamous main attendant. He’d sweated and strained under the yoke of the sentence brought down by God, Himself; the very fact of his continued existence a stew of torturous regret and rage.
With force, he turned his mind from it, steering Sitri away as well.
“Did you know Amon and Lillith both tried to bring me back?” he asked. There was no anger in his voice, only curiosity.
Sitri nodded.
“All things serve Him, of course, but those two are both shameless in their currying of favor,” he raised his eyebrows. “I think they really do believe there might be a place set for them yet.” He shook his head in dismissal of such an idea. “But you are rather a large fish, Lucifer. I am surprised you haven’t met with more attempts of repossession.”
“I haven’t been here very long. Although it seems longer than it’s been. They have difficult lives, humans. I’m starting to see that. So much mess and complication. It is as though their brains work at cross-purposes.”
“When they work at all,” Sitri said, adding a drollness of tone to his voice as he cast a baleful glance at the commuters.
The train screamed into its next stop and birthed the uneasy riders out onto the platform. They scattered, some looking over their shoulders, unable to put a cause to their fear. The young woman with the Starbucks coffee drying in a splatter pattern on her tights flipped open her phone and as soon as she saw daylight, dialed the number of a cab company. She’d decided to take a sick day, but she would be damned if she was riding back to her apartment in that fulminous train.
Sitri wanted to order a car but the Devil merely switched lines to the Patco train that would take them over the bridge and into New Jersey.
“Preposterous,” Sitri said, waiting as the Devil bought tickets at a kiosk. “We should not be taking mass transit, Lucifer. Do you realize how ridiculous you’re being? There was a time when we’d have ridden nothing but the blackest of horses, eyes alight with fury…and now you reduce us to this…this…cattle car?”
The Devil made no reply as they settled onto the thin, stingy seats. He glanced at the window but they were underground and he saw nothing save his reflection; it startled him. The thin face–hungry looking and somehow melancholy–was not the picture he had of himself. This face, this body, were vulnerable beyond what he’d ever imagined. Humans were creatures rife with fear and indecision, but how could they not be, carrying themselves in vessels thin-skinned as these?