It drifted back to me from the pile of pages: My story is very closely connected to yours.
But how could that be?
I searched for Satan, half expecting to see a warning on my screen.
Satan: “Accuser.”
For a long time, I read and reread that single word.
I SLEPT, FINALLY, AROUND three in the morning but woke again just after five thirty.
I couldn’t go on like this. Maybe that is his intent. I pictured myself five years into the future, a skeleton of a man, my eyes sunken into my skull, dark circles like black halos on pallid, sun-forsaken skin, ranting on street corners, and no doubt jobless.
I got up for water, thinking I ought to return to bed, try to sleep some more. But instead I sat down at my computer, setting the glass atop a pile of proposals I had read the night before, the content of which I could no longer remember.
I touched the pad on my laptop. A page of links on Satan and Satan-related topics sprang to pixilated life. I had asked about Satan on the verge of hysteria that day in the bookstore. Now here I was with a bookmark on him.
Lucian claimed he didn’t know where I was meant to spend eternity. Staring at the screen, I wondered: Was I sealing my own fate with every hour, every minute I passed with him? I felt the cold fingers again, scraping the inside of my chest. Could one be damned by association?
Stop it. You’ll make yourself crazy.
I looked out my window onto the darkness of Norfolk Street. All around me I was surrounded by so-called normal people chasing lives filled with normal things—money, relationships, losing weight. People who went home to families or empty apartments and went to bed worrying about the same, normal things.
I wondered if I would ever return to that life. Assuming Lucian never appeared again, could I ever purge myself of this more vivid reality and go back, reset . . . reboot?
Just as I lifted my finger to the power button, a new meeting notice appeared in the corner of my screen.
14
That Tuesday, Helen, my editorial director, called me into her office.
Helen Ness was a strange mixture of steely, old-school-style politics and a frozen-in-time femininity that, having manifested itself in young adulthood, had never quite progressed into the next thirty years. As I entered her office, she pulled off her glasses. They hung on a beaded chain and dropped down against her sweatered bust. I took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of her heavy oak desk. From here I could see that the lines at the corners of her mouth had directed bits of color from her lipstick away from her lips like tiny irrigation canals.
“I’m worried about you, Clay. Even when you’re here, you don’t seem here. Your skin is pasty, you look thin and worn out. You look terrible.” She smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead. Shoulder-length, curled under at the ends. I doubted it had changed style since her days at Smith College. “I don’t know if it’s your divorce or your health or what. Sheila said you’ve been to the doctor a few times.”
Well, see there’s this demon.
“But I need you to let me know what’s going on.”
He’s following me, and I’m pretty sure he had that runner on Arlington killed.
“Let me help, Clay.”
I’m compiling the story of our encounters, which, by the way, has a nice subplot about Satan.
“I understand. I’ve—” I raked a hand through my hair. It needed a cut. “I’m just run down.”
“I’ve had one viable project of yours make it through the committee in the last three months,” she said.
That’s because the editorial committee can’t make up their minds. Despite my sick days and missed meetings, I knew for a fact I had three proposals stuck in committee limbo.
“I need a big project to fill a hole—something we can get into production by spring, summer at the latest.” She dropped her hands to her desk. “Do you have anything you can get me? Help me out here, Clay. I know Katrina’s been sending things your way.”
Don’t even suggest it, Clay. But I could think of nothing else. “Actually, Helen, I’ve been working on something,” I heard myself say. “A novel about a fallen angel—a memoir-style story told from the viewpoint of a demon.” Inwardly, I cursed myself.
“Clay”— a slow, appreciative smile eased across her features—“I had no idea you had gone back to writing.”
Since the failure of Coming Home, you mean.
“Sounds intriguing. Religious fiction is getting hotter, and you do know we get first right of refusal.”
I’m an idiot. “I know.”
“Give it to Phil or Anu, and we’ll take it to committee.” She replaced the glasses, sliding them down her nose.
“It’s not quite finished—”
“Just get us something to look at.” She smiled, a second reminder that the meeting was over.
I thanked her, eager to get out of her office, to figure out what I had just done. Eager to get on with the day and to my appointment that evening.
I passed Sheila in the hallway, and the sight of her startled me. She looked drawn, thinner than I had ever seen her, and I realized it had been weeks since we’d had a real conversation. I had never seen her look quite like this—she was practically gaunt, and her lavender twin-set matched the smudges beneath her eyes.
“Clay, how are you? I talked to Aubrey over the holiday. She said she saw you. And that you’re seeing someone.” She smiled slightly.
That struck me as hilarious—in a manic, high-pitched laughing kind of way. “It’s, uh, a casual thing. And you? How are you?” I thought of Helen and her “you look terrible.” Apparently it was going around; I had never seen Sheila look so unattractive. I had never seen her look unattractive, period.
She took a long, shaky sigh. “Oh, Dan and I are separated.”
“I’m so sorry.” I said it because it was the proper thing to say. It was the thing I had grown sick of hearing from others about this time last year. But I wasn’t sorry, not really. Despite her haggard appearance, I had a hard time summoning any compassion for her. Thinking back to what Lucian had told me, to the “have to see you” e-mail, I found my sympathies rested solidly with Dan. What was it with Sheila and Aubrey, the adultery twins? I should call Dan. I ought to be having this conversation with him.
“Yeah.” She glanced down at the papers in her hand. She appeared to have been en route to the copy machine. “It’s difficult. I don’t know what will happen.”
“Well, if there’s anything I can do . . .” But not only was I sure there was nothing I could do—I was fairly certain I wouldn’t do anything for her if I could.
“I’m glad you’re seeing someone, Clay. I’m not sure Aubrey realizes yet how much she lost.”
I thanked her and excused myself.
Her words stayed with me the rest of the day, as powerful, almost, as Lucian’s.
I REALIZED AFTER MEETING with Helen that I might have a problem. I had just proposed a story based on the memoir that Lucian had apparently submitted—or gotten through otherwise demonic means—to Katrina. Maybe the stack of papers on my desk bore little enough resemblance to the scant pages Katrina had given me that it wouldn’t be an issue, but I couldn’t find the proposal she had given me to know for sure. And I did not like the idea that I was walking what felt like a thin ethical line, especially considering on whose behalf I walked it.