“How about here,” Hoover says.
Hatcher looks at him. Hoover has struck a pose with the city as backdrop and his hands clasped behind him.
“That’s fine, Mr. Director,” Hatcher says, and he wonders if Hoover really intends to do the interview with his lips painted. “Before we begin…” Hatcher hesitates. He doesn’t know how to ask this, and he regrets even trying — why the fuck should he care if the man chooses to appear like this? — but Hatcher is looking at Hoover’s lips and Hoover suddenly realizes what this is about.
“Ah,” Hoover says. “Of course.” He pulls a handkerchief from an inside coat pocket and half turns and wipes the lipstick off his mouth. He puts the handkerchief away and strikes his pose again.
Hatcher lifts the camera and Hoover is looking fiercely determined to do whatever manly G-man thing he needs to do, but from his lips, which barely move, comes a soft, clear, “Thanks.”
Hatcher, perhaps still under the influence of that moment of contentment, says, “You look good.”
Hoover pushes his lower lip up ever so slightly — into a little pout of thanks — and then he hardens again and nods, “Ready.”
Hatcher turns his camera on and says, “There’s just one question and you can talk for as long as you wish. Why do you think you’re here?”
And J. Edgar Hoover says, “I was needed. Can you imagine how many Communists there are down here? Do you want Hell being run by Communists? They’d destroy us. Satan was an angel. He had a falling out with his father, but who hasn’t? Some fathers just up and go crazy. Others have it out for you. Satan was set up, if you want to know the truth of it. Somebody had to deal with the vast hordes of damned humanity. The proof is out that window. Look at the citizens he has to deal with. Look at the elements within that citizenry. Now look at the organization Satan has built. He knows everything about everybody. All the time. Every second. You think there’s a question about why I belong here? What would I do in a place where everyone is so high and mighty and perfect? You think I’m not needed here? You don’t think it’s lonely for men like Satan and me? We understand each other. I have to suffer like the rest of you. You don’t think I deserve it? You don’t think a real man can’t like something a little frilly? You don’t think I look stunning in a feather boa and a tasteful basic-black dress?”
Hoover stops. He hears where he’s gone with this. Hatcher lifts his face from the camera and Hoover looks at him and then at the camera and then back to Hatcher. “Nothing we can do,” Hoover says.
“I have no control once it goes in,” Hatcher says.
Hoover nods. “I guess I’m done.” He turns and moves off to his desk.
Hatcher looks out the window once more. The streets are full of thousands of years of souls endlessly pressing on to destinations they do not know, from promptings they do not understand. Hatcher has a brief, sweet, newsman’s fantasy: he scores the greatest scoop in history — the discovery of a back door out of Hell — and he breaks the story on the Evening News from Hell and they all go, every last soul, they all escape from Hell. And he wins an Emmy. And then a Pulitzer Prize.
Hatcher turns from the window and crosses Hoover’s office — the man sits behind his desk and waits, and whoever is under there waits — and Hatcher is out the door and instantly vast furry bat wings enfold him and press him into hot naked rippling womanflesh.
But only for one dart of a tongue halfway down his esophagus and then an unfolding of wings and a quick float back to the desk and a putting on of the horn-rims and a fluffing up of papers. Hatcher stifles a faint gagging still going on down his throat, and he steels himself and moves to her desk.
“Well,” he says. “You said to stop by the desk.”
“Oui oui,” she says.
“Are you French, Lulu?”
“No. Lily and I did a three-way nooner with the prime minister of France. So we oui oui ouied all the way home.” She giggles her deep throat giggle and winks. “So. I want to take you home to meet Mama.”
“Mama.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
She couldn’t possibly, of course. Not just because of what Hatcher now understands. But also because his mind has basically shut down about what he’s getting into for the sake of these addresses. And yet he can’t think of a better way to proceed. But oh my. Mama.
“She’s old as can be,” Lulu says. “But sexy as Hell.” And clearly Lulu believes Hell to be sexy.
Hatcher has no choice but to push on. “Would you do me one little favor, Lulu?”
Lulu flutters her bleached-blond eyebrows at him. “What would you like?”
“I’ve got some interviewing to do. Denizens. It’d help if I can get a few addresses.” He nods to the computer behind her.
“Wellll,” she says, cocking her head to the side, laying the tip of her forefinger into the center of her cheek, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, and then twirling the finger. “Since it’s you. But no screaming when I bite a little.”
She is already whirling in her chair and her hands flash over the keyboard, calling up the directory. Hatcher is panting in panic, but one pain is like another in Hell, when it comes down to it. And so he gives her all the names he can think of that he might need to find the back door, and to understand why he is here, which may not be unrelated if another Harrowing is truly imminent. Virgil and Dante. And Beatrice, in case her back-alley noir apartment was temporary. Hatcher’s three wives. These names come quickly. And then he says his father’s name, who turns out to have no address at the moment but is out somewhere stuck perpetually in traffic, roadraging at other drivers. Hatcher has a little surge of relief that he won’t have to find the old man. And he says his mother’s name. They are all of them in Hell. And now he’s glad he thinks of this, for Sylvia: Adrienne Monnier. Then he hesitates. But yes. If it’s what Anne needs, to resolve things one way or another. He says Henry VIII, King of England.
Hatcher steps into the elevator at the end of Hoover’s corridor. His head is buzzing with Lulu’s promise to come for him soon, to meet Mama. As the doors are about to close, there are hurried footsteps and then a trim man with an elongated face and broad-bridged nose slips in. At first his dark eyes sharply focus on Hatcher, but they quickly go blank. He wears a cream linen suit and a wing collar and spectator shoes. There is a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. He turns and stands shoulder to shoulder with Hatcher as the doors close. A hunch shoves even Lulu to the back of Hatcher’s mind for a moment.