“Shut up,” Billy says. “Just tell me where.”
“Our team probably put them right in the Dumpster. Behind Barometer.”
“I have to get over there.”
“By now,” Laurent says, “I’m sure they’re—”
“Shut up,” says Billy, staggering to his feet. “How do I get out of here?”
“You said you’d hear me out,” Laurent says.
“I’ve heard enough,” Billy says. “Thanks, but I really do believe that I have.”
He looks around for an exit. He spots a glowing red sign; he spots a door set into a cinder-block wall, and he sets off toward it.
“We won’t keep you here against your will,” Laurent calls after him.
“Because it would be wrong,” Billy says.
“We won’t keep you here against your will,” Laurent continues, “but I want to be clear that it’s not safe for you out there. The Adversary has an interest in you and we don’t know why. He’ll come after you again. He won’t stop until he’s gotten what he wants. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can bargain with him. The only thing you can do is hide, and the only place you can hide is with us. We have a secure room. We could make you comfortable in there until we get your new identity set up—”
“I don’t want a new identity,” Billy says, turning to look Laurent in the face. “I like my life. Or at least I did, before you clowns started to mess with it.”
He is a little bit surprised to realize that he means this.
Laurent regards him with a look of inconsolable disappointment. Billy turns to go. He has his hand on the door when one final question occurs to him.
“Actually,” Billy says.
“Yes?” Laurent says, eagerly.
“What about God?” Billy asks. “If the Devil exists, that implies the existence of God, right? And you guys know about the Devil, you have fancy names for when he appears and all that, so: What about God? Do you know about God?”
“I’m glad you asked that, Billy,” Laurent says. “We have some of our best people working on that problem, the Absent Benefactor problem. We have a machine. It’s got these meters on it, lights, it’s fantastic, just fantastic.”
“A God machine?” Billy says.
“A God detector,” Laurent says. “Banks of lights. I think there’s, I don’t know, 777 LEDs. Magnificent to behold. It’s on constantly. Staffed round the clock. It’s designed so that if we detect Benefactor activity the thing will go off like a Christmas tree, if you’ll pardon the joke. I can take you up there, if you want, it’s on three, in our secure room. You could have a look.”
“Does it ever — has it ever lit up?”
Laurent’s smile fades. “No,” he says.
“Then it’s just a box, isn’t it?” Billy says, with no small sadness.
Neither of them says anything for a moment. Finally Billy turns again, to go, this time for real.
“At least take my card,” Laurent says. “So that when things get really bad you have a way to get in touch with me.”
“I don’t want your card,” Billy says. “I just want cab fare.”
“I’ll give you one if you take the other.”
And this, at last, is a proposition to which Billy can agree.
CHAPTER EIGHT. THIRD-GUESSING
WHEN NOT TO TIP LEAVING YOUR MARK • YOUR DIGGING THROUGH GARBAGE GAME • DESTROY ALL GOLFERS • BEAUTIFUL MACHINES • SIMPLE PLANS • MAGIC VS. SHOTGUNS • COMPOST FLAVOR • GOING TO FLORIDA • NOT GOING HOME • INTO THE VESTIBULE
Before long Billy’s back in Brooklyn, at Barometer. He opts not to tip his cabbie, which he feels pretty bad about, but at least it leaves him with three bucks in his pocket. Three bucks is not really enough to do much on if he can’t find his shit, but he’ll at least be able to get a MetroCard, or use a pay phone: reach someone, begin explaining things.
The numbers of everyone he knows, of course, are stored in his phone.
As he hurries around to the weedy alley behind Barometer, hobbled by the insistent pressure of his bladder, he tries desperately to remember Denver’s number. He cycles through all the Queens exchanges he can recall in the hopes that one might jog his memory. 264? 267? For some reason, the number that keeps bobbing up, unbidden, is the Ghoul’s: it has a certain playful rhythmic character that keeps it bouncing around in Billy’s skull, like a billiard ball ricocheting around a china shop, annihilating every other phone number Billy has ever known.
Once he’s marginally shielded from the street, he’s finally able to take that piss. He luxuriates in the experience. It may be the grandest piss he’s ever taken. In a burst of exuberance he opts to write his name in giant cursive across the pavement: he gets all the way through BILLY and about halfway through a magnificent R before he finally empties out. Mine, he thinks with satisfaction, as he looks over the result.
Okay: Take a Piss is officially off his list. Now for everything else. Let’s see: Denver hates him, everyone else thinks he sucks, he’s losing his job probably right now, he’s locked out of his apartment, he can’t afford his rent, Jørgen’s still missing, and, oh yeah, the world is still supposed to perish by fire.
First things first. Phone, wallet, keys. Hope you brought your Digging Through Garbage game, he tells himself grimly as he advances on the Dumpster, you’re going to need it.
He doesn’t actually need it, he quickly learns, because a long iron security bar prevents the Dumpster’s lid from being opened more than a single inch, keeping out the curious, the needy, and the desperate alike. Turns out Billy actually needed to bring his Lock-Picking game. He doesn’t, of course, have any Lock-Picking game to bring.
He tries to open up the Dumpster again. He checks the lock, as if he’ll notice something about it he didn’t notice the first time. He considers going around to ask someone from the Barometer staff, explaining the situation, asking whether he can use their key, until he remembers that they don’t open until six.
Fuck it, he thinks, not for the first time today. I’ll just wait. Some kind of Plan B dimly takes shape in his mind, wherein he hauls ass across town and shows up to work, but the idea of showing up to work three hours late and out of uniform just to find out whether or not he’s been fired is too demoralizing to really constitute an option.
So. He looks for a place to sit, a milk crate or a cardboard box, and, finding nothing, he just leans up against a utility pole.
He stands. He waits. He shuffles. He longs yearningly for the distraction of a cigarette. After three minutes, he’s cold and bored, wishing for something to happen.
And that’s when the Devil appears at the mouth of the alley, wearing a hefty black peacoat over a vivid shirt of electric blue, an acute contrast against the grays of the November morning. For a moment Billy is actually glad to see him, an impression that is dispelled the second Lucifer throws his arms wide in a gesture that strikes Billy as being about as welcoming as a carnivorous plant slowly peeling itself open.
“Billy!” Lucifer says. “Good morning!”
He strides into the alley, takes three steps and then pauses at Billy’s signature, written in cooling piss. He stares blankly at it, as if it is a message that he cannot quite decide whether to decode. Eventually he takes a cautious step around it and proceeds on.
Once he’s close enough, he repeats the arms-thrown-wide gesture. It does not improve with proximity. Billy edges away a bit. Lucifer holds the gesture for a second, then lets it devolve into an elaborate shrug, and from there into a tiny act of grooming: he picks a fleck of ash from the peacoat’s heavy cuff.