“Just no. I don’t feel safe around you and I sure as hell don’t trust you. And although your offer is very intriguing — and I would love to see my work in print — so if you know anybody and feel like putting in a good word for me …” Noting that he’s beginning to backslide, he makes the decision to just shut up.
“Let me tell you what you’d have to do,” Lucifer says, smiling with the radiant false force of a salesperson.
“I don’t care what I’d have to do,” Billy says. “It could be the simplest thing imaginable. Something I was going to do anyway. Go to the bathroom, take a leak and two aspirin. Then, bam, you’re a famous writer. I’d still say no.” As he says this, he feels a pang deep in his chest, like a piece of gravel hitting a bell, and he realizes that it may not, in fact, be true.
He thinks for a minute about how his life would change if his book got published. He contemplates the feeling of validation he’d enjoy. The ability, at least for a little while, to say You were right to do this. To give up time every day, precious time, the resource that other people seem able to turn into billable hours or functional relationships, to working on putting words together, to making declarations about people who don’t exist, to saying that they did things they didn’t do. To spend money on books instead of clothes or a haircut. To fail out of school because he spent a semester trying to teach himself Polish in order to read a Stanislaw Lem collection he’d bought at a bookseller’s kiosk in Greenpoint (and, not incidentally, because he used Krakowianka, a Polish blackberry vodka, as his primary study aid). If he were holding his book in his hand he’d be able, for once in his life, to look at all his choices and say You were right. What would that feel like? Billy doesn’t know. He would like to know.
But he does know one thing. He knows that if he says yes, in this way, under these circumstances, and he gets what he wants, he won’t exactly be able to say that he earned it. And he wants to earn it.
And so Billy decides. He says, “This discussion is over.” He rises. “Thanks for the coffee.” He heads for the kitchen to get that refill he’s been wanting, leaving Lucifer sitting, blank-faced, there on the couch.
After a minute, Lucifer rises, straps the messenger bag across his chest, dons a pair of aviator sunglasses, and fishes the business card out of the junk on the coffee table. He meets Billy in the kitchen on the way out.
“I’m disappointed,” he says.
“And if you were my dad, that might matter to me,” says Billy. Call your dad back, says Billy’s brain.
“I’ll respect your wishes,” Lucifer says, ignoring the retort, “and be on my way. Do keep my card, though. In the event that you change your mind.”
“I very much doubt that I’ll be changing my mind,” Billy says. But he pockets the card.
“Good day to you, Billy Ridgeway,” Lucifer says. Billy half expects him to disappear in a great cloud of violet smoke, but he heads out the front door like a normal person.
Billy gets a great flash of jubilation as soon as the door latches. I was tempted by the Devil, he thinks, and I walked away. He suddenly realizes that Denver was wrong — he’s not a chronic fuck-up! This is proof — ironclad, dishwasher-safe proof. He has the moral high ground and he intends to hold it. He notes a few little shoots of regret and doubt fringing the edges of the high ground, but, hey, who cares, that’s normal.
Another sip of the really good coffee. He notices that Lucifer left the beans. This day is going to keep getting better.
He takes a leak and two aspirin. And in the blessed dark of the bathroom, for which his hangover is grateful, he decides to keep going on his winning streak. He’s going to get Denver on the phone. If he can look the Devil in the eye and emerge unscathed then surely he can work things out in his personal life. He feels good. He feels confident. He flips his phone open and eyeballs the time.
“Son of a bitch,” he says.
CHAPTER THREE. PROFOUNDLY SUCKING
IDEAL DESKS BLACK SHIRT AND KHAKIS • THAI FOOD AND BOURBON • NOT CHARLIE OR CHUCK • DRUNK SENIOR EDITORS • A FUCK-TON OF HINDUS • JESUS, TAXES, PEDOPHILE • POSSIBILITIES OF AN UNCERTAIN WORLD • BAD PUBLICITY
I wish that I was the kind of person who owned an appointment book, Billy thinks, as he frantically grubs around in the bottom of his closet, looking for the button-down shirt that completes his work uniform. He’s never owned an appointment book but he pictures it as this serious leather-bound thing, sitting on his desk. In this fantasy, his desk is nothing like the desks he’s ever actually owned — desks which quickly go invisible under unmanageable mountains of unopened mail and tech cables — it is instead one huge square slab of monochromatic wood, with nothing on it except this imaginary appointment book, his laptop, and maybe some interesting artifact. A piece of river stone. And, in this fantasy, when people approach him with some kind of demand on his time, he simply says I’m not sure if I can see you right now. Let me check my appointment book. And he can flip it open and examine the day dispassionately and say Ah, yes, today is no good. Today I shall be selecting pieces of fiction for tomorrow night’s reading and then I must depart for my shift at the sandwich shop. Perhaps next Wednesday? And then he wouldn’t have days like today, where somebody shows up and devours his available time, and then the next thing he knows he’s on his knees, in the closet, pulling shirts out of a heap, hoping he can make it to work before Giorgos decides to fire him.
He finally finds the black button-down he was looking for. It hasn’t been washed anytime recently but fuck it, the dictum says black shirt and khakis, he’s never heard Giorgos say The black shirt shall smell fresh or The khakis shall not bear mayonnaise stains that could be mistaken for semen.
Bang, he’s out the door, down the stairs, through the vestibule, and out into the cold, clear Brooklyn morning. Running for his life, or at least the version of it where he has this job and lives in this apartment.
If Billy loses this job he won’t make rent. In fact, even with the job it’s often a struggle. That $12.50 an hour adds up pretty slowly. He’s had months, plural, where he’s had to turn to Jørgen for a little financial help. Billy thinks on this for a moment as he angles through a cluster of kvetching grandmothers and it occurs to him that if Jørgen doesn’t return before the end of the month then he’s going to have to cover the entire rent himself. This is not actually a possibility. Just call him, Billy thinks, as he barrels past discount electronics shops and the bagel place that he likes. Denver was right. You should just call him.
Denver. He imagines the thought of her name stopping him dead in his tracks. (In actuality he is already stopped by two elderly Romanians who have chosen to use the sidewalk to angrily negotiate the sale of a pair of ancient Nintendo Entertainment System consoles.)
The point is: he misses Denver. And as he gets around the Romanian guys and heads into a final sprint toward the subway stop, he thinks about her, he reflects back on the normal times, the downtime, the evenings that he’d spent with Denver just flumped out in his bed, eating Thai takeout, drinking some incredible bourbon that she’d brought over, watching stupid YouTube videos on her MacBook, listening to her plot out a piece of conceptual video art that she wanted to make out of uploaded footage of cats, seeing her smile at his jokes. Pressing his face into her shoulder as the hour grew late. Not having sex kinda ’cause of Jørgen and kinda just ’cause they were both too sleepy. The memory is a lamentation. Right now he feels like he would do anything even to be not having sex with Denver.