“Father, I am Lucifer.”
He looks at me, waiting for the punch line. When I don’t give him one, he leans back on the sofa and laughs his weary old-soldier laugh.
“And here I thought you were my friend. The prince of lies is right.”
“I am your friend and I didn’t lie to you. I wasn’t always Lucifer. Trust me. I didn’t ask for the job. The previous Lucifer forced it on me. That’s how I know if you end up in Hell you’ll be taken care of. I run the goddamn place.”
He gets up and goes to the buffet. Shovels fruit and cheese onto a plate and brings it back.
“God is in pieces and you’re the Devil. You’re right. I might as well eat.”
“That’s the spirit.”
I go back over and spoon black caviar and sour cream onto a plate.
“You know, if anyone should be freaked out here, it’s me. You’re like the third person I’ve told about the Lucifer thing and everyone is taking it really well. I mean, I’d like just a little polite shock and horror when I tell people I’m the king of evil.”
Traven spreads Brie on a cracker with the care and attention of a sculptor.
“If people don’t seem shocked, maybe it’s because it’s a bit much to process all at once. And you do have a colorful history.”
“So that’s what people say behind my back. That I’m colorful.”
“Would you rather be boring?”
“Sign me up.”
There’s nothing sadder in this word than a true-blue Satanist. I don’t mean the ones who dress in black, listen to Ronnie Dio, and use the Devil as an excuse to throw graveyard key parties. I mean the ones who’ve bought the gaff that if they pray to the baddest of the bad, he’ll drop doubloons, luck, and hotties in their laps all the livelong day and then, when they die, they’ll get their own castles and pitchforks and get to join the endless torture party. They’re the ones I feel sorry for. Haven’t they figured out that Lucifer cares even less about his flock than God cares about His? Some of these nitwits have actually met Lucifer and he treated them like expired meat.
Career devil worshippers are Dungeons & Dragons freaks that never grew up and still believe that if they had just one superpower they’d be the belles of the ball or prom king. On the one hand, I want to FedEx them hot cocoa and a pile of self-help books. And on the other hand, I want to use them ruthlessly for whatever I can squeeze out of their service bottom carcasses. Maybe when I have more time, I can play Dr. Phil and get them to do an honest inventory of their collective psychoses. Right now, though, I’m on a timetable and I don’t have time for tea and sympathy. Maybe the best thing I can do is show them what Hell is really like. Make them copy the entire Oxford English Dictionary onto three-by-five cards. Stamp them. Date them. Put each word in a separate folder and file it. Then take all the words out, burn them, and start over. Do it until I say stop and of course I never will. They’ll use up all the ink in the world and all the paper in the western hemisphere. Some will slit their wrists with a thousand paper cuts. Others will get cancer from the ink fumes or go snow-blind from the scanner. Welcome to Hell. It’s just like high school but with more boredom and entrails.
I don’t know if Samael put them there, or the hotel, but the bedroom closet is full of suits and expensive shirts and shoes. I toss my ripped shirt on the bed and pick out a purple one so dark it’s almost black. Samael wore shirts like this because the color hid the blood seeping from an old wound. The Greeks and Romans considered it the color of royalty and that wouldn’t appeal to Samael’s vanity. No. Not one bit.
Someone is knocking on the grandfather clock. Traven sets his plate down on the table. He looks like he’s waiting for the seven plagues to stroll out of the clock.
Three people come in. A trinity. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our boredom.
There’s Amanda Fischer, a high-society babe with a young woman’s face and a crone’s hands. Plastic surgery or hoodoo? Your guess is as good as mine.
With her is a man about her age carrying a briefcase. He’s balding and seems to be compensating for it by growing bushy muttonchops. He looks like her husband. Maybe muscle or an over-the-hill skinhead. The third one is a dark-haired young guy with a bland pretty-boy face and dressed so perfectly in Hugo Boss he can probably recite back issues of GQ by heart. All three of them are caked black with sin signs, like they crawled here through one of Cherry Moon’s tunnels.
The disappointment on their faces is spectacular. Samael is Rudolph Valentino handsome. When they see my scarred mug, they wonder if they’re in the right room. Maybe they stepped through the wrong magic clock.
“Hello,” says Amanda. “We’re here to see our master, Lucifer.”
“You’re looking at him, Brenda Starr.”
“I’ve seen you before. You’re his bodyguard.”
I take a bite of a rib and suck the barbecue sauce off my fingers.
“Do you think Lucifer has access to only one body? Look into my eyes. Can’t you sense my power and glory and all the other shit that makes your crowd moist?”
“Do you know who you’re talking to? Watch your mouth,” says Muttonchops. He has a high-toned British accent. The kind that says, “I’ve never opened a door for myself my whole life.”
“Why do I care who she is if she doesn’t know who I am? Doesn’t the fact I’m in here with many tasty snacks tell you something?”
“Yes,” Muttonchops says. “That you’re a clever enough impostor to fool the hotel. But you can’t fool us.”