The apartment building I had once considered homey seemed, overnight, to have become dorm-like and shoddy. The industrial carpet on the landings was dirty, the mailboxes impersonal despite the nameplates stamped out on a label maker.
I forgot my morning coffee. I stared at Mrs. Russo’s door, now devoid of coffee cake and chocolate-chip cookie smells, of inspirational music and the sound of visitors. I thought of finding the old e-mail and risking another message to Light1, of calling him out despite the consequences. Of posting a message to a blog site: Demon encounter? Ever talked to one? Was his name Lucian?
But I did none of these things. I decided that when I saw the doctor in three days I would ask for a psychiatric referral, even if I suspected my mind was sound.
I would also ask for an antianxiety prescription.
My sleep was harassed by a cast of human faces, each of them jeering in turn. By watches with faces inside faces in an infinity of time like an image reflected by two mirrors. By the ticking of the second hands, loud as bells tolling in my ear.
When I woke, the bells, ringing like those from the steeple on Park Street, had passed. I had been in bed nearly three days. I made my way to my desk, turned on the computer.
I stared at the file of my manuscript, my unfinished story. The memoir into which I had funneled every bit of my energy, my life.
Just before I hit the command to delete it, a notice appeared in the corner of my screen.
5:00 p.m.
L.
That afternoon I placed a call to a number I had not expected to dial—not today and perhaps not any day ever.
The voice on the other end was surprised but not hostile. “This is so unexpected.”
“I just called to see how you are.”
“I’m fine. I’m very fine. I’m surprised to hear from you. Is everything all right? Are you all right? You sound tired.”
“So do you.”
“I suppose that’s the truth. Are you still seeing that woman we met at the museum?”
I hesitated. “No. Not really.”
“You know you’re allowed to, Clay. You deserve that. To be happy.” Her statement reminded me too well of Lucian’s words in the sandwich shop.
Everyone thinks they deserve happiness.
“I was wondering: Have you talked to Sheila?”
“Only once since she moved home. She’s withdrawn. Much the way you were, I suppose.”
“She called me before she left. I’m afraid I wasn’t very sensitive. Actually, I was rude.”
“She told me. She thought you’d be able to help her. More than I could.” She gave a mirthless sound that wasn’t really a laugh.
“Why would she think I could help her?” I thought of the day in my office, the call to my hotel in Cabo San Lucas.
“Didn’t she tell you why they’re separated?”
“Not—no. Not in so many words.”
“Dan left her, Clay.”
I stared off toward the bedroom, recalling Sheila in my office the day she had asked me to speak to Dan, wringing her hands and looking like a bird about to pull her own feathers out. I felt ill.
“Yes, but—”
“She came by the house several evenings, worried that he might be seeing someone. I wasn’t the best friend to her, Clay. I was too ashamed to tell her that everything she said made sense. And he was, too—seeing someone from work. One of the women in the office e-mailed her and asked to talk to her. She told her everything.”
The night she returned my text message from a friend’s house. The “Have to see you” e-mail on her computer. Lucian had alluded to her affair without saying it, and, once I believed it, he had not dissuaded me.
Fiend! I felt worse than horrible. I felt responsible. “I need to call her, Aubrey. Can you give me her number?”
I took it down, not sure when I would call or what I would say.
“Aubrey?” I said, at the end of the call. “What was it that was never enough for you? Was it money? What I did for a living?”
“Don’t.” I heard a tremor in her voice. “Don’t do that. You did everything right.”
“I don’t think I did.”
“Yes, you did. You’re a good man.”
Lucian’s words echoed somewhere between my brain and the phone line.
I ask you, what is good, really, Clay?
And I knew the answer: not good enough.
But I thanked her anyway, knowing she meant well, and asked her again if she was well.
And with those words, I felt her fall irrevocably away from me. All the hope I had harbored, but had been afraid to admit even to myself, slipped away like coins through a grate.
“That’s wonderful, Aubrey. That’s really something.” My voice was hollow. I wished her well again and we hung up.
It seemed so unfair. She would have the house, the children, the life I had wanted with her. She would never endure what I had, would never know what those months had been for me.
It was unfair, but it had tethered me too long. And despite our reasons and expectations—realistic or not—I had surely let her down as much as she had betrayed and abandoned me. I was a good man, but I was no better than she.
I forgave her.
I had not been to Esad’s since that first night. The strap of bells against the glass sounded sharp and metallic, too loud. The smell of the grill, the chicken and burgers and gyros, flooded my nostrils and I was there again, that night in October.
But tonight I was a different man.
The Mediterranean stranger was there, sitting at the same table. This time I did not wait for him to summon me but walked directly to his table and sat down.
“You let me believe lies.”
His hair curled over his forehead as it had before, though this time I didn’t find his looks enviable. His wool trousers did not summon to mind cognac, yachts, or Cohibas.
His watch, stainless, heavy, and surely expensive, did not interest me.
He studied me, his eyes darting across my face as though he were reading a book. He smiled slightly. “But I never lied.” He picked at his slacks, at the cuff of his cashmere sweater. The action struck me as far too affected.
“And Mrs. Russo?”
“What business is it of yours?”
He was right. I supposed that was between her and her God. I did not expect to get a straight answer from Lucian, anyway. Besides, asking would not return her to me, grant me retribution, or help me now.
The demon looked away, deflecting my gaze.
“The story isn’t finished,” I said.
“Ah, the story,” he said coldly. He tapped his chin in a mockery of thinking and sat back, regarding me over his slightly hooked nose. “How about this. I had a dream—if demons truly dream—the other night. I dreamed I stood before a great mirror—one that distorted all the things I once thought beautiful, recasting them in ghoulish images, casting me into an ugly mold I have known only in my own mind. And it threw Lucifer into such a grotesque state that I barely recognized him except by his eyes and that presence I know to be his. And when I shook free of it, my strange waking dream, it occurred to me that I was not looking at a mirror at all but into the reflection of all things as they are, for all things must be seen in their true light when held up to the mirror of Truth.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” My anger, my grief, my outrage, bubbled up all at once.
His mouth formed a tight line. “I saw Lucifer the other day. Still brilliant, my prince. Still beautiful. Perhaps not quite as stunning as before—it may be that the millennia are finally working their wear upon him, as the shining cloth wears at last upon the finish of an antique, as even kisses wear down the gold leaf of an icon. But he’s lovely yet.” His eyes shone with terrible light. “Remembering him in the idyll of first Eden is almost more than I can stand, though I have long since come to terms with all that has happened since. To look upon him now is still amazing, though he is not—will never again be—the perfect creature he once was. But then, none of us are what we were. Even you, Clay.” He looked at me, clearly expectant.
“Do you feel better saying that? Ruminating about your life, though your future is set and there’s nothing you can do about it—living in the past, as we say? I don’t care that you saw Lucifer! How does it finish? The story isn’t finished!”
The dark smile changed, transformed itself into a terrible glare. “But mine is. And that is all I am concerned about. I’m tired, Clay. I came back to you, not because I wanted to, but because I was compelled to. I played a game with you, and for the game to end I must finish it. So here I am. And this is all I have for you and all you will get from me, for I know very well how my own story shall end. Oh, there’s more for you, a bit more, but this is the end as it pertains to you and me. My tale has given way to yours. Don’t you see it, or are you still blind, you idiotic human? In the end, as I have said, it has always been about you.”
“No,” I said, my emotions heating to a roiling rage. “I don’t see at all what this has to do with me. And without that, it has no ending. And without an ending, it can’t ever be published. So there’s some truth for you!”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? That was your aim all along!”
“No.” His mouth curved, revealing white teeth. “It wasn’t. I told you I needed to tell you my story. Yes, I knew you would write it. I knew your ego would find the opportunity irresistible. But my goal all along has been to tell you my story.”
“Just to be heard? Just to ruin my life?” I was shaking now.
“How long do you expect to live, Clay?”
“What?”
“I hope not very long.”
My heart was beating erratically. He glanced at my chest, as though he could see it through my flesh.
“That heart of yours has outgrown its casing. It happened a long time ago. You’ll go to the doctor in a couple of days, and he probably won’t even properly diagnose it. But here, what’s a trifle to me? I give you a parting gift: restrictive cardiomyopathy.”
I blanched. “What? What is that?”
“Look it up. You’re handy that way. Be sure to inform your doctor, or he might well miss it or, more likely, dismiss it as an anxiety disorder. It doesn’t really matter if he does. The only thing that could possibly save you by now is a transplant.”
Sweat trickled down my sides inside my sweater. “Why? Why did you do this?”
“Because this is your life, Clay: fleeting, ephemeral, and insignificant except for one thing, that El loved you. And you have missed it. Missed it all, completely. And now, look at you. Sweating, worried about your life, your story. Did you expect to live forever? Did you think this day would not come? It had to, if not in this way, then in some other. I’ve done you a favor!”
“What favor?”
“Still blind!” His eyes flashed with an evil I found both horrible and horribly mesmerizing. “Look around you! Open your eyes! In telling you the truth about yourself more clearly than anyone ever hears it, I have shown you a choice that was before you all along. But no, even now you cannot see it.”
“What choice?”
In the sandwich shop the demon had been incensed. But here before me now, I knew the purest hate in the universe was leveled, in this moment, at me.
“The truth, Clay! In the end I have told you the truth—a truth that, having heard, you are now doubly accountable for. Yes, if you become one of them, those shining souls, what can I do about it? But reject the truth even by refusing to decide, and reap the consequence you rightfully deserve. Do you hear that? That is accountability. It is the sound of hell, calling for you! Having had such an extravagant gift offered you, your rejection can only result in damnation far greater than that of those to whom it was never offered.”
His lips pulled back from his teeth. “This, then, shall be my singular consolation, my bitter solace: that when you die—and the time will be soon—there will be at least one of El’s precious clay humans more damned to hell than I!”
I gaped as he got up. This time it was I who grabbed his wrist. But he shook me off as though I were an insect.
I fell back. “Where are you going?”
“I have an appointment,” he growled. And he strode out into the black night, the light of the moon blue in his hair.
I staggered home, heartsick—literally—knowing he was right. But knowing, also, what I needed to do.
I had come to the end of the story only to find that it was no story at all. That my childhood training in the stuff of myth was a living and breathing reality.
That, indeed, there was a monster.
Just not the one I thought.