“Go ahead,” says Phil. “He’ll love seeing you. No one ever comes here.”
“After you.”
Phil grins. “You gotta have more faith, Niko-statin.” He steps into the room and darkness swallows him. After a moment Niko leans his guitar case against the white wall and walks in after him. His shadow falls into the trapezoid of doorway light. All he sees is white floor unidentifiably stained and the ghost outline of Phil nearby.
Rustling wings again. Something large moves in the darkened room and by the time he registers its motion it has rushed into his little island of light and he is all enfolded by its wings. He staggers back and raises his hands to strike the reeking thing that whimpers as it holds him slobbering. It’s huge and muscular and dark with skin the texture of a shark. Still holding him it slides down his body’s length to kneel before him sobbing loudly. Great convulsions heave its muscled back. It cries his name in a voice that stirs dim recognition buried deep within his cells like the encoded cancer trigger that is humanity’s heritage. A primordial self has argued with this voice. Nations have fallen beneath its easy guile. The strong and crumpled figure hugs Niko round the knees like a mournful child and a horntip rasps his jeans as the sorry creature turns its face up to him. Even in the scant light Niko sees the goldleaf shine of its goat eyes, the glint of tear tracks on the jetblack leather face.
Niko reaches out, he cannot stop himself, he reaches out and pats the Devil on the head.
The dark beside him laughs. “Now isn’t that sweet?”
Niko cannot look away from the idiot madman grinning up at him with a cannibal’s drooling mouth of sharpened teeth. “What have you done to him?”
“Me? Not a thing, Niko-lepsy. Poor bastard’s crazy as a shit-house rat.”
The Devil cries and cries at Niko’s feet.
“It was the job. The old bat just wasn’t cut out for it in the long run. It all got to him.”
Niko looks toward where Phil’s voice emerges from the darkness.
“Nobody did this but him. Scout’s honor.” He shakes his head at the pathetique before him. “He was the fairhaired boy before he got handed this gig. Never got over getting the boot. Used to pine all the time. That Milton, he had him pegged. All heart, no brain, attention span of a gnat. Took everything personal.”
Niko wants to push away from the ruined glory of the abject figure before him yet he also wants to give it what mortal comfort he can provide. As the fallen god that Geryon showed him chained to the mountain had radiated patience, so this creature radiates sorrow. Infinite grief from eternal sundering, sad and passionate as a graveyard statue. And truly deeply mad.
“You want to know why your old story always played the way it did?” the disembodied voice continues. “There’s your answer. Mr. Passion. Mr. Impulse Buy. Every time, you come down here and you want to make a deal. You grind away at the poor sap until he gives in and lets you play. You’re so blindly hopeful and he’s such a sucker for anything that lets him feel something. It’s pitiful to watch. And of course your music nails him every time, because the spongehearted son of a bitch would cry if a butterfly kicked him in the head. So he hands you back that whore you just can’t live without and you and Resurrection Barbie skip on out of here, Jack and Jill go up the hill like their asses are on fire. But whatever mask your punkass soul is wearing there’s always a catch and it’s always the same. Don’t look back. Just like Lot’s wife in my favorite bedtime story. Three simple words, no big deal. And even though you’ve committed more violations than a priest at a whorehouse to come down here, and welshed on an agreement and then even dickered a new deal, even after you get what you want but don’t deserve and head on out of here, you still go right ahead and fuck the dog. Don’t you, Niko-lama? You just have to look back and screw it up. You want to know why, Niko-wafer? Because you’re a loser. A fuckup wetbrain hophead loser.”
Niko crouching looks into mad goldleaf eyes. The Devil smiles, the Devil drools, the Devil croons his name. Niko’s very soul shudders. “Well. Thanks for the newsflash.” He touches the Devil’s cheek and the Devil nuzzles his palm. Tears spring to Niko’s eyes. Why this should be tragic he doesn’t know but it is. It is. He feels he’s present at the fall and plunder of some great and frightening empire. Niko firmly pats the great dark burly shoulder. The gesture of a man bidding farewell to a horse about to be put down. Gently he unfolds the shuddering wings from around his legs and unclenches the enormous hands. Stands and pulls the Devil upright. Nods up at that hopeful insane face and then turns toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asks the darkness.
“To get my guitar.”
“No can do, Niko-naut.”
Niko stops with his back to Phil as a black flower blooms in his chest. “Crazy or not,” he tells the bright white hall, “my deal is with him.”
“Your deal is with whoever’s in charge.”
Niko looks at his shoes. They’ve sure covered some ground haven’t they. “I thought you were just a messenger.”
“We all have our public face. Don’t we, Niko-modius?”
Niko turns back toward the room. The Devil huddles just beyond the doorway light. Phil’s form is convoluted dark before him. “So the inmates have taken over the asylum.”
“The inmates are the asylum, Niko-varitch. Always were. Let’s just say there’s been a corporate restructuring at the executive level since your last little venture down this way. Carpe nocturnum, and all like that.”
“And you won’t let me play for him. Is that it? It’s all been just some big joke.”
“Oh no no no. I wouldn’t let you come this far for nothing. Who am I to mess with a tried and true old story? Everything’s the same. The masks may change but not the play. You’ll still have your little audition. And if your music does its thing well hey. We’ll hand the man his Kewpie doll. It could happen.”
Mephistopheles steps into the light and smiles. “But you won’t be playing to win him over. This time out you play for me.”
XXI.
NOTES ON HER SLEEPING
THIS TIME THE elevator’s single button bears an L and when it opens Niko looks out on the sterile and depopulated lobby of an office building. Phil walks briskly through the lobby without waiting for Niko, and when Niko emerges from the building blinking in the bright Los Angeles afternoon Phil is standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and looking bored. Hot dry clear late summer day. Niko begins to sweat under the first sunlight he has felt in a long long time. The air smells like nothing at all, and that is pure perfume. Niko puts his hands up to it. Wants to linger here and gape at the unbelievable fact of Los Angeles around him, a city become near mythical as the reality of Hell usurped it.
Then he sees what waits for them at the curb. “No way. Fuck you.”
Phil smirks and pulls out a pack of nicotine gum. “Now now Nikotchka. I went to a lot of trouble to get just the right venue for your little show.” He unwraps a stick of gum and throws the wadded wrapper to the sidewalk. “We gotta get there somehow, Nico-rette.” He folds the gum in half and puts it in his mouth and offers the pack to Niko.
Who ignores it. “If your elevator can open out on this it can open on wherever we need to go.” He means to sound angry but he hears the note of desperation in his tone.
“All part of the act, Niko-matic. If you can’t stand the heat.” He shrugs and smacks his gum.
Niko scowls and knows he has no choice. He’s come here making demands. If he wants Phil to abide by them, he’ll have to accommodate Phil’s whims in return. They both know he’s standing on shaky ground.