Demon

“How?” I envisioned a drug overdose, alcohol poisoning, a motorcycle crash. A knife fight.

He cocked his head toward the same invisible horde of insects I had noticed that first night at Esad’s. I shuddered.

“A boating accident. On the Missouri River. He drowned and left a wife. Ah, and three children. Would you like to know more?”

“No,” I said, numb, and then again, “No.” Family. Kids. Even Jake Salter had his act together. I couldn’t even stay married five years. And then I felt guilty. Act together or not, Jake was dead. Why did it always seem to happen like that?

“It always does seem to happen like that,” he said, far too young in human years to utter such words, far too dispassionate regardless of his true age.

“Stop it! Stop reading my mind! And what was that with the dreams? How dare you!” A couple stopped to stare as I turned on him. I had become one of those people I always steered clear of.

“Do you think I could have done that differently? I couldn’t have. I need you to know. It was the only way.” He had said something similar that first night at the cafe. I heard the echo of it now, bits and pieces of that first conversation flitting along with it.

“How about just telling me next time?” I said over the iteration and counterpart of our first conversations, as someone shouts with headphones on. I clutched at my head, realized with belated awareness that I was close to hysteria. I hadn’t slept well. I had lost enough weight in the last two weeks that my pants were loose—something I would normally be glad of but under the circumstances found slightly alarming—and was so behind at work that I had started to wonder if my job might be in jeopardy. It had been well over two months since I had brought any proposals to the editorial committee, and I was behind in getting the ones that had made it through ready for the publishing board with sales and marketing. The slush pile on my desk—the queries and manuscript samples sent in by agents and would-be writers—had grown to such a proportion that I had been forced to clear a space on my bookshelf to accommodate what wouldn’t fit on my credenza. I had more than a hundred e-mails in my in-box and fourteen voice mails that I repeatedly resaved under the delusion that I would return them before week’s end.

To top it all off, I just noticed this morning that I had begun to sprout bumpy hives on my chest, underarms, and back.

“I have so much to tell you, Clay. And we’ve so little time,” he said, the echoes of prior conversations subsiding with this statement. There was nothing youthful in the shake of his head.

“You’re obsessed with time, you know that?”

“You would be, too. Maybe you should be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Come on. It’s a lovely day.”

THE COMMON WAS ALIVE with the desperate festivity that comes with the last warm day of the season. Couples pushed children in strollers. Brownstone Brahmins walked their dogs, and couples dozed, curled up in quilts. A coed football game was in progress on the lawn, and leaves were everywhere, the trees having thrown their autumnal parade seemingly overnight, leaving behind a slew of red, yellow, and orange confetti.

I hadn’t been to the Common since last year’s July 4 when we—Dan, Sheila, Aubrey, and I—had decided to camp out on a patch of grass to get a good view of the fireworks. Aubrey was distant that day, and her moodiness had irritated me. Two days later, I found the e-mail from Richard.

Now here I was again, this time with either a demon or a psychopathic, albeit talented, hypnotist—part of me still clung to the shrinking possibility that an explanation might still be found in this corporeal world—and last year’s Fourth of July seemed as surreal a life as my new one had become.

We were walking toward the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, in the direction of the Public Garden, but even now I could see the blackness of Eden, the blaze of light that was Lucifer, the trailing stream of angels that followed him in a fleeing Milky Way of bright bodies. But before I would hear more, I wanted something.

“You said that first night that you came at great risk.” “Yes.”

“What’s the risk?”

Lucian sighed heavily, as though it would take great effort to explain. “Is it not enough that I have assumed it?”

I was silent.

“I’m sure you would agree that this is highly unconventional,” he said at last.

To say the least.

“It would not be looked well upon, my talking with you.”

“By whom?”

“By just about any of them. Us. Enough now. This does not serve my purpose.”

“Your purpose? What about mine? I’ve spent an entire night falling from heaven, and you know what? I’m exhausted.”

“What do you want, Clay?” He sounded weary, and this aggravated me even more.

“I want to know why! If this is dangerous for you—and I have no idea what kind of ramifications this will have for me—I want at least to know why you’re doing it.”

“I told you you were safe. Any ‘ramifications,’ as you call them, will be those of your own making. As for why I’m doing this, I’ve already told you that as well. I’m not going to waste our time answering the same question twice.”

I had hoped, if he answered it again, that I might glean some small detail more because, although I had heard his reasons, I did not understand them. Why would a demon want his memoirs published? And why by me? He had laughed at my first notion, that he was here to strike a devil’s bargain. But despite his irritation at my asking again, I could not help feeling that there was something more.