“How’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Talk around that chicken like that.”
He grinned, which made him look like a portly crocodile. “Swallowed it, that’s all. I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since lunch.”
“Do you mind if I take the others? I was warming them up for myself, and there’s more in the refrigerator.”
He stood aside with a mock bow.
“You’re in this together—this thing about Hell. You and him.” Eira indicated me as she took the frying pan from the stove.
“We met before?” he boomed at me. I said that we had not, to the best of my memory.
“Devils—demons are what he calls them. He says there are probably demons sleeping here right now, up on the second floor.”
I put in, “I implied that, I suppose. I did not state it.”
“Very likely true,” the demon boomed, adding, “I’m going to make coffee, if anybody wants some.”
“And the . . . the damned. They’re going to Hell, but they stop off here.”
He gave me a searching glance. “I’ve been wondering about you, to tell the truth. You seem like the type.”
I declared that I was alive for the time being.
“That’s the best anybody can say.”
“But the cars—” Eira began.
“Some drive; some fly.” He had discovered slices of ham in the refrigerator, and he slapped them into the frying pan as though he were dealing blackjack. “I used to wonder what they did with all the cars down there.”
“But you don’t anymore.” Eira was going along now once more willing to play what she thought (or wished me to believe she thought) a rather silly game. “So you found out. What is it?”
“Nope.” He pulled out one of the wooden yellow-enameled kitchen chairs and sat down with such force I was surprised it did not break. “I quit wondering, that’s all. I’ll find out soon enough, or I won’t. But in places this close —I guess there’s others—you get four kinds of folks.” He displayed thick fingers, each with a ring that looked as if it had cost a great deal more than Eira’s. “There’s guys that’s still alive, like our friend here.” He clenched one finger. “Then there’s staff. You know what I mean?”
Eira looked puzzled. “Devils?”
“J. Gunderson Foulweather”—the demon jerked his thumb at his vest— “doesn’t call anybody racial names unless they hurt him or his, especially when there’s liable to be a few eating breakfast in the morning. Staff, okay? Free angels. Some of them are business contacts of mine. They told me about this place; that’s why I came the first time.”
He clenched a second finger and touched the third with the index finger of his free hand. “Then there’s future inmates. You used a word J. Gunderson Foul-weather himself wouldn’t say in the presence of a lady, but since you’re the only lady here, no harm done. Colonists, okay?”
“Wait a minute.” Eira looked from him to me. “You both claim they stop off here.”
We nodded.
“On their way to Hell. So why do they go? Why don’t they just go off,” she hesitated, searching for the right word, and finished weakly, “back home or something?”
The demon boomed, “You want to field this one?”
I shook my head. “Your information is superior to mine, I feel certain.”
“Okay, a friend of mine was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. You ever been to Newark?”
“No,” Eira said.
“Some parts are pretty nice, but it’s not, like, the hub of Creation, see? He went to France when he was twenty-two and stayed twenty years, doing jobs for American magazines around Paris. Learned to speak the language better than the natives. He’s a photographer, a good one.”
The demon’s coffee had begun to perk. He glanced around at it, sniffed appreciatively, and turned back to us, still holding up his ring and little fingers. “Twenty years, then he goes back to Newark. J. Gunderson Foulweather doesn’t stick his nose into other people’s business, but I asked him the same thing you did me: how come? He said he felt like he belonged there.”
Eira nodded slowly.
I said, “The staff, as you call them, might hasten the process, I imagine.”
The demon appeared thoughtful. “Could be. Sometimes, anyhow.” He touched the fourth and final finger. “All the first three’s pretty common from what I hear. Only there’s another kind you don’t hardly ever see. The runaways.”
Eira chewed and swallowed. “You mean people escape?”
“That’s what I hear. Down at the bottom, Hell’s pretty rough, you know? Higher up it’s not so bad.”
I put in, “That’s what Dante reported too.”
“You know him? Nice guy. I never been there myself, but that’s what they say. Up at the top it’s not so bad,
