"Fuck him," I told Kiki that night. "Fuck him and his reiki guy and his three-act structure and--"
"It just doesn't matter, does it?" she said to me. "Nothing matters any more."
I didn't know what to say to that.
Then she laughed. Laughed like she had when we first met, and for that moment, I thought maybe everything would be OK.
Thought it, but knew otherwise.
Wherein the Devil Explains
The next day, I took my laptop out to the balcony again. I had plenty of time to work on the next draft of the screenplay. The new book was two weeks late at this point. My editor had never seen me late on a book before.
"I understand things must be crazy, what with the movie (congrats again, by the way!) and the move to L.A.," she'd e-mailed me, "but I'm hoping I'll get the draft of the new book sooner rather than later. Don't worry if it's a little rough! We just would like to get started on our end."
"It's almost done," I replied, the lie of lies among authors. But true in my case. And it wasn't rough at all -- I'd been revising while writing and the draft I had was pretty clean. It wouldn't need much in the way of further revising; I could just tell. After five books, I'd developed a sense for such things.
Almost done, indeed. Maybe a sentence or two at the end. That was all it needed. And then it would be done and I would be done, too.
I set up the laptop and stared at the screen. So close...
But I had the movie deal now. I could blow off the book contract, right? And in doing so, blow off that other pesky contract I'd signed. Get my soul back. Or at least cling to the tiny bit I had left.
I could do that.
I could totally do that.
But it didn't matter any more. And besides...
And besides...
"And besides, it's a really good book, isn't it?" the devil asked, lounging against the balustrade.
I couldn't lie to him. "It's a fucking masterpiece," I said in a hollow voice. I was the worst critic of my own writing, but even I couldn't fault this one.
"Masterpiece. That sounds nice."
"It's the book I've wanted to write my entire life, the book I always imagined myself writing."
He nodded knowingly. His voice soothed. "And it will succeed beyond your wildest dreams. The children of dirt farmers in Africa will read this book when they grow up, Randall. That's the deal."
I closed my eyes. So close. So close to the end.
To the ends.
"This sucks," I said. "I would have written this book anyway. I would have written it with or without you."
"And the same few thousand or so people who read your other books would have read it and no one would have cared. Now the world will read it."
"What if I repent?" My voice was soft, barely audible even to me, but the devil heard.
"You think the Old Man is interested in a single soul? He's a little busy with the big picture. And when I say 'big,' I mean universe-wide."
I remembered, then, the night of my signing at Deux Livres -- running off to cheat with Gym Girl, trapped in her neighborhood with no way back to Manda. Lovely Rita had rescued me and I'd thought of her as a guardian angel. Maybe in a movie of my life, she would have actually been a guardian angel, sent from heaven to rescue me from myself.
But not in a Randall Banner novel.
"Why me?" I asked, more plaintive that I'd intended. "Why me?"
"You asked, Randall. You offered."
"I can't be the only one," I said. "I can't be the only person who asked that day, that hour, even that minute. Why did you pick me?"
He sighed and leaned back.
"There was this one time, in Moscow... This wasn't long ago as I measure things, but to you, it was a lifetime. Anyway, I blew into town with some friends and we just tried to see how many of you we could fuck up at one go. It wasn't terribly challenging. And what I realized was that you people don't need much incentive to ruin yourselves. You'll do it for very little, and very easily."
"Pity the poor monkeys," I said with a heavy dollop of sarcasm. I typed a single sentence on-screen. One more to go. Maybe two. It didn't matter any more. I'd made up my mind. I just wanted to know why. "Why me?" I asked again.
"Seven billion people on this useless planet, Randall, my man. You know why I picked you? I'll tell you why -- it's because you're an outsider among your own species."
I said nothing. My fingers idled on the keyboard.
"I've been watching you a long time, Randall. Watching. Saw women interested in you and you had no clue. Saw things happening all around you and you didn't notice. You know why?" Without waiting for an answer, the devil stabbed his forefinger at his own temple. "Because you're too busy living in your own head. You're the most self-aware, solipsistic, self-pitying person I know, but even before you met me, you'd still managed to eke out a pretty decent life. Not that you could see it. So obsessed with your dreams dying. 'My dream is dead and no matter what happens, nothing can ever bring it back!' Boo-fucking-hoo, Randall.
"You didn't know how good you had it. Too busy holding funerals for your fantasies. But you were no one's flunky. Worked for yourself. Bedded a hottie like Fiona. And you never understood or appreciated it. Just fumbling and stumbling through life. I couldn't stand that. I had to take you down a peg."
Of all the answers to "Why me?" that was probably the only one I hadn't anticipated, the only one I didn't understand. "Take me down a peg? By giving me a super-successful novel?"
The devil flashed his grin. "It's not all it's cracked up to be, man. Do you even know how a book becomes a mega-hit like yours? I mean, yeah, Lacey helped. You can't always count on something like that, though. No, a book becomes a hit because big-mouths read it and won't shut up about it. So then more big-mouths read it. And on and on. I just got you more and better big-mouths. That's the secret of being the devil -- everyone thinks it's about, like, grand schemes. But really it's all a matter of getting the right book to the right person -- or the wrong book to the wrong person -- and letting the dominoes fall, fall, fall."
"It doesn't make any sense, though. Take my soul and in exchange give me fame, fortune, and the hottest piece of ass on the planet? I'm not buying it."
The devil shrugged. "Well, I didn't say there wasn't something in it for me..."
"My soul."
"Nah. Well, yeah, but not just your soul. Your soul is actually worthless. Who cares about it? Meaningless."
"Meaningless?" My temper waxed bright and hot. "Are you crazy? Have you seen what I've become? The things I've done to people since you started leeching it away from me?"
"Don't be a fucking dramatic douchebag, Randall. That had nothing to do with your soul."
"But--"
"You think people have to be unsouled to do what you've done? Are you that naive? Really? You're a grown-up. You know the truth. You didn't do anything you didn't want to do. You did some mean, nasty shit when you still had ninety percent of your soul. You were always the same self-involved asshole. You saw what you were becoming. You could have stopped it at any time. You didn't. Because you liked it. You liked cheating on your rebound girl, Manda. You liked treating Gym Girl like she didn't matter. You liked screwing over Del."
"You can't--"
"I can damn well be serious. Think about it -- you didn't fuck Sherrie. You resisted. You always could. You chose not to. You never once said, 'Fuck it -- it's not worth it.' Did you become worse when I started taking your soul?" Here he grinned the old, lazy hipster grin I knew so well. Only it no longer seemed particularly lazy. "Of course you did. But you didn't become bad, Randall. You were bad all along."
"We're all bad," Gym Girl had told me.
"You think I'd go to all this trouble for a soul? I didn't need your soul. I needed more than that. So much more."
His eyes gleamed. I didn't even have to prod him for more. He wanted to tell me. Here, at his final moment of triumph, he wanted me to know.
"It was actually one of y
ou chattering monkeys who gave me the idea," he said. "Everything was going great. The Internet was kicking great guns and TV was getting good, in an unseemly, trashy way. I figured in a generation, maybe two, I'd have you monkeys all hooked on the cheap, shitty entertainment, the stuff that funnels you right to me.
"And then... And then that fucking English woman, writing that damn series of kids' books. And she changed the world. She really did. She got a whole generation of kids hooked on reading, when they should have been hooked on Internet porn and music videos. So that made me think: What if I could redirect that power? What if I could exploit it? And instead of hooking people on a story about bravery and friendship and overcoming adversity, what if I could get a story written by a horrible person? A miserable, horrible person. Like you.
"It's like a computer, Randy. I input miserable wretch of a writer, depressing-as-shit book, and massive fame, and it spits out, well, spiritual and psychological apocalypse."
I typed another sentence. OK, one more. Definitely. One more and it was done.
The devil knew it. He came closer, licking his lips. "Oh, and see? See? You don't even care any more do you? You know I'm one sentence away, one bite away, from having all of you, and you don't care."
"It's a great book." I was helpless in its grasp.
"You've spent your life wanting more," the devil explained, as if I needed such explication. "More sales. More success. More pussy. And you know what? You're getting it now. You're welcome."
I strummed my fingers on the keyboard.
"The problem is that the world works a certain way and you just can't be bothered. Again, you're all tied up in yourself. You're fucking constipated with yourself. Yeah, Randall -- your books were good. And they were flops. Guess what? The world just doesn't like the kind of books you write, even if they're good. There are different kinds of 'good' and yours isn't the successful kind."
"But Flash/Back..."
"Was a fluke. One of those instances where the zeitgeist happened to conflate with your particular book. And then Down/Town benefitted from that. And the next one... Oh, Randall. This book, this new book..." He tapped the back of the screen with his finger. Gently. "This is your masterpiece, but you, Randall -- you're my masterpiece. Do you have any idea how much work this has been?
"See, first we had to attune people to what it is you do. Your work resists sympathy. And empathy. It's self-absorbed and it screams 'Don't read me!' to people."
"Wow. Thanks."
"Shut up. I'm talking. Your books are technically proficient, but they have a black heart, Randall. They're cynical and depressing. So people resisted them. But then, with poor innocent Lacey in your corner, it's like people were willing to crack through that veneer of self-important shit you lard onto everything you write."
"Hey!"
"So," he went on, ignoring me, "we got them their first taste. And even though it wasn't exactly to their liking, they had social pressures telling them -- they had Lacey telling them -- that they were supposed to like it." He showed me impossibly clean and white and large teeth with a too-delighted smile. "It's like when a friend tells you a restaurant is great. You go there and you don't actually like it, but you think you're supposed to, so you end up going back."
"You're saying you fooled people into liking my book?"
He threw back his head and roared. There was something...extra in that laugh. Something I couldn't identify. Something...leonine.
"I'm saying the world fooled people into liking it. No one wants to be left out. Everyone wants some connection to the girl on TV, the poor raped and kidnapped cutie-pie. So they read your book and they convince themselves it must be good because everyone else is reading it and convincing themselves of the same thing."
"But Down/Town..."
"That's the beauty of it. We did what normally takes decades, Randall. We shifted cultural tastes with a single book. Right now, in publishing houses around the world, you know what people are saying?"
I shook my head.
"They're saying, 'Get me more books like Randall Banner's.'"
"Really?" That certainly got my attention.
He laughed again, and this time I definitely heard the lion in there. "Damn right they are! They're looking for more books that enforce a selfish, self-absorbed, nihilistic outlook on life."
"I'm not--"
"You are! You're so..." He threw his hands up in the air. "I have no words for it, man. I mean, look at your father. Your poor, lonely father. He's seen three women love and leave him. He's alone. Totally alone. And he reaches out to you, tries to connect with you any way he can."
"I don't give a shit about hockey and I don't--"
"That's exactly what I'm talking about! Would it kill you to pretend to like hockey for the length of a phone call? Or even to talk about jerking off? He's an old man. He'll be dead soon. He's begging for some attention from his son and you just spit in his face. Each. And every. Time. And that's why I love you, Randall."
And he touched me for the first time. Touched my actual skin, I mean, stroking my cheek with a hand dry and hot, his eyes alight with malicious glee.
When I say "alight," I mean it. There was a murky light dancing in his eyes, something hypnotic and unavoidable.
The only thing that could distract me from those eyes was his touch. It burned. It froze. It made me erect and nauseated at the same time. My eyes blurred with tears.
"Don't go away yet, Randall," he chortled. "You still have work to do! Like I said, the world is going to read this next book. It's going to be the biggest thing since that asshole Gutenberg kicked this shit off. And your influence is going to make the world a collection of self-important, self-absorbed, depressed and depressing fucking assholes who don't give a shit about anyone else." He leered at me. "Just. Like. You."
I realized something. I ran through everything he had just told me.
And I laughed.
The devil smirked. "Yeah, Randall. It's funny. I fucked you. Right in the ol' shit-pit. And you're fucking over the world. Not bad, huh?"
"That's not what I'm laughing about."
"What, then?"
I wiped tears from my eyes. I typed the last sentence of the book.
I like to think I felt the last of my soul leave me, but the truth is, I didn't.
"You're not gonna believe this."
"I believe an awful lot, Randall. Some of it's even true."
"You fucked me over, sure. But I'm fucking you right back, you dumb piece of shit."
Wherein I Explain
The devil chortled with glee. "No, no, my friend. Those cool, fun new drugs Kiki's got you taking must be messing with you. In this relationship, I am the fucker and you are the fuckee. I wield the cock and you bend over and spread 'em. It has ever been thus, asshole."
"You gave me a lot of power."
"Exactly. I gave the power to change the world to someone solipsistic and narcissistic and just plain bad. And now soulless in the bargain. Score for me."
"Here's the thing," I told the devil. "That's all very well and good. But you made one mistake."
"Oh, really?" He leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, and regarded me with a wickedly indulgent smirk. "I somehow doubt that."
"Yeah. You never bothered to ask me what my book was about."
The devil opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
Then opened it again.
He lunged for the computer, but I closed the lid. "Ah, ah!"
"Let me see that!" he wailed. "I'll rip your heart out and shit in your chest, Randall!"
I believed him. I opened the laptop and turned its screen towards him.
As he scrolled to the beginning and skimmed through the book at the speed of thought, I realized something else. Something fundamental and important.
He had taken my soul but he hadn't really changed me. I had never been a good person. Never. He was right: I had always been self-absorbed and impatient and self-centered. He had done nothing to me,
taking my soul, leaving me unchanged. My soul had been weak, papier-mâché fetters on my worst impulses. Removing them made it easier to indulge in my worst, most contemptible instincts, but only by the degree it takes to break paper.
Actually, though... I had changed. Changed in one way, one important way: I could now be honest with myself. I could admit I wasn't a good person and I just didn't care one way or the other.
"Oh, fucking mother of all that is fucked up the ass!" the devil cried. "What have you done, Randall? What is this shit?"
"I'm titling it Love/Life," I told him. "And you were right about me, but you forgot one important detail: I'm a writer, asshole. I may be a dickhead, but I'm really good at putting myself in other people's shoes. And I get bored writing the same thing over and over, so I decided to try something different."
"I feel like it's too...big for me," I had told Gym Girl, all those months ago. "I feel like I'm attempting something beyond the reaches of my talent, you know?"
"Love/Life," he moaned, as though in pain. Maybe he was in pain. Had I hurt the devil?
"I may be a soulless asshole, a cheat, a guy who fucks over his colleagues, a guy who uses women, but I'm really, really good at pretending not to be."
Hence: Love/Life. A little something different for the Randall Banner fans of the world. A novel about self-sacrifice. About nobility. Altruism.
"You fucker!" he screamed. "You wrote a fucking book about Tayvon!"
A book about the best human being I know.
"What's that gonna do to the world once it gets out there?" I asked, trying (but not too hard) to keep a note of glee out of my voice.
Tayvon hated the book. Hated the idea of it. Of course he did. In that sacrificing way of his -- that military way of his -- he didn't see his service as anything exceptional. He didn't want himself held up as an ideal. Not even fictionally.
But that didn't stop me. Not me. Not the guy who only cares about himself and his own dreams and his own success.
The devil reared up, his chest enormous and powerful. A single curl of black smoke escaped a nostril.
"I am going to crush your skull to bits," he said, "and then delete that fucking--"