21

Voices drifted from the Bristol Lounge, punctuated every few seconds by the trilling laugh of a woman. I ambled toward that sound, feeling like an outsider.

I had loved to come to the Four Seasons in my first years as an editor. I was writing the Coming Home books then and used to imagine the day when I would spend every Friday afternoon in the Bristol Lounge’s overstuffed chairs, perhaps in front of the fireplace if it were cold outside, expensive brandy rolling inside the snifter in my hand. There I would take drinks with fellow writers or my own editor—perhaps even an interviewer from the Paris Review.

It was four years now since I had last been here to take Aubrey’s mother to enjoy salmon sandwiches, miniature tarts, and scones with clotted cream, all part of a high tea that we could barely afford.

I half expected the hostess to give me a polite but distant look, to say that they were full, so sorry, that I might try the Irish pub down the street. But she smiled and led me to an out-of-the-way nook just off the bar lined by a long, red leather seat. Between the bronze upholstery tacks along the back of the seat and the book-lined shelves above it, the polished cherry wood of the table and the attendant cozy chairs pulled up on the other side, the little nook gave off the flavor of an elegant personal library.

In another life, one filled with editor and writer friends, I could have claimed this corner as my own, reserved it each week to hold court and take that brandy, to grant that rare interview.

Tonight there would be no editors, no interviews, no brandy.

But there would be, at least, dessert. I ordered coffee and then got up to drift between tables of tortes and pastries and cheesecake and ice creams at that famous dessert buffet, returning ultimately with a glorious bowl of hot pumpkin bread pudding that was even now melting a scoop of maple ice cream into a white moat in the dish.

From where I sat, I had a direct view of the grouping of cushy chairs in front of the piano, where five women exchanged Christmas gifts over likewise melting desserts. The gift bags and boxes were wrapped with tulle and sprigs of fresh evergreen and yielded items like silver bowls, a polished wooden jewelry box, a Hermes-style scarf. On the hand of every woman was a rock so large I could see it from my corner, shining like a beacon.

Beyond the group, a long expanse of windows looked out onto the street and into the Public Garden beyond. I used to love the order of those flower beds with their iron ropes, the manicured lawns and spiral-cut shrubs. But now they seemed as meticulous and indifferent as a cemetery, as unnatural as the perfectly embalmed visage of a corpse.

“I’m afraid I’m the late one this time.” A young man hurried into my morbid reverie and pulled out one of the cozy chairs. He was dapper in navy blue pants and a button-down shirt, his tie loosened so that it hung askew in a way that reminded me faintly of a noose. He might have been an intern fresh out of college; he had the mischievous, spring-faced look of an Ivy League a capella singer, a Harvard Din and Tonic or a Brown Derby. His hair, a light chestnut, curled around his face and over his ears in a way that might have looked like a dirty halo if the wind caught it just right. Like a doll-faced cherub. When he sat down, he crossed his ankle over his knee and fell back into the leather as though, at the ripe age of—what, twenty-one?—he had had a long day.

“Why are you so tired?” I said, a bit put out. I had come straight from eleven hours at the office on only five hours of sleep the night before.

“I’m a busy man,” he said, smiling at me. He had a dimple in his left cheek, and his skin was flushed pink. He looked like a young man in the throes of infatuation. I had never seen him like this.

“I don’t need to tell you the committee liked what I gave them, do I?”

“Of course they liked it.” He smiled again and looked around. “I haven’t been here since they expanded.” A waitress came for his order. He smiled at her and, with a look at my cup, asked for coffee.

“Helen assumes the content is mine, and that it’s fiction,” I said, shaving the corner off the bread pudding, taking just enough ice cream with it.

“But of course.”

“It feels dishonest.”

He shrugged. “If you want to put ‘as told to’ before your name, be my guest, though it won’t do wonders for your credibility.”

“I plan to use a pen name.” It would be my concession to a conscience that knew it could not claim full credit for Lucian’s story—only my own.

“A nom de plume? How mysterious.”

I did not say that it was also practical, a means of separating this work from my former, failed attempts at publishing.

The demon seemed to be elsewhere, just disengaged enough from our conversation to be unflappable, which bothered me. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“I’m comfortable with knowing how it ends.” It came out more calmly than I expected.

“Soon,” he said. “You’ll know. I promise.” He returned his focus to me with an absent smile.

“What you don’t seem to understand is that I can’t even finish a synopsis without”— I stopped as the waitress reappeared. Lucian smiled up at her, and I considered my soggy bread pudding, not wanting to follow their small talk. I wasn’t in the mood to witness any kind of interaction that I had not had since—since Lucian’s trick in the bookstore.

“Don’t be so sour, Clay,” he said after she left.

“I’m not sour.”

“You will be when you see . . . this,” he said, lifting a scrap of paper from the table with a triumphant flick of his hand. I stared, exasperated, at a number with the name Nikki scribbled next to it.

“I’m trying to discuss this memoir that is so important to you, and you’re collecting phone numbers?”

He tucked it inside his jacket. I couldn’t help wondering what would become of that number—and the woman it belonged to.

“All right, you want to get to the end of the book.”

The skin on my arms prickled.

There’s a monster.

I suddenly wondered if I might have done better to stay home. I needed sleep. Television. A movie. I needed to focus on something normal—nothing, in other words—like any other anesthetized human for once. But I knew I wouldn’t trade being here for sleep or time in front of a television I had not turned on for more than a month.

Lucian settled into his chair as though getting down to business and lifted his coffee cup. I gave him a quizzical look.

“First, a toast.”

“To what?” I was almost afraid to know.

“To you, Clay. They’re going to love your story,” he said. “You’ll have a contract within three months—not to mention a nice little advance.”

Something lurched inside me, scrabbling at his words like pennies on the ground. I wanted to believe him. How I wanted to believe him! “You said you’re not omniscient.” But I lifted my coffee cup. He clinked it, sloshing coffee over the edges of both our rims.

“I’m not. But as you know, I play the percentages. And I would bet money on it.”

I took a tentative sip, trying not to think about it, but it was too late; my heart had started a desperate little dance.

I had to admit I could use the money. Moving my books and sparse belongings to Cambridge and trying to replace the furniture I had given to Aubrey had not done wonders for my checkbook. I supposed I had Lucian to thank for providing me other matters to focus on than the minimalist décor of my apartment that Mrs. Russo had so generously called “Spartan.”

“Speaking of which, you should look into some of those last-minute vacation specials.”

“I can’t afford it.”

“Put it on your credit card. You deserve it. You can finish the story on the beach.”

I dropped my head, slid my hands over my hair. The beach. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a beach or taken a vacation.

“Meanwhile, if we have a book to write, we’d better get to it. Now then . . .” He scrubbed the back of his head.

“The Messiah was born,” I said slowly, not wanting to remember the look of that withered face again, contorted in that terrible smile.

“Of course,” he said, leaning forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together, “by the time of that horrible, eerie night, Lucifer had made tempting the faithful and bringing them before El like so many unruly children his life’s work. Not that it brought Lucifer much joy.”

“It’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?”

“He seemed less and less satisfied by it, his tolerance and appetite had grown so great. So what else was there for Lucifer—for us—to do except dwell on our less-favored status, to watch our own dwindling hope sinking deeper and deeper beneath the surface of a black bog, out of reach? Actually, the more we dared to hope for El’s renewed favor, the more we felt compelled to show these humans for the disappointments they were. And the more we carried out the commission of Lucifer—now Satan—the more out of favor we fell.”

“Talk about diminishing returns.”

“Exactly. And eventually, I suppose, the less we cared. By then the means had become an end in itself—a way of life, a purpose.

“This had already been the case with Satan for some time, but then he had always been a creature of mission, a dark visionary. And now his vision ignited a new and unholy fire in us as well. I found myself less melancholy and more wholly focused on a new trade: no more to glorify Creator Elohim—never that again—but to degrade and despoil all his favored people in ways unknown before. Now there was true pleasure. Don’t recoil like that.”

“I didn’t,” I lied.

“It’s not as though you’ve never wandered a step—and then ten more, each one easier than the last—down a path you had never thought yourself capable of taking. Did you ever once think you’d spend every night of almost four months drunk? That you’d wake up after a three-day binge to realize you were practically broke and still alone?”

I looked away. It was not a memory I wanted to recall, the weeks of drinking, the mad sobbing on my kitchen floor. A retaliatory one-night stand. Or two.

“But I’m not here to judge you. I’m only making a point.”

I retreated into my cup, realizing I had forgotten the bread pudding. It was cold now, a sodden, lopsided heap.

“Lucifer is a creature of method. Since his first failed attempt to raise his throne and then that business of Job, he had grown allergic to failure. Even in the garden of the first man and woman, he devoted long years to observing the humans, studying behaviors, weighing their tendencies, watching them like exotic creatures in their habitat. He is the master of risk reduction. Never impulsive, his plans ferment a long time in the darkness of his heart. The Great Inventor meditates at length on his craft, always the innovator. It is the reason he so rarely fails.

“Now at last was a venture worthy of him. It set him on edge so that he craved it to the exclusion of everything else. He was insanely preoccupied, shut up like a scientist in his laboratory, a beast pacing behind the arena gate.”

I thought I might know something about that kind of preoccupation. “And what was that challenge?”

“The spirit of the Almighty. God himself in the clay body of a man. Elohim come to earth.”

I felt my forehead wrinkle. “So you really mean it when you say he was God. Literally God and man.” I was aware of my dubious tone. I had always placed Jesus in the echelon reserved for Gandhi, Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr. But they were all mortal men.

The look on the demon’s face perplexed me. His lips were parted, turned up in just the hint of a smile. I felt he was somehow waiting on me, poised to see what I might say next.

Nikki, our waitress, stepped in, breaking the taut wire between us. I looked away as she refreshed my cup, cleaned up the coffee spilled from our toast. I was glad for the reprieve, unsure what had just happened between us.

When she left, he sat forward again, steepled his fingers. “Clay, what I tell you, I need you to hear. If you can’t believe it, then consider it a part of the story, and I’ll be content with that. I would be very content with that, in fact.” His smile was a quirk on just one side of his mouth.

Of course. It only matters that it is part of the story.

“Right now you need to know that this God-man was too big a prize for Lucifer. Too tempting, shall we say.” He laughed, and the dimple on his cheek squinted. I waited out the laughter as I had on other occasions. When it suddenly and disconcertingly stopped, he considered his hands, turning them over this way and that, as though he had not taken the time to examine them until now. “To thwart the son is to thwart the will of Elohim. This was too precious a goal for Lucifer to stand idly by. Too vital to Lucifer’s state of mind. It was to be the summation of his life’s work.”

“You’re saying he meant to tempt God.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that impossible?”

“Not entirely.” He looked and sounded, to all appearances, like the young scholar. He might have been a seminary student, ruddy cheeked and idealistic. “The clay body was the crux of it. No man, no soul in a clay body has ever been immune to temptation. In fact, every clay person since the first one had succumbed to temptation at some time or another, had experienced moral failure by El’s standards at some point in his or her life. But here, suddenly, was the unfathomable combination: the perfection of El in a fallible mud body. Perfection and weakness fused together.”

“Do you ever see anything redeeming in humans?”

He seemed on the verge of saying something then rerouted his response at the last instant. “It’s the nature of the vessel, Clay: cracked. Something that, once ruined, should have been thrown from the potter’s wheel to the refuse pile long ago. And what better way to prove it than to humiliate El with his own failure as one of them? He had chosen to become one of you. He chose the terms. If he wanted to fight with one hand tied behind his back, well then . . .” He shrugged.

“When you put it that way, it doesn’t seem quite fair.”

“He was as much flesh as he was El. But he was still El. And though Lucifer was practically foaming at the mouth, he chose his moment carefully. He waited until the God-man was fasting in the desert. Until he was hungry. There Lucifer exploited his hunger like a general attacking the weakest defense of the enemy. He questioned his identity. If you are the Son of God, he said. He is an expert rhetorician, experienced and so suggestive. Why not turn these stones into bread?

“But the man was steadfast. There was a purpose to the fasting, and he wouldn’t be tempted to eat. He wouldn’t yield to the dictates of his human flesh.”

I thought of all the times I had been nearly incapacitated by low blood sugar. By plain hunger. By pain, by sleeplessness.

“So Lucifer appealed to his pride, taking him up to the top of the temple in Jerusalem. If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down. It was ingenious.”

“Why is that ingenious? Wasn’t he essentially telling him to take a flying leap? To die?”

Lucian smirked. “I never thought of it that way. But no. The temple was the one place people expected to see the Messiah. And the Host would never have let him die from a physical fall; it was guaranteed in Scripture, and Lucifer knew it. You could argue that he was doing the God-man a favor—at least this way people would know who he was. And I heard Lucifer’s thought: Let them see him then. Let him throw himself down and prove who he is.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. His ego held no sway over him. Rather surprising for a man who went about saying he was God. By now Lucifer was showing signs of strain. So like a gambler on the last hand of the night, he held back nothing. He drew the God-man to a mountain and cast a mighty vision, a menagerie of nations, against the sky—Babylon and Persia, the government of Rome and commerce of the Mediterranean. Spices and olives and wine, fleets of ships, the jealous pride of kings and queens and emperors.”

As he was talking, the tabletop shimmered, emitting more light than the reflected lamps of our corner nook. Between the abandoned bowl of bread pudding and his coffee cup, I saw the sun, setting in a dark gold disk. As it melted into the horizon, it became the wheat fields of Egypt. Then the stalks of wheat were not wheat at all but a field of people. A nation of people. Lucian’s voice wafted toward me in what could have been the voice of a singer: the mighty millions of the land of Han, flowing with silk, roads pulsing with trade. The roads swept beneath me, beneath the surface of the polish, of my bird’s-eye view, miles at a time until they became a sprawl of cities and I recognized pyramids—Egypt. No, not Egypt. These were the stepped ziggurats of an undiscovered west. Teotihuacan, city of gods, came the voice. I saw the gold masks, the priests in their robes, arms raised to the sun.

A coffee cup sailed over the image. Lucian had pushed it across the table toward me.

“Treasures of the East and fertile lands yet undiscovered, rich in commodities of a future age. Lands of people pagan and unconquered, of client kings and vassals and dominions to come. Like diamonds against black velvet, he showcased the world and all that might belong to the God-man so splendidly that those of us who had walked the streets and corridors and dwelt in the inner chambers of those places blinked and staggered at the sight of their collective glory. It was the mosaic of all of Eden’s wealth. And Lucifer offered it all to the God-man if he would do one thing: fall down and worship. Just one, simple, singular act.” He looked up at me. “It would have been so easy. I knew from experience.”

“What good would that have done Lucifer?”

He shook his head. “It was the thing he had always craved and often won—except from the one from whom it would mean something. And now El stood a hand’s reach away in the body of a man, with a man’s cravings and a human’s proclivities. We hardly dared breathe. For a moment it was as though I stood again in that ancient rock garden, the sand of the desert as hot under my feet as the rocks of that place had been. And I watched from below with spirit eyes as Lucifer, arrayed with Legion and surrounded by Host, aspired to the godhood he craved, his beautiful eyes as covetous as they had been that first day an eternity ago when he cast his ambition like grappling hooks up into heaven.”

His gaze wandered. He seemed to be looking at something in the direction of the bar. But when I tried to discern what it was, I saw only a cluster of random business travelers, a few stray reception-goers bored with whatever was going on upstairs, a man and woman talking together. He seemed more and more distracted of late, and it was starting to concern me.

I looked from him back to the bar and considered the reception-goers more closely. They were two women, possibly sisters; both looked half Asian, one with curly, highlighted hair. She sat at the bar while the other leaned against it, turned in our direction. The seated one gazed sidelong in what I thought was my direction until I realized that no, she was looking at Lucian. Figures.

“This time there was no violence. Clay, listen to me! Our time is short.”

My attention snapped back. “I’m listening.” As though I could do anything else! I was fairly certain that whatever he said would return to me later, regardless of how closely I listened.

“This time there was no violence.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair. “This time he would take heaven by word, by simple trade, offering the world in exchange for that proclamation of divinity.”

“Was he offering that much, really? I mean, considering that El made it?”

“It was the sum of Lucifer’s wealth, his kingdom, his all. He was jealously possessive of everything within it. Would he sacrifice it so readily for the sake of one dangerous temptation posed to God himself as he stood hungry in the desert, strained by human flesh? Yes. Yes, I knew he would. And it would be Lucifer’s best and greatest moment. You have to know that wealth meant nothing in comparison to that—to this victory.” He glanced over his shoulder.

Something is wrong.

“What were all the kingdoms in the world against the triumph of proving El’s so-called son a fraud, a mortal as hopelessly weak in his clay trappings as the rest of them?” he said, his voice trailing over his shoulder.

“What is it?” I said finally, exasperated.

He blinked at me. “I’m fine. Listen now, this is important. There was something more than that, though. I realized it as I stood there, with Lucifer as close to the human act of sweating as a cherub can be. I didn’t know it at the time, but Lucifer had seen in this man some great vision, some latent danger.” He shifted in his chair, glanced at his watch. “And though he never said it, I saw in that moment that he was desperate.”

I had never seen Lucian quite like this, and I was becoming nervous by proxy. I was worried he would leave too soon. And I needed this—every word he spoke. For the completion of my manuscript. For myself.

But his state unnerved me for other reasons: What could possibly make a demon uneasy? I glanced at the bar. The two women were gone.

Lucian pushed the coffee mug away, checked his pocket for something—the phone number of the waitress. As though sensing just that thing, Nikki appeared, all curves and cheekbones and lips. She set the check down on a tiny tray, and Lucian pulled a large bill from his pocket, telling her with a hasty smile to keep the change.

When she left, he said, “The man, weak, thirsty, hungry, buffeted by wind on that summit, refused Lucifer. He sent him away with the authority of El himself. And the kingdoms in the visions painted in the sky shattered like a great glass window, sprinkling shards onto the far horizons as the man collapsed to the desert floor.”

He stood, rifling his fingers through his curly hair, seeming to look for the nearest exit.

It wasn’t nearly enough! I leaped up. “And then? Then what?” I hated myself.

“Lucifer wasn’t finished.” He stepped around the chair.

He strode out, not even noticing Nikki when she tried to wave at him.