HELL OF A FIX

by Matthew Hughes

 

* * * *

 

Around here, Matt Hughes is best known for his tales of Penultimate Earth, particularly the stories about Henghis Hapthorn and those concerning Guth Bandar. (Hapthorn fans should know that Herpira, the new novel featuring the foremost freelance discriminator, is due out by the time this issue hits the stands.) Now we bring you a story that is not set in the far future. Rather, this one is set in the here and now ... at least, that’s where it starts. Where it goes, well, you’ll have to read on to find out...

 

I

 

The demon’s sudden appearance, along with a puff of malodorous smoke and a short-lived burst of flame, took Chesney Arnstruther by surprise.

 

He recovered quickly, however. The existence of demons had been a fixture of his youthful education, which had included two hours a week of Sunday school—taught without pussyfooting by his mother. In adolescence, Chesney had drifted away from old-time religion. He found too many absurdities in scripture. Besides, he found a more reliable truth in mathematics.

 

But he was still able to recognize a demon when it flashed into existence right before his eyes. The brief pyrotechnics had scorched the top of the almost-finished poker table, so that his first reaction was to say, “Get the blue bling blithers off my table!”

 

The demon, huge and toadlike, with oversized, clawed hands, revealed daggerlike fangs. “You invite me to depart the pentagram?” it said, its voice like bones cracking.

 

“What?” said Chesney. An instinct for self-preservation reasserted itself. “No, I invite you to nothing, except to go back where you came from!”

 

“To hear is to obey,” said the demon. “Just sign here and here, initial there.” It had produced a roll of parchment and used the tip of a claw to mark three places with an X.

 

Chesney thought the document’s author must have learned penmanship from a seismograph, the letters all spiky, scrawled with ferocious violence. Then he managed to decipher the content, and said, “No way! You’d get my soul!”

 

“That is the standard arrangement. You summon one of us, we do your bidding, you render up your insignificance.”

 

“My what?”

 

“A technical term, where I come from.”

 

“I don’t care if it’s the word of the week,” said Chesney. “My soul is not an insignificance. I’m not signing.”

 

“Then I can’t do your bidding.”

 

“I don’t have any bidding. Just go back to ‘where you come from.’”

 

“Sounds like bidding to me.”

 

“Well, it’s not,” said Chesney, sucking away the blood that was still welling from beneath the nail of his left thumb and gesturing with the hammer in his right hand. “It’s a rejection of the entire concept of bidding. Especially if the bidding costs me my soul.”

 

The demon looked annoyed. Chesney did not find it a happy sight, but he stood his ground. “Now, go away.”

 

“I can’t,” said the toad. “You summoned me. I’m here until I’ve done whatever it is you need doing. Even if it takes overtime—for which, you ought to know, I get nothing extra—so sign the agreement and let’s get to work.”

 

“I didn’t summon you,” said Chesney. “It’s some kind of mistake.”

 

The demon slitted its yellow eyes. “Let’s go over this. This is your pentagram I’m standing on, right? And that’s your blood there, deposited by your hand sinister? And you did say, ‘Hodey-odey shalaam-a-shamash woh-wanga kee-yai’ didn’t you?”

 

“Oh,” said Chesney, “now I get it. I can explain.”

 

* * * *

 

It all began with Letitia Arnstruther, Chesney’s mother who raised him singlehandedly from an early age after Wagner Arnstruther, his father, departed for parts unknown with a truck-stop waitress. A devout woman, Letitia could not abide rough manners or coarse language, in both of which her husband abounded. Indeed, her son had often wondered—though he’d never had the courage to ask—what strange concatenation of events must have occurred to unite his parents, even temporarily, in matrimony.

 

Yet one thing was clear as he grew from childhood to manhood: the mildest profanity would net him cold looks, even colder suppers, and downright chilly silences. As a defense, whenever Chesney felt the need for strong language, he substituted strings of nonsense syllables. The habit, deeply ingrained at an early age, had endured long after he left home to attend college.

 

In college, Chesney discovered the sheer decorum of the interrelationships that numbers could form with each other; that became his fascination. Though he lacked the creativity to pursue a career as a pure mathematician, his degree led to a position as a junior actuary in a midsize insurance company. He spent his days calculating the risk of death or injuries for tiny slices numerically carved from the demographic spectrum. His evenings were mostly given over to the second love he had discovered in college: graphic novels, especially those that featured oddly talented individuals who fought crime, freelance-style.

 

Crunching numbers suited Chesney’s deeply introverted personality. Actuaries were not expected to be the life of any party. All the men in his department had grown up as friendless as he. Five of them, however, made a regular habit of getting together at each other’s homes to play poker. Chesney was asked to join when one of the five left town.

 

Chesney never applied his math skills when he played poker. He bet high on weak cards and stayed in for pots he had scant chance of taking; but winning wasn’t the point—it was being in the game that counted, the sense of risk and possibility that died if he folded early. This endeared him to the other players, all of whom played strictly by the numbers and thus regularly transferred wealth from Chesney’s wallet to theirs.

 

The game’s venue rotated. After a couple of months, Chesney was expected to host the next get-together. But he lived in a cramped studio condo in a downtown high-rise. One wall had a pull-down Murphy bed; the opposite wall enclosed a kitchen nook and was pierced by a pass-through hole with a countertop and two stools. Otherwise, Chesney’s domestic arrangements comprised a couch fronted by a coffee table and a chair made of extruded plastic.

 

There was nowhere to sit and play poker, even if two of the five sat on the end of the Murphy bed. Chesney trolled through furniture-store internet sites, and found five folding chairs that could be stacked in his downstairs storage space. But for a decent-sized poker table he sought in vain. They were all made to accommodate seven large men. Chesney could not fit such a table and chairs into his small living space. So he resolved to make his own playing surface. It would need only five sides, and with some judicious trimming it would seat them all comfortably.

 

Chesney had the lumber yard cut the plywood top to size and bought ready-made legs from the do-it-yourself department. Along with a drill, a multitip screwdriver, a sheet of green felt, a box of tacks, and a hammer, he tackled the project.

 

* * * *

 

“So you see,” he told the demon, “I was tapping in a tack to hold down the felt. I hit my thumb hard enough to make it bleed. I shook my hand and some blood hit the table. At the same time, I swore—the way I swear—and the next moment, there you were.” He paused to suck the last droplets from his thumb. “It was just a mistake.”

 

The demon gave him a look almost as cold as one of his mother’s worst. “You expect me to go back and tell that to my supervisor?”

 

“It’s the truth.”

 

“Where I come from, truth is not a highly prized commodity.”

 

“Well, I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Chesney said. “I didn’t summon you.”

 

“Yes, you did. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

 

Chesney tried to explain. “I did inadvertently say the words that summoned you, but I was not summoning you when I said them. The mere sounds don’t matter. There has to be the intent behind them.”

 

“Intent?” said the demon. “That’s your angle?”

 

“It’s not an angle. It’s an explanation.”

 

“So you’re definitely not signing the agreement?”

 

“Definitely.”

 

The demon spread huge, clawed hands like a giant, toothy toad that takes no responsibility for whatever comes next. “Okay,” it said. “But let me tell you, this ain’t over.”

 

And with a second puff of stinking, yellowy smoke and a lick of red flame, it was gone.

 

* * * *

 

“So what are you, some kind of wise guy?”

 

The question broke Chesney’s immersion in Champions of Justice. It wasn’t just the question, though; there was also the whiff of sulfur and the gravelly quality of the voice, which sounded as if it had come out of a tyrannosaurus with a sore throat. He looked up to see, standing on the other end of the bench in the minipark where he often ate his lunch, another demon.

 

This one had the head of a weasel that had been refitted with sabertooth fangs and coal-black eyes the size of saucers. It was the height of a small boy, but its body was a miniature version of a potbellied, heavy-shouldered thug in a pinstriped suit with wide lapels and a ridiculously small tie. It wore two-toned shoes of patent leather, the insteps covered by pieces of strapped-on cloth—spats, Chesney knew they were called; the Penguin wore them in Batman comix—and its stubby, hairy-backed fingers flourished a half-smoked cigar as it waited for an answer to its question.

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“We don’t do pardons, mack,” said the apparition. “That’s the other outfit’s racket.”

 

“The other outfit?”

 

The demon poked one thumb upwards.

 

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “I assume you’re here about the mistake?”

 

“We also don’t make no mistakes. So we need to clear this little thing up, see? Real quick-like. Twenty-three skidoo.”

 

“Why do you talk like that?” Chesney said.

 

“Like what? Last time I was up this way all youse mugs talked like this.”

 

“We’ve moved on. So should you.”

 

The demon moved closer, put one hot hand on Chesney’s shoulder. “We can make you a real sweet deal, pal.”

 

“No.”

 

“You ain’t heard the offer yet. It’s a doozie.”

 

“You mean, ‘an offer I can’t refuse?’”

 

The demon’s weasel lips drew back in what Chesney hoped was a smile. “Hey, I like that,” it said. “I can use that.”

 

“Leave me alone or I’ll call....” He thought about how to complete the threat and opted for: “a priest.”

 

The humped shoulders shrugged. “That don’t cut no mustard with me, mack. I’ll just ankle outta here and come back when you’re alone.”

 

Chesney sighed. “All right, make your offer, but the answer’s still no.”

 

Even before he got the last words out, the park disappeared. He was standing in a small room, the walls lined with metal doors of various sizes, each with a number and a slot for a key. “Where am I?” he said.

 

“Swiss bank,” said the demon. “Get a load of this.” It tapped a door and the panel popped open. A metal box slid out and the demon flipped up its top. Inside were stacks of banknotes, jewelry cases, and two ingots of pure gold.

 

“All mine, I suppose?” said Chesney.

 

“And that’s just for starters.”

 

“Won’t the owner mind?”

 

“Where he’s going, they don’t take cash.”

 

“No, thanks.”

 

The huge weasel eyes narrowed. “Okey-doke. Then how ‘bout this?”

 

They were in a dimly lit room. After a moment’s disorientation, Chesney realized it was a bedroom—no, he corrected himself, a boudoir. The demon did something and the light strengthened. On a vast, circular bed, strewn with silk pillows and satin sheets, reposed a buxom blonde, eyes closed, lips parted in blissful slumber. She was not wearing much, and what little she did have on only enhanced the strong impression she created. Chesney’s exposure to unbridled pulchritude was almost nil; he had to drag his gaze away.

 

“Whadda ya say?” said the demon, its weaselish eyebrows bobbing suggestively.

 

“No,” said Chesney, though the single syllable seemed to catch in the back of his throat.

 

“Oh, picky, huh?”

 

The blonde was replaced by an even more buxom brunette. She stretched in her sleep, rearranging and simultaneously revealing elements of her anatomy in a way that caused Chesney to emit an involuntary sound. But again he managed a “No.”

 

“We got a full selection,” said the demon, and Chesney was looking at a redhead who would have stopped Titian dead on the bridges of Renaissance Venice.

 

“No!”

 

The demon cocked its weasel head at him and moved a finger. The redhead was replaced by a naked, muscular young man with prodigious personal qualities.

 

“Certainly not!” said Chesney. “You’re wasting your time.” He glanced at his watch. “And mine.”

 

“Keep your hair on,” said the demon. “I’ll get a bead on you yet.” Immediately, the boudoir was gone and they were standing in an office that struck Chesney as somehow familiar. Then he saw the seal woven into the rug and registered the room’s oval shape. “Howzabout it?” said the weasel.

 

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Chesney said.

 

“You’d be surprised.”

 

“Who? Which one?”

 

“Ones,” said the demon. “But I ain’t saying nuttin’ more. We don’t rat.”

 

“Take me back.”

 

The demon studied him. “Look, mack,” it said, “we’ve done moolah, molls, and moxie. What else is there?”

 

“I don’t want anything. Just leave me alone.” Chesney blinked and found them both back on the park bench. The demon brought its outsized eyes closer to Chesney and in the center of each black circle he saw a red flame kindle.

 

“Listen, buddy, you wanna take the deal,” it said. “You’re making a lotta trouble for a lotta guys you don’t wanna make no trouble for.”

 

Chesney stuck out his small chin. “I’m not making trouble,” he said. “This is your mistake.”

 

The demon growled and it cocked one stubby fist, saying, “Smart guy, why I oughta....” But when the man on the bench did not flinch, the creature clasped its hands together and put on as conciliatory expression as a befanged weasel could contrive. “Listen, mack,” it said, “I’m just a yob doing a job. I got a dozen demons to supervise and we’re busy, see? Everybody’s working double shifts and we got no time to monkey around. So, take the deal or take the consequences.”

 

“You don’t get it,” said Chesney.

 

“What is it I don’t get?”

 

Chesney thought for a moment, then said, “It never really made sense to me, the heaven or hell thing. But now you show up and make it clear that the game is played pretty much the way the preachers told it, all those Sundays I was growing up.”

 

“Ah, you don’t want to listen to those holy joes,” said the fiend.

 

“Yeah, I think I do. You see, I make a deal with you, I get a few years of fun down here, assuming you don’t reneg based on the fine print. Then, bang, I’m spending eternity shoveling hot coals. Or I turn you down and wind up in paradise forever.” Chesney spread his hands. “I mean, do the math.”

 

“Most people we deal with, they don’t see it that way,” the demon said.

 

“I’m an actuary.”

 

Now the demon looked worried. “Listen,” it said, “you don’t know the whole score. I’m trying to keep a lid on this thing, but you don’t play ball, she could blow. I mean, sky-high, you get me?”

 

“No,” said Chesney. “And you don’t get me. What did they used to say, last time you were here? ‘Take a powder?’ ‘Amscray?’ ‘Agitate the gravel?’”

 

He dived back into Champions of Justice. When he heard the clap of air as the fiend disappeared, he glanced at his watch and was pleased to see that no real time had elapsed. He wanted to finish the comic before his lunch break was up. It featured his favorite hero, a mild-mannered, bespectacled UPS courier who battled drug cartels and international terrorists in the bowels of a dysfunctional metropolis. The brown-clad crimefighter was about to turn the tables on a cabal of ninja-trained mujahadeen. “Go, Driver, go,” Chesney breathed.

 

* * * *

 

Saturday evening, he was setting up for poker. He had bought taco chips and salsa and more beer than the mini-refrigerator could hold. The table looked great, the blood cleaned off with club soda. Chesney went downstairs to his locker and came back with the five chairs. Nudging open the apartment door, he was surprised to see a little blonde girl in pinafore and ankle socks standing beside the table.

 

“Are you lost?” he said.

 

“I just got one question,” she said. Actually, the voice asking the question came not from the girl but from the fanged mouth of the ruby-red snake that uncoiled itself where a tongue would have been if this had really been a little girl instead of another demon.

 

He put down the chairs. “What?”

 

“Just tell me, are you ready to go all the way on this?” said Snaketongue.

 

“Yes, I am,” Chesney said. “I didn’t give much thought to my soul before you guys started demanding it. Now I figure it’s worth hanging onto.”

 

The snake went back where it came from and the demon crossed its arms and looked up at him in a way that let the man know he was being weighed up. Pinned to one of the pinafore’s straps was a large button with a design on it: a pair of crossed pitchforks against a background of leaping flames. Underneath were the letters IBFDT.

 

“What’s the button?” Chesney said, but the demon didn’t answer. It finished its examination, then nodded as if in confirmation of something it had been mentally chewing on, and disappeared. When nothing further happened, Chesney unfolded the chairs and put them around the table. He had just finished when the phone rang.

 

It was Clay, not the best poker player of the five but the one who made the least secret of how much he enjoyed raking in a pot after Chesney had stayed in too long.

 

“We’re all set here,” Chesney told him.

 

“I’m not playing tonight.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I dunno, I was getting ready, but suddenly I just don’t feel the urge.”

 

“We need you,” Chesney said. “Four’s not enough.”

 

“Sorry.” Clay hung up.

 

Chesney folded one of the chairs and leaned it against the wall. The phone rang again; it was Ron, the one who had originally invited Chesney into the game. “I’m not coming,” he said.

 

Like Clay, he wasn’t sick or jammed up. “You don’t feel the urge?” Chesney asked.

 

“Yeah. I don’t feel much like doing anything.”

 

Chesney folded another chair. He’d never played three-handed poker, and doubted it would be much fun. Within ten minutes, he didn’t have even that to look forward to: Jason and Matt both canceled.

 

Saddened, Chesney gathered up the chairs and took them down to storage, then followed with the disassembled table. He came back to the refrigerator crammed with beer and the bags of chips on the countertop, opened one of each and sat on the couch. Normally, taco chips and beer were his favorite snack, especially when the former were dipped in fiery salsa, which he had also bought plenty of. But now, after taking the edge off the hunger and thirst he had built up moving furniture, his appetite failed. He poured the last half of the beer down the sink.

 

What do I do now? He thought about going out and renting a DVD, as he often did on a weekend night—sometimes even straight-out porn. But the prospect had no appeal tonight. He’d really been looking forward to poker; it was the only time he felt a little wild and unpredictable.

 

He put on his coat and set out for the comics store. A new Freedom Five should be on the rack. He walked with his usual gait, shoulders indrawn, hands in pockets, focused on the sidewalk before him. It wasn’t terribly dangerous to make eye contact in this neighborhood, but there was no reward to compensate even for the minimal risk. Nobody would welcome his gaze.

 

He had not gone far before something about the background noise level penetrated his lonely thoughts. He looked around. This part of the downtown livened up on Saturday nights. His block had two old-fashioned bars and a nightclub where twenty-somethings danced in a trance engendered by a combination of vodka, strobe lights, and more decibels than were good for their chances of not needing hearing aids before they cleared their fifties.

 

Evening was settling in; the street should have been filled with cars, the bars with drinkers and the nightclub doorway with bouncers selecting from a lineup of the future deaf. The thump of the club’s bass kickers ought to have been underlying the tenor honk of horns, with the treble laughter of girls-in-groups topping off the layered cacophony of a Saturday night soundscape.

 

But the street was quiet: only a couple of cars moving sedately past empty parking spots; the club’s sound system silent; no squeals from clutches of girls because there were no girls. The sidewalks—and the bars, too—were practically empty.

 

Something big on TV tonight? he wondered. Is that why the guys aren’t coming? It would not have been the first time he had missed some major node in the mass culture. People at work had stopped asking him how he voted on American Idol.

 

He pushed at his unresponsive memory. Some pneumatic teenage girl singer was coming to town; he’d overheard a couple of the office clerks talking about how their daughters were planning to get tickets the moment the internet box office site came on-line. Last time, the concert had sold out in under a minute.

 

But that event, even if it was happening right now, would only account for the absence of teenage girls on the street. But the entire block was almost deserted. And now Chesney let his gaze go farther, down the next block and the one after; he turned to look back the way he had come; and it was all the same—the sidewalks and pavement virtually empty.

 

Maybe it’s something big, he thought. An attack? He decided to forget about the Freedom Five and hurried back to his apartment. But when he flipped on the cable news channel, all he saw was a female anchor telling him that some vote in Congress had not turned out as expected.

 

The image cut to a reporter outside the Senate who was saying that an earmarks-laden spending bill had failed to receive a single affirmative vote. Even the senators who had shoehorned in pet projects had inexplicably voted nay. Chesney listened for a while, but found it hard to take much interest. He was about to switch channels when he noticed something about the reporter’s demeanor: normally, this commentator spoke with an air of forced gravitas, as if the truly important part of any story was the fact that he, the reporter, was deigning to take notice of it; but now he was reciting from his notes as if ticking off a laundry list.

 

Strange, thought Chesney. The anchorwoman came back on. It was only as he was looking at her that another oddity clicked into focus for him. She was less than perfectly coiffed and made up. She looked less polished—quite ordinary, Chesney thought—and her presentation lacked that quality of being ever so pleased with herself that was standard for TV newspeople.

 

By coincidence, the next item was about the upcoming tour of the teenage girl singer. The anchor reported that tickets had been expected to sell out almost immediately, but since the box office opened an hour ago, only a few hundred tickets had sold—and those appeared to have gone to indulgent parents and grandparents buying them as presents.

 

Now the network cut to a live feed. Breaking news: a would-be suicide bomber had been about to blow up a Pakistani police station. Instead, she had removed the explosive vest she wore under her voluminous black robe and surrendered to some policemen loitering around the entrance. And the officers, instead of hustling her inside for a painful interrogation, had sat down with her on the front steps. They seemed to be having a restrained discussion, with much rueful head-shaking and nods of mutual, though sad, agreement.

 

Chesney clicked through a few more news channels, ending on a live show hosted by a curmudgeon who enjoyed browbeating guests with insults and invective. He saw the pundit slumped in his chair, a bearded professor in the guest spot, both of them shrugging and conversing in mild tones. The usually choleric host was saying, “Of course, it doesn’t matter much one way or the other, does it?”

 

The academic blandly nodded and said, “No, not really.”

 

Chesney switched off. Something was out of the ordinary, though he could not yet put his finger on it. Maybe some new flu going around, he thought.

 

He switched to the entertainment channels, found a sitcom he usually enjoyed, about a dysfunctional family. The dialogue mostly consisted of characters scoring points off each other with sarcastic putdowns—often scathing and decidedly risqué. In the past, some of the sallies and verbal duels had caused Chesney to squirt cola out of his nose; but tonight’s episode seemed like a constant barrage of unnecessary cruelty. He didn’t even chuckle, although the studio audience that had been there for the taping went into paroxysms of mirth as the grossly overweight young male lead launched into a sustained rant about his chain-smoking mother-in-law’s sexual history.

 

Chesney switched off. The silence in the apartment seemed suddenly profound: no horns or engine noises rising from the street; no stereos blaring from any of the neighbors; no arguments, either, although Saturday night was prime time for the high-rise’s several unhappily married couples to bring their week’s disappointments to each other’s attention.

 

He was puzzled. He thought again about going to the comix shop, but the Freedom Five did not lure him tonight. After a moment’s thought, he decided that he was feeling let down by the collapse of his first shot at hosting the guys for poker. Or maybe it is the flu.

 

* * * *

 

II

 

Sunday mornings invariably meant a call from Chesney’s mother, urging him to tune in to some religious broadcast that was filling her with enthusiasm. Most often, it was The New Tabernacle of the Air, fronted by the Reverend William Lee Hardacre. Broad-shouldered, tall, fiftyish, with silver hair that looked as if it had been poured into a mold and let to set overnight, he wore a big gold-and-diamond ring that flashed as brightly as his piercing blue eyes whenever he raised his hands to call down divine wrath on some celebrity whose behavior had caught his attention over the preceding week.

 

Reverend Billy Lee had started out as a lawyer, a labor-management mediator. Well into a successful legal career, he caught the fiction bug and began penning bestselling potboilers set in the arena of corporate law. Then, while writing his seventh blockbuster, he experienced some kind of spiritual epiphany. He gave up both law and literature to enter a seminary. When he emerged, he launched The New Tabernacle of the Air.

 

The show always opened with Hardacre at a desk, commenting on news items from the past week. His analysis was invariably sharp and often insightful, especially when it came to spotting hypocrisy among the famous and powerful. The final ten minutes would see the preacher single out one particular celebrity for what Time magazine once called “a precise and comprehensive flaying.”

 

Like a prosecutor summing up for the jury, the preacher would detail the excesses and egotisms of his weekly target then invite his legions of viewers to write to the object of his censure—he always had their actual mailing addresses to pass along—and express their views. Letitia Arnstruther never failed to comply. She liked to read her best passages over the phone to Chesney, urging him to join in the campaign to rid the world of whatever evil the Reverend Billy Lee had unleashed her and her fellow devotees against.

 

But today, Chesney’s phone had not rung. Grateful to be left alone, he got up late and ate a bowl of corn flakes while rereading an issue of The Driver, the one where the hero foiled a plot to kidnap a billionaire’s beautiful daughter. But though he had always enjoyed the comix artist’s striking images, especially those that featured the amply endowed kidnap victim, this time the tale failed to capture him.

 

Still the phone hadn’t rung. He wondered if something might have happened to his mother, though that seemed as unlikely as if “something might have happened” to the Himalayas. Letitia Arnstruther was the kind of person who happened to others. She herself was as unaffected by the doings of other people as Mount Everest was by the tiny, gasping creatures that crept up to its ice-capped peak. Except, Chesney admitted, when it came to sins committed by persons of note—especially what she always referred to as the “sins of the flesh,” by which she did not mean gluttony.

 

The few Sundays when she hadn’t called had coincided with an exceptionally enrapturing performance by Reverend Bill Lee. He found the TV remote and flicked on The New Tabernacle of the Air, which went out live in this time zone.

 

He caught the Revered Billy Lee in mid-fulmination: “Lust and fornication, brothers and sisters! Sodom and Gomorrah! The fleshpots of Egypt, the Whore of Babylon! But I say unto you that these are as nothing compared to the recent conduct of the celebrated TeShawn ‘Bad Boy’ Bougaineville.”

 

Chesney was vaguely aware of the name: Bougaineville was the football player who had shot up his girlfriend’s Lexus when her behavior failed to satisfy him. Chesney remembered the man saying, “Bleep, I done give the dumb bleep the bleepin’ ride inna firs’ place.”

 

Chesney muted the sound. The preacher was in full cry, his helmet of silver hair shining in the carefully positioned lights so that it formed a halo above his earnest face. His blue eyes flashed, his capped teeth gleamed, his square jaw jutted as he bit off each phrase, while sweat trickled from one temple. Chesney could imagine his mother seated on the overstuffed sofa, knees locked and hands clasped, leaning forward, a flush of pink in her cheeks. TeShawn would be getting a memorable letter from Letitia Arnstruther.

 

That’ll be it, he thought. But then something odd: across the bottom of the screen came a crawl. The program scheduled for this time period is not available. We present a repeat airing of last week’s New Tabernacle of the Air. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Chesney clicked the remote. Live coverage of a football game was scheduled to begin just about now. He found a pre-game interview with a young man described as the NFL’s most highly paid wide receiver and realized it was none other than TeShawn Bougaineville. The player was tearfully confessing to a longstanding weakness for cocaine and fast women. The sportscaster interviewing him was also in tears. “How awful for you,” he blubbered. The expression of sympathy made TeShawn break down and sob.

 

“What the hepty-doo-dah’s going on?” Chesney said. He switched channels to the Sunday public affairs show, In Contention. But the three regulars were not shouting each other down or trading insults. Instead, they didn’t have much to say about anything, and what they did say seemed to Chesney to lack all conviction.

 

He shut off the TV and went out. He headed for the riverside park, usually a lively place on a warm day like this: couples necking on the grass slopes, skateboarders daring each other to try potentially neck-snapping stunts on the step-seats of the concrete amphitheater; older folks walking in pairs and shaking their canes at in-line skaters whizzing past on the asphalt paths.

 

But today only a couple of solitary pedestrians stared into the river’s muddy flow. A woman sat on the steps of the amphitheater, pensive, chin in hand. Chesney passed the civil war memorial, heading by habit toward the basketball court and the hot-dog cart. He always bought a steaming chili dog smothered in fried onions and ate it on one of the nearby benches, keeping an eye out for female joggers.

 

But no jiggling bosoms passed by today, and after a single bite of the hot dog he set it down and let it go cold. The man who sold them closed up his cart and pushed it slowly toward the parking lot.

 

“What’s going on?” Chesney said, aloud.

 

“You talkin’ to us?” said a voice behind him.

 

He turned. The speaker was one of a group of young men, in their teens and early twenties, whom he had sometimes seen playing ball on the single-basket court: tough guys, wearing clothes that showed their muscles and gold chains, two of them with red bandanas tied around shaven heads. Usually, they swore a lot and played loud rap from a boom box. Sometimes they shouted at Chesney when he went past, words that he only partially heard and always pretended that he didn’t.

 

“No,” he said, trying to keep a tremor out of his voice.

 

“Oh,” said the one who had spoken, olive-skinned with a sparse mustache, a chain tattoo encircling his neck, “that’s okay. My mistake.” They walked away, and Chesney noticed that none of them moved with their customary macho swagger.

 

“What,” he said again, “is going on?”

 

* * * *

 

Monday morning, the stock market went phut. At least, that was how the cable news phrased its report while Chesney ate his corn flakes.

 

“Can’t remember a day like it,” a reporter said, standing in an empty trading floor. “Two hours since the Stock Exchange’s opening bell, and most brokers and traders haven’t shown up for work. The only trades are those made automatically by computer programs and some charitable foundations. Otherwise, the place is dead. Nobody’s interested in making money.”

 

The bus ride to work was eerily placid. Nobody jostled for first place on line, and Chesney even saw a teenager offer an old lady his seat. The traffic was sedate; the taxis were actually yielding right of way, and nobody ran a red light.

 

At the office, he had barely settled behind his desk when Ron and Clay came into his cubicle. They were having a discussion about whether their work was morally defensible.

 

“I think it’s ethically neutral,” Clay said. “We’re only calculating risk factors for different demographics, so that policies can be designed that balance risk and reward for the company.”

 

“Yes,” said Ron, “but the side effect is to identify some groups that will be denied coverage completely.”

 

They both turned to Chesney and said, together, “What do you think?”

 

It was not a question the actuary had ever considered. “I’d want to think about it,” he said. “Evaluating people based on risk categories can be seen as extending from a recognition that fundamentally, life is not fair.”

 

“Agreed,” said Clay.

 

“On the other hand,” Chesney continued, “just because life is not fair, should we reinforce the unfairness? Life, after all, is not a moral being making ethical choices. But we are.”

 

“That’s how I see it,” said Ron.

 

“But if we don’t work out the risk factors, the insurance business can’t function. Ultimately, nobody gets insured, and that can’t be good.” He paused. “It’s tricky.”

 

Clay said, “Maybe we could calculate the net benefit-to-misery ratio inherent in the way the industry works now, versus the same ratio if there was no insurance for anybody.”

 

“But how can we be sure benefit and misery cancel each other out?” said Ron. “Maybe an ounce of misery is worth a pound of happiness.”

 

“Plus we have a moral obligation to our employer to earn our salaries,” Chesney said.

 

“But if we’re part of an immoral enterprise, our obligation is to quit,” Ron countered.

 

“Isn’t it odd that these issues never came up before?” Chesney said.

 

“Well,” said Clay, “we’ve always been too busy.”

 

“Shouldn’t we be busy now?”

 

“Not if we’ve been part of a fundamentally immoral system,” said Ron.

 

And around and around the discussion went.

 

At noon, tired and hungry after a hard morning’s debate, Chesney went to the park to eat lunch. He chewed his sandwich without much appetite. Was it proper for him to eat his fill when billions of people around the world were malnourished? On the other hand, he couldn’t do much about the problem if he was underfed. “Not that I have been doing anything about it,” he said to himself. “Maybe I should.”

 

His eye fell on the headline of a tabloid that someone had left on the bench: “Conscience Bug” Spreads. Chesney picked it up and read the story. A scientist from the National Centers for Disease Control was speculating that there might be a viral vector for the wave of morality sweeping the world. Something seems to have disabled our “selfishness circuits,” the report read. Greed, anger, lust, gluttony—all of what used to be called the “seven deadly sins” —have suddenly stopped affecting our conduct.

 

It’s as if, after having spent all our lives with a devil and an angel on each shoulder, none of our devils are showing up for work.

 

“You are causing a great deal of bother,” said a genteel voice. Chesney lowered the paper and saw a dapper, bearded gentleman seated on the other end of the bench, his hands folded over the head of a black walking stick.

 

“I beg your pardon?” Chesney said.

 

“Something I am not often inclined to give,” said the stranger. “And certainly not to you, after all that you have done.”

 

There was something familiar about the face and voice. Then Chesney had it: the man was the spitting image of the actor who had played Kris Kringle in the original 1940s version of Miracle on 34th Street. He had the white beard and the snowy hair, though his eyes did not twinkle as he regarded Chesney with an animosity that seemed to struggle with amused contempt.

 

“You’re not another demon, are you?” the actuary said. “I’ve told you—”

 

“Not another demon, no,” the other interrupted. “I am the one they all work for.” And now any vestige of amusement went away. “Until you came blundering along.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

The dapper gentleman pointed a finger at the newspaper Chesney still held in both hands. The words none of our devils are showing up for work floated free of the page and rose to hover before Chesney’s eyes, where they enlarged until they were six inches high. Then they burst into yellow-and-orange flames before dying down to inky smoke that dissipated in a nonexistent wind.

 

“You,” said Satan, “you ridiculous little man, have singlehandedly caused Hell to go on strike.”

 

* * * *

 

It all made actuarial sense. It was basically a problem of numbers and demographics. Hell, like Heaven, was an autocracy. Satan ruled, aided by his inner circle of fallen angels who, before the Fall, had held high ranks within the angelic hierarchy: Thrones and Dominions, Powers and Principalities. Now they were Dukes and Princes of the Abyss, and below them were legions of demons who had been mere rank-and-file rebel angels and archangels before they had all tumbled down to the black-iron shores of the lake of fire. To these fell the tasks of punishing and tormenting the dead who earned eternal damnation, and of tempting the living toward conduct that would eventually bring them to the waiting furnaces and pitchforks.

 

At first, it had been enjoyable work. The tormentors had fallen to it with a will, creating wonderfully ironic punishments: Sisyphus and his rolling rock; Tantalus’s disappearing food and drink; Nero’s out-of-tune orchestra ceaselessly playing his most beloved compositions. The tempters, meanwhile, constantly whispered in humanity’s collective ear, generating a stream of new customers.

 

But, as the ages wore on, Hell’s success was its own undoing. There were only so many demons. The constantly accelerating intake of the newly damned was not matched by any increase in the legions of Hell.

 

Back when humankind numbered only a few hundred million, a demon assigned to the punitive battalions was charged with “making it hot” for only a few hundred condemned. Now the world’s population was heading for seven billion, and a great many of them—urged on by the corps of tempters, still creatively finding new transgressions to recommend—were crowding through the gates of Hell. A fixed number of overworked demons had to cope with an exponentially increasing quota of the damned. Their productivity had reached its limit, yet the demand for more, more, more never ceased. The fiends were fed up.

 

Over the past century, into this volatile dynamic had come the first labor organizers to earn damnation. Of course, no true saints of unionism were consigned to Hell; but the labor movement attracted the same range of opportunists and self-servers as any other path to power and plenty. So, although no Joe Hills were to be found in the nine circles, the Jimmy Hoffas were amply represented.

 

These rabble rousers saw a familiar scenario: their tormentors were overworked and underappreciated. And the fact that there were not enough demons to keep every damned soul in constant misery gave the organizers the leisure to exploit the opportunity. Before long, some had talked their way off the treadmills of red-hot iron. They began to advise their erstwhile tormentors on tactics and strategy.

 

Not long after, the first delegation from the Infernal Brotherhood of Fiends, Demons, and Tempters approached the Dark Throne to propose that His Satanic Majesty enter into discussions on matters of mutual interest. The demons who carried the messages to the feet of the Adversary were summarily blasted to fragments, but they painfully reconstituted themselves and came back for another try.

 

Eventually, Hell’s dysfunctionality had to be faced. As a stopgap, management negotiated a first contract with the workers. Contracts being a field of expertise in which management excelled, the final terms were not much of an improvement for the members of the IBFDT. But it was a base to build on. All that was needed now, the Brotherhood reasoned, was for management to breach the contract. Then the whole infernal work force would come out on strike, and they wouldn’t go back until they had a real deal.

 

Into this powder keg awaiting a spark stepped Chesney Arnstruther. The toadlike demon that answered his unintentional summons had been called away from its regular duties, pouring molten gold down the throats of misers. According to the contract, it should have been excused from its tormenting quota while it secured Chesney’s signature on the contract and carried out whatever that contract required. When it returned without a signature, its supervisor told it that it still had to fill all the misers with gold—and there were plenty of misers.

 

The demon had balked. Its supervisor, Xaphan, the fanged weasel in spats, had tried to straighten the matter out by getting Chesney to accept the contract. By the time Xaphan returned in failure, the toad demon had gone to its IBFDT shop steward, Snaketongue, and the ranked dominoes had begun to quiver.

 

Snaketongue argued that the IBFDT member had been exempted from its quota when it was called away. Xaphan countered that the toad demon had brought back no signed contract, so no exemption could apply.

 

There was no clause in the master agreement to cover the anomaly. Supervisor and shop steward stared at each other for a long moment, then the latter had stepped upstairs into Chesney’s apartment to ask the pregnant question: “Just tell me, are you ready to go all the way on this?”

 

When Chesney said, “Yes, I am,” the dominoes began to topple.

 

* * * *

 

“Now you understand,” said Satan.

 

Chesney shook his head, not in denial but from the still-resonating impact of all the information that Lucifer had caused to appear in his consciousness—including graphic images that would have given Hieronymous Bosch the collywobbles.

 

“Now let me show you a few things,” said the Devil.

 

“You’ve shown me enough already,” said Chesney, but a manicured hand took charge of his arm and instantly they were somewhere else. It was somewhere high, like a great precipice, but the perspective was odd. Then Chesney saw it: “All the kingdoms of the world,” he quoted. “This is where you brought—”

 

“Speak the name,” said Satan, “and I’ll kick you over the edge.” He shook his shoulders as if throwing off a cramp. “Look out there.”

 

Chesney looked, and whatever he looked at somehow enlarged and deepened until he was transported into a fully rounded scene. He found himself standing in a factory that made computers, but its assembly line was stilled, its employees absent, its huge, dust-free space echoing with silence.

 

“No greed,” said the Devil. “No one orders goods, because no one wants to make a profit by selling them. And even if they did, no one wants to make wages by manufacturing them.”

 

An instant later, they were back in the high place. “Look,” Satan said again, and Chesney was drawn into another setting: the nightclub down the street from his studio, its booths empty, its lights extinguished, the dance floor deserted, the ranked bottles behind the bar growing dusty.

 

“No lust. No young men strutting to impress the young women, no young women letting themselves be impressed.”

 

And then a four-star restaurant, chairs piled on tables stripped of their cloths, grills and ovens cold, coolers full of meats and vegetables turning dry and drab.

 

“I get it,” Chesney said. “No gluttony. And nobody’s trying to keep up with the Joneses because envy’s turned off, and the leisure industry’s flat on its butt because people aren’t feeling slothful. And fashion’s dead because there’s no vanity.”

 

The restaurant disappeared and they were back on the high place.

 

“And what were you going to show me for anger? Some guy sitting in a cave twiddling his beard?”

 

“I’ll show you anger,” the Devil began, then made a visible effort to restrain himself. “I’m showing you,” he said after taking a deep breath, “that I am woven into the warp and weft of the world. You have undone one of the fundamental fastenings of existence.”

 

“No,” said Chesney, “all I did was hit my thumb and not swear. All the rest came from your side of the house.”

 

Suddenly, Chesney was back on the park bench, but now he faced a lean, dark-haired personage with precisely planed features and a tiny, pointed beard. Satan flexed his long-fingered hands, like a strangler warming up. A faint whiff of sulfur stirred the air.

 

“We can make you a special offer,” the Devil said. “No fine print, no surprises. Anything you want. President. Movie star. Richest man in the world, Bill Gates for your butler, the Queen of England as your maid.”

 

“But eventually,” said Chesney, “you’d take my soul.”

 

“The customary arrangement.”

 

“But I’m not the customary customer, am I?”

 

The Devil’s brows made a vee. The air darkened. “This must be resolved,” he said.

 

“Fine,” said Chesney. “I accept your arguments, the warp and the weft, the necessity of sin. I’m still not prepared to give up my soul just to plug a hole in Hell’s collective agreement.”

 

The answer was a grinding of teeth.

 

“I sympathize,” said Chesney. “I mean, I really do. But can’t you cut a deal with your employees?”

 

Satan sighed. “They’re being very hardheaded.”

 

“How about promoting some of the worst sinners to be assistant tormentors?”

 

“Against the rules. The worse people are up here, the worse they have to suffer once I get hold of them.”

 

“Can’t you change the rules?”

 

“Not the ones I didn’t make.”

 

Chesney came up with a new idea. “How about promoting the least sinful?”

 

“We’ve tried that,” the Devil said. “They lack ... verve.”

 

“Shorter work week?”

 

“We’re already running into backlogs.”

 

“Then I got nothing,” Chesney said.

 

“If you accept the deal,” Satan said, “I could arrange for you to live a very long time.”

 

“No matter how long it was, eternity will always be a lot longer.”

 

“Yes,” said the Adversary, “and it’s growing longer still while we sit here getting nowhere.”

 

“I appreciate,” said Chesney, “that you’re not ‘making it hot for me’ up here.”

 

“Again,” was the answer, delivered in a tone that suggested immense anger barely under constraint, “I don’t make the rules.”

 

The odor of sulfur sharpened, then Chesney was alone on the bench.

 

* * * *

 

III

 

Chesney had always felt, in his innermost corner that he told no one else about, that he was destined for some great achievement. The fact that life had so far offered him few avenues of approach to a grand destiny had not discouraged him. Nor had the fact that the only time he ever mentioned his feeling to anyone—his mother, when he was ten—she had strongly discouraged him from holding his breath in anticipation.

 

Despite the low-ball cards life generally dealt him, Chesney nourished his belief in secret, first by reading and rereading the biblical tales of other disregarded young men who achieved greatness: Joseph and his triumphs in Egypt, and David the sling-swinging shepherd boy who rose to take Saul’s throne. Later, he discovered other sources of inspiration, and further fueled his hopes with the exploits of Batman and the Green Lantern, and especially Ben Turner, who developed his powers as The Driver after handling a mysterious package misdirected from a parallel dimension.

 

Ever since his encounter with the toad-demon, Chesney had been nurturing a hope that all of this was building toward the realization of some greater plan—with him as its keystone. It occurred to him now, as he made his way back to the office, that his desire to make some singular mark in the world must be pure; the demon that would have tempted him to the sin of pride was instead walking a picket line in Hell. That realization led him to another: if he usually had a tempter, he must also have an operative from the other side.

 

He stopped at the edge of the park. “Hello,” he said. “Are you there?”

 

No answer came.

 

“I’m talking to you,” he tried again, “my guardian angel—the one who counters the demon assigned to tempt me.”

 

Still no answer.

 

“I know you must be there. And you don’t have much to do right now. I could really use some advice.”

 

A small voice spoke reluctantly in his ear. “We’re not supposed to be audible.”

 

Chesney looked around but there was no one in sight. “These aren’t normal conditions, are they?”

 

The voice said, “Hmm.” After a long moment, it said, “We’re also not qualified to advise. No real training, you see. Basically, we’re about countering temptation. A reactive role.”

 

“You mean, whatever my tempter says I should do, you say I shouldn’t?”

 

“And vice versa.”

 

“It doesn’t sound as if you put a lot of thought into it.”

 

“Thinking is not encouraged,” the voice said. “That’s what got you-know-who into all his ... difficulties.”

 

Chesney said, “Still, you’re bound to be more experienced at this sort of thing than I am.”

 

“I’d have to ask someone senior. I can’t tread on your free will.”

 

“But I’m freely asking you for advice. You must have heard what the Devil said.”

 

“Oh, yes. I must say it was strange to see him again. I gather he’s tied up most of the time in administration, you know. That’s what thinking gets you, I suppose.”

 

“Back to my situation,” said Chesney. “What’s the right thing for me to do?”

 

“Oh, no,” said the voice, “I really couldn’t say. The most I’m authorized to do is to encourage you to consult your conscience.”

 

“I thought you were my conscience.”

 

“No. You got one when you got free will.”

 

“Well, what about your conscience? What does it say?”

 

“Don’t have one,” said the voice. “No need. No free will.”

 

“Angels have no free will?”

 

“I think we used to. But we must have got rid of it, after we saw how much trouble it caused for your recent visitor and his followers. Ever since, we just do Himself’s bidding, no questions asked.”

 

“All right,” said Chesney, “what is His bidding?”

 

“Hmm,” said the voice. “He hasn’t said anything to me.”

 

“You said you could ask someone senior?”

 

“Oh, yes. I could ask a Throne, maybe even a Dominion.”

 

“Then would you please do so, and get back to me?”

 

“If they say I can.”

 

* * * *

 

After lunch, Chesney returned to an empty office. It had been empty all morning. He had come to work thinking he owed it to his employer, but now he realized that it was more a matter of following a routine. He had become a creature of habit.

 

He had disposed of the last few items in his electronic in-basket before lunch. Now he switched off his PC and sat gazing at the blank monitor. Consult your conscience, his guardian angel had said. Since childhood, his conscience had always spoken to him in the same terse and querulous voice: that of Letitia Arnstruther.

 

“I should go and see her,” he said.

 

* * * *

 

He waited far longer than normal for a bus. When it finally arrived, he took a close look at the driver, wondering if the man had come to work from a sense of duty or from sheer force of habit. In the inert expression on the driver’s bland face, he recognized the look of another prisoner of routine.

 

He was the only passenger as the bus rolled through virtually empty streets, taking the bridge out of downtown and heading for the suburbs. It was an express service, and normally Chesney took it as far as the major intersection where the Buy-Buy mall and a brand-name outlet center faced each other across several lanes of traffic. There he would transfer to a local route for the remaining eight blocks to his mother’s house.

 

But when he had stood at the connecting point for twenty minutes, his transfer slip in hand, and no local bus came, he set off to walk the rest of the way. The first two blocks, passing the parking lots of the mall and outlet center, were an eerie experience. Usually, the vast stretches of asphalt were jam-packed with cars, SUVs, and minivans. But today the lots held only a few plastic shopping bags skirling in the breeze. Stores stood unlit and empty, and roads normally thick with comers and goers were bare.

 

Chesney felt a rising tide of guilt. The soundless, unpeopled streets, as he left the commercial zone and entered the neighborhood in which he had grown up, were now not just strange—they were an unspoken reproach to him, personally. Because, after what the Devil had told him, it was beginning to sink in that all of this silence and inactivity was the doing, intentional or not, of Chesney Arnstruther.

 

The dawning awareness brought a question to the front of his mind: Was good the mere absence of evil? On the basis of what he was seeing and experiencing, he wasn’t at all sure such a case could be made. He now lived in a world that was shorn of evil, the forces of iniquity having packed up their tools and booked off, but he could not bring himself to say that this new world was good. It was more accurately summed up by a word that he had recently come across in a newspaper article on neologisms that were making their way into updated dictionaries.

 

“Meh,” said Chesney. “That’s what it is. Not good, not bad, just meh.”

 

And that was Chesney’s.... He had been going to use the word fault. But he realized that he wasn’t prepared to go that far, not yet. But it is definitely my doing, he told himself. He had to shoulder some of the responsibility, and therefore some of the blame. But how much? He didn’t know. And, not knowing, he couldn’t judge how much effort he was obligated to put out to rectify the situation.

 

As he walked along, he wrestled with the math, but his mental calculator couldn’t come to grips with the ratios. Not enough solid digits to feed into the equations, too many variables. He needed certainty. And thus he hurried his pace. Because, when it came to delineating fault, for cutting through a tangle of who did what and how and to whom, and revealing the hard core of culpability, Chesney knew of one incisive, discriminating mind that could pierce the darkness like the beam of a lighthouse in an old-time cartoon.

 

Two blocks later, he turned onto the front walk of the house where that intelligence had reigned, constantly sorting moral wheat from chaff—and finding far more of the latter than the former—for as long as Chesney could remember.

 

He stepped up onto the porch, knocked as he turned the big brass doorknob, and called, “Mother, it’s me.”

 

He stepped into the dark-paneled hallway and was immediately wrapped in the house’s familiar odor of ancient furniture polish and lavender potpourri. No answer had come, and he spoke a little louder: “Mother?”

 

“In here,” came her voice. He opened the heavy glass-paned door that led into the parlor and stepped into the space that he most associated with his mother. The scene was as always: the old-fashioned overstuffed furniture, inherited with the house and still dappled with doilies, the wide sweep of a curved-legged coffee table covered in envelopes, writing paper, and sheets of postage stamps.

 

And she herself was where she so often was: at the parlor’s antique writing desk, a relic of the age when Victorian ladies communicated with their world through scented note paper and fine penmanship. Mrs. Arnstruther’s handwriting would have come up to those long-ago ladies’ exacting standards, though the characters of the persons to whom she wrote would have raised many a refined eyebrow.

 

For, in the years since Chesney had ceased to be the chief focus of his mother’s days, her primary occupation had become the composition of earnestly scathing letters to politicians, movie stars, musicians, journalists, authors, and academics. These missives included unsparing assessments of their recipients’ characters and activities, along with pointed recommendations as to how they could improve their lives. Should they choose not to take her well-meant advice, she offered detailed descriptions of the eternal fates that surely awaited them.

 

For all their elegant phrasing, her narratives of impalings, amputations, roastings, piercings, gougings, and rough penetrations into intimate parts that awaited her correspondents made for harrowing reading. But her contemplation of their visitation upon the recipients of her epistles always brought a glow to her rounded countenance.

 

But now Chesney found her seated at her desk, a letter unfinished before her, her fountain pen idle in her plump fingers. Her cheek rested against her knuckles, and the eyes she turned toward her son lacked their customary glint. “There you are,” she said, as always, though without even a tinge of the usual accusatory tone that allowed Chesney to infer the unspoken completion of the phrase: and about time, too.

 

“Mother,” he said, “are you all right?”

 

The answer was a sigh. “I suppose,” she said. “But I seem to lack energy.” She gestured at the paper before her. “I was trying to write a letter to that young woman who gyrates on the television, but...”—she sought for the words—”it just won’t come to me.” She put down the pen and leaned back in her brocaded chair, letting her hands fall to her lap. “I feel ... listless.”

 

“Mother, come sit with me,” Chesney said. He took her hands and drew her over to the sofa. “I need your advice.”

 

Normally, such an admission would have set Letitia Arnstruther firing on all cylinders. She gave off advice the way pinwheels gave off sparks. But, as she sat at one end of the overstuffed chesterfield, she remained subdued, and startled her son by answering, “I don’t know if I’m any good at advising anyone today. I just don’t seem to have much ... oomph.”

 

“I know, Mother. And I even know why,” said Chesney. And not two minutes later, so did Letitia Arnstruther. He had to admit that she took it well. He had been wondering how others would react, but his mother at least absorbed the information with genuine surprise, followed by a welling up of concern for him.

 

“My poor Chesney,” she said.

 

He was taken aback. He had never heard his mother express sympathy. Even when she was patching up his boyhood cuts and scrapes, she was more given to issuing instructions on how to avoid their happening again. But he had no time to dwell on the past, so he told her: “I don’t know what to do.”

 

“Well,” she said, blinking, “you must do what’s right.”

 

“That’s the problem I’m wrestling with. It couldn’t be right to take the deal the Devil has offered—that would be siding with evil. Not to mention damning my immortal soul. But it’s not just about me. While Hell is on strike, nobody’s doing any sinning, anywhere in the world. If I give in, I would be responsible for all the evil that would follow once Hell goes back to work.”

 

“So you shouldn’t give in.”

 

“But the whole world has come to a stop,” Chesney said. “It turns out that sinning is what makes the world go round. With sin turned off, nobody’s motivated to do anything, except for those who keep on out of habit or a sense of obligation. Why, even you....” He broke off when he saw her look of consternation.

 

“Me?” Her expression took on an introspective cast. After a moment, her eyes widened and went to the piles of stationery and stamps on the coffee table then to the writing desk. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.”

 

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said.

 

“Pride,” she said, as if to herself, then, “no, it’s more out of envy. Now, why did I never see that?”

 

“I’m sorry,” he said again, “very sorry.”

 

She pulled herself together. “Well,” she said, “first of all, you have nothing to be sorry for. You meant no harm. You’re trying to make good come out of it.”

 

“But I don’t know how.”

 

“And why would you? You’re an actuary, not a philosopher.” She seemed to recover some of her old energy. She lifted a spiral-bound notebook from the coffee table, flicked through its pages until she found what she was looking for. “Here it is,” she said and reached for the phone. She punched in a long-distance number and waited for an answer. But when it came, her brows briefly drew down and she put the phone back on its pedestal. “Voice mail,” she said, rising from the sofa. “That won’t do. We’ll have to go see him.”

 

“Who?” said Chesney.

 

But she was already through the door to the hallway and her voice came back to him over the rattle of car keys.

 

“The Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre.”

 

* * * *

 

They traveled in the beautifully maintained mid-sixties-vintage Dodge Monaco that Letitia Arnstruther had inherited, along with her house and furniture, from her widower father.

 

“I’m not sure about this,” Chesney said, sitting on the passenger side of the wide bench seat.

 

“But I am, dear,” said his mother. “No one knows more about Heaven and Hell than the Reverend Billy Lee.”

 

“But I’m not sure we should be bothering him.”

 

She did not take her eyes off the road. “He’s a minister of the gospel. How could it bother him to help someone in spiritual trouble?”

 

Chesney pictured Hardacre’s face as he normally saw it, formed into an image of stern condemnation, eyes lit with what seemed a less-than-holy light as he foretold doom and damnation for the sinners he singled out for examination. “Well, maybe,” he said.

 

The Reverend Billy Lee’s walled country estate was a two-hour drive south of the city. As one of the New Tabernacle of the Air’s Saints Circle, Letitia Arnstruther had three times attended social functions in a marquee set up on the long, manicured lawn. No one that Chesney or his mother knew had ever been invited inside the mansion itself.

 

They passed through an arched gateway and followed a long drive of crushed white stone, parking on a wide apron in front of the doors of a multicar garage. The sounds of the Dodge’s doors closing and their footsteps on the pristine gravel were loud in the silence that hung over the place.

 

“I’m still not sure—” Chesney said.

 

His mother said, “I’ll be sure for both of us.”

 

They ascended broad steps to a pillared portico, and she gave the old-fashioned bell pull a solid tug. From inside, Chesney heard mellow chimes, but the door remained closed. Letitia yanked the cord again, harder and longer.

 

“I’m coming,” said a voice from within. The door opened. A medium-sized, balding man in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt stretched over a definite paunch looked up at them. “What can I do for you?”

 

“We’d like to see Reverend Billy Lee,” said Chesney’s mother.

 

“You are seeing him,” said the man.

 

“I don’t like to contradict,” said Letitia, “but I’ve met Reverend Hardacre—”

 

“And I don’t look like him,” the man finished for her. “Well, this is what he looks like without his girdle, his padded shoulders, the lifts in his cowboy boots and his two-thousand-dollar hairpiece.” He held up one hand and Chesney saw the flash of his diamond-studded, heavy gold ring. “This is part of the act, too, but I can’t get it off. Too many steak and lobster dinners.”

 

He peered up at the woman through washed-out hazel eyes and continued, “I don’t have my contacts in, but I think I recognize you. Letitia Arnstruther?” When Chesney’s mother confirmed the identification, Hardacre said, “You write absolutely horrific letters. I get copies from the lawyers of people I’ve sicced you onto. They’re practically pornographic. I used to not know whether to laugh or wince. Of course, now I know.” He winced.

 

Chesney saw that his mother was not taking the Reverend Billy Lee’s unembroidered revelations well. He thought he had better change the agenda. “Mr. Hardacre,” he said, “I’m Chesney Arnstruther.”

 

Hardacre looked him up and down. “You’re not the husband?”

 

“The son. We need to talk to you.”

 

The preacher shook his mostly hairless head. “I don’t think I’m any use to anybody right now, son,” he said. “If I ever was any use before, which is a matter for debate. I’ve got the conscience bug.”

 

“Yes,” said Chesney, “and it’s my fault.”

 

Hardacre looked at him more sharply now. “Then you’d better come in.”

 

* * * *

 

He led them to a baronial sitting room: a vast stone-flagged floor scattered with a dozen plush Persian carpets; a high, domed ceiling from whose center descended an iron chandelier with gilded scrollwork; one wide wall pierced by tall, mullioned windows flanked by drapes of heavy, dark velvet; a fireplace that could roast an ox, and above it a life-sized oil painting of the Reverend Billy Lee posed like Charlton Heston’s Moses preparing to part the Red Sea. Concealed lighting bathed the portrait in a glow that ensured that the image would be the first thing to which a visitor’s gaze was drawn.

 

Before the fireplace was a conversational grouping of massive armchairs upholstered in ox-blood leather. Chesney thought they were designed to impress rather than to offer a comfortable seat, but he hadn’t come for a relaxing chat. He got right to the point. “I’ve accidentally caused Hell to go on strike.”

 

The reverend’s face did not at first register any emotion. After a moment, Chesney saw the man’s brows rise and fall, while his lips half-pursed then turned down at the corners in a frown of concentration. Finally, his eyes widened and his mouth half opened, the index finger of his right hand thrust forward to point at Chesney. “Ah,” he said, nodding. “So that’s it.”

 

A ripple of relief passed through Chesney. He had been expecting to have to argue his case, but instead found himself in the position of the character in a mystery who provides the sleuth with the one clue that illuminates all the others.

 

“I’ve been puzzling over it,” Hardacre said.

 

“I would have thought you’d have been praying over it,” Letitia said.

 

The reverend’s eyes couldn’t twinkle without the blue contacts and the carefully focused lights of his television studio, but he managed a pretty good version of his down-home smile. “Not much point in that, ma’am,” he said. “We kind of have an agreement: I don’t bother Him, and He lets me get on with things in my own way.”

 

“So you’re not really a man of faith?” she said. Chesney heard nothing in her tone but innocent wonder. On any other day, the words would have been freighted with scorn and anger, but no dark power was stoking his mother’s fires.

 

“That’s a complicated question,” the preacher said. Then Chesney saw him put the matter aside as he continued, “but it seems your son has a more pressing conundrum. So why don’t you tell me how you got yourself—and all of us—into this fix?”

 

So Chesney told him, starting with the poker night and working his way up to the encounter with Satan in the park, Hardacre interrupting occasionally to pose small questions. When the tale was told, he bowed his head, steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips, a gesture not of prayer but of concentration. After a long silence, he looked up and said, “I think your mother has indeed brought you to the right man.” He paused and quirked his lips, then said, “Ordinarily, I would say that with a genuinely overweening pride, but I guess the fellow who supplies me with that emotion isn’t on the job.

 

“Even so,” he continued, rubbing his palms briskly together, “no reason why we shouldn’t get down to work.”

 

“What can we do?” Chesney asked.

 

“Well,” said the reverend, “it’s been a long time since I’ve handled one, but first we’re going to bring both sides to the table and get us a bargaining session.”

 

* * * *

 

IV

 

“I will not,” said Satan.

 

“You gotta,” said the red snake protruding from the little girl’s mouth. “We’ve given all we’ve got. Management has got to cut us some slack.”

 

“I do not ‘manage’ Hell,” said Lucifer. “I reign in it.”

 

Snaketongue folded its arms across its pinafore. Satan examined the ceiling, as if he found it far more interesting than the fuming demon across the table.

 

“All right,” said the Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre, “That’s enough for our initial session. I’d like to suspend negotiations while I explore opportunities for finding common ground. Then we’ll meet again. Shall we say two hours?”

 

“You gotta be kidding,” said the IBFDT president.

 

“Pointless,” said the Devil.

 

“You’ll just have to trust me,” said Hardacre.

 

“Why should we?” said the Devil.

 

The preacher rose and ordered the papers he had spread before him on the table. “Because,” he said, “I know something you don’t.”

 

* * * *

 

Chesney and his mother had eavesdropped on the bargaining session from an adjacent room, the mediator having left the door slightly ajar. Now as Hardacre came in, Chesney said, “That didn’t seem to go well.”

 

“It always starts like that,” Hardacre said. “If it didn’t, they wouldn’t need a mediator.” He had dressed for the occasion: one of his carefully tailored suits, hand-tooled western boots, the silver-haired toupée.

 

“What did you mean,” Letitia asked, “when you said you knew something they didn’t?”

 

“Ah,” said Hardacre. He laid the thick sheaf of pages he’d been carrying down on a side table. “That will take some explaining. And first I need to talk to someone else.” He looked at Chesney. “You said your guardian angel was going to seek advice from higher up?”

 

“Yes, but I haven’t heard back. I got the impression it didn’t want to deal with me.”

 

The preacher nodded. “I’m sure it didn’t. But we can’t allow them that option.” He addressed the air. “Show yourself. We need to talk.”

 

Nothing happened. Hardacre sighed. “I can solve this, but you have to buy in.” He waited. “Otherwise, it all stops. And He’ll never know how it ends.”

 

An achingly beautiful chime sounded, and a tall, nobly-featured man with hair as blond and fine as corn silk, wearing an impossibly white suit, was suddenly standing before them. “What do you mean?”

 

Hardacre had his own question: “Throne or Dominion?”

 

“Throne,” said the angel. “Now, what did you mean?”

 

“I mean,” said Hardacre, “that He’s written Himself into a corner. When that happens, it’s up to the characters to save the story.”

 

Chesney thought it was probably the first time the angel’s perfectly smooth brow had ever had to wrinkle. “I beg your pardon?” it said.

 

“I’ll explain,” said Hardacre, “over supper.”

 

* * * *

 

“I’ll be glad,” Hardacre said, serving out plain bologna sandwiches and glasses of water, “when we get this settled. I miss gluttony.”

 

The angel did not partake but joined the three mortals in the dining room. “You were going to explain,” it said.

 

Hardacre chewed his sandwich without enjoyment and swallowed. “It goes back to when I was writing my seventh novel,” he said. “Halfway, I got stuck. I’d started out knowing what the story was about, but the characters took on a life of their own. They developed in ways I hadn’t anticipated. After a while, I couldn’t see how to make them do what the story said they ought to do.”

 

“That’s not uncommon,” the angel said. “Don’t authors sometimes find that the characters take over the story?”

 

“Indeed. And a wise writer follows where they lead. So I let my characters decide where they wanted to go, and together we made a different book from the one I had set out to write. That made me realize that it’s not the writer’s story; it’s the characters’ story, and the author is just writing it for them.”

 

“Very witty,” said the angel, “but what does it have to do with our situation?”

 

“The experience,” Hardacre said, “taught me that you can not only learn by reading books. Sometimes you learn by writing one. And that’s when I had my revelation, the one that made me give up law and literature, and pursue a degree in theology.”

 

Chesney chewed his almost tasteless sandwich and listened to the preacher offer his argument. The more he saw of how Hardacre took control of the situation, the less the younger man could maintain his belief that he was the central figure in this story. Perhaps he should accept that he would always be one who watched from the sidelines and let more determined people push and elbow each other, or stroke and pull together.

 

Sure, he had accidentally called up a demon, but now it looked as if he would not be the one to finish what he started. Listening to Hardacre expound to a high-ranking heavenly hierarch, he thought, Hardacre’s the hero. I’m just the character who gets the ball rolling, so that Reverend Billy Lee can step in and play the leading role. He looked at his mother, her eyes locked on the preacher, even though there was an actual angel in the room, and wondered if any woman would ever take that much interest in him.

 

“But you never received a doctorate in theology, did you?” said the angel. Chesney saw that the news came as a surprise to his mother.

 

“No,” Hardacre admitted, “my thesis was not accepted.” He paused for effect. “But I’ll bet it would have to be now.”

 

Again the angel looked perplexed. But Hardacre had turned to Chesney now. “You’re an actuary. You calculate the odds of this or that event happening to this or that segment of the population.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Does your work convince you that life is unfair?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Because the guy upstairs sometimes stacks the deck?”

 

“What do you mean?” Chesney said.

 

“Take Adam and Eve,” Hardacre said. “He sends two innocents out into a garden where an evil intelligence is plotting to destroy them. Does He warn them about the snake?”

 

Chesney shook his head.

 

“Or Cain and Abel. Cain’s a farmer. Abel’s a shepherd. Cain had to work hard weeding and harvesting crops, while Abel just followed a bunch of sheep around. But when they offer Him their best, He blesses Abel’s offering and disses Cain’s.”

 

“But when Cain kills Abel,” Chesney said, “God doesn’t punish him. He even puts a mark on his forehead to warn people to leave him alone.”

 

“Which makes me wonder,” said Hardacre, “didn’t God consider fratricide a punishable offense? When Cain asks, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ he gets no answer. A straightforward question of ethics, but apparently it stumps God.”

 

The angel opened its mouth to speak, but Hardacre kept right on. “And then there’s poor old Job. His life gets trashed because God and Satan make a bet. His wives and kids are killed, his goods are destroyed, he gets covered in boils, and when he complains, God tells him not to be uppity.”

 

“It wasn’t quite like that,” said the angel.

 

Hardacre waved the objection away. “And there’s other stuff. Two different creation stories in Genesis. Or take Noah and the Flood. God doesn’t like how His creation is going, so He erases the whole thing and starts all over. Who does that?” Hardacre immediately supplied the answer: “Writers do that.”

 

“Where is all this leading?” said the angel.

 

Hardacre put up a hand in a way that asked that the question be deferred. “One more thing. The most important clue of all: always the books.”

 

“Books?” Chesney said.

 

“He always wants us to write books. The Torah, the Gospels, the Koran, the Rig Veda, the Book of Mormon, lots more. Even when virtually everybody was illiterate, he was inspiring people to produce books.”

 

“He wants you to remember what was important,” said the angel.

 

Hardacre said, “I don’t think so.”

 

“You question?” said the angel.

 

“Of course. We’re supposed to.” He appealed to Chesney. “If He wanted us to read a book, why didn’t He just write one and have it delivered to us at birth? Or he could just put the information into our heads”—he looked at the Throne—”the way he did with you. Why all the different versions, the contradictions? And all written by us?”

 

“I assume you have an answer?” said the angel.

 

“I do,” said the preacher. “But when I defended it as my doctoral dissertation, I got shouted at.” He came back to Chesney. “But all the different books are a collective clue—what critics call a recurring motif.”

 

“But what does the clue tell us?” Chesney said.

 

“The obvious,” said Hardacre. “All of this, all of us”—he gestured broadly to include all creation—”is His book. And He’s writing it to learn something.”

 

“He is what He is,” said the angel. “What does He have to learn?”

 

Hardacre gave the heavenly visitor a gentle smile. “Morality, of course.”

 

“To quote you,” said the angel, “‘I don’t think so.’”

 

“You don’t think at all,” said Hardacre. “You were created, ready-made and perfect, to already know everything you need to know. What He needs you to know. You immortals—including the ones down below—are not characters in this story. The thing about characters is that they change. You don’t change. You’re just fixed factors, background forces, like weather or gravity.

 

“That’s why we have free will and you don’t. We’re the ones who have to think. We have to work it out, move the story forward, make it come right in the end. The question is: What is ‘right in the end’? What’s the point of all this?”

 

Chesney’s mother spoke. “To earn salvation.”

 

The preacher shook his head. “We wouldn’t need salvation if He hadn’t given us free will, then sicced the Devil on us. Besides, why does He keep changing the rules? We used to be damned for eating pork and lobster, or wearing cloth made of two different fabrics—then all at once that’s okay. First we could have lots of wives and concubines, then we could only have one, then He changed his mind again and told Mohammed he could have four. For centuries, ‘an eye for an eye’ was fair play, then suddenly it’s ‘forgive them their trespasses.’”

 

Chesney said, “You’re saying He’s trying to figure out what’s right? Through us?”

 

Hardacre poked a finger in his direction. “Ahah.”

 

“But what about all those people who go to Hell?” said Chesney. “God lets them fail and suffer so that He can learn something?”

 

“You can’t make a story without conflict,” the preacher said. “Conflict brings suffering. He’s not writing a Care Bears episode.”

 

“But that’s cruel,” Letitia.

 

“It’s the price we pay. And that He pays, too. Because He’s partly responsible for our screw-ups.”

 

“It’s still cruel.”

 

“Yes,” said Hardacre, “but it’s not real. We’re not real. And when the story is all told, when He writes ‘The End’ at the bottom of the last page, then all this will wrap up. Hell, Heaven, angels, devils, saints, sinners—it will be as if we never were. The story will be told.”

 

“Then what happens to us all?” Chesney said.

 

“We go back where we came from.”

 

“But where’s that?”

 

Hardacre tapped his temple. “Where do any characters come from?”

 

“You’re saying,” the angel said, “that he has generated us as characters in a book He is writing, and when it is finished, we will all be reabsorbed into Him?”

 

“You have a problem with that?” Hardacre said. “What did you think would happen in the end?”

 

“The world will end. All will be judged. The good will live in Heaven; the bad will go to Hell. You have read the Book of Revelation?”

 

“Oh, yes, just as I have read Zarathustra’s writings and the Norse sagas,” said the preacher. “They’re like the two Adam and Eve stories—early drafts. Since then, the story’s moved on.”

 

“It’s a remarkable theory,” said the angel. “But I’m not surprised that the seminary rejected it.”

 

“Angels are never surprised,” said Hardacre. “How could you be when you know everything you need to know? Just as you won’t be surprised when my theory turns out to be correct.”

 

“You believe you’ll prove it?”

 

“In about an hour,” said Hardacre. “When we resume negotiations.”

 

* * * *

 

“What is that doing here?” said Satan. For all Hell’s reputation as a hot place, the look he gave the Throne could freeze a bonfire.

 

“He’s part of the solution,” said Hardacre.

 

“No,” said the angel, “I have no authority to intervene.”

 

“You will have,” Hardacre said. “Now, I’d like to put a proposal on the table.”

 

The Devil turned his head so that he did not have to look at the Throne. His sharp-pointed fingernails drummed impatiently on the polished wood.

 

“I’ve asked Chesney Arnstruther to be present because he is obviously part of the situation,” Hardacre said.

 

“Very well,” said Satan.

 

“Fine by me,” said Snaketongue.

 

“And Chesney’s mother is here, well, mainly because she’s his mother.”

 

The Devil made a gesture of irritation but offered no objection. The IBFDT president shrugged its pinafore straps.

 

“Now, as I understand it,” Hardacre said, “this dispute grows out of two roots: one, the number of sinners to be punished in Hell has grown exponentially and continues to increase, putting limits on your work force’s productivity; two, labor organizers have introduced collective action.”

 

Hearing no contradictions, he went on, “Shall I assume that under no circumstances would you countenance doing less tempting, leading to a decrease in the intake of sinners?”

 

“Not acceptable,” said the Devil.

 

“So we cannot address supply, and must deal with productivity. I have a suggestion: down among your ... population, in addition to labor organizers, you’re bound to have some public relations consultants.”

 

“Quite a few,” said Lucifer. “It’s a field that rewards amoral inventiveness.”

 

Hardacre said, “I suggest you pluck a few out of the furnace and have them advise you on the concept of ‘opinion leaders.’ Briefly explained, they are those individuals within any community not officially recognized as leaders but whose actions and views carry more weight with their neighbors than do the deeds and words of the bulk of the population. PR practitioners have developed sophisticated techniques for identifying them. By concentrating your tempters on opinion leaders, you need put less effort into the rank and file.”

 

Satan stroked his pointed beard. “Freeing up tempters to join the punishment corps?”

 

“Exactly.” Hardacre turned to the IBFDT president. “Would you have any problem with a reallocation of the work force?”

 

“Would seniority transpose from one corps to the other?” the demon said. Hardacre looked to the Devil, who nodded. “Then no problem,” Snaketongue said.

 

“But your proposal gives an advantage to ... the other side,” said Satan, flicking a hate-filled glance at the Throne. “They already have superiority of numbers.”

 

The angel said nothing, but a tiny smile moved the corners of its perfect lips. Satan growled.

 

Hardacre spoke before the rancor could escalate. “Suppose the other side withdrew some of its effort, concentrating on the same opinion leaders, easing up on humanity’s rank and file?”

 

The angel gently stirred the air with two elegant fingers. “We will not do that.”

 

“You will,” said Hardacre, “if my theory is right.”

 

“What theory?” said the Devil and the IBFDT president.

 

“He thinks,” said the Throne, “that we are all characters in a book that Himself is writing.”

 

The demon vibrated its snake-tongue against its little-girl lips, making a unique sound of scornful disbelief. The Devil made a small sound and rolled his coal-black eyes.

 

“If I’m right,” said Hardacre, “we’ll know soon.”

 

“How?” said all three of the non-mortals at once.

 

“We’ll know because the solution that you”—he nodded to the angel—”just found unacceptable will suddenly become acceptable. Just as there once was a hard shell over the Earth called the firmament, and then there wasn’t. Just as it was once possible to build a tower or put up a ladder that would reach to Heaven, and then it wasn’t.”

 

“I don’t remember the firmament, and the Tower of Babel is just a myth,” said the angel.

 

“Because He doesn’t need you to remember,” said Hardacre. “But the firmament and the tower, the Sun that could be stopped in the sky, they were as real as this room. Then they were revised out of subsequent drafts. He keeps rewriting back chapters as he goes forward. I used to do that myself.”

 

“How could you know this if we don’t?” said Satan.

 

“Characters know what they need to know. That’s how the internal dynamics of story-making work.”

 

The Devil gave the mediator a hard look. Chesney admired the way Hardacre stood up under the power of that stare. “I find your idea offensive,” Satan said, “not to mention ridiculous.”

 

“If I’m wrong, we all just sit here and the story comes to a dead stop. If I’m right, we make a deal and move on.”

 

They sat. The only sound in the room was the staccato drumming of Satan’s fingers on the tabletop. The wood was now gouged and scorched.

 

After a while, Reverend Billy Lee said, to no one in particular, “When you’ve written yourself into a corner, remove a wall.”

 

They waited. The Devil’s drumming grew more impatient. Smoke rose from beneath his fingertips. He opened his mouth to speak.

 

And the Throne said, “We accept.”

 

Satan cast the angel a suspicious glance. “You said the proposal was unacceptable.”

 

“Did I? I don’t recall.”

 

The Devil blinked and his expression took on an inward cast, as if he had just lost the train of his thought. “What just happened?”

 

“I think we got a deal,” the IBFDT president said.

 

Hardacre said nothing. But Chesney had never seen a man look so happy.

 

“But you cannot tell anyone,” said the angel.

 

It seemed to Chesney that Hardacre was about to argue. Then he saw a sequence of thoughts cross the preacher’s face, the last one being acceptance. “Yes, that’s fair,” he said.

 

“And you,” the angel said to Satan, “may not tempt him to tell.” Satan’s brows clouded, and the room suddenly smelled of sulfur, but the angel went on implacably, “or the deal’s off.”

 

The Devil’s lips drew down in a grim frown. For a long moment, the issue hung in the balance. Then he said, “Not acceptable.”

 

“Of course,” said the Throne. “It’s your pride. Your damnable pride.”

 

“As it always was,” said Lucifer, “and always will be.”

 

Hardacre spoke. “Perhaps if the instigator of the crisis offered an apology.”

 

Satan raised an eyebrow. “An abject apology?”

 

“But he is blameless,” said the Throne.

 

“All the better,” said Hardacre.

 

Satan considered it. “The idea does appeal,” he said. “He will have to bow down to me.”

 

“But not serve you,” said Hardacre.

 

Satan made a motion that dismissed the point as insignificant. “And in front of all my subjects. We’ll give everybody an hour off.”

 

“Us, too,” said the demon.

 

“Except for crowd control,” Satan shot back.

 

“Agreed. We’ll use the reassigned tempters.”

 

Hardacre looked around the table. “Then I think we can call this dispute settled,” he said.

 

“Like flip-flonkin’ flickafack, you can!”

 

They all looked at Chesney. If he could have, he would have regarded himself with equal surprise. The words had come out of him before he had known they were there. And now he heard himself continue, “It’s not fair. I have nothing to apologize for.”

 

His mother had been regarding Hardacre with a gaze that looked to Chesney like pure adoration. Now she turned to her son and put a gentle hand on his arm. “There is, my dear,” she said, “a precedent.”

 

“Are you saying you won’t do it?” Hardacre said. “There’s a lot riding on this.”

 

Chesney’s reaction had been an unthinking rejection of the injustice. Now he thought about it while Heaven and Hell waited to hear what he would say. And then an idea came to him. More than an idea. A revelation.

 

Maybe, he said to himself, I am the hero of the story after all. Aloud, he said, “I will do it”—he even paused for effect—”on one condition.”

 

* * * *

 

V

 

Hell was a deeply unpleasant experience. The heat made Chesney’s skin ache, the air seared his lungs, and the sights and sounds brought up surges of horror and pity from inner depths that the young man had not known he possessed. Still, he bore up and when the time came, he spoke, clearly and loudly, the words of the formal apology as they had been negotiated by Billy Lee Hardacre and the Devil. Then he made a deep bow and held it until he heard a small grunt of satisfaction from Lucifer.

 

The event took place on a narrow promontory of naked rock that arched out over the enormous Pit, crammed with the entire population of the underworld. Demons lashed and prodded the damned into serried ranks that stretched farther than the actuary could see through the foul and filthy air. When Chesney straightened from his bow, he saw the final phrases of his apology—”and do most humbly beg Your Satanic Majesty to overlook the inconvenience and impudence of my unpardonable conduct”—as huge letters of fire slowly fading above the pit. After his little grunt, the Devil made no response other than to wave him away as if the whole business were of not the slightest consequence.

 

The IBFDT president then stepped up and signed an ornately decorated and sealed document. Satan did likewise. The ruby-red snake protruding from the little girl’s mouth then shouted, with a surprisingly stentorian volume for such a small serpent, “We’ve settled. Everybody back to work.”

 

A moment later, Chesney found himself back in his studio apartment. The electronic calendar on the countertop between the main room and the kitchen nook said that it was the same day on which he had first summoned up the toad-demon. The calendar’s clock ticked over to the second just after he had smashed his thumb with the hammer. As with the firmament and the Tower of Babel, the days when Hell had gone on strike had been written over. They had never happened.

 

Chesney’s thumb hurt and bled, but he suppressed the urge to utter anything more than a heartfelt groan. Nor did he shake the wounded digit, spraying blood. Instead he popped it into his mouth and sucked it.

 

“Ain’t that a pretty sight?” said a gravel-scratchy voice. Chesney turned to see the diminutive, weasel-headed supervisor in the Al Capone suit regarding him with disgust. “A thumb-sucker, yet.”

 

Chesney extended the hurt thumb. “Heal it.”

 

The fiend shrugged.

 

“Xaphan, I command you,” Chesney said—they had now been formally introduced—”heal my thumb.”

 

Xaphan rolled its weasel eyes then gestured brusquely. Immediately, the pain left Chesney’s thumb, the swollen redness disappeared, and the split flesh from which his blood had flowed was whole again.

 

“Good,” said the young man. “Now to work. We don’t have much time before the guys come over for poker.”

 

The demon consulted a gold pocket watch chained to its vest. “I can give you one hour, fifty-nine minutes, five seconds. And no banking unused time.”

 

“I know the terms of the deal,” said Chesney. “In future, don’t waste time reminding me.” He rubbed his hands. “Now, first I’m going to need a costume. It has to be bulletproof, knifeproof, fireproof, acidproof...”—he thought for a moment—”well, just make it generally proof against anything that could harm me.”

 

“You gonna want a cape?” Xaphan said.

 

“No cape. But I should have some kind of utility belt to hold all the doodads.”

 

“What kind of doodads?”

 

“We’ll work that out later. First, I need a good name.”

 

“Howzabout ‘The Bozo’?”

 

“Enough of your sass,” Chesney said. “I’m thinking, maybe, ‘The Regulator.’ How’s that sound?”

 

“Like some punk thinks he’s top of the world.”

 

“Listen,” said Chesney, “a deal’s a deal. You’re my ‘condition’ and your boss agreed to it. I get you two hours out of every twenty-four, you come when I call you, and we fight crime and bad guys.”

 

The fiend shoved its hands in its pockets and scuffed its spatted shoes against the carpet. “I don’t like this. I don’t like you.”

 

“You don’t have to. Back to the costume. I’ve always liked Batman’s colors, good for lurking in the shadows, but I want a big capital ‘R’ on my chest.” He snapped his fingers. “And another ‘R’ on the buckle of the utility belt.”

 

Xaphan muttered something. Chesney ignored it and continued. “And gloves—no, gauntlets—that let me climb walls. Boots to match. And it’s all gotta fold up and fit into a pouch I can carry in my pocket, for when I have to go into action on short notice.”

 

The oversized weasel eyes rolled, but the demon was writing it all down on a pad. “You want I should give you a cleft chin and a little curl of hair down over your forehead?”

 

“No. But I’ll need a mask so I can keep my identity secret.”

 

“You wanna fortress of solitude? A glass airplane?”

 

Chesney ignored the sarcasm. “No, but I’ll need a bigger apartment.”

 

Xaphan flicked its hands in opposite directions. The inner walls of the studio blew outward. Chesney saw his startled neighbors in the adjoining suites sitting amid billowing clouds of drywall plaster. “Undo that,” he said, and when the walls instantly went back in place, “and from now on you only do what I directly order you to do.”

 

The demon sulked.

 

“At least until we’ve worked the bugs out,” Chesney said.

 

“Bugs?” the demon said. “That’s a good one, coming from you.”

 

“‘Bugs’ hasn’t meant ‘crazy’ for, I dunno, fifty, sixty years,” Chesney said. “You should get a software update.”

 

“You don’t like how I talk?”

 

“Not so much.”

 

“Well,” Xaphan said, “so’s your old man.”

 

“Which means?”

 

“That I don’t like you.”

 

“We’ve covered that,” said Chesney. “Now where were we? We’ve done costume.” He snapped his fingers. “I know, tell me where some really bad guys hide out.”

 

“Oh, swell,” said the demon. “You slay me.”