Drifting Through Sun and Storm

The devil is real, this I know to be true.

He’s right over there in fact. He’s sitting on the old and worn-out, off-brand, second-hand lazy-boy recliner set in the corner of the living room. It’s not his, rather, it belongs to our other roommate Pedro, but he sits there more often than not.

He waves to me.

I wave back to him

He asks me if I could sacrifice a goat in his name.

I ask him where he even expects me to find a goat, let alone afford one. Goats are probably expensive.

He suggests a chicken, then.

Does it have to be a live chicken, I ask? Would a rotisserie chicken do, like the ones at Buy’N’Cheap down the street?

He says rotisserie is fine, as long as it’s the original flavor, and not the lemon pepper. The devil doesn’t like the lemon pepper.

Most of the things in the apartment belong to Pedro. Of the three of us he has the good job, working as a bus boy at the O’Harlequins Pub and Eatery on Seventh and Talbot. They share tips between the whole staff, and on Friday fish nights he rakes in the cash.

Pedro says he just saw the most perfect, prime location for his future restaurant on the way home from work the other day. He was driving along when he saw the vacant lot just across the street from Starbucks, where the old Donut Hole used to be. It would be the perfect spot for Pedro’s Roadside Grill.

The devil asks if that’s the Starbucks on Lawrence and Mill Street.

Pedro says yes.

The devil says they’re building another Starbucks there.

Pedro says that there’s already a Starbucks across the street! He sighs and sits on the couch, and asks the devil what he’s watching.

The movie Bloodsuckers From Space, a tale of vampire aliens, plays on the TV screen. The devil prefers vampire movies, Pedro likes zombie films, I like ghost flicks. It’s a trifecta that’s never in the same place, so we rotate sub-genres of horror.

Pedro says they all share the idea of immortality in death, an eternal existence beyond the grave.

The devil says that there is a difference, that ghosts live forever in the past, zombies live forever without a future, while vampires always live in the present.

Pedro says there is a difference, that vampires live without a future, bound by their addiction to blood. Ghosts are bound to their haunting, while zombies don’t even need brains to wander.

I say there is a difference, that the real life of a zombie is forgotten, that the real life of the vampire is replaced, while the memory of a ghost lasts forever.

We watch them all just the same.

The devil drives an old, beat up 1998 Dodge Stratus. The front headlight on the driver’s side is askew. The rear turn signal on the passenger’s side no longer blinks. On a hot day the air conditioning could easily lead to an engine fire.

It’s the only car to the three of us. The devil drives, Pedro sits in the front, and I sit in the back. We step in the car, lock the doors, and roll down the windows to beat the heat. The devil turns the ignition and the engine sputters to life.

The devil turns on the radio and old country music begins to play. Outside there is the sound of traffic, a congested mix of car horns and brakes screeching and engines due for an oil change months ago. There’s someone shouting at someone else but I can’t tell who for what before they’re gone. There is a clicking noise, every so often, as the devil taps the right turn signal on and off to emulate its function.

The devil drops Pedro off at O’Harlequin’s first. The evening has barely begun but there’s already a crowd, the parking lot almost full. Pedro slips out of his seat and I take his place.

For a while we just drive, with nothing but the traffic, the voice of Kenny Rogers, the wind coursing through the open windows, and sometimes the clicking of the turn signal to keep us company. There’s a traffic light that turns from green, to yellow, to red, and the devil pulls to a stop just over the white line.

At the corner, standing on the sidewalk, there’s a man carrying a sign that says, “PLEASE HELP”, and below that it says, “GOD BLESS”. I hope the devil doesn’t notice.

He does.

The devil shakes his head. He asks if I think God even cares, that a person, that any person, would need help. The devil asks would God even help them.

I tell him that I don’t know.

He asks why I don’t.

I tell him that they haven’t gotten to that bit of training at work.

The devil says that all that man wants to do in life is to elevate himself from his position, but you know what happens when you try to elevate yourself?

I guess that you get to a higher elevation.

The devil shakes his head and says that you get cast out of heaven.

That’s something I don’t like about the devil. He’s always making it about himself.

The sun was already setting when we pulled up to the Package Pro Mail Center downtown. I barely step out of the car before the devil has already begun to speed off. I button up the vest of my uniform and make my way to the back, to the mail room.

The manager, Tina, is there. She says there’s a new product coming soon, and we would all have to train and prepare for it. She says it’s luxury packaging, for those that want a guarantee that their box would arrive with extra care.

Scott asks how much that service would cost.

Tina says it would depend on distance and weight, but based on their typical sales domestic usage would start at around three hundred dollars for bronze, five hundred for silver, and seven hundred for gold, to transport a single package, up to fifty pounds. The price, would of course, go up from there.

Dhruv says he can’t afford that.

She laughs and tells Dhruv that these services aren’t for him.

The devil likes the pier, the old, wooden one down the street from The Fried Fishery. It extends far out, where in the early morning darkness the creaking boards are barely visible beneath our feet, and the water is pitch black. Somewhere behind us there are the lights and the noise of the city, but out here, in the darkness at the end of the pier, they seem so distant.

There is a line of boats on either side of the pier, anchored and tied down. The devil says that he owned a boat once, a fishing boat like those. He’d go out in the morning, just before the sun would start to rise, dock just after the sun went down.

He would catch fish, he would sell fish. He sold fish so that he could afford to catch fish so he could sell fish so that he could afford to catch fish, until the day came that he couldn’t even do that.

The devil sold his boat that day.

Pedro likes to look at the city lights from the pier. He says the city is a place of opportunity, a place where anyone could make anything of themselves. It is a place where a person could change the world.

Pedro’s grandfather moved to the city decades ago in search of that dream. There were opportunities for the right person to come along and pick them up and make something of them. He died poor, with nothing to his name.

His father searched for that dream, deep in the heart of the city. There were fewer opportunities then, at least for the individual person, but for someone with capital, a company with money, there was opportunity to be granted. He died in debt.

Pedro wonders if there are any opportunities left. The sun rises and the devil pulls his Dodge Stratus around.

The devil sits back in Pedro’s second-hand, off-brand lazy-boy recliner set in the corner of the room. Pedro sits on the couch, and I sit next to him.

Cemetery Beneath the Moon plays on the TV, a zombie werewolf movie in which the werewolves are actually zombies, risen from the grave, and the zombies turn into werewolves in the right light.

The devil waves to me.

I wave back to him.

He asks if I would sacrifice a goat in his name.

I ask him where he would expect me to find a goat, let alone afford one. Goats are probably very expensive.

The devil asks Pedro if Pedro would sacrifice a goat in his name.

Pedro looks shocked. Sacrifice a goat, he asks, in this economy?