10

Let’s be clear about something: Miranda has never been the best judge of character, preternaturally eager to eat from outstretched hands, regardless of their contents. Too trusting. She has been, however, cagey with her friendship in these past years, after certain extended palms that seemed to offer her compassion and understanding instead held, upon closer inspection, only self-doubt and negativity and anxiety and pills and mental health degradation until a not-so-accidental-overdose-type-deal ended all that, so yes, although looking into the glassy green eyes of this creature, a creature renowned for evil, causes some cautious voice within her to scream “RUN,” something in his offer still appeals to her true nature.

And besides, this is a being of ineffable power, one that might have used all manner of subterfuge to finagle her into a mutilating scenario. But it didn’t: instead, it came to her as it is, grotesque and unfamiliar and frightening, but also sincere. It’s here purely as itself. And that goes a long way.

Anyways, there’s only really one small part of her that wants her to engage with the Banana, but that’s the part responsible for sympathy and decision-making, so engage she does. Her first breath beside the beast fills her nostrils, nay her very soul, with the sweet, fetid aroma of old banana.

“So, what’s this all about?” she asks. “What do you want?”

“We’ll get to that, Miranda Swami, have no fear. For now, just take a load off. My colleagues have been chasing you all over the city, and I’m sure you’re quite tired. Can I get you anything? Coffee?Tea? FantaColaCoffee?SevenUpHotTeaSprite?” 

“Uhm, I’m actually okay, thanks.”

“Your prerogative,” A.B. says. Apparently, the beast has a thirst himself, or else just wants to show off, for he snaps his fingers and in his hand appears an amber-tinged bottle of perspiring, cold Kombucha.

“That’s a nice trick,” Miranda says, thinking how good Kombucha actually would be right now, “do you do it at parties?”

“Don’t be too impressed. I can make things appear, but it doesn’t work the other way. And only non-biodegradable plastics. In other words, I can create garbage, I just can’t take it away. How’s that for hellion humor? The Boss, curse his soul, loves that kind of stuff. ‘Humor: it’s a demon’s greatest weapon in the struggle against untrusting humans,’ that’s what I was always taught.”

“And your boss is the Devil, right?”

“Yes, indeed. Now, I’m no slouch myself, mind you. When I’m not out meeting with important clients like yourself, I have quite far-reaching authority over a number of departments. I don’t mean to brag, but there are only a few individuals with my level of responsibility. Most have names you’d probably recognize. If you like, I can get into our whole hierarchy, tell you what makes Azazel tick, though be warned, it’s somewhat arcane. Ah, you’d be bored to death by it. Believe me, sister, if there’s one thing unique to my kind, it’s our love of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, lovely thing, is confounding, illogical, irritating at worst, maddening at best, causes gridlock, ahhhh, just our cup of tea.”

“With Big Banana, you mean?”

“Oh, everywhere. We’ve got plenty of other operations — diversification is the key to a sturdy portfolio — and if they’re hellish in design, they’re fiendishly bureaucratic, you can count on that. Corporations, government agencies…take, uhm, the DMV for example: what efficiency-minded human would’ve invented that fucking nightmare?” A.B. says, laughing, though it comes out sounding more like a burp. The cloud of yellow gas escaping his mouth neither confirms nor debunks the notion. “Goodness me, my apologies. Must’ve eaten some bad brimstone, been coughing up sulfur all day.”

Miranda is too distracted to smile.

“That was a joke,” A.B. clarifies.

“I can’t believe the DMV is actually —”

“Let me stop you right there. Don’t go trying to guess everything we’ve got our claws sunk into, it’ll drive you mad. And you wouldn’t be the first.” Then in a whisper, “Marlon Brando.”

“Why are you telling me all of this? Why tell me any of this?”

“Because I want you to trust me, Ms. Swami. That’s my style. I believe in honesty and direct communication. You’re a smart girl, you have a keen nose for bullshit. So I’ll be level with you, because that’s what I’d want if I were sitting where you are. That’s what would work for me. And the straight and narrow of it, Miranda, is that I have your best interests at heart.”

“Everyone says that.”

“Kid, I’m not everyone,” he says. As if to prove it, A.B. groans, strains, and eventually pushes two enormous, ochre bat wings, equipped on their surface with sharp scales, through the light fabric of his jacket, allowing their diseased, yellow plagiopatagium to lift him a few feet into the air. “Do you know why I’m here? Do you want to take a guess why I’m here, me, a suit more-or-less, and not one of my more vicious colleagues like the ones, say, from across the river? Nasty creatures, by the way, I’m truly sorry about all that. But, uhm, well that’s the nature of bureaucracy, yeah? There’s always going to be some departmental overlap. You were never in any real danger, I made sure of that. Surely you remember all the good times we’ve had together? The thunder cloud, the talking cactus, that weird balloon merchant. Not sure who’s terrible idea that was. Got bloodied up right good at the end there, you did though, yeah?”

Flashes of horrible things attack Miranda’s subconscious and lay for mini-moments in front of her eyes. She can’t think of a good response. The Demon hovers up into the air and around to her other side, adopting a levitating lotus-pose, his little wings needing to perform only the slightest of flaps to keep his assuredly hollow body airborne.

“Maybe, Ms. Swami,” he continues, “you’ve realized certain occurrences that have, in the not too distant past, seemed too good to be true, certain fortuitous acts of fate. Information sprinkled at the correct moment, a certain, shall we say, push forward when the route ahead was nebulous?

“I can’t take complete credit, but you should know that many strings had to be pulled, and many favors called in, to get you safely to this bench today. But that’s why they’ve assigned me to your case, someone with authorization, someone with real power, not some boring, bastardly corporate drone, some number-crunching intestine muncher. You’re an important client, and that designation comes from all the way at the top. I’m here, Miranda, all of this has been done because, and pardon my language, we’re not fucking around.We need you, Miranda Swami.”

“Need me? Need me? Need me for what?” Miranda asks, half-concerned, half-intrigued, soothed from her shock by the surprisingly stimulating siltiness of the winged Banana’s voice. Despite her instincts, despite all the self-preservation-related alarms blaring within her, Miranda likes this guy, this thing, this Banana. He’s a straight-shooter he is, and if he’s truly as important as he claims to be, and if he’s really come down to Earth to speak with her — with little old her? — why that’s pretty gosh darn flattering to boot.

“Come on,” A.B. says, “nobody’s up and around today what with all the craziness across the harbor. People quaking in their houses and bomb shelters and doomsday vaults and such. Let’s go for a walk, I want to show you something.” The Demon leads the way.

Halfway into a more densely-forested part of the park, A.B. must feel he’s not being followed. “Look, I’m not gonna hurt you okay?” he yells behind him. “You gotta trust me!”

“Forgive me, I’m just now realizing the insanity of following a literal demon into a deep, dark wood.”

A.B. turns in the air, exasperated crow’s feet stomped into the skin beside his eyes. “Look here,” he says. A pouch manifests in the creature’s abdomen, a pouch in which the demon’s knowing claw rummages for a moment before producing from its depths a small white business card. He takes it by its corner and flicks it forward, all wrist. It spins like a ninja star, seeming to rend the very air, before sticking its northwest corner into the telephone pole to Miranda’s left. “Read it.”

Cautiously, she removes the card from the wood.

Mr. Avery “A.B.” Banana

26 Nassau Street, Floor 26, Ext-817

Sr. V.P., Devil’s Advocacy

“You see there?” he says, “I’m obviously not one of the violent demons! We don’t issue them business cards is what I’m saying. I myself am a proud Devil’s Advocate…Oh come on! Not even a little smile? It’s supposed to be funny! You know, not all of us are even capable of humor. Most have no need for it. If I were anything like them, interested in gnawing at your gizzards and sucking out your stomach through your throat — which isn’t even the worst of it, by the way — I’d be licking your blood off my claws by now. I surely wouldn’t be here cracking jokes. I mean, look at you: exhausted as can be, no witnesses anywhere, what’s stopping me? Only my honor, my title, my directive, capeesh?”

Okay, well, hrmph, that’s fair. She’s been satisfactorily swayed, but doesn’t quite want the demon to know, so still she stays a few feet back of the hulking, floating thing. A.B., curiously, casts no shadow upon the ground below him.

Miranda: adequately assuaging an increasingly-anxious amygdala.

A.B.: not minding her distance as long as the girl is following and accounted for. 

“So, what does a VP in Devil’s Advocacy actually do?” she asks. 

“Can’t figure that out yourself?” 

“I try not to assume.”

“How admirable.” A.B. scratches the back of his head, saying, “How do I put this? It’s a big, wide world out there. My Boss, for all his power and insight, is often too busy to himself do all the little things that need be done for the good of our organization. I quite literally advocate for the Devil, here on his behalf, at his behest — and yes, I repeat for emphasis, he mentioned you personally. Are you following me, dear?”

“Not really.”

“I’m saying I was assigned to your case, so I’m here to make mine.” 

“Your what?”

“My case.”

“Case for what?”

“For your soul, Miranda Swami! Don’t be dense. We’re Demons. I work for the Devil. We want your soul, or some of it, and it’s my job to convince you why that’s a good idea.” 

“Oh…shit. Another capitalist, huh?”

A.B. raises his claws, palms forward, beside his face. “Guilty,” he squeaks, smiling.

“Well, best of luck with what I can honestly say will be one Hell of a tall task,” Miranda says, lighting a cigarette.

“You’d be shocked how malleable morality can be.”

“So, just to get everything straightened out, for my own sake: the Devil, your boss, wants my soul, and so he’s sent you here to try and convince me. This is a sales pitch?” 

“Yes.”

“So: you’re going to gain my trust, hit me with all sorts of razz-matazz, and then, at the end of this, I’m supposed to sell you my eternal soul.”

“Well, I want you to at least be thinking about it. And, mind you, it’s not so cut and dry. These words ‘eternal souls’ and ‘heaven’ and ‘Hells’ and all that…without going into too much detail, they’re misleading. Trust me. Honestly, for someone with as keen a nose for bullshit as Gwami the Seer, I’d be shocked if you bought into such a hardened Judeo-Christian narrative.”

Miranda is close behind A.B., sure, but something’s obviously wrong. Her eyes are faraway, staring into a middle-distance that might as well be another universe. Her feet can’t keep a straight line. “So, they…they do know…” she says under her breath.

A.B only catches the end of her little muttering, but nevertheless knows what she’s melting down about. “Know what? That you’re Gwami the Seer? Yes, Miranda Swami, we all know. Even before your little exposé today during that live stream — which we were all watching by the way. Remarkable work, even if it was all for naught. But, I digress. Surely you remember we have a certain someone’s brother as our new CEO.”

Miranda slows in the center of the lane, a certain slant of light shining a diagonal down her face from temple to throat like a scar, and she’s blubbering. Tears from God-only-knows-where just pouring from her eyes. She’s not heaving for breath, she’s not even sad. She just can’t seem to stop the aqueduct eyelids.

“He’s not worth it, kid. Take it from me, he’s an asshole.” 

“What did you just say?” His comment causes Miranda to stop altogether right in the middle of the asphalt. A.B. doesn’t seem to notice.

“His willingness to give it all up,” the Demon continues, “well it was great for water-cooler talk. That was a big job, done front-to-back by the Boss himself. Likes to show off his stuff, now and again, put on a show, set an example. We’ve all watched the tapes: flawless execution, I mean really, truly inspired work.

“Not totally your brother’s fault — no man is an island, of course, and Ol’ Lucifer’s persuasive powers are well-documented — but you should know what we think of him. That kind of smarmy, slick-thinking type guy…well, even we Demons have our preferences.”

A.B. turns around to face Miranda, who still stands stoic, unmoving and unblinking and expressionless some ways back. “Miranda? Miranda, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you frozen solid?”

Nobody, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever confirmed her suspicion, the one she’s had her whole life, the one she posits to anyone that’ll listen, that her brother really is an asshole. Everywhere he went he was coddled and lauded, put on pedestals and given clout for his queerness, for his business acumen, for his grades and his extra-curriculars, for all sorts of things that Miranda never cared too much about because, when you cut all that extraneous fat away from the core of him, he’s always been this: a beating, pulsating, undulating asshole.

And here was proof. Unbiased proof from an objective figure, a figure whose job it is to judge such things. A.B. floats over to Miranda’s side. In perhaps the first ever recorded instance of a demon compassionately touching a human, A.B. lays his hand on her shoulder. God, how good that feels.

“Don’t think too much into it,” he says, “He’ll get what’s coming to him. That’s what we’re here for.”

“What do you mean?” 

“What do you mean?”

“You said ‘That’s what we’re here for.’ What are you here for?”

“Well, we’re not evil, Miranda. You can believe the old narratives if you want, but like I said, that’s never really been your style. We punish evil. That’s kind of what Hell, if that’s what you want to call it, is all about. My ilk and I, we’re agents of justice. All this dealing in souls, it’s in pursuit of a balanced world, where good is encouraged and evil punished. That makes sense to you, right? Why else would we be able to make such change on a world we’re borne outside of? We are the system and we are the failsafe. Don’t be afraid of us, we’re everywhere. We have to be.”

“Yeah, but…” Miranda seems to lose her train of thought. She almost starts a phrase three times, but stops each time in a pout, her sentences not communicating what she’d like them to. And right now, her words are too important for imperfection. “I’m not saying you’re an idiot,” she says finally, “I’m really not…but even an idiot could see that this ‘agent of justice’ shit is propaganda. Do you really think the ACTUAL Devil cares about justice? Don’t you think, maybeeeeeeeee, he just gets off on fucking lives up on Earth, safe in some cosmic cave somewhere while his underlings do his bidding?”

“You’re a tough cookie, you know that?”

“We’re negotiating over my literal soul, dude. You wanted a layup?”

“There’s that patented Miranda Swami fire. I like it. I love it, in fact. Most people cave by now, you know? They get dazzled by me or by the drink trick or by their own imaginations. You impress me. Or, should I say, you continue to impress me.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen some shit. You’re not going to shock me out of my complacency that quickly.” 

“No. No, I guess not. Here, my wings are tired, let’s sit for a while.” A.B. floats lazily over to a bench at the edge of the paved path. No semblance of the surrounding cityscape is visible through the growth and underbrush. Without city sounds, you can really get lost in the quiet of mid-autumn, the cold-snapped twigs and patter of frantic chipmunk-feet making final preparations. A Human and A Demon share the world’s stillness.

“I want an answer.” 

“About the justice thing?” 

“Yes.”

“Well, and I can’t stress this enough, it’s not really up to me. I just collect the souls I’m asked to collect, you know? I just do as I’m told, advising when I can. Maybe that’s not a great excuse, but I don’t get to decide what I do or do not believe. For instance, I know your life story pretty well, but it’s not for me to consider whether you deserve what you’ve gotten, whether you’ve been good or not. That’s really a question for the boys in accounting.”

“So, your whole existence rests upon willful ignorance?”

“It’s not willful ignorance, it’s faith. Well, you and I can call it faith, but really, these are things I know. Demons are different from your kind, we don’t question ourselves or our circumstances; it’s not in our codex to do so. We know the facts of our existences, and there’s no use questioning them, since it’s not like that’d do to change anything. We’re like computers, just combinations of algorithms. And you know what? Things are easier this way. You want to call it a deficiency? Fine. You want to say it makes me less alive than you? That’s fair. You want to say it makes me easily manipulatable? It does. It certainly does.

“But I have a purpose, a real purpose, the same purpose as the rest of my kin, a purpose that binds me to my brothers. We’re all of us in pursuit of the same things, in cahoots about the same situations, believers in the same ideals. I don’t have the luxury or curse of questioning myself, but that’s okay, because none of us do. Does that answer your question? I know I’m an agent of justice, so I must be. And that’s okay because we all are.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Miranda says, noticing that her companion is shaking, that small trickles of yellow liquid have begun to discharge from open-mouth sores pouting all over his abdomen. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m okay. I just, well, this is what happens when I start thinking about these things. My body has a physical reaction. You know, it’s not easy being a Demon either. Knowing about free will but not being able to experience it, that’s a special kind of hardship. It’s like having a word on the tip of your tongue for your entire life. It would drive you crazy after a while, if you thought about it too much.”

“Tough lot.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes.”

They sit in silence for a moment, and a stray breeze blows black hair across Miranda’s face.“So, is that your pitch?” Miranda finally says, impatient. “I should make a deal with you because you think you’re an agent of justice, that it’s somehow my cosmic duty to universal homeostasis to do so? I have to say, Mr. Avery —”

“My friends call me A.B.”

“A.B., then…I have to say, not a great pitch.” 

“Sweetheart, I haven’t even started my pitch yet.” 

“Well, by all means, I’m ready when you are.”

“Absolutely, and if you’ll direct your attention to that small patch of grass right there, we can begin.”

Miranda looks forward to a conspicuously bare patch of grass within the great thicket ahead, everything a tangled mesh of branches and resilient buds except for this empty spot.

“Watch.”

The sun, at its current angle, shines through some of the branches, casting a shadow on the bare ground. As the seconds pass, and the sun moves minutely forward, the shadows on the ground, disparate lines, begin to bend, then start to connect, to converge. The sun passes ever-so-slowly through the fishnet branches as a picture begins to present itself: a pentagram of perfect dimension and exact circular construction comes together out of the dark lines, reliant on the predictable path of the sun for its eventual completion.

“And here we go.”

Without warning, red light bursts up from the pentagram, and like a flashbang, momentarily blinds Miranda, who opens her burnt, raw eyes to see a Hag standing in the circle, a Hag like those of swamp legend, all warts and shriveled skin, warped fingernails that curl at their tips, clad in a black, dusty frock. The creature makes a stink-eye at Miranda, then turns to A.B. and nods.

“Abby,” she says, pleasantly surprised, “what a pleasant surprise.” Her voice is deep, guttural like a rumbling stomach.

“Jacko, how are we?” 

“Who’s the girl?”

“A client.”

“Terrific. Ma’am,” the Hag says to Miranda, tipping an invisible cap. The creature cracks her neck, a sound which echoes through the forest, before leaping into the air, and all of spacetime seems to bend as her whole mass swirls into a single point, crunching into itself and then blasting back out in the form of a crow. It caws a parting caw and presently flies away over the trees.

The pentagram, per the sun’s automatic directive, loses its previous proportionality, becoming more and more oblong and finally unrecognizable, before passing out of existence entirely, spending its last few moments of life as the same scattered array of light lines it was before.

“Miranda Swami, you have no idea how much magic is hiding in all the corners of the world around you. No idea. It startles even me sometimes.”

Miranda Swami, meanwhile, is having trouble catching her breath. It wasn’t immediately apparent to her companion that she was gasping at all. In a beggar’s intonation, she asks, “What…what, how?”

“This spot can only be used like that, as transport, very rarely. It’s existed here for millennia, and yet you’re the first human soul to see it. Imagine that.

“Miranda, I know you’ve seen some things, and I know you’ve been privy to some awful frights. I know about your meeting with Cindi, and I know about all the things you read in those dusty old books she keeps in that silly little cave she likes to hide in. I know all of it. I know everything you know, and I want you to now know this: you don’t know anything.

“Beings you can’t comprehend with agendas you can’t understand hide in plain sight all around you. But that’s okay. You weren’t meant to know that much. You humans are simple creatures by design. Your job is to remain earthbound, to affect change here, to enjoy this simple, lovely place for all of our sakes. My point in bringing you here is to ask you to let go of your preconceptions, about everything. There’s so much you don’t understand, about souls, demons, sales — you name it. Oh, don’t make that face, is this so surprising? Take, for example, your roommates, your pretty little roommates, your strictly inferior roommates; how do you think they got where they are? Working for Big Banana, money coming out their ears, enjoying their fruitful days and not fretting about their futures…”

It takes Miranda a moment to put the pieces together. As she does — when she does — her jaw begins a reflexive descent.

“And your parents in their pretty house. Your father with all that political goodwill. That always seemed a little too ridiculous, yeah? Why would anyone trust your old man to lead them? I mean, you’ve always been able to see right through him, ever since you were a kid. And Mother is, well, you know her. How come so many people love her as they do? You see where I’m heading?”

A cold bitter wind blows straight down Miranda’s throat. Speech eludes her. She thinks of Caleb. As if involuntary, she thinks of Caleb.

“Him too. As you know. But if you had any idea what was done for him, how much of our maneuvering it took to get him where he is now, well, you’d be…you’d just be floored. People always assume they’re the only ones, that meeting with us, dealing with us is somehow reserved for a special chosen faction of humanity. But the fact is that everybody sells their soul, or a part of it, sooner or later. That’s the way it works. Some take the Cindi Lapenschtall route, and have a permanent effect on the world. Some are happy exacting revenge on an ex-boyfriend, because that’s all their soul is worth to them. It’s dicey, ain’t no way around that. Nobody discusses it, either because they’re scared or guilty or whatever, but this is the way the world is turned. It’s the way justice is applied to everyone: the good, the bad, and otherwise. Sometimes it’s confusing, and sometimes its effects seem strangely counterintuitive, but everything is figured out in accounting. It all makes sense in the books. You just have to put faith in the system.

“Listen. I’m a trustworthy guy: I’ve been as forthcoming and transparent with you as possible. I wouldn’t screw you on this. Get a jump early, use what we’re offering to live a better life, to bring more good to the world. That’s why I brought you here, showed you all of this. Because I want you to have a leg up, Miranda. Because we’re able, for a limited time, to offer you a leg up. What you’ve just seen today, none of it was ever meant for human eyes. Know that. But I wanted you to step into my world so you might allow me to step into yours. Know that I believe you could be good, do good, help maintain balance for the rest of your days. I want to invest in your soul, Miranda Swami. Let me put my money where your mouth is, so to speak. And don’t worry about all that after-lifey type stuff, okay? Let me just say this: it’s nothing like it says it is in the book. Just be a good person, don’t murder anyone, and soul or not, you’ll be a-okay. All right? There. That’s my pitch. How do you feel? What do you say?”

Miranda can sense, even at that moment, that her forthcoming reaction will have far-reaching, perhaps cosmically-significant, effects. Every adjective every noun every subject-verb agreement she’s ever uttered or considered or seen on a standardized test appears before her in a grand matrix; processes beyond her control whittle them down one by one, until the chosen sentence leaves her mouth:

“I need to think about it.”

Which is true, she does.

“That’s great, Swami, really great. Just consider it. Really consider it, that’s all I ask. It’s not like we’re going anywhere, no matter what happens with everything across the water. I warn you though, your soul might not ever be as valuable as it is now. Call with any questions, okay? Super. Here, again, is my card.”

A.B. snaps his fingers. The sharp sound is the cue for hundreds and hundreds of business cards to explode skyward in a continuous stream from an adjacent sewer grate, like water spouting from a busted-up fire hydrant. A.B. sticks his hand into the paper pell-mell, pulls out a single card, and hands it to Miranda as the deluge reverses course, diving back down into its subterranean home.

“That’s one of my favorites. Rule #1 of sales (write this down): always leave ‘em on their ass. Been nice talking with you, Miranda Swami. It really has been. Let’s not wait so long until next time.”

On that, A.B. extends his wings and blasts into the air, becoming in a matter of moments no more than a brief yellow speck on a darkening horizon.

Miranda looks towards the sky until she can no longer make out the imaginary point where A.B. might be. Some cirrus clouds rush in and do their measly best to block out the sun. She turns the card over in her hand, finding on the back some writing scrawled in crayon. Subways are all closed. I’d walk. A.B.

Certainly uncertain about whether she’ll take A.B.’s long-term advice, she decides to take this bite-sized bit, hugging herself close and hustling out of the park, trying to phonelessly orient herself in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge, wishing for warmer clothes. She’d love to ask someone for directions, but all the bodegas are boarded up, all the terrified families still huddled tight in their homes.

“Well, that’s that, then,” she says out loud, a button line that seems to have been said in someone else’s voice. It’s amazing what the motor muscles manipulating the mouth may mutter when unaccompanied. She walks and walks and eventually takes a left at the edge of the park, walking along this, the last visible treeline before the city reverts back from its primordial forest form to its standard concrete and mortar. A breeze knocks some shriveled berries down to the sidewalk. Are they edible? Better not find out.

Miranda, two roads diverged before her, one berried and one not, hopes for the best.