I graciously gave him a moment to collect himself. Then the moment passed, and his smile returned to life, resting easily on his face.
"Exactly," he said with a little too much gusto and a creepy wink. "But Mr. Walker, while I have you here, let me take a moment of your time to run you through the exceptional deal I can offer you right now."
I took another swig of tequila and shrugged. I had no idea what was going on, but it was a lot more entertaining than whatever old movie was playing. I had no idea who Zeke was or what he was a citizen of at this point. I must have missed something.
"It's actually so simple," the demon said, his smile widening far enough that I could see that his teeth were pointy, more like a shark's than a man's.
Had they been like that the whole time? I couldn't remember.
"If you could have anything in the world right now, absolutely anything you wanted, what would it be?"
I'd like to blame my answer on a strong drink and a low tolerance. But I am not certain I'd drunk enough alcohol to blame it on that.
Furthermore, I cannot in good conscience say that my answer would have been any
different if I had been stone-cold sober.
"There's this girl," I started.
"Mm-hm, there always is," Arzal agreed.
"We've been friends since freshman year of college, and I've always secretly been in love with her, but she's marrying my best friend—"
"And you wish she was with you instead?"
"Yes. No! I don't know?" I sighed. "Of course I wish that. But Kyle is my best friend. I wouldn't want to…"
Arzal nodded sympathetically and placed a clawed hand on my left shoulder. It emitted a strange warmth that I could feel through my jacket.
"Say no more, my friend. I understand. But I'm happy to say that we can help you with this. In fact, it's our specialty. I can offer you ten years."
As he talked, his pearly whites flashed like the moon in the dim theater."What do you mean ten years?" I asked.
"Ten years of everything you want. You get the girl, you live out your dream life. It will be literally the best possible outcome you could have."
"Then what happens?" I asked.
His smile winked out again, a momentary flicker like a power surge to a room's light fixture. "Then you'll need to pay for your wish," he said in a somber tone. "The, uh, price for that—the ten years of bliss—is your soul."
He stared at me, his enormous smile suddenly absent, and in its place was only a nervous, frozen patience, like a fisherman waiting to see if his bait had hooked me.
Now, this was my first demon sales pitch, but according to every bad TV show I've ever seen, this was the part where I was supposed to be overwhelmed by my crippling depression, desperate for one thing to go right with my wretched life.
The crushing weight of this should have made Arzal's deal seem worth considering.
But like I said, I've seen those TV shows. I've read those books where the characters do that. I listened to my college professor drone on about Faust.
The universal takeaway from all of them is that taking the deal is a bad idea. Maybe it's postmodern Athen cynicism or something, but I wasn't even a little tempted. Which seemed odd to me, since temptation was what creatures like Arzal were supposed to be the best at.
"Nah," I said, pausing to take another sip of tequila. "I'm good, thanks."
My refusal appeared to hit Arzal the Demon with an almost-physical force. He slumped forward in his chair and placed his head in his hands.
"I don't get it," he said into his palms. "Why am I so bad at this?" He raised his head to glance at me with a pitiful stare. "Were you even a little tempted?" he asked hopefully.
"Not really. Sorry, man," I replied. I felt strangely bad for him. Wordlessly, I offered him my bottle of tequila, which he casually accepted.
"Balls," he muttered after taking a sip. "Do you realize what you just did? I can't tempt a miserable human into changing his horrific life, but you can hand me a bottle of liquor without any setup at all. And I took it without
a thought!" He pushed the bottle back to me and buried his head in his hands again.
He muttered something that sounded vaguely like "Mpphgr denkin trailer." I didn't know how to react to his pity party. We sat in awkward silence as whatever black-and-white movie continued to drone on.
I had some more tequila. Part of me, the ever-present self-aware portion of my
consciousness, was very aware of the fact that I was in the process of getting inebriated while hanging out with a demon at a movie theater. What would my mother say? I don't really know. No one ever taught me how to
prepare for a situation like this.
In all the stories I knew, people always
accepted the deal. Maybe when the movie was over, we would both go our separate ways. Maybe demons actually like old movies. Maybe that's all Hell is: endless old movies. I could see that, come to think of it.
"I'm gonna do it," Arzal said after a solid ten minutes of silence.
"Hmm?" I asked, trying to not seem rude.
"It's unethical, but who cares. I'm screwed either way."
I realized at this point that Arzal was talking to himself. He turned away from me and pulled a briefcase, which had apparently been resting out of view, up into his lap. It was black and looked to be made of cheap faux leather with two flimsy brass clasps holding it shut.
Arzal held it in his lap for a moment, still closed, hesitating, like a man about to dive into frigid water. After a few seconds, he nodded to himself and opened the case. A
reddish glow emerged from the inside, highlighting his face. I felt a blast of heat consistent with the theme of the night.
"Listen, Dylan, you seem like a nice guy," Arzal said as he fished around inside the case. He leaned into it, his scaly red arm vanishing past his elbow, which was trippy because there wasn't enough depth to the briefcase for him to be going that deep.