Part 2

"I read your email," Satan said.

I remembered I hadn't introduced myself. I accepted that I probably didn't have to.

"I'm very sorry you've found yourself in this situation," he said, without a hint of irony. "Let's talk about next steps."

I cleared my throat and fished for the wording I would have used if I was composing an email. "I included a tentative plan at the end of my email."

"I remember. It was a good summary. Thank you for taking the time to write it." He waited for a response. 

I guessed. "Of course."

He nodded. "Of course, the devil's in the details."

It caught me off guard, so when I laughed it sounded the way I did when I was alone, too high, half-strangled, pitch dark. It was an unsettling noise. Even after I'd listened to it for most of a year I still hated it, and I cut myself off fast and hard.

Satan was unperturbed. "So please, tell me," he said. "What do you want?"

It might have been rude if he hadn't said it with so much weight. He wanted to know, and nothing more. I drew a deep, shaky breath and held it until my muscles felt solid again, and then I told him. 

I spoke quickly but calmly, in the low, level voice I used when something went catastrophically wrong in the warehouse and Doug sent me out to the sales floor so I could ask the customers, insistently, urgently, but soothingly, if they could please make their way to the exits. If I was honest, that, and variations on it, was my primary job, and I was very good at it; I had a natural gift, and one developed by near-constant practice ever since my first job, when I was in ninth grade. I was fourteen then. 

A memory almost coalesced, it felt important, but the haze swallowed it again. I watched it go.

I had been talking for a very long time. What I said hardly sounded like words to me anymore, most of what I heard was a continuous low buzz hovering like an insect at the bottom of my perception, like I'd been out in the cold for too long or the wind had been so loud for so long that I'd tuned it out, but I didn't lie, even accidentally, which should have required much more attention than I'd thought I was paying to the conversation. No matter how much time passed Satan didn't move. His eyes were smaller through his glasses -- he must have been nearsighted, or have chosen to be, for some reason, who knew what -- but sitting across from him while he watched me felt like being pinned down by a shaft of sunlight focused to a point under a magnifying glass. He blinked as often as I did, which I checked because somehow I felt like he hadn't since I'd first seen him in the waiting room, a feeling that only got stronger the longer I watched him and regardless of how many times I saw him do it. It was physically heavy. I could have stood up and I couldn't have. I could have left the office entirely and gone back outside to the world outside the fish tank, and I couldn't have. I could have stopped talking, maybe, at any point, maybe. But I didn't.

Much later -- the office had no clock, my phone was miles away -- I felt myself wrapping up. I tied off my last threads of new information and ran down a short summary of my main points, which was much easier than it should have been given that I couldn't remember what any of them were, but when Satan repeated each of them back to me, patiently, attentively, I recognized them the same way I recognized the highway exit closest to my old house even when I drove past it or I recognized the reflection I cast in a window even when I barely caught it in my peripheral vision and the glass's tint left it an indistinct smudge. It was always mine. It was always there. Before what he'd said could even fully register I could confirm that he'd understood me perfectly.

"Thank you."

Something released me. The temperature rose or fell, the air pressure dropped off or came rushing back, but the air emptied itself.

The radiator popped once. The blinds tapped the window. The room was silent. For the first time I felt the back of my chair.

I took one long breath and almost forgot to take another.

Satan handed me a slim paper packet. "Why don't you look it over."

The office contained neither a computer nor a printer and at no point had I seen him write anything down. I took the packet anyways, started to leaf through it, stopped and stared.

"Is everything in order?" he asked.

Six pages of twelve-point Times New Roman, single spaced, meticulously sectioned off by lowercase Roman numerals under Arabic numerals under uppercase Latin letters under uppercase Roman numerals. A flawless dissection of everything I'd said, catalogued and reassembled, given a new, elegantly simple form, leaving left nothing out.

Everything I wanted.

"Yes."

Satan smiled, bright and warm, and I had no idea if he was sincere. "Sign here, please."

I did.

"Thank you."

I nodded.

Satan stood, buttoned his blazer, and flicked through a filing cabinet. "By the way. Where did you park?"

"Around the corner," I said. "In the lot in front of the parking garage."

"The Christopher H. Martin Memorial Parking Garage?"

I blinked. "Yes."

"I miss Chris." His back was to me, but I could hear his smile in his voice. "Did you pay?"

I hesitated, for no real reason. "I didn't."

"Hm. You'll get a ticket."

"Sorry. I couldn't find your customer parking lot."

"I have none. Nor do I have employee parking," he added, then waited for me to ask.

"Why?"

"I park in front of the courthouse." 

He said it with the perfect, self-assured freedom of the rare boss who is beyond any need at all for his subordinates to laugh at his jokes. I half smiled.

"This is your copy." He handed me a document envelope. "My card's inside if you have any questions. Let me write you some notes before you go."

The sheets of carbonless carbon paper he tore off for me were crisp and weightless, and in the quiet outside the subsonic whisper between them carried all the way across the street. The sun was now bright white. Its late morning light turned the envelope on my dashboard from municipal printer goldenrod yellow to angelic gold.