Unsoul'd (29 page)

"I guess..." Kiki poked at her sushi with her chopsticks, worrying a California roll into a pile of rice, avocado, and cucumber. "I guess I thought...or was
hoping
, really...that one of us..."

"That one of us wouldn't be damned."

She threw down the chopsticks. "I can't eat any more. I'm sorry." Before I could stop her, she ran from the room.

That night, for the first time since we'd met, we spent the night in the same bed without touching each other.

Wherein My Evil Backstabbing Pays Off

Eventually, the studio got around to reading Del's script.

And mine.

"Guess what?" Malcolm said excitedly when he called me, and since he said it excitedly, I didn't even have to guess.

"What?" I asked, as though I didn't already know.

"They don't want Del's version. They want yours. They want you to be the screenwriter."

I feigned surprise. "Really? Me? That was just something I knocked out..."

"You're too modest. It's excellent. It's really, really good stuff, and they can't wait to see what you do in revising."

"I'm flattered."

"So, just say the word and I'll get started on the deal. They got this first bite at the apple for free because you basically did it on spec, but don't worry -- we're gonna get you some serious coin."

"I'd love to do it," I said. "I think it would be fun to try something different from novels."

"Great, great. I'll tell the studio so that they can dump Del and get started on your contract."

A few days later, I happened to bump into Del while leaving the production company office after a meeting. He pulled me aside in the parking lot.

"I don't get it, Randall. What happened?"

"I guess they didn't like our draft, man."

"But they said you turned in your own."

"Yeah, well, they didn't like the one we did together, so I tried something on my own."

"That's not what I heard. I heard you turned yours in around the same time."

I shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

"I thought you liked what we did together," he said, seeming more hurt than angry, more befuddled than outraged. "I just don't understand."

"I don't know what to tell you," I said again, when the truth was, "I don't
care
to tell you."

"Good luck with it," he said, still wounded, still confused. "It's a brilliant book and it deserves to be a great movie."

At home, I wondered about that. Wondered about his parting comment. Could he really be that idealistic? Could he really, truly care only about the work, not about his own ego?

Impossible. People like that didn't exist. They never had.

"Fuck him," I told Kiki that night. "Fuck him and his reiki guy and his three-act structure and--"

"It just doesn't matter, does it?" she said to me. "Nothing matters any more."

I didn't know what to say to that.

Then she laughed. Laughed like she had when we first met, and for that moment, I thought maybe everything would be OK.

Thought it, but
knew
otherwise.

Wherein the Devil Explains

The next day, I took my laptop out to the balcony again. I had plenty of time to work on the next draft of the screenplay. The new book was two weeks late at this point. My editor had never seen me late on a book before.

"I understand things must be crazy, what with the movie (congrats again, by the way!) and the move to L.A.," she'd e-mailed me, "but I'm hoping I'll get the draft of the new book sooner rather than later. Don't worry if it's a little rough! We just would like to get started on our end."

"It's almost done," I replied, the lie of lies among authors. But true in my case. And it wasn't rough at all -- I'd been revising while writing and the draft I had was pretty clean. It wouldn't need much in the way of further revising; I could just tell. After five books, I'd developed a sense for such things.

Almost done, indeed. Maybe a sentence or two at the end. That was all it needed. And then it would be done and I would be done, too.

I set up the laptop and stared at the screen. So close...

But I had the movie deal now. I could blow off the book contract, right? And in doing so, blow off that other pesky contract I'd signed. Get my soul back. Or at least cling to the tiny bit I had left.

I could do that.

I could totally do that.

But it didn't matter any more. And besides...

And besides...

"And besides, it's a really good book, isn't it?" the devil asked, lounging against the balustrade.

I couldn't lie to him. "It's a fucking masterpiece," I said in a hollow voice. I was the worst critic of my own writing, but even I couldn't fault this one.

"Masterpiece. That sounds nice."

"It's the book I've wanted to write my entire life, the book I always imagined myself writing."

He nodded knowingly. His voice soothed. "And it will succeed beyond your wildest dreams. The children of dirt farmers in Africa will read this book when they grow up, Randall. That's the deal."

I closed my eyes. So close. So close to the end.

To the end
s
.

"This sucks," I said. "I would have written this book anyway. I would have written it with or without you."

"And the same few thousand or so people who read your other books would have read it and no one would have cared. Now the world will read it."

"What if I repent?" My voice was soft, barely audible even to me, but the devil heard.

"You think the Old Man is interested in a single soul? He's a little busy with the big picture. And when I say 'big,' I mean universe-wide."

I remembered, then, the night of my signing at Deux Livres -- running off to cheat with Gym Girl, trapped in her neighborhood with no way back to Manda. Lovely Rita had rescued me and I'd thought of her as a guardian angel. Maybe in a movie of my life, she would have actually been a guardian angel, sent from heaven to rescue me from myself.

But not in a Randall Banner novel.

"Why me?" I asked, more plaintive that I'd intended. "Why me?"

"You asked, Randall. You offered."

"I can't be the only one," I said. "I can't be the only person who asked that day, that hour, even that minute. Why did you pick me?"

He sighed and leaned back.
 

"There was this one time, in Moscow... This wasn't long ago as I measure things, but to you, it was a lifetime. Anyway, I blew into town with some friends and we just tried to see how many of you we could fuck up at one go. It wasn't terribly challenging. And what I realized was that you people don't need much incentive to ruin yourselves. You'll do it for very little, and very easily."

"Pity the poor monkeys," I said with a heavy dollop of sarcasm. I typed a single sentence on-screen. One more to go. Maybe two. It didn't matter any more. I'd made up my mind. I just wanted to know why. "Why me?" I asked again.

"Seven billion people on this useless planet, Randall, my man. You know why I picked you? I'll tell you why -- it's because you're an outsider among your own species."

I said nothing. My fingers idled on the keyboard.

"I've been watching you a long time, Randall. Watching. Saw women interested in you and you had no clue. Saw things happening all around you and you didn't notice. You know why?" Without waiting for an answer, the devil stabbed his forefinger at his own temple. "Because you're too busy living in
your own head
. You're the most self-aware, solipsistic, self-pitying person I know, but even before you met me, you'd still managed to eke out a pretty decent life. Not that you could see it. So obsessed with your dreams dying. 'My dream is dead and no matter what happens, nothing can ever bring it back!' Boo-fucking-hoo, Randall.

"You didn't know how good you had it. Too busy holding funerals for your fantasies. But you were no one's flunky. Worked for yourself. Bedded a hottie like Fiona. And you never understood or appreciated it. Just fumbling and stumbling through life. I couldn't stand that. I had to take you down a peg."

Of all the answers to "Why me?" that was probably the only one I hadn't anticipated, the only one I didn't understand. "Take me down a peg? By giving me a super-successful novel?"

The devil flashed his grin. "It's not all it's cracked up to be, man. Do you even know how a book becomes a mega-hit like yours? I mean, yeah, Lacey helped. You can't always count on something like that, though. No, a book becomes a hit because big-mouths read it and won't shut up about it. So then more big-mouths read it. And on and on. I just got you more and better big-mouths. That's the secret of being the devil -- everyone thinks it's about, like, grand schemes. But really it's all a matter of getting the right book to the right person -- or the wrong book to the wrong person -- and letting the dominoes fall, fall, fall."

"It doesn't make any sense, though. Take my soul and in exchange give me fame, fortune, and the hottest piece of ass on the planet? I'm not buying it."

The devil shrugged. "Well, I didn't say there wasn't something in it for me..."

"My soul."

"Nah. Well, yeah, but not just your soul. Your soul is actually worthless. Who cares about it? Meaningless."

"Meaningless?" My temper waxed bright and hot. "Are you crazy? Have you seen what I've become? The things I've done to people since you started leeching it away from me?"

"Don't be a fucking dramatic douchebag, Randall. That had nothing to do with your soul."

"But--"

"You think people have to be unsouled to do what you've done? Are you that naive? Really? You're a grown-up. You know the truth. You didn't do anything you didn't
want
to do. You did some mean, nasty shit when you still had ninety percent of your soul. You were
always
the same self-involved asshole. You saw what you were becoming. You could have stopped it at any time. You didn't. Because you liked it. You liked cheating on your rebound girl, Manda. You liked treating Gym Girl like she didn't matter. You liked screwing over Del."

"You can't--"

"I can damn well be serious. Think about it -- you didn't fuck Sherrie. You resisted. You always could. You chose not to. You never once said, 'Fuck it -- it's not worth it.' Did you become
worse
when I started taking your soul?" Here he grinned the old, lazy hipster grin I knew so well. Only it no longer seemed particularly lazy. "Of course you did. But you didn't become
bad
, Randall. You were bad all along."

"We're all bad,"
Gym Girl had told me.

"You think I'd go to all this trouble for a soul? I didn't need your soul. I needed more than that. So much more."

His eyes gleamed. I didn't even have to prod him for more. He wanted to tell me. Here, at his final moment of triumph, he wanted me to know.

"It was actually one of you chattering monkeys who gave me the idea," he said. "Everything was going great. The Internet was kicking great guns and TV was getting good, in an unseemly, trashy way. I figured in a generation, maybe two, I'd have you monkeys all hooked on the cheap, shitty entertainment, the stuff that funnels you right to me.

"And then... And then that fucking
English
woman, writing that damn series of kids' books. And she changed the world. She really did. She got a whole generation of kids hooked on reading, when they should have been hooked on Internet porn and music videos. So that made me think: What if I could redirect that power? What if I could exploit it? And instead of hooking people on a story about bravery and friendship and overcoming adversity, what if I could get a story written by a horrible person? A miserable, horrible person. Like you.

"It's like a computer, Randy. I input miserable wretch of a writer, depressing-as-shit book, and massive fame, and it spits out, well, spiritual and psychological apocalypse."

I typed another sentence. OK, one more. Definitely. One more and it was done.

The devil knew it. He came closer, licking his lips. "Oh, and see? See? You don't even care any more do you? You know I'm one sentence away, one bite away, from having all of you, and you don't care."

"It's a great book." I was helpless in its grasp.

"You've spent your life wanting more," the devil explained, as if I needed such explication. "More sales. More success. More pussy. And you know what? You're getting it now. You're welcome."

I strummed my fingers on the keyboard.

"The problem is that the world works a certain way and you just can't be bothered. Again, you're all tied up in yourself. You're fucking constipated with yourself. Yeah, Randall -- your books were good. And they were flops. Guess what? The world just doesn't like the kind of books you write, even if they're good. There are different kinds of 'good' and yours isn't the successful kind."

"But
Flash/Back
..."

"Was a fluke. One of those instances where the zeitgeist happened to conflate with your particular book. And then
Down/Town
benefitted from that. And the next one... Oh, Randall. This book, this new book..." He tapped the back of the screen with his finger. Gently. "This
is
your masterpiece, but you, Randall -- you're
my
masterpiece. Do you have any idea how much work this has been?