Mr. Scratch was known, one way or another, to campaign quietly—he was always quiet—for actuarial science.
Scratch somehow had lifestyle and mortality statistics going back three thousand years, and he’d made up tables based on those statistics.
The tables were scary.
“Scratch made a prediction one time,” they whispered. “There was a car salesman in Lexington with three kids, on his second marriage, looked healthy, and exercised. Took maybe five drinks a week, and didn’t smoke. But Scratch factored in stress from his divorce and some great-granddad of his who had a stroke, like, back before the Civil War, multiplied it by where he lived and divided it by his shoe size, and predicted this guy was going to kick on his forty-first birthday. Talked him into one huge down payment for a policy with a lot of fine print, and saved a hundred grand when the guy kicked exactly when he said he would. Scratch called it to the day.”
Mr. Scratch’s science was one philosophy. New men who had graduated from heavy eastern colleges tended to go with it.
The other philosophy, pushed loudly by Fish, was never to pay anybody any money if they could help it. “Deny all claims” was the first thing adjusters and investigators learned. Anytime someone asked to collect, you said “No.” If they asked again, you gave them as little as you could get away with. You made them beg for every little penny. A lot of people, it turned out, didn’t ask twice, and were too proud to beg.
Between these two philosophies, a lot of good people got ground up, and a lot of money got made.
ASSURANCE MUTUAL occupied most of a Chicago high-rise. Fish insisted on decorating all the offices and halls in polished mahogany, and framed pictures with scenes from history. Like George Washington crossing the Delaware, and Daniel Boone leading settlers into Kentucky.
The largest of these was a painting of Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head smashed on a rock. It hung beside the elevator for one day before Mr. Scratch happened to see it.
“Take that down,” he told the custodian in an odd, sad kind of tone.
The custodian said, “Well, now, Mr. Fish said for me to put it up there.”
Mr. Scratch gave the custodian a certain look, and the painting was taken down.
The custodian was one of those people who got ground up.
THE WORKER BEES at Assurance Mutual knew very little about the private lives of their superiors.
They didn’t know that the reason they saw more of Fish in the morning and less of him in the afternoon was that he was often drunk after lunch.
They didn’t know that Scratch was the Devil. They didn’t know he’d had a broken heart since the beginning of time. Or that he loved—loved!—the movie Mary Poppins.
SCRATCH TOOK FISH to a party for his twenty-sixth birthday. They chartered a private jet and flew south, drinking mai tais all the way.
“Enjoy,” Scratch told Fish, raising his glass.
Fish enjoyed.
The jet flew south of the border, and landed on a grassy airstrip in the middle of nowhere.
The airstrip was attached to a sprawling, mazelike house, hidden among orchards and hills and man-made lakes, and in this astonishing house was a party that had been going on for a hundred years.
New people came and went, but the party itself was immortal. There was beer and wine and girls and opium. And boys. And acid and smack and cocaine. There was a Great Dane named Fidel, who wandered the party wearing a gold chain collar, and after two drinks he might talk to you.
SCRATCH WAS DRUNK. He was sitting at one end of a steaming hot tub, in the middle of a fake indoor rain forest. He felt good.
They had accomplished something, he and Fish. Built something. Betcher ass God had never built an insurance company!
And the company, the money, was only the start. He hoped.
Money ruined some people, but he had a hunch that Fish could be tempered by its touch. He would grow, become a person of value. He might become what the Devil thought of as the perfect human: someone who had power and vision. Who would focus his strength on making the world better, faster, and stronger. The kind of people the Devil needed on his planet, and who had yet to be born in any significant numbers.
Maybe such paragons weren’t born. Maybe, like Fish, like an ugly duckling, they had to grow into it. And money would be their teacher, the mountain they measured themselves against. It had to be, because money was the fiery engine of civilization. Money itself was neither good nor evil. What a childish idea! Fish would master the fiery engine. The evil he did would be necessary, and bear fruit.
“We’re on our way,” said the Devil. “We’ve got our own building, for crying out loud.”
“We?” said Fish, at the other end of the hot tub, nearly obscured by steam.
A toucan flew between them.
“You,” said Scratch. “You know what I mean. Don’t be an asshole.”
He also liked Fish. The kid was pure devil. He had yanked a man through a window and killed him with an ashtray.
For that same reason, he often disliked Fish.
He was insolent. He was proud. He was ambitious. That was pure devil, too, except rebellion was only great if you were the proud rebel. When someone else turned that shit on you, forget it.
Fish needed a lesson. A reminder. A growing pain.
“I want to show you something,” said Scratch. “See that guy over there by the pool? The fat fucker in the black trunks, talking loud, obviously thinks he’s a big deal?”
“No,” answered Fish. “It’s too steamy.”
“Well, he’s there. Let me tell you about him.”
And he told Fish that this fat fucker had made himself president of a Caribbean island nation when he was only thirty years old, promising the military some nice things, promising the CIA some nice things, and then gaining the support of the people by promising them nice things. But then he didn’t deliver. He got full of himself, and got very rich, and turned his island into a massive drug factory (which was the nice thing he’d promised the CIA). But you could only go so far like that before all you had around you were a bunch of disappointed, coked-up generals and a starving population.
“Sounds like a bonehead,” said Fish.
The giant dog Fidel wandered by, ponderously sniffing the fake rain-forest soil, following the edge of the tub.
“Buenas noches, Fidel,” called the Devil. Fidel loped away without answering.
Seconds later the Caribbean president ducked through the fake trees and slid his bulk into the hot tub, an oversize Japanese beer bottle in hand.
“Qué tal?” he boomed, saluting Scratch. Sensing someone hidden in the steam, he raised his bottle in that direction, too.
“Salud,” said the Devil, sipping his mai tai.
The Caribbean president looked suddenly uneasy, as if he recognized Scratch’s voice, but couldn’t see Scratch quite well enough yet to place him.
“Dígame,” began the president. “Sois ustedes los—”
“You quit answering your phone, Chico,” said Scratch, eyes glowing. “The special red phone I gave you? Bad manners, amigo. Very rude.”
The president dropped his beer and tried to scramble out of the tub, but he didn’t get far. Scratch waved his drink, and President Chico became a screaming torch of blue flame. Eyes popping, fat boiling, he writhed and bled for a moment before the flames shrank to a point and vanished, taking him with them.
“Jesus Christ, dude!” gasped Fish. “What was the point of that?”
The Devil climbed out, jumped into his Bermudas, and headed for the cabana.
“You figure it out,” he said. “Happy birthday.”
FOR A FEW WEEKS after Fish’s birthday, the high rollers at the Chicago office noticed a change. Fish was seen studying actuarial tables. He even held a daylong meeting about statistics, and produced a startling example of an account he, himself, had handled.
“There was a guy in Cleveland,” he told them all, including Mr. Scratch, sittin
g in the back, wearing sunglasses, “who smoked and drank like there was no tomorrow, ate nothing but red meat, and had spinal meningitis as a child. But I added in his hat size and divided by the width of his wife’s ass and multiplied the quotient by the kind of car he drives, and figured out that this guy was going to live to be ninety-eight fucking years old. We would have taken a bath. So I denied him coverage. We saved a quarter of a million projected, and didn’t cost this fellow a dime either. Saving money is making money in this business, and no one got hurt. That’s the kind of people we are, guys.”
Applause.
Even the mysterious Mr. Scratch, in the back, was seen to nod approval (and he did approve! He was surprised and pleased. Fish was growing! What he had done wasn’t nice, it wasn’t visionary, but at least it was intelligent, something that had been missing thus far).
It didn’t last. A month later, Fish called a meeting to discuss a new idea.
“Bill everybody twice,” he commanded. “Some of those rubes will pay twice.”
Mr. Scratch shook his head.
Fish was observed to strut back to his office and pour himself a strong one, and toast himself in a great big mirror.
17.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Various cities, stages, highways, drug-fueled parties,
and one very cool tree house, 1971
AFTER THE SOLD-OUT St. Louis show, the fans started out far away, across the parking lot, restrained by cops and wooden barriers. Memory waved at them. William Tell, the drummer, tried to show them his dick, but one of the bodyguards got to him in time.
Purple Airplane’s bodyguards—Jerry, Gus, and Pig—were three jolly monsters whose job was to keep the band out of trouble. They could drink, snort, and smoke more than the band members, so that even when the good times got crazy, the bodyguards were always clearheaded enough to make decisions. They could also become sickeningly violent, if they felt the band was threatened. Pig, the largest, had once thrown an overenthusiastic fan off a roof, then run for a waiting helicopter with Memory under one arm and Jason Livingston, the bass player, under the other.
When the St. Louis crowd broke loose and overran the cops, the bodyguards adopted a siege mentality.
“Form the ‘Turtle’!” roared Pig, wrapping his wallet chain around his fist.
They squeezed Memory, Two-John, William Tell, and Jason into a kind of rock-band sandwich, and raced for the buses.
Pig bit someone. Gus used his keys to rip open scalps.
For Memory, the experience quickly became frightening. She had gotten into the habit of dropping acid before big shows, and the crowd all had witch faces.
William Tell had an open bottle of whiskey, which he passed to Two-John.
“Jesus Christ,” was all they said, smiling, sweaty but cool in their shades. Jason Livingston looked disgusted.
Gus and Pig went down. They came up together, bleeding, but not before two young girls, half dressed and wobbly-eyed, tackled William Tell and ripped his shirt loose.
“Goddammit!” spat Pig.
He reached for the twin Glock pistols in his waistband.
Suddenly a peculiar silence slammed down over everything, as if a magical bell jar of safety had descended from the sky. A tall figure took Memory by the arm. A tall figure who looked at once like a rock star and a rock, like a prince and a plumber, with eyes ten thousand years deep. Did he really look like that, or was it the acid?
The tall figure flashed a smile at Two-John and said, “How we doin’?” and Two-John handed him the whiskey bottle and said, “It’s crowded.”
The Devil.
The bodyguards, who no longer needed to club and smash, were like pleasant, edgy clowns. They smiled and suggested, moving the crowd with words. Then they were all on the bus, laughing. Except for Pig, who sat looking like he might throw up.
“I was about to pull my guns,” he said.
He looked so pitiful. They laughed at him until he started laughing, too.
They formed an urgent line for the tiny bathroom, with the exception of William Tell, who just went outside and peed on the front bumper. The press took pictures, and Gus got blamed.
AFTER THEY CHECKED into the hotel, they piled into the Kennedy limo, and went right back out into the night. Over two bridges, into the hills, to the home of a famous black comedian. A house with an impossible number of rooms, and both indoor and outdoor swimming pools. The comedian wore a woolly robe over a wet swimsuit. He smoked a cigar. At his party, he was too cool to be funny.
He tried, quite earnestly, to get Memory’s memory to come back. He removed his sunglasses, revealing great, round, wonderful eyes. The acid in Memory’s blood made them the eyes of God.
“You don’t remember crying about something,” said the famous black comedian, “when you were a kid, maybe? Crying so hard it made your head hurt? You know what I mean. The kind of crying where you don’t even want to feel better, you just want to keep on crying like that for the rest of your life, you’re so mad and so sad, all at once?”
Memory said “No.” And she told him it was nice of him to try. She told him he was a Shiny Person.
She woke up in the pool the next morning, wearing someone else’s fur coat.
The Devil sat on the diving board, watching her with bloodshot eyes. On the wall behind him was a sign: SWIMMING OOL. NOTICE THERE IS NO P IN OUR POOL. PLEASE KEEP IT THAT WAY.
Memory scrunched her eyes closed. It hurt to read.
She opened the fur coat, confirming that she wore nothing else.
“So,” she said to the Devil. “You’re back.”
“For now,” he said.
She wanted to get out, go find her clothes and a bathroom and some breakfast, but the water was warm, and her body felt heavy.
She went ahead and peed right where she was.
DAYS AND WEEKS blended. There were hotels filled with famous people and parties. Girls went wild for Two-John and William Tell. William Tell liked to make forts out of naked girls, and hide in them until they collapsed.
Girls liked Jason Livingston, too, when they caught a glimpse of him. He was the shy one. Freakishly tall and thin, with long blond hair and eyes that always looked as if he’d just stopped crying.
On the highway, people followed them. Kids mostly, in VW buses or whatever they could get to run. They weren’t the kids from the concerts, necessarily. Just people who saw the bright, shining bus from miles away, read PURPLE AIRPLANE on the side, and fell in behind. Sometimes they rode alongside, waving. If somebody waved back, the fans would shriek and make peace signs. Sometimes they even rode alongside the tech bus, and waved at the roadies. Whatever the roadies did or said, it scared most fans away.
THE RELEASE OF DOROTHY, their first album, had carried them straight into the stratosphere of fame, where it seemed their slightest breath brought attention or sowed rumors. Like the rumor that Two-John was some kind of low-ranking East European prince, who kept a stable of rabbits for food. Like the rumor that Jason Livingston took pills by sticking them up his ass, or that Memory was called Memory because she actually had amnesia.
Through all the travel and the fame and the music, the Devil struggled to keep his own head in balance. He wasn’t here to enjoy himself. Memory and her band had a purpose to serve, and he meant to see it was served right.
The music of Purple Airplane was like a magic carpet ride. It was a journey you went on; everyone said so. Maybe you danced to it. Maybe you stared into space, drugged by Memory’s voice or Two-John’s haunted guitar. But you went somewhere, something happened to you. Afterward, you felt like you knew a secret. Everyone said so, and the Devil thought, This is it! It’s happening! The locked door at the center of everyday human life was finally opening, and they’d find some kind of wild garden inside where they’d grow into the beings he’d always known they could be.
And maybe they did, here and there, for a little while. Hard to say. If people felt the door open, they still got up the next day
and answered the ordinary roll call of their lives.
Music journalists had a hard time explaining how the magic carpet worked. The Airplane’s music spread in many directions, which was the same as no direction, and when one writer asked Memory what the band’s direction was, she just stared right through him in the nicest way.
The Devil heard the question, though, and tossed it around in his head.
Being lost was a kind of direction, wasn’t it? People talked about losing themselves in thought, in love, in conversation, or a TV show. You had to get lost to find the heart of anything, didn’t you?
William Tell just snarled that if people needed directions they should ask a fucking cop.
IT WASN’T AN ordinary life, by any means.
Unless you had nothing to compare it to, which Memory didn’t.
The funny thing about living and remembering, she had discovered, was that it added up so fast. You spent all week looking forward to something—maybe a show, or time alone to take a bubble bath and drink a bottle of wine—and before you knew it the thing was happening, and then it was past. A week past, or a month. And before she knew it, she was a year older and had a million memories.
It was better than it had been, right? When it was just her and the moment and a black, silent, twenty-year hole?
She sat in a bubble bath in a Miami hotel, drinking a bottle of wine, watching the steam rise, trying to catalog what she did remember.
The catalog began on a hot dirt road with Queen Anne’s lace and summer moths fluttering around, and woods on both sides. Every now and then the buzz of cicadas would rise around her like an invisible storm, then subside, and then rise again, and she walked down the shoulder with no shoes on in a simple white dress, and didn’t even know she didn’t know anything, not even her own name, until a woman pulled over in a pickup truck and asked her where she was going, and she didn’t know.
Up Jumps the Devil Page 13
