What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [91]
El Jefe squinted some more and chewed his cigar at Satan. “Yeah?” He addressed the woman, but kept his eyes fixed on the Devil. “How’d he do that?”
“Well…” The woman looked down, apparently unsure of how exactly to describe whatever it was that she’d just seen happen. But then her husband stepped out in front of her, holding his arm out and shushing her back gently.
“He,” the old man pointed at Satan, “evaporated the man from the property company.” The old man gave a little nod and then stood with his chin up, ready for whatever response was headed his way.
El Jefe rested his arm on the driver door and stopped mid-chew. “What?”
The old man seemed to shrink. “That’s ... what he did.” He shrugged. “He just made the guy go ... poof.” He made a poofing gesture. Behind him, his wife shook her head and made a slightly different poofing gesture.
El Jefe turned to Eli, who’d been standing at his shabby, flower-bathrobed version of attention. “Eli, is this true?”
Eli nodded. “Uh, yeah. I mean, yes. I saw it. Right there.” He turned and pointed at the spot on the sidewalk. “Evaporated him, just like that.” He snapped his fingers, but then, still holding his hand up in the air, seemed to reconsider his evaluation of the poofery or evaporation or whatever it had been, and let his hand fall. “You know, I’d say it was less evaporation than kind of a …” He searched for the word, but only found the incredulous eyes of the man with the cigar. “He’s— He’s an angel.” Eli turned and wafted his hands in Satan’s direction, like a game show presenter girl.
Satan was just a popcorn and a soda short of being a sports spectator as he watched, turning his head back and forth as each person spoke. The power these men in the big car seemed to hold over Eli and the elderly couple was incredible. And wrong, somehow. They were so deferential, almost as if the men were kings or... gods! Idolators! He stepped backward slowly and cautiously, moving toward the spot where he’d tossed the flaming pipe of divine vengeance.
“You evaporated him, huh?” asked El Jefe. Satan smiled and nodded. El Jefe smiled and chewed and rolled the cigar around for a while, ruminating. “You,” he said, addressing Satan, “aren’t one of Cadmon’s damned soldiers, are you?”
Satan paused, mid-step. Who was Cadmon? “I don’t work for any—” He stared at El Jefe for a second, confused. “I am a servant of the Lord. An angel!”
“See?” said Eli.
“Yeah?” asked the man with the cigar. “I don’t see any wings.”
They all stared at each other for a moment. El Jefe turned briefly to the man standing on the other side of the car and jerked his head toward the elderly couple, who were having an animated conversation of their own, and making increasingly strident poofing gestures at one another. With the old-man equivalent of a bounce in his step, El Jefe’s passenger marched over and ushered the couple back into their apartment building.
El Jefe returned his attention to Satan. “So, where are they?”
“Where are what?”
“Your wings.”
“Hmm ...” said Satan, scratching at his chin. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”
The man who’d attended to the elderly couple returned, wiping his hands on his blue engineer’s suit. He whispered something in El Jefe’s ear, and the two engaged in a quiet conversation for a moment.
Satan inched his way over to the metal pipe.
The two old men finished their whispering. El Jefe nodded, and the other man returned to his position at the passenger door.
“Okay,” said El Jefe, turning back to Satan and Eli. He looked back and forth between the two before finally settling his eyes on the Devil. “I think you’re going to have to come with us.”
“No, he – he can’t go with you. He’s— “ Eli looked to Satan for help, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention.
“Look here, son,” said El Jefe. There is a principle of conversational logic which states that any conversant of a sufficiently advanced age, who is at least ten-percent more aged (the “-ed” in “aged” should be pronounced