What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [98]
Satan regarded the bottle in his hand. “I don’t need this,” he said, and handed it back.
“It’ll help,” said Virgil.
Satan shook his head a tiny bit, but it looked less like “no” than like he was trying to erase an image from his mind.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked El Jefe.
Satan’s breathing was not the calm respiration of someone who was sitting on the comfortable, overstuffed couch in the back of a Town Car. “Nothing,” he said. “I guess I just need to remember my anger management exercises.”
It was at that instant that something clicked in Satan’s mind.
A curious, slightly worried look came over El Jefe’s face, as he watched in the rearview mirror. The eyes of the weirdo they’d just picked up had grown quite large, suddenly taking on the aspect of someone who has just put the family dog in the oven and is wondering whether to choose “bake” or “broil.”
Virgil didn’t notice. “Why aren’t there any broads?” he demanded from the front.
“What?” El Jefe tore his attention away from the backseat. “How the hell should I know?” He swerved the car away from the curb, narrowly avoiding a man who dangled from the top of a bus stop shelter by one arm, and eased the car to a stop at an intersection.
“Why aren’t there any women?” continued Virgil. “That’s what I want to know. Why is it all just men?” He waved his hand, gesturing at the lack of naked ladies among the unclothed hordes.
“I don’t know,” said El Jefe. “Maybe it’s because naked ladies lead to temptation, and Jesus didn’t want anyone to be too tempted at the end of the world. You’re the one who knows all about this crap. You tell me. “
“Well, that’s just it. There’s supposed to be a lot of … debauchery at the start.”
“The start of what?” asked El Jefe.
“The start of the end of the world.” Virgil turned to face the window again so that he could get some more muttering done. “Dumbass.”
El Jefe smacked him.
“Ow!”
El Jefe continued the conversation casually. “I’m not sure,” he said, “that all the bad stuff that precedes the arrival of your Lord and Savior is supposed to be entertaining.”
“Yeah, but a few naked ladies couldn’t hurt.”
They waited at the intersection as a long line of naked guys paraded through the crosswalk. El Jefe glanced in the mirror back at his new passenger, who now seemed calm, almost serene, even. He opened his mouth to speak, but one naked guy carrying a sign threw himself onto the hood of the car. His sign flopped onto the windshield, along with the more dangly bits of his anatomy, obscuring the passenger side of the glass and putting an end to Virgil’s hopeful scanning for naked ladies.
“We’re all gonna die!” said the nudist hood ornament. He let out a savage, animal scream and then turned over sideways, chomping at the air like a shark on the deck of a boat.
“That’s disgusting.” El Jefe turned on the windshield wipers and squirted the man with wiper fluid. One of the wipers got tangled up with some of the more sensitive parts of a man’s anatomy. He yelped, and there was a lot of ooh-ing and sucking air between teeth inside the car. Ultimately, it took an extended horn blast, along with a couple of taps of the gas pedal to lurch the man off the hood. Finally, the guy rolled off the side, and El Jefe hit the accelerator, letting the sound of an enormous, American V8 discourage any further attacks.
They rode in silence for a few moments before El Jefe turned his attention back to Satan. “So, those kids back there.”
Satan glanced over his shoulder to see which kids El Jefe was talking about.
“No, no. The couple. Back at the apartment complex.”
Satan looked forward again and tilted his head in a non-committal gesture.
“Those kids back there,” continued El Jefe, now negotiating a wonky freeway entrance – of which there are many in Austin. This one required El Jefe to head south and loop back around in order to get into the north-bound lanes of the Mopac Expressway. “They really seemed to believe your parlor trick.”
“It wasn’t a trick.” Satan evaporated Virgil. “See?” Dust swirled around