Sympathy for the Devil - By Tim Pratt Page 0,117

took a couple of deep drags and blew the smoke out the partially opened window.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“You know, just up the road a piece.”

We stopped at a red light and I looked over at him. That crown of thorns must have itched like hell. I shook my head and said, “Wait till I tell my wife about this.”

“She religious?” he asked.

“Not particularly, but still, she’ll get the impact.”

He smiled and flicked some ashes into his palm.

We drove on for a while through the vanishing light, past fields of pumpkins and dried corn stalks. A few minutes later, night fell, and I turned on the headlights. I didn’t see it at first, but a possum darted out into the road right in front of the car. Bump, bump, we were over it in a microsecond. I looked at Christ.

He shrugged as if to say, “What can you do?”

“… and Heaven?” I asked as the car traveled into a valley where the trees from either side of the road had, above, grown together into a canopy.

“Angels, blue skies, your relatives are all there. The greats are there. Basically everybody is there. It gets a little tense sometimes, a little close.”

“You said that ‘basically’ everybody is in Heaven,” I said. “Who isn’t?”

“You know,” he said, “those other people.”

We kept going past the fences of the horse farms, the edges of barren fields, until Christ had me stop as McDonald’s and order him a quarter pounder with cheese, and a chocolate shake. I paid for it with my last couple of dollars.

He said, “I’ll pay you back in indulgences.”

“Hey, it’s on me,” I said.

He wolfed down the burger like the Son of Man that he was.

“So what have you seen in your travels?” I asked.

“You name it,” he said, sucking at his shake. “The human drama.”

“Do you ever stop anywhere?”

“Sometimes. I’m always on the look-out for an old Howard Johnson.” There was a short pause and then he said, “Could you step on it a little, have to be in New Egypt by eight.”

“Sure thing,” I said and put down the pedal. “You meeting someone?”

“I’ve been seeing this woman there on and off for the past couple of years. Every once in a while I’ll appear, give her a little push and then split by sunup.”

“She must be pretty special.”

“Yeah,” he said, and took out a flattened wallet. “Here she is.”

He showed me an old photo of this forty-five-year-old ex-blonde-bombshell in a leopard bikini.

“Nice,” I said.

“Nice isn’t the word for it,” he said, with a wink.

“What’s she do?” I asked.

“A little of this, a little of that,” he said.

“No, I mean, where does she work?”

“At the funeral parlor. She sews mouths and lids shut. She lives in a small house in the center of town. When I get there, she’s usually in bed. I step out of the armoire, minus the robe, and slip between the sheets with her. We eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil for a few hours and then lay back, have a smoke.”

“Does she know who you are?”

“I hope by this time she’s figured it out,” he said.

“She’ll end up going to the tabloids with the story,” I warned.

“Screw it, she already has. We were in that one recently with Bigfoot on the cover and the story about the woman who turned to stone on page three.”

“I missed that one, but I remember the cover.”

All of a sudden Christ sat straight up and pointed out the windshield. “Whoa, whoa,” he said, “pull over like you’re going to pick this guy up.”

Only when he spoke did I see the shadowy figure up ahead on the side of the road. I could see it was a guy and that he was hitchhiking. I passed by him a few feet and then pulled over to the shoulder. We could hear him running toward the car.

“Okay, peel out,” Christ said.

I did and we left that stranger in the dust.

“I love that one,” said the savior.

A few minutes passed and then I heard a hatchet of a voice from the back seat. “You fuckers,” it said. I looked in the rearview mirror and there was the Devil—horns, red skin, cheesy whiskers in a goatee. As I looked at him his grin turned into a wide smile.

Jesus reached back and offered a hand.

“Who’s the stiff at the wheel?” asked the Devil.

“You mean fat boy here?” Christ said and they both burst out laughing. “He’s cool.”

“Nice to meet you,”