The boy did not yet belong in Hell, but there he was. The soil was black and hot, and everything was on fire. Even the sky, which was huge, was on fire. Under the huge sky of fire  was a long road on which the boy stood and threw shadows of varying sharpness and opacity. He could not see where the road led, only that it led somewhere, which was better than nowhere. Buildings in the distance, tiny skyline fidgeting in the heat. He had just emerged from a mound  of garbage and stank like shit. Or else the whole place stank like shit. The boy only knew he  wasn’t dead, just lost. 

He went down the road and, somewhere, was apprehended by demons. The demons  shoved the boy along, all the way into the city, straight to Satan, who was cucumber-eyed and  reclining in a mud bath in his colossal Palace of Fire. The boy was thrown forward. Satan’s cucumber slices slid away with dramatic slowness to reveal two caprine eyes flaming with  vexation. He spoke: “Who in the hell are you?” 

A fine question. “Jerry,” said Jerry. 

“Just Jerry?” 

“Jerry Lugubrious,” said Jerry Lugubrious. 

“Are you here with the living or with the dead, Jerry Lugubrious?” 

Another fine question. Jerry answered. Satan sat up in his mud bath. This was an odd  situation. Satan asked Jerry more questions, and Jerry tried to supply helpful answers. Jerry told Satan that the last thing he remembered doing before being transported to Hell  was trying to heave a rather unwieldy bag of garbage into the dumpster behind the apartment  building where he lived. Satan said “ah” and explained that a lot of portals to Hell are hidden  inside dumpsters; Jerry must have fallen into one by mistake. The two had a good laugh. Satan  really was very nice and understanding about the whole thing. He ordered one demon to make Jerry some tea, and another demon to draw Jerry a mud bath in the neighboring tub. The boy and the Prince of Darkness drank tea and mud-bathed and talked about life for a very long time. 

Jerry Lugubrious was a sandy-white doll of a boy who had only recently begun to be  called a “man” with any seriousness or regularity. He looked a bit like an illustration on one of  those old Boys’ Life covers. The creased eyes. The coiffed hair, so blond it’s yellow, impossibly  fitted to his scalp. Teeth so white they almost hurt to look at. Satan had liked him right away, but  he especially liked him after Jerry unabashedly related his life’s dream of becoming a big-shot  advertising executive with lots of money and a firm with his name in big shiny letters on the  building’s facade. 

“Normally, I don’t take so mercifully to interlopers,” said Satan, “but you, kid, I like the  cut of your jib. Dammit, I could use someone like you around here. Someone with your attitude.  What’s the word? Ambition. Someone with your ambition. Let’s say something wild here. Let’s  say I offered you a job. What do you think you might say to that, Jerry?”

Jerry didn’t know the words “interloper” or “jib,” but he knew better than to refuse work  from a big shot like Satan. Bills to pay. Student loans, rent. Jerry had a glove with one finger  missing, and his shoe was blown out at the side. Plus, working for Satan would look quite  impressive on his resume, thus increasing his chances of one day becoming a big shot himself.  He could see the way out of his middle-register existence lighting up before him like a runway in  the night. 

Satan interviewed him right there in the mud bath. Jerry told Satan everything he believed Satan wanted to hear. 

Satan: “Are you a hateful person?” 

Jerry: “And how!” 

Satan: “What’s your attitude toward your fellow man?” 

Jerry: “I can’t stand that guy!” 

Satan: “Tell me about a time you used evil to solve a problem.” 

Jerry: “Once, I took advantage of my roommate’s peanut allergy so he’d stop stealing my lunch.” Jerry was hired on the spot. He and Satan laughed and smoked cigars in the mud. He still works for the big man today. 

It’s 2019 on Earth. Thursday. Nanette Hubble keeps saying “sweet flippin’ flapjacks,” a  catchphrase in a new cartoon, into a studio microphone until the casting director tells her thank  you, we’ve heard enough. Nanette, a seasoned reject, does not stand there all dumb and  incredulous like they do in movies about struggling actors. Nor does she shout or cry at her  rejectors. Nor does she give the other voice artists the finger and storm off to the bathroom to berate herself in a mirror before smashing it with her bare fist. Nanette is a professional and is  guided by propriety, not impulse. As she coolly but readily makes her exit, she very politely  thanks the people at the table for their time and produces upon herself a smile so huge it almost  looks like it hurts. 

Flying home, south on I-79, she smokes a cigarette against the lamentory slowness of a  lesser-known Miles Davis number, one wrist on the wheel, in a blur of evening snow.

The apartment is small, cold, dark. But quiet. Officially, it’s smoke-free, but not as far as  our Nanette is concerned. She lies in the recliner in a blue haze of Bionic Woman reruns that  dance silently on the old Electrohome. The swish and sigh of cars in the wet street put her to sleep,  and the old dreams replay. 

Dreams of exchanging her ratty green bagger’s apron for a shiny studio lanyard. Dreams  of being known not as “Nanette, the girl who struck out looking in the final at-bat in the series deciding game,” or as “Nanette, the girl who pissed herself that one time in pre-algebra in the  middle of an exam,” but rather as “Nanette, voice of this beloved cartoon character, bringer of  joy who is, herself, joyful, and who is just as pleasant in real life as you would think, and  surprisingly pretty, too, and has a great sense of humor, and loves all her fans, takes time out of  her busy schedule to sign autographs, donates her excess wealth to dog shelters and cancer  research,” and so on like that. 

The old nightmare, too: Nanette fakes her death and attends her own funeral in disguise,  only to find that she is the sole person in attendance. 

She jumps awake at sudden pain. A two-centimeter burn appears on her left forearm.  Nanette deposits her cigarette into a half-eaten bowl of microwave noodles on the TV tray.

Just out of view: polaroids depicting Nanette and her disappeared boyfriend in a cork board jumble that summarizes their life together. Nanette and Jerry sharing a big sandwich.  Nanette and Jerry kissing on a glittery New Year’s Eve or Day. Nanette in a birthday hat  pretending to take a slice out of Jerry’s ass with a cake knife while Jerry parodies a look of terror.  They met at school, he the mindlessly practical version of her, she the helplessly fanciful version  of him. They liked each other a lot, but “love” was not a word uttered freely between them. It  was more like an intense interest. Jerry was interesting in the way the unusually long icicle outside  Nanette’s window right now is interesting; was it about him, or the icicle? 

The anniversary is, what, Tuesday? Of Jerry’s mysterious disappearance. Nanette has spent the year since feeling lost and blaming herself. She thought they had a good thing. She was helping Jerry with money while he plodded towards his degree. And she did voices, impressions,  which Jerry found infinitely amusing. Bart Simpson under the influence of various Schedule 1 drugs. Walter Matthau and George Bush Sr. picking out the very ripest tomatoes at a supermarket for their homemade salsa. Jerry had a great laugh, one that made you laugh, too, even if nothing was really all that funny. It seemed so good, so permanent at the time. She misses him always. 

But now here he comes emerging torturedly from the building’s dumpster out back, the young man covered in soot and clutching his devil-horned boater like some childhood nightmare’s addled notion of Dick Van Dyke. Once out, he crouches a moment in the  snowy darkness, coughing, colder than hell. He does not at once realize where he is. When he does, he runs to the building’s entrance and buzzes every number he thinks he remembers possibly being his. 

 

The dramatic reunion of Nanette Hubble and Jerry Lugubrious is like the emotional  soldier’s homecoming in movies and Super Bowl commercials.

“I thought you were gone forever,” she says, “I thought you were dead,” crying into his chest. She squeezes him hard so that he stays. 

“I should call my mom. She probably thinks the same thing.” 

“You can call her tomorrow.” 

“All right.” 

“Everything can wait till tomorrow.” 

“All right.” 

“You smell like farts.” 

“It’s the dirt. High sulfur content. Sort of interesting, actually. I’ll tell you about it later. I  should probably shower.” 

“No,” she says, squeezing him harder. “I don’t care how you smell.” 

“You’re not mad?” 

“No. I’m so happy.” 

“I’m so sorry, Nan. I didn’t mean to leave without saying anything. I didn’t mean to leave  at all.” 

“I’m not mad, Jerry. Not right now.” 

The moon is impossibly bright. The falling snow’s shadows on the bedroom walls create  the illusion of gradual ascent. Jerry playfully sticks the devil-horned boater on Nanette’s head.  She laughs. Neither can look away from the other. They have sex. Nanette keeps pinching Jerry’s  cheek and calling him “my little Jer-Bear” and telling him how she missed him so, so much. 

As he enjoys his first cigarette in almost a year, Jerry does his level best to explain just  what’s been going on all this time. There’s no straightforward or convincing way to put it. Jerry  was in Hell, and now he works for the Devil. Nanette thinks at first that it’s just a metaphor, the way soldiers in Vietnam said war was “hell,” or how a miserable office drudge might use the  word “hell” as a synonym for “dull, unending work” or “a state of ennui.” But the more Jerry talks, the crazier he sounds. 

“It was a bunch of lousy grunt work at first.” He keeps drawing on his cigarette, creating suspense. “Dusting, landscaping. I delivered a whole lot of mail. After a while, Satan said I could  start selling real estate over the phone, like they do in that movie. He gave me a desk in the same  building where he lives. Can you believe that? My desk was by the door because, you know what  he said? He said, if I couldn’t hack it, see that door, that’s where my ass would go, right out that  door. He’s funny like that. A little scary, too, but. Anyway, he said I really cut the old mustard.  Said I was the best closer he’s had in centuries. That’s where I got the hat. There was a  competition. The hat was first prize. Second prize was a set of steak knives.” 

“Sorry,” says Nanette, laughing, “I could’ve sworn you said Satan got you into this whole  mess.” She sits up a little, doffing the boater. 

“Yeah, you know. The Devil. Evil guy with the horns and the goatee. The Bible makes  him out like he’s some monster trying to destroy the world, but actually he’s trying to save it.  We’ve been lied to our whole lives, so we don’t realize that evil is actually good, and good is  actually evil.” 

“Um.” 

“You’ll have to meet him sometime. He explains the whole thing a lot better than I do.  He’s sort of like a father or mentor to me. He’s so smart, Nan. I don’t know his IQ, but it’s gotta  be in like the hundreds or thousands or maybe even higher. He’s taught me all kinds of stuff about all sorts of things. We play badminton every Saturday. I’m not very good. He always beats  me.” 

Nanette feels cold and a bit sick. “Jerry.”

“Hey, but guess who just got a big promotion? That’s right. That’s why I’m here, Nan. I  get to do the Devil’s work right here on Earth now. Isn’t that great? We can finally be together  again.” 

“Jerry.” 

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, what about school? What about finishing my degree?” 

“That’s not what I’m thinking.” 

“Well, there’ll be no more worrying about any of that stuff anymore, Nan. That all goes  out the window. This job is everything I’ve ever wanted and more. I really feel like I’ve found  my purpose in life. You know?” 

Nanette scratches her nose. “Something stinks,” she says. “I think maybe you should see  about that shower.” 

Nanette is up late the next morning, Saturday, thinking that it’s Friday, a workday. She  checks her phone, relieved. “I could’ve sworn.” 

Jerry is still asleep. He’s on his side, drooling a bit, one leg overtop a crumpled mass of  bedding. He breathes so subtly that, if it weren’t for the very slight nose whistle, you’d almost think he was dead. 

Nanette is frying eggs at her dingy kitchenette, wearing a bathrobe with little cartoon  sheep on it, when here comes her landlady’s unmistakable shave-and-a-haircut knock at the door.  Nanette scuttles over in her slippers to answer. “Mrs. Lieberman,” says Nanette. 

“Nanette,” says Mrs. Lieberman, “dearie,” always infantilizing in a way that makes it  hard to tell whether she’s being malicious. “I hate to disturb on you on a Saturday morning, but I  just thought I’d just drop by to—”

“I know, Mrs. Lieberman. I have the money. I just lost track of the date. I’m very sorry.  It’s been one of those weeks. I’ll send it over just as soon as I’m done with—” “Oh, honey, not at all. In fact, I came to tell you that you can just go ahead and forget about this month’s rent.” 

“Forget? As in…?” 

“You’re an exemplary tenant, Nanette. I don’t believe you’ve ever given me any trouble  of any kind. Look, I know this past year has been awfully unkind to you. I just thought, that poor  girl, someone ought to do something nice for her.” 

Nanette almost laughs. “Geez, Mrs. Lieberman. I don’t know what to—” 

“Nothing at all. You just enjoy your weekend, sweetie, and hail Satan. Bye-bye now.”  Nanette makes a slightly twisted expression in the doorway as she watches Mrs. Lieberman limp  down the stairs with her silver-plated cane. The muffled scrape of a passing snowplow swells and  then recedes against the walls of the stairwell. Nanette actually has to pinch herself. Then,  remembering the skillet, she runs back to the kitchenette to find that the eggs are, by some  divinity, perfectly cooked. 

“These eggs are perfectly cooked,” Jerry remarks at breakfast through a mouthful of  eggs. Nanette bites into a piece of toast, smiles at him weakly. The situation with Jerry feels  somewhat like a tightrope act with Nanette teetering way up on the wire. Dealing with him will  require a balanced approach, she’s decided; his babbling will be neither dismissed nor indulged.  It’s the classical approach of both psychotherapists and exorcists. 

“Hey, um. Look. I know last night was a lot,” says Jerry, spitting a bit of egg at his  girlfriend.

“Nooo,” Nanette says pleasantly, wiping her cheek. “It was just so much at once, I think.  Like, you know. I wasn’t expecting any of that. Like…” 

“Yeah, no, right.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Unexpected.” 

“Exactly.” 

“I guess you didn’t have too much of a reason to believe all that stuff about Hell. I  probably sounded like a crazy person.” 

“And Bingo was his name-o,” is what the inner, meaner Nanette might have said. But,  “You sounded like someone who’d just been through something very stressful,” is what she  actually says. 

“Stressful but rewarding,” Jerry says pointedly, looking serious. “Please don’t be  confused about that, Nan. This has been the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.” He  hesitates before taking his next bite. “Better make that second-greatest.” He winks a disarming  wink. Nan tries to laugh convincingly. 

A silence. Jerry is apparently a lot hungrier than his girlfriend. “Anyway,” he says, eating,  “I wish I had some kind of proof for you. Wouldn’t you know it, I lost my phone just as soon as I went through that portal to Hell, so here I am without any pictures.” Jerry’s face brightens with  epiphany. “Hey, there we go. I’ll just show you the portal to Hell. That portal’s how I got in with  Satan in the first place. Boy, was he mad, even after I told him it was an accident. Man takes his  security very seriously, understandably. It all worked out for me, of course, so.” “Portal to…?” 

Jerry wipes his mouth with a bare forearm and squeaks his chair back. “It’s right out  back. Right in the dumpster behind the building.”

“I don’t recall a portal to Hell being in the lease agreement.” 

“That’s what I thought, too. Must’ve been a boilerplate thing. Apparently, a lot of them  have one. A portal to Hell, I mean. A lot of dumpsters lead straight to Hell. Come on, I’ll show  you.” 

“Maybe later, Jerry.” Jerry nods and dabs his mouth with a napkin. Nanette touches her food absently with her fork. She lets her perfectly cooked eggs go cold. 

 

The weekend is a haze of quiet tension and little peculiarities. Nanette looks at Reddit  and WebMD while her boyfriend spends the weekend watching the eighth and ninth seasons of  Swamp People on Netflix. Strangers keep coming to the door with gifts like alcohol and frozen  organ meat. The strangers all make ominous pronouncements like “hail Satan” and “blessed are  the destroyers of false hope” and “welcome to the Order of Darkness and Despair” before  departing abruptly. The freezer gets so full of organ meat that Nanette has to start throwing out old bags of vacuum-sealed birthday cake and three-bean chili to make room.

Monday, Jerry ties his tie in the mirror and says he’s going to work. He is dressed to kill,  absolutely mercilessly. He even has a briefcase. He kisses Nanette and is out the door before she  can start in on any kind of interrogation. In the doorway, she tells him he’d better not go  disappearing on her again, the young woman sounding just a little mad. 

Jerry’s job is to search the town for lost souls. He takes buses. Browses grocery aisles.  Sits in various kinds of waiting rooms. Just waiting, however long it takes, for someone to make  their unhappiness evident. Sometimes it’s a sigh. Sometimes a pronounced gesture of frustration.  Sometimes—and this is the jackpot right here—a little sniffle and tear in the eye. You’d be  surprised how many of these occur publicly; you just have to pay attention.

Then, Jerry will look up from his phone or reading material and carefully approach the  unhappy person in a direct but non-threatening way to ask quietly what the matter is. The  unhappy person will say it’s nothing, perhaps deny even knowing what Jerry’s talking about.  Jerry will affect an empathetic expression and press. “No, really. I think I might be able to help.”  He will be sure to make it his business right away, to cast himself vaguely as a potential aid to  the unhappy person before they can tell him to fuck off. 

This always gets desperate people’s attention. A hand on the shoulder sometimes  enhances the effect. Just on the shoulder, very gently, not around the whole neck or anything like  that. He will use what he learned in advertising school to appeal to the primary sadnesses almost  all unhappy people share. Loneliness. Hopelessness. Powerlessness. Regret. For maybe the first time, the unhappy person will feel understood. Being understood, they will confess they are  desperate. Up against a wall. At the end of their rope. And being desperate, they will be willing  to try just about anything, no matter how crazy or unconventional, if it advertises even the  slimmest chance of a solution. And Jerry will be quite happy to inform them that he happens to  have just the thing they’ve been looking for. All they have to do is surrender their soul. 

Neither Satan nor Jerry actually cares what the unhappy person’s problem is. I owe the bank money I don’t have. I have a rare bone disease that causes incredible pain. The girls in Alpha Beta Epsilon don’t want to have sex with me. Whatever. As long as you sign on the dotted, flaming line. 

Do not underestimate the soft sell. I know this is probably a lot to take in, Mrs. Murray.  Tell you what. Why don’t you think it over. Sleep on it. No need to rush into a big decision like  this. I’m not some huckster. I want to help. Take all the time you need to decide. In fact, here’s  my number. Line’s always open. Just text or call. Questions, anything. Anytime. No pressure  whatsoever.

Jerry is a natural. On his first day, he deftly convinces eight townspeople to sell their  souls to the Devil, positively obliterating the previous rookie record of five (set by the man who  legendarily went on to swindle Robert Johnson out of his soul at the Dockery crossroads). In the  early evening, as our triumphant Jerry rides the bus home in his slackened necktie, he gets a call  from Satan who personally congratulates him, tells him he’s proud, and hints at the possibility of  a very nice year-end bonus if he keeps up the good work. Jerry is so pleased with himself he  almost becomes emotional. 

 

It’s dark. Nanette takes a smoke break in the parking lot of the grocery store near closing.  Gusts push loose snow across the pavement in little scarves. She keeps her arms folded in the  cold. 

An unsaved number lights up her phone. She answers: “Yeah?” 

“Nanette Hubble?” 

“Yes?” 

It’s the casting director from the other day. “Congratulations, kid. You got the part.” He  sounds to be holding an executive-size cigar between his teeth. 

“Part,” Nanette repeats. “Um, what part would that be?” 

“The Bonnie Blunderbuss part. ‘Sweet flippin’ flapjacks,’ and all that.” He continues  before Nanette can react: “Anyway, kid, we think you were just dynamite. You’ll forgive us if we  had to underreact at the audition; see, we make it a point to stay neutral in front of the other  voice actors during the audition process. Keeps things professional. At least, that’s the idea.  Apologies if we were in any way discouraging.”

“Wow,” goes Nanette. “I thought I was being turned down. It felt just like all the other  rejections.” She laughs the slightly crazed laugh of those who must countenance the too-good-to be-true. 

The casting director laughs a little too. “Rejections? You kidding? Look, Nan. Can I call  you Nan? Look. Frankly—and normally I don’t go around admitting this stuff—we were all  blown the fuck away. I mean, the comic timing, the understated zaniness, with just the right  amount of Ali MacGraw demureness and naturality: Dynamite, Dynamite, Dynamite, with a  capital motherfucking D, sweetheart. I said to our producer Jim, I said, Jim, here’s your show.  This girl is the whole show.” And he goes on like this while Nanette keeps smiling into her own  shaking hand. 

“I guess I was just trying to make it my own,” Nanette explains. “It’s funny; being  someone else is the only time I feel like myself.” 

“Uh-huh,” goes the casting director, not interested. “Anyway, just wanted to call and let  you know and say congrats and all that. We’ll be in touch. All right? All right. Hail Satan, kid.” Nanette does a little dance and gives her place of employment the vengeful one-fingered  gesture of long-awaited emancipation. 

 

Fertility. Freedom from drink. Just a little more time with a dying wife. The resurrection  of a childhood border collie. A normal-looking nose. Money. Reconnection with an estranged  daughter. Authorship of the great masterpiece of contemporary opera. 

These were the eight Faustian bargains brokered by Jerry Lugubrious in his first business  day on Earth, which he later tells Nanette all about as they share their apartment’s recliner in the  glow of the CBS Evening News. Nanette has already shared her good news, but the goodness has now somehow worn off. “I feel kind of sick,” she says. Jerry ignores her. For both their sakes,  she pretends to feel all right, and keeps pretending for years and years and years. A general fact about actors is that, when they’re acting, they’re not, and when they’re not,  they are. 

 

Jerry and Nanette Lugubrious attend Jerry’s retirement banquet in Hell in the year 2120.  They have a newborn, Jerry Jr., whom Nanette totes around in a nylon Ergobaby papoose; no  sitter was available. Physically, the new parents are as young as they were a hundred years ago,  though Nanette’s face has settled noticeably into the creases of maternal exhaustion and a  century of vague discontent. Most people assume she’s one of those women who looks older than  she really is. 

The dress code is business casual. The venue is TGI Fridays, the one on Anguish Avenue,  a favorite haunt of Satan’s salariat where, intriguingly, Satan himself is known to occasionally  stop by and unwind. 

This whole thing was Satan’s idea; he’s rented the whole place out for the night. Some of  Hell’s highest-profile damned are present. J.P. Morgan and Napoleon I are solemnly engaged in a  game of billiards. John Wilkes Booth is hunched intently over a pinball machine, a game at  which he is said to be superb. Richard Nixon is having a go at “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”  on the karaoke machine. Everybody is smoking cigarettes or cigars under their own little  stratosphere of smoke, which Nanette worries may be bad for Junior, despite his supposed  immortality; she’d given up the habit during pregnancy just to be on the safe side.

Satan really is the goateed, tomato-red satyr most people imagine him to be. The  pitchfork is a myth; he has scoliosis and makes it a point not to lug things around without good reason. He did not impress Nanette as particularly evil when they were introduced, just phony.  He possesses a kind of salt-of-the-earth, Sam-from-Cheers quality and leads Hell with homespun  charisma, not an iron fist. Nanette of course remembers the old rule about bullshit: the biggest  pile attracts the most flies. 

It is also a misconception that Hell is the place of ubiquitous torment described in  sermons, or the Kafkaesque bureaucracy wryly depicted in satirical cartoons; each soul is tortured from 8 to 5 on business days and allowed respite after hours and on weekends, just like on Earth. The concept of “unending” torture is purely pre-industrial, made a thing of the past by the emergence of the Torturers’ Union, with whom you most assuredly do not want to trifle. The  torturers and the damned souls they torture actually get along rather well and often go out for  drinks after a long day in the dungeons and pits. They’re here forever, so they might as well be  friends. After all, the demons are just doing their jobs. 

Junior is asleep in his papoose. He seems to have an easier time sleeping in raucous  environments than perfectly silent ones, a fact which Nanette contemplates in her chair at the  head of the dozen or so tables that have been conjoined to make one long dining platform. 

Satan and Jerry Sr. are mingling with the evening’s ass-kissers, while Nanette is left  anonymous and alone. Jerry has not yet seen fit to introduce her to anybody here. Instead, he goes around relating old war stories from his hundred years in sales, remembering them as a  former boxer remembers his knockout-prime. Occasionally, he’ll glance over at Nanette, and  she’ll hear a snatch of his old joke about why salesmen’s wives always seem to be much more  attractive-looking than the salesmen. Satan keeps laughing and giving Jerry a hard, sportive slap  on the back.

Already tired, Nanette sends for a bottle of TGI Fridays’ finest Heineken Silver.

“…just to have you…back again…just to touch you…once again.” So plaintively ends Nixon’s rendition of Bread’s “Everything I Own.” A small group applauds. Nanette scowls and makes a low, inconspicuous farting sound with her tongue. 

“Wish me luck,” Jerry, suddenly nervous, whispers to his wife. He does not notice the  little copse of spent Heinekens that’s materialized before her. He takes a deep breath as he  discreetly reviews the notes Nanette prepared for him one last time. 

Satan gives Jerry an inquiring thumbs-up, and Jerry shoots one back in the affirmative.  “Folks, if I could have your attention for just a moment please,” goes Satan. His voice is huge.  The TGI Fridays goes reverently silent, except for the woody scrape of a few chairs twisting to  face the front. “I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight on behalf of both myself and the man of the hour, who I believe now would like to say a few words. Jerry?” 

Jerry smiles flatly. Clears his throat. Tugs nervously at a cuff link. “Just be yourself,”  Nanette said to him all week, the most hypocritical advice there is. Rarely in life does anyone get  what they want by being themselves. There is a reason dull jobs are applied for with suspicious  enthusiasm, a reason 60% of pictures uploaded to dating sites are altered. Some unsaid rule is always inhibiting you, interfering. At a point, you hardly remember what “yourself” even means. 

All this occurs to him in a fuzzy and indirect way as he stands there at the head, frozen, a bit waxy-looking and pale, like a Jerry sculpture that approximates but does not replicate the real  Jerry. Somebody coughs. Jack the Ripper gives one of the Enron people a look like, what’s with  this guy? There’s something odd—unsettling, even—about a silent salesman, especially Jerry  Lugubrious, that famously slick masseur of the English language. Everyone’s beginning to get a  little creeped out.

Finally, here it goes: “They say when you retire, you leave the job, but the job doesn’t leave you.” But it’s not Jerry. “That’s what he was supposed to say. He’s been practicing all week  what to say. But I guess there’s no practicing for stage fright.” This is Nanette saying this. To  everyone. “Just take a deep breath, honey. Try picturing everybody naked.” She’s swaying  slightly in her seat like a reed in a low wind. Little Jerry Jr. is stirring at her chest. He yawns with  his tiny triangular mouth. 

Jerry Sr. laughs uneasily with a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Ixnay, darling,” he says  from the corner of his mouth. They have the kind of tolerant intolerance for each other that  longtime couples sometimes do, that kind of buried resentment. 

Nanette shoos him. “What does that mean, ‘the job doesn’t leave you?’ I hung up my gloves years ago, and I did voices for a living; if my job hasn’t left me, I’m goddamn psychotic.” “I do believe you’re preaching to Satan’s choir, dear,” goes Jerry, still doing his awkward  laugh. “This is my wife Nan, everybody,” he explains, grinning painfully. No one is sure whether  to laugh with him. 

“Oui,” says Napoleon I, trying to be helpful, “Bonnie Blunderbuss. ‘Sweet flippin’  flapjacks.’ It was a very funny character of the television cartoons.” 

“Damn right,” John Wilkes Booth agrees. Some of the other damned souls mumble their  agreement as they suddenly detect and recognize her voice’s dormant cartoon aspect. Nanette grabs one of her bottles, disappointed to find it empty. “How funny you all  remember me when I myself have forgotten.” Some in the audience are eyeing Satan to see  whether he might intervene, but he gives no sign. “And who are you, Jerry? When you really get  down to it, are you leaving your job behind, or is the Devil now just part of who you are? Who we are?”

Jerry clears his throat. “People, clearly my wife has gotten herself pretty happy by this  point in the evening.” He points a thumb at the bottles, makes a face. “I’m afraid in these  conditions she tends to get a little philosophical, as you are now witnessing.” 

“You wanna know what I think?” Nanette belches softly into her fist. “I think we’re just bad people. You have a genius for badness, Jerry, and I have a genius for pretending you don’t. In  the end, we got everything we didn’t deserve, and nothing we did.” 

Jerry has broken a rather noticeable sweat. “All right, Ophelia. You made your speech.  Now listen, everyone here’s itching to raise a toast. Would you let the birds dip their beaks, for  Christ’s sakes?” 

Junior begins to shriek and cry at his mother’s bosom. Nanette bounces him in his  papoose and tells him it’s okay. She cries a little, too. “Our boy has evil parents,” she whimpers,  looking away. It’s a terrible sight. “He’ll never have the goodness he deserves.” 

Jerry sits, rubs his face in his hands. Everybody looks down at their tables, thoroughly  bummed out. Junior keeps crying that horrible infant’s cry while Nanette tries to talk him out of  it. The pinball machine chooses an unfortunate interval to snarl out its little rock-n-roll flourish,  which makes Junior cry even louder. Nobody wants to be here, but nobody wants to be the first  jackass to get up and leave, either. 

Now Satan approaches Nanette and her baby, slowly, his expression shadowy and  malevolent. He stands huge at her side with all the guests watching. “It can be changed,” he  pronounces. “Your son can be granted a good, moral life. A mortal, honest life.” 

Nanette wipes her nose with her wrist. “With all due respect, I don’t believe you’d know  an honest life if it walked up and gave you its card.”

“You’re A-number one right about that, Mrs. L.,” Satan concedes, laughing. “Couldn’t  have said it better myself. Luckily, I have people, experts, who take care of that business for me.  Your boy would be in good hands.” 

Jerry sighs. “Now wait just a minute—” 

“Very, very good hands,” Satan iterates, ignoring the husband. He puts his own hand on  Nanette’s shoulder. Just on the shoulder, very gently, not around the whole neck or anything like  that. He makes little cooing noises at her baby who is instantly soothed. “It can be done, if that’s  what you really want.” 

“That’s all I want anymore,” Nanette says softly. 

Satan nods, strokes his goatee. “There is a cost, as you well know. The parents must  never leave this place. There goes your immortality, and there go your souls, effective  immediately upon agreement. Your own death and damnation. That’s the offer: simple and fair.” 

Jerry stands. “All right, enough. Get your slimy sales talk off of my wife. She has no say  in what happens to my soul.” 

“Your soul?” Satan has to laugh. “You gave that up years ago, my abject servant, when  you fell in with me. I’ve met bellhops less obsequious than you, Jerry. That’s your philosophy,  isn’t it? Leave no ass unkissed.” 

“‘Abject,’ ‘obsequious…’ La-di-da-di-da. You always make with the big words when you  want to confuse me. Well here’s something I’m not confused about. It’s her decision, her soul.  One soul, one favor. That’s how it works.” 

“Half a loaf is better than none, and two loaves are better than one. That’s economics.  Don’t you know that?” 

Jerry shakes his head. Finally, people are beginning to gather their things and leave. A  small tear forms at the corner of Jerry’s eye. “I thought you were a friend.”

“I thought you were a businessman. Now if you don’t mind, I’m about to close.” Jerry picks up someone’s bottle. “Here’s mud in your eye, you old serpent.” He drinks  what’s left in the bottle, which isn’t much, before making for the double-door exit. “She just  likes wasting salesmen’s time, you know,” he warns, stepping backwards through the doors.  “Take my word for it. I’m a century deep into that whole game.” 

Satan looks at Nanette. Junior has already drifted back into a light, fidgety sleep. “This is  obviously all very overwhelming, Mrs. L.,” says Satan. “Tell you what. Why don’t you just take  some time to think this whole thing over. Sleep on it. There’s no need to rush into a big decision  like this. Take all the time you need to decide. You know how to reach me. When you decide it’s  right, I’ll have my people draw up the contract for you to sign. We’ll see that your boy has  nothing to do with us for the rest of his life.” 

The soil in Hell smells like shit. Something to do with the sulfur content. Jerry still isn’t used to it, even after coming and going all these years. 

In Hell, everything is on fire. The ground is on fire. The sky is on fire. The TGI Fridays  sign is on fire. Jerry wanders out through the parking lot and into the middle of Anguish Avenue.  A car swerves screechingly to the left to avoid him. The driver curses. Jerry looks back through  the restaurant window to regard his wife with utter contempt, his innocent child with savage  indifference. He knows Nanette has already made her decision. He goes down the road and  wanders for a long time. Somewhere, in an unfamiliar place, a horrible fear comes on; Jerry  doesn’t know whether he’s dead or just lost.