Time is getting away from us?

I committed the encounter to paper, spending the urgent recollection of every word in the act of writing it. When I had finished, I spread the pages out on the kitchen table. They were scribbled in hyperactive script on paper from the recycling bin, across the backs of newsletters, pieces of mail-anything that had been near to hand.

I opened my laptop and started to type.

Around 1:00 a.m., as I transcribed the end of our dinner together-my dinner-I found I had missed a major point. I had thought there was something significant about the family at the table, that something about them first drew her interest and then piqued her. But that wasn't it, the thing that precipitated the moment-that startling, stunning moment-that she snapped at me. It was the coming revelation in her own story. The thing she knew she must say.

"And then he forgave them."

I had thought nothing about that statement at the time. Forgiveness was, after all, the vernacular of religion.

Even for demons?

I scrolled back through the electronic account to an earlier appointment, the words leaping at me as I came to them:

"Had I been a G.o.d, I would have set it all back. I would have erased everything, returned it all to the way it had been.""Why couldn't you? For that matter, why wouldn't G.o.d?""I'll tell you why: because we were d.a.m.ned!" d.a.m.ned!"

I scrolled forward.

"He forgave them."

I sat back in my chair, staring at the screen.

LATE THAT NIGHT I received a response from Katrina, but the proposal she attached was not one I recognized. Confused, I paged through the brief teaser of Dreaming: A Memoir, Dreaming: A Memoir, by L. LeGeros. by L. LeGeros.

It was the personal account of a paranoid schizophrenic.

16.

The demon chose two more plates and pushed them across the table toward me with a short, stocky arm.

"Please stop," I told him as the woman with the dim sum cart stamped her red symbol on our tab and pushed on. I meant it not only because I was full but because the rapt interest with which he had watched me eat for the last half hour disturbed me. He had inundated me with sweet buns, pork buns, shrimp dumplings, and vegetable packets with tiny green peas perched on the twisted peak of their wrappers. They squatted now in orphaned ones and twos inside their bamboo steamers; I could not possibly accommodate them all.

"Very well." He folded those arms before him. He had hung his jacket over the back of his chair but, seeing the way his dress shirt strained at the shoulders, I thought he ought to have left it on.

"About your proposal to Katrina . . ." I wasn't sure how to go about what I meant to say next. I had feigned an e-mail problem, had asked her again to resend it, stating even more carefully that I needed the short one, the additional one she had given me as an afterthought the day she came to my office. But when she resent it, I found myself scrolling again through the scant pages of Dreaming: A Memoir Dreaming: A Memoir by L. LeGeros. by L. LeGeros.

"What proposal?" He seemed to wink, though his eyelid never moved.

So that was it. Another of his mind tricks. No one had seen the proposal for Demon: A Memoir Demon: A Memoir but me. Katrina had no awareness of the story evolving into a living thing on my desk and hard drive, waiting for me to wake in the morning and come home at night, to feed it the nutriment of my preoccupation. An excitement tapped in my chest, a metronome in time with my heart. but me. Katrina had no awareness of the story evolving into a living thing on my desk and hard drive, waiting for me to wake in the morning and come home at night, to feed it the nutriment of my preoccupation. An excitement tapped in my chest, a metronome in time with my heart.

"I see," I said carefully. More, More, I thought, I thought, though it will risk his anger. though it will risk his anger. "Then in that case, I need to know what happened after El forgave them. The humans, I mean." "Then in that case, I need to know what happened after El forgave them. The humans, I mean."

He sat up, fussing with the little teapot, over pouring a small trickle of chrysanthemum tea into his untouched cup. It seemed he could not dive headlong and cold into this topic, so I waited, considering his bushy eyebrows, the unremarkable face with the suggestion of jowls on either side of his thin-lipped mouth. I had thought him vain after our first few encounters, though of late he seemed to care less and less about the beauty of his guises.

"El's acts of forgiveness became tedious in the way that something routine is tedious. Like a sound that grates on your patience so that where you had only disliked it before, you come to hate even the merest suggestion of it. Like a smell that has the ability to incite nausea. I didn't know who I was more astounded with-El because he constantly forgave them, or the humans because they made constant and abiding mistakes again and again. With disgust and amazement we pushed ourselves to see how far we could go with them. We dared. And El sat back again in pain amid the chaos of all this teeming life, once so wonderful, multiplying over the great ball of earth and water. But he would not relinquish them. During that time I realized something had happened within me."

"What do you mean?" I said, surrendering my chopsticks with an overfull sigh.

"Like nerves after they've been severed, I could no longer sense El as I had before, even after falling away. But in that same way that I knew myself-better, even-I knew El to be unchanging. For as little as I could perceive of him by then, I understood well his sentiments about all that was happening."

"And Lucifer?"

"Oh, he had determined to rule over this great, floating ball of land-had, in fact, never given up his claim to it. Now, having s.n.a.t.c.hed Adam's birthright from him the moment he abdicated it, he threw wide the doors to this world as though to a mansion and invited the humans in, creating banquets of diversions designed just for them: new and bizarre religions, strange philosophies, indulgences for all appet.i.tes. He had by then set himself up as all the things he had ever wanted to be: a power, a ruler . . . a G.o.d. G.o.ds. He answered to a variety of names, and the humans offered him sacrifices and performed great acts of murder and bloodletting for his sake. It was gory. And grand."

"So he had what he wanted at last."

"After a manner, I suppose. You must understand that he didn't care about the offerings, the blood, or the lives. It was that people did it that delighted him. That with every little betrayal, the people moved farther away from El. Eventually, they forgot him. Those were wild, accelerated days-like a dancer, twirling faster and faster until she falls; like your dreams of falling off buildings, the wind shrieking in your ears. And I watched it all with a sense of inevitability."

Sometimes when he was like this, when it seemed he was transported back, I wondered if his own memories were as vivid to him as they had been to me the time in the tea shop or that day in the Commons.

As vivid as my memories of Sarah Marshall's death.

I had almost managed to go a whole day without thinking about it.

"But even the forbearance of El in his grief had limits. And the day came when he could abide it no longer. Of course, I expected him to slam down the heavy fist, but the day came and still he held off. Like a mother giving a child to the count of three, El gave the clay people 120 years to change their ways."

He sat back and crossed short arms, his shirtsleeves encasing them like sausages. "I was put off! Had he ever been willing to play the suffering parent toward any one of us? Toward Lucifer, first and best-created of El, prince and anointed cherub? But El had not offered him so much as a glimmer of the patience he showed humans. Never so much for any of us."

As he said this, the distant and disowned look seemed to creep first into one eye and then into the other, like a lizard slithering through his skull.

"Had I been human, I would have considered myself lucky." He thumped his chest. He was pudgy enough that it didn't make much of a sound. "But they were oblivious to the indulgence they had been given. They went about their ways as pleased them best. And the years went by."

"All 120 of them."

"All 120 of them," he agreed. "In the end Lucifer crowed his triumph. He had brought about the destruction of El's world and the spoiling of his clay creatures like so much fruit left on the ground. Now El would be forced to acknowledge him; there would be no more of the clay people to talk with, commune with-and who would want to by now, anyway? Unworthy, fickle, unfaithful. . . . The humans were a failure. It was time to destroy them."

I shuddered at the slight jeer with which he said this.

"Only you Westerners fancy what happened next as the stuff of myth. Most ancient cultures have taught it as history: water covering the land, swallowing up creation as it had Lucifer's rock garden an age before."

Indeed, I was having trouble reconciling the picture-book accounts of animals two-by-two with this story of failed humans, gleeful devils, and a forbearing G.o.d. "So Eden was destroyed again."

Lucian's brows drew together. "But it didn't exactly happen as I thought it would-as it had before. The deep didn't swallow up the land, and El didn't hover over the deep. Nor did he put out the sun or destroy my beloved moon. I didn't have the experience to know then what I know now: that El is unlikely to do anything twice or predictably. That he spared an entire family was unpredictable indeed." He lifted his cuff to glance at the elegantly thin timepiece on his wrist.

"Noah's family," I said, feeling as though I vied with time itself for his attention.

He dropped his arm back to the table. "I was indignant! Why bother? What was the point? For those forty short days that Noah's little boat bobbed about on the flooded earth like a piece of cork on a lake, I agonized over it. And when the rain was over and the water subsided and the people crawled out of the boat and made yet another sacrifice, I realized something: Here was El's weakness, if ever he had one. He loved loved these creatures, these people made of mud. They had failed and he had grieved. He had punished them and they had died, but he couldn't bear to obliterate them all." these creatures, these people made of mud. They had failed and he had grieved. He had punished them and they had died, but he couldn't bear to obliterate them all."

Ice crystallized in his eyes, like the frozen surface of a pond under too much weight-or the shattered windshield of a car on Arlington.

Just then the cart lady appeared again, pushing a large wooden vat. She waved a flat golden spoon as though it were a fan. "Hot almond pudding?" she asked, smiling at Lucian.

"THINGS OBVIOUSLY DIDN'T END there," he said, nudging the plate of gelatinous custard closer to me. It was surrounded by a moat of syrup, and I accepted it without any intention to eat it. He was amicable again, as congenial as a round-faced elf. I found the increasing capriciousness of his moods more and more unsettling, as though indeed I walked on a thin layer of ice over a coursing black current.

"On the contrary, the Flood marked a new beginning. And when it was over and the family had survived, El did something he had never done before: He made a promise-not to us but to the clay people. He promised never to destroy the earth with water again. And he gave them a sign, like a token given to a favorite friend.

"Now let me say that not one of us has ever received such a token. What's more, it was the first promise of many. In subsequent generations he blessed them again, named a branch of them Israel, and made them his special nation."

Now he lifted his empty hands. "Promises . . . tokens . . . blessings. Who was G.o.d to be accountable to men? Who was man, to procure a promise from G.o.d? And then he gave them laws, specific rules for living, since they seemed to need things spelled out for them. He taught them intricate rites of atonement and for communing with an all-perfect G.o.d so that despite their wrongs, their tainted lineage, he could stand to be near them.

"But it wasn't just that he tolerated them. They had done the irreparable in separating themselves from him forever, and it was as if he couldn't bear to be apart from them."

Though he maintained the same even tone as he said this, it was too controlled, so that rather than seeming genuine, the effect was one of moderated effort.

"Do you hate humans?" The instant I said it, something dark slithered into his gaze with the silent stealth of a reptile entering the murk of a swamp.

"Compared to Lucifer's, my hate is nothing. His odium, his grudge against El grew-grows-by the day." He checked his watch.

No, not yet.

"Come on," he said, pushing back from the table.

"Where?" I was instantly on my feet.

He retrieved his coat and slapped a bill-a fifty-on the table.

BY THE TIME WE left the potpourri of food, stale cigarettes, and urine that was Chinatown behind us, I was breathing hard, my heart beating spastic percussion against my sternum. I towered a good six inches over him, but his short legs were deceptively fast, and I trailed after him like a hapless kid tagging after the schoolyard leader, down Washington Street past St. Francis House.

On either side of the street, homeless men loitered in ones and twos, smoking, scanning the pedestrians with dull, roving eyes, as if watching a play through a window. Though I had never been homeless, I knew that look, had been that person-the editor cleaning up the prose of would-be writers like a janitor sweeping up the refuse of others, contorting myself to fit my wife's boxed worldview, going about my life as silently as the Charles, flowing out to sea.

Lucian kept a brisk pace, looking around us with interest, seeming to enjoy the jaunt. This irritated me. Despite my obvious need for it, I was not here for the exercise.

"And so?" I said with some difficulty against the cold. "What came after the promises and laws?"

The heels of his dress shoes tapped against the sidewalk with the rapid staccato of a stopwatch. "The rest is just history, frighteningly dull: wanderings, wars, migrations, judges, priests, kings, and concubines. Actually, the concubines are a little bit interesting. You can read all of that for yourself if you're simply dying to know. But far be it from me to encourage you to read it. It's only the history of your race from the beginning. Nothing overly significant, I a.s.sure you."

I hated it when he was sarcastic. I never knew when it would bloom into a fit of real anger. Each of his outbursts startled and disturbed me a little more-and I felt I could afford them less and less.

At Tremont, he veered toward a lightbulb-lined marquee and the large, arched entrance of the Majestic Theatre. It glowed from within, a fact hardly discernable beneath the wealth of lightbulbs until we reached the front doors. Lucian pulled one of them open.

Inside the foyer, dark green ran in lightning bolt veins through burnt orange marble. Ram-horned, Dionysian heads smiled down from the tops of pillars on either side of the main auditorium entrance, and gold cherubs capered above and between them, playing the pan flute. The house was alive, chimes just signaling the end of intermission as though they might have indeed come from those golden pipes. The effect was grand and gauche, but for a moment I thought I saw them crumbling to scagliola plaster and gold paint all around me, as the house in Belmont had caved into a pile of refuse. A woman b.u.mped into me, and the illusion dissipated at the sound of her startled apology. I found Lucian on a low landing, impatiently waving as he started up the stair toward the mezzanine.

I followed him up and then up again to the balcony, breathing hard, my heart thumping in my ears with each step. Ahead of me, Lucian slipped inside the left balcony entrance with the last of the intermission stragglers.

The lights lowered as I stepped inside. Blinking in the dark, I caught the stocky form of the demon making his way toward a set of empty seats as the conductor entered to applause.

"What are we doing?" I hissed, sitting next to him.

He said nothing, only folded his hands on his lap as the curtain opened on a simple j.a.panese set.

I sat stymied through the third act of Madama b.u.t.terfly, Madama b.u.t.terfly, through the return of Pinkerton and b.u.t.terfly's surprised meeting with his new wife. The soprano might have been outstanding, Suzuki's mezzo-soprano brilliant-I don't know. I both heard and did not hear them. The sets-perhaps ingenious-served only to occupy my eye, which roamed the lines of the shoji screens like the corridors of a labyrinth as I paced back through all that the demon had said at the China Pearl, wondering again, as I inevitably did, what this had to do with me. through the return of Pinkerton and b.u.t.terfly's surprised meeting with his new wife. The soprano might have been outstanding, Suzuki's mezzo-soprano brilliant-I don't know. I both heard and did not hear them. The sets-perhaps ingenious-served only to occupy my eye, which roamed the lines of the shoji screens like the corridors of a labyrinth as I paced back through all that the demon had said at the China Pearl, wondering again, as I inevitably did, what this had to do with me.

By the time b.u.t.terfly committed suicide and the red j.a.panese moon bled down the front of her house in a modern projector trick, I was ready to jump up, to leave here for someplace where the demon might talk just a bit-any bit-more.

But when the curtain came down on the last ovation and a river of well-dressed bodies took up coats and scarves and shuffled to the exits, Lucian stayed in his seat, gazing thoughtfully at the stage.

"What a silly story," he said, finally. "Puccini never got things right."

"Why, because his heroines always die?"

"Yes, and what is left?"

"Honor?"

His words were an exasperated exhale. "But that's so boring. boring. b.u.t.terfly should at least murder the second wife." b.u.t.terfly should at least murder the second wife."

I was the one noting the time now, calculating how late I might be up tonight. I needed to get through the stack on my desk before I allowed myself the indulgence, the release, of transcribing our meeting today. And then there was Helen, expecting to see something soon on this "demon memoir," still the only viable project I had to give her-not because I didn't have anything of merit from another author, but because it was the only one that mattered to me.

"I would think you might enjoy the tragedy."