The Demonologist

Chapter 2

I gather some work things into my satchel and make my way back out into the heat to the subway. The air is more wretched down here, vacuum-sealed and sweetened by garbage. This, along with the human scents, each relating a small tragedy of enslavement or frustrated desire as they pass.

On the ride downtown I try to summon the Thin Woman, to recall the physical details of her person, so vividly present only minutes earlier. But whether it is the unsettling events of the day or some corner of my short-term memory gone on the fritz, she returns to me only as an idea, not as a person. And the idea is more unnatural, more frightening, in recollection than she struck me at the time. To think of her now is like the difference between experiencing a nightmare and telling someone in the bright safety of the morning about its meandering, foolish plot.

At Grand Central I rise up the escalator and tunnels that feed into the station’s main concourse. Rush hour. It feels more like panic than purposeful travel. And nobody is more lost-looking than the tourists, who have come to witness the thrill of bustling New York but now stand merely stricken, clinging to their spouses and children.

O’Brien stands by the information kiosk beneath the gold clock at the center of the floor, our traditional meeting place. She looks pale. Possibly irritated, rightly, by my lateness.

She’s looking the other way when I sidle up next to her. A tap on her shoulder and she jumps.

“Didn’t know it was you,” she apologizes. “Though I should have, shouldn’t I? This is our place.”

I like that more than I perhaps ought to—the notion of “our place”—but write it off as merely an accident of words.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“You are forgiven.”

“Remind me again,” I say. “Why is this our place? Is it a Hitchcock thing? North by Northwest?”

“And you are my Cary Grant? A self-flattering notion. Not that the casting is so far off, so don’t pout. But the truth is I like meeting here precisely for all that makes it so uncivilized. The crush. The masks of greed and desperation. The pandemonium. Organized chaos.”

“Pandemonium,” I repeat absently, though too quietly for O’Brien to hear amid the hubbub.

“What’d you say?”

“It’s the name Satan gives the fortress he builds for himself and his followers after being cast out of heaven.”

“You’re not the only one who’s read Milton, David.”

“Of course. You were way ahead of me.”

O’Brien takes a step to look directly up at me. “What’s up? You look all wobbly.”

I think of telling her about the Thin Woman, the strange proposal delivered to me at my office. But there is a sense that this would be sharing a secret I was meant to keep—more than a “sense,” a physical warning, my chest tightening and a distinct squeezing around my windpipe, as though invisible fingers have passed through my flesh to silence me. I find myself murmuring something about the heat, my need for a stiff drink.

“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” O’Brien replies, taking me by the arm and leading me through the mob on the terminal floor. Her hand on my elbow a patch of cool on my suddenly burning skin.

The Oyster Bar is underground. A windowless cavern beneath the station floor that, for whatever reason, lends itself to the eating of raw seafood and the drinking of cold vodka. O’Brien and I have spent our time here mulling over the state of our careers (mine hitting the top of its game, enjoying “leading world expert” status at almost every mention, and O’Brien’s writing on the psychological underpinnings of faith healing lending her recent semi-fame). Mostly, though, we talk about nothing in particular in the way of well-matched, if unlikely, companions.