Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (22 page)

The demon driver pulled over. “So where exactly am I supposed to go?” Marlo asked him as she stepped out of the gleaming black coach.

The stooped demon, whose poor posture made him seem like a withered question mark of meat and bone, turned his head slowly to address Marlo.

“The Persecution Complex,” he croaked, glaring at her from beneath his screwed-on chauffeur’s cap. “Go
to the Shopping Block, just inside, and a concierge will help you with your list.”

The demon chortled, adding, “As much as anyone
could
.”

Marlo looked at the complex with a twinge of dread. Then she shuffled across the parking lot—a sea of SUVs with sporadic herds of Hummers—and unrolled the ridiculous menu Madame Pompadour had given her for the devil’s lunch.

• A bowl of Enmity & Enmities chocolate candies with all the blue ones removed by severed hand
  

• Single-shot Better Latte Than Never coffee drink, stirred counterclockwise ONLY
  

• A monkey
  

• American Spit cigarettes (presmoked, as the devil is trying to quit)
  

• Head of raw broccoli (which the devil detests and is to be procured only so that he can have the satisfaction of throwing it away)
  

• A basket of extra-fuzzy bunny rabbits, puppies, and kittens. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know
  .
  

• A bottle of champagne for the devil’s real friends
  

• A bottle of real pain for his sham friends
  

• Three 13-oz. nonrecyclable plastic bottles of H2No, the antiwater
  

• Another monkey
  

• A vegetarian platter for Satan’s iguana, Dr. Lizardo
  

• HostiliTea service for nine, a Honey Bear pack of honey, and two air impurifiers
  

• 1 gallon of fresh-squeezed blood orange juice
  

• 1 gallon of forbidden apple juice
  

• 13-piece bucket of General Gander’s Unlucky Bride Chicken
  

By the time Marlo had reached the bottom of the list of insane lunch demands, she heard the whoosh of the automatic doors and entered the Persecution Complex.

Inside was a cramped collection of pathetic, neglected storefronts—a Pottery Bunker, Scarbucks, Home Despot, and GallMart, to name a few. Much of the complex, however, was cordoned off with bright yellow emergency tape and under-destruction signs:
WE APOLOGIZE—YET ARE NOT IN ANY WAY RESPONSIBLE—FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. EXPECTED TIME OF COMPLETION: WHEN THE COWS COME HOME.—HELLIBURTON CONSTRUCTION

What a dump
, Marlo thought as she scanned the mall, her kleptomaniac fingers barely registering the faintest “must steal something …
anything”
tingle.

Beyond the foyer, she noticed a small hard-but-not-impossible-to-notice booth marked
VALET.
Marlo stepped up to the booth, wrinkled her nose, and saw that the sign had been freshly written in red Sharpie. Marlo slapped the desk bell with her palm, but the rusty old bell was muted and barely registered a sound. A slender demon in
way-too
tights appeared from behind a plastic curtain in the back.

“May I help you …
miss
?” the creature said snootily as it evaluated Marlo from down its nose, a ski slope of curved cartilage with an oiled, coiled handlebar mustache beneath.

“You tell me,” Marlo said as she pushed her parchment across the counter. The demon regarded it carefully, its lip curled with faint distaste, before snatching and unrolling it. His black eyes glittered with amazement.

“Is this for …
him?”
he gasped while his eyes danced across the list. “I knew he was the Prince of Prima Donnas, but this is below and beyond….”

Marlo nodded as her compact cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you …,”
sang the ring tone.

Marlo flipped the compact open.

The second she did, she felt her throat constrict.
Collar ID
, she surmised as Madame Pompadour’s name
flashed in the mirror. Marlo punched one of the compact’s cheek rouge pans, and the madame’s feline face filled the mirror.

“You were supposed to be back by now,” she snapped.

“Hello, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Marlo replied.

“Working with girls your age for hundreds of years, I assure you that I’m completely immune to the effects of both sarcasm and eye rolls,” Madame Pompadour replied.

Marlo rolled her eyes, anyway.

“That one was on the house,” she muttered.

“What you don’t understand,” Madame Pompadour continued, “is that the devil’s stomach is a precision timepiece of exotic need. If he doesn’t receive
just
the right meal at
just
the right time, he goes stark craving mad.”

“But I just got here, psycho kitty,” Marlo said. “I couldn’t have gotten here any sooner if—”

“There is no scientific instrument sensitive enough to possibly detect my interest in your excuses. I expect you back immediately, if not sooner. And everything better be perfect, if not better.”

Madame Pompadour hung up. The demon valet stared at Marlo with a look bridging on sympathy as she clicked the compact closed.

“And I thought
I
had a bad boss,” he commiserated.

Marlo shrugged.

“No one is the boss of me,” she said. “Not even me. Who needs the responsibility? So, can you help me out here?”

The demon valet surveyed the list gravely.

“Well, some of these requests border on the physically impossible … but I think I can get you most of these items, or at least virtually indistinguishable substitutions. Here,” he said, tearing the list in half. “Most of the beverages you can procure at the Scarbucks across the concourse there. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best with the rest.”

“Thanks,” Marlo said, flashing her lopsided, seldom-seen smile as the demon valet dashed away.

She hurried into the underworld coffee shop, which—with its sterile interior, vacant baristas, and acrid, burnt-bean aroma—didn’t seem a far cry from those she had frequented up on the Surface.

“How are you today?” the bored barista asked with all the enthusiasm of someone awaiting a tetanus shot.

“Same as I always am,” Marlo retorted, “not in the mood for chitchat.”

She slid the list across the counter.

“I need these things and I need them now.”

The woman scratched apathetically at a scar that spread across her throat and burrowed into the strap of her kelly green apron.

“Is this, like, some kind of a joke?”

Marlo leveled a gaze at the barista’s glassy eyes.

“I don’t think the devil is known for his sense of humor,” she said, leaning slightly across the counter so that her point would have less distance to travel. “Unless you think the Black Death, World War II, and infomercials
are funny.”

The barista gulped.

“This is for …
the Big Guy Downstairs
?”

“Yep, and he needs his single-shot on the double.”

The barista nodded as a bead of sweat broke free of her hairline and raced for her nose.

“Name?”

“Marlo Fauster.”

The barista turned toward her staff, thrust her fingers in her mouth, and let forth a piercing whistle.

“People, we have a situation,” she declared urgently. “I need you to stop what you’re doing and get on this most unholy of orders, stat!”

Marlo sighed with relief. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she was so close she could practically hear the freeway. She settled down into an uncomfortably warm leather chesterfield and fidgeted with restlessness. Marlo’s forearm began to prickle, as if she had somehow picked up poison oak.

Statusphere
, Marlo thought for no particular reason as she, unconsciously, dug out the latest issue from her messenger bag. The moment she slipped it on, the prickling sensation went away, her frantic breathing slowed, and a sense of cool refreshment cascaded upon her like a Wigglin’ Waterpillar sprinkler on a summer’s day.

LYON’S DEN (CONT’D)

“Marlo Fauster!” the barista called. Marlo jumped, shook the fog of humiliation from her head, and sprang toward the counter. The barista wheeled out three large boxes stacked on a dolly.

“Here you go,” she said, wiping her sweaty hands on her green apron. “I think I got it all … well, most of it, anyway.”

Marlo furrowed her brow with worry.

“Most of it?
What do you—”

“You’re so vain …”

Marlo’s heart seized like a monkey’s hand around a stolen banana. She checked the compact and—who else would it be?—it was Madame Pompadour calling yet again. Marlo stuffed the phone at the bottom of her messenger bag, where it vibrated angrily.

“Thanks,” Marlo muttered to the barista as she wheeled the boxes into the concourse.

The valet booth was obscured by crates and barrels. The demon concierge patted his leathery palms together.

“Well, miss, I really outdid myself with this one, I must say,” the demon commented with pride, swiveling his long, greasy head toward Marlo as she approached the booth. “Of course, I did have to make some rather liberal …
interpretations …
reading between the lines, so to speak.”

Marlo surveyed the crates with worry.

“What do you mean,
interpretations
?
”
she asked.

“You’re so vain …”

“Aaaah!” Marlo yelped. “Stop calling me, you smug, psycho cat!”

Marlo began to hyperventilate. She could feel Madame Pompadour’s disapproval grip her by the throat.

“I got to go,” Marlo panted, distracted, as she heaved her booty-burdened dollies out of the complex. She was perspiring as profusely as a sumo wrestler in a
sauna, but she had done it: fulfilled an impossible task that not even that picky stuck-up kitty could shake her tail at.

Madame Pompadour examined the contents of the crate. Her faint whiskers twitched as she probed each item with her keen, serpentlike eyes. She looked up at Marlo with a languid expression of contempt.

“Miss Fauster,” she snarled. “Do I look like a fool?”

Marlo knew better than to answer this question in the way that she
so
wanted to.
Ached
to, almost.

“No, of course not,” Marlo settled for as a response. “Fools wear those curly little shoes with the bells on them—”

Madame Pompadour coiled her graceful arms together and leveled her lethal gaze at the girl sweating before her.

“Then explain to me why you think you can so blatantly disregard my specific, clear instructions and come back with this collection of …
garbage.”

“But—”

“I’m not interested in your explanations!” Madame Pompadour shrieked. She snatched two sock monkeys from the crate.

“What are these?” she asked, trembling with rage.

Marlo swallowed.

“Well,” she said nervously. “You wrote that the devil
wanted ‘monkeys’ for lunch, and I guess the valet couldn’t find—”

“I specifically wrote
live
monkeys on your list, Miss Fauster.”

Marlo’s face grew hot. She knew for a
fact
that Madame Pompadour had specified no such thing. Marlo grabbed the list out of her messenger bag.

“No, you didn’t!” she cried. “It says right here …”

Marlo looked at the list.

Live monkey
.

Another live monkey
.

“Principal Bubb neglected to tell me that you were legally blind,” Madame Pompadour purred cruelly. “Unfortunately for the rest of us who must suffer your …
unique look
, we are not as lucky.”

Marlo scanned the list. Nearly all of the items were somehow …
different
. In little ways. But, in Madame Pompadour’s all-seeing cat/serpent eyes,
nothing
was little: especially if it meant an opportunity to belittle one Marlo Fauster.

“But … but,” Marlo stammered.

“Farzana,” Madame Pompadour called out as she turned toward her office. “Call the custodial crew and have someone come down and cart all …
this,”
she added with a disgusted wave of her paw, “away.”

As the haughty headmistress reached for the tasteful knob on her tasteful office door, she lobbed one last blazing scowl over her shoulder.

“The devil will be
most
disappointed, Miss Fauster,” she hissed. “Most disappointed that his basic needs were not only unmet, but also mocked. You are, without a doubt, the most worthless girl who has ever been deposited on my doorstep. And after all I’ve done for you …”