Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — I met the Devil on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway on Friday afternoon, which, if you've ever sat in traffic on the BQE, will not surprise you. I summoned him at the intersect of Hamilton Avenue. Traffic was moving fine when I started the incantation, a steady 30 miles an hour, which for the BQE is practically the Autobahn.
"Thanks for meeting me," he said, extending a hand that was room temperature, which somehow made it worse. "I don't usually do press, but honestly? I'm in a great mood. I had to tell someone and who better than The Brooklyn Herald. Stellar stuff really."
He gestured broadly at the expressway, which had already begun to slow.
"You know what this reminds me of? Hell. But less efficient. I love it here."
Behind us, a taxi driver laid on his horn for nine consecutive seconds. A woman in a Subaru gave him the finger.
I asked him what brought him to Brooklyn.
"Business is booming," he said. "And I mean booming. I haven't seen numbers like this since the Black Death. You know how long ago that was? I had middle management back then. Tiny operation. Now?" He whistled. "We're scaling."
The subject turned quickly to the Republican Party, which the Devil described with what can only be characterized as genuine professional admiration.
"I have to hand it to them," he said, leaning back against the guardrail as an eighteen-wheeler honked. "They have exceeded my wildest expectations. And I want to be clear, my expectations were wild. I'm the Devil. I invented wild expectations."
Traffic had now stopped completely. A delivery van driver got out of his vehicle to scream at a Honda Civic. The Honda Civic screamed back. Somewhere behind them, a gunshot went off. The Devil didn't even flinch.
He pulled out a phone and scrolled through what appeared to be some kind of dashboard.
"See this? Souls to pain ratio. That's my key metric. It's higher than it's been since World War II. World War II! Do you understand? I had a good chunk of the continent of Europe working for me back then, and somehow these guys are putting up comparable numbers with just — what — Congress and a few governors?"
I asked him to be more specific.
"Where do I start? Forcing people to give birth and then refusing to help them raise the children. No jobs programs. No economy building. No healthcare. Just, have the baby and good luck. That's not governance, that's a soul farm. I couldn't have designed it better myself. And believe me, I've tried. I have people for this. They went to school for this. These Republicans are outperforming my people without even trying."
He paused to watch a driver in a Nissan Altima cut off an ambulance.
"Beautiful," he murmured.
Behind us, the situation was deteriorating. The delivery van driver and the Honda Civic had gotten out of their cars and were now chest to chest, shouting about lane merging and personal honor. A third man, who appeared to have no connection to either of them, had joined in and was shouting about the Mets.
"And now this war with Iran," he continued, shaking his head in admiration, utterly unbothered by the chaos building around him. "I mean — wow. Just wow. The sheer volume. My processing centers are backed up. I've had to open three new intake facilities. We're hiring. Hell is hiring! You know how crazy that is?"
I asked him about the midterm elections and what will happen when the Republicans are voted out.
"Voted out?" He looked at me like I'd said something adorable. "I hope the midterms are a bloodbath." He paused. Smiled. "And I really mean that."
"I used to hate democracy," he admitted. "Hated it. Thought it was the worst thing humans ever came up with. People choosing their own leaders? Terrible for business. Or so I thought." He leaned in. "But then I truly understood it. You know what democracy actually is? It's people voting against their own beliefs. Against their own interests. Against their own families. And doing it enthusiastically. With yard signs."
He clapped his hands together.
"Democracy is the best thing since sliced bread. And I was there when sliced bread was invented. It was fine. This so much better."
A bottle shattered somewhere to our left. The delivery van driver had thrown the first punch. The Honda Civic man swung back. The Mets fan tackled both of them into the hood of a Kia Sorento. A woman got out of her minivan, not to break it up, but to yell at all three of them for denting the Kia, which turned out to be hers. Then she threw her travel mug at the delivery van driver. Three lanes were now completely blocked by human bodies.
"My quotas are going through the roof. Through the roof! My board, yes, I have a board, they are thrilled. We're projecting growth numbers that haven't been seen in six centuries. Hell's expansion plan was supposed to take another two thousand years. We're ahead of schedule. Way ahead."
He straightened his robe and looked out over the expressway, which had not moved in twenty minutes.
"And here's the thing that really gets me excited," he said, lowering his voice as though sharing a secret. "With today's technology? We could bring Hell to Earth. Not metaphorically. Literally. The infrastructure is almost there. The spiritual bandwidth, the despair output, the institutional rot — it's all lining up.
"I'm quite excited for the future," he said. "And I want to be clear, I have never once, in the entire history of existence, said that sentence before."
By now the BQE had descended into something out of a medieval painting. A man in a Con Edison vest was wrestling a cyclist over a side mirror. Two Uber drivers who had never met were trying to flip a Smart Car. A woman was beating a man with a rolled-up yoga mat while he kicked the bumper off a Prius. A dog had gotten loose and was running between lanes, barking at everyone equally, the only creature on the expressway with any sense. Traffic had not moved in thirty-five minutes. It would not move for another two hours.
"Who could have asked for more than what these people are doing?" the Devil said, tightening his robe. "Honestly. Who?"
He turned toward the on-ramp. Then he stopped. Looked back at me. Looked out over the war zone of dented hoods and swinging fists and shattered glass and the endless, frozen river of cars stretching toward the horizon.
He smiled and then he laughed, long and deep, a sound that rolled across the expressway like thunder and made every horn on the BQE go silent for exactly one second.
"Oh, it's going to be a great year," he said. "It starting to smell like Saint Petersberg all over again! Wooo!!!"
Then he walked into the exhaust fumes and was gone. The air smelled briefly of sulfur, and then just of the BQE.