“Well, you don’t see that every day,” said the Emperor. Lazarus, the golden retriever, ruffed in sympathy, but Bummer, the Boston terrier, was already after them, hell-bent for leather, emitting a staccato growl that sounded as if he had swallowed a very small and angry motorcycle and was trying to keep it down as he ran.
Not in my town, Bummer thought. Not in my town.
Lazarus looked to the Emperor as if to say, We have to go after him, don’t we? He fell into a tolerant trot while the Emperor tucked his walking stick under his arm and hitched up the army-surplus map bag he had slung over his shoulder to hold the heavy journal containing his list of the dead, and strode along behind.
His bad knee had been bothering him more than usual lately, since they’d started sleeping nearer the water, in and around Fort Mason, sometimes in a nook or cranny at the St. Francis Yacht Club, instead of in the utility closet behind the pizzeria in North Beach whose benevolent owner had cleared out the space and even provided a key for the Emperor and his men. Something about being closer to the bridge helped the names of the dead come to him, and on recent mornings he could scarcely work the stiffness out of his hand before the names and numbers began flooding his mind, and he would have to sit down wherever he was and record them. At first he’d gone to the library, and to the police station, and even to City Hall to get the names the dead had asked for, but these were names he hadn’t found there, and the dates went back much further than the year the dead had originally asked him to record.
At the edge of the park, streetcar tracks, long unused, ran into a long concrete trench where the street cars used to pass before entering the tunnel under the great meadow above Fort Mason. Bummer chased the hodgepodge creatures into the trench, knowing that there was a set of steel doors closing off the tunnel at the end and soon he would tear ass out of whatever these things were, or at least stand tough and give them a stern barking at.
As the doors came into his view, Bummer smelled a foul, avian odor that he’d encountered before, and he stopped so abruptly he nearly toppled over. The doors covered only the lower portion of the tunnel; the arch above, nearly four feet high, was open and dark. At the base of the doors was a wide puddle that looked like tar or heavy oil.
The Emperor and Lazarus caught up to Bummer just as one of the creatures, the calico-cat-headed one, bounced up and over the doors, into the dark arch. As the second one, the guinea pig, crouched to leap over the top of door as well, out of the puddle came a sleek feminine hand with long talons that impaled the little dandy in the chest. Another hand snaked out of the dark liquid, snatched the toy tugboat, and submerged, then a third emerged, talons bared, and with the first one tore the guinea pig to shreds; blood and silk splattered the door and the concrete walls of the trench.
The third creature turned and ran back toward the Emperor and his men, who also turned and followed it out of the trench.
Above his own rasping breath the Emperor heard, “Oh, that’s delicious, isn’t that delicious?” in a breathy, female voice, that wafted from the dark tunnel.
They’d agreed to meet at an independent coffee place off Union Street in the Marina called The Toasted Grind. Did nobody drink anymore? Lily wondered. She loved coffee, but this was turning out to be a stressful day and a couple of stout Long Island iced teas would certainly take the edge off, especially if the bridge guy was buying. She’d only agreed to this because the bridge guy had called as she was getting ready to meet M, and she thought it would be something she could tell the Mint One that would make him jealous. Oh, well.
“Are you Mike?” Lily said, walking up to the guy who she figured was Mike. He was, as he’d described himself, “kind of normal-looking”: midthirties, medium height, medium build, dark hair, greenish eyes, a lot like Charlie Asher, only with more muscle. He was wearing jeans and a clean, blue oxford-cloth shirt, but it was clear he had shoulders and arms—Charlie’s arms had just been props he used to keep his sleeves from collapsing. Why was she even thinking about Asher?
He stood. “I am,” he said. “Lily?”
“Sit,” she said. She sat across from him. “You know this is not a date, right?”
“Of course. Thanks for meeting me. You know, on the phone, that first day, you said you knew things, and well, I wanted to pick your brain.”
“In Fiji, they have a special pick just for eating human brains. They call it a brain fork.”
“Not like that.”
“I know,” she said. She signaled to the server, a girl about her age with a short blond mop of mini-dreadlocks.
Lily ordered a black brewed coffee and Mike followed her lead until the server said, “You want anything in that?,” directed at Lily.
“Like?”
“We just got our liquor license. We don’t have the bar put together yet, but we can make you an Irish coffee.”
“A shot of Irish whiskey would be great,” Lily said.
“You?” the girl asked Mike.
Mike cringed a bit and looked at Lily when he answered. “I’m trying to stay away from depressants. I’ve just gone through a breakup and some stuff.”
“Me, too,” said Lily. “Put his shot in mine as well.”
The server smiled. “I know. I’m dating an old guy, too. Don’t you love how they act like every decision is life-altering?”
“I’m not an old guy,” said Mike.
“It’s not a date,” said Lily.
“I’ll be back with your coffee,” said dread girl. “Anything else right now?”
“A Viagra and a pair of handcuffs,” said Mike, deadpan.
“Nice,” said dread girl, then to Lily, “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.” And off she went.
“You’re sharper than you look,” Lily said.
“Thanks. I think. You’re younger than you sounded on the phone.”
“My experience weighs on me far more than my years show.” She sighed, a tragic sigh that she didn’t get to use much anymore since she’d been forced by a brutal society to behave like a grown-up, and since she’d lost weight, most of her mopey Goth clothes didn’t fit, so she was almost never dressed for tragic sighing. “I’ve seen too many things that can never be unseen, Mike.”
“I guess I thought you were older because of how you dealt with that jumper.”
Was he trying to say something? She didn’t need anyone else judging her and she wished she had worn something low-cut so she could accuse him of looking at her boobs, which he totally was not, which was annoying. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“You were so calm, unconcerned. I mean, that guy died.”
“You think I’m unconcerned? That I don’t care? Do you know why I’m cynical and snarky on the crisis line?”
He shook his head.
“Because it works. It’s normal. They need normal, fast. They need out of the spiral they’re in, so if they’re suddenly offended by me, or horny for me, I don’t care. What they’re not focused on is their own pain, they’re not alone, there’s someone else on the planet with them who is annoying and possibly sexy, and it gets them to put the pills or the gun down, it gets them off the bridge in a safe way. That’s my jam. It used to be being dark and mysterious, but you can’t out-dark the people I was hanging out with, and if I get the least bit drunk or high, I tell everyone everything I know, so I’m a fucking loser at mysterious. Yeah, we lost that guy, but I saved five others this month. I’m good at what I do.” Five and half, bitches! she thought.
“I know, that’s why I called you,” Mike said.
“Wait. What?”
“And because she told me to.”
“Who told you to?”
Their coffees came before he could answer and he waited for Dread Girl to leave before he answered her.
“This is going to sound really strange,” he said. “I can
’t quite believe I’m going to say it—”
“If you start talking about your ex, I will knock you out of that chair—”
“A ghost. The ghost of Concepción de Arguello, daughter of the governor of Alta California.”
“Where is that? I don’t even know where that is,” Lily said. He was doing that big lie with a little detailed lie to give it the credibility thing.
“It’s here,” Mike said, gesturing to the street and around them. “This is Alta California.”
“This is the Marina. This is where you go between the fraternity or sorority house and your first divorce. Look around, except for our waitress, who I guarantee doesn’t live in this neighborhood, it’s all people who are completely self-absorbed without a shred of self-awareness.”
“Wow, that’s harsh,” Mike said.
“You haven’t served them,” Lily said. She smiled, not a lot of teeth but a sparkle of mischief in her eye, then sipped her hot liquor through the straw.
“Ghost,” Mike said.
“So?” Lily said.
“This was Alta California in the early 1800s.”
“You’re not going to just forget you said that, then? I’m willing. I mean, to be honest, you’ve probably lost your shot with me, because I have a rule about not boning the mentally disturbed, but we can be acquaintances, and I promise not to cock-block you with the waitress—she seems into you. But don’t you think that was disrespectful, her hitting on my date like that.”
“I’m not your date.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“You told her that.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“She said that you knew Death and could help with the Ghost Thief. That I should call you.”
“The waitress?”
“The ghost.”
“You’re going to tell me, so tell me?” she said. She signaled for the waitress to bring her another, then, in her head, she conjured sad French accordion music playing, mimes and ballerinas entering the stage to act out Mike’s story, guys rhythmically kicking Gérard Depardieu in the kidneys as a backbeat, because fuck him, why did he have to be in everything French?
So he told her, about Concepción, about the other ghosts, about how they had only spoken to him, about the Friends of Dorothy, about all of it, and as he told her, she believed him, because his wasn’t even close to the most bizarre story she’d been part of, and then she realized . . .
“Oh my fucking god, the guy who paints the fucking bridge orange for a living is special and I get to go back to retail. Oh, fuck me. Fuck me roughly with a big spiky demon dick!”
“Huh?” said Mike, who hadn’t expected that particular reaction. “People are looking.”
“Fuck them!” Lily said. “They’re not special. I know, because I’m not special and I recognize the symptoms. Although all you Marina people think you’re fucking special, don’t you? You entitled fucks!”
The waitress was making her way over to try to settle Lily down, but Mike signaled that he had this and she went the other way.
“Concepción evidently thinks you’re special,” Mike said. “She said you would be able to help save them from the Ghost Thief.”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Lily said.
“Maybe you’re supposed to find out,” Mike said. “And right now I need you.”
“What for? You’re the magic ghost-talker guy.”
“I need you to talk me out of jumping off the bridge.”
Part Two
With nothing will be pleased until he be eased
With being nothing.
— William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act V, Scene V
10
Remembrance of Things Past
She was so slight that her body made barely a rise in the sheets, like a wave on a calm pond from a phantom wind—her face might have been a skeletal mask laid upon the pillow for presentation, her long white hair brushed out to one side the way she liked it.
“You are trying to disappear,” Baptiste sang from the doorway, “but I see you.” He wheeled his mop bucket into her room.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Baptiste,” Helen said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Bonjour, Madame Helen,” said Baptiste. “Comment allez-vous?”
“Pas trés bien. Je suis fatiguée, monsieur.”
“I won’t be long, then you can rest. Can I bring you anything, chère?”
“No, thank you. Thank you for speaking French with me, no one does that anymore. I spent my semester abroad in Paris, you know?”
She told him this every day he worked, and every day he replied, “Ah, the City of Light. So many delights. What, I wonder, is your favorite?”
And here, her answer often changed. “I loved walking through the Jardin du Luxembourg in the autumn, when the wind was blowing a little, and chestnuts would drop out of the trees and sometimes hit one of the old men who sat on the benches reading. Plop, right on the head.” She laughed, then coughed. “Now I’m the old one.”
“Nonsense, chère.” He was not so young himself, and by the end of his workday, gray stubble would show on his dark cheeks as if they had been dusted with ash.
“You want some oxygen?”
“Non, merci,” she said.
He was not authorized to put the cannula in her nose and turn on the oxygen, but he had done it before when she was in discomfort, and he did a lot of things he was not authorized to do. He rolled his bucket to the corner, dipped his mop in the water, then leaned on the ringer until it was nearly dry. When he wiped the mop out into the corner, the room filled with the smell of the lemon disinfectant, but above it he could still detect the acid smell of her organs shutting down. Helen had been in hospice for six months, longer than most of the patients. He had become attached to her and he was sad her time was coming to an end. Speaking French to her was a kindness he didn’t get to grant to most of the patients, although he made an effort to try to do something actively kind for each one of them, every day, even if it was only asking after a grandchild, changing the channel on the television, or singing a soft song to them as they slept.
They all would pass, and he would grieve for each one, even if he was only the man who mopped the floors, gathered the laundry, emptied the bins. He would say hello to each one every day, if they were conscious or not, and say good-bye each evening as well, so if they died in the night, good-bye would not go unsaid. But Helen concerned him more than the others. Her name had not appeared in his date book and he did not see the object around her glowing red. From her symptoms, he could tell he had only days to retrieve her soul vessel, and he did not want to go to her house, as he sometimes did. He did not want to see the life she had left, which was grand and full and opulent; he knew because she had told him, and he did not want to see what she was leaving because it would make him more sad.
He mopped from the wall to her bedside, then ran the mop under her bed and up onto some very nice Italian shoes. On the other side of the bed stood a sharp, well-dressed Latin man who was looking around the room with some urgency—trying to look around Baptiste, not at him.
“Who are you?” Baptiste asked, and the man in the nice suit leapt back as if he’d encountered an electric fence at Helen’s bedside.
“Santa Maria!” he said. Then he looked back quickly, as if something might be following. Finally, he looked at Baptiste. “You can see me?”
Baptiste smiled. “I can, but Madame Helen cannot.”
“I’m blind,” said Helen.
“What are you, some kind of ninny? Say hello to Madame,” said Baptiste.
Charlie paced across the parlor of the Three Jewel Buddhist Center, the claws on his duck feet snagging occasionally on the Persian rug, at which Audrey tried not to cringe. She was not attached to material thin
gs, but it was a nice rug.
“I’m telling you, Audrey, they’re squirrelly,” Charlie said.
“Really? Squirrelly? Who would have thought?”
“No, I don’t mean it that way. Well, yes that way, but what I’m saying is that the Squirrel People are going loopy, not exactly dirt-eating loonies, although there is a little of that. Okay, fine, they’ve turned into dirt-eating loonies. There, I’ve said it.”
“So they won’t help us find the Death Merchants or the missing soul vessels?”
“I went to ask them, but they . . .” Charlie considered for moment whether he wanted to say exactly what he had seen, and if he knew, in fact, what he had seen. “Look, they’re my friends, but the Squirrel People are loopy.”
“We prefer People of the Squirrel,” said Bob, the beefeater-bobcat guy, who stepped out from behind a wastebasket in the butler’s pantry and strode into the parlor using his spork as a walking stick. “Or just, the People.”
“You shouldn’t lurk, Bob, it’s not polite,” said Audrey.
“Your hair looks nice,” said Bob.
Audrey had not put any product in her hair and had just brushed it up and over, so it fell softly to her left shoulder. It did look nice, Charlie thought, and he wanted to punch Bob for having said so before him.
“He’s just trying to distract you,” Charlie said.
“I heard you two talking,” said Bob. “So we checked the places where we found the souls before, the Death Merchants.”
“And?” Audrey said.
“When were you spying on us?” Charlie asked.
“They’re all gone,” Bob said, ignoring Charlie’s question. “All of the Death Merchants that we took soul vessels from were killed by the Morrigan except Charlie and the tall Minty One. I don’t know if there are others.”
Secondhand Souls Page 10