“Who’s the stranger?” Robert asked Mavis over his shoulder. Something about the young man’s aquiline good looks repelled Robert, like biting down on tin foil with a filling.
“New meat for Slick,” Mavis said. “Came in about fifteen minutes ago and wanted to play for money. Shoots a pretty lame stick, if you ask me. Slick is keeping his cue behind the bar until the money gets big enough.”
Robert watched the wiry Slick McCall move around the table, stopping to drill a solid ball into the side pocket with a bar cue. Slick left himself without a following shot. He stood and ran his fingers over his greased-back brown hair.
He said, “Shit. Snookered myself.” Slick was on the hustle.
The phone rang and Mavis picked it up. “Den of iniquity. Den mother speaking. No, he ain’t here. Just a minute.” She covered the mouthpiece and turned to Robert. “You seen The Breeze?”
“Who’s calling?”
Into the phone, “Who’s calling?” Mavis listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece again. “It’s his landlord.”
“He’s out of town,” Robert said. “He’ll be back soon.”
Mavis conveyed the message and hung up. The phone rang again immediately.
Mavis answered, “Garden of Eden. Snake speaking.” There was a pause. “What am I, his answering service?” Pause. “He’s out of town; he’ll be back soon. Why don’t you guys take a social risk and call him at home?” Pause. “Yeah, he’s here.” Mavis shot a glance at Robert. “You want to talk to him? Okay.” She hung up.
“That for The Breeze?” Robert asked.
Mavis lit a Taryton. “He got popular all of a sudden?”
“Who was it?”
“Didn’t ask. Sounded Mexican. Asked about you.”
“Shit,” Robert said.
Mavis set him up with another draft. He turned to watch the game. The stranger had won. He was collecting five dollars from Slick.
“Guess you showed me, pard,” Slick said. “You gonna give a chance to win my money back?”
“Double or nothing,” the stranger said.
“Fine. I’ll rack ’em.” Slick pushed the quarters into the coin slot on the side of the pool table. The balls dropped into the gutter and Slick began racking them.
Slick was wearing a red-and-blue polka-dotted polyester shirt with long, pointed collars that had been fashionable around the time that disco died — about the same time that Slick had stopped brushing his teeth, Robert guessed. Slick wore a perpetual brown and broken grin, a grin that was burned into the memories of countless tourists who had strayed into the Slug to be fleeced at the end of Slick’s intrepid cue.
The stranger reared back and broke. His stick made the sickly vibrato sound of a miscue. The cue ball rocketed down the table, barely grazing the rack, then bounced off two corner rails and made a beeline toward the corner pocket where the stranger stood.
“Sorry, brother,” Slick said, chalking his cue and preparing to shoot the scratch.
When it reached the corner pocket, the cue ball stopped dead on the lip. Almost as an afterthought, one of the solid balls moved out of the pack and fell into the opposite corner with a plop.
“Damn,” Slick said. “That was some pretty fancy English. I thought you’d scratched for sure.”
“Was that a solid?” the stranger asked.
Mavis leaned over the bar and whispered to Robert. “Did you see that ball stop? It should have been a scratch.”
“Maybe there’s a piece of chalk on the table that stopped it,” Robert speculated.
The stranger made two more balls in an unremarkable fashion, then called a straight-in shot on the three ball. When he shot, the cue ball curved off his stick, describing a C-shaped curve, and sunk the six ball in the opposite corner.
“I said the three ball!” the stranger shouted.
“I know you did,” Slick said. “Looks like you were a little heavy on the English. My shot.”
The stranger seemed to be angry at someone, but it wasn’t Slick. “How can you confuse the six with the three, you idiot?”
“You got me,” said Slick. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, pard. You’re up one game already.”
Slick ran four balls, then missed a shot that was so obvious it made Robert wince. Slick’s hustles were usually more subtle.
“Five in the side!” the stranger shouted. “Got that? Five!”
“I got it,” Slick said. “And all these folks got it along with half the people out in the street. You don’t need to yell, pard. This is just a friendly game.”
The stranger bent over the table and shot. The five ball careened off the cue ball, headed for the rail, then changed its path and curved into the side pocket. Robert was amazed, as were all the observers. It was an impossible shot, yet they all had seen it.
“Damn,” Slick said to no one in particular, then to Mavis, “Mavis, when was the last time you leveled this table?”
“Yesterday, Slick.”
“Well, it sure as shit went catywumpus fast. Give me my cue, Mavis.”
Mavis waddled to the end of the bar and pulled out a three-foot-long black leather case. She handled it carefully and presented it to Slick with reverence, a decrepit Lady of the Lake presenting a hardwood Excaliber to the rightful king. Slick flipped the case open and screwed the cue together, never taking his eyes off the stranger.
At the sight of the cue the stranger smiled. Slick smiled back. The game was defined. Two hustlers recognized each other. A tacit agreement passed between them: Let’s cut the bullshit and play.
Robert had become so engrossed in watching the tension between the two men and trying to figure out why the stranger angered him so, that he failed to notice that someone had slipped onto the stool next to him. Then she spoke.
“How are you, Robert?” Her voice was deep and throaty. She placed her hand on his arm and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. Robert turned and was taken aback by her appearance. She always affected him that way. She affected most men that way.
She was wearing a black body stocking, belted at the waist with wide leather in which she had tucked a multitude of chiffon scarves that danced around her hips when she walked like diaphanous ghosts of Salome. Her wrists were adorned with layers of silver bangles; her nails were sculptured long and lacquered black. Her eyes were wide and green, set far apart over a small, straight nose and full lips, glossed blood red. Her hair hung to her waist, blue-black. An inverted silver pentagram dangled between her breasts on a silver chain.
“I’m miserable,” Robert said. “Thanks for asking, Ms. Henderson.”
“My friends call me Rachel.”
“Okay. I’m miserable, Ms. Henderson.”
Rachel was thirty-five but she could have passed for twenty if it weren’t for the arrogant sensuality with which she moved and the mocking smile in her eyes that evinced experience, confidence, and guile beyond any twenty-year-old. Her body did not betray her age; it was her manner. She went through men like water.
Robert had known her for years, but her presence never failed to awaken in him a feeling that his marital fidelity was nothing more than an absurd notion. In retrospect, perhaps it was. Still, she made him feel uneasy.
“I’m not your enemy, Robert. No matter what you think. Jenny has been thinking about leaving you for a long time. We didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“How are things with the coven?” Robert asked sarcastically.
“It’s not a coven. The Pagan Vegetarians for Peace are dedicated to Earth consciousness, both spiritual and physical.”
Robert drained his fifth beer and slammed the mug down on the bar. “The Pagan Vegetarians for Peace are a group of bitter, ball-biting, man haters, dedicated to breaking up marriages and turning men into toads.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“What I know,” Robert said, “is that within a year of joining, every woman in your coven has divorced her husband. I was against Jenny getting into this mumbo
jumbo from the beginning. I told her you would brainwash her and you have.”
Rachel reared back on the bar stool like a hissing cat. “You believe what you want to believe, Robert. I show women the Goddess within. I put them in touch with their own personal power; what they do with it is their own business. We aren’t against men. Men just can’t stand to see a woman discover herself. Maybe if you’d exalted Jenny’s growth instead of criticizing, she’d still be around.”
Robert turned away from her and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was overcome by a wave of self-loathing. She was right. He covered his face with his hands and leaned forward on the bar.
“Look, I didn’t come here to fight with you,” Rachel said. “I saw your truck outside and I thought you might be able to use a little money. I have some work for you. It might take your mind off the hurt.”
“What?” Robert said through his hands.
“We’re sponsoring the annual tofu sculpture contest at the park this year. We need someone to take pictures for the poster and the press package. I know you’re broke, Robert.”
“No,” he said, without looking up.
“Fine. Suit yourself.” Rachel slid off the stood and started to leave.
Mavis sat another beer in front of Robert and counted his money on the bar. “Very smooth,” she said. “You’ve got four bucks left to your name.”
Robert looked up. Rachel was almost to the door. “Rachel!”
She turned and waited, an elegant hand on an exquisite hip.
“I’m staying at The Breeze’s trailer.” He told her the phone number. “Call me, okay?”
Rachel smiled. “Okay, Robert, I’ll call.” She turned to walk out.
Robert called out to her again. “You haven’t seen The Breeze, have you?”
Rachel grimaced. “Robert, just being in the same room with The Breeze makes me want to take a bath in bleach.”
“Come on, he’s a fun guy.”
“He’s a fun-gus,” Rachel said.
“But have you seen him?”
“No.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Call me.”
“I will.” She turned and walked out. When she opened the door, light spilling in blinded Robert. When his vision returned, a little man in a red stocking cap was sitting next to him. He hadn’t seen him come in.
To Mavis the little man said, “Could I trouble you for a small quantity of salt?”
“How about a margarita with extra salt, handsome?” Mavis batted her spider-lashes.
“Yes, that will be good. Thank you.”
Robert looked the little man over for a moment, then turned away to watch the pool game while he contemplated his destiny. Maybe this job for Rachel was his way out. Strange, though, things didn’t seem to be bad enough yet. And the idea that Rachel could be his fairy godmother in disguise made him smile. No, the downward spiral to salvation was going quite nicely. The Breeze was missing. The rent was due. He had made enemies with a crazed Mexican drug dealer, and it was driving him nuts trying to figure out where he had seen the stranger at the pool table.
The game was still going strong. Slick was running the balls with machinelike precision. When he did miss, the stranger cleared the table with a series of impossible, erratic, curving shots, while the crowd watched with their jaws hanging, and Slick broke into a nervous sweat.
Slick McCall had been the undisputed king of eight ball at the Head of the Slug Saloon since before it had been called the Head of the Slug. The bar had been the Head of the Wolf for fifty years, until Mavis grew tired of the protests of drunken environmentalists, who insisted that timber wolves were an endangered species and that the saloon was somehow sanctioning their killing. One day she had taken the stuffed wolf head that hung over the bar to the Salvation Army and had a local artist render a giant slug head in fiberglass to replace it. Then she changed the sign and waited for some half-wit from the Save the Slugs Society to show up and protest. It never happened. In business, as in politics, the public is ever so tolerant of those who slime.
Years ago, Slick and Mavis had come to a mutually beneficial business agreement. Mavis allowed Slick to make his living on her pool table, and in return, Slick agreed to pay her twenty percent of his winnings and to excuse himself from the Slug’s annual eight-ball tournament. Robert had been coming into the Slug for seven years and in that time he had never seen Slick rattled over a pool game. Slick was rattled now.
Occasionally some tourist who had won the Sheep’s Penis Kansas Nine-Ball tournament would come into the Slug puffed up like the omnipotent god of the green felt, and Slick would return him to Earth, deflating his ego with gentle pokes from his custom-made, ivory-inlaid cue. But those fellows played within the known laws of physics. The dark stranger played as if Newton had been dropped on his head at birth.
To his credit, Slick played his usual methodical game, but Robert could tell that he was afraid. When the stranger sank the eight ball in a hundred-dollar game, Slick’s fear turned to anger and he threw his custom cue across the room like a crazed Zulu.
“Goddammit, boy, I don’t know how you’re doing it, but no one can shoot like that.” Slick was screaming into the stranger’s face, his fists were balled at his sides.
“Back off,” the stranger said. All the boyishness drained from his face. He could have been a thousand years old, carved in stone. His eyes were locked on Slick’s. “The game is over.” He might have been stating that “water is wet.” It was truth. It was deadly serious.
Slick reached into the pocket of his jeans, fished out a handful of crumpled twenties, and threw them on the table.
The stranger picked up the bills and walked out.
Slick retrieved his stick and began taking it apart. The daytime regulars remained silent, allowing Slick to gather his dignity.
“That was like a fucking bad dream,” he said to the onlookers.
The comment hit Robert like a sock full of birdshot. He suddenly remembered where he had seen the stranger. The dream of the desert came back to him with crippling clarity. He turned back to his beer, stunned.
“You want a margarita?” Mavis asked him. She was holding a baseball bat she had pulled from under the bar when things had heated up at the pool table.
Robert looked to the stool next to him. The little man was gone.
“He saw that guy make one shot and ran out of here like his ass was on fire,” Mavis said.
Robert picked up the margarita and downed its frozen contents in one gulp, giving himself an instant headache.
-=*=-
Outside on the street Travis and Catch headed toward the service station.
“Well, maybe you should learn to shoot pool if you’re going to get money this way.”
“Maybe you could pay attention when I call a shot.”
“I didn’t hear you. I don’t understand why we just don’t steal our money.”
“I don’t like to steal.”
“You stole from the pimp in L.A.”
“That was okay.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Stealing is immoral.”
“And cheating at pool isn’t?”
“I didn’t cheat. I just had an unfair advantage. He had a custom-made pool cue. I had you to push the balls in.”
“I don’t understand morality.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“I don’t think you understand it either.”
“We have to pick up the car.”
“Where are we going?”
“To see an old friend.”
“You say that everywhere we go.”
“This is the last one.”
“Sure.”
“Be quiet. People are looking.”
“You’re trying to be tricky. What’s morality?”
“It’s the difference between what is right and what you can rationalize.”
“Must be a human thing.”
“Exactly.”
10
AUGUSTUS BRINE
Augustus Brine sat in one of his high-backed leather chairs massaging his temples, trying to formulate a plan of action. Rather than answers, the question, Why me? repeated in his mind like a perplexing mantra. Despite his size, strength, and a lifetime of learning, Augustus Brine felt small, weak, and stupid. Why me?
A few minutes before, Gian Hen Gian had rushed into the house babbling in Arabic like a madman. When Brine finally calmed him down, the genie had told him he had found the demon.
“You must find the dark one. He must have the Seal of Solomon. You must find him!”
Now the genie was sitting in the chair across from Brine, munching potato chips and watching a videotape of a Marx Brothers movie.
The genie insisted that Brine take some sort of action, but he had no suggestions on how to proceed. Brine examined the options and found them wanting. He could call the police, tell them that a genie had told him that an invisible man-eating demon had invaded Pine Cove, and spend the rest of his life under sedation: not good. Or, he could find the dark one, insist that he send the demon back to hell, and be eaten by the demon: not good. Or he could find the dark one, sneak around hoping that he wasn’t noticed by an invisible demon that could be anywhere, steal the seal, and send the demon back to hell himself, but probably get eaten in the process: also, not good. Of course he could deny that he believed the story, deny that he had seen Gian Hen Gian drink enough saltwater to kill a battalion, deny the existence of the supernatural altogether, open an impudent little bottle of merlot, and sit by his fireplace drinking wine while a demon from hell ate his neighbors. But he did believe it, and that option, too, was not good. For now he decided to rub his temples and think, Why me?
The genie would be no help at all. Without a master he was as powerless as Brine himself. Without the seal and invocation, he could have no master. Brine had run through the more obvious courses of action with Gian Hen Gian to have each doomed in succession. No, he could not kill the demon: he was immortal. No, he could not kill the dark one: he was under the protection of the demon, and killing him, if it were possible, might release the demon to his own will. To attempt an exorcism would be silly, the genie reasoned; would some mingy prelate be able to override the power of Solomon?
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