I leave everything on the kitchen island, grab a glass, and go into the living room with Eva’s bourbon. I pour a shot and toast her.
You brought me back and then tried to kill me, so I guess we’re even there. But if I ever see you or Barron again, I’m taking your heads down to the bowling alley and not stopping until I roll a three hundred with each of you.
I turn on the TV and flip through the channels, but what I’m really thinking about is the windows. I wonder how far it is down from them to the hillside below. If I bought one of those collapsible home fire-escape ladders and hung it outside, I wonder if I could reach the ground. It’s L.A. sometime in the seventies outside. How can I not check that out?
Abbot doesn’t have to know.
No one has to know.
I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
I FALL ASLEEP with the TV on. Babies sleep a lot, right? I guess new bodies need sleep too. And I didn’t piss myself, so I’m still one up on babies.
It’s about three in the morning, everything on TV is garbage, and I don’t have any movies yet. I grab my coat and shadow-walk to Donut Universe.
The woman working the counter is my alien friend from last night. She looks startled when she sees me.
“Wow, you look a lot better.”
“Thanks for helping me out. I think I’d still be lying there without you.”
She gives me a sly smile.
“The last time you were in you said you’d buy out the store if you were still alive. Are you a man of your word?”
I spread a thousand dollars of Sandoval’s money on the counter.
“Is that enough?”
She holds up a hundred to the light to see if it’s counterfeit.
“It’s a start,” she says. “But I have a better idea.”
She brings me a black coffee and an apple fritter.
“Voilà.”
“You remembered.”
“On the house,” she says.
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
She leans across the counter and speaks in a low voice.
“Look around. It’s just us and a couple of drunk convention guys who don’t want to go home to their wives.”
“Thank you …”
She points to her name tag and says, “Janet.”
“Janet. Right. I’m Stark.”
She shifts her weight a little nervously.
“Actually, that stuff isn’t really free.”
“How much is it?”
She pushes the thousand back to me.
“Sit down over there. I get off in fifteen minutes.”
“Anything for free donuts.”
“If you finish your coffee, come back for more.”
“Great. I’ll be over there.”
I drink the good coffee and eat my fritter. Janet is a little odd, but the last week has been pretty fucking odd— with dying, not dying, burning up, not burning up, going back Downtown for a few minutes, and being a cling-wrap mummy—so why not end it that way?
What the hell am I going to do with my life? I think going part-time at Max Overdrive is probably out of the question, so what else is there? I could go back to work for Abbot, but that’s eventually going to lead to more monsters and I’m going to try to avoid them for now.
I should call Allegra and talk to her about PTSD stuff. But no yoga or soy burgers.
Maybe Carlos needs a barback at Bamboo House. But not on necromancer night. Never on necromancer night.
The UFO mansion is kind of big and empty to be there all the time alone. Candy and Alessa have music night at Max Overdrive. Maybe I could have movie nights at my place. Or is that too pathetic and obvious? I’m not twenty anymore. Of course, when I was twenty I was Downtown fighting bugeyed fuckwits in the arena. Maybe I get to do some twenty-year-old things? I’ll think about it.
“Mind if I join you?”
Marshal Wells slips into the booth across from me. He smiles and clasps his hands together.
“You’re looking good, James. What is your secret?”
“Lots of greens. Prayer. Faith in the baby Jesus.”
Wells unclasps his hands.
“You see? I try to approach you in a calm and respectful manner and you resort to cheap blasphemy.”
“I didn’t think it was cheap. It felt just about right to me.”
He doesn’t talk for a minute. Just looks me over.
Eventually he says, “Who did you sell your soul to this time?”
“You’re talking about my miraculous resurrection?”
“You look better than even before you were a moldering piece of human garbage.”
I eat a piece of my fritter.
“There weren’t any demon deals or satanic payoffs. Just good old American know-how.”
“You’re what that circus at the drive-in was about,” says Wells.
I rap my knuckles on the table once.
“It was great. You ought to try it. Treat yourself to a spa day.”
“No thank you. I have more important fish to fry. Which reminds me. Don’t worry about your friend Marcella’s future in the Vigil. I executed her.”
I want to jump across the table and throttle him, but I stay where I am, trying to show him as little as possible. It’s a pointless thing to do. Wells knows me well enough to know what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking about.
“Nothing to say?” he says. “No clever quips or animal violence?”
I look at him hard.
“How many people do you have outside?”
“Enough to put you down like the dog you are.”
“And the innocent people in here?”
“They’re your responsibility. Do something dumb or just sit there and listen.”
I reach for my coffee, and almost imperceptibly, he flinches. Unfortunately, I think that’s all the satisfaction I’ll get out of him tonight.
I say, “I have a friend coming over soon, so make it fast.”
“Then listen hard, Mr. Stark,” he says. “The first thing I want from you is my scroll.”
“I told you. I burned it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Would you believe me if I told you it was a mistake?”
He turns his head slightly and says, “What does that mean?”
“The scene at the drive-in? My coat ended up in the fire. And the scroll was in my pocket.”
He stares at me.
“Why should I believe you?”
“It’s the truth.”
“You told me you’d burned it before the drive-in.”
“I did. That was a lie.”
“But now you’re telling the truth.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the truth is so stupid,” I say. “You see everything in gigantic, CinemaScope Old Testament terms. Plagues. Seas parting. People turned into pillars of salt. But the truth is smaller than that. I fucked up.”
Wells hangs his head for a few seconds. When he looks up, he’s as hard and mean looking as I’ve ever seen him.
“Listen to me. Things are coming. They’re bigger than you or me or any of the pissant sinners around us. I know that you think I’m going to tell you to stay out of the way. But I’m not. Feel free to jump into the fray anytime you want, James. I welcome it. I long for it. You think you’re protected from on high by Thomas Abbot and his pixie friends? Let me tell you, he won’t be able to help you. There is no one you can turn to, nowhere you can run where I can’t find you. And when I do, I’ll burn you down and everyone and everything you’ve ever loved.”
I look at him with my heart racing.
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“I don’t, James. What are you thinking?”
“I think you’re a cheese Danish guy. Cherry would be too sweet and decadent. No, you’re definitely cheese. Admit it. I’m right. Why don’t you get some coffee and I’ll buy a whole box for you and your lackeys outside? What do you sa
y?”
He looks at his watch.
“Fortunately, I have an appointment on planet Earth,” he says. “Enjoy your pastry. You look almost like a human being with that thing. That’s how I want to remember you. Almost human, but not quite, and more dangerous because of your proximity to normalcy.”
Wells slides out of the booth.
I look at my fritter.
“‘Proximity to normalcy’ is a nice turn of phrase. You ought to do a needlepoint, frame it, and shove it straight up your ass. Keep it there with the rest of your wisdom.”
“Good night, James.”
“Good night, Larson.”
As he’s walking out, Janet comes over with coffee and a pile of donuts.
“Who was your friend?” she says, sitting down. “He didn’t look happy.”
“He isn’t a friend. You know those people you never want to see again, but you seem to run into them everywhere? That’s him.”
“Oh good. He looks like a cop. I was afraid for a minute you might be one too.”
“I’m about as far as you can get from a cop and still be a biped.”
Satisfied, Janet takes a bite of an eclair.
“How’s the coffee?” she says, covering her half-full mouth with her hand.
“Good. How’s your donut?”
She swallows.
“Good. Now it’s time for you to pay for your dinner.”
“That doesn’t make me at all nervous.”
“It’s just a question. Questions, actually. Several of them.”
“Shoot.”
She says, “Last night you looked like someone worked you over with a tire iron and you walk in here tonight like nothing happened.”
“I don’t think that’s technically a question.”
“It will be later, but I have another one first.”
“Let me have it.”
“When I helped you up, you disappeared. You didn’t run away or hide in a crowd. You disappeared. How did you do that?”
Shit.
“You saw that?”
“I sure did.”
I take a bite of fritter, stalling for time.
“It’s not a big deal. It’s just a trick I can do.”
“I thought it was a big deal,” says Janet. “I could use it around here sometimes with the creeps that come in. Can you show me how to do it?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that kind of trick.”
She leans over the pile of donuts and speaks in a quiet, conspiratorial voice.
“Are you one of those magic people? I’ve seen them, you know. When it’s late like this and nothing’s happening I watch people. It’s not spying really. Just people watching, you know?”
“What have you seen that makes you believe in magic?”
“Sometimes they goof around. Make napkins move or the coffee refill itself.”
I brush off the comment.
“Those just sound like tricks you could learn off YouTube.”
She points at me. “Which is exactly what a magic person would say. You’re going to have to try harder than that to convince me that you didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke.”
“There was smoke?”
“There should be. It would be a much better trick.”
“I’ll remember that.”
She looks down at the table.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Sure. You helped me last night.”
“That’s not what I mean. It was during the whole craziness with the zombies last year. You came in and said you were an angel and that I should go home and lock the doors.”
Right. “I remember that. Only the way I recall it, I didn’t say I was an angel. You did.”
She looks at me hard.
“You saved my life. I never forgot you, but I guess you forgot me.”
“Of course not. You gave me free donuts then, too.”
She smiles again.
“Another question: How did you get all those scars?”
It always comes down to my stupid face.
“All of them? I got them at different times.”
Janet reaches across the table and touches my nose.
“How about that one?”
“You want the truth?”
“Absolutely.”
“It was from a xiangliu. It’s a really big snake. With nine heads.”
She drops her weight against the back of the booth.
“You’ll notice I’m not laughing or mad. Guess why.”
“Why?”
“I believe you.”
I look out the window. A day ago I thought I’d never see Hollywood Boulevard again and here I am now eating donuts with a nice alien.
I say, “It’s okay talking like this.”
“I think so too.”
“But you should know that I’m involved with someone.”
That gets her attention. “Boy or girl?”
“Girl.”
“Where is she?”
“With a friend.”
“It’s three in the morning. Kind of late to be out with a friend.”
“They’re really good friends.”
She pushes some powdered sugar around on the table with her fingertip.
“I’m friendly. Can’t we be friends?”
This is nice and I come up with four thousand reasons why I should leave right now. But I don’t. Instead of saying “Good night,” my mouth says, “Sure. Why not?”
Janet is friendly, and at least for the moment, I’m pretty alone. We drink coffee and talk about nothing. She’s older than I thought.
“I’ve got one of those faces,” she says. “I get carded all the time.”
We talk until the place starts to fill up with people on their way to work. After everything that’s happened, it’s nice to sit and talk to someone who doesn’t know about the awfulness of it. And someone who isn’t scared of my real face.
I look at the clock.
“It’s getting busy. I should give you your booth back.”
“Yeah. I should get going too.”
Before I get up I say, “Let me ask you a question this time.”
“Go for it.”
“If someone moved into a new place, are movie nights something grown-ups do?”
“What kind of movies?”
“That’s the big question. I mean you could have a bad-movie night or a good-movie night.”
“What’s your idea of a bad-movie night?”
“How about Face/Off and Battlefield Earth?”
“A bad Travolta festival. That is pretty bad.”
“Too bad?”
“Not with the right people.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I get up and so does Janet.
She says, “Can I come to your movie night?”
“I didn’t say I was doing it. It’s just something I’m thinking about.”
“Do you like drive-ins?”
“In fact, I’ve had some very intense times at drive-ins.”
She fans herself like she’s scandalized.
“Really?”
“Not like that.”
“The Devil’s Door is having a seventies festival.”
“I heard about that.”
“I’ll remind you the next time you come in.”
“Next time.”
“Aha,” she says. “Then there is a next time.”
“I mean, I come in all the time.”
Janet puts her donuts in a bag.
“Sure, sure. That’s what you meant.”
I nod at the door.
“I should go.”
Janet points over my shoulder.
“Look at those guys,” she says.
When I turn, I feel her put something in my hand. The two guys, however, just sit there.
When I look back for Janet, she’s gone. And she slipped me a piece of paper with her phone number. Nicely done. She has some disappearing tricks too. I start to throw her
number away, but after a moment’s hesitation I put it in my pocket instead.
Maybe I’ll have a movie night after all.
Or maybe steal a car and go to Flicker’s. Not with anyone necessarily. But maybe. Who knows?
I walk down Hollywood Boulevard in the morning sun for a couple of blocks.
Really, whether I have a movie night or not, go to the drive-in or not, it’s good to be alive.
And not a monster in sight.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to my agent, Ginger Clark, and everyone else at Curtis Brown. Thanks also to my editor, David Pomerico, and the whole team at HarperCollins. A special thanks goes to James Sime and Isotope, the best comic shop in San Francisco. As always, thanks to Nicola for everything else.
About the Author
Richard Kadrey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim supernatural noir books. Sandman Slim was included in Amazon’s ‘100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime’ and is in development as a feature film. Some of his other books include The Wrong Dead Guy, The Everything Box, Metrophage, and Butcher Bird. He also writes comics.
RichardKadrey.com
By Richard Kadrey
Sandman Slim
Kill the Dead
Aloha from Hell
Devil Said Bang
Kill City Blues
The Getaway God
Killing Pretty
The Perdition Score
The Kill Society
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