“You ladies doing all right back there?” he asked as he gunned the Roadmaster out of the turnout and back onto Highway 80. The big V-8 rumbled and the four chrome ports down each side of the hood blinked as if startled out of a nap, then opened to draw more air into the infernal engine. The tail of the Buick dipped and the grinning chrome mouth of the grille gulped desert air like a whale shark sucking down krill. Far below the crusty strata, long-dead dinosaurs wept for the liquid remains of their brethren consumed by the creamy, jaundiced leviathan.
“Was that them?” came a female voice from inside the trunk behind the bloodred leather backseat.
“That sounded like them,” another female voice.
“Y’all can take a peek, you need to be sure,” said the man in yellow. “Trunk ain’t locked.”
“You should go faster,” said a third voice.
“They sound close,” said the first. “Are they close?”
“They won’t catch us,” said the yellow fellow. “Them goggies ain’t shit.”
“I hate those things. They’re so barky.” said the second voice.
“So bitey,” said another.
“Well, they loves y’all,” said the yellow fellow. “That’s why y’all are along.”
“Can they bite through this metal? because I don’t think I’m ready for the above?”
“No, not in the light. Not yet.”
“Macha, remember that time they almost tore you apart?”
“I’ma slow up a bit, ladies, so they stay close.”
A chorus of “No!” and “Oh, fuck no!” erupted from behind the seat.
Just yards behind, the hellhounds heard the voices, answered with enraged howls, and quickened their pace. The Buick jerked with impact, something hitting the rear, tearing metal, once, then again. The ladies in the dark screeched. The driver checked his side mirror and, finding it overflowing with angry dog face, slammed the accelerator to the floor, because while “them goggies might not be shit,” he did not particularly want to be proven wrong by being reduced to yellow specks in great piles of hellhound poo dropped across the Nevada desert.
“I want to make Salt Lake before they know what happened,” said the driver.
“What’s at Salt Lake?” asked one of the trunk voices.
“They’s a portal there that these motherfuckers don’t know about.”
“To the Underworld? We just got out of the Underworld.”
The yellow fellow chuckled. “Relax, ladies. We gonna dump these goggies in Salt Lake, keep ’em out of my business in San Francisco. I’ll have y’all back in some less portable darkness lickity-split, then y’all can freshen up.”
“What about the child?” asked one of the voices.
“We cross that bridge when we get to it,” said the yellow fellow.
“She’s worse than the hounds.”
“Nemain!”
“Well, she is.”
“You know, it’s not so bad in here,” said Babd, changing the subject.
“Plenty of room. And it’s not damp.”
“And it’s warm.”
“You want,” said the driver, “y’all can stay there when we get back to the city. I get you some curtains and cushions and whatnot.”
He smiled to himself. Through many centuries and many incarnations, he had learned one universal truth: bitches love them some cushions.
They sped on, and after the two unfortunate bites, stayed just far enough ahead of Alvin and Mohammed so that from a distance, the hellhounds might appear to be particularly animated clouds of black smoke emitted from the tailpipes. They were creatures of fire and force, pursuing a yellow Buick with a creamy-white top through the desert. Like many supernatural creatures, they winked in and out of the visible spectrum as they moved, so when a highway patrolman outside of Elko, Nevada, looked up from his radar readout, first he blinked, then he was tempted to radio up the road to his colleague and say, “Hey, did you just see two pony-sized black dogs, doing seventy, pursuing a giant slice of lemon meringue pie?” Then he thought, No, perhaps I’ll keep that to myself.
About that same time, five hundred miles west, in the Mission District of San Francisco, a Buddhist nun and little crocodile-wizard guy were working out the finer points of a murder.
“Is it really murder,” said Audrey, “if he is going to jump anyway?”
“I’m pretty sure it is,” said Charlie. “I think the Buddha said that one should never injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. If we know he’s going to jump and we don’t stop him, I think we’re going against whatever sutra that is.”
“First, that is not a sutra, that’s Asimov’s First Law of Robotics, from I, Robot, and second, we’re not just allowing him to harm himself, we’re trying to get him to do it on a schedule.”
“I didn’t know Isaac Asimov was a Buddhist,” said Charlie. “Buddhist robots. Ha!”
“Asimov wasn’t. But the robots thing is close. I mean, you”— she was about to say, You are kind of a Buddhist robot, but instead she said, “You know those terra-cotta warriors they found in China, buried since the second century B.C.? Those were kind of supposed to be Buddhist robots. The Emperor Qin Shi Huang was going to have a priest use the p’howa of forceful projection I used on the Squirrel People to put soldiers’ souls in the terra-cotta soldiers, making himself an indestructible army. It might have worked if they’d filled them with meat.”
“You said that Buddhism didn’t come to China until the fifth century.” Charlie had always had a difficult time understanding Buddhism.
“It was always there, they just didn’t call it Buddhism. Buddha was just a guy who pointed out some fairly obvious things, so we call it Buddhism. Otherwise we’d just have to call it everything.”
“Sometimes I think you’re just making up Buddhism as you go along.”
“Exactly.” Audrey grinned. Charlie grinned back and Audrey shuddered. She would not miss all those teeth grinning at her. She had been under pressure when she’d put his body together, but given the opportunity to build her perfect man again, she would definitely go with fewer teeth.
“Maybe this Sullivan guy is in someone’s calendar,” Charlie said. “If Minty can find his name on one of the Death Merchants’ calendars, then we’ll know his death is inevitable. In a way, we’ll be saving him, or his body, at least?”
“He still has to offer his body as a vessel for your soul. He must do it willingly or the Chöd ritual won’t work. I’m not sure it will work, anyway, Charlie. I’ve never done it. I don’t know if anyone has ever done it.”
“Well, Lily’s going to ask him. If he says yes, we’re good to go.”
“Would you believe Lily if she told you that she needed your permission to move a new soul into your body, and in order to do that, you had to jump off a bridge at a certain time?”
“I would. Lily is very trustworthy. She worked for me for six years and never stole anything. Except the Great Big Book of Death.” Charlie scratched under his long, lower jaw, wishing he had a beard, even a chin, to stroke thoughtfully. “Okay, that caused problems, but otherwise . . . Yes, good point. But he told her a ghost talked him into this and she believed him, so he kind of owes her.”
“Really?” She raised a questioning eyebrow.
“You’re right, we should go talk to him.”
“Charlie, you know I adore you, but I’m not sure that the finer essence of your being will shine through to a stranger, in a first meeting, and we are asking this guy to believe something that sounds, if not impossible, certainly preposterous.”
“I know. That’s the beauty of it. I’m like the preposterous poster child.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“Fine. Maybe just brush your hair to the side so it’s soft, nonintimidating,” Charlie suggested.
“Wha
t’s wrong with my hair?”
“Nothing. So you studied robots in the monastery? Who would have thought.”
Because her discipline stressed living in the moment, and not obsessing on the past or the future, Audrey found herself more than somewhat off balance when Mike Sullivan answered his door.
“Hi, Audrey,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Mike.” Dark, short hair; light eyes, green, maybe hazel, kind.
He was younger than she expected, even though Lily had told her that he was in his early to midthirties, and he was better-looking than she’d expected, even though Lily had also mentioned that he was not unpleasant to look upon. What surprised her most was that he was so healthy and alive, because in the past, everyone she had prepared for bardo, the transition between life and death, had been sick and dying, and most often old. Mike Sullivan did not look like a man who was dying.
She shook his hand and let him lead her into his second-story apartment, which took up the middle floor of a Victorian in the Richmond District, adjacent to Golden Gate Park. She felt prickly and self-conscious as she sat on the couch and watched him move around the apartment, playing host, getting them tea, relaxed, barefoot, in old jeans and a T-shirt. Despite her training to stay focused on the moment, she glimpsed into the future, and she realized that if everything went as it was supposed to, in a few days she’d be shagging this guy. She blushed; she could feel the heat rise in her cheeks, and she realized he must see it.
“You’re not what I expected,” Mike Sullivan said. “The director of a Buddhist center—although I don’t know what I expected.”
“That’s okay,” said Audrey; she touched her hair, which she’d spun into a bun behind her head, so that wasn’t what he meant. “There aren’t many women in my sect, even in the East. I’m privileged to have my position.”
Mike sat down on the edge of a recliner across the coffee table from her and leaned forward. “From what Lily tells me, you’re one of a kind.”
Audrey felt herself blush again and suddenly, and for no reason she could think, thought of poor Lizzie from Pride and Prejudice, and then remembered how she also felt that Lizzie, nay, all of the Bennet women, in fact, all of the characters in P&P could have benefited from a good roundhouse kick to the head, and how, if she kept blushing, she should ask this guy to deliver one to her. (Despite what she had told Charlie, she did know a little kung fu, which she had learned in college, at San Francisco State, not in a monastery in Tibet. Namaste.)
“Mike, you should know, I’ve never done this before. I have transferred conciousnesses from people to, uh, other entities, many times, actually, but not anything like this. I don’t even know if Chöd works. I mean, I’ve read scrolls written about people in the mountains who gave their bodies up for an enlightened being, but I’ve never seen it.”
“I figured,” said Mike. He smiled.
“So if you’re going to do this, you should go into it prepared for your life to simply end, as all our lives will end. Part of you will endure either way, but you shouldn’t do this just to offer up your body.”
“I know,” said Mike. “I know all that. I’ve always known that. I’m not doing this for your friend.”
“You need to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“And you understand that if it works, someone else will be walking around in your body. If someone you know sees him on the street, they’ll think it’s you. Your friends, your family.”
“I don’t have any family, and no close friends.”
Audrey paused. She wasn’t sure how to react to that. Well, she wanted to ask why not, but that seemed a bit cruel, considering why she was here.
“Audrey, I’ll be honest, I have never really connected with anyone. I mean, I’ve had girlfriends, even serious ones, but they’ve always left, and I’ve always let them. I’m not sad, or heartbroken, I just go to work the next day and try to do my job. Another girl comes along, and then we’re off to the races until the race ends again. Same with friends. I get along with people, I like listening to them, I play in a softball league with some cool guys, but if they all went away tomorrow I’d be fine. My folks are dead, my brother and I have been out of touch for years, all the rest of my extended family is all over the country and we don’t see one another. Not bad blood, just blood. I guess I only realized after these people, these ghosts, came to me on the bridge, but I’ve been like a ghost for a long time. It sounds like this friend of yours can put better use to this body than I ever have. He’s welcome to it.”
Audrey was breathless. He was so calm about it, so sure. This was the place you tried to get people to in bardo, to accept their death as part of their life, as a door through which all must pass, will pass, and have passed. He was standing calmly in the doorway, unafraid. It was the sexiest thing she’d ever encountered, and if it weren’t for Charlie, she would have wrestled him to the couch and screwed his brains out right then. No. From desire comes suffering. And besides, she could jump him after he was dead. Her Buddhist practice had suffered somewhat, she realized, since coming back to the States.
“Mike, have you thought about something less violent? Carbon monoxide? Pills?” Was she actually planning a murder with the victim?
“No, it has to be the bridge. That’s where I’m going. I mean, that’s why I’m going. Concepción, did Lily tell you about her?”
“Yes, but I don’t know about any Ghost Thief. I’ve never even heard the term before.”
Mike nodded, looked into his teacup, which he held loosely by the edge between his knees. “I figured. But they need me.”
“For what?”
“Don’t know.” He shrugged, smiled. “If your Charlie said he needed you, would you ask him what for?”
Oh yes, she was going to do him until he begged her to stop. He’d be lucky if he could walk straight when she was done with him.
She cleared her throat, fidgeted. “I guess not,” she said demurely.
She really did need to get laid more than once every twelve years. This must be what it’s like for locusts. Long periods of dormancy followed by crazy tantric bug-fucks. Maybe not.
She cleared her throat again, hoping it would clear her restless mind as well. “Well, we’ll have to be there, when you . . . when you . . .”
“Jump?” he offered.
“Really, do you have to jump? Maybe you can crawl up in a cubbyhole with a bottle of sleeping pills? You don’t have to jump, do you?”
“I think I do. Believe me, that part sort of gives me the willies. I mean, if you’re up on the bridge five days a week for ten years, there’s not five minutes that pass that it doesn’t occur to you that you are just one mistake from plummeting to your death.”
“That’s it!” she said.
“That’s what?”
“That’s why you’re who you are. That’s why you can do this, why we’ll be able to do this. Probably. You’ve lived every day of your life preparing for your death.”
“Not really preparing.”
“But you’re not afraid when you’re up there, right?”
“No. Well, I was a little bugged out when the ghosts first showed up.”
“But you’re aware, always.”
“You kind of have to be.”
“We can do this, Mike.” She put her tea down and reached out for his hands. He put his tea down and took her hands across the table.
“I’m sure we can do this; we just have to coordinate everything.”
“One thing . . .”
“Yes?”
“Can you pull me out of my body before I hit the water? I kind of don’t want to be there.”
“I think that’s going to be on you—the timing of your part of the ritual.”
“Great. I’m in. Now what?”
“Well, there’s your life to close up. Charlie’s g
oing to have to sort of take over for you, at least for a while. Because even though you jump off the bridge, and you die, to everyone else it will appear that you survived.”
“So, what? You want me to close my credit cards, stuff like that? Get my affairs in order?”
“I guess just do things to make it easier for Charlie to move from your life to his.”
“And now his soul is trapped in some kind of jar? A vessel? Lily wasn’t clear.”
“Sure, let’s say vessel. Some kind of vessel.”
“Poor guy. And he has a little girl. You know, I wouldn’t believe any of this if the ghosts hadn’t appeared to me. I mean, Concepción was the one who told me to call Lily. A ghost! Who would have believed that?”
“I know,” said Audrey. “I’ve trained for this kind of thing for most of my adult life and it wigs me out a little.”
“I love her,” said Mike. “I’ve never been in love, but I love her.”
“Yes,” said Audrey, patting his hand.
“The ghost.”
“Right, I know,” said Audrey. “Let’s make lists. Lists will help. Let’s start with ten things to keep you from getting too broken when you fall hundreds of feet into the bay.”
So, I guess we’re going to kill this guy, she thought. Then she said, “How does Thursday look for you?”
13
The Shadow of a Thousand Birds
Minty Fresh had felt dread rising like acid in his throat since Rivera first showed up in his shop with the story of the banshee, but never had it been more immediate than when he walked into the pawnshop in the Fillmore to find Ray Macy standing behind a glass case full of watches and jewelry. Ray had worked with Lily at Charlie Asher’s secondhand store. Lily had described the fortyish, balding ex-cop as her nemesis, her natural enemy, and a fucktard of astounding density. Minty tried to dismiss Ray as just more of the saturated humanity that lived under the wide spray of Lily’s contempt sprinkler, except that the ex-cop had become openly hostile when Lily and Minty Fresh closed Charlie’s store to open their pizza and jazz joint. Shortly afterward, Ray moved out of Charlie’s building and Fresh thought he’d seen the last of him. But no, here he was, guarding the gate, so to speak, to the only living Death Merchant Fresh knew besides Charlie and Rivera. It was cool. He was cool.