Part 4 (1/2)
I turn in my seat and look at Evelyn and t.i.tus. He has Aki's ring in one hand and the photo in the other. His eyes are half closed and he's whispering an incantation. Evelyn hangs on his every word. She doesn't look happy, but maybe a little more hopeful.
I'm suddenly aware that while I'm watching t.i.tus, pretty much everyone else in the bar is watching me. I'd like to think they're staring because of my white-hot animal magnetism, but I know I'm not Elvis. I'm Lobster Boy, hear me roar.
Carlos gives me the tamales in a Styrofoam carrier.
Thanks and good night. Be sure to tip your waitresses.
I leave through a shadow near the fire exit in back.
YOU KNOW HOW they put out oil well fires by setting off an explosion that's so big it snuffs out the first fireball with a bigger one? Sometimes the only way to get past something impa.s.sable is to smash it with itself. Like kills like. When you live with a dead man's head that won't shut up and smokes all your cigarettes, the only way to deal with the awfulness is to make it so unbelievably awful that it becomes kind of weirdly beautiful. Like an exploding giraffe full of fireworks. (h.e.l.lions really know how to throw a birthday party.) Kasabian calls it his ”p.u.s.s.y wagon,” but I can't go there, so I call it the ”magic carpet.” Really it's a polished mahogany deck about the size of a dinner plate, supported by a dozen articulated bra.s.s legs. When I brought it home from Muninn's-partial payment for a quick smash-and-grab job-one end of the deck was loaded down with prisms, mirrors, and gears that must have meshed with another long-lost machine. The top is covered in what looked like teeth marks and stained with something black. I don't want to know what used to drive the thing or what happened to it.
After I unscrewed and sawed off all the extra hardware, I let Kasabian take it out for a test drive. What do you know? His low-rent, third-rate hoodoo was just powerful enough to keep the bra.s.s legs in sync, so he can move around on his own now. It's nice not to have to carry Kasabian everywhere anymore, but it means that every day I come home to a chain-smoking Victorian centipede.
He's standing on what used to be the video bootlegging table and using his bra.s.s legs to tap numbers into a PC. Ever since he got mobile, Kasabian has been doing Max Overload's books again. He and Allegra set up a little in-store wireless network so he can do the banking and buy new inventory online. Race with the Devil, a decent piece of mid-seventies trash with Warren Oates and Peter Fonda trying to outrun a bunch of rural devil wors.h.i.+ppers, plays on a monitor next to the PC. Ever since his visit Downtown, Kasabian has been on a devil movie kick. He doesn't look up when he hears me come in.
”So, how did it go?” He turns and looks at me. ”Oh, that bad.”
”Just about that bad, Alfredo Garcia.”
”I told you not to call me that.”
”I had to go Wild Bunch in the theater. Left me in a Peck-inpah state of mind.”
”Did you get paid, at least?”
”Yeah, here's the big money. Plus the usual deductions.”
I drop the check next to the keyboard. Kasabian pinches the ends of the check between two of his bra.s.s legs and holds it up to read it.
”That p.r.i.c.k. He just does this to humiliate you. It makes him feel better about not being able to do the stuff you can do and needing you for his dirty work. It's pure envy.”
”Yeah, it's a glamorous life here in Graceland.”
I pick up the bottle of Jack Daniel's from the bedside table and pour some into the same gla.s.s I've been using for three days.
”And he's trying to keep us on the hook by starving us. You know that, right? You ought to let me hex his a.s.s.”
I sip the Jack. It's good, but after the Aqua Regia, it's about as potent as cherry Kool-Aid.
”Save your hoodoo for real work. And, technically, he's only starving me. If he knew about you, he'd s.h.i.+t his heart out.”
”Great, get him up here. I'll video it and put it up on YouTube.”
”Aelita would be the fun one to get on tape. I'm an Abomination, but I don't even know if angels have a word for you.”
”One does. 'Hey, s.h.i.+thead.'”
”Lucifer always had a way with words. He's just like Bob Dylan, but without all the annoying talent.”
”That's hilarious. He loves it when you say stuff like that. Every time you do, he turns up the temperature Downtown ten degrees.”
”Then he should be able to cook biscuits on his t.i.ts by now.”
”I'll ask him for you.”
”No, you won't. When you download your brain or play video highlights or whatever it is you do for the old man, you'll only show him what you want him to see. You hold back crumbs 'cause when you know something he doesn't it gives you power. Just like you hold back things from me. And I hold back things from you and he holds back things from both of us. We're a little cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k of liars.”
Kasabian nods to the Styrofoam container I set on the bed when I ditched my weapons.
”Do I smell tamales?”
”Yeah, you want them? I lost my appet.i.te.”
Kasabian kneels down on six of his legs and hangs over the edge of the table. He uses four of his free legs to open the door of the minifridge I installed and uses two more legs to grab a bottle of Corona. He pops the top off the beer while pulling himself back onto the table and waggles a bunch of his other legs at me like a h.o.r.n.y lobster.
”Slip me some crimson, Jimson.”
I hand him the container.
”Don't forget your bucket.”
”Have I ever?”
”I just don't want a first time.”
He doesn't answer. He's already diving into Carlos's spicy tamales, working a plastic fork with two of his front legs. After each bite of food, a glob that looks like white-orange putty oozes from the bottom of his neck, through the hole I drilled in the magic carpet and into a blue kid-size plastic beach bucket. There's a pop-top trash can at the end of that table. Kasabian is good about dumping his scat when he's done, but he's short, so he needs me to step on the pedal to open the top. It's nice to be needed.
I'm not in the mood for Cirque de Puke right now, so I find a pad and pencil and try to remember what Eleanor's monster belt buckle looked like. Alice was the artist in my family. Even my handwriting made my teachers weep. When I'm done, I have a sketch that's pretty good if I was a half-blind mental patient in the last stages of tertiary syphilis. I hold it up so Kasabian can see it.
”You recognize this?”
”I'm on my lunch hour, man.”
”Just look at the G.o.dd.a.m.n paper.”
He doesn't move his head from the food, just swivels his eyes and squints at the image.
”Nope. Never seen it before. What is it, some monster you're supposed to kill or have you started dating again?”
”It's something I saw today. Like a belt buckle or an icon or something. I didn't think much about it at the time, but it's been bugging me.”
”I don't recognize it.”
Plop goes the tamale putty.
”Can you check it out in the Codex?”
Now he turns to look at me. He hates it when I ask him to look things up. I'm not even supposed to know about the Daimonion Codex.
”I don't think so. Someone's using it. Occupado, you know?”