“Did you get some sloppy joe?” asked best friend number three. Despite the hundred-degree heat, she wore a pink sweatsuit emblazoned with rhinestone poodles and carried a nervous little black poodle under her arm everywhere she went. The dog licked her potato salad while she was distracted by talking to Charlie. “I don’t know if your mother ever ate sloppy joe. Only thing I ever saw her take in was an old-fashioned. She did enjoy her cocktails.”
“Yes, she did,” Charlie said. “And I think I’m going to go enjoy one myself, right now.”
Charlie had flown into Sedona that morning after spending the night in San Francisco trying to find the two overdue soul vessels. Although he couldn’t find a burial notice for Esther Johnson, the pretty brunette woman at her house had told him that she had been interred the day after he’d first gone to the house in the Haight, and he assumed that the soul vessel had been, once again, buried with her. (Was the brunette’s name Elizabeth? Of course it was Elizabeth, he was fooling himself to even pretend to forget. Beta Males do not forget the names of pretty women. Charlie could remember the name of the centerfold of the first Playboy he’d ever swiped from the shelves in his dad’s shop. He even remembered that her turnoffs were bad breath, mean people, and genocide, and resolved that he would never have, be, or commit any of those things, just in case he ran into her sometime when she was casually sunning her breasts on the hood of a car.) There was no trace of the other woman, Irena Posokovanovich, who was supposed to have died days ago. No notice, no records at hospitals, no one living in her house. It was as if she’d evaporated, and taken her soul vessel with her. He had a couple more weeks to get to the third name in his date book, but he wasn’t sure what he was going to have to deal with to get to it. Darkness was rising.
Someone beside him said, “Small talk doesn’t really get any smaller than when you’ve lost a loved one, huh?”
Charlie turned toward the voice, surprised to see Vern Glover, diminutive Death Merchant, munching some coleslaw and ranch beans.
“Thanks for coming,” Charlie said automatically.
Vern waved off the thanks with his plastic fork. “You saw the shadow?”
Charlie nodded. When he’d gotten to his mother’s house this morning, the shadow of the mesa had reached his mother’s front yard, and the calls of the carrion birds that churned in its edges were deafening. “You didn’t tell me that no one else could see it. I called my sister from San Francisco to check the progress, but she didn’t see anything.”
“Sorry, they can’t see it—at least as far as I’ve ever been able to tell they can’t. It was gone for five days. It came back this morning.”
“When I came back?”
“I guess. Did we cause this? Doughnuts and coffee and it’s the end of the world?”
“I missed two souls back home,” Charlie said, smiling at a gentleman in burgundy golf wear who held his hand to his heart in sympathy as he passed them.
“Missed? Did the—what did you call them—the sewer harpies get them?”
“Could be,” Charlie said. “But whatever is happening, it seems to be following me.”
“Sorry,” Vern said. “I’m glad we talked, though. I don’t feel so alone.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said.
“And sorry about your mother,” Vern added quickly. “You okay?”
“Hasn’t even hit me yet,” Charlie said. “I guess I’m an orphan.”
“I’ll make sure and check out whoever gets her necklace,” Vern said. “I’ll be careful with it.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said. “You think we have any control over who gets the soul next? I mean really. The Great Big Book says it will move on as it should.”
“I guess,” Vern said. “Every time I’ve sold one the glow has gone out right away. If it wasn’t the right person, that wouldn’t happen, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Charlie said. “So there is some order to this.”
“You’re the expert,” Vern said—then he dropped his fork. “Who is that? She’s so hot.”
“That’s my sister,” Charlie said. Jane was coming across the room toward them. She was wearing Charlie’s charcoal double-breasted Armani and the strappy black pumps; her platinum hair was lacquered into thirties finger waves, which flowed out from under a small black hat with a veil that covered her face down to her lips, which shone like red Ferraris. To Charlie, she looked, as usual, like the cross between a robot assassin and a Dr. Seuss character, but if he tried to squint past the fact that she was his sister, and a lesbian, and his sister, then he could possibly see how the hair, lips, and sheer linear altitude of her might strike someone as hot. Especially someone like Vern, who would require climbing equipment and oxygen to scale a woman Jane’s height.
“Vern, I’d like you to meet my incredibly hot sister, Jane. Jane, this is Vern.”
“Hi, Vern.” Jane took Vern’s hand and the Death Merchant winced at her grip.
“Sorry for your loss,” Vern said.
“Thanks,” Jane said. “Did you know our mother?”
“Vern knew her very well,” Charlie said. “In fact, it was one of Mom’s dying wishes that you let Vern buy you a doughnut. Wasn’t it, Vern?”
Vern nodded so hard that Charlie thought he could hear vertebrae cracking.
“Her dying wish,” Vern said.
Jane didn’t move, or say anything. Because her eyes were covered, Charlie couldn’t see her expression, but he guessed that she might be trying to burn holes in his aorta with her laser-beam vision.
“You know, Vern, that would be lovely, but could I take a rain check? We just buried my mother and I have some things to go over with my brother.”
“That’s fine,” Vern said. “And it doesn’t have to be a doughnut, if you’re watching your figure. You know, a salad, coffee, anything.”
“Sure,” Jane said. “Since it’s what Mom wanted. I’ll give you a call. Charlie told you I’m a lesbian, though, right?”
“Oh my God,” Vern said. He almost doubled over with excitement before he remembered that he was at a postfuneral potluck and he was openly imagining a ménage à trois with the deceased’s daughter. “Sorry,” he squealed.
“See you, Vern,” Charlie said as his sister hustled him toward the kitchen cubicle of the clubhouse. “I’ll e-mail you about that other thing.”
As soon as they rounded the corner into the kitchen Jane punched Charlie in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.
“What were you thinking?” Jane hissed. She flipped back her veil so he could see just how pissed off she was, just in case the punch in the breadbasket hadn’t conveyed the message.
Charlie was gasping and laughing at the same time. “It’s what Mom would have wanted.”
“My mom just died, Charlie.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “But you have no idea what you’ve just done for that guy in there.”
“Really?” Jane raised an eyebrow.
“He will remember this day always,” Charlie said. “That guy will never again have a sexual fantasy in which you do not walk through, probably wearing borrowed shoes.”
“And you don’t find that creepy?”
“Well, yes, you’re my sister, but it’s a seminal moment for Vern.”
Jane nodded. “You’re a pretty good guy, Charlie, looking out for a tiny stranger like that.”
“Yeah, well, you know—”
“For an ass bag!” Jane said as she sank a fist into Charlie’s solar plexus.
Strangely, as he gasped for breath, Charlie felt that wherever his mother was right now, she was pleased with him.
Bye, Mom, he thought.
PART THREE
BATTLEGROUND