Niko turns toward the curb and hoods his eyes against the glare. For a moment the only three sounds are the intermittent wind, the wet smack and pop of Phil’s gum, and the subtle purr of a rare and immaculately maintained twelve-cylinder engine as the Black Taxi idles by the curb with the Driver holding open the suicide door.
THE BLACK TAXI cruises empty Sunset Boulevard in the middle of the sunny afternoon. From the spacious passenger compartment Niko looks in wonder at lighted traffic signals, storefront neon, motionless streets. Somehow Los Angeles has evacuated ten million people but left everything running as if they will return at any moment. An urban Marie Celeste. Not a car in sight. Litter-free streets. Clear air. Unnerving quiet. The only sound the deep gargle of the Franklin’s engine.
Niko looks away from the window. Beside him Phil texts on his iPhone and ignores their surround. Between them lies the guitar case. There’s plenty of room for it on the facing seat but Niko prefers it close at hand and between himself and Phil.
Straightbacked and unwavering the Driver steers them east through Hollywood not half a mile from where the Checker Cab pursued this very car through Friday evening traffic a thousand years ago when mortals ruled the earth. They pass the Hollywood Palladium. Amazing how fast you travel in an empty city.
Niko leans back on the leather seat. Smells of leather, lemon oil. Birdseye maple sidepanels polished to a liquid gloss. The ride quiet yet surprisingly rough. Well, fortyfive hundred pounds of car on an old leafspring suspension on illkept L.A. roads. But apart from jostling the car itself is unaffected by the world. The ridged rubber siderunners bear no hint of wear or even shoeprint. No trace of blemish mars the paint. The spotless chrome displays no pitting. The windshield glass so clear it’s hard to see the frame holds glass at all. Bugless prow of huge front grille. Clear and spotless rings of whitewall tires. Beehive hinges on the suicide doors. Deep maroon upholstery pristine. Thick layered glossy paint like liquid holding shape through some miracle of surface tension. The Franklin’s utter black is even more amazing in the sunlit day. They travel like a carshaped hole along the boulevard.
Niko bolts upright.
The smooth white balls of Phil’s blank eyes peer over the top of his shades. “Forget something, Niko-lirium?”
Niko sits back and looks out the window. “No. Nothing. This is all just too strange, that’s all.” In truth he hasn’t forgotten something, he’s remembered something. In his coat pocket is a little box and in the little box is the spare key to this very car.
Niko tries to quell his sudden urgency. What’re you gonna do, cowboy, wait’ll they stop to take a leak and boost the car and drive it home? Sure your house is less than five miles from here, but look around you. This might be L.A. but it sure as hell ain’t your L.A.
Nonetheless the knowledge of the spare key on his person reassures. An ace up his sleeve.
At Western they turn left and head north toward the Hollywood hills. Western hooks right to become Los Feliz Boulevard and they speed along the undulating road. Before Hillhurst Niko sees a sign and realizes where they’re headed.
Phil sees the sign as well and frowns. “Aw, Niko-lizer. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
The sign whips past.
Niko leans back in the seat again and shuts his eyes. “It still is. Heck, I haven’t been to the observatory in years.”
A long quiet pause. The Black Taxi hangs a left and begins to climb the hill in earnest. Then a hand claps Niko’s thigh and a sharp barking laugh opens his eyes. “Niko-median. You had me going for a second there.”
Niko turns away again. “You’ve had me going a lot longer than that,” he tells the window.
IT ISN’T THAT the show will start soon. It’s that it never stopped. Phil was right. All that changes are the masks we wear. I was born for this moment. Have been borne toward this moment many times before. Chained to the turning of the wheel. And what brings me round to this point every time, what makes the wheel turn in the first place, is my belief that I can free myself from its vicious circle.
Then why bother? What’s different this time around?
In the cradle of his nemesis he rocks toward his culmination as the Franklin climbs and climbs the winding way.
Jemma. Jemma’s different this time round. She doesn’t belong here chained to someone else’s story. She deserves better. She always did. And if I can only get her out of this it doesn’t matter what becomes of me. I will have broken the circle. Sometimes victory and success are not the same.
Can you do this?
They break from the treelined residential section. Niko looks at his guitar case. In the light of day it’s really beat to shit. He sets his hand upon it as if feeling for a pulse.
Phil looks up from his cellphone. “Flop sweat, Niko-star?”
Niko looks at him and marvels that he doesn’t feel a thing. Out there on that empty plain he really did surrender something. “Weapons check.”
THE BLACK TAXI pulls up smoothly to the curb beside the unattended box office near the entrance to the Greek Theatre. The Driver gets out and holds open Phil’s door. Niko grabs his guitar and gets out of the big black car. He stares pointedly across the roof at the Driver but the Driver looks into some middle distance that renders Niko invisible.
The Driver shuts the door and takes up station beside the Franklin.
Niko faces the theatre entrance. The hot and steady wind feels cleansing on his face. Phil comes up beside him, hands in pockets and smacking gum. “Nice venue.”
Niko shrugs. “Never played it.”
“You kidding? You’ve played the Greek for ages.”
“Cute.” Niko heads toward a turnstile.
Phil stops him with a hand on his arm. “Make you a deal.”
Niko does not look back. Through the gate he sees the scalloped rows of open air seats. “Blow off the gig,” Phil says. “Get in the car and go straight to your front door. The real one in the real L.A. No strings, no catch. You go home no worse off than when you started, you don’t come back, and we call it even and the original Deal still holds. No harm no foul. What do you say?”
Niko imagines it. Going back home to his life and picking up the pieces and plunging back in to the remainder of his mortal days. With Jemma left down here. He shrugs off Phil’s hand and walks toward the turnstile.
“Okay. Final offer.”
This time Niko doesn’t even slow.
“Blow off the show and go back home and I tear up your contract. Null and void. We don’t owe you and you don’t owe us. Even steven, just like we never met. How about it?”
At the turnstile Niko stops. “And Jemma?”
Phil looks around as if asking Do you believe this guy. “Niko, buddy, be reasonable. While you’re at it why don’t you ask me to go back in time and make sure Eve is herpephobic? We can’t walk away with nothing. Just like you don’t go back to nothing. She’s dead and that’s forever, like the songs all say. Let it go.”
Now Niko turns around and looks at Phil and Phil’s expression falls as Niko slowly, coldly smiles.
NIKO ENTERS THE South Terrace near the stage. The bowl of empty seats curves up before him. The proscenium has been built to suggest a classic Greek design. Niko has been here many times, or at least been to its doppelganger on the populated earth, but only to attend shows, never to play one.
A large band on the stage stands mute with silent instruments. As Niko climbs onto the stage they do not look at him but stare blankly outward. Niko recognizes most of them. Some he’s met before, others he knows from grainy pictures on old album art. A bony man wearing halfrim glasses and a shapeless fedora sits before a battered upright piano. A man with a pale and angular face shadowed by his broadrimmed black hat wears a serape over one shoulder and his guitar on the other. A ruddyfaced man with a hangdog look holds a harmonica limply in his gnarled hands. A heavyset man stands like a zombie with his alto sax before him. Motionless behind their mic stands are a very dark woman with a rotting orchid above her ear and a small pale woman with long kinked hair. There are many others, fallen stars and great unknowns now summoned forth from their torments to hear one of their own howl out his pain and so compound their own.