• • •
A day later, give or take a few hours, after a long drunk and a series of nightmares so bad I’m not even going to talk about them, I was back on Planet Apartment, a bit hung over but more or less sober again, and in need of something to do to avoid going seriously, permanently crazy. It wasn’t like the heartache I’d had the first two times Caz had been snatched away from me. I didn’t have the strength for that, I guess. Maybe I had finally accepted the fact that the universe hated me. I felt like I was in a car with the fuel tank almost empty, the engine sputtering, still moving, but pretty soon all the momentum would be gone, and I’d coast to a halt in the middle of big, big nowhere. Until that happened, though, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but keep rolling forward, even though it was all but pointless. There were still some things I didn’t understand, and I figured I might as well satisfy that curiosity while I still had a little strength.
I called the kid and told him to meet me at the Compasses, hoping he’d have a few answers. I still didn’t know why I was even alive and free instead of banged up in Heaven’s equivalent of a supermax detention facility. Our bosses usually don’t like loose ends, and I was about as loose as they came.
To my shock and horror, I discovered that although everything else had been fixed up for me and returned to normal (as if such a thing was even possible), when I checked the parking spot for my apartment I found the same horrible yellow thing I’d been driving, Temuel’s taxicab. Apparently the universe was still having a few laughs at my expense. Just looking at it depressed me, so I decided to walk.
Clarence was waiting when I got there. Quite a few regulars were around as well, and it might have been my imagination, but it seemed like they were all trying not to make it obvious that they were watching me with keen interest. The only person who acted normally was Chico the bartender, who grunted in recognition, slid me a vodka tonic, then went back to cleaning glasses with a bar towel.
“I’m really glad you called me,” Clarence began, but I held up my hand.
“Just a second.” I downed half the drink. “Okay, better. You were saying?”
He gave me a look that had a little too much of Sam in it, except more disapproving. “You don’t need to do that, Bobby.”
“What? Drink? The fuck I don’t. Look, just tell me what you know and don’t slather it with happy-sauce.” I lowered my voice. “What happened? Is Anaita really gone? Dead?”
“Not dead, but definitely in heavenly custody. They froze her in some big blue block of . . . I don’t know what. Then they took her away. I’ve heard she’s already been tried and convicted.”
“What? Tried? You mean they had a trial already—the biggest one in centuries? Was it public?”
“In Heaven?” Clarence snorted. Some of my cynicism appeared to have rubbed off on him. “No. But everyone knows.”
I looked around the bar where everyone knew lots of things that I probably didn’t know. They looked like that didn’t bother them, but it sure bothered me. “What about the Mule? Why won’t he call me?”
Clarence shrugged. “Can’t say. I haven’t heard anything official about him, and I haven’t seen him either. But he’s still in charge of the San Jude departments, as far as I can tell.”
“Shit. They’re just going to sweep the whole Anaita thing under the rug, I bet. Did you make a report?”
“Report?” His smile was not a happy one. “I’ve been grilled by every fixer on Heaven’s payroll, I think. They wanted to know everything. Everything.”
“Shit. And shit. What did you tell them? Did you tell them . . . ?” I looked around. Nobody was paying attention except Monica’s friend Teddy Nebraska, who, as usual of late, was looking at me like he wanted to say something. I didn’t particularly want to be said-something-to, so I looked away. “Did you tell them about Caz?”
“No.” He frowned. “And they didn’t ask. I don’t know why. They didn’t ask about your trip to H-E-double-hockey-sticks, either. But they wanted to know everything about your . . . conflict, I think that was their word, your conflict with Anaita.”
I stared at him. The thing with Clarence, I could never tell if he said things like “H-E-double-hockey-sticks” to be ironic, or if he really was some reincarnated youth minister. “Okay, let me try another one. Why the hell am I free? Why did the cleaning crew go to all the trouble of re-doing my apartment and even filling my fridge with fresh crap I’ll never eat?”
“I don’t know, Bobby. But I think it’s out of our hands now. We just have to wait and see what Heaven decides.”
“Waiting,” I said. “I hate that.” But Teddy Nebraska had apparently decided that he hated waiting, too, and now he was finally making his big move. Clarence and I watched him walk over to our table.
The kid stood up. “I’m going to go get myself another iced tea.”
“Hi, Bobby,” Nebraska said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
I was torn between wondering why Clarence would walk all the way across the room for a drink containing no alcohol and wondering what the hell Nebraska wanted from me. I didn’t know him well, but of course I’d seen him a lot recently, with Monica. He dressed well, but with that faintly overdone look that suggested not too many decades back he would have been wearing a white Panama suit and a straw hat. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Sit down.”
“Thanks.” He slid into the booth and then just sat there. I wondered if he too, like Walter Sanders, had been approached by one of our superiors about me and had only now worked up the courage to tell me (when it was way too late to make any difference).
“What can I do for you?” I asked at last.
“Well, I’ve always admired you, Bobby—”
“Please. Today of all days, that kind of shit just makes my head hurt. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, Nebraska. Me, not so much. So please, just get on with it.”
He took a breath. “I don’t know if you know, but I’ve been seeing Monica Naber. Nahebaroth.”
“Yeah, I know.” If he thought this was the complaints department, I might have to pop him one in the mustache. “So?”
“So, I just wanted to . . . to make sure that was all right with you.”
I stared at him. I honestly thought for a moment he was putting me on. “Let me get this straight—you’re asking me if it’s all right for you to date Monica?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. First time since the snow and ash and the end of the world. “You’re joking, right? You and Monica set this up as a prank?” I pretended to look around for cameras.
Instead of being relieved or pleased, Nebraska seemed worried. “Does that mean it’s okay?”
“You’re serious—you want my permission? Did you tell Monica you were going to do this?”
“She thinks I’m crazy,” he admitted. “But I didn’t want you to think we were sneaking around behind your back. Everybody knows things have been tough for you lately.”
At another time I would have bent one of his fingers until he told me all the things that “everybody” knew, but at this point my shit was so muddled up I didn’t even care. “Look, Ted, Monica is a wonderful person. Well, she’s a wonderful angel—I’m not sure how good any of us are at ‘person.’ But she can make up her own mind, and she can see whoever she wants. Neither of us ever had a claim on each other. Frankly, she deserved better than me, anyway. If you’re the better, more power to you both.”
He looked as if a weight had been lifted. “So we have your blessing?”
I nearly said something mean. It was just so silly. I even looked around to see if Monica was watching, enjoying the whole stupid conversation, but the Compasses was pretty much stag right then, just a bunch of the boys in various states of looseness. Daytime tends to be guys-only, not because women aren’t welcome, but because most females have the sense not to spend the sunshine hours in a saloon. And as I looked around and realized I was really back—maybe not the same, but back on my home turf—a tiny bit of hopelessness lifted off me. Not enough, mind you. I still couldn’t imagine living much beyond the next day without Caz and Sam, I still couldn’t believe there was anything on this gray planet to keep me here, but at least I could see a little farther through the darkness than when I came in.