I rolled my eyes. I was going to have to go in and mend fences at Packages Plus, I could see.
“And we buy this at store. But why you need sugar, Bobby?” Oxana passed me a family-sized bag of C and H granular. “You make some cake?”
“Ha ha,” I said. “I’m going to do a little cooking, yes. I have an important meeting tomorrow, and I’d like to take some treats.” I hadn’t told them about my invitation to meet von Reinmann and his Black Sun buddies yet, so I outlined it in quick strokes.
Halyna was so upset she pulled the car over to the shoulder, right on the Woodside Expressway, which even in the middle of the afternoon, an hour before the commute really got going, was still a bad idea. Horns blasted as the drivers behind us had to press themselves all the way over to the driver’s side of the lane to get by. “You don’t do that! You don’t go alone! They are killers!”
“Just get back on the road please,” I said. “I know what I’m doing. People have been trying to kill me since you were in kindergarten. You may notice that I’m still here.”
“But you don’t know these men. The Black Sun—they are very, very bad. They have powers!”
“Hey, a lot of the folks who hate on me aren’t even human,” I said, but I didn’t make a point of it. I was pretty sure the Amazons still didn’t know I was anything other than another mortal dude, and if I was lucky, Ballsack von Ryebread and his little group didn’t know either. I know it seems like my secret identity is secret to no one, but that’s because most of the people I hang out with already know. The rest of the folks in San Judas who know me think I’m an ordinary guy who just gets into slightly extraordinary situations from time to time.
• • •
For some reason, the Amazons thought me cooking in my boxer shorts was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
“Look, I’m not just doing this to give you a thrill, ladies. I’m working with some very nasty stuff here, and I only have so many decent pairs of pants.”
“No, is good,” said Oxana. “You have very nice leg.”
“Legs,” Halyna corrected her. “He has two.”
“Maybe she only likes one of them,” I suggested. “Hand me that little plastic jar over there, will you?”
While I was stirring, I asked the Amazons to put on some music. Oxana chose. After about ninety seconds of the ghastly Europop dance music had jolted my brain like badly-administered electroshock, I put down my spoon and changed it for something that worked a bit better with precision and potentially explosive chemicals, in this case Nina Simone’s first album, Little Girl Blue.
“You are old!” said Oxana.
“No, is nice,” Halyna said, listening. “She has a lot of . . . person in her voice.”
“Absolutely right,” I said. “You have that pair of shoes?”
“Why you want shoes?” Halyna said. “And so boring shoes?”
“Because I wouldn’t do this to a pair I wanted to keep.” I took a black oxford out of the box and examined the heel. Hard rubber—perfect. It had to take enough shock to let me walk in it, without being so resilient that it wouldn’t do the job. I took a little fine-grain sandpaper and started scuffing up the polish just a bit. After all, anybody who knows anything about me would be suspicious if I showed up with shiny shoes or, Highest forbid, wearing a tie. Most places I hang out, a tie would get me shot as an impostor.
• • •
By the time I’d finished the rest of my preparations, “Central Park Blues” was tiptoeing through the speakers and the Amazons had given up and gone to bed. I finished the cleanup, set everything carefully aside to dry or harden or whatever, then made myself a real drink. Considering I hadn’t set Caz’s apartment on fire or lost any fingers with my chemistry experiments, I figured I’d earned it. I left the hood fan running on the range to clear any fumes, since the place had no windows, and went into the bathroom, where I locked the door, took off my watch, and practiced opening a Zipper, then timing the difference between how long it felt like in the no-Time bubble and how long it actually was. (No, that’s not a euphemism for anything.) Because soon it was going to be in my best interests to be able to judge how much time was passing in the real world while I was Outside.
The rains had ended, so I walked out into the courtyard, clinking ice in my glass and trying not to think too much about the first night I’d been here with Caz, because that hurt too badly. I sometimes thought it would be better if one or both of us had died, because then at least there would have been an end of sorts. Instead we were stuck in this netherworld, for Caz, literally; for me, only figuratively. And although I knew that what I was doing now was my only chance to ever get her back, sometimes I felt like I couldn’t wait any longer—that at some point I was going to start shouting and punching things and that would go on until someone tasered me and hauled me off to a secure ward in Atascadero. But that wouldn’t do Caz any good at all.
Had she even received my message? Why hadn’t she sent one back? Maybe freezing and torturing a nizzic wasn’t the best way to continue communication—how was I supposed to know? Flying booger-demons don’t come with instructions.
Something whirred overhead, and I looked up, heart racing, but it was only some night bird passing. No message there, at least not one I was waiting for.
Twenty minutes or so drifted by, but I was still alone, just me and the smell of wet concrete and a few ice cubes rattling in the bottom of an empty glass.
eighteen:
make friends and incinerate people
I WAS LIMPING as I made my way along Centennial Avenue, but it was only a tactical limp.
I saw my Datsun reach the corner and turn, heading back toward Ravenswood, the new paint job quite convincingly ratty after the recent hard use. I’d let the Amazons drive me because I didn’t want to risk setting off the incendiary in the heel of my shoe, but I was damned if I was going to risk getting them hurt on this little scouting expedition, which was exactly the kind of stupid, probably unnecessary thing I do best by myself.
Centennial had been a major thoroughfare back in the 1960s, but it had fallen on leaner times, and the big downtown rebuilding program of the mid-90s had just missed it by a couple of streets. It was wide but didn’t look it because it was crammed with boxy, multistory buildings built at the beginning of the previous century. These days people drove through it too fast, and although it was still a neighborhood where people lived—almost all the upper floors of even the more successful businesses were apartments—the gloominess, wide streets, and fast traffic tended to keep even local pedestrians moving quickly. Not to mention the less pleasant elements of street life, which were to be found on Centennial in profusion, as some guy on public television might say. The intersection of Centennial and Industrial a few blocks down was one of the best places in Jude to find hookers and drugs at pretty much any hour of the day.
Here, a little west of Cendustrial, as some of the locals called it, things weren’t quite so grim, but they hadn’t exactly caught the wave of gentrification either. The downstairs businesses were mostly small taquerias, Asian food joints, dry cleaners, and nail salons—the kind of establishments you find in strip malls out in the suburbs.
Number 378 was a big, sandy-gray building of about the same vintage as the rest of the street, but a floor or so higher than its neighbors. It was also a bit more upscale than the rest of the block, with three entrances on the bottom floor, one for a doctor’s office, one for an accounting business, and one with “Sonnenrad Communications” written in gold paint on the glass. I pushed that one open and went in. There was no one inside, just a kind of sad little waiting room with a table and some magazines. (Nothing particularly neo-Nazi, I feel honor-bound to report, but I guess you don’t want to leave copies of Genocide Illustrated out for the UPS guy to see.) A laser-printed sign taped to the wall said the reception desk was one floor above, so I limped carefully up the stairs to a smaller room. The receptionist was about twenty-five and as blonde as one of the German schoolgirls out of Triumph of the Will. Her accent, though, was strictly San Judas.