“The practice room is to make us grateful for all the times she doesn’t do this.”
I go upstairs and open the door to our rooms. The sound is like getting punched in the chest. I hold up my hands in a T time-out signal. She smiles at me like a demented eight-year-old.
“It sounds great up here, doesn’t it?” she says.
“It’s beautiful. Angel choirs and demon songs. Now please go and play in the practice room. If I hear much more of this gorgeousness it will spoil me for all other music forever.”
She screws up her mouth into a half sneer.
“You’re weak, old man. And you’re dripping all over the floor.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I say.
She unplugs her guitar and amp. Picks up both.
“You’re off the guest list for our first show.”
“Then it won’t be the first show I’ve crashed. I know all the back exits and kitchen doors on the Strip.”
She comes over and stands on her toes.
“Kiss me and I won’t hate you forever for being such a noise wimp.”
I lean down and we kiss. She head-butts me lightly when we stop.
“Nope. I still hate you. You’ll have to make it up to me later.”
“How?”
“Be sure to lock the door tonight. We’re going to play the Cowboy and the Duchess.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“You will,” she says. “And I make no promises that you’ll be the cowboy.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
I get out of my wet clothes and leave them to dry in the bathtub. Pull on some dry jeans and a moth-eaten Max Overdrive T-shirt and go downstairs.
“Thank you,” says Kasabian.
“If I’m the Duchess later, you’re going to owe me.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What’s that you’ve got?”
He holds up a disc and wiggles it.
“Your witch stopped by with a new movie. The full eight-hour version of von Stroheim’s Greed. Before us, only twelve people ever saw the uncut film. We can be the thirteenth and fourteenth.”
“I like a lot of odd stuff, but even I think eight hours of Teutonic existential grimness sounds awful.”
Kasabian shakes his head.
“Pussy.”
“Everyone is calling me names tonight.”
Kasabian sets down the disc and puts a copy of Hitchcock’s lost flick, The Mountain Eagle, back on the shelf.
“People keep asking about buying copies of the discs,” Kasabian says.
“Selling isn’t part of the business plan. We’re strictly a rental operation.”
“That’s what I keep telling them. But those vampires can get scary insistent.”
“Tell them to come and talk to me,” I say. “Besides, what can a vampire do to you? I mean, do you even have blood anymore?”
He looks hurt.
“Watch the language. I’m just starting to feel good about this body and you go and bring that up.”
“Relax. We’ve both been dead. It’s no big deal.”
“Says the guy with the hot girlfriend and a body still made of meat. You think sweat stains are hard to get out of clothes? Try machine oil.”
“Anytime you want to go back on your magic skateboard, I’ve got it for you in a closet upstairs.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Candy uses it to do her paper rounds.”
Kasabian pulls a beer from behind the counter and twists the cap off. I’ve talked to him about drinking in front of customers, but he’s just one more person around here who doesn’t listen to me.
“You two are so domestic these days it’s sickening.”
“You should get out more, or at all,” I say. “You’ll meet someone nice and we’ll have little puppy hellhounds running around the place.”
“Speaking of shit that’s never going to happen, guess who just showed up in Hell?”
“Who?”
“Chaya, the long lost God brother. He doesn’t look too good. Like he booked a long weekend in an ass-kicking machine. You should go down and check it out.”
“You just want me to do your swami work for you.”
“We need the money, genius.”
“I’m sick of talking about money.”
“That’s what people with no money say.”
I want to say something. About an incident that’s bothered me for almost a year. Even thinking about it makes me angry and ashamed. Angry she got killed and ashamed I couldn’t do anything about it.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I say. “There’s a green-haired girl in Hell somewhere. Find her for me.”
“A green-haired girl? Sure. There can’t be more than a million of those.”
“She used to work at Donut Universe. I never told anyone, but I found her name in an online obit. Cindil Ashley. Find her and I’ll do your job.”
Kasabian waggles an eyebrow at me.
“An old love? You sly thing.”
“You do not even want to begin joking about this,” I say. “She was murdered by the Kissi right in front of me. If they weren’t dead, I’d kill them all over again for it.”
The Kissi were a race of mad, malformed angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. They’re gone now, but before they went, they killed a lot of innocent civilians. When I lost an arm in Hell, the Kissi marked me by replacing my normal arm with a Kissi one. Now I wear a glove on my left hand to hide it from people.
Kasabian holds up his metal hellhound hands in a “calm down” gesture.
“It’s cool. Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Now you do. Find her for me.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
There’s a knock at the front door. I open it. A blond Ludere girl comes in. She’s all wet and all smiles. It’s Fairuza, Candy’s drummer.
“Hey, Stark. Hey, Kasabian,” she says.
Kasabian hides his beer. I’ve never seen him do that before. But I’ve never seen him around Fairuza.
“How are you doing?” he says.
“Great. Thanks for the movie. It was cool. I never thought I’d like a silent flick.”
She hands him a copy of Metropolis.
“You said you liked sci-fi, so I figured.”
“Good choice. You have anything more like it?”
“Are you kidding? We specialize in shit . . . stuff . . . no one’s seen. Let me dig around and see what I can come up with.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
“I don’t know how you watch your movies. Lots of people do it on computers these days . . .”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“Well, if you ever want to see something like it’s supposed to be seen, a good screen and sound,” he says. Then stops. When he starts up again he speaks in a rush. “I have a real good setup in my place. If you ever, you know.”
She hesitates.
“I like to eat Chinese food when I watch movies. Do you, I don’t mean this in a bad way, eat?”
“Sure. All the time. Ask him,” he says.
I nod.
“He’s a great white shark. Nature’s perfect eating machine.”
Fairuza shrugs.
“Sure. Why not? Find me something good and it’s a date.”
“Okay. Great,” he says.
Candy starts torturing “Ace of Spades” again in the practice room. Fairuza points.
“That’s my cue,” she says.
“I’ll have something for you when you’re done,” says Kasabian.
She smiles.
“Impress me.”
He nods and she goes into the room.
I say, “I believe you have a date.”
“Now all I have to do is find something dazzling.”
“I don’t think you know her well enough for 2001 or Zardoz. One’s too weird and one’s too slow.”
“Yeah. Those are second-date movies.”
“Third.”
“You think?”
“At least.”
“She means it, right? Like, you don’t think she just said that to make fun of me?”
“I don’t think Candy hangs out with people like that. She knows killers, but not mean girls.”
“Okay. Now I just have to find something. The Fifth Element?”