Later that night, Mason played his little trick on me and I never saw Alice again.
Only now she's standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the wrecked room. She doesn't have to say a word. I know what she's thinking because it's what I'm thinking. That the mess is a kind of metaphor for my life. She sighs. Picks up small things, drops them, then picks up something else. She shakes her head in wonder at all the junk until I feel ashamed and stupid.
I know that none of this is real. This Alice is a golem. The present Parker said Mason would be sending me. This sighing ghost isn't Alice any more than the slab of meat I tossed into the tar pits was Kasabian.
The golem's eyes are milky gray. Its skin is cracked and stained with red, green, and brown lichen, like old granite. Its broken teeth ooze blood. Golem Alice's fingertips are bare bone, like something has been gnawing at them.
Unfortunately, knowing that something isn't real doesn't mean it's going to go away or that it doesn't affect you. When she isn't eyeballing the wreckage of my mini Pompeü, Alice is leaning over me and whispering in my ear.
"You wouldn't throw me into the black tar, would you, Jimmy? There's no air down there. And it's so dark. You wouldn't do that to me, would you, baby?"
THE MORNING CREW arrives like a herd of baby elephants jacked up on lattes and enough mutant energy drinks to give a rhino a stroke. The crew is an ever-shifting posse of film school hipster dudes. I don't know any of their names and I don't want to. They're just Blond Surfer Dude. Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. Dreads Dude, etc. They really are dudes. Sleepy eyes. IQs drowning in bong water. They invent complicated filing systems for the movies because the alphabet baffles them.
One of them knocks on my door. I open it without putting on a shirt. My wrists have healed, but there's dried blood on my hands. I hope I didn't ruin the overcoat. Time to look for a dry cleaner.
It's Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. He smells like he used bong water for aftershave. My lack of a shirt and the blood don't even register.
He says, "Um, a bunch of the shelves in the porn section fell down last night. What do you want us to do?"
For a second, I wonder if he's kidding. Then I remember who he is.
"Maybe one of you should go and clean it up."
"Okay, but I'm the only one who can work the register. Bill's allergic to dust and Rudy just got born again, so he's a no-porn zone till he gets over it."
"So, none of you is capable of walking to the back of the store and picking up the movies?"
"I guess not. Plus, there's cracks in the ceiling. Looks like there's cracks in there, too," he says, pointing into the room. I pull the door closed a little.
"Fuck it. It's porn. People who want it will paw through it wherever it is. Hell, they might like it better down there. Maybe we should put the whole porn section in a big pile on the floor."
"What?"
I forgot. The only things that are funny when you're as buzzed as Billy Goat Beard are cartoon animals and seeing other people get hurt.
"Never mind. Just open the store and let me get dressed."
"When is Mr. Kasabian coming back?"
I look at the kid. Does this doe-eyed weed monkey suspect something? Am I going to have to lobotomize this twerp?
"When he's damn good and ready," I say.
"Okay." He walks away, like he's already forgotten the whole conversation.
I throw the dead bolt when I close the door. Need to start locking the room up all the time. Too many weapons in here. Too much blood on the floor. Too much residual magic in the walls. All I need is for some stoned teenybopper to take a post-weed nap in Metatron's Cube and wake up with his soul on a hook in some stalker's trading booth in the souk.
I clean up in the bathroom. There's a brownish-red ring around the drain. I need to get some bleach before all the blood I've been leaking into the sink stains it permanently. I wonder if Kasabian had any accident or maybe earthquake insurance. I saw official-looking papers in one box-I'll have to track that down. It'd be nice for Allegra to be able to get the place fixed up when I'm gone and she takes over.
The overcoat is wadded in a ball at the end of the bed. It looks pretty rough. Praise Lucifer that my jeans are black. Blood's not so obvious on them. I find a box with the last of the Max Overdrive T-shirts in my size and slip it on. The only thing I have to wear over the T-shirt that will hide a weapon is the half-burned motocross jacket. I'll look a little crazy in it, but it's still wearable. Because it's such a wreck, I don't have any regrets about tearing the lining open so I can slip the na'at inside. I'll still pack Azazel's knife for backup, but from now on, my primary weapons are the ones that will keep attackers the hell away from me. I didn't crawl back to Earth just to go bankrupt buying new shirts.
It takes me a minute to find where I stashed Muninn's money. I slipped it into the back of a Val Lewton box set that was blown against the far wall. I take a wad of bills from inside and toss the box on the bed.
With the overcoat tucked under my arm, I lock up the room and slip out the back without any of the dudes seeing me.
Aelita is waiting in the alley, standing there like the angel of death in librarian drag. I drop the coat and take a couple of steps into the alley so my back isn't pinned to the wall.
I say, "You're big on the Fortune magazine look. Know any decent dry cleaners around here?"