Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim 1)

"Have a nice party, young man."

"Leave a light on. Maybe I won't wait for you to come after me."

That makes her laugh. A high titter, like crystal wineglasses tinkling together.

That's enough fun for one night. I throw my cigarette into the gutter and look around for a comfy shadow.

"Littering is a crime, even in L.A."

I'll be hearing that drawl in my dreams for the next hundred years.

"U.S. Marshal Wells. Come to party with the pixies?"

"Don't be obscene," he says. "I can smell the crazy on these people from here."

"Don't knock it. You might get lucky. Some of them inside are going to love a man in uniform."

He shakes his head.

"I don't like wasting my time talking to people too crazy or stupid or addled to understand what I'm saying."

"Then maybe what you were going to say, it's not worth saying."

"No. It is. You did a good thing the other night. I don't know that we could have stopped the ceremony without you."

"And Candy."

"Yes, your sidekick monster. So, are you Batman and Robin now?"

"I think that was our first and last date."

"Too bad. You might have been good assets."

"I'll tell her we have Homeland Security's blessing. And you can hire us, if you want. I'm sure for the right price, I can get her out of retirement."

"Aelita told me about your business proposition. I'll never understand people like you. You respect nothing. You value nothing. But you went out of your way to take on the biggest evil this city has seen in a good long while."

"I value plenty. Probably just not things you'd care about."

"You might just be surprised."

He looks away. His heartbeat is up. He's hiding something.

"It's okay to be in love with an angel. Trust me. You wouldn't be the first."

He nods, but he still won't look at me. There's a package under his arm. He holds it out for me.

"I thought you might want this. We found it when we were searching Avila. There was a whole room of similar items. It's your girlfriend's ashes."

And there goes L.A., dropping down fifty thousand feet right under me. Swallowed up by the San Andreas fault. My head swims, but I don't want him to see that. I start to say thank you, but nothing comes out.

"Don't say anything. It's okay even for an asshole to get choked up. Trust me. You wouldn't be the first."

He walks away and gets into one of his blacked-out vans. I step into the first shadow I can find.

I WANT TO steal a car. Something big. Something ugly. A Hummer or a director's decked-out Land Rover. Reinforced suspension, emergency winch, and self-sealing tires, like he thinks he can four-wheel his way out of the Apocalypse. I want to steal something bright and shiny and stupid and expensive, set it on fire, climb into the driver's seat, and pile-drive it into the ocean at a hundred and twenty. Feel the windshield cave. The crack as the safety glass pops out, hits me in the face, and snaps my neck. I want to feel the cold black water swallow me up and spit me out on the sandy bottom of the world. Just blind crabs and bone-white starfish down here. I don't want death. I know what's waiting for me when I die, and Hell is too bright. Too loud. I want oblivion. I want to not exist. I want to feel something that's not pain. I want Alice.

But Alice wouldn't want me to disappear. She didn't like me stealing or breaking other people's things, so I won't do any of that tonight.