The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

“I’d know if anything changed.”

“How?”

“I just would.”

“Okay, Cassandra, there’s something else. Did it rain much when you were down there?”

“No. I don’t remember it raining at all.”

“Well, it is now. Raining cats and dogs and little imps with pitchforks. I mean, there’s doomed. There’s screwed. And there’s monsoons-­in-­Hell fucked. And we’re at fucked o’clock.”

Suddenly I want a cigarette. I take out the Maledictions. I go to the back door and open it, blowing the smoke outside. Candy doesn’t like me stinking the place up with cigarettes that smell like a tire fire.

“I don’t get it. Could the Angra be doing it?”

“Who cares? It’s happening and whoever’s in charge down there can’t stop it. What makes you think I can?”

“You were the Devil,” says Kasabian.

It’s true. I got stuck with Lucifer’s job for three miserable months. And what do you know? I wasn’t good at being a bureaucrat or a diplomat. I fucked Hell up worse than it was when I got there, and barely made it out with my hide intact.

“You know God,” Kasabian says. “Get him off his backside. Or better yet, hide us in your magic room. You’ve always said that nothing can get in there. It’s the perfect fallout shelter.”

I puff the Malediction, cupping it in my hand so the rain doesn’t put it out.

“So your solution to the end of the universe is to hide for the next billion years in the Room of Thirteen Doors? A room with nothing in it and nowhere to go.”

“Okay. It doesn’t sound great when you say it like that. But we could fill it up with food and water and movies. Everything we need.”

“There’s no electric outlets in the Room, and more important, no toilets. Get the picture?”

Kasabian comes over to the door and sticks his fat face into the rain, looking up into the black sky like maybe if he stares long enough God will part the clouds and give him a thumbs-­up.

“If we can’t hide, then fix this shit. My business is going to fall apart when ­people realize they don’t need me to find their relatives because they’re going to be Downtown soon enough themselves.”

He wipes the rain off his face with his sleeve and heads to the back of the shop where his rooms are.

“If anyone wants me I’ll be having a Béla Tarr festival in my boudoir.”

“Bullshit. You don’t watch gloomy Hungarians when you’re depressed. You’ll be watching porn all night.”

He gives me the finger without turning around and closes the door to his Batcave. I head upstairs.

Yeah, we’re broke now, but it was money well spent. We got Max Overdrive up and running again, at least on a small scale. And we fixed the place up so it’s less like a crash pad for a crazy person and a dead man and more like a place where actual ­people might live.

Kasabian has the ground floor, in three small rooms built behin

d the video racks. Candy and I have the upstairs. Three rooms like he has, with a little kitchen area. When we were building the place, all I insisted on was a bed with an extra-­strong frame, the largest flat screen humanly possible, and a dishwasher. I would have been happy eating off paper plates with plastic forks for the rest of my life, but Candy said I should stop pretending that the world is a squat and that I’m just passing through. I’ve stuck around for almost a year, so maybe she’s right. After losing room ser­vice and our cushy life at the Chateau Marmont, there was nowhere else for us to go but Max Overdrive. I don’t think Candy ever lived anywhere very long before Doc Kinski took her in. She doesn’t talk about her life before that. If playing Ozzie and Harriet makes her happy, then it’s all right with me. But I’m still not folding fucking pillowcases. Good thing for everyone there’s a laundry down the block.

Why has she been moody and off her feed lately? Today wasn’t the first time she’s been mad enough to snap. What if she feels like she got in too deep with the domestic bliss stuff? She dumped me once before, back when I disappeared for three months in Hell. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if after getting sheets and plates and all kinds of kitchen trinkets, she decides she can’t handle it? It wouldn’t exactly surprise me. Most of my luck revolves around breaking things. If every day was car chases and sawing ­people’s heads off, I’d be the Pope of Lucky Town.

CANDY COMES HOME about an hour later. I have Spirited Away going on the big screen. Her favorite movie when she’s feeling down. She sticks her head around the door and raps on it with her knuckles.

“Knock, knock,” she says. “I brought a peace offering. Burritos from Bamboo House of Dolls.”

“Then you may enter.”

“Thank you, sir.”