The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

She puts the burritos on the table. She left her jacket downstairs, but her jeans are soaked through. She’s even given up her Chuck Taylor sneakers for shin-­high rubber boots with skulls and stars. She takes them off and tosses them in the tub, then comes over and flops down next to me on the secondhand sofa.

“What are we watching?”

“If you don’t remember it, Allegra needs to check you for a brain tumor.”

She pushes up against me and gives me a little elbow in the ribs.

“I’m sorry. Was that your side, Mr. Sarcastic?”

“You’re dripping on the linoleum and getting the couch wet, wino.”

Candy unbuckles and slips off her jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor. She sits beside me and shivers. Pulls my arm around her. My left arm. She doesn’t mind the prosthetic. I think she kind of likes it. I pull her closer.

I say, “So, Allegra fixed you up?”

Her head moves against me as she nods.

“She said it was probably the stress of getting the new place together and doing stuff with you and the Vigil, knowing no one at the Vigil wants me there.”

“Fuck ’em,” I say. “They’re paying me to be there. They’re getting you for free. If you don’t want to come in you don’t have to. Take it easy and settle into the place.”

She looks up at me.

“And let you have all the fun? Besides, what would I do here while you’re gone? We only get a few customers, and unlike Kasabian, I can only jerk off so many times a day.”

“What do other domestic ladies do? You could take up needlepoint or do crossword puzzles. Maybe get into Valium and martinis.”

“I like the sound of the last part. But seriously, Allegra has all the help she needs at the clinic and I like being Robin to your Batman. That and my Duo-­Sonic are about the only things I give a shit about right now.”

I gave Candy a cherry-­red electric guitar a few weeks back. She got herself a little used Roland CUBE amp and bashes away every moment she can. She only knows about three chords, but she plays them with great conviction. Sometimes Fairuza, a Ludere who works with Allegra at the clinic, jams with her on drums. They’re talking about starting a band, calling it the Bad Touch Sugar Cookies because it sounds like one of the idoru bands they like. Supposedly, Fairuza’s old band once opened for Shonen Knife at the Whiskey. I think Candy about dumped me for her when she heard that, but I have a better movie collection, so she stayed.

I take a blanket off the back of the couch and wrap it around Candy and we watch the rest of the movie. After that, I write the report I promised Wells, and e-­mail it to him. I still can’t figure out what the mess in Hobaica’s demented head meant. Tooth flowers. Seas of fire. Hacked-­up bodies. It’s like a Texas Chain Saw wet dream. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Maybe I just left him on ice too long and Hobaica’s soul was all screwed up from his brain getting frozen and oxygen deprived. Anyway, it’s not my job to figure out. That’s for the bag of Shonin bones.

Later, Candy reheats the burritos and we eat them while watching Hausu, a funny Japanese haunted-­house flick. Candy cackles the whole way through it. I don’t pay much attention. She goes downstairs when we’re done eating.

I’m still wondering if I should take a chance and go see Mr. Muninn in Hell. Maybe it would be smarter to check in with Samael first. He’s living in the palace with Muninn and would know if it’s all right for me to go down. Your holy roller types are talking about God sending a new flood to cleanse the world. I’ve got news for them. God’s got his hands full right now. The parts of him that aren’t already dead.

A rhythmic thumping and buzz comes up through the floor, from the storeroom we soundproofed with egg cartons and blankets. Candy and Fairuza are thrashing through a ragged version of “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” because what else is there to do at the end of the world?

A FEW GLASSES of Aqua Regia later, I remember something I promised to do. I put on a hoodie and one of my frock coats and dig around under the bed for a dusty sack of bones that I took out of Kill City, a cursed shopping mall at the beach in Santa Monica. There was a pack of ghosts in the basement that wanted me dead, but we cut a deal. They let me go and I promised I’d bury their bones in the ground outside the mall. With fixing up Max Overdrive and starting back with the Vigil, I’d put it off a dozen times. All this talk of the apocalypse, I think maybe I should do it now just in case. I don’t want to die having lied to a bunch of poor slobs buried under a thousand tons of concrete, corn dogs, and panty hose.

I put a little LED flashlight in my pocket and step through a shadow. Go through the Room of Thirteen Doors and come out under the Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking L.A. From up here, through the air that’s been washed clean by the rain, the city is beautiful. L.A. always looks best in the dark, when it’s just lights and the ugly hulks of the buildings have been softened to vague night shapes. Even from up here, I can see the traffic snarling the main streets and spilling out onto the Hollywood Freeway. ­People are leaving town and they don’t even know why. They’re running just to run. Some animal part of their brain knows something bad is coming and they want to get as far from it as possible. Who can blame them? But if the Angra come stomping back to the world, there won’t be anywhere too remote to hide. In the meantime, they run like lemmings.

Idiot that I am, I didn’t bring a shovel, so I have to dig with my hands. I put the bones in the ground between the H and the O in HOLLYWOOD. I don’t know if being in soil will help those ghosts rest easier, but I’ll sleep better knowing I’m not just another liar in a city built on slick pitchmen who’d sell you their mother’s kidneys if it got them salesman of the month.

It’s dark up here and there isn’t a shadow in sight. I turn on the LED flashlight and bury one end in the ground. I get in front of the beam and step into my own shadow, soaked and cold, heading home.

Later, Candy comes upstairs. Her T-­shirt is soaked through with sweat.

“Having a little drink?”

“I went out. I’m trying to get the chill out of my bones.”

She takes off her shirt and tosses it on the back of a chair. She comes over and straddles me on the couch, presses her warm body into mine.

“Better?” she says.

“Much.”