“I’m fine. Really,” I lie.
No one talks for a minute, then Candy says, “We should get together. Just the two of us.”
“For high tea and crumpets?”
“No, dummy. A date night. You and me.”
“Alessa is all right with that?”
“She knows you and I still have a connection. We can talk about the details on our date.”
Half of my brain wants to be happy but the other, more rational, part is wary of getting kicked around again. Still, I say, “That sounds great.”
“Cool. What do you want to do?”
“Want to come on spook patrol with me? Abbot wants me to check out some ghosts in Little Cairo.”
“Oh. An adventure,” she says. “Just like old times.”
“Just like old times.”
“When?”
“Around seven thirty. Before the sun goes down and things get hopping.”
“This is exciting. I’ve missed this.”
“Me too. I’ll come by the shop.”
“See you then.”
I go into the kitchen, pop one of my PTSD pills, and pour myself a bourbon, trying to drink away my nervousness.
It looks like I have a date.
I call Janet and we talk for a while. They want to get together, but I tell them I can’t and about the job I’m doing for Abbot. But not about Candy. It’s just all too complicated. I tell them we’ll meet for coffee the next day and hang up. It feels like I’m experiencing some kind of slow-motion whiplash. First, I have a love life with Candy. Then she’s with Alessa and I don’t, so I don’t have anything. Then I meet Janet and it might be something. And now Candy wants to be alone with me. I haven’t felt this popular since I was everyone’s favorite punching bag Downtown. I hope I don’t end up as bloody as I did then.
The sun is starting to dip in the sky when me and Candy enter Little Cairo.
With its pyramid and Sphinx-shaped houses, the neighborhood was wildly popular with Hollywood types in the thirties and forties, but the Egyptian fad faded by the early fifties, so the fashionable set moved on. In the midfifties and sixties, Little Cairo became a hipster and hippie hangout. The place was a dump by the late sixties, which made it even more popular with the groovy people. Charlie Manson and the girls lived there for a while. Blasted on acid, Jim Morrison climbed to the very top of the Great Pyramid and promptly fell off. He didn’t get a scratch. Little Cairo was remodeled in the ironic eighties and made a modest comeback. Now the neighborhood is mostly a curiosity stop for tourists, like Chinatown or snaky Lombard Street in San Francisco. Right now, Little Cairo looks like a drunk tornado stumbled through the place, tossing around cars and trees, peeling the skin off the pyramids and obelisks, and just generally shitting up the place quite nicely.
After a short look around, Candy says—in her best Bette Davis voice—“What a dump.”
We stroll to the edge of the neighborhood and I do a little hoodoo to reveal the wards and charms shutting Little Cairo off from the rest of the city. Abbot’s crew did a good job. There’s nothing getting in or out of here, and from the outside, the place looks normal, except for the police barricades and quarantine signs.
Candy and I sit on a curb. I take out a Malediction and she hands me a flask. I drink and pass it to her before lighting up.
She leans back on her hands and looks around. “I was wrong before. It’s not so bad here.”
I almost choke on my cigarette.
“Are you kidding? This is where junkyards go to throw their junk.”
She looks around.
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Fresno?”