Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

“So, you, did you, I mean, did you jump, too?” asked Mike.

“Nah, I went back to Chicago. Heart attack in ’58.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Smoked a lot, ate a lot of bratwurst, we didn’t know stuff in those days.”

“No, why are you on the bridge?”

“No idea. Guess that’s why the Spanish broad wanted me to tell you my story. You want I should fetch her?”

“Maybe that would be good,” Mike said. The ghost’s story had made him a little woozy. He couldn’t figure out if it was nausea or anxiety, but neither were to be taken lightly when you were up on the bridge.

“So long, bridge painter,” said the ghost. “And by the way, you can tell the dame that you have not been helpful in the least. I feel like I’m the only one did any talking here. No offense.”

“You’ll want to fuck off, now,” said Mike, who despite being a nice guy, had his limits, which he was very close to reaching with this particular spirit.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” said the ghost.

In an instant he had rolled into the beam he was sitting on and Concepción materialized on the beam next to Mike, so close she could have sat on one of his safety lines.

“Thank you,” she said. “My brave champion.”

“Why?” asked Mike. He felt better just seeing her, in fact his emotions had swung from morose and anxious to elated and nearly giddy as soon as she appeared.

“I think you can understand now that we need you,” she said. “He is just one of many.”

“You need me for what?”

“To join us, of course,” she said.

9

Coffee with Lily

When she arrived, he was already in the coffee shop, sitting in one of the conversation areas in a wingback chair, his long legs stretched out before him like a fun slide.

> She said, “Just because the forces of darkness are rising and the end of the world is nigh, don’t think I’m going to play Armageddon bone monkeys with you, M. This is just coffee.”

She called him “M,” because she refused to call him Minty, it being, in her mind, entirely too cheerful and perky and kind of stupid, and because he told her once that when he had worked security for a casino in Vegas he said they referred to him as M.F., which everyone thought stood for motherfucker. So “M” for short.

“A double espresso for me, then,” he said with a smile.

She put her enormous spike-­studded purse on the chair to the side of him. “How about two singles?”

He nodded. “That would be perfect, Darque.”

She turned to conceal her own smile and headed off to the counter to get their coffee. She knew he’d conceded to having two single espressos because he knew that watching him drink from the teeny-­tiny cups made her laugh, so she’d won coffee already. But he had called her Darque, which she loved, so maybe he’d won. Fucksox!

When she returned with their coffees she said, “Are you sure you want to talk about this stuff here?”

“You didn’t want to come to my place.”

But she did want to come to his place, be charmed into insane make-­up sex where he enveloped her pale and luscious beauty like a great spider, rendering her helpless in his grasp, stinging her again and again (although not in the butt) until she screamed. But he was too old, too tall, too rich (she would not be a slave to his economic stability—­even at the price of moving back into a crap apartment in the Sunset), and most of all, he was way too dark and cool.

She said, “Well, in public I thought there’d be less sobbing. It would be less embarrassing for you.”

“Very considerate of you,” he said. “You know that one voice mail, I was having a bad reaction to some cold medicine. So, you know, just ignore that one.”