The Perdition Score (Sandman Slim 8)

“There’s such a shit storm in my head. Vidocq might be in love with Liliane. Abbot’s a liar. I’m a liar. Oh yeah, and some kids ate another kid alive tonight and it might be my fault.”

She leads me to the sofa.

“Tell me everything and I mean everything.”

So, I do.

And she doesn’t leave me.

At the end of it, she leans back and says, “Poor kids. Poor Allegra.”

“Yeah.”

She takes my hand, still hanging on to the barbed-wire bucket of shit with me. If I came back from Hell for anything, it was for this. Fuck the world. If the whole planet was on fire, I’d stay on this sofa with Candy and let it burn.

“We’re in it till the wheels come off, you know,” she says.

“Till the wheels come off.”

We sit there together like that until she falls asleep against me.

WHEN I GET to the clinic, Allegra is waiting for me outside.

She gives me a quick hug and leads me to a café around the corner. When I was dragged Downtown, Silver Lake was still thrift shops, dingy little corner groceries, working-class bars, people cooking on hot plates in garages, and low-level dope dealers. Now it’s Wi-Fi-enabled omelets and gluten-free Vespas.

The café Allegra takes me to has all kinds of local handicrafts on the walls. Handblown glass sculptures. Elaborate ponchos and serapes. Artsy photos of shadows and empty parking lots. In another life I would have pegged the stuff as hippie junk, but the prices are aimed strictly at people who’ll pay hundreds for vintage Chuck Taylors and ironic children’s watches.

“Not a word,” says Allegra when she sees me looking around. “This place has good coffee and these people are my neighbors. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I’m not saying anything. I was just admiring the hundred-dollar doilies. They’d look charming in my gun drawer.”

She looks at me.

“What are you drinking, Stark? I’m buying.”

“Coffee. Black.”

“I’ll get you an espresso. You can play with the little cup when you’re done.”

“I’ll get us a table.”

I find one by the window and settle down. Check my reflection in the glass. The bruises are fading and the gash on my cheek is healing fast. Still, you’d have to be on the space station to miss it. The knot on the back of my head from the concrete throbs, but Trotsky is nowhere to be found. I’ll take a few bruises for that.

Allegra brings our coffee and sits down, smiling at me.

“What?” I say.

“Are you going to tell me about your face or am I going to have to play twenty questions?”

“It’s nothing. I was in a fight I could have avoided, and got what I deserved.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she says. “No trouble at home, then?”

“Home is fine. What about you?”

She picks up a packet of brown sugar and pours it into her latte.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Eugène is playing like nothing is going on with his lady love, but I’m not stupid. It might not be so bad if they didn’t spend half their time speaking French like they don’t want me to know what they’re saying.”