Did I use up all the armor’s power on Brimborion?
Wouldn’t that be a hilarious goddamn end to everything?
The ground comes up fast. “The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish” mixes with the rising sound of the engine. What did I expect? Fucking up is my true home and I’m heading there fast.
I wish I had a cigarette.
Then there’s nothing at all.
Then there’s something.
The front wheel hits pavement. A rush of vertigo. Lights. Smeared and jittering. The nothing parts like heavy curtains. Or a trapdoor.
The rear wheel drops. The impact is like being rear-ended by a battleship. I can’t hold the bike. So I lean it to the side. Lay it down and let it slide. Ten or twenty yards. The asphalt grinds against my legs but the leathers hold. I’m not so sure about the coat. Have I mentioned I’m hard on clothes?
When the bike finally stops, it’s sliced a deep groove in the roadbed. I grab the handlebars, get my weight low, and tilt the bike upright. It’s not even scratched.
Welcome home.
It feels good to say it and mean it. How do I know? The place doesn’t smell like bad meat and misery. The sky is clear and full of stars. Clue number three: the bike’s stopped right in front of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Tombstones never looked so good.
A big screen is set up by the columbarium. People sit and sprawl on blankets among the dead. Movie night at the cemetery. It’s not as weird as it might sound. On Día de los Muertos, families offer food and eat meals with their dead. In Hollywood, we show up with offerings of cowboys and show tunes.
Tonight we’re entertaining our favorite stiffs with a pristine print of The Bad Seed. Pigtailed moppet Patty McCormack just set Leroy the janitor on fire and her mother and best friend watch him burn from an upstairs window. How are you enjoying the movie so far, dead people? We could have shown The Sound of Music but we thought we’d scare the last few scraps of coffin jerky off your bones.
I’m back on the bike when I notice a kid by the cemetery gates. A girl in a frilly blue party dress. Maybe nine or ten years old and she’s all alone. Who brings their kid to a murder movie in a graveyard drive-in and lets her run off alone? Hell, who brings their kid to one of these things at all? The place is half stoners and speed-freak hipsters. The moment the show is over the whole block will turn into one big bumper-car ride.
The kid doesn’t move. Just stares at me until she realizes I’m staring back. Then she turns and runs through the cemetery gates. I can hear her laughing all the way across the street. With an attitude like that, she’s going to grow up and start a mind-blowing band or become a serial killer. I flash on Candy: that could have been her years ago bouncing into Hollywood Forever, a tombstone Disneyland for kids too carnivorous for teacup rides and cotton candy.
I step on the kick-starter and the bike fires up on the first try.
First question. Where’s Candy? No way she’s at the Beat Hotel anymore. What’s the second choice? L.A. is a lot to take in when it’s not on fire. I can’t get used to seeing the sky. I need to get my bearings and screw my head on straight.
I’m starting to feel just a little conspicuous on this Hellion hog, with a headlight that could blind the space shuttle, no driver’s license, license plate, title, or insurance. Not that I ever had any of those things. But now I don’t have them and I’m on an illegally imported foreign motorcycle. Back on Earth thirty seconds and I’m already a felon. Welcome home, shithead. I’ll stick to the side streets for now.
I cross Hollywood Boulevard and pull the bike into the alley next to Maximum Overdrive video, the store where I lived with Kasabian. Kasabian used to be dead. I know because I cut off his head. It’s where I’ve been staying since I got back from Hell the first time, which makes it the closest thing I’ve had to a home in eleven years.
A man and a woman walk by holding hands as I turn into the alley. It looks like they’ve been picnicking by a coal-mine fire. Their hands and faces—every exposed patch of skin—is smeared with gritty dirt, but their clothes are clean and pressed. I’ve never see two dirtier clean people in my life. They catch me looking at them and cross to the other side of the street.
The alley by Max Overdrive is a snowdrift of junk. The Dumpster overflows with plastic trash bags and food cartons. There are enough broken bottles that the alley looks like a salt plain. I don’t think the garbage has been picked up in weeks. I steer the bike and park in the Dumpster’s shadow.
In the old days I’d use the Key to the Room of Thirteen Doors to walk into the store through a shadow but Saint James has that. I take the duffel off the bike, get out the black blade, and slip the tip into the door lock. One turn and it clicks open.
Inside, the place stinks of paint. The floors and display stands are covered with plastic drop cloths, but there’s a fine layer of dust on them. No one’s done any work in a long time.
There’s a light on upstairs in the room I used to share with Kasabian. I go up the stairs quietly, knife out and ready. At the top I push open the door with the toe of my boot. It opens on a messy bedroom. There’s a wooden desk where Kasabian used to keep his bootleg video setup. Now there’s a computer surrounded by monitors. I push the door open more. Something is in the room with its back to me. A heavy mechanical body with a human head. It picks up a bag from Donut Universe in its mouth and heads for the desk on all fours like a dog. When it sees me, the head opens its mouth and drops the bag. It raises a paw and points at me.
“Don’t say a goddamn word.”
The last time I saw him, Kasabian was still just a chattering head without a body. Now he’s something more, but I don’t know if it’s an improvement.
I come inside and drop the duffel. My armor is sticking out from under my shirt. Kasabian nods at it.
“Did the Wizard give you a heart, Tin Man?”
“Funny. Careful you don’t pop a rivet, Old Yeller.”
His face is like the couple in the street. Smeared with something dark and coarse, like black sand. He trots to the desk on all fours. Kasabian’s head on a hellhound body isn’t a pleasant sight.