I turn in my seat and look at Evelyn and Titus. He has Aki’s ring in one hand and the photo in the other. His eyes are half closed and he’s whispering an incantation. Evelyn hangs on his every word. She doesn’t look happy, but maybe a little more hopeful.
I’m suddenly aware that while I’m watching Titus, pretty much everyone else in the bar is watching me. I’d like to think they’re staring because of my white-hot animal magnetism, but I know I’m not Elvis. I’m Lobster Boy, hear me roar. Carlos gives me the tamales in a Styrofoam carrier. Thanks and good night. Be sure to tip your waitresses. I leave through a shadow near the fire exit in back.
YOU KNOW HOW they put out oil well fires by setting off an explosion that’s so big it snuffs out the first fireball with a bigger one? Sometimes the only way to get past something impassable is to smash it with itself. Like kills like. When you live with a dead man’s head that won’t shut up and smokes all your cigarettes, the only way to deal with the awfulness is to make it so unbelievably awful that it becomes kind of weirdly beautiful. Like an exploding giraffe full of fireworks. (Hellions really know how to throw a birthday party.)
Kasabian calls it his “pussy wagon,” but I can’t go there, so I call it the “magic carpet.” Really it’s a polished mahogany deck about the size of a dinner plate, supported by a dozen articulated brass legs. When I brought it home from Muninn’s—partial payment for a quick smash-and-grab job—one end of the deck was loaded down with prisms, mirrors, and gears that must have meshed with another long-lost machine. The top is covered in what looked like teeth marks and stained with something black. I don’t want to know what used to drive the thing or what happened to it.
After I unscrewed and sawed off all the extra hardware, I let Kasabian take it out for a test drive. What do you know? His low-rent, third-rate hoodoo was just powerful enough to keep the brass legs in sync, so he can move around on his own now. It’s nice not to have to carry Kasabian everywhere anymore, but it means that every day I come home to a chain-smoking Victorian centipede.
He’s standing on what used to be the video bootlegging table and using his brass legs to tap numbers into a PC. Ever since he got mobile, Kasabian has been doing Max Overload’s books again. He and Allegra set up a little in-store wireless network so he can do the banking and buy new inventory online.
“So, how did it go?” He turns and looks at me. “Oh, that bad.”
“Just about that bad, Alfredo Garcia.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“I had to go
“Did you get paid, at least?”
“Yeah, here’s the big money. Plus the usual deductions.”
I drop the check next to the keyboard. Kasabian pinches the ends of the check between two of his brass legs and holds it up to read it.
“That prick. He just does this to humiliate you. It makes him feel better about not being able to do the stuff you can do and needing you for his dirty work. It’s pure envy.”
“Yeah, it’s a glamorous life here in Graceland.”
I pick up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the bedside table and pour some into the same glass I’ve been using for three days.
“And he’s trying to keep us on the hook by starving us. You know that, right? You ought to let me hex his ass.”
I sip the Jack. It’s good, but after the Aqua Regia, it’s about as potent as cherry Kool-Aid.
“Save your hoodoo for real work. And, technically, he’s only starving me. If he knew about you, he’d shit his heart out.”
“Great, get him up here. I’ll video it and put it up on YouTube.”
“Aelita would be the fun one to get on tape. I’m an Abomination, but I don’t even know if angels have a word for you.”
“One does. ‘Hey, shithead.’”
“Lucifer always had a way with words. He’s just like Bob Dylan, but without all the annoying talent.”
“That’s hilarious. He loves it when you say stuff like that. Every time you do, he turns up the temperature Downtown ten degrees.”
“Then he should be able to cook biscuits on his tits by now.”
“I’ll ask him for you.”
“No, you won’t. When you download your brain or play video highlights or whatever it is you do for the old man, you’ll only show him what you want him to see. You hold back crumbs ’cause when you know something he doesn’t it gives you power. Just like you hold back things from me. And I hold back things from you and he holds back things from both of us. We’re a little clusterfuck of liars.”
Kasabian nods to the Styrofoam container I set on the bed when I ditched my weapons.
“Do I smell tamales?”
“Yeah, you want them? I lost my appetite.”
