The Dirty Streets of Heaven

slowly you could still see between them to the flatlands of Spanishtown on either side, block after block of two- and three-story apartment buildings. “I mean, that there are so many questions about what we do-questions without answers?”

“I got enough of those already, Junior, and mine are going to get me killed if I don’t answer ’em, so I don’t really have time for the other kind. Look, like I said, it turned out that there really is a Heaven, there really is a Hell, and this is what happens after we die. What’s so hard about that?”

He scowled. “You don’t get what I’m saying.”

I hit the brakes hard as some moron tried to catch the yellow at Valota Road, missed it by three seconds, and would have t-boned me if I hadn’t seen him coming and waited to start into the intersection. “I hope when you kill yourself they send Young Elvis to plead your case, asshole!” I yelled after him. “No, check this, Clarence-I do get it. Because I had more questions than you when I started, and I still ask questions all the time. But some things we may just never know. As living beings, humans don’t understand completely how the universe works, and as angels there’s still stuff that hasn’t been revealed to us yet. I decided I can live with that.” Which was not entirely true. I was pretty sick of unanswered questions, but you can only bang your head against so many walls before you either rethink your approach or knock your brains out once and for all.

“But what about the religious thing? Why is it that the whole operation is run by Christians and Jews? Were they right about everything all along? Were the Buddhists and-and the Ba’hai, and Muslims and everyone else wrong? That just seems so…American.”

I laughed as I swung into the coffee shop parking lot. “Hold on, kid. Who’s saying everyone else is wrong? Who’s saying the Christians or the Jews are right?”

“What do you mean? It’s obvious that if…”

“Nothing’s obvious,” I said, cutting him off. “Have you bumped into Moses or Jesus hanging around upstairs? You haven’t, have you? We see what we see, and that isn’t much.” I sighed. “Look, kid, for all we know the Highest-the one who gives us all the orders-also calls Himself Allah, or Ahura Mazda, or Jade Emperor or even Brahma. Maybe we’ve been told we’re ‘angels’ because that’s all we can understand, even after we’re dead. We don’t really know anything, and as you should have learned by now, you can’t trust the way things look, either.” I got out of the car. “You’re about to learn that lesson all over again.”

He got out, still frowning like he wanted to argue some more. “Who are these people I’m going to see, anyway?”

I shook my head. “First, you’re just tagging along, a quiet observer. Second of all, they’re not people. Third, you may not see anything at all-unless they decide they like you.”

“Huh?”

“Just shut up for a change, okay? Let’s get some lunch.”

I could understand Walter Sanders’ less than enthusiastic review of the Superior Grill when we got inside. The place was your garden-variety greasy spoon with menus printed in the seventies and waitresses who looked like they had been working there a lot longer than that. Even the pies behind the glass counter had a slightly embalmed look, like the corpses of Communist leaders on public display. Our waitress resembled Wallace Beery in one of his prizefighter movies-definitely the punch-drunk phase of the story. She didn’t seem all that crazy about having to serve anybody, but took our orders without actual argument, hung the slip on the roundy-roundy thing, then went back to talking to the other waitress (who could have passed for Lon Chaney Jr. with a beehive hair- do).

“I don’t get it,” Clarence whispered to me. “We’re the only ones in the place. When are your friends supposed to get here?”

“Why, bab?” asked the cream pitcher, its top opening and closing like a tiny silver mouth. “Are you thinking about asking one of the waitresses out instead?” The chuckle that followed was a little coarser than the silvery-bell variety one usually expects from invisible spirits. Clarence let out a yelp like a dog whose tail has just found its way under a foot and was halfway to the front door before I could convince him to come back. At the other end of the long room the waitresses looked up without interest, then went back to discussing particle physics or whatever else was keeping them from bringing me a glass of water.

“Who said that?” Clarence asked me, eyes wide.

“I did, bab,” said the cream pitcher in a broad West Midlands dialect. “Didn’t mean to put the wind up you.”

“She did, though,” said the coffee thermos, its own lid also bouncing up and down as it spoke, like a cheap overseas cartoon. “She loves it when they jump.”

I rolled my eyes. Both sisters enjoyed this sort of childishness way more than they should have after all so many years of afterlife. “This is Haraheliel, ladies,” I said. “But we call him Clarence. Clarence, these are the Sollyhull Sisters, Betty and Doris. They know everybody who used to be anybody.”

“He looks like a nice young one,” said the cream pitcher. “Not an old grump like you, Bobby-love.”

“Oh, but our Bob’s got reason to be grumpy, doesn’t he?” said the coffee pot. “Look at his face-the poor dear’s all over cuts and bruises!”

The bell above the door tinkled and a couple of delivery drivers in uniform walked in. They waited a minute for the waitresses to finish up their review of quantum field theory, then when that didn’t happen, they chose a booth not far from ours and sat down.

“Is this a trick?” asked Clarence in a loud whisper, still looking around for the source of the bodiless voices. “Who’s doing this?”

“He’s not thick, is he?” Betty asked. “I mean any more than normal, young-lad thick?”

“Oh, is he one of those unfortunates?” her sister said. “That’s a shame.”

“Just new,” I told the ladies. “Betty and Doris are earthbound spirits,” I explained to Clarence. “They exist both here and the spiritual plane, although it’s more like they’re just visiting here. Where they come from is sort of another part of Outside-through the Zippers, except it’s actually part of Purgatory. I think.” I shrugged. “It’s confusing.”

“What he means is that we’re ghosts,” said Doris proudly. “The real thing, us. ’Cept we’ve got no place of our own to haunt. Once we lost the bungalow where we grew up, we just floated around. Eventually we floated all the way over here!”

“Bloody Norah, she makes it sound easy!” said Betty. “We haunted a second-class stateroom on the Franconia for two whole years before we could get off again! That running water is nasty stuff for ghosts-everyone knows that-but who would have guessed that the ocean counted too?”

“Oh, and then we were in New York for a while,” her sister continued. The two voices seemed very close to the ears, and the ladies loved to jump back and forth from side to side, as though someone was playing with the mixing board of reality. Even for somebody like me who was supposed to try this stuff at home, it could be quite disorienting. “Too cold, that was. That’s why we come out here!”

“Ghosts get cold…?” Clarence sounded like he was not getting the kind of answers about the supernatural world that he had expected.

“Just conceptual-like,” said Doris. “But it still stings a bit when it’s winter.”

“Oh, and you never liked that, our Dor, did you?”

“No, you’re right, bab, I day’n’t.”

“If you ladies are finished with your reminiscences,” I said, “perhaps we could do a little business.”

The coffee pot rattled, bouncing the lid and belching out a little drift of steam. “Ooh, wotcher got?”

I took the bag out of my pocket and set it on the table just as the waitress arrived with our water, a mere fifteen minutes or so after we’d entered the diner. When she was gone again I pulled out the telltale bottle. Now the cream pitcher began quivering too. “Oh, lovely!” said Betty. “Doris, look! Yardley’s English lavender!”

“Have a quick sniff,” I said and took off the cap. The lids of both pot and pitcher popped open as whatever was inside them rose invisibly and, presumably, hovered above the perfume bottle.

“Dunt it just take you back,” said Doris dreamily (and still invisibly.) By this time the delivery guys sitting a couple of tables away had noticed the rather potent smell of lavender drifting over and, by their expressions, were wondering what the hell Clarence and I were doing.

“Reminds me of going down the dance hall on a Saturday night,” crooned Betty, then groaned as I put the cap back on the bottle. “Oh, you cruel sod! What did you do that for?”