The Dirty Streets of Heaven

dull?”

“If they do,” answered some shouting Australian, “then we’ll replace ’em! Absolutely free!”

A great gust of cheers and applause greeted this announcement. I rolled onto my side and reached for Caz, who was facing away from me, slender back and buttocks as vulnerable as a child’s, but when I touched her she pushed my hand away.

“Don’t.”

“Just…Caz, talk to me.”

She shuddered a little. “Don’t. I’m serious. You know you’re going to wind up telling me what a whore I am and how I broke your little heart. Let’s just skip the preliminaries.”

This time I grabbed her arm hard enough that she couldn’t throw me off, and before she could really start struggling, I pulled her around to face me. For a moment she still kept her face turned away, the face that had haunted me for days, but then she gave up. Drops of sweat clung to her forehead and cheeks but her eyes were dry as they met mine.

“Don’t ask the questions because there are no answers,” she said. “You and I, we had a moment, okay, but we can never be together in a million years. Just forget about it. I only came here to tell you something.”

“The hell with that.” I sat up. She stayed on her back, delicate and damaged, putting me even farther in the wrong. She was lying right there in front of me, telling me I couldn’t have her. I fought against a cloud of red fury that could deliver nothing but disaster. “No! I don’t believe this is nothing. I know nothing, and this isn’t it.”

“Okay, so call it lust.” She slid farther up the bed so she could lay her damp, white-gold head against a pillow. The ivory length of her from navel to feet stretched beside me, distracting me, especially the abbreviated triangle between her thighs that gleamed like straw spun into gold. “We have that on my side, too. It’s nothing unusual.”

“Damn it, Caz, what do you want from me? If you’re going to dump me, what are you doing here?”

“Dump you?” She pushed herself back against the bumpy headboard but didn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable it was. “You have an inflated sense of yourself as a lover if you think a one-night stand means happily ever after, Dollar. Especially between you and me.”

“Are you telling me you don’t feel the same way?” I wanted to hit something. I wanted to rip the covers off the bed, spilling her and everything we’d done like a magician’s tablecloth trick gone embarrassingly wrong. “Go ahead, then. Tell me. Let me hear you say it.”

She looked at me then, really looked at me for the first time since she’d come through the door, eyes somber and serious. “I don’t feel the same way you do, Bobby.”

It was like being knifed in the gut. I’ve had that happen, so I know. The air pushed out of the belly, the cold, hard ache of something that shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t ever be there-it was almost exactly the same. “You’re lying.”

“Lying is what I do,” she said quietly. “It’s my job. But I’m trying to do you a favor and tell the truth for once.”

I got up and walked to the minibar, but taking a drink, especially out of one of those puny little bottles seemed like such a weak thing to do, such a human thing, that I turned around again and walked back to the bed. My entire life, the Highest’s grand plan for Doloriel, had shrunk to the dimensions of this little hotel room…or even smaller. To the size of a mattress covered with damp sheets. I have never wanted so badly to hit someone, to hurt someone the way I was hurting but I have also never wanted so badly to grab that same person and carry her away, to flee the wicked, wearisome world and spend the rest of whatever life I had trying to make her happy. “Torn” is not the word. “Confused” is not the word. I don’t think there is a word. “So, why did you come here?” I managed at last. “Why, Caz?”

“To warn you,” she said. “To try to save your life.”

I laughed, I’m sure rather bitterly. The life in question didn’t seem like an important commodity at that moment. “Some demon you are.”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you at all.” For a moment she had to look away, and I had a stupid hope that I had broken through somehow, that she was going to tell me that all the rest of what she’d said had been another lie. But when she turned back to me her face was horribly, horribly composed again. “Of course I do, in my own way. And I don’t want anything to happen to you-at least, not because of me.” She sat up and gathered her clothes, then slid off the bed and began to pick up her shoes and the rest of what had fallen, rewinding the spool of our sex, making it as though it had never happened. She was still half-naked, and despite my guts roiling and my head pounding, the sight of her bending over to get her coat was too much for me. I tried to put my arms around her but she violently yanked herself away from me.

“No! Don’t! I can’t! I can’t do that again.” She backed away, then after staring me down for a moment, stepped into her panties and began slowly putting herself back together. Every glimpse of flesh made my chest ache, especially when she buttoned up her shirt and the main expanse of her pale skin disappeared like the sun going behind clouds.

“Now,” she said when she was dressed, “we can argue some more or you can listen to me.” She looked at her watch. “We don’t have much time before I have to go.”

“With him?”

“Argue or listen?”

I closed my mouth.

“Eligor’s ending the conference early,” she said. “I heard him talking to one of his subordinates. Tonight, at midnight.”

“What are you talking about? He doesn’t have the power to do that even if it is his hotel This is a goddamn summit conference! He’s outranked by a bunch of guys on his own side, let alone what my side would think about it. You’re wrong, Caz. It’s not going to happen.”

“I heard what I heard,” she said, cool as a marble fountain. “And if he’s doing it, it’s probably to catch you by surprise, Bobby. He told me he wouldn’t…he said he wasn’t interested in you anymore, but we all know what his word’s worth.”

“Hold on. He told you he wouldn’t go after me anymore? Is that what you were going to say? Why would he say that? What did you tell him? Or what did you give him…?”

“Now you’re arguing,” she said.

“Fuck it, that’s not fair…” I began.

“But there’s more!” shouted the audience along with the Australian television huckster. He continued on, whipping them into a frenzy. “That’s right! For this one low price you can get two Robo-Chops, plus two shredder blades, two deli slicers, and this beautiful serving plate!” The informercial audience sounded like they were nearing the climax of a particularly noisy orgy, or else, perhaps, watching the Christians being delivered to the arena sand to meet the maneaters. I stalked to the television to turn it off, then began looking around on the floor next to the bed for the remote.

The door thumped closed.

I ran after her, snagging myself on some trailing bedclothes. When I had untangled my legs and got the door open, Caz had already vanished around the corner of the corridor, no doubt heading for the elevator. I could hear other voices in the hall and hesitated, balancing my need to catch her with my desire not to be running around Eligor’s hotel with my dick dangling and no gun. Caution won out, but only barely. I threw on my pants and pulled my jacket on over my bare chest, shoved the automatic into my pocket, and pushed my feet into my shoes without untying them before I hurried down the hall.

Three minor angels were having a rare old time trying to open the door to their room. They had clearly been tasting the unfamiliar freedoms of mortal bodies, especially the sort that came from fermented grain, but I still didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself chasing down the corridor after a female demon who had probably just passed them-something that might pierce the haze enough to be remembered tomorrow. I manufactured a little you-ought-to-know-better smile as I walked by, sending them into gusts of embarrassed laughter, then I moved briskly toward the elevator.

Could she be right somehow? Did Eligor, maybe with Caym’s help, have the clout to shut down the conference? And would he really do it just to get a crack at me?

He thinks I tricked him, I realized. He thinks I tricked him about the