Currency of Souls

His face contorted with pain, damp forehead pressed against the wheel, Brody tells him, “He was trying to rob me, for Chrissakes. Guy had a knife to my throat.”

Dean nods his understanding and spreads his hands. “Hey, he was a punk. I know that, but it still upset me. After all, no one wants to think about some dumb old dead crooner, now do they?” He purses his lips, then continues. “Oh sure, the old farts play us on their radios, but they don’t think about me or Frankie, or any of the old boys. Not any more, even though it don’t cost ’em a dime. Not one dime, friend. They just keep us locked away with memories of the first time they got laid.” He narrows his eyes at Brody, as if he’s worried that it’s too complicated for the kid to understand. “The proud moments, y’know? Life’s moments. But it don’t matter what the music playing in the background was. Oh no. That gets forgotten. We get forgotten.” He sighs, looks back out at the road. “Then you have the crazies, the guys who got hit on the head one too many times in the ring, or came back with busted heads from one war or another, and just because I was singing on the radio while they waited to get their brains put back in, they decide I’m God. They decide they’re going to be me, and damned if they don’t walk around like little mirror images, singing and dancing and reminding people of the good ’ol days. Highballs in one hand; smoke in the other. Reminding people of Dino.” He rubs his hands together in delight and grins. “So here you have some goddamn yuppie couple who are eating cavier, sipping champagne in the park while Tommy wonders how many deadbolts there are on the woman’s underwear and she’s wondering when’s he gonna stop wondering how many deadbolts there are on her underwear because she’s not wearing any, when up the street comes waltzing the ghost of Dino, looking like me right down to the smile and the sparkling eyes, right down to the snazzy shoes. Only he smells like dog shit and old pizza, but hell, the job’s already been done, because the girl sees him and starts remembering, and she tells the guy about how she’s free next Sunday and maybe he’d like to come over and watch a movie, and its one she remembers seeing as a kid, something about some lecherous but handsome lush, and it sounds like a prime opportunity for Tommy to bang the broad, so he agrees. Cut to Sunday, my friend, and both of those jerks are squatting by the TV watching me do my thing, and they’re enjoying it. And I’m getting off on it.

“That, kid, is who you knocked off.”

“I didn’t know.”

Dino lights a cigarette. “Why’d you kill him?”

“I told you.”

“Sure. Sure you did. Because he was going to rob you right?”

“Right.”

“Well ain’t that something. You took the guy’s life because he stole from you.” He slaps his knee, tipping ash onto the floor. “Just like you stole from me by killing him and robbing me of the limelight, right?” He laughs loudly. “Life can be a hell of a thing sometimes, can’t it?”

“I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t.”

Dean blows out a plume of blue smoke. It flows across the windshield and up Brody’s nose. He coughs before he can stop it, looks fearfully at his passenger, then allows himself a sigh when it appears his involuntary protest has gone unnoticed.

“That was some pretty broad you had too.”

With no small effort, Brody raises his head. “Yeah, she was.”

“Too bad about the drugs.”

“Yeah.”

“You know her long?”

“Maybe a year.”

“Know who she was?”

Brody feels a tightening across his chest. The casual way the man is asking these questions, the way he’s not looking at him, makes him fear that Carla might have been someone a lot more important, at least to the ghost of Dean Martin, than he ever suspected. She certainly played the guy’s music enough to drive him crazy, so maybe…

“Wanted to be a ballerina,” Dean tells him, a wistful smile on his faces. “Like any little girl. Grew up, wanted to be a lawyer because she got hooked on Matlock. Got older still and wanted to be a model, even spent some time in L.A. That’s where she discovered the shit she kept putting in her veins. Came back, cleaned up, got herself enrolled in a nice community college thing, studied to be a medic. Dated a guy who beat the shit out of her at every available opportunity, so she ended up getting involuntary hands-on training with the medics. She left him and the college, hitchhiked her way to Texas, considered getting into music. First guy she approached told her he’d give her as much time in the studio as she gave him on his couch. The old story. She thought of suicide, but dismissed it in favor of resuming her habit. Why? Because I told her so. I thought her being messed up and alive was better than her being dead any day of the week. And she was helping to keep me around, playing my records every time she felt blue, mentioning my name whenever the subject of music came up. And why? Because her grandmother and me had a thing one time, back in the late ’50’s, right when I was at the top of my game. Showed up backstage on night at a Vegas show, a real country girl, out of her league and well aware of it, but just there to prove she had the guts to come say “hi” to a man she thought she loved because of how I looked and because I could sing real well. I took her to dinner a few nights, and sent her on her way, and that was that. Liked that gal a lot.

“Once I went balls up and they put me in the ground, I figured I’d look in on her from time to time, and kinda got to like it. She always played my records too. After she died, I watched over her daughter, then Carla.” He whistles. “What a kid. Helped that she liked my music of course. But I watched her real close, watched her life get worse and worse and not a whole lot I could do about it. Oh sure, I’d help her throw up after a bad night, or put her car keys where she could find them, maybe keep a bad guy she was thinking of dating out of the picture until she forgot about him and he forgot about everything except when to empty his colostomy bag. But she was on the downward slope, friend, and I couldn’t do enough to keep that from happening. After she left Texas, I followed her to Gainesburg, where she met you.”

Brody remembers. The bank job with Smalls, a low-level thug with dreams of grandeur that ended up splattered all over the wall of the First National. Kyle had kept his share, and spent the first of it at a roadside diner a hundred miles from Gainesburg. That was where he’d met Carla. She’d been sitting alone in a booth, staring into a cup of coffee, looking like she was considering jumping into it and drowning. He’d watched her from his own booth, weighing up the positives and negatives of approaching a girl when he was on the run from the law, when she took the initiative and slid in beside him, started talking about the weather, and music (Do you like Dean Martin?), as if they’d been friends forever.

“I didn’t mean for her to die,” Brody says, grimacing as he inspects his broken finger. “I swear I didn’t. I loved her.”

“You think you did.”

“No, I—”

“The same way you think you loved all those other girls you dragged along on the little crime spree you call your life, all those other girls you turned into mothers because you don’t care. Sooner or later they stop becoming your problem. Sooner or later they stop becoming anything at all.”

“That’s not how it is.”

Dean looks at him, grins widely. “Look who you’re talking to. There’s no sense arguing with me, and why would you want to? You’re stressed out enough as it is.”

“Please, look…”

“I’m not going to kill you, kid.”

Every muscle in Brody’s body unclenches, and he allows himself to sit back.

“That’s not how I do things. I just wanted you to know who that girl was those guys put in the ground back there. She wasn’t just another one of your crack-whores good for a hundred miles only. She was someone, and she was a damn sight more human than you’ll ever be.”

Brody nods. “I know you don’t believe me, but I did care about her.”

“Sure you did, kid.” Dean cracks open his door, puts one foot out on the road. “Sure you did.” He exits the car, brushes dirt from his trousers and leans in the open window. “Do me a favor, will ya?”

Brody looks at him. “Sure.”

“When you get on your way, play some of Carla’s discs. I don’t imagine there’d be a nicer way to sing her