Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

“What are we gonna do?” says Niko.

The cabbie goes to the front of the cab and picks up a set of starter cables. “We’re gonna jumpstart him.”

“Are you out of your fucking—no, wait, never mind. Good idea.” Niko steps away and the cabbie clamps the black cable to Nikodemus’ left chest and then touches the red cable to his right chest. Bluewhite flash, electric sputter, flying sparks, smell of ozone and burned flesh. The galvanized body spasms. A tendril writhes like a detached lizard tail and quickly grows still. A puff of smoke rises from Nikodemus’ chest.

“Christ.” Niko glances at the sky expecting rolling thunder and quaking ground. He leans forward and feels for pulse and respiration and shakes his head.

A gray Mercedes with darktinted windows eases into the nearby intersection and stops with an abrupt bark. Powerlocks clack down and the sedan speeds away.

Again the cabbie touches Nikodemus with the red cable. Sputter spark smoke. Nikodemus jackknifes as if gutpunched and goes rigid and then goes slowly limp again as if deflating. The smell of seared flesh would be nauseating had Niko not become accustomed to such things. Niko sets an ear against the broad sternum. Still nothing.

The cabbie frowns and holds her car keys out to Niko. “Rev the engine when I tell you to.”

Niko limps to the cab and practically falls behind the wheel. The cabbie ducks beneath the hood and moves the red clamp from the positive terminal to the starter coil and then says Okay and backs quickly away.

The engine starts and idles knocking. Flash sputter spark and twenty thousand volts rush lightspeed into Nikodemus.

The cabbie yells Yes and Niko hears a long asthmatic wheeze of firstdrawn mortal breath and then a bellow that can best be called demonic. Then a thud of thrashing tendril denting quarterpanel.

Niko scurries from the cab to see the demon very much alive and on his feet and squared off with his snaking tendrils raised against the cabbie who holds up the starter cable clamps like a horror movie hero brandishing a crucifix against a vampire.

They both turn at Niko’s voice. “Welcome to Los Angeles,” he tells his demon.

THE CABBIE DRIVES down Wilshire Boulevard. Swerving through traffic caught by surprise at the signals’ sudden change. “Sorry to take surface streets,” she shouts into the wind buffeting through the mostly empty windshield frame. “The Hollywood Freeway’s still a nightmare.”

“A nightmare.” Niko laughs. He hears the edge of hysteria in it but he can’t help himself. A nightmare.

People stare at the cab as it hurries along. Beat to hell, no windshield, a demon filling up the back seat and gawking like the tourist he is. How could they not? But this is Los Angeles and most of them assume there’s a movie or a television shoot nearby, or that someone’s having a theme party or premiere. Or even if they don’t think there’s a movie or a party or a premiere, well, this is Los Angeles.

As they drive past MacArthur Park Niko can’t get over how clean everything looks. And the people! They aren’t covered with blood or shit or scabs or parasites. They aren’t buried in stone or broken in half or impaled on pikes. Those kids at the corner there. Six teenaged boys with beanie caps pulled low over shaven heads and loose shirts over baggy pants. Hands stroking belly tattoos. On constant lookout like meerkats. Not screaming, not mutilated, not blank and hopeless but whole and alive. They have no idea how beautiful fleeting rare and frail they are. No one out there has any idea. Not the woman packing up her hotdog stand or the kids dueling with their plastic laser swords or the gaunt man rattling his paper cup of paltry change or the Rasta selling homemade incense on a blanket or the man behind the counter at the doughnut shop filling a pink box with a dozen mixed or the swollenfeeted woman pushing her shoppingcart full of rags. Lucky blessed mortal oblivious and so very much alive. Unique unknowing souls one day to be contained perhaps within rude mason jars delivered to their tailored doom and every one of them worthy of the costliest rescue.

It is an effort of will to look back at his demon. Looking back at anything will take some getting used to. Nikodemus wears a thick gauze patch taped over one eye from a firstaid kit the cabbie brought forth from the Checker Cab’s trunk.

“How you doing?”

Nikodemus shrugs and gestures with a tendril out the window.

The cabbie maneuvers the Checker Cab like a porpoise through signals and intersections and traffic. “Thought I’d take Wilshire to Fairfax and take that till it hits Hollywood. That’s about the least crowded we’ll find on a Friday night without going way out of our way.”

Niko merely nods. He would ride shotgun with her on any route she took on earth or otherwise and never question her. The city he knows seems more surreal to him than its unattended doppelganger had. These old familiar streets so new and strange. Perhaps they are not what’s changed.

Hard west on Wilshire now. Vermont, Western, Crenshaw. Abstract neon of Koreatown. On the hillside the Griffith Observatory poised between seas of ordered light. The Greek Theatre hidden in the hills nearby. I played there for Jem and yet I’ve never played there at all. The tall block letters of the Hollywood sign dark beyond.

Through Midwilshire now. Tar Pits, County Art Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum. At Fairfax the Checker Cab turns right and heads north. Traffic thickens as they near CBS Studios and Farmers Market and The Grove. Stopped behind a car at the light at Fairfax and Third Niko glances back to see Nikodemus staring up in mortal terror at a Gray Line Tours bus turning left from Third onto Fairfax.

It’s okay, he tells his demon.

Nikodemus nods doubtfully without taking his piratic gaze from passing forms of tourists backlit behind tinted windows as they point down at the smashed and battered cab.

“What you lookin at?” the cabbie calls.

Niko sees a camera pointed at Nikodemus. “Wave,” he tells his demon. “Wave.”

Nikodemus waves. One for the books.

Nikodemus what do I do with you? I have violated something in bringing you here and I have no doubt the universe will seek to rectify it.

At Santa Monica a homeless man standing gaunt in the street like a bedraggled prophet points at the cab and shouts Motherfucker owe me money. Then the light turns green and they continue unabated across Sunset to Hollywood where they turn right and then left onto the canyon road to begin their snaking climb.

ALL THE OLD familiar places. The gaudy lighted mailbox at 2101. The wrought iron bats of the horror movie director at 2118. The left turn that always seems about to end but in fact turns sharper. Coming home.

Niko doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Even after everything his heartbeat quickens and his mouth grows dry and his eyes blink rapidly as they take in what will be catalogued later. My friends beside me. This ruined amazing car. Did ever an explorer come back home from unmapped oceans bearing such cargo as mine? Ferried across the sunless world.

Behind him and below him city light sways and sways.

The last stretch of uphill road. The final curve. The length of white stone wall. The graze mark where somebody sideswiped it some years back. My demon with me still. The flaring driveway. Security light and camera. Jemma snug against my lap and leaking out into the mortal world.

The black grilled gate.

The broken chain of myth.

The Black Taxi waiting in the driveway.

“WHAT DO YOU want me to do?”

Idling in the middle of the road the battered yellow Checker Cab faces the sleek Black Taxi. Gunslingers on the main street of Dodge. The space between them electric.