Tad Williams: The Dirty Streets of Heaven

As the kid and I fell in behind Sam, a couple of bystanders looked briefly in our direction but then sort of lost interest. We’re not easy to notice when we’re working, I’ve learned over the years. We’re still there , if you know what I mean-we have real bodies-but if we don’t want you to see us then you probably won’t, or at least you won’t remember it afterward.

Sam and the kid vanished into the shimmering line down the middle of the air and I stepped through after them.

As always, it was the quiet of Outside that struck me first, a great, heavy hush as if we had suddenly dropped into the biggest, most silent library in the universe. But in most ways we were still where we had begun-the docks, with the cop cars and safety vehicles burning the darkness with red and blue lights and the downtown skyline stretching skyward behind them like a mountain range. But the police spotlights weren’t moving, nor were the cops’ mouths, a helicopter over the Intel Tower, a diver floating on green jelly swells, or even the few seagulls who had been startled off the pilings by all the activity and were now frozen in mid air like stuffed displays hung from a museum ceiling. Only one thing was different Outside: a woman with short gray hair and a dark raincoat stood in the midst of the petrified policemen, though none of them could see her.

“That’s her,” Sam said. “You want to walk the kid through meeting the client while I’m waiting for the guardian, B? That way he can learn from the best.”

“Lying bastard,” I said, but I got the facts I needed from him and then led the kid down to the puddle-glazed dock.

“We look the same here,” the kid said, staring at his hands. “I mean, we do, don’t we? Like our earth-bodies?”

“Pretty much.”

“I thought we’d look more…angelic.” He looked embarrassed. “Like in Heaven.”

“This isn’t Heaven-we’re still on the plane of earthly existence, more or less. We just stepped out of Time. But we don’t have to look the same here, it’s just sort of a tradition. The Other Side folk prefer to make themselves more intimidating. You’ll see.”

As we approached our new client, she stared at us with an expression I had seen on a lot of faces in a lot of similar situations-total, utter confusion.

“Silvia Martino,” I said. “God loves you.”

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Who are you?” She flapped her hands at the motionless cops and firefighters. “What’s wrong with these people?”

“They’re alive, Mrs. Martino. I’m afraid you’re not.” I’ve dumbed down my explanations over the years. I used to think breaking it to them slowly was the kindest way, but I learned differently. “You apparently drove your car into the bay. Any reason?”

She was more than a bit beyond sixty but no old lady. In fact, she looked like someone who might get old but would never really get old, if you know what I mean. Then I remembered that she would never get any older than this moment.

“Drove my car…?” She looked at the white bulk of her SUV hanging at the end of the straining tow truck cables like Moby Dick, decorated with fantails of glassy, motionless water. “Oh, dear. That’s my car, isn’t it?” Her eyes widened. She was beginning to do the math. “I was trying to turn around, and I guess I got…confused.” She blinked. “Am I…am I really…?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Then the tears came. This is the part I hate most about my job. Sometimes your clients are so happy to be out of their sick, dying bodies that they practically dance. But those who get caught by surprise, who suddenly come to understand that there’s no more, that’s it, game over…well, those are tough. There’s not much to say while they work it out, but if they need it you can put your arms around them and hold them when you’re Outside, and that’s just what I did. You would have, too.

After a while she was through the worst of it. She was a tough lady-I liked her. She pulled away from me and dried her eyes, then asked, “And who are you?” She looked at me more carefully now, as though I might be about to try some after-death marketing scam on her.

“My name is Doloriel. I’m an advocate angel of the Third House.” I didn’t bother to introduce Clarence because he would have only done something stupid like promised her that everything was going to turn out all right. (I could tell by his disappointed expression that was exactly what he’d planned to do.) Instead I pointed back at Sam, who was now talking to the lady’s guardian, a wispy, half-transparent thing that gleamed in its folds like foxfire. “That fellow is Sammariel, another advocate angel. He’ll speak for you.”

“Speak for me? How? When?”

“At judgement,” I said. “Very soon.”

“Judgement…?” Eyes suddenly wide and fearful.

“Just wait here, please.” I pulled the kid aside and gave him some fairly harsh warnings about what he was allowed to do and say, then left him with the recently departed. He and the dead woman stared at the half-submerged car as though wishing someone would leap out of it and help the conversation along. I was glad he was keeping his mouth shut. People deal faster (and better, I think) with that terrible, ultimate realization when you let them work it out for themselves. Besides, what are you going to tell them? “Just fooling, you’re not really dead! This is just a wake-up call for you to fix your life!” Because it’s not. It’s the end, at least of their time on Earth, and no cheerful chitchat is going to change that.

The guardian angel had just finished briefing Sam when I joined the party. “Briefing” isn’t as much like the real world as it sounds: The guardians kind of make their knowledge available to us, and for the entirety of the proceedings it’s just there , at our mental fingertips, as though the memories were our own. Thank goodness that ends again after the sentence-it would be overwhelming to carry the details of every life you’ve argued for, all the time. It’s tough enough sometimes just dealing with the stuff that sticks.

Anyway, the guardian gave me what I guess was an interested look, although it’s hard to tell with them because they’re far less human in appearance than we are-a lot less corporeal, too. They don’t use actual meat bodies, of course, otherwise people would be wondering why some kind of shiny human jellyfish was always floating along next to them. “You’re Doloriel,” it said. “I’ve heard of you.”

“Can’t say the same about you until I know your name.”

“Iphaeus.” It stared at me, twinkling a little. “Heard you like to piss people off.”

“Wouldn’t go so far as to say I like it.”

“Look,” interrupted Sam, “if the two of you want to get to know each other better you can always arrange a romantic dinner. Right now…”

The guardian gave a sort of shiver and its glow dwindled. “He’s here.”

Something had just stepped through a red-lit portal from the Other Place (their equivalent of the Zipper was less like a shimmering white line and more like a fiery wound) and now stood brushing imaginary lint from its immaculate, blood-colored suit.

“Grasswax,” said Sam. “Shit. They’re going to make me work for this one.”

I heard Mrs. Martino gasp when she saw the demon, and I was sorry I’d left her with the kid. It’s pretty nasty when a client realizes Hell is real. I hoped she’d make it through the actual trial without breaking down-some judges are real assholes about that. The quality of mercy may droppeth as a gentle rain from Heaven, but sometimes you’d swear there was a drought.

Another shape stepped out of the wound a few moments after Prosecutor Grasswax, a muscular, hairy demon in a cheap suit with a wolfish snout and an attitude to match. I’d seen him before, though I couldn’t remember where-a nasty piece of work named Howlingfell. Bodyguards didn’t usually show up for this kind of routine work on neutral turf. I wondered why the prosecutor felt he needed protection. From the way Howlingfell sniffed the air, he looked like he was working. Didn’t really make much sense. His boss was ignoring him.