Richard Kadrey - Hollywood Dead

“Keep going. I tip big.”

I stop him at a hundred dollars. He holds the bills out like I might bite his hand off. It’s tempting.

I walk to a shadow and put the bills in my pocket.

“Don’t wait up.”

“I don’t want you coming back drunk,” says Sandoval.

“Don’t worry. I’ll look pretty for class pictures tomorrow.”

One more step and the shadow swallows me.

I know those two are going to fuck me over, but I don’t know how, and until I do I’m going to have to dance their dance, take my lumps, and smile the whole time. Howardis the one I need to keep an eye on. The necromancer is the Blue Fairy to my Pinocchio and I want to be a real boy again. If things go sideways, the others can fry. Howard though? I won’t let anyone touch a hair on his stinking head.

I step out of the shadow onto Hollywood Boulevard a few blocks west of Las Palmas and Maximum Overdrive, the video store where I live. Or used to. Who knows now? Up ahead, Donut Universe shines like the Virgin Mary doing barrel rolls over Lourdes, so I head over.

BEFORE I GO inside there’s the matter of Roger’s cigarette. There’s no one on the street I can bum a light from, which leaves me with one option. I put the smoke in my mouth and cup my hands around it. Whisper some Hellion hoodoo. A small flame flickers up from my palm, just big enough for me to spark the cigarette. It’s a relief, and I don’t mean just getting to smoke. I haven’t done any hoodoo since coming back and I didn’t want Sandoval and Sinclair to see me in case I blew it. Now I want to try something bigger, but what I’m best at is breaking things, so I’ll wait until there’s something I want to see in pieces.

The Sherman is a decent smoke in its own way, but it doesn’t have the bite of a Malediction, the most popular cigarette in Hell. I had a whole box stashed upstairs at Max Overdrive. Wonder if they’re still there. More important, I wonder if I should even go near the place again. What if I run into Candy? The last time she saw me, I was dying with a knife in my back. I’ve been gone a year. What’s her life like now? A year is long enough to move past whatever grief she might have felt back then. The good news is that I saw her outside Max Overdrive the night I came back from Hell, so I know she and the store are still around.

The truth is, I want to run inside and see her right now. But what if things don’t work out with Wormwood? It’s almost Thursday and I could be gone again by Sunday. Is it fair to stumble back into her life when I could just as easily stumble out again? The answer is simple. Seeing her now wouldn’t even be close to fair. So, for the moment I’ll keep to myself and see how this insane fucking situation plays out. It’s a lonely feeling, but I’m almost used to that.

What’s really getting to me is that as much as I missed her in Hell, it’s a hundred times worse being back. My perfect, beautiful monster. During my last look at her she was in her Jade form, tearing Audsley Ishii apart. That’s how you know someone really likes you. Anyone can give you chocolate and flowers, but when they’ll disembowel someone for you? That’s true love.

I crush the Sherman under my heel and go inside Donut Universe.

The smell that hits me is almost overwhelming. Familiar and alien at the same time. Hellion food tastes like what a butcher shop throws in the trash and then a hobo sleeps on it for a couple of days. But what’s on the shelves in this shop …

If I have to die again, let it be in Donut Universe. Bury me in old-fashioneds and éclairs. Burn me in the parking lot and let me drift up to Valhalla on a wave of holy sugar and grease fumes.

When it’s my turn, I step up to the counter, where a pretty young woman asks me what I want. Like the rest of the Donut Universe staff, she wears little antennae with silver balls on the end. The balls bop gently as she speaks. My friend Cindil wore antennae like that when she worked here. Back before she was murdered. I can’t ever come in here without thinking of her. But I brought her back from Hell and now she has a pretty decent new life. She even plays drums in Candy’s terrible band. Or she did a year ago. Where is she now?

Goddammit. Memory is such a bastard when you don’t know if any of it’s true anymore. Candy. Cindil. Max Overdrive. L.A. That’s hard to lose and maybe harder to get back when you don’t know if you can keep it.

“Sir?” says the antennae girl. “Do you want a donut?”

Fuck me. How long have I been standing here? I can’t even interact with actual humans without looking like a lunatic. Take two.

“I’ll have an apple fritter and a cup of coffee.”

She rings them up and tells me the price. I hand her one of the twenties and when she tries to give me change I say, “Keep it. I’m just happy to be back here.”

She smiles and says, “Welcome back,” like she means it, and it kind of breaks my heart. She’s nice. I forgot what that’s like. I try to smile back at her, but I’m not sure I’m getting it right. I mean, my face does something . Whether it’s a smile or not is up to her.

The good news is that when she brings me my order she doesn’t pepper-spray me. That’s a beginning. I feel like a kid on his first date, proud he didn’t spill whiskey on his girlfriend’s dress or puke on her when he drank too much.

“Come back soon,” she says as I pick up my stuff.

“If I’m still alive next week, I’ll buy out the whole damn store.”

She laughs and says, “It’s a date then.”

I nod and get out before I blow the moment.

More than I already have, I mean.

At the corner, I take a long sip of coffee. It’s funny. I remember what they served at Donut Universe as being pretty good, but I can barely taste this stuff at all. I unwrap the apple fritter and take a bite. It’s the same thing. I feel the dough in my mouth, but I can’t taste anything. Another sip of coffee and another bite of fritter. I chew until I can’t stand it anymore and spit the fritter into the gutter. It’s not the food. It’s me. I can’t taste it. Another side effect of being only half-alive. At least the cigarette had a little kick. And I could taste bourbon the other night. This half-alive situation is getting on my nerves. I’ll do whatever it takes to get right again.

If cigarettes and liquor are all I can handle until I’m fully alive again, there’s only one place I can go. I head for Ivar Avenue and Bamboo House of Dolls. And it better be there. I swear if it’s gone, Wormwood won’t have to worry about the faction.

I’ll nuke L.A. myself.

FORTUNATELY FOR EVERYONE, I don’t have to drop even a single bomb. As soon as I spot the neon, my whole body relaxes. I need a drink more than ever to wash the last mealy remnants of the fritter out of my mouth. But I don’t want anyone here to know I’m back, including Carlos, the bartender. I step into an alley and throw on a glamour so no one will recognize me. There are still eighty dollars of Sinclair’s money in my pocket. That should be enough to get decently horizontal.

But I don’t go inside right away. Instead, I stay on the street letting the moment soak in. A day or so ago, I was standing at the pearly gates. Just a few hours before that, on the road for a year with a dog pack of psycho marauders tearing up the Tenebrae, killing and burning everything in our path. Standing here now, just a day later, all that feels like a bad dream. Mouthfuls of dust, road rash, and the kind of burning fear that’s indistinguishable from anger. But here and now it’s just cigarette smoke, couples whispering to each other, and the sound of bird chirps and horns as Martin Denny spins on the jukebox. It’s a little overwhelming, but in a good way. I take one last gulp of L.A. night smog and go inside.