Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“You said these Death Merchants were all shopkeepers? You and I are not shopkeepers.”

“I have a bookshop on Russian Hill. That’s how I knew that the soul vessel would be a book. Probably, anyway. If you don’t have a shop, then how—”

“My wife sells them on the Internet.”

“You sell souls on the Internet?”

“It’s not always the Internet. Some Saturdays she will take them to the swap meet at the Cow Palace parking lot and sell them off a blanket. People pay a lot of money for the silliest things. We may be able to buy a house soon.”

“How do you know the right person gets the soul?”

“How do you know in your bookshop?”

Actually, Rivera didn’t know. While he had several soul vessels in his shop, he had yet to sell one. But when he did, there was no way to verify the right person was getting it. According to the Big Book, each soul would find its right person. He shook his head and they both looked into the gutter. Rivera had a million questions for the orderly, and he guessed that Baptiste felt the same toward him, but there was a feeling of wrongness to it, like somehow they were cheating on a test.

Finally, Baptiste said, “How long? For Helen?”

“Three days,” Rivera said. “But you know, the number isn’t always how long they have to live, only how long we have to collect the soul vessel. So probably less. I’m sorry.”

“Why do you suppose I did not get her name in my calendar?”

“I don’t know,” Rivera said.

“I should probably get the Proust book for you, then.”

“I would let you collect it, but I’m afraid I may have already set things out of order by falling behind on my calendar.”

“I understand,” Baptiste said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Rivera waited, closed his eyes, and just felt the chill wind biting through his light, worsted wool suit. In a few minutes Baptiste came back out of the front door, moving quite a bit more quickly than he had gone in.

“It’s gone,” he said.

“Did you check all the drawers?”

“I checked and I asked the shift nurse, who said that Helen had her check on it this morning. It was there then, she said.”

“Did Helen see anything?” Rivera asked.

Baptiste just looked at him.

“Sorry. Did she hear anything?”

“Rats. She complained of the sound of rats scurrying in the room. She rang for the nurse after we came out here.”

“Rats?”

“Her hearing is very good.”

They just looked at each other and there was a lull between gusts of wind when the leaves that were skittering around in the street slid to a stop. A woman’s voice whispered, “Meeeeeeeeat.” A woman’s voice that seemed to be coming from under an Audi wagon parked on the curb across the street. They both looked and did a slow, synchronized deep knee bend until they could see under the car, where there appeared to be nothing but leaves and a candy wrapper.

“Did you hear that?” Baptiste asked.

“Did you?” asked Rivera.

“No,” said Baptiste.

“Me either,” said Rivera.

Lily let herself into the empty storefront that had once been Asher’s Secondhand and later the location of Pizazz, the pizza and jazz place she and M had opened. The sight of the sign, leaning in the corner, and the idea that she’d let the Mint One talk her into that name made her want to start cutting herself again, something she’d indulged briefly when she was fifteen but had quickly stopped because it hurt. The space filled the entire ground floor of a four-story building at the corner of Mason and Vallejo streets, where the North Beach, Chinatown, and Russian Hill neighborhoods met like slices of an international pie.

All the booths and tables were gone, as well as most of the restaurant equipment. Only the oak bar and a great, brick, wood-burning pizza oven remained. There was still a storeroom with a staircase that led up to Charlie Asher’s old apartment (now Jane and Cassie’s), but now it contained only a walk-in refrigerator and a few bar stools and chairs instead of the collection of knickknacks that had filled it when it had been Charlie’s store.

Lily dragged some stools out to the bar and sat down to wait in the diffused daylight from the papered-over windows. This would be weird, but she found she was excited at the idea of seeing Charlie again, even if he was a wretched little carrion creature now.

Soon there was the silhouette at the door of a woman who apparently had a crescent-moon-shaped head and Lily hurried to the door to let her in. Oh yeah, this was going to be weird.

Audrey, wearing yoga pants, a sweater, and sneakers, stood on the sidewalk holding a cat carrier shaped like a Quonset hut. It was made from heavy nylon embroidered in blue and orange swirls, heavy mesh halfway down on either end.

“Hi,” Lily said, stepping out of the way so Audrey could come in. They’d met once before the debacle, when Lily had been the one with the postmodern hair. “Where’s Asher?”

Audrey lifted the cat carrier.

“Well dump that little fucker out,” Lily said. “Let’s have a look at him.” Charlie had described his new body on the phone but she wanted to see him for herself.

“Hi, Lily,” came a voice from inside the luggage.

“Asher!” Lily bent down and tried to look into the cat carrier, but beyond something dark reflecting two points of light—eyes, she guessed—she could see nothing.

Audrey swung the cat carrier away from Lily. “He’d prefer you didn’t see him this way.”

“Oh, hell no,” Lily said. “I agreed to meet you here where all my PTSD began, I get to look at the little monster.”

Lily tried again to squint into the cat carrier. Audrey swung it around the other way.

Charlie said, “Audrey, if you keep swinging this thing around, I’m going to be sick.”

“Please,” Audrey said to Lily. “He’s really sensitive about his looks.”

Audrey put the cat carrier on the bar and sat down at one of the stools. Lily sat and squinted through the carrier’s mesh, trying to see something. Still just points of light.

“Asher, is it really you?”

“It’s me now.”

“I feel like I’m talking to a tiny priest in a tiny confessional. But you can only hear my tiny sins.” She affected her bowed-head-of-deep-contrition look, which was new to her, so she wasn’t confident in it. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I once drank the last of the milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. I drew pubes on my Barbies and posed them in a threesome with a Ninja Turtle. I sometimes wish that dicks were mint flavored. I won’t say what made me think of it. I never wished that you were dead, Asher, but when I worked here, I sometimes wished that you would fall down the stairs and land in a cake. I don’t know how the cake gets there, it’s just a fantasy.”

“I don’t think any of those things are sins,” Charlie said.

“What do you know? You’re not a priest.”

“Although he is wearing a beautiful wizard’s robe,” said Audrey.

Lily gave Audrey what she considered her, withering , silence, worm! look.

“How about I run out and grab us some beverages?” Audrey said. “Give you two a chance to catch up.”

“Skinny latte, please,” Lily said, flashing her, I am cute so all my prior bitchiness must be forgiven smile. “Here, my treat.” She took a bill from her purse and handed it to Audrey, who, having spent years as a monk begging for her daily meal, accepted it without protest.

“I’ll get your usual, Charlie,” Audrey said, and she was out the door.