Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

As soon as the door closed Lily said, “Asher, you fucker!” She slapped the top of the cat carrier. It took the hit and sprang back.

“Ouch!” said Charlie. “Hey!”

“How could you do that to me? You fucker! You fucker!” Lily was crying now, as if she’d been saving it all for when Audrey was no longer in the room, which she had. “I thought you were dead! You let me think you were dead! You fucker!”

“Stop saying that,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry.”

She smacked the top of the cat carrier again.

“Ouch!”

“I would never do that to you, Asher, you fucker. Never! How could you do that? I thought we were friends, well, not friends, but something. You fucker!”

“I’m right here. Stop crying.”

“I’m crying because you’re right here, you fucker. I finished crying because you weren’t here a long time ago.”

“I thought it would be easier—I couldn’t keep running the shop, being Sophie’s daddy, being Charlie Asher like this. I thought it would be easier. I’m a freak.”

“You’ve always been a freak, Asher. That’s your best quality.”

“That’s not true, I was always nice to you, at least when you weren’t being stubborn and moody.”

“Which is like, never.”

“Is that why you called the Buddhist Center and blackmailed me into meeting you? Because you’re angry?”

“Yes, I’m angry, but that’s not why. M told me you were in trouble, so I thought I might be able to help.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out between you and Minty Fresh.”

Lily cringed at the sound of M’s full name. “What could I do? You guys and the whole death-dealing thing… And he knows so much, and I don’t know anything, and he was always giving me stuff and forgiving me when I was a bitch—acting like he respected my opinion.”

“Maybe he does respect your opinion.”

“That’s what I’m saying. How do you win a relationship like that?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to win a relationship, Lily.”

“What do you know? You’re hiding in a cat box.”

“This isn’t a cat box.”

There was a commotion from the back room, a door opening at the second-floor landing, then footfalls on the stairs.

“Is voices. Hello,” said Mrs. Korjev. The stout Russian grandmother came down the backroom stairs, followed by Sophie Asher. Sophie, her dark hair in pigtails with clips that resembled gummy bears, was dressed in layers of pastels that would have looked perfectly fine on taffy or ice cream. The soles of her pink sneakers lit up with every step.

Lily leaned over the bar so they could see her. “Hey.”

“Lily!” Sophie scampered into the abandoned restaurant and jumped into Lily arms. “We miss you and your pizza.”

“I miss you, too, kiddo.”

“Lily, the goggies are lost. We’re going to put up posters.”

Sophie ran back to Mrs. Korjev, who handed her a letter-size printed sheet from a stack she was carrying. Sophie plopped the poster on the bar in front of Lily, then climbed onto the bar stool next to her. “See?” Sophie said. “There’s a reward.”

Mrs. Korjev pulled a staple gun from her shopping bag and held it. “Is reward for Mr. Chin at butcher shop, too, if he give Vladlena trouble about boning chicken again. Is lost-dog-poster staple on his front-head.”

“Forehead,” Sophie corrected the Cossack matron.

“If shoe fit,” said Mrs. Korjev.

“So you’re doing your shopping, too,” Lily said. “Multitasking.”

“Chinatown have best vegetables, even for white devils,” Sophie said, with only a slight Cantonese accent, a remnant of Mrs. Ling’s shopping tutelage. “Auntie Jane used to take me to Whole Foods on her day off, but she says she has to take too much vitamin X to keep from killing everyone there, so now we get our veggies in Chinatown.”

“Let’s see here.” Lily pulled the poster over. At the top there was a picture, printed in black and white, of Sophie perhaps a year or two younger, with the hellhounds. Sophie was in the tub, her head above a sea of bubbles, crowned with shampoo horns. Alvin and Mohammed flanked the claw-foot tub like guardians at the entrance to a bubbly tomb, making them look completely unreal to scale, which is kind of how they looked in real life.

“We blacked out my eyes with this square for my privacy,” said Sophie.

“Good idea,” said Lily. “You didn’t have any other pictures of them?”

“Nope,” Sophie said.

The poster read:

LOST

2 Irish Hellhounds.

Very black, like bear.

Huge, like bear.

Answer to Alvin and Mohammed.

Like to eat everything. Like bear!

REWARD!

“Did you write the text, Mrs. Korjev?” Lily asked.

“I put in two bears and the Irish part,” said Sophie. “Daddy said that no one would believe you if you called them hellhounds, but if you said Irish hellhounds everyone thought they’d heard of them.”

A scratching noise came from the cat carrier on the bar and Sophie seemed to notice it for the first time. “Hey, what’s that? Do you have a—”

Lily clamped her hand over Sophie’s mouth. “No. I don’t. There’s nothing in there. Nothing. Do you understand?”

Lily’s hand still on her mouth, Sophie nodded. Lily tentatively pulled her hand away.

“I wasn’t going to say it,” Sophie said.

“I know,” said Lily. “I’m just taking the empty carrier to a friend. There’s some food in there that shifted.”

“Okay,” said Sophie.

“We need to go, lapochka,” said Mrs. Korjev. The Russian matron had come around the corner of the bar like a great, bosomy whirlwind when Lily grabbed Sophie and still held her staple gun at the ready. Lily was relatively sure that she had been only seconds from having her own forehead stapled.

“Okay, you two,” Lily said. She carefully lifted Sophie off the bar stool and set her on the floor, then crouched in front of her. “I hope you find the goggies.”

Sophie gave Lily a hug. “Come see us. Bring special-special pizza.”

“I will,” Lily said. “Bye, Sophie. Bye, Mrs. Korjev.”

“Bye,” Sophie said, leading Mrs. Korjev out the metal door that led into the alley. Mrs. Korjev looked back at Lily, siting down the mole on the side of her nose, letting Lily know that she had her eye on her.

As soon as the door closed behind them, a heartbreaking wail rose from the cat carrier.

“You okay, Asher?”

“I miss her so much. She’s gotten so big.”

“Sorry.” Lily patted the top of the cat carrier.

“What’s special-special pizza?”

“It’s a flaming-dome pizza with mac and cheese inside. I created it for Sophie to celebrate her becoming a vegetarian.”

“She’s a vegetarian? She didn’t even like vegetables last year.”

“It’s okay. She’s only a vegetarian because it was a thing with the other girls. Jane convinced her you could still be a vegetarian if you only eat animals that eat vegetables, too.”

“So anything but what?”

“I don’t know, lion, bear, crocodile—”

“Jane is ruining my daughter. I have got to come home. I’m missing everything.”

“But you are coming back, right?” said, Lily trying to cheer him up.

“Probably not. We’ll never find the right body.”

“No, that’s the good news. That’s why I’m blackmailing you—I mean, why I called. I think I have the body for you.”

“Lily, I have to be there almost at the moment of death. You can’t just grab a body out of the fridge.”