Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“I have to work at four,” Abby said.

“It’s an emergency. Like an hour, max. Can you pick me up at the corner of Polk and Pine?”

“Okay, but I’m going to be dressed for work.”

Twenty minutes later, Abby showed up in her beater Prius and Lily jumped in. “What are you wearing?” was the first thing Lily said.

“For work,” Abby said. She was wearing a khaki skirt, black tights, a crisp white blouse and flats. If not for her hair, which was still short and dyed a deep maroon, Lily wouldn’t have recognized her.

“Retail?” Lily asked.

Abby nodded. “I’m a failure. What are you wearing?”

Lily was in black jeans, ankle boots, and a red SF Fire Department T-shirt, which she had thought might help her with the ambulance guys. “Me, too,” she said.

The two failed Goth girls shared a high-five and hugged it out for their shame, then Lily said, “Head up Van Ness and pull in in front of City Hall.”

“I can’t park there. There’s a bus stop.”

“You’re not parking. It’s an emergency.”

Lily outlined the plan on the way: “I need to steal a defibrillator.”

“Okay, I’ll drive,” said Abby.

“No, you have to come in with me.”

“Why? They aren’t heavy. Are they heavy?”

“No, but I haven’t done this before.”

Abby pulled the Prius up onto the sidewalk in front of City Hall and they both jumped out.

“My friend is having a heart attack. My friend is having a heart attack,” Lily chanted as she led Abby up the steps, and continued chanting it as they ran up the hall.

“My friend is having a heart attack, make way.”

When people looked, Abby said, “Hey, fuck off, I’m having a heart attack.”

Finally they spotted a bright red plastic box inside a larger, clear plastic box near a fire extinguisher.

“You want this, too?” Abby said, her hand on the fire extinguisher handle.

“No, just this.”

Lily pulled open the plastic box and pulled out the defibrillator, which was about the size of a small laptop computer. There was a readout and a single yellow button. Then the box started talking.

“Place pads on patient’s chest,” said the box.

Unfortunately, Lily and Abby had attracted enough attention on their way to the defibrillator that a group of about a dozen people had gathered around them to either help the skinny girl or watch her twitch.

“Place pads on patient’s chest,” said the box.

Lily popped open a little door on the defibrillator and two vinyl pads about the size of coasters, stuck together, fell out, trailing wires behind them.

“What do we do?” Abby said.

“Place pads on patient’s chest,” said the box.

Lily held the box between her legs, separated the two pads, then tore open Abby’s blouse and slammed the pads on her boobs.

“You bitch!” said Abby. She grabbed the front of Lily’s shirt and made to tear it open, but instead just stretched it out and spun Lily halfway around.

“Heart rhythm normal. Do not shock,” said the box.

“What’s going on here?” came a voice from down the hall.

It was a heavyset, coplike guy, in that he had a gun and a uniform, but he didn’t look like he ever had to do any difficult cop stuff.

Abby took off running the way they had come. Lily grabbed the defibrillator just as it was about to be yanked out of her hand and followed.

“Heart attack! Heart attack!” Abby yelled ahead. “Out of the way, I’m having a fucking heart attack.”

“She is,” said Lily, holding up the defibrillator as she ran. “Slow down, Abs, you’re pulling out the wires.”

Abby jumped into the Prius. Lily bundled the defibrillator into her friend’s lap, then jumped in the Prius’s back door behind her. “Go! Go! Go!”

And with all the roaring fury of a golf cart escaping the back nine, they sped into the traffic on Van Ness and were immediately stuck behind a bus, which, it turned out, didn’t matter, because no one was chasing them.

“Do not shock. Heart rhythm normal,” the box said.

“You got electro-stickum on my best bra,” Abby said. “I have to change before work, now.”

“They look good on you, though—like a sexy torture robot.”

“Yeah?” Abby was trying to look at her chest while driving. “See if there’s extras in the little box.”

So that had happened, and Lily had called M and told his voice mail, “No problem on the defibrillator, I’ll have it for you,” but then doubt started rising as evening came on, and by midnight she really, really wanted to be asleep, not thinking about killing a guy, but the stupid foghorn. What, ships didn’t have radar and stuff, they still had to use nineteenth-century technology to keep from crashing into rocks?

She went to her bedroom window, threw up the sash, and stuck her head out as the foghorn sounded.

“Really?” she shouted.

Again the horn.

“Seriously!”

“How ’bout you be quiet,” said Mr. Lee, the old Chinese guy who lived in the apartment below her and was hanging out the window smoking.

“Sorry,” she said, and slunk back to bed.

AUDREY AND CHARLIE

Since meeting with Mike, Audrey had spent three days fasting, chanting, and meditating, preparing herself to perform the ritual of Chöd, trying to achieve the mental state necessary, without, of course, thinking about achieving the mental state necessary, which is sort of the tricky part of Buddhism.

Late Wednesday night found her sitting in the lotus position on a wide, padded stool at the end of the bed while Charlie paced frantically around her, nervous about his big moment. She had not slept and would not sleep, having achieved the state of waking trance that she would need to maintain through the ritual, but Charlie’s toenails, snickt, snickt, snickting on the carpet threated to pull her out of her trance.

Calmly, evenly, quietly, she said, “Charlie. Please.”

“I can’t sleep. I’ve tried. All the things that could go wrong. What if it doesn’t work and Sophie never has her daddy? You could have done all of this for nothing. Mike might back out, and who could blame him. I’m sure there’s a way I could screw this up. And you know if there’s a way to, I will. And not only that—”

“Please,” she said, not a note of alarm or anger, every breath with purpose.

“I just can’t sleep, there’s the—” and he was off again. Snickt, snickt, snickt.

Audrey, her face a model of the beautiful and compassionate Buddha, stood on the cushioned stool, ever so slowly—Venus rising from the sea on the half shell—and let her silk saffron robe slip off her until she stood there naked.

“Hey,” Charlie said. “Wow. What, are you—”

Charlie, all of his vital energies and most of his fluids having been inspired to swiftly migrate to his enormous dong, was spun around as the member unfurled from his waist until it achieved its full appreciation, then he plopped over on his side unconscious on the rug, where he remained, snoring, until dawn.

Audrey slowly lowered herself back into the lotus position and continued her meditation through the night.

THE MORRIGAN

They had once been death goddesses of the Celts, the three, and had reigned over the battlefields of the North for a thousand years, plucking souls from the dead and dying, and driving warriors on with fury and terror, switching from their raven and crow forms to the silky, razor-clawed harpy-women as whim and wind suited them. Now they were patchwork shadows, licking their wounds in a closed train tunnel under Fort Mason Great Meadow, unable even to hold three-dimensional form, distinguishable from the oil stains left by the tractors and other heavy equipment stored in the tunnel only in that they were moving.