Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

“Where’d you learn to drive a boat?” Minty Fresh asked.

“Our dad used to take us fishing,” shouted Charlie. “Jane always got to drive the boat.”

“Shhhh,” shushed Audrey, who evidently was not as deep in trance as they thought.

“Sorry,” said Charlie.

“Uh-oh,” said Jane as she steered toward the north tower of the bridge. “That’s not good.”

A finger of fog was streaming in through the Golden Gate; from their position, it appeared to be above the water, but below the deck of the bridge.

Minty Fresh lifted his sunglasses to get a better look. “You can see to steer, right?”

“So far,” said Jane. “But I don’t know if we’ll be able to see the bottom of the bridge from under it. It might be a whiteout by the time we get there.” She checked her watch.

Five minutes later, when they were a half mile out, the fingerling of fog had taken on the aspect of a snowy knife blade, inserting itself between the bridge towers and the water just below the roadway.

“We won’t be able to see the bottom of the bridge,” said Jane, digging in her rain-jacket pocket for her phone. “I’m calling it off.”

Lily was supposed to be at work at nine, and she had actually been headed that way, but after dropping off the defibrillator at Charlie’s store for his sister, and learning that the big gay cop, Cavuto, had been killed, she started to shake, and as her bus approached her stop near the Crisis Center offices she realized she just couldn’t do it. She got off the bus and flagged down a taxi.

“Take me to the Golden Gate Bridge,” she said.

“You want me to take you to the visitor center, or to the bridge. Because if I take you to the bridge, I’m going to have to go to Marin to turn around and pay the toll to come back and it’s going to cost you.”

“Sure, the visitor center,” she said, not really thinking it through.

She got out of the cab at the visitor center and paid, then started running up the trail for the bridge. She hadn’t even gotten to the tollbooths before she was out of breath and had to slow to a walk. She checked the time on her phone: 8:55. Five minutes. She started to jog in the wobbly, ankle-breaking way that drunk girls do, although she wasn’t drunk, just really out of shape.

He was going to jump off from the steel structure under the road, about two hundred feet south of the north tower. She looked up. She wasn’t even to the south tower. She’d never make it. And if she did, what was she going to do? You couldn’t even get to where he was going to be from the walkway; at least she didn’t know how to get there.

But there was fog coming in under the bridge, like a plank or something. He wouldn’t jump in the fog. That was one of the plans, she was sure of it.

She scrolled up his number and pressed dial. This was her thing, this was what she did. This was what made her special. She would get the bridge painter off the bridge.

“Hi, Lily,” Mike said.

“Mike, you can’t do this. Not today.”

“I have to, Lily. But I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

She made an exasperated growling noise.

“Are you okay?” Mike asked. “You sound like you’re choking. Are you crying.”

“No, I’m running.” She was crying. “I’m right above you on the walkway.” She was , kind of, above him, and she was on the walkway, she just wasn’t right above him on the walkway, by about a quarter of a mile.

“That’s very sweet of you,” Mike said. “But really, I’ll be fine. I don’t know, I feel like I’m done here.”

“You’re totally not done. You paint the bridge I’m looking at it. I can see a spot you missed right here. There’s rust.”

“This is what’s supposed to be, Lily. She needs me. They need me.”

She held the phone to her chest until the urge to scream that he was a fucking lunatic passed, then, very calmly she said, “Just come up, Mike. This is a bad idea. There’s fog. You can go back down if your mind is set on it, but for now, please just come up here. Hang out with me for a little bit. I’m waiting.”

“Are you using the ‘promise of sex’ thing on me, Lily?”

“No, that’s not what this is. That’s a different thing completely. This is—”

“Well, that would be lovely, and under other circumstances, I’d jump at the opportunity.”

“Really?” He did not just say that. Did he really say that?

“I mean, I’m flattered, but Concepción is waiting for me, and she has my heart.”

“Mike, did you just call that ghost your boo?”

“Good-bye, Lily. Thank you. I have to go, I have another call.”

Her phone beeped as he disconnected. She stopped walking and just looked at it.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she screeched.

A father who was walking his two elementary school kids across the bridge took their heads and steered them away from the foulmouthed girl with too much eye makeup. He glared over his shoulder at her.

“Oh, lick my love-luge, Dockers, I’m trying to save a fucking life here.”

She couldn’t see the screen of her phone through the blur of her tears. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and looked again: nine o’clock.

Hi, Jane,” Mike said into the phone. He stood on a beam under the roadway, facing the city, one arm wrapped around a crossbeam. He’d already slipped out of his safety harness, leaving the lines attached to the bridge. At his feet, the bag of sand. The chant Audrey had taught him was repeating in his mind, over, and over, and over, as constant as the ocean.

“Mike, it’s not a go,” said Jane. “We can’t even see you.”

Mike looked down on the strip of fog that was streaming not more than twenty feet below him. Incredibly dense, but wispy and soft-looking on top. Looking out, the bay was clear all the way to Berkeley, the fog only coming in from the ocean side, the strip of vapor like the fog bank testing the temperature of the bay before coming through the Gate. He’d seen it before, he’d seen it all.

“It’s clear all around you, though, right?” Mike said.

“Yes, but not above us. It’s not safe.”

Concepción materialized before him, about ten feet away, smiling, her arms out.

Mike laughed. “Good-bye, Jane. Take care of my body.” Eyes forward, knees a little bent, hands in a fist, he thought. He crouched, put his phone on the beam, then stood and faced Concepción, holding the bag of sand before him.

“Come to me,” she said. “Come to me, my sweet Nikolasha.”

The Sanskrit chant circling in his head, Mike dropped the bag of sand and stepped out into space.

The man in yellow could just hear them saying—after the Morrigan killed the cop and took the soul vessels from the bookstore, completely wasting them—he could just hear them saying, “ They’re creatures of darkness, it’s not like they’re just going to waltz right in in broad daylight and take the souls.”

Everybody likes a surprise , he thought.

So, just a little after nine in the morning, when a pasty guy in big glasses flipped the “Open” sign on the front door at Fresh Music, the man in yellow waltzed right in, in broad daylight, to take the souls.

It was a nice store, stained glass in the front windows true to the Edwardian architecture of the building, poster-sized black-and-white photos of jazz, soul, and rock greats. Iconic album covers in frames over the racks of used vinyl: Bitches Brew, Lush Life, Sticky Fingers, Abbey Road, Born to Run. The yellow fellow strolled by the racks, flipping an album here, there, looking for that beautiful red glow that the ladies loved so.