Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job

Having actually been invisible to people, or nearly so, Charlie did a double take. It was midmorning and the gym was full of lean spandex-clad women in their twenties with disproportionately large breasts, perfect skin, and expensive hair, who seemed to have the ability to look right through him the way that everyone did when he was in pursuit of a soul vessel. In fact, when he and Ray had first come into the gym, Charlie had actually looked around for some object, pulsing red, thinking that he might have missed a name on his date book that morning.

“After I was shot I dated a physical therapist that worked here for a while,” Ray said. “She called them that: fuck puppets . Every one of them has an apartment that some older executive guy is paying for—just like he paid for the health-club membership and the fake tits. They spend their days getting facials and manicures, and their nights under some suit out of his suit.”

Charlie was wildly uncomfortable with Ray’s litany, talking about these women who were only a couple of feet away. Like any Beta Male, he would have been wildly uncomfortable in the presence of so many beautiful women anyway, but this made it worse.

“So like they’re like trophy wives?” Charlie said.

“Nuh-uh, like wannabe trophy wives. They don’t get the guy, the house, whatever. They just exist to be his perfect piece of ass.”

“Fuck puppets?” Charlie said.

“Fuck puppets,” said Ray. “But forget them, they’re not why you’re here.”

Ray was right, of course. They weren’t why Charlie was there. Five years had passed since Rachel’s death, and everyone had been telling him he needed to get back in the game, but that’s not why he agreed to accompany the ex-cop to the gym. Because Charlie spent too much time on his own, especially since Sophie had started school, and because he’d been hiding a secret identity and avocation, he’d started to suspect that everyone might have one. And since Ray kept to himself, talked a lot about people in the neighborhood who had died, and because he really didn’t seem to have a social life beyond the Filipino women he contacted online, Charlie suspected Ray might be a serial killer. Charlie thought he’d try to get closer to Ray and find out.

“So they’re like mistresses?” Charlie said. “Like in Europe?”

“I suppose,” Ray said. “But did you ever get the impression that mistresses worked this hard to look good? I think fuck puppet is more accurate, because when they get too old to hold the attention of their guy, they’ve got nothing more going. They’ll be done, like marionettes with no one at the strings.”

“Jeez, Ray, that’s harsh.” Maybe Ray is stalking one of these women, Charlie thought.

Ray shrugged.

Charlie looked up and down the line of perfect derrieres, then felt the weight of his years alone or in the company of a child and two giant dogs, and said, “I want a fuck puppet.”

Aha! thought Ray. He’s picking a victim. “Me, too,” he said. “But guys like us don’t get fuck puppets, Charlie. We just get ignored by them.”

Aha! Charlie thought. The bitter sociopath comes out . “So that’s why you brought me here, so I could show I was out of shape in front of gorgeous women who wouldn’t notice?”

“No, the fuck puppets are fun to look at, but there’s some normal women who come here, too.” Who won’t talk to me either, Ray thought.

“Who won’t talk to you either,” Charlie said. Because they can tell that you are a psychokiller .

“We’ll see in the juice bar after our workout,” Ray said. Where I’ll sit at an angle so I can watch you pick your victim .

You sick fuck, they thought.

Charlie awoke to find not one, but three new names in his date book, and the last one, a Madison McKerny, had only three days for him to retrieve her soul vessel. Charlie kept a stack of newspapers in the house and, typically, would go back for a month looking for an obituary of his new client. More often, if the hellhounds would give him some peace, he would simply wait for the name to appear in the obituary section, then go find the soul vessel when it was easy to get into the house, with mourners or posing as an estate buyer. But this time he had only three days, and Madison McKerny hadn’t appeared in the obituaries, so that meant she was probably still alive, and he couldn’t find her in the phone book either, so he was going to need to get moving quickly. Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev liked to do their marketing on Saturdays, so he called his sister, Jane, and asked her to come watch Sophie.

“I want a baby brother,” Sophie announced to her Auntie Jane.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry, you can’t have a baby brother, because that would mean that Daddy had sex, and that’s never going to happen again.”

“Jane, don’t talk to her that way,” Charlie said. He was making sandwiches for them and wondering why he always got stuck making the sandwiches. To Sophie, he said, “Honey, why don’t you go in your room and play with Alvin and Mohammed, Daddy needs to talk with Auntie Jane.”

“Okay,” Sophie said, skipping off to her room.

“And don’t change clothes again, those are fine,” Charlie said. “That’s the fourth outfit she’s had on today,” he said to Jane. “She changes clothes like you change girlfriends.”

“Ouch. Be gentle, Chuck, I’m sensitive and I can still kick your ass.”

Charlie spanked some mayonnaise onto a whole wheat slice to show he was serious. “Jane, I’m not sure it’s healthy for her to have all these different aunties around. She’s already had a hard time losing her mother, and now you’ve moved away—I just don’t think she should keep getting attached to these women only to have them yanked out of her life. She needs a consistent female influence.”

“First, I have not moved away, I’ve moved across town, and I see her every bit as often as when I lived in the building. Second, it’s not like I’m promiscuous, I’m just shitty at relationships. Third, Cassie and I have been together for three months, and we’re doing fine so far, which is why I’ve moved out. And fourth, Sophie did not lose her mother, she never had her mother, she had you, and if you’re going to be a decent human being, you need to get laid.”

“That’s what I mean, you can’t talk like that in front of Sophie.”

“Charlie, it’s true! Even Sophie can see it. She doesn’t even know what it is and she can tell that you’re not getting any.”

Charlie stopped constructing sandwiches and came over to the counter. “It’s not sex, Jane. It’s human contact. I was getting my hair cut the other day and the hairdresser’s breast rubbed against my shoulder and I almost came. Then I almost cried.”

“Sounds like sex to me, little brother. Have you been with anyone since Rachel died?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“That’s wrong. Rachel wouldn’t want that for you. You have to know that. I mean she took pity on you and hooked up with you, and that couldn’t have been easy for her, knowing she could do so much better.”

“Took pity on me?”

“That’s what I’m saying. She was a sweet woman, and you’re much more pitiful now than you were then. You had more hair then, and you didn’t have a kid and two dogs the size of Volvos. Hell, there’s probably some order of nuns that would do you now, just as a holy act of mercy. Or penance.”

“Stop it, Jane.”

“The Sisters of Perpetual Nookiless Suffering.”

“I’m not that bad,” Charlie said.

“The Holy Order of Saint Bonny of the BJ, patron saint of Web porn and incurable wankers.”