Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job

“So, from what you guys are saying, there are thousands of humans walking around without souls?”

“Millions, probably,” Charlie said.

“Maybe that explains the last election,” she said, trying to buy time.

“You said you could see if people had one,” said Minty Fresh.

He was right, but she’d seen the soulless and never thought about their sheer numbers, and what happened when the dead didn’t match with the born. She shook her head. “So the transfer of souls depends on material acquisition? That’s just so—I don’t know— sleazy. ”

“Audrey, believe me,” Charlie said, “we’re both as baffled by the mechanics of it as you are, and we’re instruments of it.”

She looked at Charlie, really looked at him. He was telling the truth. He had come here to do the right thing. She threw open the pantry door and the red light spilled out on them.

The pantry was nearly as big as a modern bedroom, and every shelf from floor to ceiling and most of the floor space was covered with glowing soul vessels.

“Jeez,” Charlie said.

“I got as many as I could—or, the squirrel people did.”

Minty Fresh ducked into the pantry and stood in front of a shelf full of CDs and records. He grabbed a handful and started shuffling through them, then turned to her, holding up a half-dozen CD cases fanned out. “These are from my store.”

“Yes. We got all of them,” Audrey said.

“You broke into my store.”

“She kept them from the bad guys, Minty,” Charlie said, stepping in the pantry. “She probably saved them, maybe saved us.”

“No way, man, none of this would be happening if it wasn’t for her.”

“No, it was always going to happen. I saw it in the other Great Big Book, in Arizona.”

“I was just trying to help them,” Audrey said.

Charlie was staring at the CDs in Minty’s hand. He seemed to have fallen into some sort of trance, and reached out and took the CDs as if he were moving through some thick liquid—then shuffled away all but one, which he just stared at, then flipped over to look at the back. He sat down hard in the pantry and Audrey caught his head to keep him from bumping it on the shelf behind him.

“Charlie,” she said. “Are you okay?”

Minty Fresh squatted down next to Charlie and looked at the CD—reached for it, but Charlie pulled it away. Minty looked at Audrey. “It’s his wife,” he said.

Audrey could see the name Rachel Asher scratched into the back of the CD case and she felt her heart breaking for poor Charlie. She put her arms around him. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. I’m so sorry.”

Tears splattered on the CD case and Charlie wouldn’t look up.

Minty Fresh stood and cleared his throat, his face clear of any rage or accusation. He seemed almost ashamed. “Audrey, I’ve been driving around the City for days, I could sure use a place to lie down if you have it.”

She nodded, her face against Charlie’s back. “Ask Esther, she’ll show you.”

Minty Fresh ducked out of the pantry.

Audrey held Charlie and rocked him for a long time, and even though he was lost in the world of that CD that held the love of his life, and she was outside, crouched in a pantry that glowed red with cosmic bric-a-brac, she cried with him.

After an hour passed, or maybe it was three, because that’s the way time is in grief and love, Charlie turned to her and said, “Do I have a soul?”

“What?” she said.

“You said you could see people’s souls glowing in them—do I have a soul?”

“Yes, Charlie. Yes, you have a soul.”

He nodded, turning away from her again, but pushing back against her.

“You want it?” he said.

“Nah, I’m good,” she said. But she wasn’t.

She took the CD out of his hand, pried his hands off of it, really, and put it with the others. “Let’s let Rachel rest and go in the other room.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. He let her help him up.

Upstairs, in a little room with cushions all over the floor and pictures of the Buddha reclining amid lotuses, they sat and talked by candlelight. They’d shared their histories, of how they had come to be where they were, what they were, and with that out of the way, they talked about their losses.

“I’ve seen it again and again,” Charlie said. “More with men than with women, but definitely with both—a wife or husband dies, and it’s like the survivor is roped to him like a mountain climber who’s fallen into a crevasse. If the survivor can’t let go—cut them loose, I guess—the dead will drag them right into the grave. I think that would have happened to me, if it wasn’t for Sophie, and maybe even becoming a Death Merchant. There was something bigger than me going on, something bigger than my pain. That’s the only reason I made it this far.”

“Faith,” Audrey said. “Whatever that is. It’s funny, when Esther came to me, she was angry. Dying and angry—she said that she’d believed in Jesus all her life, now she was dying and He said she was going to live forever.”

“So you told her, ‘Sucks to be you, Esther.’”

Audrey threw a cushion at him. She liked the way that he could find the silliness in such dark territory. “No, I told her that He told her that she’d live forever, but He didn’t say how. Her faith hadn’t been betrayed at all, she just needed to open to a broader understanding.”

“Which was total bullshit,” Charlie said.

Another cushion bounced off his forehead. “No, it wasn’t moo-poo. If anyone should understand the significance of the book not covering everything in detail, it should be you—us.”

“You can’t say ‘bullshit,’ can you?”

Audrey felt herself blush and was glad they were in the dim orange candlelight. “I’m talking faith, over here, you want to give me a break?”

“Sorry. I know—or, I think I know what you mean. I mean, I know that there’s some sort of order to all this, but I don’t know how someone can reconcile, say, a Catholic upbringing with a Tibetan Book of the Dead, with a Great Big Book of Death, secondhand dealers selling objects with human souls, and vicious raven women in the sewers. The more I know, the less I understand. I’m just doing.”

“Well, the Bardo Thodrol talks about hundreds of monsters you will encounter as your consciousness makes its journey into death and rebirth, but you’re instructed to ignore them, as they are illusions, your own fears trying to keep your consciousness from moving on. They can’t really harm you.”

“I think this may be something they left out of the book, Audrey, because I’ve seen them, I’ve fought with them, wrenched souls out of their grasp, watched them take bullets and get hit by cars and keep going—they are definitely not illusions and they definitely can hurt you. The Great Big Book isn’t clear about the specifics, but it definitely talks about the Forces of Darkness trying to take over our world, and how the Luminatus will rise and do battle with them.”

“Luminatus?” Audrey said. “Something to do with light?”

“The big Death,” Charlie said. “Death with a capital D. Sort of the Kahuna, the Big Cheese, the Boss Death. Like Minty and the other Death Merchants would be Santa’s helpers, the Luminatus would be Santa.”

“Santa Claus is the big Death?!” Audrey said, wide-eyed.

“No, that’s just an example—” Charlie saw she was trying not to laugh. “Hey, I’ve been bruised and electrocuted and tied up and traumatized tonight.”

“So my seduction strategy is working?” Audrey grinned.

Charlie was flustered. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—was I staring at your breasts? Because if I was, it was totally by accident, because, you know—there they were, and—”