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Charlie knew what was happening because he had seen it before, and Buddy and Jane knew because Grace, the hospice nurse, explained it to them. "It happens again and again. I've seen people come out of a coma and sing their favorite songs, and all I can tell you is to enjoy it. People see the light come back into eyes that have been dull for months, and they start to place hope on it. It's not a sign of getting well, it's an opportunity to say good-bye. It's a gift. "
Charlie had also learned by observing that it really helped everyone to let go if they were at least mildly medicated, so he and Jane took some antianxiety pills that Jane's therapist had prescribed and Buddy washed down a time-released morphine pill with some scotch. Medication and forgiveness can make for joyous moments with the dying - it's like they get to return to childhood - and because nothing in the future matters, because you don't have to train them for life, teach lessons, forge applicable and practical memories, all the joy can be wicked from those last moments and stored in the heart. It was the best and closest time Charlie had ever had with his mother and his sister, and Buddy, in the sharing, became family as well.
Lois Asher went to bed at nine and died at midnight.
I can't stay for the funeral," Charlie said to his sister the next morning.
"What do you mean you can't stay for the funeral?"
Charlie looked out the window at the giant ice pick of a shadow that had made its way down the mountain toward his mother's house. Charlie could see it churning at the edges, like flocks of birds or swarming insects. The point was less than a half mile away.
"I have something I have to do at home, Jane. I mean, I forgot to do it and I really, really can't stay. "
"Don't be mysterious. What the hell do you need to do that you can't attend your own mother's funeral?"
Charlie was pressing his Beta Male imagination to the breaking point to come up with something credible on the spot. Then a light went on. "The other night, when you sent me out to get laid?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, it was an adventure, to be sure, but when I went to get my scalp sewed up, I also had a test. I talked to the doctor today, and I have to go get treatment. Right now. "
"You moron, I didn't send you out to have unsafe sex. What were you thinking?"
"It was safe sex. " Right, sure, he thought, he almost scoffed at himself. "It's the wounds they're worried about. But if I get on these drugs right away, there's a good chance that I'll be okay. "
"They're putting you on the cocktail? As a preventative?"
Sure, that's it, the cocktail! Charlie thought. He nodded gravely.
"Okay, then, go. " Jane turned and hid her face.
"Maybe I can get back in time for the funeral," Charlie said. Could he? He had to retrieve two overdue soul vessels in less than a week, and hope that no new names had appeared in his date book.
"We'll do it a week from today," Jane said, turning back around, tears blinked away. "You go home, get treated, come back. Buddy and I will handle the arrangements. "
"I'm sorry," Charlie said. He put his arms around his sister.
"Don't you die on me, too, you fucker," Jane said.
"I'll be fine. I'll be back as soon as I can. "
"Bring back that charcoal Armani of yours for me to wear to the funeral, and Cassie's strappy black pumps, okay?"
"You? In strappy black pumps?"
"It's what Mom would have wanted," Jane said.
When Charlie landed in San Francisco there were four frantic messages on his cell phone from Cassandra. She had always seemed so calm, composed - a stable counterpoint to his sister's flights of fancy. She sounded a wreck on the phone.
"Charlie, she's got him trapped and they're going to eat him and I don't know what to do. I don't want to call the cops. Call me when you land. "
Charlie did call, all the way into the city in the shuttle van he called, but kept getting transferred to voice messaging. When he got out of the van in front of his store he heard a hiss coming out of the storm drain at the corner.
"I missed finishing with you, lover," came the voice.
"No time," Charlie said, hopping over the curb and running into the store.
"You never called," purred the Morrigan.
