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“We’ll see each other much sooner than you think,” she says.
“Super. You bring balloon animals and I’ll hire clowns. It’ll be a party.”
I steer the Geo around the wrecked van. The frat boy on the curb finally figured out someone to call. Blood runs down his forehead and drips onto his phone, but he looks relieved. There’s a siren in the distance.
I turn right at the corner and steer the Geo onto the freeway.
THINKING ABOUT DEATH makes a ride go by fast. Thinking about your own death—even if it’s supposed to be temporary—makes it fly by like a cheetah with a jet pack>
You’d think that with all my connections to the celestial sphere, I’d have a better handle on death. But I don’t know anything. I didn’t die in Hell and since then I’ve lived through every kind of attack, abuse, and humiliation Hellions, humans, and hell beasts could pile on. After you’ve been shot, stabbed, slashed, burned, and almost zombified and survived it all, death gets kind of abstract. It’s like valentines and diplomas. Something other people have to deal with. But now it’s my turn to ride the pale horse and I have serious reservations about it.
Every day I walk down Hollywood Boulevard and see civilians making themselves crazy worrying about the meetings they’re late for or did they put the rent check in the mail or is their ass starting to sag and I think, “I’ve seen the creaky clockwork that turns the stars and planets. I’ve gotten drunk with the devil and body-slammed angels. I’ve seen the Room of Thirteen Doors at the center of the universe. I know the taste of my own blood as well as you know your favorite wine. I’ve seen so much more than you’ll ever see. I know so much more than you’ll ever know.” And then it hits me like a runaway semi. I don’t know anything that matters. Here I am thinking how much better and smarter I am than all the stuffed-shirt meat puppets wandering L.A. and I remember that there’s a billion people who haven’t done a tenth of the things I’ve done but who know the big answer to the big question: What happens when you die? I’ve seen fragments of it. I stood in the desert of Purgatory with Kasabian after he died and before Lucifer brought him back. But that doesn’t count. That was someone else’s death and Purgatory was just a projection of the afterlife created by my spell. Not the real thing. I’ve seen death a thousand times, and almost snuffed it myself, but I’ve never made it through all the way, and that scares me.
Are sex and death connected? Hell yes. They’re the two things in the world you can’t explain. You only know them by experiencing them. Maybe that was my mistake. I should have asked Mustang Sally if I could trade this death trip for having to relose my virginity at the crossroads. Easy. Any fun girl would be up for that. Instead of driving to my doom in a mom’s powder-blue shit wagon, I could be back in Hollywood, stumbling down the street with a grin, a beer, and a frustrated boner, trying to lure drunken dollies into a night of black-magic freeway lust. But no, I didn’t think of that and now I’m stuck on a backed-up interstate with what Medea said about Alice banging around in my head and wondering what this steering wheel is going to taste like when my face smashes into it at a hundred miles an hour.
IT HAPPENS ON West Adams as I’m closing in on the crossroads underpass at I-10 and Crenshaw.
The light bar on top of a cop car flashes in my rearview mirror.
Maybe he’s looking for someone else.
His sirenn">His bleeps twice.
“Pull over.”
The cop’s voice comes out of the car’s bullhorn sounding like a bigger and angrier version of the robot in Candy’s glasses.
“Pull over.”
The one time I don’t steal a car this is what happens. That’s the lesson for tonight. Anytime I try to do something like a regular person, I get fucked for it. Never again.
I slow down, but I don’t pull over. Every nerve in my body is vibrating, telling me to jam the accelerator and leave these shitbirds in my dust. But I can stomp this accelerator from now until the sun burns out and there still won’t be any dust. This three-speed rowboat would lose a drag race to a crippled monkey on a Big Wheel.
I pull over and cut the engine. The patrol car stops behind me. The driver aims the car’s outside spotlight at my side mirror, blinding me. I unclamp the angel a little and its eyes cut right through the glare.
Two cops in the car. Both male. One is young and wiry with a close-cropped flattop. He’s more excited than he should be at a simple traffic stop. Probably a recent cop school graduate.
The driver, the one getting out, is heavier. A bit of a donut gut, but he’s got at least fifty pounds of muscle over his partner. The older cop showing a young pup the ropes. Shit. I’m probably one of his life lessons. Any other night, this Romper Room scene would be playing out somewhere else. I should have pulled over when I saw the lights go on.
I roll down the window. The cop comes up on me sticking close to the car. Smart. If he came in wide, I could reach for a weapon and shoot before he had a chance to get his gun out. Sidling up like he is, I’d have to turn around in my seat to get a shot off and he’d put six slugs in the back of my head before I could say, “Ouch.”
The cop has his flashlight out, held in an underhand grip so he can swing it like a club. He shines the light in my face then lowers it a few inches, leaving me temporarily night-blind.
“Evening, sir. Did you know that your left taillight is out?”
“No, I didn’t. Thank you. I’ll get it fixed first thing tomorrow.”
He’s unmoved by my diplomacy.
“May I see your license and registration, please?”
“This isn’t my car.”
“Whose is it?”
“A friend’s. He’s a priest.”
“Is he? May I see your license, then?”
