Mortality Bridge (35 page)

“Me? Not a thing, Niko-lepsy. Poor bastard’s crazy as a shit-house rat.”

The Devil cries and cries at Niko’s feet.

“It was the job. The old bat just wasn’t cut out for it in the long run. It all got to him.”

Niko looks toward where Phil’s voice emerges from the darkness.

“Nobody did this but him. Scout’s honor.” He shakes his head at the pathetique before him. “He was the fairhaired boy before he got handed this gig. Never got over getting the boot. Used to pine all the time. That Milton, he had him pegged. All heart, no brain, attention span of a gnat. Took everything personal.”

Niko wants to push away from the ruined glory of the abject figure before him yet he also wants to give it what mortal comfort he can provide. As the fallen god that Geryon showed him chained to the mountain had radiated patience, so this creature radiates sorrow. Infinite grief from eternal sundering, sad and passionate as a graveyard statue. And truly deeply mad.

“You want to know why your old story always played the way it did?” the disembodied voice continues. “There’s your answer. Mr. Passion. Mr. Impulse Buy. Every time, you come down here and you want to make a deal. You grind away at the poor sap until he gives in and lets you play. You’re so blindly hopeful and he’s such a sucker for anything that lets him feel something. It’s pitiful to watch. And of course your music nails him every time, because the spongehearted son of a bitch would cry if a butterfly kicked him in the head. So he hands you back that whore you just can’t live without and you and Resurrection Barbie skip on out of here, Jack and Jill go up the hill like their asses are on fire. But whatever mask your punkass soul is wearing there’s always a catch and it’s always the same. Don’t look back. Just like Lot’s wife in my favorite bedtime story. Three simple words, no big deal. And even though you’ve committed more violations than a priest at a whorehouse to come down here, and welshed on an agreement and then even dickered a new deal, even after you get what you want but don’t deserve and head on out of here, you still go right ahead and fuck the dog. Don’t you, Niko-lama? You just have to look back and screw it up. You want to know why, Niko-wafer? Because you’re a loser. A fuckup wetbrain hophead loser.”

Niko crouching looks into mad goldleaf eyes. The Devil smiles, the Devil drools, the Devil croons his name. Niko’s very soul shudders. “Well. Thanks for the newsflash.” He touches the Devil’s cheek and the Devil nuzzles his palm. Tears spring to Niko’s eyes. Why this should be tragic he doesn’t know but it is. It is. He feels he’s present at the fall and plunder of some great and frightening empire. Niko firmly pats the great dark burly shoulder. The gesture of a man bidding farewell to a horse about to be put down. Gently he unfolds the shuddering wings from around his legs and unclenches the enormous hands. Stands and pulls the Devil upright. Nods up at that hopeful insane face and then turns toward the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asks the darkness.

“To get my guitar.”

“No can do, Niko-naut.”

Niko stops with his back to Phil as a black flower blooms in his chest. “Crazy or not,” he tells the bright white hall, “my deal is with him.”

“Your deal is with whoever’s in charge.”

Niko looks at his shoes. They’ve sure covered some ground haven’t they. “I thought you were just a messenger.”

“We all have our public face. Don’t we, Niko-modius?”

Niko turns back toward the room. The Devil huddles just beyond the doorway light. Phil’s form is convoluted dark before him. “So the inmates have taken over the asylum.”

“The inmates are the asylum, Niko-varitch. Always were. Let’s just say there’s been a corporate restructuring at the executive level since your last little venture down this way. Carpe nocturnum, and all like that.”

“And you won’t let me play for him. Is that it? It’s all been just some big joke.”

“Oh no no no. I wouldn’t let you come this far for nothing. Who am I to mess with a tried and true old story? Everything’s the same. The masks may change but not the play. You’ll still have your little audition. And if your music does its thing well hey. We’ll hand the man his Kewpie doll. It could happen.”

Mephistopheles steps into the light and smiles. “But you won’t be playing to win him over. This time out you play for me.”

XXI.

NOTES ON HER SLEEPING

THIS TIME THE elevator’s single button bears an
L
and when it opens Niko looks out on the sterile and depopulated lobby of an office building. Phil walks briskly through the lobby without waiting for Niko, and when Niko emerges from the building blinking in the bright Los Angeles afternoon Phil is standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and looking bored. Hot dry clear late summer day. Niko begins to sweat under the first sunlight he has felt in a long long time. The air smells like nothing at all, and that is pure perfume. Niko puts his hands up to it. Wants to linger here and gape at the unbelievable fact of Los Angeles around him, a city become near mythical as the reality of Hell usurped it.

Then he sees what waits for them at the curb. “No way. Fuck you.”

Phil smirks and pulls out a pack of nicotine gum. “Now now Nikotchka. I went to a lot of trouble to get just the right venue for your little show.” He unwraps a stick of gum and throws the wadded wrapper to the sidewalk. “We gotta get there somehow, Nico-rette.” He folds the gum in half and puts it in his mouth and offers the pack to Niko.

Who ignores it. “If your elevator can open out on this it can open on wherever we need to go.” He means to sound angry but he hears the note of desperation in his tone.

“All part of the act, Niko-matic. If you can’t stand the heat.” He shrugs and smacks his gum.

Niko scowls and knows he has no choice. He’s come here making demands. If he wants Phil to abide by them, he’ll have to accommodate Phil’s whims in return. They both know he’s standing on shaky ground.

Niko turns toward the curb and hoods his eyes against the glare. For a moment the only three sounds are the intermittent wind, the wet smack and pop of Phil’s gum, and the subtle purr of a rare and immaculately maintained twelve-cylinder engine as the Black Taxi idles by the curb with the Driver holding open the suicide door.

THE BLACK TAXI cruises empty Sunset Boulevard in the middle of the sunny afternoon. From the spacious passenger compartment Niko looks in wonder at lighted traffic signals, storefront neon, motionless streets. Somehow Los Angeles has evacuated ten million people but left everything running as if they will return at any moment. An urban Marie Celeste. Not a car in sight. Litter-free streets. Clear air. Unnerving quiet. The only sound the deep gargle of the Franklin’s engine.

Niko looks away from the window. Beside him Phil texts on his iPhone and ignores their surround. Between them lies the guitar case. There’s plenty of room for it on the facing seat but Niko prefers it close at hand and between himself and Phil.

Straightbacked and unwavering the Driver steers them east through Hollywood not half a mile from where the Checker Cab pursued this very car through Friday evening traffic a thousand years ago when mortals ruled the earth. They pass the Hollywood Palladium. Amazing how fast you travel in an empty city.

Niko leans back on the leather seat. Smells of leather, lemon oil. Birdseye maple sidepanels polished to a liquid gloss. The ride quiet yet surprisingly rough. Well, fortyfive hundred pounds of car on an old leafspring suspension on illkept L.A. roads. But apart from jostling the car itself is unaffected by the world. The ridged rubber siderunners bear no hint of wear or even shoeprint. No trace of blemish mars the paint. The spotless chrome displays no pitting. The windshield glass so clear it’s hard to see the frame holds glass at all. Bugless prow of huge front grille. Clear and spotless rings of whitewall tires. Beehive hinges on the suicide doors. Deep maroon upholstery pristine. Thick layered glossy paint like liquid holding shape through some miracle of surface tension. The Franklin’s utter black is even more amazing in the sunlit day. They travel like a carshaped hole along the boulevard.

Niko bolts upright.

The smooth white balls of Phil’s blank eyes peer over the top of his shades. “Forget something, Niko-lirium?”

Niko sits back and looks out the window. “No. Nothing. This is all just too strange, that’s all.” In truth he hasn’t forgotten something, he’s remembered something. In his coat pocket is a little box and in the little box is the spare key to this very car.

Niko tries to quell his sudden urgency. What’re you gonna do, cowboy, wait’ll they stop to take a leak and boost the car and drive it home? Sure your house is less than five miles from here, but look around you. This might be L.A. but it sure as hell ain’t your L.A.

Nonetheless the knowledge of the spare key on his person reassures. An ace up his sleeve.

At Western they turn left and head north toward the Hollywood hills. Western hooks right to become Los Feliz Boulevard and they speed along the undulating road. Before Hillhurst Niko sees a sign and realizes where they’re headed.

Phil sees the sign as well and frowns. “Aw, Niko-lizer. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

The sign whips past.

GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY

GREEK THEATRE

Niko leans back in the seat again and shuts his eyes. “It still is. Heck, I haven’t been to the observatory in years.”

A long quiet pause. The Black Taxi hangs a left and begins to climb the hill in earnest. Then a hand claps Niko’s thigh and a sharp barking laugh opens his eyes. “Niko-median. You had me going for a second there.”

Niko turns away again. “You’ve had me going a lot longer than that,” he tells the window.

IT ISN’T THAT the show will start soon. It’s that it never stopped. Phil was right. All that changes are the masks we wear. I was born for this moment. Have been borne toward this moment many times before. Chained to the turning of the wheel. And what brings me round to this point every time, what makes the wheel turn in the first place, is my belief that I can free myself from its vicious circle.

Then why bother? What’s different this time around?

In the cradle of his nemesis he rocks toward his culmination as the Franklin climbs and climbs the winding way.

Jemma. Jemma’s different this time round. She doesn’t belong here chained to someone else’s story. She deserves better. She always did. And if I can only get her out of this it doesn’t matter what becomes of me. I will have broken the circle. Sometimes victory and success are not the same.

Can you do this?

They break from the treelined residential section. Niko looks at his guitar case. In the light of day it’s really beat to shit. He sets his hand upon it as if feeling for a pulse.

Phil looks up from his cellphone. “Flop sweat, Niko-star?”

Niko looks at him and marvels that he doesn’t feel a thing. Out there on that empty plain he really did surrender something. “Weapons check.”

THE BLACK TAXI pulls up smoothly to the curb beside the unattended box office near the entrance to the Greek Theatre. The Driver gets out and holds open Phil’s door. Niko grabs his guitar and gets out of the big black car. He stares pointedly across the roof at the Driver but the Driver looks into some middle distance that renders Niko invisible.

The Driver shuts the door and takes up station beside the Franklin.

Niko faces the theatre entrance. The hot and steady wind feels cleansing on his face. Phil comes up beside him, hands in pockets and smacking gum. “Nice venue.”

Niko shrugs. “Never played it.”

“You kidding? You’ve played the Greek for ages.”

“Cute.” Niko heads toward a turnstile.

Phil stops him with a hand on his arm. “Make you a deal.”

Niko does not look back. Through the gate he sees the scalloped rows of open air seats. “Blow off the gig,” Phil says. “Get in the car and go straight to your front door. The real one in the real L.A. No strings, no catch. You go home no worse off than when you started, you don’t come back, and we call it even and the original Deal still holds. No harm no foul. What do you say?”