Ian Tregillis - Something More Than Night Read online

  I pulled out a stool for flametop. “Park the body. Bite an egg.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Sit down. Have something to eat.”

  “Why don’t you talk like a normal person?”

  “I’m not a person. Neither are you, any longer.”

  “Do all ‘angels’”—she put scare quotes around that—“talk like you do?”

  “Nah. Most of the others are old fluff.”

  She rolled her peepers and gave the joint a once-over. I knew what she saw because I’d constructed this little pocket reality all by my lonesome. It was the sort of place where a cup of joe cost a nickel and that was four cents too much for what it bought you. They didn’t serve decaf here. It was the sort of place that smelled of bacon grease and burned coffee and the sweat and pomade from the guy on the next stool. The sort of place where it didn’t pay to look too closely at the silverware, but where you could count on decent eats so long as you didn’t ask for anything poached, infused, or zested. Two palookas in overalls and flatcaps occupied a table along the storefront window, lamping the passing girls and arguing too loudly over the box scores. They’d been doing that since DiMaggio’s day; I added them as an homage, when he played his last game, and never got around to rearranging the place. It was comfortable. A ceiling fan with one missing blade tried to push the air around but the air was having none of it. Three houseflies buzzed around the fan, their aerials stuck on a permanent three-second loop, which lent the off-kilter sense of a filmstrip skipping its sprockets, which I liked just enough not to fix. A tomcat and his steady chewed each other’s faces in another booth. In the kitchen, the short-order cook listened to a ball game on a staticky radio. A clean-shaven mugg in suspenders and a bowtie flapped his jaw on the telephone in the wooden booth near the restrooms. His suitcase, open on the floor beside him, was full of brushes.

  Our waitress tossed the rag in his direction. “Hey! Phone’s for paying customers, you chiseler.”

  He covered the mouthpiece. “Aw, go soak your head. I’m doing business here.”

  “Well excuse me, Mr. Rockefeller, but we got other folks here, real paying customers, that might wanna make calls of their own.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m expecting a call.”

  “You can soak it, too, rummy.” Someday soon I was going to revamp the place. Really I was. The shtick had been funny the first few decades.

  “Tell you what. My girl here”—by which I meant Molly—“is in the market for a new hairbrush. A mane like that takes a lot of attention. So give it a rest and after we’re done eating I’ll let her tell you all about it.”

  “That’s square?”

  “As a brick.”

  “Done.” He tossed the phone back on its hook, gathered up his case, and took a booth in the corner. He shouted over to Flo for a plate of hash browned potatoes.

  (“I’m not your girl,” Molly hissed. “Don’t order the hash browns,” I whispered.)

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “Welcome to my Magisterium, kid. My own humble corner of the Pleroma.”

  “Pleroma,” she said, rolling it around in her mouth as though she were knotting a cherry stem with her tongue. (A lesser bo might have gotten sidetracked, wondering if she could do that. But not yours truly. I’d been there while she shuffled through her memories and happened to know, for the record, that she could.) “I’ve heard that word before. My mom went on a New Age kick for about ten years. I never had any patience for that crap.”

  She hugged herself. Shivered. Surveyed the greasy spoon again. Then she said, like a wrestler crying uncle, “I guess it wasn’t crap.”

  “Sure it was. But Pleroma’s an old word. Know any Greek? To regular lugs like me and you, it means the totality of the divine realm.”

  “Then what the hell is a Magisterium?”

  “An angel’s home away from home. The Pleroma is the totality. The superset. Magisteria are the subsets.” Eat your heart out, Bertrand Russell. “We all have one. Even you. Your own little slice of the divine. If it helps, think of it as a gussied-up memory palace.”

  Flametop ran a fingertip along the counter. It must have come back sticky, because her face twisted in a little moue of distaste. Flo probably missed some syrup when she cleared the plate, and certainly didn’t care.

  Molly said, “This place isn’t divine. It’s a shithole.”

  “Hey!” The cook growled through the order window. The words came out slurred because he had to force them past the cigar stub planted in the corner of his mouth. “You don’t like it you can take a hike, princess.”

  Everybody paused to look at her. The waitress, the guys in the corner, even the roundheels. I gestured at the empty stool beside me and said, quietly, “Park the body.”

  She took a paper napkin from the dispenser and spread it over the stool before sitting down. Even then she took care not to lean on the counter. Yeah. Definitely cashmere.

  “Is everybody here like you?” she asked.

  “Nah. This place don’t exist in the mundane realm anymore. But I thought it was swell, so I lifted its impression, rebuilt it in the Pleroma.”

  “Why, for fuck’s sake, would you do that?”

  “Why are you so obsessed with an apartment that no longer exists?”

  “You two gonna order something, or you just taking up space?” Flo pulled a paper pad from her apron and a pencil from behind one ear. She glared at us, pencil tip poised above the pad like a cat watching a mouse hole.

  “Draw two in the dark,” I said, fishing in my pocket for change.

  She didn’t jot that down. “Your usual?” she said.

  “Yeah. And wreck ’em.”

  I asked flametop, “You want anything besides coffee?”

  She shook her head.

  “You really should eat,” I said. “It’s on me.”

  “I don’t want food poisoning,” she said.

  “Relax. It ain’t like you can die again.” Well … The way I figured it, better to keep things simple for now. Too many tangents and I’d never get her back on her feet.

  To Flo, she said, “Just coffee, please.”

  Flo tossed the paper ticket on the sill of the order window. The cook snatched it. The cups Flo filled for us had matched once, but hard living had given them mismatched chips and cracks like a bad marriage. I got the dregs of the pot; they tasted like they’d been on the burner since Christmas last. I tossed a handful of change on the counter.

  “Whoa,” said Molly. “What’s that?”

  A silver feather glimmered among the nickels, dimes, and lint. It stood out like the Hope Diamond among a showgirl’s sequins. She lifted it by the stem, twirled it in her fingers. It sent streamers of starlight flickering through the diner like a celestial disco ball. There was no mistaking this for a human artifact. The radio in the kitchen thrummed with the music of the spheres.

  Rats. I cleared my throat. “Uh. That used to belong to the guy you’re replacing.”

  “What are you doing with it?”

  “He was a pal. Can’t a guy keep a memento?” She flipped the feather to the other hand, and wrapped her fingers around her cup to warm them. Gabriel’s was a cold beauty. She cocked an eyebrow. “Okay,” I added. “Maybe I was planning to hock it. He doesn’t need it anymore.”

  At that, Molly narrowed her eyes. She set the feather down and lifted the cup to her lips, but again, didn’t drink. “Why not?”

  I decided to keep it simple. “He moved on,” I said, and left it at that. Figured there was no need to mention Gabby had been taken off the payroll. I put the feather back in my pocket. Flo’s a fine gal, but with a tip like that she could buy this joint and still have enough change left over for a yacht. I was doing her a favor. She wouldn’t enjoy the country club life.

  “Why am I replacing him?”

  “He carried a lot of weight around here. We need somebody to pick up the slack. One fella moves on, somebody else comes along
to take his place. It’s just the way it is.” I pulled a flask from an inner pocket and spiked my cup with a little hooch. There’s no coffee so burned that a little rye won’t improve it. Flametop declined when I offered her a tipple. I shrugged. “See, we’re the Prime Movers. We spin the celestial spheres. You might say we keep the trains running on time.”

  I winced. Poor choice of words.

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “You’re doing it right now.” I sipped. The coffee hit the spot. “Whether you know it or not, your ideation of reality, of how it ought to be, is melding with similar conceptions from the rest of us. You’re contributing to what the wise-heads call the Mantle of Ontological Consistency. ’MOC’ for short.”

  It was a mouthful, and she almost choked on it. But whether she was choking on ontology or on the effort not to laugh, I couldn’t tell. “You didn’t come up with that.”

  “Told you, it was some of the higher-ups. I don’t care for the five-dollar words. They get stuck in my throat.” Another sip helped with that. “See, what you monkeys—”

  “Call me that again and we’ll see who screeches.”

  “—(sorry, doll, it’s just a nickname) what the mortals think of as reality is more or less what the Choir says it is. In theory—we’re talking frictionless planes and spherical cows here—an angel all by its lonesome could shape reality to any old whim, anything at all, and change its mind every Tuesday. Some of us are better at it than others. But there’s one thing nobody can do. When two or more of us come into physical or conceptual proximity—that is, when our spheres of influence overlap—we’re bound by the consensual basis of reality. That’s where ontological consistency enters the picture. Nobody can flout that, not even the high rollers.” I sipped again, lubricating the pipes. “If you want to get fancy about it, you could say the structure of reality contains no branch cuts. Good thing, too. You got any idea what happens when some mugg decides it’d be real swell if time had six dimensions, while some rooster hiking his flaming sword through an adjacent Magisterium decides multidimensional thermodynamics is for suckers?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Molly. But she seemed a little less glum than she had been. Good. She was getting to be a real drip. Bet she’d have a nice laugh, if she ever gave it the reins.

  “It happened once, long time back. After the fireworks settled, the result was completely sterile. Which is sort of the whole point. You and me and the rest of the Choir? We make the mundane realm an easy place to live for the monk—… mortals. Thanks to us they’ve got causality and conservation laws and gravity and all sorts of perks. They’ve got it real good. And so do you. The system’s been in place for a good long while now, ticking along nicely. All you have to do is go with the flow and not rock the boat. It’s nothing but smooth angles as long as you don’t.”

  Flo set a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs on the counter and topped off my cup. I dusted the plate with salt and pepper while she swept the change into her apron. Then I lifted a forkful of rubbery eggs to my mouth and said, “Thus ends the lecture. Welcome to the Choir, kid.”

  Flametop was quiet for about as long as she’d ever been during our brief and stormy acquaintance. She hadn’t touched her coffee. The salesman got his plate of hash browns and demanded a bottle of catsup. The lamps buzzed, and in the kitchen somebody hit a single. The eggs weren’t bad. The bacon was worth every cent.

  “If you made this place,” said Molly, “how come you’re actually paying for the food?”

  “Aw, don’t pick on old Bayliss. Told you, I spent a lot of time on Earth. You’ll find thinking like a mortal is a tough habit to break.”

  “Were you mortal?”

  My snort sent coffee where it wasn’t meant to go. Rye fumes stripped the paint from my sinuses. “No,” I said, when I could speak again. “You’re a rare case. Most of us have been around since the big one.”

  Well, she was the only such case. Details, details.

  “Then why did you choose to make things compatible with li—”

  “Look, angel. Molly. If you want to argue teleology with the wise-heads, be my guest. But my opinions on the matter don’t amount to a hill of beans. I’ve given you the Pleroma 101 lecture, and now it’s time for me to dust.” I took the last bit of egg and bacon in a bite, and washed it down with what little remaining joe I hadn’t spilled or coughed on myself. I winked at Flo, retrieved my fedora and coat from the empty stool beside me, and gave the cook a little salute.

  “Good luck, doll.”

  Molly jumped to her feet. “That’s it? That’s fucking it?” They were staring again, all of ’em. “You push me under a train, give me some half-assed meaning-of-the-universe crap, and then you fucking take off?”

  “As much as we seem to enjoy each other’s scintillating personalities, yes.” It was embarrassing, my screw-up, but the sooner I got away from her the sooner I could try to forget about it.

  I was glad she’d left the baseball bat back in Magisterial Minneapolis. Given a little more time to practice, the look in her eyes could have ignited the bacon grease on my shirt. “You owe me answers,” she said.

  She wasn’t lying. That nickel dropped when she fell from the platform. I sighed again. An overactive conscience can be a real wet blanket sometimes.

  “Look. I won’t leave you high and dry.” I took a clean napkin from the counter and borrowed Flo’s pencil. It smelled like hair spray. “Take a few decades to get settled. Go find your Magisterium. Make a comfortable spot for yourself. You seem like a sharp one, you’ll catch the gist of things. Like I said, just drift with the current. Take it easy. Then if you still feel the need to brace me, ring.” On the napkin, I jotted:

  BAYLISS. RIVERSIDE 5-2165

  She took it, read it twice, and said, “Is that supposed to be a telephone number?”

  “It is a telephone number.”

  “In Heaven.”

  “Who said anything about Heaven? That’s the direct line to my Magisterium. You should feel honored. I don’t share it with every sad sack what comes my way.”

  She gave me a wary look—it was second nature for her—but fished around in the pocket of her coat until she produced an earbud. She tucked a coppery lock behind one ear, popped the bud in, and issued a command via her contact lenses.

  Figured it would put her mind at ease, so I let the call go through. Eventually, when she got the hang of things, she’d be able to ditch the Earthly affectations. A strident clanging echoed from the booth in the corner.

  “Hey, pal,” said the two-bit salesman. “There’s your call.”

  “Satisfied?” I asked. She didn’t say anything. I took that as a yes. “It’s been swell, angel.”

  I tipped my hat again, and then I was out the door. I knew a sleepy-time girl in San Francisco who was probably getting lonely right about then. Just as I shifted back into the mundane realm, I heard,

  “So, sweetheart. I bet you wish there was an easier way to rake out those curls every night.…”

  4

  THE MOST POPULAR GIRL AT THE DEBUTANTES’ BALL

  “Oh, piss off,” said Molly.

  The salesman said, “Don’t be such a sourpuss. What do you see in him, anywise? A lulu like you deserves a fella with prospects and a steady income.”

  Screw this, she thought. Molly hit the door a few seconds after Bayliss. She emerged in the laneway. Based on the booming of the floodwalls and the dusting of snow in the gutters, little time had passed. But he was nowhere to be seen. And when she turned around, the diner had become a bar thundering with old trance music. She recognized it. They had argued here, she and Martin, just before—

  She couldn’t breathe. Cold air clogged her windpipe like a frozen lump of suet. Fatigue enveloped her. Overwhelmed her. It dragged her down like a vicious undertow. She had just enough strength to sit on the landing without collapsing. She needed a minute to collect herself, but marshaling her thoughts was pointless as sucking s
yrup through one of Martin’s hypodermic needles. She hugged her knees. Frantic shallow breaths frosted the scarf at her throat. The studs of her earrings pinched when she laid her head on her knees.

  Her chest pulsed to the rhythm of a beating heart. Her body was intact. Wasn’t it?

  With Bayliss gone, and the diner along with him, there was nothing to suggest she wasn’t the victim of a terrible hallucination. That made more sense than anything else. The entire conversation with Bayliss had already begun to fade in her memory, like a wild dream evaporating into vague impressions at the first touch of daylight. Maybe Martin really had slipped her something.

  Oh, shit, Martin. He was falling apart again.

  They hadn’t seen each other for several months prior to meeting at LAX for the flight to Australia. Molly could tell he was already backsliding, drinking too much, as soon as she hugged him in the terminal. She recognized the slow unfocused eyes and the skunky scent of beer on his breath. When pressed on it he’d admitted to having a couple. Just to help him sleep on the flight, he’d said. The lie hurt, but less than her guilt. She shouldn’t have fallen out of touch. She should have been there for him. Should have been a better sister. How long before he started using again? He’d never get help on his own.

  Unless …

  What had Bayliss said? Something about angels shaping reality.

  Was she really an angel? She didn’t feel angelic. But what if—