She saw him looking and smiled.
Ray smiled back, then, out of the corner of his eye, saw the monitor with the photo of the first-grade teacher holding her breasts, and sprained the right side of his face trying to turn in time to punch the power button before she passed the counter.
“Just browsing,” said the love of his life. “How are you today?”
“Hi,” Ray said. In his mental rehearsals, he started with “hi,” and it just sort of burped out of him before he realized that it put him behind a beat. “I mean, fine. Sorry. I was working.”
“I can see that.” Again the smile.
She was so understanding, forgiving—and kind, you could just tell that by her eyes. He knew in his heart that he would even sit through a hat movie for this woman. He would watch A Room with a View AND The English Patient, back-to-back, just to share a pizza with her. And she would stop him from eating his service revolver halfway through the second movie, because that’s just how she was: compassionate.
She made a show of browsing the store, but two minutes hadn’t passed before she made for Charlie’s special shelf. Even the sign said SPECIAL ITEMS—ONE PER CUSTOMER, but it didn’t say if that was a per-day policy, or one per lifetime. Charlie hadn’t really specified, now that Ray thought about it. Sure, Lily had yammered on about how important it was that they adhere to the policy, but that was Lily, she might have grown up some, but she was still disturbed.
After a short time she picked up an electric alarm clock and brought it over to the counter. This was it. This was it. Ray heard the back door open.
“Will this be everything?” he said.
“Yes,” said the future Mrs. Ray Macy. “I’ve been looking for one like this.”
“Yep, you can’t beat a Sunbeam,” Ray said. “That’s two-sixteen with tax—aw, heck, call it two even.”
“That’s very nice of you,” she said, digging into a small purse woven from colorful Guatemalan cotton thread.
“Hi, Ray,” Lily said, suddenly standing there beside him like some evil phantom who appeared out of nowhere to leech every potentially joyous moment out of his life.
“Hi, Lily,” he said.
Lily clicked some keys on the computer. Slowed down by his freshly sprained face, Ray wasn’t able to turn before she’d hit the power button on the monitor.
“What’s this?” asked Lily.
With his free hand, Ray thumped Lily in the thigh under the counter.
“Ouch! Freak!”
“I’m sure you’ll enjoy waking up with that,” Ray said, handing the alarm clock to the woman who would be his queen.
“Thank you so much,” said the lovely brunette goddess of all things Ray.
“By the way,” Ray said, pushing on, “you’ve been in a couple of times, I was wondering, you know, because I’m curious that way, uh, what’s your name?”
“Audrey.”
“Hi, Audrey. I’m Ray.”
“Nice to meet you, Ray. Gotta go. Bye.” She waved over her shoulder and headed out the door.
Ray and Lily watched her walk away.
“Nice butt,” Lily said.
“She said my name,” Ray said.
“She’s a little bit—I don’t know—unimaginary for you.”
Ray turned to the nemesis Lily. “You have to watch the store. I have to go.”
“Why?”
“I have to follow her, find out who she is.” Ray began to gather his stuff—phone, keys, baseball cap.
“Yeah, that’s healthy, Ray.”
“Tell Charlie I—don’t tell Charlie.”
“Okay. So is it okay if I switch the computer from the UGLY Web site?”
“What are you talking about?”
Lily stepped back from the screen and pointed to the letters as she read, “Ukrainian Girls Loving You—U-G-L-Y, ugly.” Lily smiled, a perky, self-satisfied smile, like that kid who won the spelling bee in third grade. Didn’t you hate that kid?
Ray couldn’t believe it. They weren’t even being subtle about it anymore. “Can’t talk,” he said. “Gotta go.” He ran out the door and headed up Mason Street after the lovely and compassionate Audrey.
Rivera had driven up to the Cliff House Restaurant overlooking Seal Rocks and forced Charlie to buy him a drink while they watched the surfers down on the beach. Rivera was not a morbid man, but he knew that if he came here enough times, eventually he’d see a surfer get hit by a white shark. In fact, he sorely hoped that it would happen, because otherwise, the world made no sense, there was no justice, and life was just a tangled ball of chaos. Thousands of seals in the water and on the rocks—the mainstay of the white shark diet—hundreds of surfers in the water, dressed like seals, well, it just needed to happen for all to be right with the world.
“I never believed you, Mr. Asher, when you said that you were Death, but since I couldn’t explain whatever that thing was in the alley with you, didn’t want to explain, in fact, I let it slide.”
“And I appreciate that,” said Charlie, showing a little discomfort at drinking a glass of wine with handcuffs on. His face was candy-apple red from having been burned by the pepper spray. “Is this normal procedure for interrogations?”
“No,” Rivera said. “Normally the City is supposed to pay, but I’ll have the judge take the drinks off your sentence.”
“Great. Thanks,” Charlie said. “And you can call me Charlie.”
“Okay, and you can call me Inspector Rivera. Now, braining the old lady with the cinder block—just exactly what were you thinking?”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Of course not, you’re fine, this bar is full of witnesses.” Rivera had once been a by-the-book kind of cop. That was before the demons, the giant owls, the bankruptcy, the polar bears, the vampires, the divorce, and the saber-clawed woman-thing that turned into a bird. Now, not so much.
“In that case, I was thinking that no one could see me,” Charlie said.
“Because you were invisible?”
“Not really. Just sort of not noticeable.”
“Well, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think that’s any reason to crush a grandmother’s skull.”
“You have no proof of that,” Charlie said.
“Of course I do,” Rivera said, holding up his glass to signal to the waitress that he needed another Glenfiddich on the rocks. “I saw pictures of her grandchildren, she showed me when I went in the house.”
“No, I mean you have no proof that I was going to crush her skull.”
“I see,” said Rivera, who did not see at all. “How did you know Mrs. Posokovanovich?”
“I didn’t. Her name just showed up in my date book, like I showed you.”
“Yes, you did. Yes, you did. But that doesn’t really give you a license to kill her, now does it?”
“That’s the point, she was supposed to be dead three weeks ago. There was even a death notice in the paper. I was just trying to make sure it was accurate.”
“So in lieu of having the Chronicle print a correction, you thought you’d bash in granny’s brains.”
“Well, it was that or have my daughter say ‘kitty’ at her, and I refuse to exploit my child in that way.”
“Well, I admire your taking the high ground on that one, Charlie,” Rivera said, thinking, Who do I have to shoot to get a drink around here? “But let’s just say that for one millisecond I believe you, and the old lady was supposed to die, but didn’t, and that because of it you were shot with a crossbow and that thing I shot in the alley appeared—let’s just say I believe all that, what am I supposed to do about it?”
“You need to be careful,” Charlie said. “You may be turning into one of us.”