“You’ll be able to find your way back here?” asked Spyder. “Maybe you should take Primo as backup.”
“I’ll be happy to accompany you, Butcher Bird. And a one-armed man with a blind woman might evoke even more pity from an anxious trader.”
“All right,” said Shrike. “We’ll rendezvous here in two hours. Can I trust you three to find your way back?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll look after Lulu and the little brother,” said the Count.
Spyder felt a pang of awkwardness as he and Shrike went off in different directions. He felt, somehow, that he should give her a goodbye kiss or something, but simultaneously wondered if he was supposed to acknowledge anything between them at all. In the end, they both went their own way.
They walked three abreast through the strange town, Spyder near the street and Lulu near the buildings. Count Non walked between them. “The first time I ever went to Tijuana on my own, I got lost,” said Spyder. “Ended up in this shantytown somewhere up in the hills. This place went on and on. Plus, it was one of those days where you don’t wake up hungover, you wake up still drunk. So, I’m wandering around, trying to figure out a way back to town, and this kid, a student, starts chatting me up. He wants to practice his English. Only whenever I ask him how to get back downtown, he suddenly can’t understand me. I tell him to fuck off and keep walking. But these Tijuana shantytowns are like a goddam anthill. Houses made of broken cinder blocks, cardboard and big cans of vegetable oil pounded flat.
“Fast forward a few hours and I’m somewhere, but nowhere I’ve ever seen before. And now the sun is going down. Out of nowhere comes the kid who wanted English lessons. At first I think that I’ve just walked in a big circle. Then, I realize that the little fucker’s probably been shadowing me all day. My eyes are red and my head’s full of broken glass and dust bunnies. I was wearing a brand new shiny pair of two hundred dollar New Rock boots. I had to trade ’em to the kid to get out of there, and walked back to my hotel barefoot.”
Spyder couldn’t quite figure out a pattern to the city. A street would be laid out like an ordinary one in any town, but then a building would be gone and in its place would be a pile of junk. Lost things, Spyder guessed. Not objects, but the memory of them. There were mounds of keys, piles of every kind of money, great meals laid out on endless banquet tables, the wan clowns and listless trapeze acts from forgotten circuses, lost limbs (fingers still trying to grasp some long lost something, feet flexing with somewhere to go). There were packs of dogs, flock of birds, colonies of house cats and stacks of dirty aquariums holding every kind of fish imaginable, lost pets all.
They stopped to look at the trinkets laid out on tables in a small street market on a yellow boulevard that intersected theirs. A trader with leathery skin and blue, chapped lips clasped his hands and greeted them eagerly. He stared at Lulu. “I see you’ve been doing some renovations, my dear.” He took a bite of a juicy, green-skinned fruit. “What will you take for her?”
Spyder didn’t bother looking up at the man, but kept studying the charms on the table. “She’s not for sale.”
The merchant leaned in close and spoke in intimate tones. “You think I won’t keep her well because she lacks eyes and perhaps a liver. But don’t worry. Those are not the organs that concern me.”
Spyder tucked his hands in the waist of his jeans, pushing back his jacket to make sure the man saw Apollyon’s knife. “I missed that. Say it again,” Spyder told the man.
The merchant’s gazes flickered from the knife to Spyder’s shoulder. “You misunderstood me, friend. There is no business here,” said the merchant, licking his thin lips. “Thank you. Have a good day.” He walked quickly away.
Spyder turned to Count Non, who loomed close behind him. “I was doing all right, you know. I don’t need you doing Hulk Hogan over my shoulder.”
“Perhaps neither of us frightened him,” said the Count. “Perhaps for once he heard his own words and thoughts and appalled himself.”
Lulu said nothing, but pushed the merchant’s wares off his table and onto the pavement.
“He seemed like the real reflective type,” said Spyder.
“‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.’” The Count laughed, “I like you, little brother. You disguise your nobler qualities to play the fool well.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Would you take some advice from someone with more experience of the world?”
“You don’t look that much older than me.”
“Trust me. I am.”
“Are we talking Michael Douglas old or Bob Hope old?”
“More like those mountains we’re heading to.”
“You must get great senior discounts on the bus.”
“Be quiet, little brother.”
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Be quiet,” repeated Count Non. “It’s not necessary to fill every moment with your own voice. Silence terrifies you. Your see your own existence as so tenuous that you’re afraid you’ll pop like a soap bubble if, at every opportunity, you don’t make a noise to remind the world that you’re alive. But wisdom begins in silence. In learning to listen. To words and to the world. Trust me. You won’t disappear. And, in time, you might find that you’ve grown into something unexpected.”
“What?”
“A man,” said the Count. He started out of the market and back to the main boulevard. Spyder and Lulu followed.
“Don’t feel badly. This is just a chat between friends, not a reprimand. If you feel lost and foolish sometimes, don’t worry about that, either. All great men begin as fools. It’s one of life’s little jokes.”
“Spyder, he just called you a joke of the universe. Kick his ass,” said Lulu. She put an arm around Spyder’s shoulders. Count Non smiled at her.
“Food for thought,” said Spyder. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up for a while. I’ll meet you back at the corner where we started.”
“I was just fucking with you, man,” said Lulu, but Spyder was already rounding the corner in the other direction.
THIRTY ONE
The Future
In a street of nightmares, Spyder saw the Black Clerks.
The street had been roofed over, like the souks of Morocco. The sound attracted Spyder to the spot, a strange and deliberate animal wail—screams extracted with mechanical precision.
Inside the dark, cramped street was a gallery of horrors. Men turned over bonfires on huge metal spits. Women were crushed under rolling boulders studded with surgical blades. Children screamed as spiders and over-sized ants tore at their young flesh. Terrified people were tormented up and down the length of the street, shrieking and tearing at the arms of passersby as they were chased by snarling animals or angry mobs. Spyder took a breath and reminded himself that none of this was real. It was just the collective memories of bad dreams, the night terrors these poor saps could never forget. It reminded him of paintings by Bruegel and Goya, and, while he tried to work his way around the thought and not let it invade his consciousness, the memories of the paintings made him think of the underworld. If this is what Hell was going to be like, Spyder wasn’t sure he could take it. Of course, he was going to be blindfolded so, unlike here, he wouldn’t have to actually look at Hell. It was a small comfort, but Spyder was ready for any comfort he could get.
At the far end of the street, Spyder spotted the Black Clerks. At first, he took them to be part of another nightmare and stopped to watch them pulling the guts out of a cop who had been crucified across a writhing pile of drug-starved junkies, their withered limbs (oozing pus and blood from running sores) strained against the barbed wire that held them together. The head Clerk, the one who always held the reptile-skin ledger, looked at Spyder and beckoned him over.