“Reality sucks,” said Lulu sitting up on the chairs. “But, if you wait long enough, everything becomes normal. You’ll see.”
Looking out the studio window onto Haight Street, Spyder watched the people outside going through their happy, blind lives. Couples were going to dinner, ducking into bars. On the corner, a girl with blue hair was kissing a boy in a cop shirt and vinyl shorts. Softly Spyder sang, “When I’m lyin’ in my bed at night, I don’t wanna grow up, Nothin’ ever seems to turn out right, I don’t wanna grow up.” He looked at Lulu. “Know that song?”
“Tom Waits. Jenny gave me the CD for my birthday.”
“When I see the price that you pay, I don’t wanna grown up, I don’t ever wanna be that way, I don’t wanna grow up…” For the first time, Spyder was glad that Jenny had left him. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain all this to her. Where was she right that second? Was she happy? He hoped so.
NINE
Hard Thanks
Spyder straightened up when he realized that he and Lulu were no longer alone.
Three smiling men, dressed like bankers in an old movie, were standing in the studio. One of the men carried a large snake-skin ledger. All three men were very pale and carried long, curved knives in their belts. The banker in the middle was wearing the face of the businessman Spyder had spoken to in the street that morning. The face was held in place on the banker’s head by shiny brass clasps that stretched the skin like taffy.
“You are not alone?” said the banker in the middle, the one with the book.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked Spyder.
Lulu stood up and pushed him against the wall. “Shut up, Spyder.” She looked at the bankers. “I wasn’t expecting you. It’s not time yet. I can still see fine.”
All three men were wearing skin masks. From under the stolen meat, their flesh seemed to give off a cold chemical glow, like fungus on the walls of a cavern. There was nothing at all human about the men’s presence, Spyder thought.
“This visit is not for you,” said the banker in the middle.
“It is for us,” said the one on the left.
“For accounts balance?” said the one on the right.
“I don’t owe you nothing. My account is balanced,” said Lulu.
“For now,” said the banker in the middle, who appeared to be the leader. “Our concern lies with the future?”
“I saw what you did to that guy. Get the fuck out of here!” said Spyder, grabbing one of the chairs and starting at the men.
The banker with the ledger calmly pulled his knife and pointed the blade at Spyder. “This is not for you, young man. Please do not interfere.”
“Look at her. She doesn’t have anything left to give you.”
The three pale men nodded and laughed. “She lives and breathes? Yes. There is always something. Her heart?”
Spyder looked at Lulu. “You said they didn’t take hearts.”
“We take hearts, when life is not honored or appreciated. But the oblation can not live without one, so we take them last.”
Spyder weighed the chair in his hands, knowing the moment to hit someone had passed. When he set the chair down, the middle banker put the knife back in his belt.
“You can’t have her,” said Spyder. “But from what she told me, you don’t care about that. You just want a payment, right?”
“Accounts must be balanced. This is our burden,” said the one on the right.
“Any will do, if given freely?” said the one on the left.
Spyder nodded, still trying to parse their odd, sing-song speech. “Then take something from me.”
“Shut up, Spyder!” shouted Lulu.
The middle banker said, “You owe us nothing. If we took from you, we would be in your debt?”
“No. You’d leave Lulu alone, so we’d be even.”
“This is possible.”
“And you said this was for the future, so you wouldn’t need anything from me right now…?” Spyder asked.
“Correct.”
“Okay then. It’s a deal. I’ll see you down the fucking road. The door is that way. Use it.”
“There is no deal yet,” said the middle banker. He stepped forward and grabbed Spyder’s arm with shocking speed and strength. With his knife the banker cut a symbol into the underside of Spyder’s left wrist. “Now we have a deal.” He smiled at Spyder. The flesh the banker wore didn’t quite synch with his muscles, so the smile came in stages. First the facial muscles worked, then the teeth appeared, then the outside flesh stretched into something a schizophrenic might call a smile. “So that you will not forget? And no one else can claim you.”
Spyder had been tattooed, pierced and had a ritual scar on his chest, but nothing he’d ever done prepared him for the pain of the banker’s knife. It managed to be freezing and branding-iron hot at the same time. And it didn’t feel as if the blade was cutting, but raking away large sections of skin and muscle. However, when Spyder looked there was a small, neat incision that was already cauterized.
“Pardon us?” said the banker, and all three men started toward the back of the shop.
“Hey, Barry White, tell me something,” said Spyder. “You knew she wasn’t alone, didn’t you? This whole scene was just a vaudeville act. You weren’t here to collect from her, but to rope in someone new.”
The middle banker nodded to his companions, then to Spyder. “You. The girl. This does not matter. The debt matters. The restoration of balance? This is our burden.” One by one, the three men entered the little bathroom at the back of the studio. When Spyder opened the door a moment later, they were gone.
“What was that word he called you just now?” Spyder asked Lulu.
“Oblation,” she said. “It’s a kind of sacrifice. The kind you’re supposed to give with thanks.”
“It’s not enough they zombifie you. You’re supposed to send them a thank you card, too?”
“Pretty much. You wouldn’t think it to look at them, but the Black Clerks are all about having a good time.” Lulu put her hand lightly on Spyder’s shoulder. “You have no idea what you just got yourself into.”
Spyder kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right. I think I know someone who can help.”
TEN
DOA
After dropping Lulu at home, Spyder took at cab to the Bardo Lounge. He’d always preferred the night, but now he was falling in love with it.
Spyder couldn’t really deny the angels in the sky or the anacondas with the faces of crying children hiding in the palm trees along Dolores Street, but in the dark smaller oddities were swallowed and invisible. Besides, night had always seemed a time of madness and possibility. The visions just felt more natural at night.
The neighborhood around the Bardo Lounge had taken on a heavy, wet jungle feel, as if the cab had stumbled into the abandoned set of some expensive dinosaur movie. There were always a lot of film crews in town and for a moment, Spyder thought that they might have genuinely rolled onto a set. But sacrifice poles dotted the corners, animal heads and flowers dripping in the thick, humid air.
The Bardo Lounge was packed. Rubi was serving drinks. She gave Spyder a kiss on the cheek and bought him a tequila. He was relieved to see that she was entirely normal, with none of Lulu’s mutilations.
The bar was alive with a happy, drunken weekend crowd. Leather-clad boys and girls with hair in cotton-candy colors and lips shining brighter than their vinyl skirts. Spyder wanted to wade out and dive into their beauty, and be baptized by their sweat and saliva. But for the first time since he was an awkward teenager, he couldn’t think of anything to say to them. He felt as removed from the crowd as the monsters he’d been seeing in the streets all day. Spyder turned away and drank his tequila.