Since Jim was quite accustomed to anomalies in the Afterlife, he didn’t spend too much time puzzling over either the nature or origins of the place in which he found himself. Instead, concentrating on the practical possibilities of the moment, he turned his attention to the contents of the tray. He poured himself a cup of coffee, wondered about smoking the cigar, but decided he wasn’t ready. Even in the Afterlife he had never mastered the knack of not inhaling, and cigars inevitably made him cough. What really interested him was the drugs. The array of medication was formidable. A total of seven pills and capsules were arranged on a blue and white Wedgwood plate, two large white pills, two smaller yellow pills, two red and black capsules, and one more in turquoise and orange. “Sweet Jesus, Doc, who do you think you are? Jerry Lee Lewis?”
Jim pushed the pills around on the plate with his index finger, arranging them into different patterns of colors. Finally he selected one yellow pill, a red and black capsule, and both white pills. He had no idea what they might be, but how much harm could they do? He was already dead, after all. He put all four in his mouth at once, and, before he could think about it any further and reconsider, he washed them with a gulp of coffee, followed by a fast shot of bourbon and a chaser of orange juice. The old reckless Jim was back in the saddle again, going with the impulse and damn the torpedoes. Maybe, if he kept it up, his coherent creativity might actually return. Having escaped the Great Double Helix, he felt he was taking the first steps in a new phase of being. And these steps would not be cautious or faltering: better a lurch than a whimper. The best of times had always come when he’d pushed self-destruction to the fate-to-the-wind limit, and that was where he was headed now. There’s danger at the edge of town. By the way of compromise, though, he ate a single slice of toast, if only to indicate to the world, and maybe Lola, if she was the one who cleared away the tray, that his repast hadn’t been purely chemical. Then he sat back to wait and see where the pills might be taking him.
Jim didn’t have long to wait. A loud bang, and a vibrant flash like an exploding TV screen, heralded the onset of at least one of the drugs. The entire room, and the world and sky beyond it, began to spin violently. Jim’s vision shattered into fractal chaos. From the intensity of the rush he estimated that, had he still been mortal, his heart would probably have exploded. The effect lasted for only a few seconds, though, and then he returned to normal. A second later, a small army of six-inch-tall, anthropomorphic cartoon rodents in tiny military uniforms appeared, quite literally out of the woodwork, and proceeded to march across the floor in formation. They halted in front of Jim, saluted, and then vanished. Even Jim found himself a little stunned, and had to remind himself that, like so many other things, drug abuse in the Afterlife was exempt from the restrictions of cause and effect.
Before anything else could happen, Jim reached quickly for the opium pipe. He didn’t bother to search for a match with which to light it; he wished it alight and it was lit. He inhaled deeply, happy that spontaneous combustion was one of the perks of being dead. Opium, along with alcohol, was a drug that could, for the most part, be relied on to have a similar effect to that which it had on Earth. A couple of long pulls on the pipe were enough to mellow the environment to the point where further explosions or rodent animations would hardly daunt him. The smoke didn’t exactly take him all the way to the Palace of Mirrors, but he found himself in a far more amiable state of mind than he’d enjoyed in a long time. Maybe Doc Holliday had the right idea. Jim’s headache had completely gone; when he inadvertently dropped a red-hot coal from the pipe on his bare thigh, he was only marginally aware of the pain.
Putting the pipe down, he attempted to stand. To his mild surprise, he neither reeled nor staggered. He simply floated with an easy naked euphoria in the direction of the mirror on the red velvet wall. He smiled at his own reflection. In death, he had miraculously shed the weight gain that had dogged him through the final years of life. He could see the bone structure in his face, his stomach was flat as a board, and he was once again the sullen prince who had taken rock and roll by rebel storm. He laughed out loud. “You’re one handsome devil, Jimbo. Don’t you ever die again, you hear?”
He realized the absurdity of what he had just said, but he was too opiated for it to bother him. He turned away from the mirror, suddenly gripped by an urge to get out of the room and do something. He realized he was probably expected to dress. From his brief encounter with the man, Jim couldn’t imagine the immaculate Doc Holliday setting up his home someplace where everyone went buck naked. A thought stopped Jim momentarily in his tracks. Hadn’t Doc said that they’d met before? Jim still had no recollection of such an encounter, so plainly not all of his memory had been returned to him. Unless, of course, more than one Jim Morrison was running around the Afterlife. It was the first time he’d considered such a possibility; maybe the pills and the opium were giving heightened powers of perception. Did any mechanism exist within the Great Double Helix to prevent two people from taking on the same persona? Somehow Jim doubted it. The Great Double Helix manifested little respect for individualism. He would have liked to ponder the problem, but the drugs were doing nothing for his attention span. Dressed. That was what he had to be. Concentrate on the practical now, leave the applied metaphysics for later, when he was no longer quite so airborne.
He looked at the clothes on the chair and wondered if they were intended for him. Then he saw his old scuffed engineer boots standing side by side at the foot of the bed, as if awaiting instructions. If his boots were there, the clothes also had to be for him.
Jim picked up the top garment. It was a loose Mexican shirt made from rough cotton. Beneath it were his familiar scarred and battered leather jeans. He quickly dressed, took one final look in the mirror, and started for the stairs.
***
“I need your help.”
Semple McPherson raised an eyebrow and half-smiled. Aimee needed something, thus the sudden materialization of the golden Princess phone. Semple saw no reason to be helpful. “I’m kind of busy right now.”
“What are you doing?”
Semple was tempted to tell her sister that it was none of her fucking business. It was so typical of Aimee to want to know what she was doing. As though she had the right to evaluate whose priorities should be the ones to take precedence. Instead, Semple made her voice sweetly innocent. “Actually, sibling, dear, I was busy torturing one of your angels.”
Aimee sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that.”
Semple glanced at the angel, who steadfastly refused to look at her. “Why? There are plenty more where he came from.”
“Isn’t it all a little childish?”
Semple could just imagine her sister, standing on her goddamned marble terrace looking out over her ludicrous Heaven, a sad patient smile on her miserable face and bluebirds fluttering all around her. It would make a welcome change if one of the wretched bluebirds took a shit on her. Except, of course, Aimee’s bluebirds didn’t shit. “The word you’re grasping for is ‘childlike.’ ”
Aimee’s voice took on an edge that foreshadowed full-blown exasperation. “The word I’m grasping for is ‘pointless.’ ”
“This particular angel had failed to accomplish a very rudimentary sex act.”
“They’re not designed for sex.”
“You don’t have to remind me. Besides, I was bored.”