Jim had never seen a dog sway on its feet before. At the same moment, a lone rider moved slowly down the street, a strangely insubstantial figure wearing a ragged Civil War uniform, bowed over in the saddle of a pale and exhausted horse. Jim glanced quickly at the horse and rider and decided that he didn’t even want to speculate on their story. He turned back to the dog and gestured toward the opium den. “If I wanted to go to that place, what would I have to do?”
The dog was noticeably slurring now. “Well, you don’t just go walking in the front door. That’s for sure.”
“I need to be introduced to Sun Yat?”
“It’s not even as easy as that.”
“It isn’t?”
“The truth is that it’s all down to Doc’s whim. And you better believe me, Doc has his whims.”
Jim sighed. “I’d sure like to get me some of that opium time. I could handle laying in the rack and just drifting and dreaming.”
The dog grinned. “I heard that Doc drifts all the way back to Earth in his opium dreams.”
Jim nodded thoughtfully. “Indeed? I really could handle some of that.”
The dog wasn’t exactly encouraging. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If Doc likes you, you’ll get an invite. If he don’t, you won’t be around long enough to need one.”
Jim didn’t want to hear what happened to people to whom Doc took a dislike, so he turned the direction of the conversation a couple of points sideways. “You said Sun Yat’s place was next to where the whorehouse used to be?”
“That’s right.”
“So what happened to the whorehouse?”
The dog laughed. “Oh, the house is still there. It’s the whores that are gone. They all got religion and moved on. You know what whores are like when they get religion. Some say it’s because they spend too much of their working life staring up at Heaven.”
Jim didn’t know what whores were like when they got religion. All the whores he could remember had pretty much remained whores, except the ones who switched careers to become junkies, but he let it pass. “So where did they go?”
The dog shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. Rumor was that they split to some holier-than-thou ectosector run by this broad calling herself Sister Aimee.”
“Sister Aimee?”
“That’s what I heard. Seems she’s got a place set up way down yonder, like some Sunday school heaven.”
Jim thought about this. “Didn’t Doc kinda take it amiss?”
The dog frowned. “Why should Doc worry?”
“Didn’t he create the whores in the first place?”
The dog looked at Jim as though he were an idiot. “Hell, no. Doc didn’t create too much of this.”
Jim was surprised. “He didn’t?”
“Well, I mean, he made the buildings and stuff, but you can see how much trouble he took with those. Dr. Caligari lavished more care on his cabinet.”
Jim looked around. Most of the buildings were unfinished in some way, leaning on each other at disconcerted angles.
“Goddamned things are held together with nothing more than faith and baling wire,” the dog continued. “I gotta tell you, I don’t even feel safe pissing on them when Doc’s not paying attention. It’s a miracle they make it from one day to the next, but Doc doesn’t exactly cotton to making things too solid.”
“But what about the people?”
“Doc didn’t make the people.”
Jim was having trouble getting a handle on what the dog was saying. “No?”
“He didn’t make you, did he?”
Jim was still confused. “No, but I assumed-”
The dog cut him off. “Don’t come around here assuming, boy. This is not a place to be making assumptions. Doc strongly disapproves of dreaming up people just to act as extras in the fantasy. It’s like he always says, ‘If you can’t attract a population of real folk, then fuck you.’ Doc thinks cookie-cutter populations tempt the psychos and sadists.”
“So how did all these people get here?”
The dog looked at him impatiently. “Listen, if I gotta be the goddamned talking guidebook, you could at least give me another drink.”
Jim held up the bottle. Little more than an inch and a half of whiskey left in it. He looked at the dog. “If I give you a drink, it’ll kill the bottle. You fucking spill half of it.”
“So you get up and go over to the cantina and get another one. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is I’m not sure I can walk.”
The dog regarded him bleakly. “Of course you can walk. You just don’t want to make the effort.”
The dog’s attitude was starting to piss Jim off. “So why don’t you go and get your own bottle? You’ve got four fucking legs.”
It seemed that Jim was beginning to piss the dog off, too. Its voice took on an aggrieved snarl. “It’s hard to carry a fucking bottle when all you’ve got is paws.”
Jim didn’t need to be snarled at by a damned alcoholic dog. “Maybe you should hang a barrel of cognac around your neck like a fucking St. Bernard.”
The dog bared its teeth at Jim in what amounted to a snarl. “Fuck you. I’ll go someplace where the drunks are a bit more hospitable.”
For a moment, Jim thought the dog was about to bite him and he wondered how the hell he should deal with that. Could you actually punch out a dog? Then the dog started to walk away. Jim realized he’d probably made an error in good manners. He called after the dog. “Hey, wait up. You can have the last of the booze.”
The dog turned and looked at him with an expression of utter canine contempt. “Keep your fucking booze. I got friends, if you know what I mean.” And with that ambiguous parting shot, it trotted off in the direction of the cantina.
Jim watched as the dog vanished inside the cantina. He half expected it to reemerge a few moments later, followed by an entire pack of talking dogs intent on ripping him to shreds in canine retribution for the disrespect that he had afforded one of their number. Although Jim had never actually witnessed or even heard a firsthand account of such an occurrence, a rumor did exist in the Afterlife that, should you be torn apart by dogs, blown up, or otherwise have your quasi-corporate body fragmented into multiple pieces, you were in a lot of trouble. The essential core of one’s being, the part that some called the soul, would almost certainly return to the pod; that wasn’t the problem. The real problem was that the other bits might actually attempt to reconstitute themselves with often grotesque and monstrous results, and even come looking for you.
He struggled to his feet and stood waiting, but when, after a reasonable passage of time, no vengeful dog crew snarled from the cantina, Jim sat back down again and resumed his previous indolence. Long Time Robert Moore had started in on another tune, and Jim simply relaxed, closed his eyes, and let the sound wash over him.
If I wake tomorrow
I ain’t guessing where I’ll be
Maybe in some other time
Maybe in misery
Jim’s eyes remained closed, until a second voice roused him. Someone else seemed bent on breaking in on his precious internal privacy. He looked up and discovered a bulky man wearing a dashiki, a riot of red gold and green, with his hair puffballed out in a vast Afro. The man was standing over him, grinning down with a mouthful of jewel-encrusted teeth that put Long Time Robert Moore’s lone diamond to diminutive shame. “I’m Saladeen.”
Jim nodded. “Saladeen?”
“Right?”
Jim found it hard to drag his eyes away from the gem-filled bridgework, but he extended a tentative hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Saladeen grasped the offered hand, fortunately with no fancy ritual handshake. “You Jim Morrison, ain’t you?”
Jim tensed and slowly drew his legs up protectively, in readiness to flee or fight as circumstances might dictate. “I was last time I looked.”
“I saw you one time.”
Jim relaxed slightly. Apparently he didn’t owe Saladeen money and he hadn’t done anything terrible to his sister. He raised a neutral eyebrow. “You did?”