As they drive past MacArthur Park Niko can’t get over how clean everything looks. And the people! They aren’t covered with blood or shit or scabs or parasites. They aren’t buried in stone or broken in half or impaled on pikes. Those kids at the corner there. Six teenaged boys with beanie caps pulled low over shaven heads and loose shirts over baggy pants. Hands stroking belly tattoos. On constant lookout like meerkats. Not screaming, not mutilated, not blank and hopeless but whole and alive. They have no idea how beautiful fleeting rare and frail they are. No one out there has any idea. Not the woman packing up her hotdog stand or the kids dueling with their plastic laser swords or the gaunt man rattling his paper cup of paltry change or the Rasta selling homemade incense on a blanket or the man behind the counter at the doughnut shop filling a pink box with a dozen mixed or the swollenfeeted woman pushing her shoppingcart full of rags. Lucky blessed mortal oblivious and so very much alive. Unique unknowing souls one day to be contained perhaps within rude mason jars delivered to their tailored doom and every one of them worthy of the costliest rescue.
It is an effort of will to look back at his demon. Looking back at anything will take some getting used to. Nikodemus wears a thick gauze patch taped over one eye from a firstaid kit the cabbie brought forth from the Checker Cab’s trunk.
“How you doing?”
Nikodemus shrugs and gestures with a tendril out the window.
The cabbie maneuvers the Checker Cab like a porpoise through signals and intersections and traffic. “Thought I’d take Wilshire to Fairfax and take that till it hits Hollywood. That’s about the least crowded we’ll find on a Friday night without going way out of our way.”
Niko merely nods. He would ride shotgun with her on any route she took on earth or otherwise and never question her. The city he knows seems more surreal to him than its unattended doppelganger had. These old familiar streets so new and strange. Perhaps they are not what’s changed.
Hard west on Wilshire now. Vermont, Western, Crenshaw. Abstract neon of Koreatown. On the hillside the Griffith Observatory poised between seas of ordered light. The Greek Theatre hidden in the hills nearby. I played there for Jem and yet I’ve never played there at all. The tall block letters of the Hollywood sign dark beyond.
Through Midwilshire now. Tar Pits, County Art Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum. At Fairfax the Checker Cab turns right and heads north. Traffic thickens as they near CBS Studios and Farmers Market and The Grove. Stopped behind a car at the light at Fairfax and Third Niko glances back to see Nikodemus staring up in mortal terror at a Gray Line Tours bus turning left from Third onto Fairfax.
It’s okay, he tells his demon.
Nikodemus nods doubtfully without taking his piratic gaze from passing forms of tourists backlit behind tinted windows as they point down at the smashed and battered cab.
“What you lookin at?” the cabbie calls.
Niko sees a camera pointed at Nikodemus. “Wave,” he tells his demon. “Wave.”
Nikodemus waves. One for the books.
Nikodemus what do I do with you? I have violated something in bringing you here and I have no doubt the universe will seek to rectify it.
At Santa Monica a homeless man standing gaunt in the street like a bedraggled prophet points at the cab and shouts Motherfucker owe me money. Then the light turns green and they continue unabated across Sunset to Hollywood where they turn right and then left onto the canyon road to begin their snaking climb.
ALL THE OLD familiar places. The gaudy lighted mailbox at 2101. The wrought iron bats of the horror movie director at 2118. The left turn that always seems about to end but in fact turns sharper. Coming home.
Niko doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Even after everything his heartbeat quickens and his mouth grows dry and his eyes blink rapidly as they take in what will be catalogued later. My friends beside me. This ruined amazing car. Did ever an explorer come back home from unmapped oceans bearing such cargo as mine? Ferried across the sunless world.
Behind him and below him city light sways and sways.
The last stretch of uphill road. The final curve. The length of white stone wall. The graze mark where somebody sideswiped it some years back. My demon with me still. The flaring driveway. Security light and camera. Jemma snug against my lap and leaking out into the mortal world.
The black grilled gate.
The broken chain of myth.
The Black Taxi waiting in the driveway.
XXXI.
WHEN LOVE COMES TO TOWN
“WHAT DO YOU want me to do?”
Idling in the middle of the road the battered yellow Checker Cab faces the sleek Black Taxi. Gunslingers on the main street of Dodge. The space between them electric.
“I don’t know.” Niko looks past the hood of the cab across the showdown distance. Past the Black Taxi, past the gate, at the mansion at the end of the statuaried drive. You’re still there. Unbelievably still there. Through the door and up the stairs and in the room and on the bed where mere hours ago I held you while you drew your dying breath. Hours and ages later I am back with you in hand.
“All right, screw him. We switch to Plan B.”
“I didn’t know we had one,” says the cabbie.
“We didn’t.”
QUIET NIGHT. NO traffic on the high hill road. The Checker Cab’s doors creak open and the dome light shines. The cabbie gets out already patting herself for a cigarillo and Niko gets out holding the jar like a Fabergé egg while Nikodemus struggles out. Relieved of his weight the chassis lifts. All stand waiting.
The driver’s door opens on the Black Taxi and the Driver steps out. He bids them all good evening with a touch of bony hand to glossy bill of cap and turns the hollow of his gaze toward the lambent jar in Niko’s hand.
The cabbie lights another cigarillo. “Hiya, Sparky. TGIF, huh?”
The Driver only looks at the jar. Experimentally Niko slowly lifts it. The Driver’s head tilts up. Niko lowers the jar and moves it out to the side. The Driver’s head tilts down and swivels slightly.
“Hey, how’s my ride?” calls Niko. “Sure is fun to drive, isn’t she? Handles like a dream.” He smiles. “Man, I fired her up and that bitch just opened up for me and purred.”
The eyeless gaze no longer on the jar.
“You know for a while I wasn’t even sure who was driving who. It’s a shame I had to smash her all to hell—”
A sound escapes the Driver that could not issue from a human throat. Keening and choppy and thin. Chihuahuas bark from the plastic surgeon’s estate next door. In the hills coyotes yip. The Driver shucks all pretense of patience and stalks toward Niko with cold murder on his jaundiced face.
Niko says Go.
Nikodemus sprints to the wall and jumps high and hoists himself over. His shredded wings flutter as he drops to the other side.
Niko hands the jar off to the cabbie and hurries limping toward the Driver. He veers around the Driver and makes straight for the Black Taxi where he jerks open the heavy suicide door and jumps inside and slams the door. He yanks the key from the ignition as the door is snatched open behind him.
While the Driver goes for Niko the cabbie calmly goes to the gate and hands the jar through to Nikodemus, and the demon dashes with it up the lighted drive.
Niko scrambles across the seat and gets the door open just as something grabs his ankle. He kicks out blindly and does not connect but frees his leg and tumbles headfirst from the car. He manages a halfassed shoulder roll on the driveway. Sharp pain in his side like a woodrasp drawn across his broken rib. He stands and then falls back against the open door which hits the Driver hot behind him.