Freudian Slip (19 page)

A
LBERT MADE A RARE
trip out of his office in Neither Here Nor There to meet Gus in New York City. They met at the arch of Washington Square Park, reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe, rising up above them. Just standing there felt incredibly poignant to Gus. It was where Julian had returned to his body. He remembered Julian's anguish. Though Gus was no longer mortal and therefore far less emotional than he had been in his life, Gus remembered the absolute pain that Julian had experienced. Worse, Gus had then stood watching as Kate sensed Jules had gone. It was his worst assignment ever in Neither Here Nor There, and he would do anything to fix it.

“This way,” Gus led Albert.

“So many people. So much energy,” Albert said. “I wonder if that could be quantified.”

Gus marveled at Albert's incredible capacity for trying to explain and understand the universe.
They traveled invisible to mortals, and Albert's curiosity meant he walked slowly, watching everyone intently. They crossed the street and eventually stood on the sidewalk across from a French café complete with a big picture window framed by red velvet curtains.

Gus pointed at the window. “There they are. Eating dinner. Front table. Escargot.”

Gus couldn't believe how fast things were going to Hell. It was almost as if he could
smell
the work of the demons. But he had learned over the years that was how Balam and the rest of Lucifer's minions worked. They struck quickly, when you were weakest. And they never relented.

“Oh my,” Albert clucked.

Gus and Albert crossed the street. “And look—” Gus pointed again, his face pressed up against the glass. “Left finger. Sparkler.”

“I sense demon footprints all over this.”

“Me, too.”

“I need to look at my data. Let's go see Gideon.”

The two of them made their way to their favorite bartender, finding two empty seats at the bar. Albert was a bit of a celebrity, and he greeted angel and demon alike. Gus knew Albert was uncomfortable around demons—but the
truce and peace of the bar meant he had to have a sense of courtesy.

Gideon nodded at the two of them and poured them each a whiskey. Albert pulled out his laptop and fired it up. “Go press A17, will you, Gus?”

“Good memory, Albert.”

Gus walked to the jukebox and started up the super special live version of “Fernando” again, giving him an almost instantaneous headache at the memory of Balam. He returned to the bar stool next to Albert.

“Look at this.” Albert swung his laptop's screen so that Gus could see it.

“What is it?”

“These graphs? These are levels of hope in Julian and Kate. Very low.” He lowered his voice and looked over his shoulder for demon spies. “They are both extremely vulnerable right now.”

Gus felt himself tearing up. He couldn't cry in Neither Here Nor There. Albert called such reactions emotional memories—stored in Gus's very particles from the time he was human.

“What?” Albert asked and patted Gus's hand. “Don't fret so much, my friend. Balam may not like to lose…but Albert Einstein doesn't, either. And he may be devious, but I am a genius.”

“Well, Albert, I would never be so presumptu
ous as to think the Boss made an error,” Gus said, thankful “Fernando” was playing at eardrum-shattering levels, sending most of the patrons for the door. “But I really believe they're meant to be together, that it would be a horrific mistake to keep them apart forever. And…worse, if Balam gets his devilish manicured fingers on them, they could be lost forever. Either of them could go to the other side.”

Albert looked at Gus. “Think of Galileo.”

“Galileo?” Gus always found it so much work keeping up with where Albert's mind drew correlations.

“Yes, yes. My stars, but he infuriated the church with his daring proposition that the earth was not the center of the universe. How daring!” Albert slapped the bar top. “Give me another drink, Gideon! We'll toast to Galileo.”

Gideon obliged and the three of them clinked glasses.

“To Galileo!” Albert said.

After downing his whiskey, Gus stared at Albert expectantly.

“Yes?” Albert asked.

“What does Galileo have to do with Kate and Julian?”

“Ah, yes. Galileo was daring, they imprisoned
him. Then when I developed my theory of relativity, I was a maverick. It was an exciting time. All through the theoretical physics community, whispers rose. ‘What is that Einstein fellow working on?' Now there are the wild men of string theory. Let's drink to them, barkeep!”

Gideon once again filled their whiskey glasses. Once again, the three of them toasted. “To string theory!” Albert shouted.

“To string theory,” Gus said, just as confused as ever.

“The string theorists, my trusted and trusty assistant, are searching for the theory of
everything
—that explains the
entire universe
is both its vastness and its minuteness. Gus, all this brings me to my point.”

Finally,
Gus thought.

“Sometimes, in order to do something extraordinary, you have to break a few rules.” Albert's voice was gleeful.

“Are you suggesting?”

Albert nodded and tapped his temple. “Balam isn't the only one who can interfere. I am suggesting—” he lowered his voice to a whisper even with “Fernando” playing “—we disobey the Boss. Just this once. That we help these two souls find each other again.”

Gus smiled. Perhaps with the smartest man who possibly ever lived, they stood a chance against the forces of evil.

They just had to be certain the Boss never found out.

J
ULIAN HATED THE GYM
. His whole life, his idea of exercise had been sex and lifting a shot glass to his lips. If you counted using the remote to fast-forward to the good parts in his porn DVDs, that was his entire exercise regime. And now, in rehab out in Jersey, he had never worked so hard in his life.

“Come on, Julian,” his physical therapist urged. “Don't be a wimpy boy. Push on those muscles.”

“Fuck you, Carla,” he snarled. Sweat poured from his forehead into his eyes, stinging them with salt.

“Wouldn't you love to?” Carla teased him. “Come on, big boy.” Carla, in her mid-fifties, was a squat, stocky woman with graying black hair she pulled into a ponytail with a scrunchie, and a gap between her two front teeth that Julian found endearing despite the fact that she was killing him. Right now, she was helping him navigate the parallel bars.

Julian grimaced. Every muscle ached, and his
shirt was soaked through. “I never worked so fucking hard in my life,” he growled.

“Wait until tomorrow. And the next day. And the next…And the next. I'm gonna get you running a marathon someday.”

“I'll settle for losing the wheelchair. And my dick working right.”

“We'll definitely lose the wheelchair, honey-bun. As for your dick—” she winked at him “—how do I even know it worked right before?”

He laughed despite the pain. “Oh, it worked just fine.”

When his physical therapy session was done, his arms were trembling so much from exertion that he couldn't even wheel himself back to his room.

“I'm due to take a break now, anyway. I'll take you,” Carla offered. “You can thank me later.”

“Yeah, remind me.”

She stood behind the wheelchair and started pushing him down the long, gray-linoleum-tiled hallway. The walls were a gray cinderblock, and though they tried to dress up the walls with colorful children's drawings, and a few mobiles dangling from the ceiling, it was depressing as hell.

“I fucking hate this place,” Julian groused.

“Anyone ever tell you that you have a foul mouth?”

“All the time.”

They passed by several amputees and a stroke victim, all in wheelchairs. Most dozed. The place was overcrowded. The war had sent back so many amputees.

“Listen, Julian,” Carla said, leaning down conspiratorially. “I got some advice for you, Baby Boy.”

“Yeah?”

“Don't give in to self-pity. Don't nap your days away. Look at them all. Don't give in to it and you'll get home a lot faster.”

“Easy for you to say. I had a sex dream last night and woke up and it was limp as spaghetti.” He looked up at her and smirked.

“You strike me as the type that…Well, you wouldn't let that stop you.”

Julian laughed. She pushed on his door and wheeled him through. Frank was waiting.

“Hey, Frank. This is Mistress Carla, my dominatrix. Uh…physical therapist.”

Frank smiled at her and reached out and shook her hand. “You probably deserve some kind of medal for putting up with this guy.”

“I do. A medal and a big, fat raise.” She clamped a strong hand on Julian's shoulder and leaned down once more. “You don't forget what Mistress Carla told you, okay?”

“I won't. See you, Carla.”

“See you. And nice to meet you, Frank. From the stories he's told me, you deserved a medal long before I did, honey.”

After Carla left, Frank pulled up an orange plastic chair near Julian's wheelchair. “How you doing today?”

Julian shrugged. “I'm still in this thing.” He tapped the arms to his wheelchair. “But okay.” He looked out the room's window. “I have to tell you something, Frank.”

“Sure. What's up?”

Julian kept staring out the window. He didn't want to look Frank in the eyes. “I've been a prick, Frank. Sitting in this chair, day in and day out, you do some thinking. A
lot
of thinking. And I'm thinking I've been a bastard.” He looked over at Frank, briefly. Frank's hair had turned more gray since the shooting. “We've been through a lot, pal. And the nurses told me you came every damn day to the ICU. I can tell you, if the situation had been reversed, I wouldn't have been man enough to do that. I would have run for the fucking hills and drowned in some tequila—I would have lifted my glass and silently toasted you, friend. But I would have been drunk off my ass. Hospitals give me the creeps.”

Frank cleared his throat. “Hey…that's what friends are for.”

“Yeah, well, I don't want you thinking I've become a pussy. But I wasn't a good friend, and I want you to know that I appreciate that you have been. I've changed.” He looked Frank squarely in the eyes. “I'm not that guy anymore, Frank. I just need you to know that.” He felt his own eyes get a little misty. “All right. No more chick talk.”

Frank laughed. “You'll never totally change, Jules.”

“What did you call me?” Julian felt a buzz in his brain. Like a bee zipping by his ear.

“Jules.”

“You never called me that before.”

“Hmm. I don't know. Just shortened your name. I don't know. Sorry.”

“It's all right. I just…I don't know. Weird. Someone used to call me that.” His head hurt, and the buzz was louder. “I know someone did. Can't remember who, though.”

“Anyway, you'll never totally change.”

“I guess you're right. How are things at the station?”

“Shareholders are panicking. I mean, you're the bedrock of that company—your ratings drive all
the advertising dollars. But they're saying the show is getting killer numbers because everyone's tuning in for all the updates, the ‘best of' shows, the celebrities dropping by to talk and wish you well. Have you been listening?”

Julian shook his head.

“More porn stars than a friggin' gangbang shoot have stopped by. The audience is loving it. And quite a few A-list celebs.”

Julian stared off out the window again.

“Hey…what's wrong? I mean besides the obvious. You know if you want to talk about anything, you can. You need anything? I can bring stuff from your apartment, or I can buy whatever you need, Julian.”

Julian shook his head. “I can't explain it. It's not the wheelchair or the rehab or even that some maniac
shot
me. It's that somehow, I guess, when I was in that coma, something happened. I left the old me on the other side of that darkness. It's like the coma was a wall or something. And on the other side is the old Julian. And this side is the new one. And I'm
missing
something from the other side of the wall. I just don't know what it is.”

Frank nodded. “The doctors said you'd have amnesia around that day. The shooting. And maybe
other things. You've been through a trauma, Julian.”

“It's not that. I wish I could explain it better.”

Frank was silent, and then, so softly Julian had to strain to hear him, he said, “Maybe you just don't want to be pissed off at the world anymore. Getting shot is an astounding awakening to hatred.”

“Maybe,” Julian said, unconvinced.

He and Frank talked for a while, then Frank said he had to go back to the station.

“The suits want to pay you a visit when you get out of this place.”

“Great,” Julian said unenthusiastically.

“Don't even think about it until you're ready. Screw 'em, okay? You getting better is the most important thing, not when you get back on the radio. All right, man?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

When Frank left, Julian slowly got out of his chair and made it into his bed—a bed he hated. No matter what buttons he pressed—feet up, head up, feet down, head down—he felt like a piece of meat between two slices of bread. He pressed the button for his pain meds.

There was a time, he mused, when he would have been ringing for the drugs every half hour.
But now, though he welcomed the haze, he didn't long for it.

“Hey, Joanie,” he said when his afternoon nurse came in.

“Ready to visit happy land?”

“Yeah. I'm a hurtin' pup.”

“Here you go, Julian. Get some rest.” Joanie injected the medication directly into the IV port on his forearm. She walked to the door. “Want me to turn off the overhead light?”

“Yeah.”

Julian shut his eyes and let the drugs wash over him. He felt as if he were floating. And then he had the curious sensation of an olfactory hallucination. He smelled cologne. Armani.

Julian opened his eyes and saw a well-dressed man—good-looking in the extreme, not that Julian thought of guys that way—standing there. Julian's eyes fluttered with the pain medication, and he opened his mouth but no sound came out.

“Julian, remember me?”

Julian shook his head back and forth against the pillow. He wanted to speak, but words wouldn't come. He tried to focus. The man leaned closer, and Julian felt a chill. The stranger's eyes were dark, flat, black. Cold.

“We were friends once. In a manner of speaking.
Now listen to me, Julian. Listen carefully…I have certain connections. Stick with me, and your dick will be in fine working order soon.”

A urologist? In a suit?

“Okay.”

“You know the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil'?”

“Stones?”

“Yes. And when you have your proverbial moment of doubt and pain. When this rehab thing pushes you so hard that you're
retching
from the exertion—and trust me, those days are coming—when you still can't get a hard-on, and Viagra, at your age, is the best you can hope for…erection in a pill…You call me.”

“Okay,” Julian mouthed, though how the hell was he supposed to remember this urologist.

“It's simple. You just whisper my name.”

Julian nodded, but he didn't know the guy's name.

“You just whisper
Balam.
And I'll turn up. Now, you go off to la-la land and think about that. Dream about that. Absorb it into your subconscious.”

Julian nodded, feeling the drugs in waves now, sinking, as if falling into a warm pool.

Then he heard another voice. He was too far gone to open his eyes, but this one had an English accent.

“Find her.”

Find who? Julian wondered. As blackness
came, he wondered if he would, in his dreams, travel to the other side of the wall—the coma wall—and find what it was he was missing.

Find her.