Secondhand Souls (21 page)

“I thought we liked ham,” said Nemain, looking enviously at her sister’s talons, which had manifested with the power of the soul she’d just consumed.

“These things holding the souls, aren’t they made of ham?” asked Macha. She very much wanted to pick up the little creature’s head, which lay in a stream of water in the pipe, but didn’t have the corporeal substance to pick up and hold anything. It would make a lovely pendant, at least until she could get a human head to replace it, which was her preference.

“No, it’s just meat,” said Babd. “But they are gathering it for something. Maybe they have a nest.”

“A nest?” said Macha, a dreamy tone to her voice. “A nest, built with bones of men. Lamps of skulls all around—”

“And cushions,” said Nemain, joining in the reverie. “To lie on.”

“To push a dying warrior down on and fuck him to death,” said Babd.

“—lick his soul from your claws as his light goes out,” said Macha, shuddering at the pleasure of the thought.

“Oooo, a nest,” said Nemain. “We should go back to the tunnel near the Fort, for when Yama brings us the souls.”

“No, we should wait for more of these things,” said Babd, pointing to the skull. “Follow them to their nest.”

“With the souls we get from Yama we can go above,” said Macha. “Above! Find the soul sellers. Grow stronger. Hold dominion. Build a nest.”

“With cushions,” added Nemain.

“I don’t trust Yama,” said Babd, emboldened by her easy soul score. “The last time—the banshee.”

“And the gun,” said Macha.

“And the way he walks in the light,” said Nemain. “How does he do that?”

“Shhhh,” shushed Babd. There were voices in the pipes. Not filtering down from above, but
in
the pipes with them. Small voices. She bridged herself over the top of the pipe, disappearing into the darkness there as best she could, fighting the form she had gained. Her sisters moved away from the grate above and became part of the darkness once again.

The procession of creatures moved by them, perhaps ten of them, each with the little light showing through his clothes, each carrying some bit of meat or animal part, except the last, who carried what looked like a porcelain candy dish that also glowed with the light of a human soul.

The Morrigan followed them for blocks, flowing along the sides of the pipes, watching as the little creatures climbed a makeshift ladder and hopped, one by one, through an open storm grate. Babd moved to look out but the daylight singed her and she pulled back.

“Wait,” she said.

When darkness fell an hour later they gathered at the storm grate and looked out.

“I remember this place,” said Nemain.

“That tall green one kept running over us here,” said Macha. “Cars suck.”

Babd rose up, spotted a very large Victorian house across the street, a sign in front that she could not read.

“What is it?” asked Nemain.

“The nest,” said Babd.

T
he director messaged Lily to see him in his office when her shift was finished. She set an alarm on her phone that would go off five minutes into her appearance and would sound like a phone call. The door was open and she could hear Mr. Leonidas and Sage talking. She listened long enough to determine they weren’t talking about her, then knocked.

“Come in,” Leonidas said. He was dark and a little doughy, with eyebrows that Lily found it hard to look away from because they really looked like they might have ideas of their own. Because of her fascination with his eyebrows, Leonidas thought that Lily paid rapt attention to everything he said and consequently showed her favor over the other counselors. Leonidas had a background in psychology and public health, so being a snarky bitch around him was deeply unsatisfying because he would always try to find the root of her discontent, the hurt behind her hostility; getting a rise out of him was like trying to give a handjob to a parking meter: you were going to end up frustrated and exhausted long before a cop came along to haul you away. In spite of herself, she kind of liked Leonidas. Having Sage in the room, the enemy, was presenting a dilemma.

“Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said. “What can I do for you? I can wait until you’re done with Sage if you’d like.”

“No, please have a seat. Sage brought something to my attention and I thought it fair that she be here to see how it was handled.”

“Oh, right,” said Lily. “For her thesis. Sure.” She sat down, looked over the array of a dozen or so family pictures propped across Leonidis’s desk. “How’s the fam? Have any more kids?”

“No, still just the six, same as when you asked me two weeks ago.”

“Well, I know how busy you are,” Lily said. “What’s up?”

“Lily, Sage heard some disturbing dialogue in the call center today, and I thought we would all listen to the recording together so we could understand what happened.”

“I don’t see what she has—”

Leonidis held up his hand to stop her right there. “Let’s just listen.”

He hit a key on his PC keyboard and Lily heard her own voice coming out of the speakers. Sage sat back and nodded, as if she’d just wrapped the big case on
Law & Order
.

“Crisis Center, this is Lily, what’s your name?”

And there was silence. Nothing.

“Hi, Mike,” Lily’s voice said on the recording. “How are you doing today?”

And there was another gap. And Lily’s voice continued, her entire half of the conversation, and only her half, and as the recording ran, Sage started to squirm in her chair and Lily fought,
fought very hard,
not to grin, and was really thankful when the alarm on her phone went off so she could make a big deal out of ignoring the imaginary call.

They listened to the entire conversation, Lily’s side only. When it ended, Leonidas looked at Sage and said, “That’s it. That’s the entire call.”

“But she always does—” Sage stopped. “I’ve heard her before, she’s so profane.”

“I think we can see what was going on here,” Leonidas said. He raised his eyebrows at Sage in what he probably thought was an open, understanding manner, but Lily thought they looked like two bristly caterpillars crouching, ready to pounce. He turned to Lily and she pushed back a little from his desk—the eyebrows, they were sizing her up. “Lily, while I don’t approve of high jinks in the call center, I understand the point you were making with this little performance.”

“Uh, thanks, Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said.
Point them at Sage. Point them at Sage
.

“And, Sage, while you may not immediately see the efficacy of Lily’s method, she does get results, she connects with the clients, and ultimately, that saves lives. Perhaps less focus on her process and more on yours and we’ll be able to connect with more people. Help more people. Don’t you agree?”

Sage nodded, looking into the abyss of one of the buttons on her cargo pants.

It was a Leonidas ass-chewing—as close as he ever got to one. Lily resisted doing a booty dance of triumph against Sage’s stupid sweater because that would be immature, so she did it mentally and said. “Friends?” She stood and held out her arms to force Sage into hugging it out. And as she held Sage a little too long, feeling the slight woman get tenser and tenser as the embrace continued, even as she puffed Sage’s frizzy-ass hair out of her mouth, exhibiting her victory—nay—her domination, Lily also warmed with the satisfaction of her own specialness.

She was the only one who could hear him—the only one who could talk to the ghost of the bridge.

21

Killing Villarreal

M
ike Sullivan hung from one of the vertical suspension cables by one hand. “Look, I’m as light as a feather. There’s hardly even a breeze and I’m standing straight out.”

“You are lighter than a feather, my love. Let go and you will not fall, and the bridge will not let you blow away.”

“Yeah, I think I’m going to wait on the letting-go part.”

“You are beyond fear. And you are bound to the bridge just as you were drawn to it.”

“Just the same, you died of what, diphtheria? What if right after you died I was to offer you a big steaming cup of diphtheria, how would you feel?”

“They can put it in a cup now? It was invisible in my day.”

“A Cleveland steamer was a ship, in your day, my sweet Conchita.”

She reclined on the oceanside railing—the walkway on that side of the bridge was closed most of the time, the foot and bicycle traffic confined to the bay side. Not that it would have mattered. People would have walked right through her and have only felt a chill, which was normal for the Golden Gate.

She said, “There is someone who needs to speak to you, my love.”

“Another one? I don’t understand. Why do they want to talk to me?” There had been scores of them, each telling a different story; a woman who was trapped overnight in a stationery cabinet with a janitor after the earthquake of 1989 and didn’t share the Pepsi she had in her purse, a man who hallucinated he was being pursued by a giant squirrel in John Muir Woods. The only thing the stories had in common was some unresolved element, some lesson unlearned, something sad.

“I don’t know why, my love, any more than I know why I had to wait two hundred years for you, and that you have been on your way here for two hundred years, but I trust there is a reason. I have faith.”

“Faith? But all those years as a nun, didn’t you—I mean, did it prepare you for this?”

“For this? No. True devotion is done not for a reward, but for the devotion itself. All my works, all my prayers, were for forgiveness of my selfishness, my weakness, because I could never love God as much as I loved you. What my time as a nun prepared me for was the damnation of being without you for these centuries, which I deserved. For this, you, here, with me, this joy, for this I was not prepared.”

Mike settled on the walkway beside her and took her in his arms; she embraced him, and in an instant they were a single entity—the only thing the third ghost could see of them was a white gardenia that Concepción wore in her hair, glowing.

“This is where I’m supposed to talk to the guy, right?” said the third ghost.

Mike and Concepción divided like a luminous amoeba and each stood on the walkway.

“My love, I am going to drift,” she said. “Good day, sir.”

The third ghost, who wore a baseball uniform, tipped his cap. “She asks someone what a Cleveland steamer is, might be your last—uh, whatever that was you two were doing for a while.”

“You heard that?” asked Mike.

“Yep. You want to have a smoke or something?”

“I’m good. How long have you been there?”

“Awhile. You don’t get many conversations here, as you probably know. Most people are kind of flighty.”

“Good description.”

“Besides, I wanted to see what happened if things got hot. Never seen that before either.”

“How long you been on the bridge?”

“Ah, not long, ten, maybe fifteen years. Hard to say exactly. Time, right?”

“Do you know why you’re here? I mean, any of us, but let’s just say you?”

“Cursed, I guess,” said the ballplayer. “Cursed long before I took the last out.”

“Yeah?” said Mike. “Tell me.”

“You a baseball fan?”

“I watched a game now and then.”

“So you heard of Skipper Nelson, Giant’s shortstop, right?”

“Nope,” Mike said. “Sorry.”

“So I’ll start where it started,” said Skipper.

I used to think I was cursed because of the bird, but now that I’ve thought about it, it was probably because I planned the murder of Villarreal. I first ran across Villarreal in the minors, before the bird, so it was probably him. Probably.

I was drafted as a shortstop right out of high school by the Giants and sent to their double-A team in Richmond, Virginia, the Flying Squirrels, which is where I got my nickname—the squirrel—when I finally got sent up to the majors, because of the way I could track down a grounder and turn double plays—“like a squirrel after a nut,” the announcer says, and it sticks. It coulda been worse, though. I could of gone to the Grand Chute, Crotch Crickets, and then had to deal with that nickname for my whole career. A year after me, Villarreal was drafted out the Dominican League to the Chattanooga Lookouts, which were the double-A club for the Dodgers, a catcher, switch hitter, batted .325 in the Dominican, arm like a cannon. He was an early draft pick, so you knew he wouldn’t be in double-A ball for long, but a butterball, five nine, two-fifty—you could time his forty-yard dash with a sundial, so the Dodgers wanted to see if they could take some weight off of him and give him a little more speed on the bases.

First time I meet him he’s catching for a one-pitch lefty name Markley, one of those guys you see a lot in the minors—scary heat, pushing a hundred miles an hour, but no movement, a laser beam—you know if it’s going to be over, it’s going to be right at your knees in the middle of the plate, then, after about eight pitches, he’s going to be spraying deadly leather all over the goddamn place, so if you can avoid getting a burning, baseball-sized hole through your body somewhere, you draw a walk. One out, guy before me whiffs so bad, I can feel the wind off his bat in the on-deck circle. But I’m not worried, I can see heat. It’s a gift. Then, as I’m walking up, before I even get in the batter’s box, Villarreal starts talking . . .

“How you doing? Nice to meet you? Are you married? Got any kids? How’s your mother? How was the bus trip? You guys staying at the Travelodge? How’s the rooms? You got a mini-fridge?” And he just keeps talking, mostly questions, for the next fifteen fucking years, but I don’t know that. Right then, I know, absolutely know, I can hit Markley before he goes all Wild Thing on me, I just have to watch one go by to measure, but I’m listening to Villarreal the whole time, and I whiff. And so it begins . . .

Fortunately, that first one was an exhibition game, so we don’t play Chattanooga again, before I get brought to the bigs the next year when the Giants’ starting shortstop is trying to turn a double play and gets a knee bent back by a sliding base runner. Already I have a reputation as being nimble on the turn, and no matter what the odds of it happening twice in a season, a ball club loses a starter to a certain kind of injury, they want to avoid it happening again, so I get the nod instead of the shortstop at Fresno, who has a better batting average then me, but can be flat-footed at times.

Villarreal gets called up by the Dodgers the same season, backup catcher, because their starter has taken a lot of shots to the head and is kind of goofy. In those days, before the concussion rules, if a guy could count to ten and tell his left from his right, he was good to play, and to be honest, I know a couple of ballplayers couldn’t pass that test without getting hit in the head, but they have Villarreal ready, and he’s been batting over .300 in the minors with a lot of home runs, so he was coming up soon anyway, despite still being shaped like a pregnant mailbox.

So, I finally get my first at-bat in the bigs against the Dodgers. It’s bottom of the ninth, and we’re tied two to two. The utility infielder playing short ahead of me, Manny Ignacio, a lefty, strikes out three times, and they got a left-handed closer pitching, so the skipper needs a righty at the plate. We’re playing in Candlestick Park, which, as you know, sits out on a peninsula in San Francisco Bay, and usually has a prevailing seventy-five mile an hour wind, but what I’m not used to, is about the ninth inning of every game, the seagulls start coming in, getting ready to swoop down on the uneaten fries and hot-dog buns, and they do it like they’re psychic or they can read the scoreboard or something.

So it’s two outs, we got a guy on second with some speed, and I come up and who is catching, but Chava Villarreal. Chava is short for Salvador, which makes about as much sense as a guy named Villarreal that can’t pronounce the letter V even if you put him in a Volvo and drive him to Visalia for Valentine’s Day. And he’s off; “Hey, man, nice to see you again. How you doin’? You get married? You got any kids? How’s your mother? You like San Francisco? You been to the Mission?” And he goes on, and on, and on, until between him and the seagulls diving on the outfield beyond the pitcher, I think it’s going to be a miracle if I even see the ball, let alone hit it.

And, “You like Caribbean food? I take you for the best plantains in the city when you come to Los Angeles.”

And the pitcher throws me a hanging curve that moves like a balloon, time slows down, Villarreal is a mosquito buzzing in another city, and I let go on that son of a bitch—whole body swing, toes to hips to fingertips, and it has that clack-stick sound of a homer, I can feel it and the crowd can hear it and they’re on their feet—it’s going to be a line-drive homer, not high, just a rocket off the field, except before it gets off the infield there’s an explosion of feathers, a literal explosion—I’m not even out of the batter’s box and this circular snowstorm of feathers appears right over the second baseman’s head, and this bird drops, crushed and limp, and the ball drops, plop, and the second baseman shakes his head like he’s got water in his ears, because he was following the ball to go out like the rest of us, but now it’s sitting at his feet and he picks it up and throws me out at first. We go on to win, but my first big league at-bat, I kill a bird, and not a seagull or a pigeon, oh no. My line drive killed a friggin’ goony bird. An albatross. Like a five-foot wingspan. I basically knocked a turkey out of the sky with my first hit in the bigs, and the last thing I hear before the ball hits the first baseman’s mitt is Villarreal. “Oh, man! Oh, shit! I can’t believe it. Oh, man!”

So that’s it, right? I’m cursed. But it turns out, I’m not that cursed, and I bat .260 that season and we get to the National League playoffs and by next year I’m starting shortstop, but here’s the thing, Villarreal is starting catcher for the Dodgers, and we have to play those sons-a-bitches nineteen times during the season. And three or four times every game, for nineteen games, when I come up, that fat fuck is, “So how you doing? You feeling good? I heard you got married. You have any kids? How’s your mom?” And between that and the albatross I get to be almost worthless on offense against the Dodgers, batting a flat buck-fifty against them when I’m batting in the high two hundreds, low three hundreds against everyone else.

My third season with the Giants, we’re neck and neck with the Dodgers for the division and the guy I jumped over at Fresno is batting .375 and fielding just as well, so I figure I’m maybe two, three bad games from losing my starting position, so when I come up in the second game against the Dodgers, I say, even before I get in the box, “Villarreal, just shut the fuck up. Just shut your fucking mouth while I’m in the box, you hear me?”

Evidently, though, he didn’t hear me, because through three balls, four foul balls, and a swing and a miss, Villarreal jabbered, “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know it bothered you. You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up. I’m a pro, man. A batter needs it quiet, I’m quiet. I was just wondering, you know, how your mom was.”

Two Dodger games later, right after the ump calls a third strike which was a gift to the pitcher, because it’s like a foot off the plate, I turn around and say, “You cocksucker, you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to knock your fucking head off.”

And the ump says, “You’re out of here.” And makes to throw me out of the game. “You can’t use language like that,” he says, which is more explanation than he has to give.

And I say, “I wasn’t calling you a cocksucker, I was calling this cocksucker a cocksucker. You ought to throw him out of the game. He’s got to drive you nuts, right? He never, never shuts the fuck up.”

It was a Sunday day game, and there was a lot of kids at the park, and it was televised nationally, and they muted me, but it turns out that people read lips a lot better than you’d think, so the cocksucker—and this time I mean the ump—suspended me for two games, and that cocksucker Villarreal hit a game-winning homer against us that day. So I think you can see where I’m going with this. That’s right, it might not have been the albatross. And every baseball fan in the country thinks I have a black box over my mouth because they can’t even play the highlights without I’m calling every granny watching the six o’clock news a cocksucker.

Every game, it’s all I can do to not hit Villarreal in the throat every at-bat. And then we’re coming into the fall, and I get my chance. I’m on second when Joe Rollo smacks one into the gap in center, sending it to the wall. I’m hell on wheels going for home, and their center fielder has a good arm, but the third-base coach sends me, and I look up and see Villarreal is blocking the plate, and the ball is going to get there before I do. So I got one choice, and one choice only. That’s to cream him and knock the ball loose. I’ve got four seasons of frustration going down that baseline with me, and not only is this a run, it’s my chance. I’m going to take his fucking head off. I’m going to explode him like that ball exploded the albatross. I’m going to leave broken bits of can’t-shut-the-fuck-up Dominican cocksucker scattered over the infield. So when I’m a good five feet from him I make my move. I go like I’m going for Olympic gold in the pole vault, which led to what was to be known as the Superman Slide.

Yes, he was a fat fuck, and he ran like he had tubs of lead tied to his cleats, but he was quick, so as I leave my feet, Villarreal has the good instinct to duck, and I sail, vertical, over him, not even grazing him, past the ump (on the replay you can see him saying “what the fuck?” even through his mask) and I land a good three feet on the far side of home plate, having never touched it. Villarreal spins and tags me out while I’m still wondering what happened.