Secondhand Souls (30 page)
Authors: Christopher Moore
“About that; how is it you’re all erudite and nerdy some of the time, and other times you’re all smooth and badass and black?”
“I’m black as I need to be. I use the language that serves what I have to say. You cool with that?”
“Are you cool with me thinking that Miles Davis sounds like he’s smothering squirrels?”
Minty Fresh feigned taking an arrow to the heart, then shook it off.
“I guess Miles don’t work for everybody.”
“And
Pizazz
was a stupid name for a restaurant.”
“Well, I don’t—”
“Admit it!”
“All right,
Pizzaz
was a stupid name for a restaurant.”
“Good, I win,” she said, moving close enough to the counter so he could kiss her when the time came. “Now we can play for fun.”
W
hen the ghosts of the bridge rose to find their places in the universe, so, too, did all the souls in all the soul vessels around the world. The souls of the surviving Squirrel People, who had turned to neo-druids since the attack of the Morrigan, and who had built a miniature Stonehenge from stolen hotel mini-fridges in their amphitheater beneath the Buddhist Center, also found their way back onto the Wheel of Life and Death, most moving on to live new lives as humans, except for Bob (who was Theeb), whose soul would be reincarnated twice as a woodchuck and once as hedgehog to present to him the lesson of humility, because the universe thought he had been kind of a dick.
When the ghosts of the bridge rose to find their places in the universe, Jean-Pierre Baptiste just happened to be cradling the cat person who had been his patient and friend, Helen. She went limp in his arms and he could see the red glow of her soul in her chest ascend and pass through the ceiling. Baptiste knew he would have some difficulty breaking the habit of being kind to Helen, and would have to console himself by being actively kind to other patients, as did most of the people of his calling.
Not coincidentally, halfway around the world, in Paris, on the four-hundred-year-old stone bridge over the Seine called the Pont Neuf, a craftsman named Jacques was repairing one of the carved marble faces that decorated the fascia of the bridge when a ghost appeared sitting on the railing above him. She wore the midcalf tweed skirt and crisp white blouse of a college girl from the midtwentieth century on her semester abroad in Paris. She wore her hair shoulder length and curled under in the style of Katharine Hepburn’s in
Bringing Up Baby
, Kate being her idol.
“
Bonjour, monsieur
,” she said to Jacques. “
Je suis Helen
.” And she proceeded to outline, in French with a heavy American accent, what would be required of him. And different ghosts, each more charming than the last, appeared to people on bridges all over the world, and thus was established the new turn of the Wheel of Life and Death, so that each soul on its journey between bodies, would pause in a place between places, and then continue on toward its proper place as part of the universe.
The author gratefully acknowledges the help of the following in the research of
Secondhand Souls
:
Michael Tucker, who helped me locate Concepción Arguella and Count Nikolai Rezanov’s love story, prompted only by a very vague memory of a book I read twenty years ago.
Eileen Hirst, for the lowdown on cop funerals and city politics, much of which I blissfully ignored.
Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, the intrepid San Francisco Giants TV announcers, to whom I owe credit for all the baseball lingo I know, except the profanities, which they would never, ever use.
Monique Motil, whose brilliant “sartorial creatures” sculptures were the inspiration for the Squirrel People.
Ryan, Piper, and Presley Pombrio, for the lowdown on princesses and little ponies.
And Charlee Gina Michelle Hieronymus Carnitas Tremble Moss Moore, for insight on her hospice work, as well as her patience, tolerance, and generosity, without which, this book would have never been finished.
Christopher Moore is the author of fourteen previous novels, including
Lamb
,
The Stupidest Angel
,
A Dirty Job, Fool
,
Sacré Bleu
, and
The Serpent of Venice
. He lives in San Francisco, California.
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This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SECONDHAND SOULS.
Copyright © 2015 by Christopher Moore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-177978-7
ISBN 978-0-06-243857-7 (Barnes & Noble signed edition)
ISBN 978-0-06-243856-0 (Books-A-Million signed edition)
EPub Edition AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780062355348
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