9

THE DRAGON, THE BEAR, AND THE FISH

In the hallway of the third floor of Charlie's building, a meeting was going on between the great powers of Asia: Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev. Mrs. Ling, by holding Sophie, had the strategic advantage, while Mrs. Korjev, who was fully twice the size of Mrs. Ling, possessed the threat of massive retaliatory force. What they had in common, besides being widows and immigrants, was a deep love for little Sophie, a precarious grasp on the English language, and a passionate lack of confidence in Charlie Asher's ability to raise his daughter alone.

"He is angry when he leave today. Like bear," said Mrs. Korjev, who was possessed of an atavistic compulsion toward ursine simile.

"He say no poke," said Mrs. Ling, who limited herself to English verbs in the present tense only, as a devotion to her Chan Buddhist beliefs, or so she claimed. "Who give poke to baby?"

"Pork is good for child. Make her grow strong," said Mrs. Korjev, who then quickly added, "like bear."

"He say it turn her into shih tzu. Shih tzu is dog. What kind father think little girl turn into dog?" Mrs. Ling was especially protective of little girls, as she had grown up in a province of China where each morning a man with a cart came around to collect the bodies of baby girls who had been born during the night and hurled into the street. She was lucky that her own mother had spirited her away to the fields and refused to come home until the new daughter was accepted as part of the family.

"Not shih tzu," corrected Mrs. Korjev. "Shiksa."

"Okay, shiksa. Dog is dog," said Mrs. Ling. "Is irresponsible." Not once was the letter r heard in Mrs. Ling's pronunciation of irresponsible.

"Is Yiddish word for not a Jew girl. Rachel is Jew, you know." Mrs. Korjev, unlike most of the Russian immigrants left in the neighborhood, was not a Jew. Her people had come from the steppes of Russia, and she was, in fact, descended from Cossacks - not generally considered a Hebrew-friendly race. She atoned for the sins of her ancestors by being ferociously protective (not unlike a mother bear) of Rachel, and now Sophie.

"The flowers need water today," said Mrs. Korjev.

At the end of the hallway was a large bay window that looked out on the building across the street and a window box full of red geraniums. On afternoons, the two great Asian powers would stand in the hallway, admire the flowers, talk of the cost of things, and complain about the increasing discomfort of their shoes. Neither dared start her own window box of geraniums, lest it appear that she had stolen the idea from across the street, and in the process set off an escalating window-box competition that could ultimately end in bloodshed. They agreed, tacitly, to admire - but not covet - the red flowers.

Mrs. Korjev liked the very redness of them. She had always been angry that the Communists had co-opted that color, for otherwise it would have evoked an unbridled happiness in her. Then again, the Russian soul, conditioned by a thousand years of angst, really wasn't equipped for unbridled happiness, so it was probably for the best.

Mrs. Ling was also taken with the red of the geraniums, for in her cosmology that color represented good fortune, prosperity, and long life. The very gates of the temples were painted that same color red, and so the red flowers represented one of the many paths to wu - eternity, enlightenment - essentially, the universe in a flower. She also thought that they would taste pretty good in soup.

Sophie had only recently discovered color, and the red splashes against the gray shiplap was enough to put a toothless smile on her little face.

So the three were staring into the joy of red flowers when the black bird hit the window, throwing a great spiderweb crack around it. But rather than fall away, the bird seemed to leak into the very crack, and spread, like black ink, across the window and in, onto the walls of the hallway.

And the great powers of Asia fled to the stairway.

Charlie was rubbing his left wrist where the plastic bag had been tied around it. "What, did your mother name you after a mouthwash ad?"

Mr. Fresh, looking somewhat vulnerable for a man of his size, said, "Toothpaste, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry, I didn't know," Charlie said. "You could have changed it, right?"

"Mr. Asher, you can resist who you are for only so long. Finally you decide to just go with fate. For me that has involved being black, being seven feet tall - yet not in the NBA - being named Minty Fresh, and being recruited as a Death Merchant." He raised an eyebrow as if accusing Charlie. "I have learned to accept and embrace all of those things."

"I thought you were going to say gay," Charlie said.

"What? A man doesn't have to be gay to dress in mint green."

Charlie considered Mr. Fresh's mint-green suit - made from seersucker and entirely too light for the season - and felt a strange affinity for the refreshingly-named Death Merchant. Although he didn't know it, Charlie was recognizing the signs of another Beta Male. (Of course there are gay Betas: the Beta Male boyfriend is highly prized in the gay community because you can teach him how to dress yet you can remain relatively certain that he will never develop a fashion sense or be more fabulous than you.) Charlie said, "I suppose you're right, Mr. Fresh. I'm sorry if I made assumptions. My apologies."

"That's okay," said Mr. Fresh. "But you really should go."

"No, I still don't understand, how do I know who the souls go to? I mean, after this happened, there were all kinds of soul vessels in my store I hadn't even known about. How do I know I didn't sell them to someone who already had one? What if someone has a set?"

"That can't happen. At least as far as we know. Look, you'll just know. Take my word for it. When people are ready to receive the soul, they get it. Have you ever studied any of the Eastern religions?"

"I live in Chinatown," said Charlie, and although that was technically kinda-sorta true, he knew how to say exactly three things in Mandarin: Good day; light starch, please; and I am an ignorant white devil, all taught to him by Mrs. Ling. He believed the last to translate to "top of the morning to you."

"Let me rephrase that, then," said Mr. Fresh. "Have you ever studied any of the Eastern religions?"

"Oh, Eastern religions," Charlie said, pretending he had just misinterpreted the question before. "Just Discovery Channel stuff - you know, Buddha, Shiva, Gandalf - the biggies."

"You understand the concept of karma? How unresolved lessons are re-presented to you in another life."

"Yes, of course. Duh." Charlie rolled his eyes.

"Well, think of yourself as a soul reassignment agent. We are agents of karma."

"Secret agents," Charlie said wistfully.

"Well, I hope it goes without saying," said Mr. Fresh, "that you can't tell anyone what you are, so yes, I suppose we are secret agents of karma. We hold a soul until a person is ready to receive it."

Charlie shook his head as if trying to clear water from his ears. "So if someone walks into my store and buys a soul vessel, until then they've been going through life without a soul? That's awful."

"Really?" said Minty Fresh. "Do you know if you have a soul?"

"Of course I do."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I'm me." Charlie tapped his chest. "Here I am."

"That's just a personality," said Minty, "and barely one. You could be an empty vessel, and you'd never know the difference. You may not have reached a point in life where you are ready to receive your soul."

"Huh?"

"Your soul may be more evolved than you are right now. If a kid fails tenth grade, do you make him repeat grades K through nine?"

"No, I guess not."

"No, you just make him start over at the beginning of tenth grade. Well, it's the same with souls. They only ascend. A person gets a soul when they can carry it to the next level, when they are ready to learn the next lesson."

"So if I sell one of those glowing objects to someone, they've been going through life without a soul?"

"That's my theory," said Minty Fresh. "I've read a lot on this subject over the years. Texts from every culture and religion, and this explains it better than anything else I can come up with."

"Then it's not all in the book you sent."

"That's just the practical instructions. There's no explanations. It's Dick-and-Jane simple. It says to get a calendar and put it next to your bed and the names will come to you. It doesn't tell you how you will find them, or what the object is, just that you have to find them. Get a day planner. That's what I use."

"But what about the number? When I would find a name written next to the bed, there was always a number next to it."

Mr. Fresh nodded and grinned a little sheepishly. "That's how many days you'll have to retrieve the soul vessel."

"You mean it's how long before the person dies? I don't want to know that."

"No, not how long before the person dies, how long you have to retrieve the vessel, how many days are left. I've been looking at this for a long time, and the number is never above forty-nine. I thought that might be significant, so I started looking for it in literature about death and dying. Forty-nine days just happens to be the number of days of bardo, the term used in the Tibetan Book of the Dead for the transition between life and death. Somehow, we Death Merchants are the medium for moving these souls, but we have to get there within the forty-nine days, that's my theory, anyway. Don't be surprised sometimes if the person has been dead for weeks before you get his name. You still have the number of days left in bardo to get the soul vessel."

"And if I don't make it in time?" Charlie asked.

Minty Fresh shook his head dolefully. "Shades, ravens, dark shit rising from the Underworld - who knows? Thing is, you have to find it in time. And you will."

"How, if there's no address or instructions, like 'it's under the mat.'"

"Sometimes - most of the time, in fact - they come to you. Circumstances line up."

Charlie thought about the stunning redhead bringing him the silver cigarette case. "You said sometimes?"

Fresh shrugged. "Sometimes you have to really search, find the person, go to their house - once I even hired a detective to help me find someone, but that started to bring the voices. You can tell if you're getting close by checking to see if people notice you."

"But I have to make a living. I have a kid - "

"You'll do that, too, Charlie. The money comes as part of the job. You'll see."

Charlie did see. He had seen already: the Mainheart estate clothing - he'd make tens of thousands on it if he got it.

"Now you have to go," said Minty Fresh. He held out his hand to shake and a grin cut his face like a crescent moon in the night sky. Charlie took the tall man's hand, his own hand disappearing into the Death Merchant's grip.

"I'm still sure I have questions. Can I call you?"

"No," said the mint one.

"Okay, then, I'm going now," Charlie said, not really moving. "Completely at the mercy of forces of the Underworld and stuff."

"You take care," said Minty Fresh.

"No idea what the hell I'm doing," Charlie went on, taking tentative baby steps toward the door. "The weight of all of humanity on my shoulders."

"Yeah, make sure you stretch in the morning," said the big man.

"By the way," Charlie said, out of rhythm with his whining, "are you gay?"

"What I am," said Minty Fresh, "is alone. Completely and entirely."

"Okay," Charlie said. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm sorry I smacked you in the head."

Charlie nodded, grabbed his sword-cane from behind the counter, and walked out of Fresh Music into an overcast San Francisco day.

Well, he wasn't exactly Death, but he wasn't Santa's helper, either. It didn't really matter that no one would believe him even if he told them. Death Merchant seemed a little dire, but he liked the idea of being a secret agent. An agent of KARMA - Karma Assessment Reassignment Murder and Ass - okay, he could work on the acronym later, but a secret agent nevertheless.

Actually, although he didn't know it, Charlie was well suited to be a secret agent. Because they function below the radar, Beta Males make excellent spies. Not the "James Bond, Aston Martin with missiles, boning the beautiful Russian rocket scientist on an ermineskin bedspread" sort of spy - more the "bad comb-over, deep-cover bureaucrat fishing coffee-sodden documents out of a Dumpster" spy. His overt nonthreateningness allows him access to places and people that are closed to the Alpha Male, wearing his testosterone on his sleeve. The Beta male can, in fact, be dangerous, not so much in the "Jet Li entire body is a deadly weapon" way but more in the "drunk on the riding mower making a Luke Skywalker assault on the toolshed" sort of way.

So, as Charlie headed for the streetcar stop on Market Street, he mentally tried on his new persona as a secret agent, and was feeling pretty good about it, when, as he passed a storm drain, he heard a female voice whisper harshly, "We'll get the little one. You'll see, fresh Meat. We'll have her soon."

As soon as Charlie walked into his store from the alley, Lily bolted into the back room to meet him.

"That cop was here again. That guy died. Did you kill him?" To the machine-gun update she added, "Uh, sir?" Then she saluted, curtsied, then did a praying-hands Japanese bow thing.

Charlie was thrown by all of it, coming as it did when he was in a panic about his daughter and had just driven across town like a madman. He was sure the gestures of respect were just some dark cover-up for a favor or a misdeed, or, as often was the case, the teenager was messing with him. So he sat down on one of the high hardwood stools near the desk and said, "Cop? Guy? 'Splain, please. And I didn't kill anyone."

Lily took a deep breath. "That cop that was by here the other day came back. Turns out that guy you went up to see in Pacific Heights last week" - she looked at something she had written on her arm in red ink - "Michael Mainheart, killed himself. And he left a note to you. Saying that you were to take his and his wife's clothes and sell them at the market rate. And then he wrote" - and here she again referred to her ink-stained arm - "'What about "I just want to die" did you not understand?'" Lily looked up.

"That's what he said after I gave him CPR the other day," Charlie said.

"So, did you kill him? Or whatever you call it. You can tell me." She curtsied again, which disturbed Charlie more than somewhat. He'd long ago defined his relationship with Lily as being built on a strong base of affectionate contempt, and this was throwing everything off.

"No, I did not kill him. What kind of question is that?"

"Did you kill the guy with the cigarette case?"

"No! I never even saw that guy."

"You realize that I am your trusted minion," Lily said, this time adding another bow.

"Lily, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"Nothing. There's nothing wrong at all, Mr. Asher - uh, Charles. Do you prefer Charles or Charlie?"

"You're asking now? What else did the cop say?"

"He wanted to talk to you. I guess they found that Mainheart guy dressed in his wife's clothing. He hadn't been home from the hospital for an hour before he sent the nurse away, got all cross-dressed up, then took a handful of painkillers."

Charlie nodded, thinking about how adamant Mainheart had been about having his wife's clothes out of the house. He was using any way he could to feel close to her, and it wasn't working. And when wearing her clothes didn't put him closer, he'd gone after her the only way he knew how, by joining her in death. Charlie understood. If it hadn't been for Sophie, he might have tried to join Rachel.

"Pretty kinky, huh?" Lily said.

"No!" Charlie barked. "No it's not, Lily. It's not like that at all. Don't even think that. Mr. Mainheart died of grief. It might look like something else, but that's what it was."

"Sorry," Lily said. "You're the expert."

Charlie was staring at the floor, trying to put some sense to it all, wondering if his losing the fur coat that was Mrs. Mainheart's soul vessel meant that the couple would never be together again. Because of him.

"Oh yeah," Lily added. "Mrs. Ling called down all freaked out and yelling all Chinesey about a black bird smashing the window - "

Charlie was off the stool and taking the stairs two at a time.

"She's in your apartment," Lily called after him.

There was an orange slick of TV attorneys floating on the top of the fishbowl when Charlie got to his apartment. The Asian powers were standing in his kitchen, Mrs. Korjev was holding Sophie tight to her chest, and the infant was virtually swimming, trying to escape the giant marshmallowy canyon of protection between the massive Cossack fun bags. Charlie snatched his daughter as she was sinking into the cleavage for the third time and held her tight.

"What happened?" he asked.

There followed a barrage of Chinese and Russian mixed with the odd English word: bird, window, broken, black, and make shit on myself.

"Stop!" Charlie held up a free hand. "Mrs. Ling, what happened?"

Mrs. Ling had recovered from the bird hitting the window and the mad dash down the steps, but she was now showing an uncharacteristic shyness, afraid that Charlie might notice the damp spot in the pocket of her frock where the recently deceased Barnaby Jones lay orangely awaiting introduction to some wonton, green onions, a pinch of five spices, and her soup pot. "Fish is fish," she said to herself when she squirreled that rascal away. There were, after all, five more dead attorneys in the bowl, who would miss one?

"Oh, nothing," said Mrs. Ling. "Bird break window and scare us. Not so bad now."

Charlie looked to Mrs. Korjev. "Where?"

"On our floor. We are talking in hall. Speaking of what is best for Sophie, when boom, bird hits window and black ink run through window. We run here and lock door." Both the widows had keys to Charlie's apartment.

"I'll have it fixed tomorrow," Charlie said. "But that's all. Nothing - no one came in?"

"Is third floor, Charlie. No one comes in."

Charlie looked to the fishbowl. "What happened there?"

Mrs. Ling's eyes went wide. "I have to go. Mah-jongg night at temple."

"We come in, lock door," explained Mrs. Korjev. "Fish are fine. Put Sophie in car seat like always we are doing, then go look in hallway for coast to be clear. When Mrs. Ling look back, fish are dead."

"Not me! Is Russian who see dead fish," said Mrs. Ling.

"It's okay," Charlie said. "Did you see any birds, anything dark in the apartment?"

The two women shook their heads. "Only upstairs," Mrs. Ling said.

"Let's go look," Charlie said, moving Sophie to his hip and picking up his sword-cane. He led the two women to the little elevator, did a quick assessment of Mrs. Korjev's size versus the cubic footage, and led them up the stairs. When he saw the broken bay window he felt a little weak in the knees. It wasn't so much the window, it was what was on the roof across the street. Refracted a thousand times in the spiderwebbed safety glass was the shadow of a woman that was cast on the building. He handed the baby to Mrs. Korjev, approached the window, and knocked a hole in the glass to see better. As he did, the shadow slid down the side of the building, across the sidewalk, and into the storm drain next to where a dozen tourists had just disembarked from a cable car. None of them appeared to have seen anything. It was just past one and the sun was casting shadows nearly straight down. He looked back at the two windows.

"Did you see that?"

"You mean break window?" Mrs. Ling said, slowly approaching the window and peering through the hole Charlie had made. "Oh no."

"What? What?"

Mrs. Ling looked back at Mrs. Korjev. "You are right. Flowers need water."

Charlie looked through the hole in the window and saw that Mrs. Ling was referring to a window box full of dead, black geraniums.

"Safety bars on all the windows. Tomorrow," Charlie said.

Not far away, as the crow flies, under Columbus Avenue, in a wide pipe junction where several storm sewers met, Orcus, the Ancient One, paced, bent over like a hunchback, the heavy spikes that jutted from his shoulders scraping the sides of the pipe, throwing off sparks and the smell of smoldering peat.

"You're going to fuck up your spikes if you keep pacing like that," said Babd.

She was crouched in one of the smaller pipes to the side, next to her sisters, Nemain and Macha. Except for Nemain, who was beginning to show a gunmetal relief of bird feathers over her body, they were devoid of depth; flat absences of light, absolute black even in the gloom filtering down through the storm grates - shadows, silhouettes, really - the darker ancestors of the modern mud-flap girls. Shades: delicate and female and fierce.

"Sit. Have a snack. What good to take the Above if you look like hell in the end?"

Orcus growled and spun on the Morrigan, the three. "Too long out of the air! Too long." From the basket on his belt he hooked a human skull on one of his claws, popped it in his mouth, and crunched down on it.

The Morrigan laughed, sounding like wind through the pipes, pleased that he was enjoying their gift. They'd spent much of the day under San Francisco's graveyards digging out the skulls (Orcus liked them decoffinated) and polishing off the dirt and detritus until they shone like bone china.

"We flew," said Nemain. She took a moment to admire the blue-black feather shapes on her surface. "Above," she added unnecessarily. "They are everywhere, like cherries waiting to be stolen."

"Not stolen," said Orcus. "You think like a crow. They are ours for the taking."

"Oh yeah, well, where were you? I got these." The shade held up William Creek's umbrella in one hand and the fur jacket she'd ripped away from Charlie Asher in the other. They still glowed red, but were rapidly dimming. "Because of these, I was Above. I flew." When no one reacted, Nemain added, "Above."

"I flew, too," said Babd timidly. "A little." She was a tad self-conscious that she'd manifested no feather patterns or dimension.

Orcus hung his great head. The Morrigan moved to his side and began stroking the long spikes that had once been wings. "We will all be Above, soon," said Macha. "This new one doesn't know what he is doing. He will make it so we can all be Above. Look how far we've come - and we are so close now. Two Above in such a short time. This New Meat, this ignorant one, he may be all we need."

Orcus lifted his bull-like head and grinned, revealing a sawmill of teeth. "They will be like fruit for the picking."

"See," said Nemain. "Like I said. Did you know that Above you can see really far? Miles. And the wonderful smells. I never realized how damp and musty it is down here. Is there any reason that we can't have a window?"

"Shut up!" growled Orcus.

"Jeez, bite my head off, why don't you."

"Don't tease," said the bullheaded Death. He rose and led the other Deaths, the Morrigan, down the pipe toward the financial district, to the buried Gold Rush ship where they made their home.