Mortality Bridge (34 page)

He’s in an elevator. Beside him his guitar case. Battered and scarred and stained and filthy, ancient faithful bloodhound still and patient on the floor. All right. Okay.

Niko reaches out a hand. Beyond the mirror’s border his and his reflection’s fingers meet unseen and push the single button and the button lights. A faint suck of air drawn into an enormous long wet fleshy throat. Niko’s stomach floats. He jumps up and his reflection leaves the floor and takes too long to come back down. Apart from the hollow in his stomach and a strange tight feeling in his balls there’s no other indication of the car’s plummet. He can sense it though. The deepening earth around him.

Cool air softly blows and cheesy Muzak plays from unseen speakers overhead. It takes a while for him to recognize the Muzak as attenuated versions of his own work.

He sighs, he stands, he waits.

Twenty minutes later the elevator still drops. Niko leans back against the wall and wearily slides down until he’s sitting beside his guitar as a Muzak version of Roll the Bones from his first album with Perish Blues begins. Christ. He shuts his eyes. He dreams he’s sitting on the leather couch of his Hollywood Hills living room. Beside him Van reads the Sunday paper. He’s still dead but it’s okay. Niko asks Have you finished the sports section? and Van hands it over. Niko says Thank you but somehow it is understood he means I love you and I miss you. Van nods absently and searches for the funnies.

Niko wakes up crying. The elevator still drops. Niko has to piss. An hour later he has no choice and pisses in the corner. The Muzak plays. Niko sits beside his guitar case and caresses the scarred curves. He thinks of taking out the Dobro and strumming some sad old tunes but doesn’t. He’ll either be playing along with the Muzak or against it. Either way he wants no part of it. And to be honest he’s a bit afraid to play right now. Swollen knuckles and unsteady hands. He’s coming down from his rush and he’s got the shakes. It only took one fix. He’s sweating like a lathered horse. The Muzak’s driving him insane. The elevator drops.

All that day, assuming it is day, he paces in the elevator and clears his throat and spits and blows his nose. He tries stretching out to ease the fidgets and avoids the wet spot in the corner. He studies his reflection and makes faces and flips himself off. He sings along with the Muzak. His stomach cramps. He dryheaves. He takes a tortured nap and is grateful not to dream. The elevator drops.

Niko wakes with chapped lips and growling stomach. The elevator reeks. He’s thirsty and he’s hungry. But he no longer wants a fix either, so that’s something. Always looking on the bright side, that’s me. He wonders if this is the private hell that has awaited him. Trapped forever in an elevator listening to Muzak versions of his own music. At one point he tries to pry open the mirrored door, to no avail. Probably best.

He’s counting hairs on the back of his hands when some change in sound and motion makes him look up. He feels heavier as he struggles to his feet and presses his back against the wall. He shuts his eyes and feels for changes in the elevator’s motion. A soft chime sounds and he opens his eyes. The down button is no longer lit. His knees buckle with returning weight as the elevator slows and stops. He watches himself watching. No fear and neither arrogance. Not impatient but not calm. He looks like someone begging at the back door. Well, that’s what I am. Sing for my supper.

The door glides open and wipes him away. He looks out on an executive office, Danish Modern furniture, high ceilings, lots of right angles. Well-appointed in muted gray and russet with teal accents and brightly lit in afternoon sunlight streaming in from the lightly tinted glass that takes up all the back wall. Basking in the sun outside the window is Los Angeles.

THE VIEW IS from on high and facing south. Niko sees the tangled bands of Harbor, Golden State, and Santa Monica freeways. Something wrong though. To his left stands the ranked array of downtown skyscrapers through which he was ferried by the Checker Cab, chasing Jem a life ago it seems. Library Tower rises pale green above the other buildings. In the distance straight ahead lies the long geometry of LAX. Beyond it angled coastline. Past that he can even see the outline of Catalina Island. In the middle distance the miniature downtown of Century City, and immediately before him Beverly Hills. But to the right are the Hollywood Hills, the three domes of the Griffith Observatory, the crooked teeth of the Hollywood sign. He shouldn’t be able to see all of this at once from the same window. And certainly not from this high up.

No cars on the freeways. No motion on the streets. No toy planes stacked up for LAX approach. No street traffic or police helicopters. Ten million people gone.

Nonetheless as Niko looks out on his adopted city a sudden knife of homesickness slides between his ribs. I want to wake up in our bed with Jem beside me. I want to make her a cup of that nasty lapsang souchong tea she drinks. I want to be stuck in traffic on the 405. I want to hear the breaking waves on Malibu and watch the sun sink toward Japan. The living map of half his life is spread before him, so unexpected and heartbreakingly real that Niko simply stares until nearby motion brings him back.

Behind a curved executive desk is a black leather swivel chair, and Niko has a moment as the chair turns toward him to discern with fevered distinction the desktop cluttered with papers, opened envelopes, Post-Its, a pencil cup holding scissors and a letter opener, stacked in and out trays, an Apple laptop, an intercom phone, a cherrywood display rack holding antique fountain pens, a placard reading THE LUCK STOPS HERE. A moment as the chair turns toward him to note the room is strident with the ticking of an unseen clock. An awful moment before the chair turns around in which he knows who he’ll see sitting in it.

Niko stares at retro shades above a perfect grin. “Niko-mancer. What took you so long?”

NIKO PICKS UP his guitar case and leaves the stinking elevator. It closes silently behind him. He firms his grip and heads slowly toward the son of a bitch behind the desk. He wonders how he feels.

“Sit down, sit down.” Phil waves at one of the chairs facing his desk and presses a button on his intercom and says, “Salome.” A door opens and a sad abomination enters the room. Long and tan and lean and lovely, a naked pair of woman’s legs strides across the plush gray carpet with a jingle of bells. The pubis is sparse haired, the wide hips end bluntly at the waistline. A silver edged glass tray rests on top. A woman sawn in half and made into furniture. The tray bears a Waterford ship’s decanter filled with gently sloshing brown liquor, a matching oldfashioned glass, a matching ashtray holding a book of matches and a pack of Swisher Sweets, a baggie of white powder, a floral patterned silver teaspoon, and an antique glass hypodermic syringe with fingerloops on the barrel and plunger.

Niko stares as the human serving tray stops beside him. Several toes have silver rings. An anklet of little silver bells jingles and the liquor in the clear decanter sloshes gently with the legs’ faint tremble.

“Go on,” says Phil. “The whiskey was distilled at Old Oscar Pepper; the china white’s uncut. The Swishers, well.” He shrugs. “I’ve got some killer Dunhill Cabinetta Robustos over here, but to each his own. Go on, help yourself.”

Niko finds he is not too exhausted or indifferent to hate. He knows Phil expects him to refuse out of pride or defiance or unwillingness to feel obligation. Instead he sets down his guitar case and pulls out a chair and sits down heavily and pours himself a stiff one and then opens the pack of Swishers. Phil watches like a man watching a woman undress for him as Niko knocks back the whiskey and lights a cigarillo and reads the matchbook cover as he smokes. Enjoy Travel Luxury on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

“People who collect those, you know what they’re called?”

“Yeah, I know.” The happy burning in his gut. That’s the best god damned rotgut he’s ever tasted and he’s tasted a lot. The cigarillo, well. It still feels good. He puts the pack in his jacket pocket and is startled to feel something already there. Oh right, the magnetic keyholder.

Phil just can’t take his eyes off him. “I gotta tell you, Niko-pedia, you just keep on surprising me.”

Niko blows smoke Phil’s way. “Makes two of us.”

Phil glances at the baggie on the tray. An eyebrow raises above the rim of his shades.

Niko shakes his head. “I know when to stop.”

“Do you.”

Niko says nothing. He polishes off the doubleshot of whiskey and finishes his smoke. The unseen clock counts down the time. The whiskey goes to work and by the time he finishes the cigarillo he’s buzzing like a bumbly bee and who the hell cares. Maybe that’s the way it ought to be right here and now.

When the cigarillo is down to its final inch he stubs it out in the ashtray and looks at Phil.

The human serving tray turns and jingles from the room.

Phil watches Niko watch the legs stride off. “Perfect isn’t she? You can set your drink on her and fuck her at the same time.” He slaps the desk again and laughs. Sees Niko isn’t going to play along and nods. “You want to get down to business I suppose.”

“My business is with your boss. You’re a glorified mailman.”

“Well that’s a little problematic, Niko-lonic.”

“I don’t care. You know how this all goes down.”

“Oh I do indeed. It’s an old song and we’ve all heard it a hundred times before. And after all this time and all these tries you never learn.”

Niko stands to leave and Phil stands too. The air turns ugly. Niko senses that the walls and the desk and the view are all props for his benefit. That just beyond them decimating chaos lies waiting to tear through. But the game they’re playing has been played enough to have become a ritual and the players myths. He is certain Phil will abide. Perhaps is even constrained to somehow.

“I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to play for your boss.”

Phil’s grin is perfectly insincere. “Then let’s take you to him.” He steps away from his desk but then remembers something and presses the intercom. “Mr. Alighieri, push my appointments back—” he looks Niko up and down and then glances at his huge Rolex “—an hour. Got that?”

Terrible raw screams come tinny and distorted from the intercom. Phil grins at Niko as he comes around the desk. “We’ve got him translating Dan Brown into terza rima.” He gestures at the elevator standing open for them. Niko hesitates and Phil touches his elbow. “You’ve got to trust me, Niko-mander. You got nowhere else to go.”

Niko glances sidelong at Phil’s inscrutable shades. He doesn’t trust the son of a bitch as far as he could throw a fit. But Phil’s right. He has nowhere else to go. He has almost literally hit bottom. In his experience what you likely find there is a shovel.

He pulls his arm from Phil’s grasp and picks up his guitar and steps into the elevator. Maybe this has all been willed. Maybe as the prisoner of myth there is only one outcome and my choices matter not one bit. But I’m damned if I’ll be led.

THE URINE STINK is gone. The button no longer has a down arrow but a large
B
. Phil presses it and the mirrored door closes and the car starts down. Niko and his nemesis in this small plunging room.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

Niko shrugs.

“Why do you do this to yourself? I mean it’s clear to me that even you don’t believe in this anymore. You’re just going through the motions.”

Niko stares at empty space beside his bedraggled reflection. What is there to say. What difference could it make.

Phil shrugs and looks up at the ceiling and nods. “Just curious.”

The elevator slows and stops and opens onto a bright white corridor. Phil gestures after-you and Niko steps into a long white hallway set with black doors.

Phil searches his coat pockets as he walks ahead of Niko. “It’s funny. These deals, these contracts. They’re all sucker bets, you know that?” They stop before a featureless black door and Phil pulls out a ring of long oldfashioned iron keys. “The people who sign have the talent not to need them.” Phil selects a key and inserts it into the door. “I mean, you think we give you that?” He smirks and glances at Niko. “A guy either hears the music or he doesn’t. All we do—” he twists the key “—is open doors.” He pushes the door and it seems to disappear as it opens in on blackness. “And you all sell out so cheap.” He turns toward the room. “Hey Lou. Brought you a visitor.”

Niko hears scrambling and heavy puffing and a certain rustle he has come to recognize as leather wings.

“Go ahead,” says Phil. “He’ll love seeing you. No one ever comes here.”

“After you.”

Phil grins. “You gotta have more faith, Niko-statin.” He steps into the room and darkness swallows him. After a moment Niko leans his guitar case against the white wall and walks in after him. His shadow falls into the trapezoid of doorway light. All he sees is white floor unidentifiably stained and the ghost outline of Phil nearby.

Rustling wings again. Something large moves in the darkened room and by the time he registers its motion it has rushed into his little island of light and he is all enfolded by its wings. He staggers back and raises his hands to strike the reeking thing that whimpers as it holds him slobbering. It’s huge and muscular and dark with skin the texture of a shark. Still holding him it slides down his body’s length to kneel before him sobbing loudly. Great convulsions heave its muscled back. It cries his name in a voice that stirs dim recognition buried deep within his cells like the encoded cancer trigger that is humanity’s heritage. A primordial self has argued with this voice. Nations have fallen beneath its easy guile. The strong and crumpled figure hugs Niko round the knees like a mournful child and a horntip rasps his jeans as the sorry creature turns its face up to him. Even in the scant light Niko sees the goldleaf shine of its goat eyes, the glint of tear tracks on the jetblack leather face.

Niko reaches out, he cannot stop himself, he reaches out and pats the Devil on the head.

The dark beside him laughs. “Now isn’t that sweet?”

Niko cannot look away from the idiot madman grinning up at him with a cannibal’s drooling mouth of sharpened teeth. “What have you done to him?”