The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollar (5 page)

We didn’t tell him his nickname, of course. There aren’t too many good ways to spin “The Mule.” But nobody really disliked him. He was just the boss, and an archangel to boot, and that made real affection difficult. The higher angels are just too…distant to get chummy with, even the more approachable ones like Temuel.

“Ah, Angel Doloriel!” he said with deliberate good cheer when I showed up. (You can’t always tell by looking at them, but some angels in Heaven are “he” and some are “she,” some are kind of both, and others are just “it.” Nothing personal on my end.) “God loves you. How are things in Jude?”

If there’s anything that makes people from San Judas wince, it’s hearing people who’ve never been there call it “Jude,” but I was already feeling the mandatory cheerfulness of Heaven bubbling through me and doing my best to go with it. “Hello, chief. Things are fine, I guess. Of course the Giants spent all last year playing like they never heard of runners in scoring position, and they could use a lefty reliever something fierce, but hey, spring training’s just starting so there’s always hope.” Sometimes I talk about baseball just to annoy people who don’t understand it. It’s one of the many wonderful things about that game. “Oh, and speaking of training, Sammariel’s working with this new kid.”

“Ah, yes, young Haraheliel.” He nodded. “How does he look so far?”

“Like a pig in a bikini. But I’m sure he’ll improve.” Or he’d run his mouth again at a bad time and get us all yanked out of Jude and demoted to an eternity of making pointed suggestions to minor sinners in Purgatory. “Where’d he come from, if you don’t mind me asking?”

The bright visage of Temuel clouded the tiniest bit. He lifted his shining hand in a gesture of calculated vagueness. “Oh, Records, I think. He was transferred to us as a favor to one of the higher-ups.”

There were so many things about that sentence that scared me that I didn’t dare say a word.

“Anyway, that was really what I wanted to talk to you about,” the Mule went on.

“What? You lost me.”

“The new one. Sammariel’s trainee. I want you to keep an eye on him.”

That
was even weirder. Why would anybody, let alone an archangel, be interested in a Junior Woodchuck like Clarence? “Isn’t that supposed to be Sam’s job, boss? Since he’s training him?”

The vague, gleaming gesture again. “Yes, certainly. But Sammariel doesn’t notice things the way you do, Doloriel. That’s why I’m asking you. You’ve got the eye.”

Ordinarily having a supervisor say something like that would make a guy feel good, and you’d think in Heaven it would make you feel even better, but even buoyed by pumped-in happy I was less than thrilled.

“Of course,” was what I said, having not been stupid either before or after my lamented passing. I’m hoping it was lamented, anyway, although personally I can’t remember it.

That really did seem to be all that the Mule had wanted, which made the whole thing even stranger—he had never been one for small talk, and even when he made some it was in an awkward sort of way, so you felt like you were keeping him from something more important. The truth is, I kind of liked the guy, or as much as you can like someone you don’t understand. He’d always seemed to like me too, or at least tolerate me, and that was a difference from most of the other archangels I’d met. But a boss is a boss, and since I was up at the House anyway, he made me file a bunch of reports I’d been avoiding, stuff I should have turned over days ago to Alice, our office assistant back on Earth (another angel, as far as I know, but just based on attitude, she might be a rehabbed demon.) If the road to Hell is paved in good intentions, a friend of mine used to say, the road to Heaven is paved with bullshit and busy work.

Who was this Haraheliel kid, anyway? Who had pushed buttons to get our young Clarence out of Filing and into Operations—and why? Did he know too much about something there? Or was he supposed to
be someone’s spy in the Advocacy Division? Whose attention had we attracted? And why had they selected such an obvious outsider?

Wow,
I can hear you saying,
spies in Heaven? Suspecting your literally angelic bosses of trying to shaft you? You sure have a bad attitude, Bobby Dollar.
Well, just stick with me a while before you make up your mind. That’s all I’m asking. I’ve been right more often than the haters like to admit.

I had a little time to kill before going back—my earthbound body was still in my apartment in Jude getting its seven hours of sleep—so I wandered away from the North America Building, following the climbing Avenue of Contemplation past the mansions of the blessed. As I said, one of the strangest things about Heaven is that there are no maps. If you haven’t been invited to where you’re going or don’t already have access to that particular spot, you probably won’t find it, although you’ll find a thousand other beautiful sights. You could stroll, or float, or whatever it is we do there (I’m still not sure after all these years—it just doesn’t stick in my head when I leave) for a decade and never reach the specific place you were looking for—but as I said, I wasn’t looking for anything, just wandering. I spent some time watching the Fountain of Stars and thinking big but formless thoughts. I even walked out onto Pilgrim’s Bridge, although I hadn’t meant to, and stopped in the middle of the span to look down on the great city and its sparkling, jostling crowds of inhabitants, thousands and thousands of souls, millions even, each one dedicated to order and love, each one happy with his or her place in the big plan. Beyond them all, at the top of the highest of Heaven’s hills, lay a glow like the most gorgeous sunrise—the Empyrean, the seat of the Highest. Still, being me, I couldn’t even look at that wonderful spot, the center of the Cosmos, without wondering why it was hidden away from the rest us.

Why did God make me so restless, so difficult? I’ve never understood it, but He must have wanted me to be that way, because He gave me enough for two.

As usual, when I woke up in my physical body once more it felt a little strange to me, as if someone had washed and ironed a favorite old pair of jeans. I put some coffee in the microwave—it’s strange how much like a real body mine is in terms of its needs and crotchets—and went to the mirror while waiting for the ping.

Same face. Had it for about five or six years now. Not much different from the two or three faces before it, either. It would take an expert to know I’d changed. Same body, too—average height, average weight, maybe a little wirier and more athletic than your average guy. The man in the mirror had dark hair that needed cutting, a face (ever so slightly Mediterranean or dark European) that needed shaving, and a mouth that would have been sad and artistic if it weren’t for the smile, which, although it doesn’t show up often, I’ve been told can be slightly alarming. I wondered, as I often do, if this is how I looked in life. If so, nobody’s ever mistaken me for me, if you know what I mean, but that would be quite a coincidence, I guess, to assume I’d run into anyone on Earth who might have known the old me. I might have lived in the seventeenth century for all I can guess, or wore a powdered wig and took snuff. Or I could have been a Chinese peasant. I might have been a woman, too. Could have been anybody. So why did they take that away? Why does Heaven treat souls as if they were old videotapes, erasing the priceless memories of a graduation or wedding just to record an episode of some sitcom over it? Not that I’ve got anything against situation comedy, but if we don’t get to remember what we did with our lives—even if for most of us those lives probably sucked—why did we have to go through it in the first place?

These were my mirror thoughts. Pretty ordinary for me.

Cynical,
they say.
Not trusting. Bad angel!

But like I said, God must want me to be this way. Either that or He just doesn’t give a shit. To this point, I’m staying hopeful.

They were decorating Beeger Square that afternoon for the last thrash of Carnival season, which would kick off this weekend. San Judas does love its Carnival. The light poles were strung with tinsel and hung with big, scary-looking masks, and the city workers had built a temporary stage in one corner of the square—fortunately the farthest one from the Alhambra Building, where we all hang out. The folks at The Compasses hated to be distracted by amateurs.

The bar is called The Compasses because about a hundred years ago, before they turned the Alhambra into the first skyscraper in San Judas, the site of our contemporary oasis had been a fourth-floor room in the old Alhambra Theatre that the Masons had used as a meeting
lodge. A stone plaque with the Square and Compasses, the symbol of their order, still hung over the front door of the building.

“But all the squares are outside,” as Sam liked to say. “So we only need the compasses.” And that’s how it got its name.

It was a slow day inside. The only regulars I saw were Sweetheart and Monica Naber at the bar watching CNN on the wallscreen and Chico the bartender polishing glasses, as usual looking about as warmly human as a statue of Lenin.

“Ooh,” Sweetheart said when he saw me come in, “I can smell the grumpiness from here, honey.” Sweetheart is built like an NFL defensive tackle but he’s as camp as a Brazilian soap opera, one of the few of us earthbound who really seems to enjoy life. “Bad time at headquarters?”

News travels fast at The Compasses. “Not really. Just the usual supervisorial jerking-around.” In fact, the whole Clarence thing worried me enough that I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone except Sam.

Sweetheart nodded. “I hear you, sugar. I never go near the place if I can help it—all that muted splendor makes my eyes itch.” He grinned. “Got any plans for Carnival? Are you coming to my party? ‘Cause you can’t let Carnival go by without dancing, sweetie!”

I sometimes think Sweetheart has gone a bit native.

Monica looked up when I slid onto the stool next to hers. Chico, who was always eager to avoid conversation, edged away to give us some privacy.

“Hey,” she said. “You look rough. Stairway to Heaven?”

“It’s not the lyrics that make it so good, it’s the guitar solo. But yeah. Just got back.” I was curious if she knew anything about the kid but I didn’t want to give out too many particulars about what the Mule had said. “Where’s Sam?”

“And his trusty sidekick Mini-Sam? Haven’t seen them yet. Sanders and Elvis have some kind of bet going about how fast an armadillo can run so they took off about half an hour ago for the zoo. Kool’s got a client over in Spanishtown. Things have been slow. I blame clean living.” She looked at me a little funny, perhaps wondering why I was sitting next to her making friendly chat. See, Monica and I had been through a little thing together not too far back and some of the skin was still raw, if you know what I mean. Long story. But she was naturally
suspicious of my intentions. Hell,
I’m
naturally suspicious of my intentions most of the time.

“Speaking of the kid,” I said, “they say he comes straight out of the Halls of Records.”

She laughed. “And you want to know if I’ve heard anything about that? Sorry, Bobby. What do you care, anyway? They didn’t stick
you
with him.” She stood up. “Any requests?”

For a moment I thought she was going to sing or something, then I saw she was headed for the jukebox. “Nothing that will make my head hurt.” I watched her walk across the room. Nice shape. We call her Monica because she’s dark-haired, cute, and a bit a bit of a bossy group-mom, like that character on
Friends
. Naber…well, that’s because it’s hard to say “Nahebaroth” properly without making your throat sore. She’s a good person, except her taste in men is appalling, me being the prime example. I was told by another female friend once that when I get morose it’s “like being around a grumpy cat—you’ll let someone feed you, but Heaven forbid anything more.” And we were doing pretty well at the time she said it.

The bar fell into an unexpected moment of silence as the antique jukebox clicked and hummed, then the record was flipped onto the turntable and the needle dropped. I used to think of The Compasses’ jukebox as a metaphor for how every soul in God’s Kingdom mattered, but I’m not certain any more that the conceit really works.

As Monica strolled back through the mostly empty tables, Steely Dan’s “Haitian Divorce” began to honk its way through the introduction. Naber had a little sway in her walk. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t been seeing Naber suspicious, I’d been seeing Naber flirtatious, but I’d forgotten what it looked like. She’d been on that stool for a while, drinking mai tais or some other godawful tropical poison, and that meant she was liable to do something dangerous. Extremely liable.

“What are you looking so miserable for, anyway?” she asked as she slid in beside me, still moving to the music. “Jeez, B, if you’d cheer up a little something nice might even happen to you tonight.”

Frisky
and
nostalgic. Things were about to get really complicated. We’d had a great time together for a while, but it ended in a protracted firefight of name-calling and running-for-the-hills—the former her, the latter me—so there was no way in hell I was going to start anything up
again unless I was
real
drunk and
real
stupid, and I hadn’t had a drink yet that night.

Then, just that moment, as if to prove that the Highest still loved little Bobby Dollar very, very much, my phone started buzzing in my pocket.

Monica looked down at my vibrating pants. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s because you’re happy to see me.”

“Gotta take it. It’s work.”

“You go and get some, honey!” Sweetheart shouted. I’m not sure what he meant.

“Shit,” I said, staring at the screen. “Alice says this should have been Sam’s, not mine, but she’s passing it on to me. Looks like I’ve got a date with old money.”

Monica did her best to look amused, but I could tell she was disappointed, which made me more than nervous. When did she decide I was anything but another guy who’d messed her up? If Monica had decided to forgive me—to forgive me with benefits, even—it was going to make The Compasses a bit hot for me.