The Urban Fantasy Anthology Part 7

I didn't know if there was a Heaven or a h.e.l.l or what lay on the other side of living. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But there was no reason to tell him that. He wanted certainty.

"h.e.l.l's for bad people," I told him, "and you're just a poor kid who got stung by a bee."

I saw the fading remnants of his mouth moving, but I couldn't make out the words. And then he was gone.

I looked at Zia.

"I don't feel any better," I said. "Did we help him?"

"I don't know. We must have. We did what he wanted."

"I suppose."

"And he's gone on now."

She linked her arm in mine and walked me into the between.

"I had this idea for a store," she said.

"I know. Where you don't sell anything. Instead people just bring you stuff."

She nodded. "It was a pretty dumb idea."

"It wasn't that bad. I've had worse."

"I know you have."

We stepped out of the between onto the fire escape outside the apartment. I looked across the city. Dawn was still a long way off, but everywhere I could see the lights of the city, the headlights of cars moving between the tall canyons of the buildings.

"I think we need to go somewhere and make a big happy noise," Zia said. "We have to go mad and dance and sing and do cartwheels along the telephone wires like we're famous trapeze artists."

"Because...?"

"Because it's better than feeling sad."

So we did.

And later we returned to the Rookery and woke up all the cousins until every blackbird in every tree was part of our loud croaking and raspy chorus. I saw Lucius open the window of his library and look out. When he saw Zia and I, leading the cacophony from our high perch in one of the old oak trees in the backyard, he just shook his head and closed the window again.

But not before I saw him smile to himself.

I went back to the old woman's apartment a few weeks later to see if the ghost boy was really gone. I meant to go sooner, but something distracting always seemed to come up before I could actually get going.

Zia might tell me about a h.o.a.rd of Mardi Gras beads she'd found in a dumpster and then off we'd have to go to collect them all, bringing them back to the Rookery where we festooned the trees with them until Lucius finally asked us to take them down, his voice polite, but firm, the way it always got when he felt we'd gone the step too far.

Or Chloe might call us into the house because she'd made us each a sugar pie, big fat pies with much more filling than crust, because we liked the filling the best. We didn't even need the crust, except then it would just be pudding, which we also liked, but it wasn't pie, now was it?

Once we had to go into the far away to help our friend Jilly, because we promised we would if she ever called us. So when she did, we went to her. That promise had never been like a chain dangling from our feet when we flew, but it still felt good to be done with it.

But finally I remembered the ghost boy and managed to not get distracted before I could make my way to his mother's apartment. When I got there, they were both gone, the old woman and her dead son. Instead, there was a young man I didn't recognize sitting in the kitchen when I stepped out of the between. He was in the middle of spooning ice cream into a bowl.

"Do you want some?" he asked.

He was one of those people who didn't seem the least bit surprised to find me appearing out of thin air in the middle of his kitchen. Tomorrow morning, he probably wouldn't even remember I'd been here.

"What flavour is it?" I asked.

"Chocolate swirl with bits of Oreo cookies mixed in."

"I'd love some," I told him and got myself a bowl from the cupboard.

He filled my bowl with a generous helping and we both spent a few moments enjoying the ice cream. I looked down the hall as I ate and saw all the cardboard boxes. My gaze went back to the young man's face.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Nels."

He didn't ask me my name, but I didn't mind.

"This is a good invention," I said, holding up a spoonful of ice cream. "Chocolate and ice cream and cookies all mixed up in the same package."

"It's not new. They've had it for ages."

"But it's still good."

"Mmm."

"So what happened to the old woman who lived here?" I asked.

"I didn't know her," he told me. "The realtor brought me by a couple of days ago and I liked the place, so I rented it. I'm pretty sure he said she'd pa.s.sed away."

So much for her being happy. But maybe there was something else on the other side of living. Maybe she and her ghost boy and her daughter were all together again and she was happy.

It was a better ending to the story than others I could imagine.

"So," I asked Nels, "are you happy?"

He paused with a spoonful of ice cream halfway to his mouth. "What?"

"Do you have any ghosts?"

"Everybody's got ghosts."

"Really?"

He nodded. "I suppose one of the measures of how you live your life is how well you make your peace with them."

My bowl was empty, but I didn't fill it up again. I stood up from the table.

"Do you want some help unpacking?" I asked.

"Nah. I'm good. Are you off?'

"You know me," I said, although of course he didn't. "Places to go, people to meet. Things to do."

He smiled. "Well, don't be a stranger. Or at least not any stranger than you already are."

I laughed.

"You're a funny man, Nels," I said.

And then I stepped away into the between. I stood there for a few moments, watching him.

He got up from the table, returned the ice cream to the freezer and washed out the bowls and utensils we'd used. When he was done, he walked into the hall and picked up a box which he took into the living room, out of my sight.

I could tell that he'd already forgotten me.

"Goodbye, Nels," I said, though he couldn't hear me. "Goodbye, Ghost Boy. Goodbye, old lady." I knew they couldn't hear me, either.

Then I stepped from the between, out onto the fire escape. I unfolded black wings and flew back to the Rookery, singing loudly all the way.

At least I thought of it as singing.

As I got near Stanton Street, a man waiting for his dog to relieve itself looked up to see me go by.

"G.o.dd.a.m.ned crows," he said.

He took a plastic bag out of his pocket and deftly bagged his dog's p.o.o.p.

I sang louder, a laughing arpeggio of croaking notes.

Being happy was better than not, I decided. And it was certainly better than scooping up dog p.o.o.p. If I was ever to write a story the way that Christy did, it would be very short. And I'd only have the one story because after it, I wouldn't need any more.

It would go like this: Once upon a time, they all lived happily ever after. The end.

That's a much better sort of story than the messy ones that make up our lives. At least that's what I think.

But I wouldn't want to live in that story, because that would be too boring. I'd rather be caught up in the clutter of living, flying high above the streets and houses, making a joyful noise.

The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories Neil Gaiman It was raining when I arrived in L.A., and I felt myself surrounded by a hundred old movies.

There was a limo driver in a black uniform waiting for me at the airport, holding a white sheet of cardboard with my name misspelled neatly upon it.

"I'm taking you straight to your hotel, sir," said the driver. He seemed vaguely disappointed that I didn't have any real luggage for him to carry, just a battered overnight bag stuffed with T-s.h.i.+rts, underwear, and socks.

"Is it far?"

He shook his head. "Maybe twenty-five, thirty minutes. You ever been to L.A. before?"

"No."

"Well, what I always say, L.A. is a thirty-minute town. Wherever you want to go, it's thirty minutes away. No more."

He hauled my bag into the boot of the car, which he called the trunk, and opened the door for me to climb into the back.

"So where you from?" he asked, as we headed out of the airport into the slick wet neon-spattered streets.

"England."

"England, eh?"

"Yes. Have you ever been there?"

"Nosir. I've seen movies. You an actor?"

"I'm a writer."

He lost interest. Occasionally he would swear at other drivers, under his breath.

He swerved suddenly, changing lanes. We pa.s.sed a four-car pileup in the lane we had been in.

"You get a little rain in this city, all of a sudden everybody forgets how to drive," he told me. I burrowed further into the cus.h.i.+ons in the back. "You get rain in England, I hear." It was a statement, not a question.

"A little."

"More than a little. Rains every day in England." He laughed. "And thick fog. Real thick, thick fog."

"Not really."

"Whaddaya mean, no?" he asked, puzzled, defensive. "I've seen movies."

We sat in silence then, driving through the Hollywood rain; but after a while he said: "Ask them for the room Belus.h.i.+ died in."

"Pardon?"

"Belus.h.i.+. John Belus.h.i.+. It was your hotel he died in. Drugs. You heard about that?"

"Oh. Yes."

"They made a movie about his death. Some fat guy, didn't look nothing like him. But n.o.body tells the real truth about his death. Y'see, he wasn't alone. There were two other guys with him. Studios didn't want any s.h.i.+t. But you're a limo driver, you hear things."

"Really?"

"Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. They were there with him. All of them going doo-doo on the happy dust."

The hotel building was a white mock-gothic chateau. I said good-bye to the chauffeur and checked in; I did not ask about the room in which Belus.h.i.+ had died.

I walked out to my chalet through the rain, my overnight bag in my hand, clutching the set of keys that would, the desk clerk told me, get me through the various doors and gates. The air smelled of wet dust and, curiously enough, cough mixture. It was dusk, almost dark.