8

A STREETCAR NAMED CONFUSION

Into the breech of the Castro district Charlie Asher charged, an antique sword-cane from the store on the van seat beside him, his jaw set like a bayonet, his visage a study in fearsome intensity. Half a block, half a block, half of a block onward - into the Valley of Overpriced Juice Bars and Outlandish Hair Highlights - rode the righteous Beta Male. And woe be unto the foolish ne'er-do-well who had dared to fuck with this secondhand death dealer, for his raggedy life would be fast for the bargain table. There's going to be a showdown in Gay Town, Charlie thought, and I am gunning for justice.

Well, not really gunning - since he had a sword concealed in a walking stick, not a gun - more of a poking for justice - which didn't really have the avenging angel connotation he was looking for - he was mad, and ready to kick ass, that's all. So, you know, just watch out. (Coincidentally, Poking for Justice was the title currently second in popularity at Castro Video Rentals, closely edging out A Star Is Born: The Director's Cut, and outranked only by Cops Without Pants, which was number one with a bullwhip.)

Charlie turned off Market Street and just around the corner on Noe Street he saw it: Fresh Music, the sign done in blocky, Craftsman-style stained glass, and he felt the hair at the back of his neck bristle and an urgency in his bladder. His body had gone into fight-or-flight mode, and for the second time in a week, he was going against his Beta Male nature and choosing to fight. Well, so be it, he thought. So be it. He would confront his tormentor and lay him low, as soon as he found a parking place - which he didn't.

He circled the block, cutting between caf��s and bars, both of which were in abundance in the Castro. He drove up and down the side streets, lined with rows of immaculately kept (exorbitantly priced) Victorians and found no quarter for his trusty steed. After a half hour of orbiting the neighborhood, he headed back uptown and found a spot in a parking garage in the Fillmore, then took the antique streetcar back down Market Street to the Castro. A cute little green, Italian-made antique streetcar, with oak benches, brass railings, and mahogany window frames - a charming brass bell and a top speed of about twenty miles per hour: this is how Charlie Asher charged into battle. He tried to imagine a horde of Huns hanging off the sides, waving wicked blades and firing arrows as they passed the murals in the Mission district, perhaps Viking raiders, shields fastened to the sides of the car, a great drum pounding as they rowed in to pillage the antique shops, the leather bars, the sushi bars, the leather sushi bars (don't ask), and the art galleries, in the Castro. And here, even Charlie's formidable imagination failed him. He got off the car at Castro and Market and walked back a block to Fresh Music, then paused outside the shop, wondering what in the hell he was going to do now.

What if the caller had just borrowed the phone? What if he stormed in screaming and threatening, and there was just some confused kid behind the counter? But then he looked in the door, and there, standing behind the counter, all alone, was an extraordinarily tall black man dressed completely in mint green, and at that point Charlie lost his mind.

"You killed her," Charlie screamed as he stormed by the racks of CDs toward the man in mint. He drew the sword as he ran, or tried to, hoping to bring it out in a single fluid movement from the cane sheath and across the throat of Rachel's killer. But the sword-cane had been in the back of Charlie's shop for a long time, and except for three times when Lily's friend Abby tried to leave with it (once trying to buy it, when Charlie refused to sell it to her, then twice trying to steal it), the sword hadn't been drawn in years. The little brass stud that you pushed to release the blade had stuck, so when Charlie delivered the deathblow, he swung the entire cane, which was heavier - and slower - than the sword would have been. The man in mint green - quick for his size - ducked, and Charlie took out an entire row of Judy Garland CDs, lost his balance, bounced off the counter, spun around, and again tried for the single draw-and-cut move that he had seen so many times in samurai movies, and had practiced so many times in his head on the way here. This time the sword came free of the scabbard and slashed a deadly arch three feet in front of the man in mint, completely decapitating a life-sized cutout of Barbra Streisand.

"That is un-unfucking called for!" thundered the tall man.

As Charlie recovered his balance for a backhand slash, he saw something large and dark coming down over him and recognized it at the last instant, as the antique cash register slammed down on his head. There was a flash, a ding, and everything got dark and gooey.

When Charlie came to, he was tied to a chair in the back room of the record store, which looked remarkably like the back room of his own store, except all the stacked boxes were full of records and CDs instead of all variety of used jetsam. The tall black man was standing over him, and Charlie thought at first that he might be turning to mist or smoke, but then he realized it was just that his vision was going wavy, and then pain lit up the inside of his head like a strobe light.

"Ouch."

"How's your neck?" asked the tall man. "Does your neck feel broken? Can you feel your feet?"

"Go ahead, kill me, you fucking coward," said Charlie, bucking around in the chair, trying to lunge at his captor and feeling a little like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail after his arms and legs had been hacked off. If this guy took one step closer, Charlie could head-butt him in the nads, he was sure of it.

The tall man stomped on Charlie's toes, a size-eighteen glove-leather loafer driven by two hundred and seventy pounds of death and used-record dealer.

"Ouch!" Charlie hopped his chair in a little circle of pain. "Goddammit! Ouch!"

"So you do have feeling in your feet?"

"Get it over with. Go ahead." Charlie stretched his neck as if offering his throat to be cut - his strategy was to lure his captor into range, then sever the tall man's femoral artery with his teeth, then gloat as the blood coursed all over his mint-green slacks onto the floor. Charlie would laugh long and sinister as he watched the life drain out of the evil bastard, then he would hop his chair out to the street and onto the streetcar at Market, transfer to the number forty-one bus at Van Ness, hop off at Columbus, and hop the two blocks home, where someone would untie him. He had a plan - and a bus pass with four more days left on it - so this son of a bitch had picked the wrong guy to fuck with.

"I have no intention of killing you, Charlie," said the tall man, keeping a safe distance. "I'm sorry I had to hit you with the register. You didn't really leave me any options."

"You could have tasted the fatal sting of my blade!" Charlie glanced around for his sword-cane, just in case the guy had left it within reach.

"Yeah, sure, there was that one, but I thought I'd go with the one without the stains and the funeral."

Charlie strained against his bonds, which he realized now were plastic shopping bags. "You're messing with Death, you know? I am Death."

"Yeah, I know."

"You do?"

"Sure." The tall man spun another wooden chair around and sat on it reversed, facing Charlie. His knees were up at the level of his elbows and he looked like a great green tree frog, crouched to pounce on an insect. Charlie noticed for the first time that he had golden eyes, stark and striking in contrast to his dark skin. "So am I," said the evil mint-green frog guy.

"You? You're Death?"

"A Death, not THE Death. I don't think there is a THE Death. Not anymore, anyway."

Charlie couldn't grasp it, so he struggled and wobbled until the tall man had to reach out and steady him to keep him from toppling over.

"You killed Rachel."

"I did not."

"I saw you there."

"Yes, you did. That's a problem. Will you please stop thrashing around?" He shook Charlie's chair. "But I wasn't instrumental in Rachel's death. That's not what we do, not anymore, anyway. Didn't you even look at the book?"

"What book? You said something about a book on the phone."

"The Great Big Book of Death. I sent it to your shop. I told a woman at the counter that I was sending it, and I got delivery confirmation, so I know it got there."

"What woman - Lily? She's not a woman, she's a kid."

"No, this was a woman about your age, with New Wave hair."

"Jane? No. She didn't say anything, and I didn't get any book."

"Oh, shit. That explains why they've been showing up. You didn't even know."

"Who? What? They?"

Mint Green Death sighed heavily. "I guess we're going to be here awhile. I'm going to make some coffee. Do you want some?"

"Sure, try to lull me into a false sense of security, then spring."

"You're tied the fuck up, motherfucker, I don't need to lull you into shit. You've been fucking with the fabric of human existence and someone needed to shut your ass down."

"Oh, sure, go black on me. Play the ethnic card."

Mint Green climbed to his feet and headed toward the door to the shop. "You want cream?"

"And two sugars, please," Charlie said.

This is really cool, why are you giving it back?" said Abby Normal. Abby was Lily's best friend, and they were sitting on the floor in the back room of Asher's Secondhand, looking through The Great Big Book of Death. Abby's real name was Alison, but she would no longer tolerate the ignominy of what she called her "daylight-slave name." Everyone had been much more responsive to calling her by her chosen name than they had been to Lily's, Darquewillow Elventhing, which you always had to spell for people.

"Turns out it's Asher, not me," Lily said. "He'll be really pissed if he finds out I took it. And he's Death now, I guess, so I could get in trouble."

"Are you going to tell him you had the book?" Abby scratched the silver spider stud in her eyebrow; it was a fresh piercing and still healing and she couldn't stop messing with it. Abby, like Lily, was dressed all in black, boots to hair, the difference being that she had a black-widow's red hourglass on the front of her black T-shirt and she was thinner and more waiflike in her affected creepiness.

"No. I'll just say it got misfiled. That happens a lot here."

"How long did you think it was you?"

"Like a month."

"What about the dreams and the names and stuff it talks about, you didn't have any of that, right?"

"I thought I was just growing into my powers. I made a lot of lists of people I wanted gone."

"Yeah, I do that. And you just found out yesterday that it was Asher?"

"Yeah," said Lily.

"That sucks," said Abby.

"Life sucks," said Lily.

"So, what now?" asked Abby. "Junior college?"

They both nodded, woefully, and looked into the depths of their respective nail polishes to avoid sharing the humiliation of one of them having gone from dark demigod to local loser in an instant. They lived their lives hoping for something grand and dark and supernatural to happen, so when it had, they took it more in stride than was probably healthy. Fear, after all, is a survival mechanism.

"So all these things are soul objects?" asked Abby, as cheerfully as her integrity would allow. She waved to the piles of stuff Charlie had marked with "Do Not Sell" signs. "There's like a person's soul in there?"

"According to the book," said Lily. "Asher says he can see them glow."

"I like the red Converse All Stars."

"Take them, they're yours," said Lily.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Lily said. She took the All Stars off the shelf and held them out. "He'll never miss them."

"Cool. I have the perfect pair of red fishnets I can wear with them."

"They probably have the soul of some sweaty jock in them," Lily said.

"He may worship at my feet," said Abby, doing a pirouette and an arabesque (remnants, along with an eating disorder, of ten years of ballet lessons).

So I'm like a Santa's Helper of Death?!" Charlie said, waving his coffee cup. The tall man had untied his one arm so he could drink his coffee, and Charlie was baptizing the stockroom floor with French roast with every gesture. Mr. Fresh frowned.

"What in the hell are you talking about, Asher?" Fresh felt bad about hitting Charlie Asher with a cash register and tying him up, and now he was wondering if the blow hadn't caused some sort of brain damage.

"I'm talking about the Santa at Macy's, Fresh. When you're a kid, and you notice that the Santa Claus at Macy's has a fake beard, and that there are at least six Salvation Army Santas working Union Square, you ask your parents about it and they tell you that the real Santa is in the North Pole, and he's really busy, so all these other guys are Santa's helpers, who are out helping him with his work. That's what you're saying, that we're Santa's helpers to Death?"

Mr. Fresh had been standing by his desk, but now he sat down again across from Charlie so he could look him in the eye. Very softly he said, "Charlie, you know that that's not true now, right? I mean about Santa's helpers and all?"

"Of course I know that there's no Santa Claus. I'm using it as a metaphor, you tool."

Mr. Fresh took this opportunity to reach out and smack Charlie upside the head. Then immediately regretted it.

"Hey!" Charlie put down his cup and rubbed one of his receding-hairline inlets, which was going red from the blow.

"Rude," said Mr. Fresh. "Let's not be rude."

"So you're saying that there is a Santa?" Charlie said, cringing in anticipation of another smack. "Oh my God, how deep does this conspiracy go?"

"No, there's no goddamn Santa. I'm just saying that I don't know what we are. I don't know if there is a big Death with a capital D, although the book hints that there used to be. I'm just saying that there are many of us, a dozen that I know of right here in the city - all of us picking up soul vessels and seeing that they get into the right hands."

"And that's based on someone randomly coming into your shop and buying a record?" Then Charlie's eyes went wide as it hit him. "Rachel's Sarah McLachlan CD. You took it?"

"Yes." Fresh looked at the floor, not because he was ashamed, but to avoid seeing the pain in Charlie Asher's eyes.

"Where is it? I want to see it," said Charlie.

"I sold it."

"To who? Find it. I want Rachel back."

"I don't know. To a woman. I didn't get her name, but I'm sure it was meant for her. You'll be able to tell."

"I will? Why will I?" he asked. "Why me? I don't want to kill people."

"We don't kill people, Mr. Asher. That's a misconception. We simply facilitate the ascendance of the soul."

"Well, one guy died because I said something to him, and another had a heart attack because of something I did. A death that results from your actions is basically killing someone, unless you're a politician, right? So why me? I'm not that highly skilled at bullshit. So why me?"

Mr. Fresh considered what Charlie was saying, and felt like something sinister had crawled up his spine. In all his years, he didn't remember ever having his actions directly result in someone's death, nor had he heard of it happening with the other Death Merchants. Of course you occasionally showed up at the time when the person was passing, but not often, and never as a cause.

"Well?" Charlie said.

Mr. Fresh shrugged. "Because you saw me. Surely you've noticed that no one sees you when you're out to get a soul vessel."

"I've never gone out to get a soul vessel."

"Yes, you have, and you will, at least you should be. You need to get with the program, Mr. Asher."

"Yeah, so you said. So you're - uh - we're invisible when we're out getting these soul vessels?"

"Not invisible, so to speak, it's just that no one sees us. You can go right into people's homes and they'll never notice you standing right beside them, but if you speak to someone on the street they'll see you, waitresses will take your order, cabs will stop for you - well, not me, I'm black, but, you know, they would. It's sort of a will thing, I think. I've tested it. Animals can see us, by the way. You'll want to watch out for dogs when you're retrieving a vessel."

"So that's how you got to be a - what do they call us?"

"Death Merchants."

"Get out. Really?"

"It's not in the book. I came up with it."

"It's very cool."

"Thanks." Mr. Fresh smiled, relieved for a moment not to be thinking about the gravity of Charlie's unique transition to Death Merchant. "Actually, I think it's a character from an album cover, guy behind a cash register, eyes glowing red, but I didn't know that when I came up with it."

"Well, it makes perfect sense."

"Yeah, I thought so," said Mr. Fresh. "More coffee?"

"Please." Charlie held out his empty cup. "So, someone saw you. That's how you became a Death Merchant?"

"No, that's how you became one. I think that you may, uh - " Fresh didn't want to mislead this poor guy, but on the other hand he didn't actually know what had happened. "I think you may be different from the rest of us. No one saw me. I was working security for a casino in Vegas when that went sour for me - I have a problem with authority, I'm told - so I came to San Francisco and opened this shop, started dealing in used records and CDs, mostly jazz at first. After a while it just started happening: the glowing soul vessels, people coming in with them, finding them at estate sales. I don't know why or how, it just did, and I didn't say anything about it to anyone. Then the book came in the mail."

"The book again. Don't you have a copy around?"

"There's only one copy. At least that I know of."

"And you just mailed it out?"

"I sent it certified mail!" Fresh boomed. "Someone at your store signed for it. I think I did my part."

"Okay, sorry, go on."

"Anyway, when I got to the Castro it was a very sad place. The only guys you saw on the street were very old or very young, all the ones in the middle were either dead or sick with HIV, walking with canes, towing oxygen cylinders. Death was everywhere. It's like there needed to be a soul way station, and I was here, trading records. Then the book showed up in the mail. There were a lot of souls coming in. For those first few years I was picking up vessels every day, sometimes two or three times a day. You'd be surprised how many gay men have their souls in their music."

"Have you sold them all?"

"No. They come in, they go out. There's always some inventory."

"But how can you be sure the right person gets the right soul?"

"Not my problem, is it?" Mr. Fresh shrugged. He'd worried about it at first, but it seemed to all happen as it should, and he'd gotten into the rhythm of trusting whatever mechanism or power was behind all of this.

"Well, if that's your attitude, why do it at all? I don't want this job. I have a job, and a kid."

"You have to do it. Believe me, after I got the book, I tried not doing it. We all did. At least the ones I've talked to did. I'm guessing you've already seen what happens if you don't. You'll start hearing the voices, then the shades start coming. The book calls them Underworlders."

"The giant ravens? Them?"

"They were just indistinct shadows and voices until you showed up. There's something going on. Starting with you, and continuing with you. You let them get a soul vessel, didn't you?"

"Me? You said there's a bunch of Death Merchants."

"The others know better. It was you. You fucked up. I thought I saw one flying over earlier in the week. Then today, I was out walking, and the voices were bad. Really bad. That's when I called you. It was you, wasn't it?"

Charlie nodded. "I didn't know. How could I know?"

"So they got one?"

"Two," Charlie said. "A hand came out of the sewer. It was my first day."

"Well, that's it," said Fresh, cradling his head in his hands. "We are most certainly fucked now."

"You don't know that," Charlie said, trying to look on the bright side. "We could have been fucked before. I mean, we run secondhand stores for dead people, that's sort of a definition of fucked."

Mr. Fresh looked up. "The book says if we don't do our jobs everything could go dark, become like the Underworld. I don't know what the Underworld is like, Mr. Asher, but I've caught some of the road show from there a couple of times, and I'm not interested in finding out. How 'bout you?"

"Maybe it's Oakland," Charlie said.

"What's Oakland?"

"The Underworld."

"Oakland is not the Underworld!" Mr. Fresh leapt to his feet; he was not a violent man, you really didn't have to be when you were his size, but -

"The Tenderloin?" Charlie suggested.

"Don't make me smack you. Neither of us wants that, do we, Mr. Asher?"

Charlie shook his head. "I've seen the ravens," Charlie said, "but I haven't heard any voices. What voices?"

"They talk to you when you're on the street. Sometimes you'll hear a voice coming out of a heating vent, a downspout, sometimes a storm drain. It's them, all right. Female voices, taunting. I've gone years without hearing them, I'll almost forget, then I'll be going to pick up a vessel, and one will call to me. I used to phone the other merchants, ask them if they'd done something, but we stopped that right away."

"Why?"

"Because that's part of what we think brings them up. We're not supposed to have any contact. It took us a while to figure that out. I had only found six of the merchants in the city back then, and we were having lunch once a week, talking about what we knew, comparing notes - that's when we saw the first of the shades. In fact, just to be safe, this will be the last time that you and I have contact." Mr. Fresh shrugged again and began to untie Charlie's bonds, thinking: It all changed that day at the hospital. This guy has changed everything, and I'm sending him out like a lamb to the slaughter - or maybe he's the one to do the slaughtering. This guy might be the one -

"Wait, I don't know anything," Charlie pleaded. "You can't just send me out to do this without more background. What about my daughter? How do I know who to sell the souls to?" He was panicked and trying to ask all the questions before he was set free. "What are the numbers after the names? Do you get the names like that? How long do I have to do this before I can retire. Why are you always dressed in mint green?" As Mr. Fresh untied one ankle, Charlie was trying to tie the other back to the chair.

"My name," said Mr. Fresh.

"Pardon?" Charlie stopped tying himself up.

"I dress in mint green because of my first name. It's Minty."

Charlie completely forgot what he was worried about. "Minty? Your name is Minty Fresh?"

Charlie appeared to be trying to stifle a sneeze, but then snorted an explosive laugh. Then ducked.