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circled it like stalking lions.
There were two fires, however.
Within the red, yellow, and orange jets of flame another conflagration roared.
Tattered flames of blue and green and purple fluttered and flashed, their
rhythms and patterns reminiscent of negative film stock run in reverse.
Dark shapes frolicked at the fire's core. Distorted silhouettes chased one
another about though the inferno like children running through a cool fountain
on a hot summer's day. Distorted faces, like blackened commedia dell'arte
masks, peeked through curtains of hot gasses, grinning or grimacing as they
sought and fled from one another.
"Scary, ain't it?" asked a familiar voice.
The Kid sat on the limestone-capped brick sidewall that ran alongside the
steps.
* * *
The multihued blaze, the red/blue flashing strobes of the fire trucks, cop
cars, and ambulances, seemed to make no impression on the electric lime green
zoot suit that he wore. It seemed to glow in the predawn light with a radiance
all its own. He wore a broad-brimmed hat of matching color tilted back on his
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head and his chalky hands were clasped below one knee, pulled up toward his
chin, as he took in the organized pandemonium with me.
"You're dead," I said, unable to articulate the various imports that implied
for my current circumstances.
"Well, natch, Daddy-o. Been dead for close to a century, now."
"I'm. Dead," I managed, coming closer to the core issue.
"Hmmm." J.D. turned his attention to me and appeared to ponder. "Maybe. But
there's dead and then there's dead. And then there's dead again."
"'Death is but one and comes but once / And only nails the eyes,'" I quoted.
"Yeah? Who wrote that?"
"Emily Dickinson."
"She must've wrote that while she was still alive because she don't know from
nothin'."
"Really."
"Look-it, she might be the bee's knees in certain literary circles but I sure
wouldn't ask her to inventory Shineola in the afterlife. Now that guy what
wrote
Peter Pan
, he got a much better idear when he said 'To die will be an awfully big
adventure.'"
"You've read Peter Pan?"
He shrugged. "Guy wrote about boys who never grew old. Seemed relevant." He
unfolded himself from his perch next to the steps. "But instead of jawing
about a bunch of literary know-nothings maybe you ought to be thinking about
copping a ride." He pointed at the nearest ambulance. "They're loading your
body on now."
I turned and the world spun about me. By the time I could orient myself, the
back doors on the emergency vehicle were slamming shut and an EMT was climbing
into the driver's seat. "Hey!" I yelled, "Wait!"
I ran down the steps, stumbling a bit on their mushy surfaces, and sprinted
toward the ambulance.
The siren whooped and the van chugged forward just as I caught the back door
handles. I managed a short hop and glimpse through a rear window before
slipping and falling into the pavement. What was
strapped to the gurney inside didn't look like me. There was a lot of blood
and pads and an oxygen mask, and a paramedic was working feverishly to do
something. Suki was sitting on the other side, huddled in a blanket, staring
at all of the blood as if she might never want to taste any again.
Darkness.
Pulling myself up out of the pavement was like falling facedown in a sea of
mud and trying to drag myself free of the tremendous suction of muck and mire.
I got my head up just in time to see the ambulance turn the corner several
blocks down. "Hey!" I yelled. Like it was going to make any kind of
difference.
Now what should I do?
The ambulance was gone and I could spend days walking the length and breadth
of Manhattan trying to find the right room in the right hospital in an utterly
alien city of 8 million people. And if I was dead what would be the point?
I looked back at The Kid. "I could use a little help here."
His mouth twitched. "Sure." He got up, ambled over and reached down as if to
assist me. "Take my hand," he said.
I reached up and grasped his hand. Or tried to. My fingers passed through his
without even a tingle.
"I'll be damned."
"Could be," he agreed.
Chapter Fifteen
It took us two hours to walk two miles. Something about being noncorporeal and
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being disconnected from the physical plane seemed to put us into a different
time/space continuum and bollixed up moving from one point of reference to
another. We made deep sea divers look like Olympic sprinters.
There were other issues as well.
"Okay," I said as I looked up at the predawn sky, "I think I've got the basics
down: noncorporeality versus surface tension, electromagnetic radiation versus
synaptic cohesion, dimensional overlaps."
"Really?" The Kid thrust his hands into his Captain Kangaroo pockets and shook
his head. "And here
I thought I was giving with the lowdown on how to make the haunty scene."
"If you really want to give me the lowdown, you could tell me where I'm
supposed to go now.
Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Paradise?"
"Hey, just because lots of people told me where to go when I was undead don't
make me no tour guide now that I'm all phantomy. Dead ain't the same as
undead."
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