Down and Out in Purgatory by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers [Powers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781596067813
Google: hNchjwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1596067810
Publisher: Subterranean
Published: 2015-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

II

Is he in there? thought Holbrook.

He forced himself to take one slow step after another up the asphalt slope.

Holbrook knew that his real heart was stopped and cold in an unmarked grave in the original world, but he could nevertheless feel a pulse pounding in his temples, and he was dizzy enough to keep his hands spread to the sides as he walked up to the higher curb.

He remembered the broad face he had dimly seen through clear plastic at the Los Angeles Coroner’s morgue. It seemed a very long time ago.

Will I shortly be looking into that face?

Atwater had still been handsome and fit-looking when Holbrook had had dinner with him and Shasta at Mastro’s in 2006. Holbrook had at that time been a proofreader at a throwaway advertising paper in nearby Culver City, and Atwater had pretended to be very interested in hearing all the details of the job, while Shasta had just looked out the window and taken rapid sips of her Manhattan. Three years later she had been in a roped bag in the Coroner’s building.

Up on the level sidewalk now, Holbrook turned around and looked down at the sloping skyline of Purgatory. He could see towers and steeples at a distance of at least a mile; all of them were tilted toward him. Clearly he must be on the descending skirt of the bell—but he had noticed no curvature of the pavement since leaving the fountain in the square, no convexity.

He dismissed the puzzle and turned to face the front door of Chasteen’s. The round stained glass window and the iron latch were exactly as he remembered, and the door swung inward when he squeezed the latch and pushed. Familiar smells of tomato sauce and fennel and garlic rode the puff of warm air from the lamplit interior, and he saw a pitcher of dark beer on the table the six of them had customarily occupied.

He had closed the door against the cold breeze outside and taken two steps across the wooden floor when a chair scraped at the other end of the dining room and a voice called loudly, “Excuse me, you got a problem?”

Holbrook braced himself and then faced the figure that was now standing back there by the fireplace; but even in the relative dimness he could see that it was not John Atwater.

“Dylan?” said Holbrook softly. “Dylan Emsley!” Immediately he wondered if he should have said Center, the tattoo Emsley had got, instead of the man’s real name.

Emsley shuffled forward, slightly facing away from Holbrook but peering at him sideways. “What’re you looking at?” he demanded. “You know who I am?”

He wore black jeans and a black denim jacket, and he still looked twenty-five—the age he had been in 2003, when he had died in a car crash on the Hollywood Freeway.

“Have you,” said Holbrook hesitantly, “been here—all this time?”

“I’ll eat where I please! And take as long as I want! You wanna start some shit?”

“Center! Dylan, damn it! I’m Tom Holbrook, remember?”

Emsley was now holding a short knife.

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