Tex and Molly in the Afterlife by Tex & Molly in the Afterlife (epub)

Author:Tex & Molly in the Afterlife (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

INSURGENCE

So badly, it was half a tank of gas later when she rolled into the parking area below her apartment. She was exhausted and mad at herself. And to put the icing on it, she couldn't find a place to park. The place was full of beaten-up vehicles, among which she recognized those of a couple of Street Players. And in the middle of everything, taking up at least 3 human-scale parking spots, sat an outrageous Eldorado gleaming with custom chromework. A pirate flag flew from the tallest of its several antennas.

Climbing the stairs to her door, Ludi was ready (she thought) to face, to disapprove of, and if necessary, to evict whoever and whatever she found waiting in her living room. Even so, the scene alarmed her.

The air was heavy with hemp smoke. The Venetian blinds had been drawn shut. All the furniture was drawn into a sort of trapezoidal cluster in the center of the room. Indigo Jones was there, and Rainie Moss the gardener, and Sara Clump the electrician, plus—inescapably—Guillermo.

But that was not all. Oh no. Beside them, and seeming to glow in the smoky gloom, was one of the whitest-skinned people Ludi had ever seen—the more so because

a) he wore no shirt and was covered from the waist up (at least) with polychrome tattoos, chiefly of serpents and dragons, and

b)he was sitting on the arm of a chair whose primary occupant was a large and very dark-skinned teenager, wearing a woven-reed Panama hat equipped with a small, solar-powered fan. In Ludi's apartment, where the only light came from an under-cabinet fluorescent in the kitchen, the fan was motionless.

Both of these strangers looked a little older than the girl Thistle, but not much.

Guillermo glanced up when Ludi slammed the door. "It's about time," he said. "Where've you been?"

"Performing an emergency cesarean," she told him.

He made a sour face. Like, Very funny. "Well, you've missed some pretty interesting discussion. We were just about to take a vote on going forward with our next action."

Ludi walked into the kitchen, where she flipped on the bright overhead double-circline fixture, a semicool relic of the Other '60s, the one moms and dads had lived in. Most of the kitchen was of the same period: aquamarine refrigerator, speckled Formica countertops, and a wood-veneer breakfast bar with matching stools. In the slightly uncanny light of the low-watt bulbs, the whole thing glowed like a vision brought on by martinis and Frank Sinatra.

"Good god," moaned Guillermo. "Couldn't you turn that down a little?"

"It doesn't turn down," said Ludi. "It turns on."

Very faintly, like a mosquito whine, Ludi could hear the clock radio in the bedroom playing Van Morrison, who had apparently chosen the WURS late-nite rock show to die on.

"This is Saintstephen and Shadow," said Guillermo, pointing to the teenagers. He did not indicate which was who. The white one, whose hair also was devoid of pigmentation, gave her a cryptic hand-sign.

"Peace with honor," he said. His voice was sticky with saliva.

I feel, thought Ludi, as though I am standing upon the threshold of Hell.

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