Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife (53 page)

They had been left to make their own entrance into the casino. Jim had been all ready to follow the curving, velvet-carpeted stairs down to the main room, where a guitar player who looked a lot like Long Time Robert Moore, only in a white suit and now supposedly blind, was playing blues with a trio whose sound was far too casino-genteel for Jim’s more raucous taste. Once again, though, Doc had steered him in a different direction. “Stick with me, my boy. The main room’s strictly for amateurs.”

Jim was tempted to remind Doc that he
was
an amateur, but decided to follow the flow. How many times did a man penetrate the
salon privée
of the best casino in Hell? The initial impression had been luxuriously pleasing. The cigar smoke was exclusive and harmonized with the most expensive of perfumes and that indefinable bouquet of seasoned money. Players sat with piles of plaques in
front of them, some almost as large as dinner slates and plainly worth a fortune, while Van Goghs, Toulouse-Lautrecs, and Picassos looked down from the walls. On the lifeside it would have been called old money; here Jim thought of it as dead money. In his rock star days Jim had now and then found himself in similar places but always as an interloper or a sideshow. To enter as the companion of Doc Holliday, on the other hand, seemed to guarantee him instant acceptance.

Doc immediately handed over the bag containing the entire take from the sale of his soul for a croupier to convert into plaques and chips. Doc, it seemed, was going for broke. For the moment, meanwhile, Jim was left with precious little to do. In the
salon privée
, if you didn’t play, you could be little else but a silent spectator, and Jim had never found card games a spectator sport. The bar, whose booze certainly tasted top-shelf, filled his time for a while, and when its novelty wore off there were always the women to observe. One could never divorce money and sexual tension, and the women in the
salon privée
were of a unique standard of predatory beauty. Unfortunately, their attention was on the players, not any kibitzer in the twilight, no matter how romantically he might sip his scotch. One, however, did seem to be paying Jim a certain amount of attention. She had jet-black hair, cut in a severe geometric fringe low across her eyebrows, and was wearing a 1950s-style sheath dress in dark aquamarine. Jim didn’t recognize her, although she did in many ways remind him of . . . what was her name? The great underground lingerie and bondage model? Jim was certain he’d never seen the woman before, but the covert glances she kept slipping in his direction, which seemed to be a combination of desire and anxiety, were hardly the kind to be directed at a perfect stranger, no matter how perfect that stranger might be.

The reason the woman’s glances were so covert was immediately apparent. She was with a tall, narrow-shouldered, impeccably correct character in full white tie and tails, who went all the way to the wearing of white kid gloves to handle his cards. It took Jim no time at all to peg him as an aristocratic sadist from the old Heidelberg school, right down to the dueling scars on his cheek, the monocle screwed into his left eye, and the way his hair was shaved high above his ears. Heidelberg was losing badly at twenty-one and when he rose to resupply himself with chips, the woman quickly scribbled a note on a drink napkin with a slim silver pencil. She handed the
napkin to a waiter and nodded in Jim’s direction. Sure enough, the waiter, without being too obvious about it, brought the note quickly to Jim. The handwriting was flamboyant and urgent, with the characters formed large and with decorative curves. The content, on the other hand, hardly made any sense at all, unless Jim’s memory was even more damaged than he had so far assumed.

My darling
,

I beg you, for tonight, pretend that you don’t know me. The man that I am with would do terrible things to me if he discovered that we knew each other. It would be ten times worse if he should ever see that film! Even though, for my safety, we must act as strangers, don’t think I have forgotten that earthshaking night and all the awful and wonderful things you did with the DSVICE.!

Forever your slave and admirer
,

Amber
.

Jim read the note twice and then looked in this Amber’s direction. Heidelberg had now returned, and she studiously avoided his eyes. Either another time-shift was going down, or he was in a lot of trouble. How the fuck could he forget a night with that woman? and what the hell was the
device?
Since he obviously wasn’t about to go and risk Heidelberg’s wrath by speaking to her, he folded the note carefully in half and slipped it into the pocket of his tuxedo.

It was only moments after doing this that he saw someone he actually did know and recognize. Through the door, maple-syrup shoulders above a second skin of emerald sequins, had come Donna Anna Maria Isabella Conchita Theresa Garcia (but you can call me Lola). She noted the presence of Doc, who was warming his poker skills before he went to the big show with four black-tie rubes, one of whom resembled the Duke of Windsor, the abdicated English king, and another the perfect likeness of Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Having checked out Doc, Lola turned and headed straight to the bar. Although she was diametrically different from the
Viva Zapata!
bandita Jim had encountered in Doc’s forgotten town, it was definitely her.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to know or recognize him. He smiled a friendly greeting, but was met by a blank stare as she passed him to take the tequila sunrise that the bartender had started mixing the moment she’d walked into the room. Surprised, but
putting it down to the same time problem that seemed to be affecting Doc, Jim broadened his smile. “We have met, but perhaps you don’t remember.”

This time, her response was an expression of unbreakable Andean ice. “We have never met.”

“Donna Anna Maria Isabella Conchita Theresa Garcia, but you can call me Lola?”

Lola took a deep breath and then lowered her voice. “I’m not supposed to speak to you.”

Jim was mystified. “What is this?”

“Doc doesn’t remember the last time we met and I’m not supposed to, either, but I like you, Jim Morrison, so I’ll take a chance on breaking the rules. I seriously advise you to get out of here as quickly as you can. Take your Virgil and go.”

“Out of the casino?”

“Out of Hell itself.”

Jesus’ free hand moved to the remote, apparently of its own accord. The Irving Klaw porn had ended without too much denouement and was suddenly replaced by
Zorro’s Secret Legion
, a Republic serial that, in its whip work and leather costumes, ran with a distinct S&M undertow that was probably lost on the ten-year-olds for whom it was intended. Or was it? This Jesus didn’t look like a tenyear-old, but he did tend to behave that way, and he was continuing to jerk himself off while staring unblinkingly at the screen. Semple looked from screen to couch and finally at Mr. Thomas, the goat. “What do you mean, goats invented coffee?”

Mr. Thomas finished munching on a piece of cardboard. “The way I heard it, sometime around the thirteenth century an Ethiopian goatherd called Kaldi noticed that his animals were getting high as kites on the red berries of a particular wild shrub. Being of an inquiring mind and curious disposition, this Kaldi tried the berries himself. When he, too, not only got high as a kite but also remained awake for fifty-seven hours straight, Kaldi knew he was on to something. Of course, being Islamic, Kaldi’s first thought was that the said berries would be a way to stay awake and remain at one’s religious devotions longer than would have been previously possible. After chewing the berries, he decided this was a bit too much of a
jolt. Soon he hit on the idea of stewing the berries in boiling water and drinking the resulting liquid. As you’ve probably guessed by now, the red berries were wild coffee beans and—”

Semple rather rudely interrupted the anecdote. “Is everyone around here totally crazy?”

The goat looked at her both surprised and a little offended. “Not really. Not when you consider that we’re living in the brain of an entirely fictional, massively oversized Mesozoic dinosaur.”

“One’s jerking off to an old Zorro serial and the other’s telling me how coffee was invented?”

“Strictly speaking, we’re not even in the brain itself. We actually occupy a tumor on that brain.”

Semple was horrified. “A tumor?”

“What do you think this dome really is?”

“Is it malignant?”

“Not for us.”

“I meant for Gojiro.”

The goat tore off another piece of packing case and started munching. In that he seemed to need to talk with his mouth full, a conversation with Mr. Thomas was not unlike ones she’d had with Anubis. “That’s something of an academic point. The Big Green has one motherfucker of a post-nuclear metabolism and I’d imagine it’s going to take a good uninterrupted ten thousand years for a tumor to hurt him.”

Semple was still uneasy. “I’m not sure I want to be in a tumor.” “After a while, you don’t even think about it. What are you doing here, by the way?”

Semple blinked at the goat. “You’re asking me that?”

“You walked in here of your own accord.”

“I hardly knew what I was doing. I just followed the directions of the three tiny women.”

“You always do what tiny women tell you?”

“Only when I don’t have a better idea.”

“You came in like the mote in Godz’s eye, right?”

“As far as I can tell. But you know what happened. You were there when Moses’ tribe got stomped.”

The goat avoided her eyes. “I have a bit of a problem with that.”

Semple frowned. “Either you were there or you weren’t.”

“It’s one of those cat’s-cradle time problems. Some of the time I seem to have been the lead goat for Moses and his stinking followers,
sometimes I’m the companion of someone who may or may not be Jesus Christ and who thinks I may or may not be the reincarnation of Dylan Thomas.”

Semple glanced at the still-masturbating Jesus. “Can’t he hear you? He might not like his Jesushood being questioned.”

Mr. Thomas shook his head. “He’s totally in the zone. TV has that effect on him.”

An unpleasant thought struck Semple. “I’m not here to entertain you, am I?

“Not specifically, but if you were to offer, I’d be most pleased to—”

Semple cut him off. “Let’s leave that for a while. My sex life has been far too complicated of late. I really don’t feel inclined to go interspecies right now. I couldn’t take on a goat no matter how glowing his possible literary antecedents.”

Mr. Thomas chewed cardboard, apparently considering the rejection. “That’s a pity. ‘After the first death, there is no more.’ ”

“It really isn’t anything personal. I’m very fond of
Under Milk Wood.”

“That wasn’t from
Under Milk Wood.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s from something else.”

“Oh.” Semple covered her gaffe by looking around the dome. “How about, ‘it was spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black . . . ’ ”

The goat was mollified. “That’s better.”

The episode of
Zorro’s Secret Legion
had concluded in a seeming sudden-death cliff-hanger. Jesus’ hand twitched and a new movie was on the screen, Audie Murphy in
Bullet for a Badman
, picking up the story midway through the action. “I’m starting to feel that maybe the best thing I could do would be to get out of here. The possibilities seem a little limited.”

The goat swallowed. “Unfortunately that may be difficult.”

Semple’s eyes narrowed. “What are you telling me?”

Mr. Thomas scratched himself with his left hind leg. “You came in animation mode, am I right?”

Semple answered cautiously, unsure of what was coming next. “Yes. That’s where I got this gun and the ridiculous costume.”

“But then, on the way in, you passed under the lights?”

“Right.”

“And you changed back to normal?”

“That’s right. I did. Apart from the beauty spot.”

“Then that’s it. You can’t go back out again. Not in human form. No humans in Toon Town.”

“What would happen to me if I did?”

“It’s hard to explain, but very nasty.”

“So how do I change back to a toon?”