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They called me an unlikely hero, and if one thinks of it that way perhaps I was. I never did. I'm a laywer, not a hero. None of us are heroes in this world.
*****
I can't recall whether I bought the ticket for my own use or hers; I doubt I knew at the time. I only knew that I was blowing a fortune on some kind of passage to the next world in the form of a ride on the Number Nine. I'd met Hector Lemans through business connections of Maximino's and made up my mind as soon as I heard his generous offer. Maybe I always knew I'd give it to her, because I came back to Rubacava instead of taking the train right away.
The Casket always got on my nerves. The patrons were a collection of dreamers and idiots rambling on for hours on end about the meaning of death in lowercase letters. But Olivia was a busy woman, and she couldn't afford to leave her club--or Max--for long in the evenings, and so for some reason I was there almost every night. I was fingering the cigarette case into which I'd stuffed the ticket with more nervousness than I could rememeber ever feeling as I arrived that night and walked the length of the entire club to her rooms in the back.
Maybe I always knew it on some level. I hadn't been able to stand the woman when we met, until I realized that the hours I spent fuming over each acrid verbal salvo we'd exchanged were indicative of some attraction. When our affair began, she laughed and told me I knew what I was getting into, and I did. I never found out what underlying bitterness had hardened her over the decades, but I'd always known she would never look out for anyone before number one. Maybe I realized it the night I shot the photo girl. Maybe I didn't realize it until the night she left. Maybe it was any or all of the days in between.
But afterwards that night I stopped her and showed her the ticket, and as soon as I did it I knew why.
"So even you're leaving now," she laughed in her husky voice. "I might as well lock the place down and head for El Marrow. When Nick Virago leaves Rubacava for the world to come, I know the town is dying."
"And you still don't believe in that world to come?" I challenged the sarcasm in her tone.
"I believe in the world that's in front of me," she shot back.
"Here." With a sudden jerk, I thrust the ticket between her fingers. "Put this one in front of you. If it doesn't exist, you can always come back with some new existential poetry and laugh in my face."
Had she had eyebrows, she would have quirked one at me. "How many grands did you spend on this thing, Nick? I was under the impression that even Max didn't pay you enough to allow you to hand these out like movie passes."
"He doesn't." I looked at her steadily. "It's yours."
"Why?" she asked, a sharp suspicion in her voice.
I froze for a moment and then glanced back at her skull. She was smoking, as usual; I always pictured her leaning with a casual elegance against something and smoking from that long holder of hers. And I can't say now what made me tell her, but in that instant I burst out with it like some moronic schoolboy: "I love you."
She was quiet for a moment as a small smile planted itself on her skull and grew, and then she threw her head back and laughed. "You're letting me down, Nick. I always thought you were smarter than that."
I wasn't in the mood for it. "Take the damn ticket. Maybe in the next life even you'll soften enough to reciprocate."
"I hope not," she snorted, but all the same she folded the ticket between her fingers as she stood up to dress.
It was the last time I ever saw her. She was independent; when she had made up her mind to leave, she left, without a word to anyone. The next morning I heard she was gone.
I'm not sure if I believed I would see her again, either. Had she found a new lover, I wouldn't have put it past her to use that ticket out as her excuse to disappear. But I think that in my naivete, I really did believe in some way that when I'd saved up enough to buy another ticket for myself, I would see her again. Perhaps the Land of Eternal Rest could change even Olivia. Perhaps there, I reasoned as I slipped my key out of my cigarette case and let myself into the locked-down and deserted Blue Casket that next night, she could finally allow herself to fall in love.
I was a fool.
*****
The place was empty. I knew it was the last time I'd see it too. No one else had the energy or desire to run a beatnik club, and by then Rubacava was dying. When it became apparent that she wasn't going to return, the Blue Casket would be bulldozed and built over, and nothing would remain of the mark she had made on the town. Ironic, then, that I should come one last time to this place that had so irked me over the years. Ironic that I should actually miss her.
She'd taken virtually nothing with her. Money, of course, and her gun, but other than that she had simply disappeared. I lay back on the bed as I'd done so many times before and stared at the ceiling, trying to make myself believe that she was really gone.
I'd poured myself one of her Coffin Shooters, which may be the reason I have no clear idea of how long I was there. It might have been nine o' clock when I heard footsteps in the club and looked up to see none other than Manuel Calavera standing on the balcony outside Olivia's suite.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, standing up and striding over.
"I could ask you the same question," he replied. He was leaning on the column that served as the gatepost between the raised balcony and the main floor of the club. "You taking this place over now that Olivia's gone?"
He'd been gone for two years. There was no way he could have known that fast unless he'd seen her in El Marrow. "How did you know she left?" I asked lamely.
"I've been to the end of the line, Nick." He looked smug. "I hate to break it to you, but fake tickets on the Number Nine won't get you where you want to go."
Two years earlier, Calavera had nearly broken my jaw with a right hook. Under normal circumstances I would have kept my distance, but then I almost collared him. "What the hell are you talking about, Calavera?" I hissed at him.
"I saw her on the train. That thing headed south for the winter--straight into a pit of fire. Olivia always was a big smoker."
If I'd slammed his skull against the wall, it would have shattered into dust. That might have been the most satisfying option, but I was still reeling from the blow and didn't say anything until he continued. "Now I'm headed to El Marrow to put Hector Lemans out of business. Or are you working for him now?"
Hector Lemans. He was Olivia's last lover, but more than that--he was the man who had sold me that ticket. He had killed Olivia Ofrenda.
"On the contrary, Calavera," I replied. "I'm his worst nightmare."
*****
Calavera needed something from the kitchen and I mechanically unlocked the door for him. He muttered something about someone booby-trapping his car; I didn't care. I'd seen that car when that pet demon of his had taken it out on Max's track two years earlier, and I knew it far outpaced anything Rubacava had left in it. When he left town, I hitched a ride with him.
Why he let me do it, I can't say. He had a bone to pick with Hector, in the end the same one I did: selling stolen tickets on the Number Nine. But there was no reason for him to trust me--and in fact, he didn't. The girl he had with him looked at me hard when I came and told him I needed to go with him, and she pulled him aside and whispered something to him. After that, he reluctantly offered me a hand and pulled me up onto the seat.
I don't remember the 1020 kilometers to Rubacava, only reaching into my pocket to feel my sproutella gun and imagining pumping the darts of lilies into him, one by one. Only imagining the scene as Calavera described it, the train turning into a huge fiery dragon and leaping down off the tracks. Only remembering the night before and how utterly stupid I'd been.
We disembarked in Nuevo Marrow in some underground sinkhole that Calavera told me was the headquarters of some organization called the LSA. I couldn't have cared less, except that he also mentioned that they were working against Lemans--in fact, their leader, a man by the name of Limones, was going on a mission to hunt him down that night. He took me along. Perhaps, like the girl, he saw the look in my eye sockets.
Limones showed me the back roads to take until I reached a greenhouse on a hill of flowers and he told me to stop the car. After that, it was easy--even easier than the photo girl. I simply swung the door open and walked in. Lemans turned toward me, opening his mouth as if he wanted to say something--and I shot him. I shot him again and again, like a madman, until flowers spilled out and crushed themselves against the walls of the greenhouse, and then, covered in pollen, I dropped my gun and walked back down the hill.
*****
Having heard this, Olivia might laugh and say I sound like a poet. It's rubbish, of course; I'm not a poet just as I'm not a hero. If this narrative seems abrupt, it's because I don't have enough time left to waste on details and sentimentalities. As she said once of me, "You're a lawyer. You're not supposed to have feelings." I hated the way she always seemed to be right.
And so I haven't much more to tell. When I got back to the car, Limones was pumping my hand and crying that I was a great ally of this noble revolution, and even Calavera said I didn't turn out to be such a snake after all. He'd found a suitcase of real Double-N tickets and was gleefully dispensing them to their true owners. The case of fake ones sat abandoned in a corner.
As they all celebrated, I took one and slipped away.
It was the dead of night, and now, only minutes later, I am the only one on the train. This has worked to my advantage, because I don't want to take any chances as to my destination.
I don't know what happens to those who are sprouted and those who attempt to buy their ways into heaven. But if I come out on the other side of somewhere, I will find her. Perhaps even now, even if she is in the depths of hell, she will love me.
I can see the archway Calavera described at the edge of my line of sight now as the train races over the ocean toward it. Now the very walls and upholstered seats within inches of me feel as if they are made of molten lava, and I can see the pit sliding open in front of me. One hundred yards...fifty...twenty-five...and the train is diving. In a few seconds, I will be devoured by that inferno.
At the last instant, I can swear I see her face among the embers.
The End
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