Vultures

by Chuck Wendig

  “I feel like I should be hungover.”

  “Okay,” Gabby says in that way that is both humoring her and waiting for the eventual explanation. Okaaaaaay.

  “This city feels like a hangover. Like what happens after a raw bender. Cigarettes and cheap liquor, a long night with no sleep. Got this tawdry, slutty, needy vibe I’m totally into. Or I would be, if I had a drink in my hand to fight the hangover, and a cigarette in my mouth to fight the taste of last night’s whiskey pukes.” She sighs. “Fucking goddamnit, I wish I’d found this town ten years ago. Now I think I missed my opportunity. Can’t drink. Can’t smoke. Can’t really enjoy all the . . .” Her hands gesticulate in the air like spiders swaddling a fly. “You know. The glorious, glamourous dumpster fire.”

  “I dunno,” Gabby says. “I think West Hollywood is pretty quaint. And Beverly Hills and Bel Air were glitzy as shit. It’s not Vegas.”

  “Yeah, but . . . all the quaintness, all the Richie-Richness is just a cover-up. It’s plastic surgery on a drunken pig. You know what it is? It’s a mask. At its heart, I can feel it—this city is shitty and mean, all its structures and industry built on a septic system overflowing with old, bad blood.” She draws a deep breath. “I kinda love it.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “Okay, I submit into evidence this guy.” Miriam points down at the white dude on the pool raft. He’s paunchy, his belly straining against his green Hawaiian shirt as his breath rises and falls. He’s got no pants on, but he does have a pair of tighty-whiteys—too tighty, those whiteys. His hair is a mussy pompadour, and a thin little mustache decorates his upper lip, so thin it might as well be gently manscaped calligraphy. “This guy, he’s, what? Is he homeless? Could be. An alcoholic? Why not! Male prostitute? Not impossible. But he could be a director, too. Famous, even. Shit, maybe that’s Tom Cruise. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe down there on that raft is a dead, bloated, homeless Tom Cruise. Do you know? I don’t know.”

  From down below, the man calls out, eyes still closed:

  “I am not Tom Cruise.” Then, a second later: “Also, not dead.”

  “Go back to sleep,” Miriam shouts back down at him.

  He gives her the finger.

  She gives it back, even though his eyes are still closed.

  “See?” Miriam says. “How great is that?”

  Gabby rubs some sleep out of her eye. “Okay, I can see why you like it. This is definitely a Miriam Black kind of town.”

  “This city doesn’t give a shit. At the same time, it gives all the shit. It’s like, I can’t tell if it really cares but doesn’t want you to think it cares, or that it doesn’t care at all, but it’s pretending that it does.”

  “The city is a giant narcissist?”

  “There it is. The city is a giant narcissist.”

  “And you like that?”

  Miriam shrugs. “We like what we like, baby. Don’t yuck my yum.”

  “You liked that I yucked your yum last night.” Gabby kisses the back of her neck, and Miriam shudders. She’s not wrong. Miriam, now that she’s on this hormonal roller coaster of pregnancy, runs the gamut of physical sensations. Mornings are normal. Midday, she gets the pukes. Midafternoon, she gets so hungry, she feels like she could personally slaughter and eat a herd of bison. And come evening, she’s so fucking turned on, she’s like the current running through an electric chair, all buzzy and voltaic, her every nerve ending crackling like lightning. She despises the word horny; it’s like a fourteen-year-old’s clumsy idea of what sex is like. And that one word is not enough, anyway. She doesn’t get horny: she gets greedy and desirous, ecstatic and consumptive, feral and fuck-hungry. Especially these days.

  Especially right now.

  It’s not evening, so she’s off her usual schedule, but so what? She leans back and meets Gabby’s mouth with her own. “I could yuck your yum for a little while. Go back in there on the futon and fuck like it’s the end of the world . . .”

  “You have work.”

  Miriam winces. “I have what?”

  “Work. The job. Guerrero.”

  “Ugh. That’s today. God. Fuck.”

  The job. She has a job to go to. That has traditionally never gone well, and she’s entirely certain it won’t go well today.

  “It’s your first day,” Gabby says, with singsongy, overly saccharine sweetness.

  “What if I don’t go?”

  “If you don’t go, then Agent Guerrero will come and find you. And then he’ll probably fire you. And if he fires you, we lose this apartment, which the FBI is paying for, and you probably get brought up on charges, and you will have that baby in jail. Worse, you won’t find somebody to help you confront the Trespasser, and your pursuant demon spirit will probably end up possessing me, and I’ll kill that doctor in Florida before swallowing a bottle of pills and killing myself.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, I should go.”

  Gabby gives her a venomous little smile. “You should go.”

  “Fine. Mom.”

  She heads inside, gulping down another mouthful of coffee. The inside of the apartment is boxy and spare, all white drywall and Pergo flooring. The furniture is all from a local West Hollywood antique joint, every piece mismatched in style, era, and color. She plonks herself down on their flumpy microfiber couch and hikes on a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. Then, in the bathroom, she shakes a little mousse into her hair. It looks wild, unkempt, the hair of Frankenstein’s Bride after a long night of ecstasy and fight-clubbing. Maybe, Miriam thinks, that’s what she should do next for her coloring: right now, the hair is the blackest black, but a silver streak shot through it would be slick as fuck.

  “Very professional,” Gabby says, dryly.

  “I am one professional motherfucker.”

  “Have a good day at school, dear.”

  “Uh-huh. What are you going to do today?”

  “I think I’m going to try to get a job.”

  Miriam makes a face like she has an itchy butthole. “Why on this horrible planet we call Earth would you go and do something like that?”

  “I like feeling needed.”

  “I need you.”

  Gabby shrugs. “Not while you’re off playing federal agent.”

  “I’m not a federal agent; I’m just a freelance psychic-for-hire.”

  “You should put that on a business card.”

  “Seriously, don’t get a job. Just be my concubine. Stay here at home, drinking mimosas and eating fondue chocolate, and then I’ll come home and we can go eat Korean food and then we can make out like middle-schoolers until we fall asleep to the sound of sirens and helicopters.”

  “How positively domestic of you, but yeah, no, sorry, Miriam. I want to get a job. I want to contribute. I’m not just yours. I’m me. I’m mine. I gotta go be a part of the world too.”

  “Sounds gross, but you do you, lady.”

  “Go to work. You’re going to be late.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “What do you mean, how do you get there?” Gabby laughs. “You get in a car and go.”

  “We don’t have a car.”

  “I told you last night, if you were listening: I put both Uber and Lyft on your phone.”

  Miriam frowns. “I don’t know what either of those things are. Can’t I just walk?”

  “It’s like seven miles down Wilshire. You cannot walk that. Besides, people don’t walk in this city. People get in their cars to drive across the street to their neighbors’ houses. The only people who walk are the homeless and serial killers.”

  “The FBI once had me classified as a serial killer.”

  “C’mon,” Gabby says, holding her hand. “Let’s go outside, and I will teach you again how to call a Lyft.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  DRIVE

  They stand out in front of their little condo complex, and Gabby holds out Miriam’s phone and shows her the app. On it, a little Pac-Man screen of Los Angeles streets manifests, with a bunch
of little cars swarming around like they’re running from ghosts and gobbling dots. They pick a nearby car with a driver named “Steve,” and then Gabby kisses Miriam on the cheek and heads back upstairs. Miriam calls after: “Fuck do I do now?” But Gabby is gone, and no answer is forthcoming.

  She stands there. The car she has chosen, a four-door Kia sedan, does not seem to be moving. It sits nearby, apparently stalled.

  Miriam shakes the phone.

  It does not dislodge the car.

  Technology is bullshit.

  Behind her, she hears the security grate leading into the complex squeak and creak open. Someone pads out in flip-flops.

  It is Tighty-Whitey Man, aka Probably-Not-Tom-Cruise.

  “Hello, Tighty-Whitey Man,” Miriam says, the way one might greet a regal bearer of kingly news.

  Pool water puddles around his legs and flip-flops. He pulls a pair of sunglasses that are tucked around the side of his white underwear—because he still isn’t wearing pants—and pops them on over his head.

  “You call a car?” he asks. His voice is a little squeaky, like he’s got a frog in his throat. A frog who drank a lot the night prior.

  “Did you just pull sunglasses out of your underpants?”

  “I’ll be right back,” he says with a sigh.

  He pads around the corner, the flip-flops going fwap fwap fwap, once again leaving her alone. She looks at the phone, squinting at it.

  Eventually, the car moves.

  And when it moves on the screen, she sees it rounding the corner near her—and sure enough, here it comes in real life, too. Which isn’t magic, she knows, but it damn sure feels like some kind of magic. Probably forbidden magic, too. Grim sorcery, enchanted fuckery. Technology is amazing and, she suddenly decides, will eventually ruin the world.

  Tighty-Whitey Man rolls down the window. “Going down Wilshire?”

  Miriam scowls.

  “Who told you that?”

  “You did.”

  “I fucking did not.”

  He rolls his eyes. “The phone, you put the address into the phone.”

  “I didn’t do that.” Gabby must’ve, though. “Okay, fine.”

  She gets in the car. The car is nice. Clean. In the back is a water bottle and a packet of gum. He pulls away before she’s even got her seatbelt on.

  “You keep your sunglasses in your underwear,” she says. “Keys, too, I’m guessing? Were they up your ass?”

  “No,” he says, patting a chest pocket. “Here.”

  “Hm,” she grunts.

  The car drives. It winds its way through the sights of Los Angeles: palm trees, tourists, blowing trash, the tattoo parlors, the movie billboards. They round a corner and she sees a homeless guy fighting Captain America with a broken umbrella while Darth Vader and Elmo stand nearby, watching. She’s sure there’s a metaphor there but she can’t quite peg it.

  “So,” she says, clearing her throat. “Do you normally just wait around in swimming pools till someone needs a ride?”

  “I was on shift, and the phone told me I had a rider.”

  “Do you do everything your phone tells you?”

  “When it makes me money.”

  “Where’d you get the car?”

  “It’s my car. I had it parked in the lot across from the complex.”

  “It’s your car?”

  He nods. “My car.”

  “This is fucking bizarre; so, this isn’t a taxi?”

  “No, it’s my car, it’s a Lyft.”

  “I’m sitting in the backseat of your car.” A statement, not a question.

  “Correct.”

  “Fuck that,” she says, unbuckling her belt and spelunking across the middle valley between the seats. She crawls up over the center console, nearly kneeing Tighty-Whitey Man in the shoulder. He protests—“Hey!”—as she settles into the passenger seat, drawing the belt across her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, his dry, droll tone stabbed by a spike of irritation.

  “I’m not sitting back there. This isn’t a taxi. It’s not a limo. At this point you’re just some dude giving me a ride; you’re not my chauffeur.”

  “I’m not just some dude. You’re paying me.”

  She frowns. “Gonna be honest: not sure I have any cash on me.” She would feel bad about this, but somehow, she doesn’t?

  “You’re not paying me cash; you’re paying me with a credit card.”

  “Oh, I definitely don’t have one of those.” She laughs. “Yeah, I think the bank would probably give a credit card to a raccoon before they give one to me; sorry, Tighty-Whitey Man.”

  “My name is Steve.”

  “Agree to disagree.”

  He makes a frustrated sound, which is familiar to her—many people make it when she speaks to them. It’s a primal exhortation of restrained disgust. Miriam has come to cherish the sound as a signal she’s being true to herself and not changing who she is to suit someone’s idea of pleasant interaction, because seriously, fuck all that right in the no-no hole.

  “How do you not have a credit card?” he asks. “Is this a Bitcoin thing? We take Bitcoin. And Litecoin.”

  “What the fuck is a Bitcoin? Is that . . . chocolate money?”

  “What? No. It’s cryptocurrency!” He sighs. “So . . . who is paying for this ride, exactly?”

  She shrugs. “Guessing Gabby, though really, it’s the FBI.”

  “The FBI.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Are you in witness protection?”

  “No.”

  He seems really rattled now. His too-cool-for-school, hanging-out-in-my-underwear-so-what vibe is falling under the panic of being in her general presence. Good. Fuck him. “Are you some kind of extraterrestrial? Or an android? Who are you? How do you not have a credit card and not know what Lyft or Uber are, and—seriously, who are you and where did you come from?”

  “Name’s Miriam Black. Got a demon in my head who’s trying to kill me and my baby. I’m also psychic and I can see how people are going to die. I control birds and I might be invulnerable to harm.”

  He stares at her.

  But a strange thing happens. He’s no longer rattled. It’s almost like he’s relieved. “See, there you go. Now I know who you are.”

  “You do?” she asks.

  “Yep. You’re LA.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, that gonzo bullshit that just came out of your mouth is typical Los Angeles. I drive all kinds of people around this town, and half of them are either out of their gourd or pretending to be. It’s the sun, the wildfire smoke, the pharmaceuticals in the water supply, maybe. Live here long enough and it starts to rot your pumpkin.”

  “Look at you, you’re not even wearing pants.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “Couple days ago, I drove around a guy who swore to high heaven that he was the reincarnation of Ringo Starr. I tried to explain to him that Ringo Starr is neither dead nor somebody particularly worthy of reincarnation, but he wouldn’t hear it. He didn’t have an accent. He didn’t look like Ringo Starr. Didn’t appear to have a musical bone in his body—though, ha ha, neither did Ringo, zing—but it was all he talked about. That and his cats. Seven cats. All named Micky Dolenz.”

  She stares at him.

  “Drummer for the Monkees,” he explains.

  “I don’t care. I’m still trying to figure out if the shit you said about me is a compliment or what.”

  “Not a compliment, not an insult. It’s just a thing.”

  “Just a thing.”

  “Uh-huh. LA is a thing, and it gets in people. It’s in you.”

  “I haven’t even been here a week.”

  He dips his sunglasses and stares at her over their margins. “Then honey, Los Angeles has been inside you a lot longer than that.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  DESTINATION

  The drive down LA roads bears the sense of endless reiteration. It’s like being on a loo
p in a movie set, like the city doesn’t have enough money or land to deliver new sites, so it keeps parading the same stuff past in the hopes you don’t notice. Every corner is a little strip mall, and in each is a similar set of locations: a nail place, a sushi joint, a taco place, a massage parlor, a tattoo parlor. Korean food, Thai food, check cashing, hipster donut place, emergency clinic, and then shake the dice cup and roll them out for a remix of the same, again and again, on and on. On Wilshire, the scenario changes a little: bigger buildings, hotels, a golf course, and eventually, the Federal Bureau of Investigation building: a tall, austere brick that has all the personality of a roll of paper towels.

  “You weren’t kidding,” Tighty-Whitey Steve says. “This is really the FBI building.” He eases the car into the lot, at the drop-off point before the guard gate. “You don’t look like FBI. So, what’s your deal?”

  “Friends in strange places,” she says.

  “You’re really not from LA, either?”

  “Nope. Pennsylvania originally, though been all around. Never here.”

  “Well,” he says, pulling out a business card. He flips his sunglasses up over his broad forehead and looks upon her with tiny, bloodshot eyes. “Listen, there’s no way with the car app to request a specific driver, but this is my card. You ever need a ride, call me. I’ll show up. We’ll work something out. Cool?”

  “And you’d offer this why? I told you I have no money and you called me an extraterrestrial.”

  “I like extraterrestrials. I feel like an alien myself sometimes.”

  “Good sales pitch.” She takes the card. On it, his full name. “Thanks, Steve Wiebe. Maybe I’ll talk to you again.”

  “Have fun with the FBI.”

  “Job’s a job,” she says, even though that’s totally not true. This is about the furthest thing from a real job that you can get, she wagers. What do you do for a living? Oh, you know, I’m an FBI psychic. You?

  She watches the Kia sedan pull away, its pantsless driver with one oddly pale arm out the window. There comes a moment when she thinks, maybe she doesn’t have to do this. She could just fuck off. Go find one of those Thai joints, drink a Thai iced tea, and never actually go to work, but again Gabby’s reminder slithers into her ear like a nibbling brain-worm: there’s a lot riding on this gig. Not least of all, she needs Guerrero to identify for her a fellow psychic who can help her identify the Trespasser. That, in order for her to kill the Trespasser. To slay her demon, to save Gabby, she’s gotta play ball. And then maybe she can save this baby, too.