Page 2 of Installment Immortality

He began to turn back toward his car and the wind caressed his cheek, suddenly warm and smelling of sun-sweet corn, fresh from the stalk and ready to be swallowed sweetly down. “Say what you came here to say,” whispered a voice, barely audible but feminine and seductive all the same.

Bobby Cross had been a celebrity long enough to grow accustomed to the sound of beautiful women trying to talk him into things. Still, he stopped and turned once again to the intersection, taking a deep breath followed by a long step forward, past the border of the crossroads.

“The name I was given is Robert Cross. The name of my heart is Diamond Bobby. I am here tonight by the grace of the King of the North American Routewitches, who told me that if I came to the crossroads with desire in my throat, I could have what I most wish for in this world. I come prepared to pay.”

The world flickered around him, and he was abruptly standing in the same spot, on the same road, but in the middle of the day, with blue skies above him and green fields all around. The desert was gone with the night, replaced by the rolling richness of some farmer’s prize harvest. The corn rustled as the wind blew through it, and every leaf was like the bells of heaven, calling him home.

And then an angel stepped out of the corn. She had long white hair and a long black skirt, and the kind of figure that could have made her famous in Hollywood with a cock of her hip and a voluntary visit to a casting agent’s office. She was as impossible as the cornfield all around him, and those two impossibilities somehow canceled each other out, making her an ordinary sight. Why shouldn’t beautifully dressed angels wander around in cornfields? Where else did they belong?

“You don’t want this,” she said, and she wasn’t an angel after all. Angels didn’t have flat Michigan accents, didn’t sound like the fields and farmlands he’d been running from since the day he realized he was too good for that life. She sounded like all the girls his mother had ever tried to force on him, and he knew in an instant that he wasn’t going to listen to a damn thing she had to say.

Dress a bumpkin like a bombshell and she’ll still smell like cowshit when she comes to bed.

He looked her up and down with a sneer, not bothering to hide the way his eyes lingered on her breasts, and, as he finally reached her face, tried not to flinch away from the infinite horrors in her eyes. “You don’t know what I want, little girl,” he said. “What are you, sixteen?”

“Dead girls don’t age,” said the girl. “Which is a pity, because I’m a lot older than you take me for, and I know what I’m talking about. You don’t want this.”

“That old fuck in his trailer tried to tell me the same thing,” said Bobby.

The not-an-angel blinked. “The old… Did you see Big Buster?”

“Old bastard, big bushy beard, lots of young things hanging around him and batting their eyelashes like old-guy dick is something worth chasing.”

“That’s the King you’re talking about.”

“Lady, I’m an American. We don’t have kings here.”

“Not of America, ofthe— Oh,never mind. I guess now I know what happened.” At Bobby’s perplexed expression, she shrugged. “Time isn’t always linear for the routewitches. It’s just another form of distance to them. Eight years ago, he stepped down and cut himself off from the road, wandered off to die somewhere on the map of what’s real. I always wondered why.”

“But I just saw him.”

“Eight years ago, the man you sawtonightstepped down. Hisyounger self has been sharing the throne with his successor since then, getting her eased into the position. It’s not important. You’re not one of his people. He sent you here?”

“Yes.” Bobby pulled himself as tall as he could. “I’m here to make a deal.”

“And I’m here to tell you that you don’t want to do that. I’m your advocate. That means I tell you how much this isn’t worth it.”

“How much what isn’t worth what?”

“Whatever you want,” she said. “No matter what you ask for, they’ll charge you more than you can possibly pay. This is your chance. Go.”

Bobby sneered at her. “I’m staying right here, and I’m going to get my crossroads deal. I’m not scared of any bill.”

The girl sighed. “I tried. That’s all they can ask of me.”

A strange, heavy buzzing filled the air, drowning out the sound of wind in the corn. Bobby turned, unable to stop himself, and watched as a figure appeared out of nothingness. Only the figurewasnothingness, nothingness given a singular form, and looking directly at it hurt his eyes, so he didn’t allow himself to look away.

“A fair try, Miss Mary,” said the shape of nothing, and its voice was the buzzing in the air, horrible and distorted and inhuman. “A pity that they never listen, isn’t it? You can go now, if you’d like. We all know the outcome.”

“No,” said Mary. “You made me come here to advocate for him, and I’m going to advocate for him whether he likes it or not. You don’t get to use me to follow the rules when it suits you and then brush me off like a bit of lint when you can say you’ve done the bare minimum.”

The shape out of nothing didn’t have a face, or an expression; there was no way that it could look amused. And yet somehow, impossibly, it did precisely that.

“Brave little ghost,” it said. “Maybe we need to remind youwho you work for. But no matter. Fine, then. Diamond Bobby, you have come to the crossroads according to the path laid out by the routewitches. You have followed the rules, and we will do the same. What bargain do you come here to seek?”

Mary sighed, the sound soft and small and closely akin to the wind rattling the rafters on an abandoned house. Bobby shuddered. He was starting to get the idea that spending time with dead things was not in his best interests.

“I’m a star,” he said. “Everyone loves me. There’s not a straight bitch in Hollywood who wouldn’t drop her panties in a heartbeat if she thought I wanted her, and I never need to settle for any of them twice. I’m on top of the world.”

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