“That makes him the useful one,” Saul said. “Me, I’m here to class the joint up.”
“Of course,” she said, cracking a slight smile. “I’m Kali.”
“Oh, the goddess of destruction,” Saul said automatically.
“I’m sorry?” she looked confused. “Callie, um, Caroline. Caroline Stevens.” He heard the spelling to it now.
“Did you want to order lunch?” Saul said, tilting his head towards the booths. “We don’t really have the kitchen going but I can get you a sandwich, or sandwiches if you’re taking it to a... group.”
“She’s here about the statue, Saul,” Kurt said, a hint of anger in his voice. “Am I right?”
“Ah,” Callie said. “Well, as it happens, yes.” She clasped her purse in front of her with both hands. “I had to see it for myself.”
Oh, Saul thought. “Of course, you saw it in the weekly?” That would have to be the place.
Callie nodded, pulling a folded, crude grocery store weekly from her purse and unfolding it. She looked down at the paper and read in an awkward dullness, “‘Hey you go-heads, don’t forget to cast off your cares and whatever else you like with a sandwich and a beer at Cafe Monstro, now open right next to Markie’s Trunks and Gear. There’s grub in the front and books in the back and all manner of daytime nightmares and dreams, and while you’re there check out the crucified monster. Proprietors Kurt and Saul call him THE STATIONS OF THE MONSTER, but we just call him...’” and here she looked up,
“...‘swell.’”
Saul winced. “That’s not exactly how we would have written an ad.”
“The Stations of the Monster?” she asked.
“That’s what it’s called,” Kurt said.
“Like the Stations of the Cross?”
Kurt took a drag without removing the cigarette, smoke billowing as he talked. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
“Does it?” she snapped, as though something had escaped from her and she clamped it back. She blinked mightily against the smoke.
“Kurt, take that meshuge thing to the bar,” Saul laughed. Kurt shrugged and turned, crushing the cigarette in an ashtray on the bar a few yards away. Saul went on, “Like most artists, Kurt doesn’t like to talk about the meaning of his work, but I think it’s safe to say it’s a... you know, a clever commentary on popular culture.”
“There are other pieces,” Kurt said, gesturing at the walls. Callie’s eyes followed his indication to the long line of paintings, not really taking them in, which was just as well. Saul let his own eyes drift across the canvases, some of them abstract, some of them clear nightmares, witches on the gallows, and some that he was hoping she wouldn’t see at all.
“Mr. Cohn,” she said.
“Saul, by all means.”
“Hmm. I have to tell you I represent the Laguna Beach Decency League.”
Saul nearly laughed out loud, touched his lips. “I’m sorry?”
Kurt did laugh. “You’re kidding. What?”
“The Laguna Beach Decen—”
“Is there really such a thing?” Kurt asked.
“Oh, there is,” Saul said at once, because though he had never heard of such a preposterous thing as the Laguna Beach Decency League, he could tell that there was one, and Kali the Goddess of Destruction was their long-knived vanguard. In his mind he saw her in full regalia, six arms, a sea of skulls at her feet.
“There is, I have to tell you,” Callie said. She stepped back as though they might lunge for her, these two men who Saul thought were probably objectively as threatening as Abbot & Costello. “I have come here to tell you, formally tell you, that the League has lodged a formal complaint with the City Council about this... this piece of sacrilege.”
“Formally?” Saul said, amused that she liked the word enough to use it twice so close together. She was probably using it over and over in her mind: be formal. Be strong and formal, Caroline. He peered at the tiny new crow’s feet near her eyes and felt as though he could sail past them, and there she was, nervous and tiny, making a speech at the public library, wanting desperately to win a... an elocution ribbon? That seemed right.
Saul didn’t think of that as any kind of big magic trick. The ribbon, the need, all of that was true, but he knew it for the same reason he’d been able to make it in the Catskills before he’d found his true calling: he could spin a yarn about anyone he met. Just using what he saw in people. The stuff that lay there for anyone to see.
She wanted so desperately to be formal, did Caroline Matthews, and he probed no further. He was full of warmth for this dangerous woman because he was charmed by her. He reminded himself that that was often a mistake. Many times he underestimated the danger of adults because he wanted to protect the child within them.
“What does a formal complaint entail?” Saul held up a hand to stay Kurt, who he sensed was going to say something a lot less helpful.
“Well,” the woman said, relieved to be answering a sensible question. “There will be a hearing, and I have to say the most likely result is that it will need to be removed.”
“When is this to be?”
“We haven’t set a date, but I would expect a notice before next month’s meeting,” she said solemnly. Which was no answer at all.
“And, for the sake of argument, what happens if we don’t agree that this... I’m sorry,” Saul said, trying to find the right track. “It’s not sacrilegious, first, but even... I don’t even know what that means in a private restaurant.”
“I’m sure you can make that argument,” she said. “You are free to attend during the open part of the meeting.”
Kurt shook his head. “You’re asking us to throw it out?”
She shrugged. “Mister Macintyre, I’m sure your business can sustain itself with one less piece of work.”
“And what if we say no?”
Callie smiled. “Let’s not get to that,” she said.
Saul could see it, though, and it didn’t take a mind reader. There would be more complaints, and raids, and probably one of the kids they might accidentally sell beer to would turn out to be a cop’s son, and there goes the liquor license, and oh, yes, there were lots of ways to take down a local business.
He nodded slowly and shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. Friendly, like it was all business. “Okay, then. We’ll be at the meeting and see how it goes. Now, is there anything else? Would you care for a soda pop?”
She looked at him as though she wasn’t sure if he were teasing her. “Actually, there is. Could I have a look at your book section?”
He smiled painfully and nodded, leading her back past the booths. As he glanced back he saw her shaking her head at the paintings, stopping for a moment to stare at Kurt’s painting called Massacre of the Ushers, which featured several naked people (with theater usher hats) fleeing a crumbling house afire. It was just abstract enough that you couldn’t really see anything, but the imagination did everything one needed to be appalled if you were Kali the Laguna Beach Goddess of Destruction.
They reached a doorway with a beaded curtain, and Saul held the beads back so that Callie could step through them untouched. She wrinkled her nose at the beads as though they were alive with disease.