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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

I watched him saunter off, hands in his pockets and big shoulders rounded. It had gone cold, especially for a July night, and I was just considering whether I wanted to stop back in at the Compasses or head home when someone softly cleared her throat just behind me.

I spun around. Standing in the garish light of the Korean restaurant’s window was an old Hispanic-looking woman, a stranger. She extended a hand toward me, and I saw she was holding a slightly ratty bunch of carnations with a rubber band around them.

“No thanks,” I said out of reflex, but even as I did so I realized I had done a dangerous thing, walking out into the night with my guard down. And just as I realized this, I realized I had seen this woman before, but not as a woman. Something in the face was familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“You’re not going to buy a flower from a nice old lady, Bobby?” She smiled, showing me some authentic-looking, small-town Mexican dentistry. “How about taking a stroll with me, then?”

I had my hand inside my coat, groping for the butt of my FN, before I realized who it was. “Temuel?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

The archangel nodded and rearranged her headscarf. “And I really would like to take a little walk.”

forty-six

the funniest racist i know

IT WAS about midnight, but the Camino Real was still pretty busy. We walked south, past the clubs and liquor stores of the mixed-up neighborhood that had grown between Spanishtown and the rich, might-as-well-be-private streets of the Atherton District. We walked more than a few blocks, and Temuel didn’t seem in any hurry to start talking.

Meanwhile I was doing my best to figure out where my archangel and I stood. There were some things I was definitely going to tell him, including how I delivered his message in Hell, and what happened because of it. There was some other stuff I thought I should mention, but carefully, like the fact that Walter Sanders was now working as an accountant on a religious missionary’s pirate ship in Hell. But there were other things I felt much less comfortable discussing: Caz was one of them, of course, but so was a lot of the stuff about Smyler, most definitely including the fact that I now felt pretty sure the crazy little monster was sent by Anaita, a high-ranking angel who just happened to be one of Temuel’s own superiors.

Someday I’d love to be able to have a conversation with somebody who has no secrets or subtext, just to see what it’s like. I bet it would be fun. At the very least, it would be less exhausting than what I usually have to go through.