"A Kissi ran his hands around inside me. I didn't like it."
"This won't be like that. For one thing, you won't feel it. I have some special salve that'll numb you up good."
"I like the sound of that."
"Let's just get started."
He takes a stoppered bottle from the counter, opens it, and pours something thick, like Karo syrup, in a line down my chest. Then he takes a sponge-headed brush and paints the stuff across my body, from my neck down to my stomach.
He puts the brush back on the counter and says, "Tell me when that stuff gets warm."
"I think it's there already."
"Close your eyes for a minute."
I close them and he says, "Feel that?"
"No. Did you already put your hand in my chest?"
"Does it feel like I did?"
"No."
"Good. Then you're ready. Feel free to keep your eyes closed."
"Are you going to wear gloves or something, at least?"
"Of course I'm wearing goddamn gloves. I'm not a goddamn Kissi."
"Sorry."
"It's all right."
There's a clank. Like metal on metal.
"What was that?"
"That's bullet one."
"That was easy."
"See? We could have done this a long time ago and saved you some pain."
"I'll call you after my next shooting."
"Or you could try not getting shot."
"Where's the fun in that?"
He laughs a little.
"That's why you and Candy get along. That's what she'd say."
Candy is the last thing I want to talk to Kinski about when he has his hands in my guts.
"What's the going rate for magic surgery?"
Another piece of metal drops.
"It's on the house."
I don't say anything for a minute.
"How the hell do you make a living? You never have any patients and you don't charge me for surgery or for dragging my friends in here. What's going on?"
"You're tensing up. Relax. Every time you move, the bullets shift."
"Okay."
"And for your information, how I make a living is my business, not yours. As for why I don't charge you, let me ask you a question. Have you ever asked yourself how you survived all those years in Hell? Do really think you lived with Hellions and survived the arena because you're that much of a badass?"
"I don't know. I used to think about it, but I could never find any reasons. And I was kind of busy getting my ass kicked, so I stopped worrying about it."
"Well, you're back and there aren't any monsters chasing you right now. Tell me how it is that you, by yourself, managed to stay alive all those years."
"I don't know."
"Guess."
"I don't know. I'm nothing special."
"You think so? You fell into the bottom of the cesspool of Creation, survived and crawled out again. Doesn't that sound just a little special?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do. A regular person, a civilian, wouldn't have lasted a day down there, much less eleven years."
Another piece of metal falls.
"What does that mean?" I ask.
"Maybe it means you're different. Maybe it means that you're not who you think you are. Maybe it means you're not entirely human."
I open my eyes and look at him. No matter how hard I look and listen, I can't read him. Can't hear his heart or his breathing. Nothing.
"I don't like where this is going, doc."
"Another minute. We're almost there."
I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing. I didn't like seeing his hands moving around under my skin.
"You haven't answered the question. Are you human or not?"
"If I'm not human, what am I?"
"Same as me. An angel not quite fit for heaven or hell."
Another piece of metal falls. The fifth bullet.
I feel Kinski lean back. Hear him walk to the sink and wash his hands.
He says, "You can put your shirt back on."
I sit up on the table.
"What did you just say to me, man?"
He wipes his hands on a towel and says, "It's going to be harder for you than it is for me. I made concious choices that got me here. Half the universe hated you before you were born."
He moves slowly, choosing his words carefully. That much I can see. He's not high or drunk and he doesn't give off a Looney Tunes vibe. Still.
"Put your shirt on. Let's go have a smoke."
I follow him into the parking lot. The sun hurts my eyes after having them closed. I watch the doc, looking for any signs of obvious craziness. I could make a break for the Benz, but I'm a little woozy from the surgery.
Kinski is looking at me. He takes out a cigarette and offers me the pack. I take one.
"If you don't want to hear this, I'm not going to force you. I just thought that maybe you'd like to know who you are, why certain things have happened to you, and why certain other things are going to happen in the future."
"I'm listening."
"I'm sure Miss Aelita told you about God's great fuckup at the beginning of time. The thing is, there are other stories regular folks aren't supposed to know about. One is about how in the early days of the world, after what happened in Eden, yet another great fuckup, God sent angels to Earth to look after humans. These angels didn't float around in the sky with big white wings and harps. They lived as ordinary people. Had jobs. Farmed. Fought in wars. All the things regular people do. The only thing they couldn't do was fraternize with humanity. They had to remain apart and aloof so that they could be watchful."
I smoked my cigarette and watched the smog rim the clouds with funny shades of blue and gold.
"The problem with this plan is that you can't take anything, even angels, put them in a human body, give them a human life, and not expect them to start feeling and acting just a little human. Even falling in love. Even having children.
"The children these angels had with mortal women were called nephilim. There were a lot of them around once upon a time. Now, not so many."
"Why not?"
"They were killed. So were the angels who fathered them and the mothers who gave birth to them."
"Why?"
"They had to. There had to be no record, no trace that they ever existed. Most of those doing the killing didn't call the children nephilim. They had another name for them."
"Abomination."
Kinski nods.
"Smart boy."
"If you're not Doc Kinski, who the hell are you?"
"They took away my real name when they kicked me out of Heaven. Normally, when an angel falls from grace, that angel ends up with other fallen ones in Hell. That would have been too embarrassing in my case. See, I was an archangel. Uriel, the Guardian of the Earth. If they'd sent me all the way down, they knew what would happen. Lucifer would have thrown me a ticker tape parade. God wasn't going to let that happen. So, here I am. I run a little under-the-radar human fix-it shop next to some nice ladies who do other ladies' nails."
"What did you do to the kicked out of heaven?"
"I killed another angel."
"Why?"
"He deserved it."
I flick the remains of my cigarette out into the parking lot.
"Can I get another?"
The doc offers me one from the pack. I light it with Mason's lighter.
"Does Vidocq knew about this nephilim thing?"
"You mean, does he know what you are? He's a smart man who's read a lot of book. He can do the math."
"This is fucking ridiculous. I'm no goddam angel."
"Sure, you're a perfectly normal boy. You were born able to do more magic than most Sub Rosa learn in a lifetime. You survived Hell. You saved the world and you corraled the Kissi. Typical underachiever."
A skinny kid in a striped shirt and backward baseball cap comes out of the pizza joint, carrying a pile of boxes to the delivery van.
The doc nods toward him. "That kid is smarter than both of us put together. He's got a car and all the pizza he can eat. What more does a man need?"
He smiles at his own joke. It's the first time I've seen him be anything but serious.
"If I believe all this, where does that leave me?"
The smile fades.
"Not anywhere good, I am sorry to say. You're an Abomination. You'll always be an Abomination. Hell hates you for being more than a human and Heaven hates you for being less than an angel."
"No wonder I couldn't get a date for the prom."
"There's something else you need to know." He looks at his watch. "I should call Candy soon. See how she's doing. I have her on double doses of the blood substitute."
"Is she going to be all right?"
"Hard to say. It's hard to fight your own nature. I couldn't do it. Angels are creatures made to love and protect humanity, only we weren't supposed to fall in love. But I did. Candy's a predator. A killer through and through. She's trying to change that and I'm trying to help her. Maybe that's a mistake."
"I thought it was you who was making her give up the kill."
"No. She came to me."
"I wouldn't have guessed that."
"Like I said, I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing by helping her. There's something else you ought to know about the nephilim. Not all of them were killed off by God's hit squads. Your kind is mostly gone because you tend to kill yourselves. You're not the most stable being, but I guess you knew that."
"Is that how you got that wound on your arm? Those guys who tried to shove you into a car. Those were angels trying to kill you?"
Kinski laughs.
"No, boy. Heaven doesn't worry about me anymore. Those were Kissi. They were shopping for one last angel for their New Year's party."
I look at him hard, trying to read him. Wanting a final, for-real take on him. But he's a blank wall.
He smiles at me.
"I know what you're doing. You can't read angels like regular people. Even angels can't always read other angels. Otherwise we would have never had that little dustup with Lucifer in Heaven."
"Can you read me?"
"Of course."
"What am I thinking?"
"You're afraid I'm crazy because that's one more person you can't count on. And you're afraid I'm telling the truth 'cause that means you were screwed before you ever drew your first breath."
That's exactly what I'm thinking.
"Will I be like you? Will I be able to read you someday?"
He shrugs.
"It's hard to say. With nephilim, it's always different. Some are more human and some are almost angels and can do almost anything angels do. You'll know what you can do when you can do it. That's all I can tell you."
"Let's say I believe this story. Could you fix me up with a cocktail like Candy's? Make me like a regular person?"
"I wouldn't even try."
"Why not?"
"You always had magic, but you came into your real power in Hell. You were running wild, not holding yourself back like the nephilim that grew up around humans. You found yourself and accepted what you could do without all the angst and bullshit that they went through."
"And what is it I can do?"
"Warrior is the nice word, the traditional word, but that's just a polite way of saying that you're a natural-born killer. You're Sandman Slim, the monster who kills monsters. I'm not going to drug you up to change that."
"Even if I wanted to change it?"
"Especially then. How many angels showed up to save the world the other night? Did Aelita and her little quilting bee conquer the evil at Avila's heart? No. It took a monster to walk between all the forces massed there and to beat them all. No one else could have done that."
"There were two monsters there," I remind him.
He nods.
"Right. Two monsters."
The pizza delivery boy brings out a second pile of pizza boxes, loads them in the van, backs up, and heads into the afternoon traffic. He gives us the finger on the way out of the parking lot.
"I can feel a lot of stuff pinballing around in your head. You want to tell me what you think about all this?"
"If your story is true, then one of my parents fucked an angel. Which one?"
"Why does that matter?"
"It doesn't, but I want to know."
"Your mother."
"I thought so. My father was gone a lot on sales calls. Mom was lonely and pretty. I guess that explains some things about my father."
"If you say so."
"He knew I wasn't his."
"But he still raised you. Give him credit for that."
"He wanted me dead."
"Hell, boy. At some point, all fathers want to kill their sons. Just like all sons think about killing their old man. They're too much alike or the're not enough alike. It doesn't matter. What's beautiful is that they don't do it."
"Are there other nephilim around?"
"It's not like there's a newsletter or anything, but as far as I know, you're the only one."
"I used to worry all the time about being boring. Suddenly boring looks pretty good."