Sleeping Late On Judgement Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

The weather was pretty nice—November in Northern California is like September most other places—and I didn’t mind stretching my legs.
    I passed several of the city’s cherry-picker trucks: the public Christmas decorations go up in Jude right after Thanksgiving. You know, in case someone didn’t know it was the holiday shopping season, despite every store in the city draping itself in tinsel and pumping in canned versions of “The Little Drummer Boy” and “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.”
    Downtown Jude has really grown a lot in the last ten years. I admit to being just enough of an old-timer now to find some of it a bit irritating. They were pretty careful not to muck up the historical buildings at the heart of things, but everything else seemed to be painted these toy-town colors that really didn’t work for me—big swathes of yellow and purple and blue, bright colored awnings, lime-green lamp posts. Sometimes it looks like the whole downtown has been turned into a daycare center for overgrown children. I guess that’s progress of a sort. I’m told that in the 70s and 80s it got pretty grim in the old part of town, nothing but bums and liquor stores and strip joints, but I’ve lived downtown since I got out of the Harps, and I’m enough of a romantic to say I might have preferred the old version to living on
Sesame Street
. And now I hear Jude’s chamber of commerce wants to rename the old part of downtown “the Pioneer District.” Shudder.
    As I slowed down near the entrance to Beeger Square, to let a large family cross the intersection in front of me, I noticed that a couple of guys I’d seen earlier were still walking behind me and that they’d stopped too; they were now having a discussion in front of the showroom window of a baby needs store called Small Wonders, pointing at things and animatedly discussing them. The pair looked a bit like Mormon missionaries, young, clean-cut white guys wearing boring suits. I suppose they could have been a couple of young fathers-to-be, but the act seemed a little forced, and something about their suits and black shoes didn’t look quite right. Cops? The po-po did seem younger every year, at least to me. Or were these guys something more sinister?
    I was tempted to lure them into an alley and scare the shit out of them, but for all I knew they really were just a couple of kids looking for people who needed the word of Jesus. It would have been bad enough terrorizing innocent Mormons, but if they were undercover cops, things could get complicated. Besides, I had something to do and didn’t want to be observed, so I strolled into Beeger Square, doubled back behind one of the food trucks that swarmed to the square at lunch and dinner times, then slipped into one of the public restroom kiosks. I stayed there, savoring the smells of human failure for several charming minutes, then stepped back outside. No sign of the missionaries, so I headed out to the street corner where I had first successfully summoned Foxy Foxy, everybody’s favorite dancing dealer in stolen supernatural goods.
    When I reached the intersection of Marshall and Main I climbed onto the nearest pedestrian island, pushed the “WALK” button, then pretended to wait for the light. Nobody seemed to be looking, so I drew a line down the air and one of Heaven’s patented Zippers sprang into being. As the first group of pedestrians gathered around me I waited, then as soon as the light changed and they stepped off, I leaned in and softly called Fox’s name into the glowing crease that only angels and a few other select folk could see.
    He had appeared almost instantly the first time, so I looked around. The usual river of cars was inching past, but there was no sign of Mr. Fox—and believe me, he’s a hard guy to miss. I waited a minute or so, then was just about to try it again when I noticed something flitting