from THE POWER OF THE DARK GODDESS

"Oh great and powerful one, hear me. Please grant your wretched servant this simple request." With a mixture of hope and fear Ajay Sinha looked up at the ominous statue of Kali. The black goddess of Calcutta stood before him in all her menacing glory, eyes bulging and angry, her tongue covered with blood. She was adorned with a necklace of human skulls, a girdle of severed limbs, and her multiple arms clenched weapons, snakes, and a freshly decapitated head.

Ajay closed his eyes and tried to focus his mental energy on the compassionate aspect of the goddess, the side of Kali that showers her devotees with the all- encompassing reassurance of a mother's love. "Bestower of infinite peace and bliss, I am a poor man. I have two daughters. Please, not another girl to care for. I cannot pay the dowries for the daughters I have. I beg of you, no more girls." Tears sliding down his cheeks, he vowed to work from dawn until nightfall. He would earn enough money to offer a proper sacrifice to Kali; she would make the child in his wife's belly a boy.

Ajay bowed deeply, hurried down the crowded steps of the great Kalighat temple in Calcutta and searched for the man who was guarding the small vehicle that kept his family alive. He smiled at his friend, grasped the poles of his rickshaw, and entered a narrow street spilling over with worshipers rushing to the great temple. On Ashutosh Mukharii Road he maneuvered among the cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, three-wheeled pedicabs, rickshaws, oxcarts, cows, goats, donkeys, and pedestrians that jockeyed for position. It was half past six in the morning, time to pay the daily rent for his human-powered carriage. He dare not be late.

Mohammed Abdul Jinnah was seated behind a metal desk in a courtyard flanked by two of his ever-present bodyguards. Narrow shoulders and a bird-like chest sat atop a bulbous stomach fattened by chowpattis, sweet meats, and chocolates flecked with silver and gold. The early morning air was cool but Jinnah was already sweating, his blubbery neck encased in a high-collared shirt. Before taking breakfast that rolled into lunch, the rickshaw owner would change into the second of the numerous white linen suits he wore every day. He had to stay clean in this Hindu cesspool.

Clothed in nothing more than dhotis wrapped around bamboo-thin waists, the rickshaw wallahs standing in line were griping, but Ajay could not make out the source of their discontent. Because he was from the state of Bihar his mother tongue was Hindi and he had trouble understanding the Bengali language of most of his fellows. Two years in Calcutta and he still moved through the city only partially aware of what was happening around him.

"Sinha," Jinnah said matter-of-factly as Ajay approached the desk. "Fifty rupees. If you have trouble with that, ask your goddess for help."

"Fifty?" Ajay said in disbelief. "The cost is thirty rupees."

Jinnah pounded the desk with the flat of his hand and the growing pile of rupee notes jumped. "Pay fifty or get out."

Ajay could see beads of perspiration trickling down the fat man's forehead, the fury in his tiny almond-colored eyes. Unable to conceal his contempt for the vile Muslim who controlled his life, he took a twenty-rupee note from a ragged cloth purse and tossed it on the table.

"Why you miserable little Bihari bastard" Jinnah screamed so that all the rickshaw wallahs could hear him. "I'll show you. I'll show all of you." The short fat man stood up as his henchmen took a step forward. The circles of sweat under his arms grew larger as he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. The rickshaw wallahs who had been moving toward their chariots stopped. Perhaps the despised one would beat Ajay, his bodyguards ready to intervene at the first sign of resistance. It would not be the first time he attacked a rickshaw man who angered him. But what Jinnah did horrified them. Even the bodyguards looked surprised. He opened the half-full bottle, poured its contents over the stack of rupee notes from the morning's fare and then lit the bottom of the pile with a gold-plated cigarette lighter. The dry bills burned in a matter of seconds and the damp notes smoldered.

A few men rushed the desk as if to extinguish the fire but halted when the bodyguards stepped forward, scowls on their faces. Jinnah owned more than three hundred rickshaws, and the money represented thousands of hours of body and spirit-crushing labor. Ajay did not know what was worse, all those rupees gone up in smoke, or the thought of the pig happily spending them in such a mindless, insulting manner.

When the notes had turned to ashes the pear-shaped man swept them off of the table with his forearm. "Now get to work and bring me more rupees, or I'll fire every single one of you."

As Ajay darted to his rickshaw he turned and saw Jinnah pulsating with anger, the man's face flushed red. Jinnah shook a ring-studded fist at the wallahs and yelled, "You will be begging in the streets with lepers. Stinking Hindus." He pulled out a large silk handkerchief, carefully wiped his face and hands, examined his soot-covered right sleeve. It was time to change suits.

from THURSDAY IN L.A.

It was hot in Los Angeles, a major league scorcher. So hot that emergency rooms were overflowing with melted silicon cases, third-degree burns and incredibly shrinking body parts. Oh, the humanity.

My name's Thursday, Raul Thursday. I'm a gumshoe, a dick, a private dick. Private Investigator if you're looking in the yellow pages. I was sitting at my desk sorting paper clips by size, color, and manufacturer when I heard a knock on the door. Before I could answer, a tall blond bounced in sporting a pair of weapons of mass distraction that put a hammer in your toolbox, cork in your Louisville Slugger, and sent Viagara stock plunging.

"Mr. Thurrrrsday?" She purred like a spoiled house cat getting its belly scratched.

"You know my name."

"It's on your hat ... 'My name is Thursday — Really.'"

"Oh yeah."

"And what should I call you?"

"Allyer."

"One L or two?"

"Two" she said leaning into me, her perfume setting off sirens in my head. "The name is Allyer Desires, and I'm looking for a tough guy, somebody who can handle a big job." She sat on the corner of my desk and began massaging her thighs. "Are you a tough guy, Mr. Thursday?" she asked, staring at my Bugs Bunny lunch box.

"Don't let the rabbit fool you, Sweetheart. Everybody from the Big Apple is tough."

"Funny, you don't sound like you're from New York."

"I'm not."

"But you said the Big Apple?"

"The real Big Apple, sweet cheeks, Big Apple, Wisconsin, population 362. Make that 361, Granny died last month."

"Are you crying, Mr. Thursday?"

"She grew the best marijuana in the state ... I mean she made great cookies."

"I want you to find my husband."

My eyes slid down her dress taking in every curve. I hadn't been with a woman since the lady clown in the mortuary incident, and I was as horny as Bill Clinton at a Monica Lewinsky look-alike contest. "Lucky man," I said.

"Not really." She looked down at electric purple finger nails. Mine. "He's deceased."

"He's dead, and you don't know where he is?"

"I haven't seen him since he left the house a week ago."

"Then how do you know he's dead?"

She brushed the side of my face and with a soft hand. I noticed a small tattoo that might have been a rose under the cuff of her blouse. "Would you stay away from me for a week ... and still be alive?"

Good point, I thought. "I guess not."

"His name is Randall R. Randall." She took a roll of fifties out of her purse only slightly smaller than Pee Wee Herman's head and tossed them on the desk.

"So what's the R stand for, or is it obvious?"

"I don't know. But he gets very, very angry when I ask." Her voice spiked at the second 'very.' "Find him by Friday, Thursday, and Saturday there'll be a little something extra in it for you. Something you really want." She licked her lips, smiled, then headed for the door. "Call me. I'm in the book, right after 'Desirable Drapes, Doghouses and Beyond.'"

I floated on the scent of her perfume until the shrill of the phone brought me crashing back to reality. "Thursday here." I said. No answer. "Who's on the line?"

"That's right," the mystery voice said.

"What?"

"He just left."

"Who just left?"

"No, I'm still here."

"What?"

"Professor Wot just left with Mr.Wen. This is Dr. Hu." I could hear the panic in his voice, like a Hooters girl waiting on a table full of drunken sailors back from a six-month cruise. "I have information about ... about. It's imperative I see you immediately. Pick me up at the corner of First and Magnolia. I'll be carrying an umbrella."

I bolted out the door into the outer office. Mona, the secretary I share with Urine the Know, the city's only mobile drug-testing company, was trying to teach her parrot to yodel in Serbo-Croatian. "Gotta run. Have to pick somebody up on First Avenue."

"Who's on First?"

Damn she's good, I thought. How did she know that?

from SORRY ABOUT THAT

It began as just another international incident, the last item on the evening news. Ten seconds of coverage, no film: India and Pakistan having another round of border skirmishes with a handful of casualties on each side. Two weeks later war exploded across the front page as rival armies threw themselves at each other with deadly efficiency. Of course nobody thought the fighting would escalate into a nuclear conflict until New Delhi disappeared under a mushroom cloud that made dead birds fall from the sky for a thousand miles.

For a few days it looked as though the carnage would be limited to Asia. But when the Indians vaporized Islamabad, the superpowers lined up behind their respective allies. All the politicos said we had nothing to worry about. No one would dare attack us, and even if they did, the Star Wars defense system was capable of "neutralizing" any threat. Who could have known they had so many, many warheads?

We had bought the house from a retired Air Force general, a Cold War commander who had a spacious underground bomb-shelter buried in the backyard. The kids used it as a playhouse and my buddies and I turned our doomsday bunker into a Monday Night Football den, the "Men's Room." Over the Labor Day holiday Joan hauled the kids to her mother's place for the last long weekend of the summer. I feigned sickness and stayed home; I'd do anything to get away from the constant squabbling associated with raising children. It was nothing more than dumb luck that I was in the shelter when the attack came, sleeping off a Black Russian hangover after a disastrous poker game and dreading the arrival of two knife-wielding, low-life brothers who accused me of diddling their sister. Which I was.

I couldn't figure out why nothing was on the radio or TV. CNN had an ongoing picture of the news desk but no smiling broadcasters with shiny white teeth and I'm-from-nowhere generic accents. When I climbed out of the shelter, everything looked normal until I got to the front of the house. Cars were stopped in the middle of the street in both directions. Some had jumped the curb onto sidewalks and lawns. I ran over to a pick-up truck and saw the driver slumped over the steering wheel as if he had suffered a heart attack. I looked at every askew vehicle in the street and found the same thing. Then I saw the body of a kid about eleven or twelve crumpled next to a bicycle. The freckle-faced boy was delivering newspapers, a first baseman's glove dangling from his handlebars. I fell to my knees and thought of my own children, my wife.

The downtown area was strewn with bodies. People had dropped dead in their tracks, as if some all-powerful being had snapped its fingers and said "OK, game's over, you lose." Tiny sparrow carcasses were everywhere. Stunned into a state of shock, I waited for whatever had killed them to kill me. But nothing happened. I didn't even feel sick.

Wandering through the deserted town, I finally came upon a living human being, an attractive woman sitting on a park bench with her head buried in her hands, sobbing. She said she had been locked in the bank vault overnight. The emergency intercom didn't work and when the door automatically opened at nine in the morning she stepped into a brave new world. Her name was Rebecca.

Neither one of us had had anything to eat or drink since the night before. We started with bottled water and canned food. Two days later we cooked a meal in the deserted kitchen of an upscale seafood restaurant and came up with a plan. The idea was to load up with supplies and head out to the valley. The smell of decomposing bodies in the city was too much to take. I convinced Rebecca not to stop at her parents' house because it would be more of the same.

The next morning we drove off in a giant SUV fitted with a trailer hitch from a car dealership. I spotted a trailer at a rental yard and hooked it up. Figuring we might return, we dragged bodies out of a supermarket for an hour, did the same thing at an outdoor store, loaded everything in the trailer and left. A few hours later I spotted the kind of farmhouse you see on calendars fostering the rural dream. There were no vehicles parked out front and no bodies inside, so we moved in.

We phoned friends and relatives across the country, then dialed random numbers all over the world. Nobody answered. We drove as far north as San Francisco and then down to Las Vegas where the neon landscape was siphoning the last juice from a giant bank of generators. We never saw a living thing — not a person, bird, cat, or dog.

The lush green pastures in the valley were covered with decomosing livestock. Those first few weeks were somber as we grieved for our loved ones and everybody else. Rebecca was 28, single, and deeply religious. One day during our umteenth canned-food meal I was to find out how much. "Charlie," she said. "Everybody's dead. Now it's time to stop grieving. We have to talk about the second phase of God's plan, what He wants us to do."

"Second phase of what? I didn't know there was a first phase."

Her eyes lit up with the chance to explain her new vision. "God's plan is perfectly clear."

"Not to me it isn't," I said, finishing the last of my extra-spicy baked beans.

"Just think about it. The destruction, everyone but us ... gone. That was no accident, no war that simply got out of hand."

"It wasn't?"

"Of course not. God has cleansed the world of evil and is giving what is left of mankind ... you and me ... a second chance."

"Second chance?"

"Yes. And this time it will be different."

All's Well That Ends Well

Marsha has the hots for personal trainer Rashid, a deep-cover Al Qaeda agent.

Buffy, who yearns for Marsha, discovers Rashid taking pictures of the nuclear power plant.

Buffy tells John who shoots Rashid and becomes a local hero.

John and Marsha reconcile.

Buffy moves to Cleveland.

Second Chance

In a chance encounter they met at a busy café on the east side of heaven.

Martha was hand-in-hand with her first boyfriend, Frank with his arm around a high-school sweetheart.

They smiled at each other, exchanged pleasantries, and walked away.

The Interview

"Four years."

"What for?"

"I'd rather not say."

"I have to know."

"Can't we move on to something else?"

"If you want this position, tell me."

"It was a job interview. The personnel manager wouldn't hire me, so I stabbed him. Seven times."

"Can you start tomorrow?"

"Let's talk salary."

Good News, Bad News

"The bad news, Doc."

"You have an aggressive, always fatal sexually transmitted disease."

"And the good news?"

"With enough morphine, your last days should be comfortable."

"And you Doctor, good news or bad news first?"

"I don't get it?"

"You will, I'm sleeping with your wife."

Take a Hike

"Beautiful."

"We're at 17,000 feet, bagged the peak, and heading home."

"I had a bizarre dream."

"Tell me about it."

"I saw us coming down the mountain, heard a voice say: 'One of you will die today.'"

"You or me?"

"I don't know."

"Forget it."

"I can't."

"Where you goin' with my boots?"