Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan

coffee,” which was true, she did. But the driver grunted and rolled his eyes at her, so Niki added, “Cafe Alhazred, on Fulton,” though it wasn’t her favorite, just the first thing that popped into her head.
    “Ma’am, are you high or somethin’?” he asked. “I know it ain’t exactly none of my concern, and it don’t make me much difference if you are. I ain’t gonna put you out. I just want to know, in case somethin’ happens.”
    Niki nodded her head, thinking that she should feel more offended at his question than she did, and then she remembered the three prescription bottles in her pocket and took one of them out to show the driver. She held the Xanax bottle up so he could see it.
    “I’m on prescription medication,” she said, wishing that he’d just drive and stop glaring at her in the mirror. “Sometimes it makes me a little groggy in the morning.”
    “You don’t say?”
    “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
    “Yeah, you’re probably right,” the driver said. “Sorry,” and he pushed the lever that started the cab’s meter running and pulled away from the curb. “Say, exactly what kind of animal you gotta skin to get a fur coat that color, anyhow?”
    “It’s not real fur,” Niki replied absentmindedly and glanced at the house as they passed it, all the tall windows dark, the curtains drawn. So Marvin must still be asleep, and I got away, she thought.
    “That’s sorta reassurin’,” the driver said and turned west onto Fulton Street.
    “I think you must talk more than any cab driver I’ve ever met,” Niki said to him and put her boots up on the back of the seat, the brown suede boots with bright, canary-yellow laces that made her feet look huge and blocky, Frankenstein feet, and she slid far enough down that she didn’t have to look at the square anymore.
    “Well, I don’t intend to drive this ol’ hack all my life. I plan on writin’ a novel one day, a best seller, after I retire, and so I gotta pay close attention and talk to folks. I figure my book’s gonna have real people, not a bunch’a made-up phonies.”
    “Someone will just sue you,” Niki said. She realized that she hadn’t put the pill bottle back in her pocket, and she shook it a couple of times. The pills made a dry, pleasant sound against the plastic, a comforting noise like a baby’s rattle or a very small maraca.
    “Oh, I ain’t gonna use nobody’s real name. I’ll come up with brand-new ones that fit people better than their real names.”
    “Doesn’t matter,” Niki said. “They’ll figure out what you did and sue you, anyway.”
    “Damn, you sure got a cynical streak, girl,” the driver mumbled and then honked his horn at a UPS truck that had pulled out in front of him. “Someone go and piss in your cornflakes this mornin’ or what?”
    “I hope you don’t have your heart set on a tip,” she said and opened the bottle, shook one of the Xanax out into her hand. The swelling on her palm was worse, but the welt had almost stopped hurting, had begun to feel a little numb, in fact. The bump had turned the color of a raisin.
    “Now, see? That is exactly what I mean. I’ll probably be naming you somethin’ awful, like…” and then he paused to honk at a rusty red Toyota and call the driver a blind hippie son of a bitch. He tugged once at the frayed brim of his Giants cap, and “Well, somethin’ disagreeable,” he said. “Eudora Bittlesnipe, maybe, or maybe Miss Suzy Sourmilk.”
    “No one’s going to read a book full of names like that,” Niki said and popped the pill into her mouth. “It’ll be a big flop, and you’ll wind up living on the street.”
    “Well, though it’s been an inspirin’ pleasure making your acquaintance, Miss Bittlesnipe, and I hate to see you go, I think this is your stop,” and he pulled over at the corner of Fulton and Divisadero.
    Niki sat up, quickly swapped the pill bottle for her billfold, plain black leather with her initials in