Angels on Fire Page 3

  Lucy let out a deep breath. Okay, at least communicating with the thing was easier than talking to the average cab driver.

  “You are a deathling, Lucy Bender.”

  Her smile disappeared. Maybe speaking English wasn’t going to make communication that much easier, after all. “Uh—I’m a human, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You die. You are a deathling.” Joth spoke as casually as if it was telling her the sky was blue. Lucy did not feel threatened or menaced by the statement, although had it come from anyone or anything else that most surely would not have been the case.

  “Die? Me? Personally? Well, not yet—I mean—” She was quickly getting flustered. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to be the first statement out of the angel’s mouth, but she certainly hadn’t expected it to be, well, so personal.

  Joth pointed at the television, which was still chattering away to itself on the dresser. “These creatures are deathlings as well?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “I want to see other deathlings.” Joth got to its feet so quickly she didn’t see it move. One moment it was perched on the chair, knees drawn up to its chin, the next it was facing her, peering at her with its unwavering, translucent gaze.

  Lucy was so startled she couldn’t find the breath to cry out—all that came from her was a sharp, short gasp. The angel was so close it threatened to send her into a claustrophobic panic. Whatever it might or might not know about “deathlings,” it was clearly ignorant of personal space. Lucy reflexively planted a hand on the creature’s hairless chest, which felt as smooth as a firm peach, and gave it a gentle shove. To her surprise, the angel flew backward, striking the easy chair with enough force to knock it over.

  “Oh God! I’m so sorry! Are you okay!?!” she gasped. “I didn’t mean to do that!”

  “I do not understand—I have done wrong?” There was no surprise, no anger, and no fear in Joth’s face or in its voice, just confusion.

  “I really didn’t mean to push you that hard! It’s just—well, you can’t do that!”

  “What must I not do?”

  “Stand that close! And it’s not just me—you can’t do that to anyone! People—uh, deathlings—don’t like it when someone gets that close to them— it’s considered hostile.”

  “Hos-tile.” Joth weighed the word as it spoke, swirling it in its mouth like Beaujolais. “What is hos-tile?”

  “You know: angry, uptight, mad.”

  Again with the blank stare. Lucy rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to figure out a simple means of explaining basic human social etiquette to an angel. “Joth, you can’t get in people’s faces like that—it’s rude.”

  “Rude.”

  “Look, just don’t do it again, understand?”

  Joth nodded, visibly relieved by this instruction. “It is not permitted. Therefore it is not to be done.” The words had the ring of a liturgical response.

  “What are you, Joth? Are you from another planet? Or did you escape from a genetics lab—is that it? Are you a mutant?”

  “I am elohim.”

  “Is that the name of the planet you’re from?”

  “From?”

  “Yeah, you know—your home. The place you were born.”

  “Born?” Joth’s look of slight bafflement seemed permanent now. “Elohim are not born. We are Created.”

  “You’re clones?”

  “Elohim are servants of the Clockwork. We exist only to tend the Clockwork. We see to the Clockwork’s every need. We regulate the Clockwork. We repair the Clockwork. That is what elohim do.”

  “Okay. Great. Now we’re getting somewhere. What does this Clockwork thingie do?”

  “It Creates.”

  “It creates what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “Worlds. Universes. Galaxies. Sea horses.”

  “You mean it’s God?”

  “That is one of the Clockwork’s names; yes.”

  Lucy groaned and plopped down on the corner of her bed. Suddenly her legs seemed wobbly. Even though she’d called the thing an angel, she had come to see it as more of an alien life form from another planet where people had evolved from birds. You know, something weird but rational; something scientific.

  But if what Joth was saying was what it really meant—then she was sharing the room with an actual ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ angel. Except this goober certainly didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen gracing the top of a Christmas tree.

  All the angels she’d ever seen—well, not personally, but in picture books and in the movies—had either looked like blonde women, Cary Grant or a beardless hippie in a long white dress with giant white wings like those of a swan, not the world’s biggest hummingbird. What had it said? ‘We’re not born. We’re Created.’ Just like a gingerbread man.

  “So, uh, Joth, is it? What are you doing here?”

  “I am here.”

  “Yeah, I know. But why?”

  “I am here.”

  “I can see that, but I want to know the reason for why you’re here and not in Heaven, or wherever it is you’re from.”

  “I do not know that answer.”

  Joth was back on its feet again, although now careful to give Lucy plenty of space. It darted about the confines of the bedroom like a hummingbird on speed, picking up things and putting them down, opening and shutting dresser-drawers, repeatedly opening and closing the doors to her wardrobe and obsessively touching each and every one of her garments in a matter of a heartbeat.

  “Stop that! Leave my stuff alone!”

  Joth instantly stopped and came to rest in the middle of the room. Despite its having picked up and touched everything that wasn’t nailed down, Lucy couldn’t tell if anything had actually been moved. Even the dresser drawers were back to their habitual half-open state.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” she demanded.

  Joth blinked. “I am here.”

  “Aw, Jesus, are we back to this again?” Lucy threw her hands up in surrender. “I give up trying to talk to you! I’ll let the professional interviewers deal with your ass! Let them ask you questions until they’re blue in the face! I don’t care! Where’s that damn phone?”

  She stalked out of the bedroom and headed up the hall towards the living room, Joth following a few steps behind her. She found what was left of her phone lying in several pieces in the foyer. “Cheap-ass piece of shit!” she groaned as she picked at the ruins. “One thing’s for sure—they don’t make these things out of the same stuff as bowling balls anymore.” She glanced at Joth, who was—literally—hovering just behind her. “Looks like I’ll have to alert the media to the existence of God the old-fashioned way—by going to the city desk in person. Oh, and do me a favor—? Cut out the hovercraft routine, okay? Your wings are giving me a headache.”

  Joth’s wings immediately halted their whirring and the angel’s bare feet slapped against the floor.

  “Thank you,” Lucy sighed.

  If Joth heard her, it gave no outward sign. Instead, its pellucid eyes were focused on something else entirely. Lucy followed its line of sight and realized that what had captured the angel’s attention was one of her photographs— a hand-tinted print of the irises resting atop her mother’s casket.

  “What—? Do you like that?”

  Joth walked over to where the picture was hanging and tilted its head first to one side, then the other, as it stared at the photograph. And then shoved its hand through the glare-proof glass. Lucy cried out as the angel tried, in vain, to pluck the flower free of the photo, oblivious to the glass slicing its fingers. She quickly pulled Joth away from the shattered picture frame and into the kitchen, simultaneously turning on the faucet and snatching a fistful of paper towels from the dispenser over the sink.

  “Are you all right? Does it hurt? How bad are you cut?”

  “Hurt?”

  “Just let me
see your hand, okay?”

  Joth obediently extended its left hand.

  Lucy shook her head. “No, the other one! The one that’s bleeding.” She looked more closely at the angel’s injured hand. “What the hell?!?” There were several deep cuts along the angel’s fingers and visible shards of glass jutting from its palm, but in the place of blood a milky substance leaked from the wounds. Even as Lucy watched, the lacerations began to seal themselves. Within seconds the angel’s hand was whole again. Stunned, Lucy turned Joth’s hand over, looking for signs scarring—only to realize Joth didn’t have any fingerprints.

  She’d read of professional hit-men burning their prints off with acid or laser-surgery, but this went way beyond simple self-mutilation. There weren’t even lines on the angel’s palms. Joth’s hands were as smooth and featureless as those of a rubber doll. And, now that she was close enough to notice, she realized that the hands also lacked fingernails. Also, there was something about the way its golden, shoulder-length tresses lay flat against its skull that suggested Joth didn’t have any ears, either.

  When she’d first found it, she had perceived the angel as a winged human—but now she realized that Joth was actually an approximation of a human. Yet, for all its alien features, Lucy could not find it in herself to be repulsed or frightened by the thing standing in her kitchen. After all, it certainly didn’t possess the brainpower or malice to do her harm. If anything, it reminded her of a cross between a Labrador retriever puppy and the duck that had accidentally flown into the patio door when she was a kid. Plus, Joth’s beatific good looks and lack of gender rendered even the unspoken tension between the sexes moot.

  From certain angles Joth resembled an effeminate man, and at others a mannish woman. The over-all effect was that of an attractive youth balanced on the cusp of adolescence, genderless in its perfect beauty. The undercurrent of dominance/submission and the potential for sexual menace that existed between human males and females simply was not an issue with the angel. The fact that she was completely at ease with a completely nude individual standing less than two feet away from her was a testament to that.

  Still, she doubted she’d be able to hail a cab in the company of a bare- assed angel, even if it did appear Caucasian. “C’mon,” she sighed. “Let’s see about getting you something to wear.”

  Some digging in the foyer closet turned up a black ankle-length duster, a pair of baggy jeans she wore to repaint the dinette set, and a pair of battered leather moccasins used for schlepping garbage down to the basement.

  “Here, these should do for now,” she said, shoving the cast-offs into the angel’s pale arms. Joth proceeded to rub the bottom of the moccasin against its cheek.

  Fifteen minutes and a hasty explanation as to what clothes were and which item was to be used to cover what part of the body later, Lucy had succeeded in getting the pants and moccasins on Joth. She eyed the angel’s gleaming wings, which were spread so that they framed its golden head.

  “Can you, uh, hide those things?” she asked.

  “Hide?”

  The angel’s habit of repeating every question posed to it was really starting to get on her nerves, but she supposed she ought to cut it some slack. After all, it clearly wasn’t used to verbal speech. They probably used some form of telepathy in heaven or wherever it was from—and she still wasn’t a hundred percent sure if Joth weren’t some wacky space-brother from another planet who just thought he was an immortal angel.

  “You know—fold your wings?”

  “Fold my wings.”

  Lucy watched in amazement as the hummingbird-colored pinions folded themselves, one over another, and came to rest against Joth’s broad, muscular back. Despite their size, they doubled over very compactly, seeming to hug the angel from behind like a second set of arms. The simple grace and unspoken strength of the act reminded her of Mose, the old African-American man who once worked for her grandparents. However, what she saw in her mind’s eye was more like a film was unwinding in her head than a memory being sparked.

  She saw Mose standing in the doorway of the old barn, harnessing the mule Pappy stubbornly insisted on keeping. His denim work shirt was rolled up past the elbows, revealing arms the color of licorice that rippled with clean muscle. She smelled saddle leather, horse liniment and Mose’s sweat, and heard his voice, surprisingly soft and sweet for a man his size, as he sang under his breath. She even saw the beads of perspiration shining on his forehead and trickling down his arms in the thick heat of an Arkansas summer.

  Lucy hadn’t thought about Mose in year, not since Mam-Maw wrote during her junior year at college to inform her of his passing. He’d been a gentle, solid man—not very well educated, but far from stupid. He had a knack for working with wood, creating simple, yet lovely, tables and cupboards. She’d been quite fond of him as a small child, before adherence to social taboos of race and station were expected of her.

  It was with a small shock that she realized she had never once spoken of Mose to anyone outside her family—not even Nevin. She’d learned long ago that New Yorkers simply didn’t understand how someone could grow up in rural Arkansas and not be a knuckle-dragging redneck with a Klan robe tucked away in the hall closet. They certainly wouldn’t understand her waxing sentimental over the hired hand who used to help her grandmother turn over the mattresses and made her a tiny matching table and chair for her seventh birthday.

  “You are thinking of someone,” Joth said in its matter-of-fact voice.

  Lucy stiffened, automatically defensive. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Mose.”

  Her heart skipped a beat, and then began pounding furiously to catch up. So she’d been right about the angel being telepathic. Still, it was rather disconcerting to realize someone had actually read her mind.

  “How do you know his name?”

  “I look into your eyes and see him there.”

  “But—how?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She believed the angel when it told her this. After all, she wasn’t exactly sure how she breathed, but she still did it. She wondered if the flashback was directly related to Joth. Maybe it was in the nature of angels to trigger fond memories. It probably wasn’t even something it was aware of or able to control—like pheromones. Still, as pleasant a surprise as the memory of Mose had been, it had proven bittersweet—as only thoughts of times long past and people long dead can be. She didn’t know if she could withstand a constant barrage of similarly draining snapshots from her past.

  “Here, put this on,” she said, handing Joth the duster.

  Joth slipped into the loose-fitting coat, consternation registering on its otherwise placid features as the canvas came to rest against its folded wings. The expression on the angel’s face was similar to that of a dog forced to wear a sweater: one of mild discomfort mixed with the uneasiness that comes with doing something it knows is unnatural.

  Lucy stepped back to eye her handiwork. While Joth would never make it past the doorman at the Limelight, it could pass on the street for a nondescript human being. In New York. In the East Village.

  “Okay, that’ll do—at least for now,” she announced as she grabbed her leather jacket, making sure her keys were still in its pocket. She headed for the door, dragging Joth behind her like a pull-toy. “Come on, buddy—time’s a-wastin’!”

  “Where are we going?” the angel asked.

  “Midtown, of course! We don’t want to keep the media circus waiting do we?”

  Chapter 4

  Lucy stepped off the curb and into Houston Avenue’s traffic, lifting her arm to hail one of the canary-yellow taxis zipping up and down the divided street. One of the drivers spotted her at the light and cut across from the far lane, coming to a sharp stop inches from where she stood. Lucy yanked open the rear passenger door and hurriedly bundled Joth inside ahead of her. As she closed the door behind them, Judd Hirsch’s tape-looped voice was already welcoming tourists to the Big Apple and reminding them to ask for a rec
eipt.

  “Where to, lady?” asked the cabbie, reaching for his clipboard. While the driver was dark-skinned, she didn’t have to check the license attached to the taxi’s passenger-side visor to figure out that while he was, indeed, of African origin, he wasn’t African-American. If his accent didn’t give him away, the ritual scarification on his cheeks certainly did.

  “Midtown; Rockefeller Plaza.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She knew the location of The Terry Spanner Show’s headquarters from doing temp work a year or so back for a law firm representing a family who had filed a suit against the production company. One of the guests on the show had been outted on “Family Skeletons In The Closet”—which resulted in the father having a heart attack on stage and the son’s suicide two days later. Spanner got off scot-free, if she recalled correctly.

  The Terry Spanner Show was famed for being a lower-middle-class freak show, with its parade of transsexual trailer trash, five-hundred-pound dominatrices, UFO abductees, cheating spouses, nympho grannies, and high-decibel face-offs between pin-headed Born Agains and equally pin-headed heavy metal fans who claimed to be Satanists. It wasn’t 60 Minutes—but she had to start somewhere, and where better than a show that wouldn’t automatically call Bellevue when she told them she had a real live angel sitting in the lobby?

  She glanced up as the cab came to a light and glimpsed the driver looking into the rear-view mirror, a puzzled look on his face. The cabbie—whose license identified him as John Madonga—reached out and readjusted the mirror, his eyes widening as he got a better look at Joth. Lucy tensed. Oh, God—he’s seen something—but what?

  Suddenly the driver’s dark face split into a brilliant smile and he gave out a half shout, half laugh. The cabbie turned around and shot the grimy Plexiglas divider all the way back so that he could hook his arm over the front seat. Then, looking Joth right in the eye, he began excitedly chattering in a language Lucy had never heard before. As she had never seen a New York cabbie do anything except honk and swear at traffic, Lucy was too dumbfounded to do anything but stare as Joth answered in the exact same tongue as the one spoken by the cabbie.