I don’t know how she did it, but she found him. Lt. Col. Inf. Division…my sight blurred. With her hand on my shoulder, I knelt down and placed the flowers on his grave.
“Are you okay?”
I gruffly replied that I was, but I wasn’t really sure. I had no idea that seeing 10,000 graves would be this overwhelming and so profoundly sad. I stood there for some time just looking into the distance, fighting tears. There were white crosses and a few Stars of David, as far as I could see, and this was just the American portion. There were graves from other countries as well. I had never felt so humbled, so worthless with my arrogance, or so insignificant. After a while, I pulled myself together.
“Thanks for helping me find it.”
“It was no biggie. I know what you said about last night, but I also know that it was more than just…you know. We were good together. Really good.”
I had to agree with her.
“But if you’d rather waste your life, thinking you’re better off alone, then suit yourself.”
I had no answer. She was right, there was nothing I could say to fix the way it had always been with me. I swallowed hard, but just walked on past her up the road toward more graves, feeling sorry for myself. What was I doing? Standing in the middle of a massive graveyard. This scene could break even the strongest of hearts. I stopped dead in my tracks.
So many. I had no idea it would move me this way. It’s not like I’d never been to cemeteries, for Chrissakes. I stood there for some time, just staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. Mama was right—we must never forget, and I needed something this Christmas to make me realize how precious life was and how wasteful it would be not to appreciate every moment of this ultimate gift.
The bus ride back to the hotel was very quiet. I guessed everyone felt the same as I did, silenced by so many young lives lost for the freedom we took for granted.
Billie kept her distance.
Later that day, we met up in the lobby while we waited for our ride to the Christmas dinner at a nearby restaurant. I thought Billie would be gone by then and I relaxed some.
But throughout dinner, I couldn’t swallow away the sour taste in my mouth or ease the pain in my chest. Not even the French bread with creamery butter enticed me. Nor the wines I found downright delicious and the rich French food and pastries I’d been enjoying. I was busy chewing on regret when I glanced up from my seat to find her staring right at me. I couldn’t look away. It was true, she was one fiery lady, too much for me to handle, but I knew I’d miss her.
She caught my eye and mouthed, “Come with me.”
Maybe Billie and I would fizzle out, but if I didn’t give us a chance, I’d never know that, would I?
I was tempted to turn away quickly, but I had no reason to go home alone, and I had ten thousand reasons to take a chance.
“I think I can fit in a trip with you to Paris. Care to join me for this lovely Christmas dinner in Bayeux first?” I asked. “If all goes well, we can do Paris after that.”
Her eyes lit up with excitement, which made me feel like dancing around like a schoolgirl with her first crush, but I resisted. That’s when I noticed she was dressed in her Christmas best, a velvet green dress with red trim made brighter with the biggest smile I’d ever seen. The kind woman seated to my left generously offered Billie her seat, and I thanked her profusely yet again. Maybe she was my guardian angel or something. I held the chair for Billie as she sat down, and I got the sweetest whiff of her perfume. I was ready to skip dinner and head right for dessert.
After I sat down, Billie leaned in close and slipped her arm through mine and whispered, “You won’t regret this. We’ll be good together. Merry Christmas, Rue.”
“Merry Christmas, Billie.”
And we’ve been really good together ever since.
Angels
Joan Arling
Being dead takes getting used to.
I can’t begin to describe how it feels to be without a body or at least to feel as if I no longer have one. Jane was with me, though, and that was all that really mattered.
It had been an accident. A blown tyre caused our car to swerve from the road and careen down a ditch, obviously killing us. The last thing I remembered was the sound of our voices shouting each other’s name, and then…then we were here.
We were not alone—far from it. For all they tell about the hereafter, the room—if you can call it a room—was full of people. Well, the souls of people. We might as well have been in the waiting area of a labour office. Time and again, a name was called, and someone walked through a door. The office or whatever was beyond that door must have had a second exit, because no one came out again.
Jane and I passed the time, or should I say eternity, reminiscing about the past and looking back upon our lives. Dwelling on the plans we’d had seemed futile, so we focused on how our demise would affect the people who hated us. Trying to think of someone dear to us seemed a waste of time, even with eternity to draw upon; ever since Jane and I had moved in together, our popularity had been at an abysmal low.
When the voice calling names became impatient, I looked up and realised it had been calling me for several minutes. Jane looked with wide eyes. No one had yet returned through that door, and the thought of getting separated was more than we could stand. I stood, grabbed her hand, and pulled her after me.
The office was like any other office—rows of filing cabinets, two desks back to back, one of them unoccupied. Only a clerk dressed entirely in white indicated that this office was not one in a million. He looked at us, and an expression of dismay settled on his face, which had not been cheerful to begin with.
“You are not supposed to enter in groups,” he said. “Now which of you is Miss—”
“I am,” I said. “This is my partner, Jane. Where I go, she goes and the other way around.” I put my arm around her waist.
He gave us a sour look. “Have you any idea where we’d end up if every newcomer were allowed to continue as if still alive?” He waited for a reaction, but all he got was our tightened hold on each other. He shook his head. “No soul is compelled to stay here against her will. Considering the alternative, however…”
“Any time!” Jane’s answer came like a bolt from the blue.
My heart leaped as she never as much as glanced at me for confirmation. God, did I love this woman. I nodded, momentarily at a loss for words.
He glared at me, then at Jane, before looking at the file before him. “Oh, I see, it’s you…,” he grumbled and pulled another file. “And you. Marked double-X at expected difficulty. Sit over there. I’ll hand this upstairs.” He pressed a button on an intercom and said, “Two cases of double-X in PR-4, form A-01 … Triple even, from the look of them. … Yes, I’ll wait.”
He cast a dark look in our direction. “Just a split eon.”
The intercom came alive again, and he acknowledged, “Yes, I know where. They’ll be there shortly.”
He turned to us. “You’ll be handled by the boss himself.” When we gave him wide-eyed stares, he added, “The boss of this department, what did you think? Go through that door, then to the last office on the left. Now hurry.”
The last we heard of him was a sigh as we entered the corridor.
Jane and I looked at each other, clasped our hands, and proceeded without a word. I could tell she was nervous, and she knew me too well to buy into my pretended coolness.
We headed to the last office on the left and were faced with a man so tall that we had to tilt our heads back to see his face. He was wearing, of all things, a halo!
“Hi, I’m Gabriel. You must be The Inseparable Two.” He grinned. “Front office reported you to be a headache. But let’s just see where we are with the two of you.”
He indicated two chairs that were much more comfortable than the ones we sat in earlier. Oh well, boss’s office, what would you expect?
He had two folders open before him, probably ours. He took another file from
a stack and opened it.
“This one is labeled troublesome as well, but she’ll probably be easier to handle.” He looked at the two of us huddled together. “You know, this girl actually has something in common with you—she’s gay too.”
I gasped at hearing an arch angel comment on our sexual orientation.
His eyebrows twitched. “She is about to come out to her parents. Did you have trouble with that?”
Jane and I looked into each other’s eyes. We’d struggled to keep off the street, with nothing and no one but each other.
“By the looks of it, she’ll be kicked out. Now, her soul is not in a stable condition, and it’s quite likely that, having nowhere to turn, she’ll want to jump off a bridge.”
Our hands tightened around each other. “Nowhere? No one?”
“Sadly, the girl she fell for wanted nothing to do with her.” He paused. “The concept of deadly sin was not invented here, so she still has a fair chance of redemption. The thing is, our policy does not call for untimely arrivals.” He looked at us and fell silent.
I empathised with the girl but was confused at the same time. Why was he telling us about her?
“If someone were to show her a reason not to hurry here…” Gabriel mused.
“Why do I get the feeling that you are leading up to something?” Jane said.
“Ah, clever girl!”
I glanced at her quickly, but for once, the patronising words did not cause her to flare up.
“Since I can’t place the two of you together here and it’s obvious you are prepared to spit ectoplasm if I don’t and there is field work that needs to be attended to…” His voice trailed off.
“I think he’s recruiting us as guardian angels,” she said, not taking her gaze off Gabriel.
“In training,” he said.
“We could be the first gay team of guardian angels.” Jane broke into a smile.
“The first?” he muttered. “You have no idea.”
* * *
And so we found ourselves on a road in the middle of the night, between a village and a railroad bridge, watching a freshly homeless girl trudging in our direction. She was so lost in her hurt that she didn’t notice us standing in the shadows.
“What do we do now?”
“Well, we need some kind of distraction,” Jane said. “Ready for action?”
Without waiting for my answer she ran toward the girl, pulling me behind her. Within seconds she stopped in front of the girl. “We can’t leave her alone out here!”
“Come on! They’re almost onto us!” I pulled on Jane’s arm.
“No way. She’s got to come.” Jane grabbed the girl’s hand and ran, pulling us both along.
We came to a crossroads and went in the woods, cowering and catching our breaths.
“What, what…” the girl stammered.
“Shhhh. Quiet, for heaven’s sake,” Jane said.
The girl looked from Jane to me, her eyes big in her lean face. “What the hell is going on here?” she asked in a whisper. “Who are you?”
I had used the time to come up with a story. “There’s a bunch of…of hooligans out there, and they caught sight of us.”
“And they started running after us, so we took to our heels,” Jane said. “Quiet now. I think I can hear them!”
We listened carefully, but all I heard were the usual nighttime noises.
“I think we lost them.” I stood and looked around.
“Do you see anyone?” Jane asked.
“No. I think we’re in the clear.”
They stood too.
“Jeez.” Jane wiped imaginary sweat from her brow. “What are you thinking, walking alone out here after dark? What’s your name, anyway?”
“Maggie. And who are you? And you’re not walking around with a group of bodyguards, either.”
“Oh, this is Angela, and I’m Jane. Our car broke down a few miles from here. We saw a sign that said we’re close to a town. Could you show us the way?”
Wordlessly, Maggie pointed in the direction she had come from.
“Will you come with us? Or do you have a date or something?”
Maggie’s eyes filled with tears.
Jane took her into her arms and let her sob against her shoulder. “There, there… Nothing is ever as bad as it seems at first sight.”
Finally, when Maggie’s tears dried, she led us back to a town called Nowheringham, which wasn’t very far.
The rainbow neon sign of a bar was the only light in the dark town. Jane steered Maggie toward it.
I frowned and cleared my throat to get Jane’s attention. When she glanced at me, I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together, indicating that we’d need money in there.
She smiled and patted her hip pocket, winking at me. “Look in your back pocket,” she whispered.
Puzzled, I put my hand in my back pocket and pulled out a bundle of notes. I sucked in a breath. That was a lot of money, enough to carry us through a month had we been leading our former lives.
Maggie pulled away from Jane for the first time since crying in her arms. “Uh, I’d better get going now.”
“Aw, come on. You showed us the way here. We’d be delighted to have you join us for a while.”
“I’ve got no money.” After a short hesitation, she said, “On me.”
“Don’t worry, we’re on an expense account,” Jane said.
I coughed to cover up a giggle.
Jane grinned, took the girl’s hand, and pulled her into the bar.
I paused briefly and looked into the sky. “Thanks, Gabe.” This job had unexpected perks.
“This has been the craziest night of my life.” Maggie sighed as we settled into chairs around a table.
“What happened?” Jane asked.
Maggie fell silent. She finally whispered, “You saved my life, you know that?”
I grinned. “Hey, that’s our j—”
“We couldn’t have left you to the hooligans, could we?” Jane said.
“No, it’s not that, even though that did frighten me.”
“What is it, then?”
“I was going to…” She closed her eyes, but that did not stop the tears from running down her cheeks again.
“You were what?” Jane said, as though she was slow in comprehending, “That bridge? You were—don’t tell me you were going to do something foolish. Why on earth would a girl like you—?”
“Because she wouldn’t have me.” Maggie wailed. “She was the world to me, but when her p-p-parents found out, she denied everything. She wouldn’t even look at me.” Maggie lowered her head onto her forearms.
“Oh God. What did your parents say?”
“They just threw me out.” Her voice shook with the sobs that racked her body.
“Excuse me, may I ask what is going on here?”
I looked up.
A good-looking butch, maybe five years older than Maggie, stood next to our table.
Maggie raised her head.
“Mags? What are you doing here? And who are they? Did they hurt you?”
“Jenny? I had no… No, these two are friends. They’ve been…”
Jenny looked at Jane and me again, her face still hard. I had a feeling she’d thrash us if Maggie said the word. “You’d better come with me, Mags.” She helped Maggie stand and then wrapped her muscular arm around the girl’s shoulder. “No offence, ladies, but I don’t know you.”
With that she led Maggie outside, leaving us smiling at one another.
“Gimme five!”
“Yes!”
* * *
Gabriel looked up from reading our report. “Not at all bad. For first timers.” He focused on me. “Do you usually call your boss by his first name? ‘Gabe’ indeed.”
Before I could answer, Jane took my hand and squeezed it. “We got the job done, didn’t we? Now what?”
His lips twitched. “You did okay. One week’s vacation.”
Doctor’s Call
Patricia Penn
Fiona looked around carefully before slipping into the waiting room of the palliative care unit. Visiting hours were over and the room was abandoned; yesterday’s newspaper lay discarded on a chair. For a moment she felt more like a character from a Jane Austen novel than a doctor on a busy shift. Her heart was beating loudly against her chest. She was fairly certain that a simple phone call should leave neither an accomplished physician nor a romantic heroine that anxious.
Even if it was a call she wasn’t supposed to make.
It had been five months as of yesterday. Miriam’s number was still saved in position one on her speed dial. Fiona told herself that she just hadn’t gotten around to replacing it with somebody or something she might need to reach quickly, like her boss or Admission. She’d been working doubles ever since Thanksgiving, no time to play around with her phone. That was all.
Home, the display said as the phone made the connection, mocking her by stating as fact another piece of ancient history. Miriam’s home wasn’t her home anymore; intellectually she knew that. Yet her heart beat faster with every ring, and when the recording kicked in she exhaled with the violence of an addict getting a fix. The voice sounded painfully familiar, low and a little bit hoarse, sending a shudder of remembered intimacy down her spine.
“Hi, you’ve reached Miriam. I’m either not available right now, or I’m too lazy to pick up the phone. But don’t worry, you can leave me a message. Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!”
Fiona didn’t leave a message. She closed her eyes, breathing in and out and allowing herself, for a second, to imagine that it was still five months ago. That she would open her mouth to say she’d be working late again because that patient had crashed, and that she was sorry, but she promised to bring Chinese, and “I love you, hon, talk to you later.”
Instead, expectant silence settled in after the beep. Disconnecting the call, Fiona plopped onto one of the nondescript chairs. The back of her head hit the wall with a heavy, frustrated thud.
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