by Ann Crawford
“Okay. I’m very happy to do that.”
As his smile grows bigger and his eyes shine like the high-beam headlights on a fast-approaching car, Emily suddenly finds the ice cubes in her glass absolutely riveting.
Jack walks Emily to her car in the café’s parking lot. “So it’s set then? Tomorrow, five o’clock?”
“It’s a date,” she smiles.
“You know, I could be an axe murderer.”
“So could I.”
“I could be an ex-con.”
“Then we’ll certainly have some very interesting conversations.”
The next afternoon, after an interminable time at the art-and-flower show and the advertising office and countless glances at clocks, watches, and cell phones, Jack and Emily stroll along the ocean’s edge. For hours. Shoes off, they relish the cool waves lapping around their feet.
“Whew, it’s hot here,” Emily says.
“You look good in hot.”
Emily looks at him in delighted surprise. She splashes deeper into the water and then completely immerses herself, clothes be heavened. Jack dives in after her. When he surfaces, he throws his arms around her and kisses her. And kisses her. And kisses her. And she kisses him. And kisses him. And....
“They just met!” Brooke exclaims.
“And your point is?” David asks.
While six angels people watch, angel watch, sky gaze, or look down while attending to their tasks, the two new angels watch the humans closely through all this kissing stuff.
“What do you suppose all the fuss is about?” David asks.
“I’m not sure,” Brooke answers. “But look at the rapture on their faces when they come up for air.”
“Well, we angels live in rapture all the time.”
Brooke watches the humans kiss a little more. “I think their rapture beats ours every day of the week and twice on Sundays.”
Emily notices the sun setting over the water—a crimson sun, a cerulean sea.
“I dreamed this once,” she sighs to Jack.
Brooke and David watch Jack and Emily gaze into each other’s eyes. Brooke gazes into David’s eyes, but she sees what she always sees when she looks into anyone’s eyes, angel or human—eternity.
Jack and Emily stumble into his apartment, lips still locked on each other’s. With unaccustomed aplomb, at least as far as moves on women are concerned, Jack maneuvers her into the living room and onto the couch, where they start to undress each other.
“I’ve never done this so quickly with anyone before,” Emily says, struggling for a breath. “Ever.”
“Me either.”
“I find that very hard to believe. Look at you. And where you live.”
“Believe it.”
Jack picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. They fall onto the bed together, arms and legs flailing and entwining. Their laughter is quickly muted by additional kisses on additional places.
Six of their angels turn their backs on them and start to meditate. Brooke and David still want to watch the humans, but they reluctantly turn around after receiving nudges and raised eyebrows from Angela and Blake.
“Jack, Emily, you decent?” Blake and Angela ask together, chortling and slapping their thighs.
Sunned, Brooke and David look at them.
“Sorry,” Blake says, trying to wipe the grin from his face.
“Just some angelic humor,” Angela guffaws.
“It’s a tradition when two angel teams come together in this way for the first time,” Blake explains.
“Well, a tradition since humans started worrying about decency, anyway. Of all things to worry about!”
After a couple more snickers from the head angels, the eight angels settle into their meditating.
Brooke opens one eye and catches David trying to look back at the humans. “Hey! We’re not supposed to watch.”
“Sorry.” David’s somewhat mortified. “Just really do want to know what all the fuss is about.”
But when David has settled into his meditation, Brooke looks over her shoulder at the two humans.
David opens one eye at her, and Brooke catches him catching her sneaking a peek. David returns to his meditation, a big smile on his face. Brooke follows suit. If angels could blush, she would have matched Emily’s face right now.
The next morning, Jack awakens with a start. His four angels pop into the room. He caresses Emily’s face, and she also awakens with a start. Her four angels pop into the room, as well.
“So you’re not a dream after all,” Jack whispers to her. “You’re not some ethereal being that disappears in the morning light. You’re really here.”
“In living color,” Emily says. “Right here, right now, up close and personal.”
“And you are an ethereal being.”
“You are, too.”
“I dreamed about you. I didn’t know who you were or where you lived or what you were doing. I only knew that you were out there somewhere and that I would find you somehow.”
Emily smiles at him through her tears. “I know exactly what you mean.”
They start to make love again. Their eight angels turn around again.
David leans over to Brooke. “Heard any funny jokes lately?”
“Well, once there were these two angels….”
“I think I’ve heard that one.”
Completely oblivious to their audience of eight, two of whom are especially captivated, Jack drops a strawberry into Emily’s mouth.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” she says, rolling the strawberry around her mouth.
She drops a strawberry into his mouth.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
Jack cuts a bite of his pancake and feeds it to Emily.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
“We’re obviously in the monosyllabic stage of the relationship,” Angela reports to the others.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Blake chuckles, “I think there were a few syllables in that ‘mmmmmmm,’ don’t you think?”
As the monitor shows Jack and Emily sleeping, their eight angels perform their tasks around their one desk. David surfs the angelnet. He types in “strawberry” and reads the information that appears on the screen.
Angela notices the subject of David’s rapt attention and gives him a look. Yes, that kind of look.
“Just wanted to see what all the ‘mmmmmmm’ing fuss was about.”
Angela raises an eyebrow at Blake, who just smiles. She smiles, too.
Jack and Emily, strolling hand in hand through the mall with their angelic entourage, stop in front of a store window. A very large—very large—woman passes the group, and Brooke watches her walk away.
“Speaking of all the fuss around food, what do you suppose makes her eat so much? Why would anyone stuff themselves like that?”
“It’s a replacement for unexpressed energy,” Blake says. “Those fat cells are really light cells longing to be expressed.”
Brooke looks back at the woman. Sure enough, her quadruple chin, arms, legs, belly, and thighs actually do shimmer, but with a strange blue tint.
“I’ve seen fat angels. Well, not fat fat, like this. But chubby.”
“What do you make of that?” Blake asks her.
“Their minds have shaped their bodies,” Brooke responds, “just like our human friends here. Every thought becomes part of their shapes. They get what they want.”
“Exactly right.”
As Brooke wanders over to David, Sapphire sidles over to Blake. “Could you please tell me why they get to, well, you know, when they have the questions and we have the answers?”
“You know why.”
“I’m trying to forget.”
“We all get what we sign up for. All of us. Everywhere.”
Sapphire scowls and returns to her whispering.
“Not very angelic of you,” Angela chides her. “And besides, they do have the answers, too, in case you haven’t noticed.”
&nb
sp; “So do the humans, if they’d just shut up long enough to realize it,” Sapphire snorts.
Blake and Angela chuckle.
“Actually, it’s a really good thing they have no idea how big they are.” Sapphire’s snort has turned into a hiss. “Can you imagine the mess they’d make across the galaxies with those monkey minds of theirs?”
“Sapphire, you can always change games—I mean assignments,” Blake tells her. “You’re always at choice. Go ref another game if you want.”
Sapphire shrugs.
The human couple wanders into a spiritual-but-not-religious bookstore. Jack spies a picture of Jesus praying, probably in the garden of Gethsemane, while an angel comforts him. He picks it up, moved beyond words.
Emily looks at the picture. “You’ve felt like that?”
Jack nods.
“Maybe you were held by an angel all those years.”
“Maybe. Maybe you were, too.”
“Maybe.”
Back out in the main mall area, Jack and Emily stroll along a little more and stop in front of another store window. They look at each other with sheer, delighted amazement as they realize what they are looking at: wedding rings. A bigger smile crosses both of their already smiling faces.
“I had no idea why I was buying all these things,” Jack chuckles. “Sesame oil. Capers. Italian herbs. I’d never paid much attention to those things B.P. But the saleswoman in that specialty store on the corner seemed eager to load me up with all these items.”
(We’re sure you remember that B.P. means Before Prison, right? Thought so.)
“Funny thing. Bet she wanted to show you how to cook, too.”
“I was on a mission. Somehow I knew you were going to burst into my life.”
Emily lights the candles on the table, beautifully set with Jack’s long-unused family heirloom china and silverware. A vase of red roses sits between the crystal candleholders. The sun setting over the ocean fills the room with a red hue as the pair starts to serve the semi-gourmet feast they’ve prepared for themselves.
In the background, Barry White accompanies them. Jack grabs the bottle of Chardonnay and sings into the top of it, as if into a microphone. “You’ll never find...as long as you live...Someone who loves you tender like I-I-I-I-I-I-I do!”
“But aren’t they breaking up in that song?”
“Uhhhhhhh, not in our version of it.”
He swirls and swoops her around the kitchen, ending in a low dip. “And you just found...the life of your love!”
“The love of my life, you mean?” Emily laughs. “Actually, I like your way much better. Kind of flows with the go.”
“Goes with the—nah, I like your way much better.”
After the first course of walnut-and-goat-cheese salad with raspberry vinaigrette comes lemon-caper grilled salmon with herb risotto and grilled asparagus under a dollop of hollandaise sauce. The feast is followed by, yes, strawberries...dipped in chocolate.
“Ohhhhhhhh, again with the strawberries!” whines Brooke as the humans drop the strawberries into the other’s mouth at a speed that would test the patience of a sloth.
“Chocolate is the best invention ever in the history of ever,” Emily swoons.
“Almost the best invention.”
“The best food invention,” she smiles.
“Really?” Brooke asks.
“Really,” Emily adds.
As Gladys Knight croons softly in the background, Jack and Emily slow dance. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Jack softly sings in Emily’s ear. He spins her into another deep dip, followed by a long, passionate kiss. He whisks her off to the bedroom.
“Hey—” Angela starts.
“Enough with the jokes,” grumbles David. Five angels smile, but two others want to grumble, too.
After a perfunctory handshake at her introduction to Emily, Lacey quickly leaves to return to her empty house. Dick has left her already, but you probably saw that one coming.
Emily squats down to greet Ben and Chelsea. Each offers her a hand, which she takes in her hands. The four walk into the apartment, accompanied by their fourteen angels (four for each adult, three for each child, all at their tasks). Brooke and David watch Jack and Emily very carefully, mesmerized by these humans in love—in love with this amazing other, with these amazing children, with this amazing life, with the amazing grace of it all.
That night, the three introduce their fourth to the fun of pre-bedtime. After the children fall asleep, the couple settles in the living room. Emily leans her head on Jack’s shoulder. “You know something? I dreamed about them almost as much as I dreamed about you.” She looks up, gazing adoringly at him.
Jack’s heart swells with love for her as well as with relief that this first time together had passed so beautifully for all four of them. He notices Emily continuing to gaze at him, but he can tell that she’s not really seeing him. “What?”
But Emily can’t quite put it into words yet. At the moment Jack noticed her strange stare, she had been seeing....well, a vista. Before her eyes, as she was looking at Jack’s face, she saw the rest of her life stretching out before her—a life filled with the love of a mate and children, filled with walks along the beach instead of hikes in the mountains, filled with a quiet mind, filled with a heart overflowing with gratitude.
Without a word, Jack sees the vista, too.
Jack and Emily drive through the L.A. smog toward the Staples Center. Brooke and David look with horror at the filthy atmosphere.
“It’ll all get done,” Angela assures the two relative neophytes. “They have eternity.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t do what they can do now,” David says. “If a human is aware, he or she has a huge responsibility.”
“Much more than if they were just asleep and didn’t know any better,” Brooke adds.
“I don’t mean fretting about it,” David says.
“No, angst only makes things worse, of course,” Brooke agrees. “But tackling it with calm certainty and love would get it done.”
“Especially love,” David says.
Yet again, Blake and Angela raise their eyebrows; yet again, they’re impressed.
As the couple enters the sports arena, Brooke and David shake their heads in disbelief. Every person has at least three, sometimes four angels, so there are over eighty thousand beings in the center.
When Jack, Emily, and the crowd around them jump to their feet, cheering on the Lakers, Brooke and David jump to their feet, too.
“You’re angels!” Angela scolds them. “You cheer for both sides! Unless a specific win is necessary for your assignment, of course.”
“Oh, right,” the novices both say, somewhat dismayed...although probably more dismayed that they can’t participate than that they were caught in human-like behavior.
“Just watch your humans!”
Brooke and David turn their attention back to Jack and Emily….And then sneak a peek at the game as the crowd roars again.
Chopsticks in hand, Jack and Emily munch on take-out Chinese food straight from the cartons. While luxuriating in the bathtub.
“And you have no animosity?” Emily asks him.
“No,” Jack says. “But I certainly feel like I’ve paid my dues for life. First a very unhappy marriage. Then that.”
“But three years of your life! And your children were without their father for three years.”
“They have me now, much better than before. And now I feel like I got first pick in the NBA draft.”
Emily smiles through her blushing. “And I suppose you and Dick arranged all of that back when you were having tea in the ethers.”
“And I suppose you and I arranged all of this back when we were having tea in the ethers.”
“No, I don’t suppose it. I know we did.”
The angels have their backs turned to the pair.
David turns to Brooke. “Haven’t I seen you here before?”
The expression she g
ives him is so wry it can’t even be called a smile.
“I’ve been waiting for you my whole life,” Jack whispers to Emily early the next morning.
“Same here,” she whispers back. “By the way...just for the record...in case you were wondering—”
“Yes, what are you stalling about?”
“Well, are you going to ask me to marry you? Because if you are, I’d say yes.”
She dives under the covers to hide her face. After recovering from his momentary shock, Jack dives after her.
In a very fine restaurant, some very fine wine is poured by a very fine waiter for a very fine couple. They clink their glasses, although the toast is made only with their eyes.
Jack points out the window. “What’s that?”
Emily tries to figure out what he was pointing at, and when she turns back to ask him, a distinctive small jewelry box sits on the table before her.
She jumps up and grabs him. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“I haven’t even asked you yet!”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Emily, can you sit your delectable derriere back down?” She sits down again, but probably still with some air between the chair and her delectable derriere. “Emily, will you marry me?”
“Oh, yesssssss!” she cries.
Jack slides the ring on her finger, and they kiss amidst many smiles from the diners around them.
The next day, they head back to the mall to buy those wedding rings they’d found themselves looking at just a week prior, which had been just two days after they met. After they purchase the rings, they pack up a Jeep borrowed from a friend of Jack’s—Emily’s rental had long since been returned—for a trip to Idaho...with a stop in Las Vegas on the way.
A little fast? No chance. Well, it might’ve been for some, but not in this case. Remember those forty qualities that Jack listed with such deliberation? Emily is or has all forty of them. The last thing on his list was, “She has her own list of all the qualities she wants in her mate, and I surpass them all.”
She didn’t have many items on her list: “Spiritual powerhouse. Family man. Gets me.” Well, perhaps that last one entails forty items in itself.
