by Nina Post
“You must be relieved,” she said. “To not be a ferret anymore.”
“Aw, heck. Being a ferret wasn’t bad. It was fun to be that small. Everything was a toy, you know? Something to play with. And for some reason, I needed a lot of toys, not to mention a lot of grooming aids. I was like a little miss ferret pageant contestant.”
“Welcome back, anyway.”
n another alley, a few blocks from Murray’s apartment, a rat the size of an otter scampered over the ferryman’s shoe and left a present. The ferryman shrieked and kicked his foot back and forth. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m out.”
“There’s been a lot of that lately.” Kelly hoisted her bag to a different place on her back.
“But don’t worry,” the ferryman added. “As we agreed earlier, I’m not going to charge Af for the trip back. And here’s a coupon for 10% off any ferrying service, including concierge.”
With that said, the ferryman saluted and popped out of the world.
“No one says thank you.” She flapped the card back and forth on her hand.
The electric lavender of the sky rolled into bright blue and progressed toward Dijon mustard yellow as bolts of lightning flashed. She didn’t hear buses or cars screeching to stops or crashing into newspaper boxes. She didn’t hear anything except rumbling thunder and the furtive scrambling of rats.
Kelly pictured Tubiel and Kermit and the rest of the SPs and ran to the mouth of the alley.
Pothole City exceeded the promise of its name. Giant potholes and ruts in the pavement radiated out from huge, broken-off chunks of Pothole City’s buildings, blocking her off.
She sat on one of the chunks and pictured Jay Vanner sitting on the granite blocks across from her, wavy hair askew in the wind, crow’s feet crinkling around his wise, squinting eyes. He would tell her, “Kelly, you need to separate yourself, mentally and physically, from this adverse situation. If you can’t change things to your liking, just send the reminders of the past on their way.”
She pictured all of the thoughts and images in her head as paper origami. She tossed them into a fireplace, doused them with lighter fluid, and flicked a lit match onto the pile.
With that taken care of, she squeezed between the intricately carved signature of a haberdasher’s office and the granite snout of a gargoyle. The stone scratched her shoulder and one of the gargoyle’s teeth hooked her bag.
When she got out, she found only an obliterated expanse of slash-and-burn landscape, with a strange glowing box right in the middle.
A lone taxicab drove down the four-lane street. She recognized the realtor advertised on the cab’s topper: Untraditional Spaces for Untraditional Clients. We Go to Heaven and Back to Help You Sell Your Condo.
The glowing box looked like a vending machine. She headed toward it, crunching debris under her sneakers. The wind roared viciously, carrying a gritty smoke in its wake that stung her eye.
A colorful and brightly-lit Cluck Snack-branded machine stood alone in a bleak landscape, and she trudged toward it.
It didn’t have a bill acceptor or any other way to pay for the merchandise. She shook it. Nothing happened.
The vast majority of the SPs were missing, and she suspected they were being held in Amenity Tower, but she needed one with her to consult.
She stepped back from the machine and thought about how this kind of thing worked. Something occurred to her to try, but she didn’t expect it to work. “Oh no, my small bird is missing. What if I never see it again? How can I get it back? Gosh, I wish there were an angel who―”
Tubiel popped into the space next to her, wearing the clothes he was wearing when she first met him.
“That actually worked?”
Tubiel smiled, but she was furious.
“Then why did I have to drive you all over downtown Pothole City to return those birds if you could just pop in like this?”
He shrugged. She let out a long breath. Murray must have manipulated it that way, must have wanted her distracted then. Why? What was he doing that he wanted to get her out of the way?
She slapped her palm on the machine. “Can you operate this snack emissary that flew in from planet Cluck Snack?”
Tubiel touched the window and the machine glowed brighter. One of the metal coils extended and a snack dropped to the tray. Tubiel reached in and pulled out a Cluck Snack Drinkable Cake Flav’r Pudd’n Pack (“Not for Hamsters or Dogs”). He split up the pack, giving one container to her and keeping the rest for himself.
“Now what?” she asked.
Tubiel shrugged. He pushed the straw in the foil opening and drank the Cake Flav’r Pudd’n, and she did the same.
“Are the others with you?”
Tubiel nodded.
“Are they OK?”
Tubiel took out his sketch pad and wrote something on it.
“They’re playing ping-pong?” Kelly said. Tubiel held up some fingers. “Some of them are. Then where are the rest of the SPs?”
He shrugged and made a face that said, ‘I wish I knew,’ then waved an arm around them to indicate the others were scattered.
She peered into the machine. “Can I get the Cluck Snack Pizza Gum?”
Tubiel put his fingertips on the machine. It pulsed and ejected the gum with a short electronic melody.
“Help me drag this machine back to Amenity Tower.”
He turned back, took hold of the machine, which his arms barely got around, and pulled, to no avail.
“Just kidding, Tube.”
He let go and smiled. “I’ll be at Amenity Tower in a few minutes. I’ll find the others.”
He tapped the glass on the machine and something dropped into the bin.
Kelly retrieved the item and examined it. “Cluck Snack Meal’n a Box Totez―Take Your Cluck Snack With You’). This is exactly what I need.”
n the roof of Amenity Tower, the wind gusted to near-jet blast force and the emergency warning siren whooped continuously. Kelly cursed Pothole City as she verified her rappelling tools and ropes were still under the window washing rails.
An angel with glossy blue wings alighted on the corner of the roof and said, “Oh, sorry. Thought you were someone else.” He took off again, staying close to the building.
A creature with a wasp body and the head of a seal flew at her, barking. It snapped at her head and circled back around, jaws wide open. With a fast draw, she let her knife fly, and the seal-wasp dropped with a soft crunch in a mound of snow. She pulled her knife from the creature and wiped it off in the milkshake snow, scooping up a ball of it to eat.
“I really have to close that air handler,” she muttered.
“You always had great aim,” a voice said behind her. “You could try that on me, but both of us know it wouldn’t work.”
She raised the knife again at her shoulder and with a gentle flick of the wrist and sent it flying, a strip of orange tape trailing off the handle. It landed in his chest, right where his heart should have been. He smiled fondly at her, pulled the knife out of his chest with a sucking sound, and wiped the knife off in the snow.
“I know how you are about your weapons.” He tossed the clean-ish knife to the ground between them. “Fastidious.” He took a step toward her.
“Don’t come any closer.”
He put his hands out. “I’m not the demon you think I am. Just this morning I gave someone directions.”
Incredulous, she said, “You burned down my house with my family inside, you demented vulture.”
The bald man put his hands in his pockets. His tie flapped in the wind like a salmon spawning upstream. “Isn’t it funny that I found you here, instead of the other way around? You caught up to me so many times. You were so ambitious, so focused―even as a child.”
“My mother was great at her job. The best.” She was annoyed with herself for being flattered and wanting to hear more, even from the angel she had been trying to kill for almost twenty years.
The bald man gave her a strange
look. “She did big jobs―museums, high-end jewelry stores―but did her own canning and sewing. Where do you think all that money went?”
The wind howled.
Kelly tucked a piece of hair under her wool cap so a strand would stop whipping her in the eye. She had looked, but never found it. “I have no idea. Now stand still so I can kill you again. Or run. It doesn’t matter.”
“You probably see this is as one-sided relationship,” he said. “I mean, you’ve been finding and killing me over and over for years. I propose that we move from the provisional acceptance of a de facto recognition to the formal ties of a de jure recognition.”
“You don’t have a provisional acceptance from me.”
“You didn’t return the gift basket I sent,” the bald man said. “That was consideration you accepted. Wouldn’t that be provisional acceptance?”
“No, because I gave it to a bear.”
“Do you know what else?”
“I’m going to push you off the building?”
“That’s posturing. Your heart’s not in it anymore.” He walked towards her at the pace of an uncurling fern crozier. “You did your duty to your mother and that thieves den of an ad hoc family, what, a hundred times? It’s just your bad luck that I can’t be killed, and that you’ve been after the wrong angel all this time. Ironic, considering your chosen career.”
Kelly sat on the building’s davit.
“You know it wasn’t me, don’t you?” The bald man asked quietly. He waited a moment. “Is this how you want to spend your life? Alone and preoccupied with the past?”
She opened a snack packet of nuts and popped some cashews in her mouth. “Maybe.”
“Isn’t it enough that you’ve devoted decades to avenging her? You’re like a machine that’s programmed to repeat the same task. When you’ve finished the task, you shut down. Am I close?”
“You’re close to getting pushed off this building.”
“I like you, Driscoll. You’ve lost yourself along the way, but you keep working, and that’s something. When you were that girl of ten, you put any so-called avenging angel to shame. The rod of God couldn’t have done any better than you. I mean that.
“Then,” he said, “over the years, as you’ve tracked me down and attempted in vain to end my life, I couldn’t help but notice that you got perfunctory and detached. Maybe it was that Mennonite Butler job. That must’ve been a real kick in the area.”
“Speaking of detached―”
“Yeah, I know, that’s what my head is going to be, right?” He laughed. “Love it.”
“I’m so glad.” She drew her second knife and realized he was closer than before.
“I’m the closest relationship you’ve got, Driscoll, so if I get nosy about your non-existent personal life, I think that’s understandable.”
“We don’t have a relationship,” she said, disgusted.
“Again, what about the gift baskets I sent you? The one with the scorpion fish, sacks of flour, and the Sig Sauer P229?”
“Yes,” she said. “I got that one. And the Cheeses of the Midwest and the Candy of the Ottoman Empire. Don’t send me any more.”
“I already sent the crab variety pack.”
“The what?”
“It’s a medley of orangutan, porcelain, and boxer crabs. With a pound of coffee beans.”
“Fine, but one more gift basket doesn’t mean we have any kind of relationship, or that I agree to stop killing you.”
He put his hands up in a complaisant gesture. “If you say so. But Driscoll, after all those times you stabbed me, blew me up in my car using common baking materials, strangled me in a matinee, and poisoned my bowl of pasta with death cap mushrooms, I almost feel like we’re friends. Maybe one day,” he said, looking almost plaintive, “we could be. But I’ll always be your guardian. Unless you want to submit the paperwork to replace me―”
“My what?”
The bald man put his hands on his knees. “Your guardian. I’m a watcher. One of Those Who Are Awake?” When he didn’t get a response, he added in a tired voice, “I’m bound to this form for seventy generations. And feeling every single one.”
She got in his face, inches from him. “You’re telling me that you’re my guardian angel?”
“Yes. And that’s why I was there that day, in the gas station.”
She put up a hand. “You want to lay this on me now? Today? Wow, you are the worst guardian angel ever. You say you didn’t set that fire, but then you just sat in a gas station watching possums become roadkill while I lost everything. I hope that pre-wrapped turkey sandwich at least gave you Norovirus.”
“There was nothing I could do.”
“So what if you didn’t strike the match? You didn’t help. What’s the point of you?” She turned to leave, resenting the unexpected burden of knowing that she had tried to kill her guardian angel dozens of times since age ten. More weight to carry, on top of everything else. And whoever torched the house and her family was still out there.
“And no more gift baskets,” she yelled. He hadn’t helped her. He hadn’t even tried to tell her the truth until now. Had he?
She thought that Jay Vanner would say she was a pathetic human being who had failed in every possible way.
As she started back to the building, a man screamed from the roof of the hotel next to Amenity Tower, his hands forming a megaphone around his mouth. “The four diabolical angels are escaping from their hellish abyssal prison! End times are imminent!”
The bald man made a call, guarding the mouthpiece from the sound of the wind.
“Hello, Pancakes Plus? I need to cancel an order.” He took out his wallet, flipped over several plastic-covered photos of Kelly and her mother, and read off the last few digits from his credit card.
elly’s family had celebrated her tenth birthday and the successful heist of a diamond necklace on the same day. Their cabin, nestled deep in the Allegheny forest, was raucous with drunk thieves and sugar-pumped fifth-graders.
The handmade cherry-wood dining table was slick with fruit punch and bourbon, slammed enthusiastically in jelly glasses to punctuate a frequent toast. At the center of the table sat Kelly’s gigantic cake.
While her quasi-friends swarmed upon a pinata in the corner like a vigilante mob, ballad-singing thieves held her up under their arms and passed her from person to person. They spent the night playing guitars, singing and drinking, and the next morning, her mother made her eggs, then returned to bed before she went off tracking.
Three miles into the forest, she stopped at a tree and dropped her pack, almost certain she had forgotten her compass. A moment later, while rummaging through her pack, she smelled the smoke. She ran to get to the cabin, but it burned in big swooping, crackling waves of flames.
She tied a bandana around her face and ran as close to the cabin as she could, but struggled to breathe, and staggered back. She ran to the cover of trees and fell into the leaves. Her vision narrowed, colored dots in a splotch of dark, and lost consciousness.
Just when she despaired of finding any sign of who had been there to start the fire, she found a man’s boot print masked under leaves.
The top sign pointers above the ankle were contradictory, which meant that someone was here within the last twenty-four hours and bent the tall grass, indicating a different direction of travel.
She sketched it in her notebook and wrote “first footprint” above it, along with the date, time, terrain, and weather, then studied the leaves around the print, picking up every single one before examining the soil itself, noticing a transfer―an insect wedged in the nubs of the boot and one not commonly seen in that part of the forest.
A few twigs next to the print, a few of them green, had been snapped recently. A faint smell of sap told her that her quarry had been to the cabin not more than four hours ago.
To find her quarry, she followed the underside of leaves, broken twigs, scuffed logs, moist worms and soil, ants, rotting trees, bruised roo
ts, and a strange etched pellet under pine needles.
A broken cobweb got her pulse racing. It was a sign that could tell her how far away he was and when he had passed through. She took four careful steps toward the web that broke at her quarry’s head.
She stood alone in the forest, listening, glasses held at her side.
At a paved road, she reassessed. At other times, she would have to tune in all over again to this change in location, but she felt confident enough to isolate the track and move ahead. Across the two-lane road was an old gas station with a logging truck parked by the orange sign.
A food counter faced the road. One man, probably an employee, walked inside; not him A second man, probably the driver of the truck, selected food from a rack, but wasn’t the right height and weight.
A third man―tall and stocky and bald―sat at the counter, wearing a windbreaker over a turtleneck.
She zoomed in on the entrance of the gas station. Sliding prints in the dust indicated that someone, maybe her quarry, was too tired to pick up his shoes high enough.
As she looked through the binoculars, the light changed. The air smelled of ozone, something metallic. The clear post-dawn light around the gas station darkened and turned into the midnight blue and soft pink and yellow of a Hubble photo.
The colors swirled over the gas station, the midnight blue turned even darker, and with a start, she remembered her quarry and crossed the empty road to the gas station.
When she sat on the swivel stool next to him, the bald man jumped a little.
“You look like you just crawled out from under a log.” He picked a leaf out of her hair and she slapped his hand away. Her weird light gray eyes, ringed with black and set in a face caked with dirt and soot, reminded him, for some reason, of a moth with deceptive eyes on its wings.
“You killed my mother.”
The bald man sighed.
“I followed you here.”
He almost laughed. That cabin was so far back in that huge forest it might as well be in the center of the earth. He drove out, quite some time ago.
