A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Remy gently touched the old man's shoulder and looked deeply into his aged eyes. “Robert will be here soon, Phil. Why don't you go see Joan, and ask her to make you a cup of tea?”

  Phil smiled, his rheumy eyes slowly blinking away confusion. “Tea would certainly hit the spot.” He licked his dry lips. “Why didn't I think of that? Must be getting old.” He winked at Remy and continued on his way down the hall, a new strength suddenly in his step.

  Remy watched his progress. He had spent many an afternoon talking with Phil about what the old timer called the good old days. Although his presence seemed to have a calming effect on these tortured souls ravaged by age, it still pained him to see the effects the years had on those to whom he had grown so close.

  It was never more obvious than when he saw his Madeline.

  Remy stepped into the doorway of the room that tried hard to be homey but never quite overcame that institutional air, and spotted the woman he loved. She seemed so small and frail, sitting in a lounge chair in front of the big-screen television. There was an ache inside him, and he wondered why he had ever wished to be flesh and blood. It was a question he asked himself with every visit to Cresthaven.

  Madeline hadn't noticed his arrival, and he watched her for a few seconds as she struggled to stay awake. Her eyes would flutter and close, her head slowly nodding until her chin touched her chest. Then she would come awake with a start, and the futile battle to remain conscious would begin all over again.

  Remy moved farther into the room. It was set up to resemble a living room; a couple of couches and chairs – both recliners and rockers – covered in vinyl made to imitate leather. Soft lamp lighting and framed Monet prints from the Museum of Fine Arts gift shop down the street completed the attempt at coziness. The TV sat on top of a large, dark, pressed-wood cabinet, a VCR on the shelf beneath, its clock perpetually blinking twelve a.m. The local news was just wrapping up the weather – cooler, with a chance of rain by the end of the week.

  He knelt beside his wife's chair as she drifted deeper into sleep, and touched her arm lovingly. Madeline lifted her head to look at him, her eyes dull, momentarily void of recognition.

  “How are you ever going to keep up with current events if you're dozing?” he asked her and smiled, before leaning in to kiss her cheek.

  The life was suddenly there, the dullness in her gaze burned away by the familiar mischievous twinkle. She smiled, reaching up to touch his face with an aged hand.

  “Caught me,” she said softly. “Now you'll make me go to bed first again.”

  It had been their nighttime custom; whoever fell asleep first while relaxing in front of the television had to warm the bed, while the other took out the dog, turned off the lights, and locked the doors. Madeline had been the champion bed warmer.

  “How're you feeling today, hon? You look better.”

  She grinned and batted her eyes, patting the collar of her bright red sweatshirt. She knew he was lying. She had always been able to read his expressions. But she played along anyway, then changed the subject.

  “You're late. Joan said you were caught in traffic. Was there an accident?” She started to stand.

  Remy took her arm, helping her up. “No accident. Just the usual stuff. I was on a case longer than I anticipated.” He guided her around the chair and toward the doorway.

  “Anything interesting?” she asked, pausing, peering down toward the lobby, then back up the hall toward her room.

  “Nothing all that unusual, until today.” He was thoughtful as they slowly made their way up the hall. “The man I was watching killed himself and his lover in a motel on the Jamaica Way. No, let me correct that. I thought they were dead, but I was wrong.”

  Madeline stopped and stared at her husband. “You thought they were dead but you were wrong? What's the matter with you, Remy – getting senile?” She chuckled and patted his hand where he held her arm.

  When they reached her room, Remy escorted his wife to the high-backed chair by her bed and helped her to sit.

  “It was the oddest thing, Maddie,” he said as he sat on the bed beside her. “I confronted him after he'd shot his lover. He talked about dreams of the end of the world. Claimed that was why he'd shot the woman and planned to shoot himself.”

  He stared through the window at the day care next door. It was dinnertime, but there was still a little Asian boy playing in the sandbox, and a little girl riding a bike in a circle, over and over again.

  “But you know what the strangest part was, Mad-die?” Remy asked. “He said he could see me. That he knew what I was.” He looked at his wife and saw confusion on her face.

  “Well, did you want him to see you?” she asked. “Did you let him – to stop him from hurting himself?”

  Remy shook his head slightly. “No. It wasn't like that at all. It was as if he could see right through me.”

  Madeline looked disturbed, turning the wedding ring upon her finger. It was something she had always done when something upset her. Remy reached down, took her hand in his, and squeezed it affectionately.

  “Hey, don't worry about it. The guy was pretty out of it. Maybe it was just coincidence that he saw me as an angel.”

  Maddie squeezed back, gazing lovingly into his eyes. “You're my angel and no one else's, do you understand? I can't bear the thought of sharing you with anyone.”

  She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed it, and he knelt beside her chair, throwing his arms around her small frame. He felt her arms enfold him in a fragile embrace and was painfully reminded of a time when she could easily have hugged the life from him.

  “You won't have to,” he whispered in her ear. “I'm yours, now and forever.” Remy stroked her gray hair and remembered the vitality of her youth.

  When he'd first opened his agency back in 1945, he'd placed an advertisement in the paper for an office manager. Madeline had been one of the first applicants, fresh from secretarial college and overflowing with enthusiasm. And she was beautiful, inside and out. In their fifty-plus years together, Madeline Dexter had taught this earthbound entity more about being alive than he'd learned in six thousand years of wandering the planet.

  He leaned in close and kissed her gently on the mouth. “I love you,” he said, looking into his wife's gaze. It was his turn now to bring her hand to his mouth and gently plant a kiss upon it.

  They were silent for a while, each basking in the warmth and love of the other.

  “How's the baby?” Madeline asked, finally. “Does he miss me? You're not letting him have too much people food, are you?”

  The baby was their four-year-old Labrador retriever, Marlowe, that they treated as if he were their child. They had had another dog, a German shepherd who went by the name Hammett, who lived to be more than fifteen. It was absolutely devastating to Madeline – and to Remy, surprisingly – when the old dog finally died. It took them years to get another, the memory of how much they loved Hammett, and how badly it hurt when he was gone, keeping them from making the next emotional investment.

  It was the sad fact that they would never have children together that eventually swayed them to take another animal into their home. They had such an abundance of love that they wanted... needed to share it with another life. There was nothing he would have loved more than to give her a child, but it wasn't meant to be. Others of his kind had done such things over the ages, and the results had been less then normal. There was something seriously wrong with children produced by the mating of human and angel.

  Something unstable.

  Remy grinned, pushing the sad thoughts aside. “Marlowe's fine, and yes, he misses you a great deal. He always asks me when the female is coming back to the pack.”

  They both chuckled, Madeline reaching into her sweatshirt pocket for a wrinkled-up Kleenex. She wiped at her nose.

  “I want you to bring him next time you visit,” she said. “I need to see my boy.”

  Time was growing short for the woman Remy loved. It was someth
ing they were both very aware of – after all, no one came to Cresthaven to get well.

  “I'll do that,” he said softly.

  She squeezed his hand and covered a feigned yawn with the other. “I'm tired, Remy. Would you mind? I think I'd like to lie down now.”

  He helped her to the bed, removing her slippers and swinging her legs onto the mattress.

  “Do you want me to help you get undressed?”

  She gave him a sly look. “Always at the most inopportune times,” she told him weakly. “Maybe if I get a good night's sleep, I'll take you up on your offer tomorrow.”

  Grinning, she moved her eyebrows up and down, and Remy chuckled, giving her a wink.

  “You go home. I'm sure the baby is ravenous and desperate to empty his tank. I'll see you both tomorrow.”

  Madeline waved him away and adjusted the pillow beneath her head.

  She was getting weaker, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it.

  Remy leaned down and kissed her long on the lips.

  “I love you. I'll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “I love you too. And don't forget Marlowe,” she ordered as he turned to leave.

  He was just stepping into the hallway when he heard her call his name.

  “Yeah, hon?” he said popping his head back into the room.

  Madeline had propped herself up against the headboard. “What do you think it means – that man seeing you?” she asked. “I can't shake the feeling that something isn't right.”

  Remy returned to her bedside and, leaning in, planted a reassuring kiss upon her forehead.

  “I'm sure it means absolutely nothing,” he told her. “It was just a fluke. The guy was so crazy he could have imagined me as the Easter Bunny. Now get some rest, and I'll see you tomorrow.”

  Remy flashed her a final smile as he stepped into the corridor and out of view. He passed through the lobby to see that the pretty young receptionist was on the phone, and he mouthed the words Have a good night as he passed.

  Walking to his car, he was preoccupied with thoughts of his wife and her failing health. The poor woman didn't need anything else to worry her right now. He got behind the wheel and turned over the engine. In the theater of his mind he saw Mountgomery and his secretary entering the motel room, heard the clamor of the door slamming shut behind them like the sound of thunder.

  Remy flipped on his blinker and eased out into traffic. Though he would have preferred otherwise, he couldn't help but remember Mountgomery smiling dreamily as he talked about the beauty of angels, just before putting the gun beneath his chin and decorating the ceiling with his brains.

  He pointed the car for home, turning up the radio, hoping the music would distract him from further thoughts of the day's disturbing events. But it did little to drown out the sound of Mulvehill's voice repeating in his head.

  They're still alive, Remy.

  They're still alive.

  Remy stood in the foyer of his Beacon Hill brownstone, sifting through the day's mail. From a basket attached to the inside of the door beneath the mail slot, he had plucked three envelopes and a grocery store circular. He tucked them beneath his arm and searched for his house key. On the other side of the inner door, Marlowe let out a pathetic yelp that suggested he was in great need of his master.

  “Hang on, pally, help is on the way.”

  He let himself into the house and was immediately set upon by the jet-black Labrador with the furiously wagging tail. The dog's tail had become the legendary scourge of knickknacks up and down Pinckney Street, able to clear coffee tables with a single exuberant swipe.

  Remy tossed the mail onto a hall table and bent down to rub the excited animal's big head, ruffling his black, velvety soft ears.

  “Hello, good boy. How are you, huh? Were you a good dog today?”

  Marlowe's deep brown eyes locked on to Remy's. And he responded. “Goodboy. Yes. Out? Out?”

  It was another angelic trait that Remy Chandler had chosen not to repress: the ability to commune with all living things upon the earth. If it had a language, no matter how rudimentary, Remy could understand and communicate with it.

  “Okay, let's get you out, and then I'll give you something to eat,” he told the dog as they walked down the hall and through the kitchen to the back door.

  “Out. Then eat. Good. Out, then eat,” Marlowe responded, his tail still furiously wagging while he waited for Remy to open the door into the small, fenced-in yard.

  The dog bounded down the three steps, his dark nose sniffing the ground for the scent of any uninvited guests, as he trotted to the far corner and squatted to relieve himself. Remy smiled, amused by the expression of relief on the dog's face. Even though he was a male dog and nearly four years old, Marlowe still insisted on squatting to urinate. Maddie had suggested he was a slow learner and would be lifting his leg in no time. Remy wasn't so sure.

  The dog started to poke around the yard again.

  “Hey, do you want to eat?” Remy called from the doorway.

  Marlowe looked up from a patch of grass, his body suddenly rigid. “Hungry. Eat now, yes,” he grumbled in response, then ran toward Remy, who barely managed to get the screen door open in time.

  Marlowe hadn't eaten since six that morning and was obviously ravenous. But then again, when wasn't he?

  Remy mixed some wet food from a can with some dry, Marlowe standing attentively by his side, closely watching his every move. A slimy puddle of drool had started to form on the floor beneath his hungry mouth.

  “Almost ready, pal,” he told the Labrador. “I hope you appreciate the time I put into the preparation of your meals.”

  “Appreciate,” Marlowe replied. “Hungry. Eat now?”

  “Yes, now,” Remy confirmed, setting the plastic bowl down on a place mat covered with images of dancing cartoon Labradors. “Let me get you some fresh water.”

  He picked up the stainless-steel water bowl as Marlowe shoved his hungry maw into his supper. He emptied the bowl and rinsed it thoroughly, then filled it with cold water. In the seconds it took Remy to do that and return to the plastic place mat, Marlowe had already finished his meal and was licking the sides of the dish for stray crumbs.

  “More?” Marlowe asked, looking up at his master.

  Remy rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No. No more. Maybe later you can have an apple, if you're good.”

  He ruffled the dog's head and went to the counter to prepare a pot of coffee.

  “Now better.”

  “What did I just say?” Remy said, scooping coffee into a filter. “Later, before bed.”

  Marlowe lowered his head and watched quietly as his master poured water into the coffeemaker. The dog carefully moved closer to Remy, casually sniffing at his pant leg.

  Remy leaned down and thumped the dog's side. It sounded like an empty drum. “What do you smell there, big boy? Anything good?”

  “Female,” Marlowe answered. “Smellfemale. Where?”

  Remy squatted in front of his friend and rubbed the sides of his black face. “Maddie is at the get-well place. I'll bring you to see her tomorrow.”

  The dog thought for a moment and then kissed Remy nervously on the ear. “Get-well place? Get-well place bad.”

  Maddie and Remy had called the veterinarian's office the get-well place, and the dog had never enjoyed his visits there. Marlowe was not happy in the least that Maddie was in the get-well place. She and Remy made up Marlowe's pack, and it confused the poor animal not to have her at home. No matter how Remy tried to explain that Madeline was sick and needed to be taken care of elsewhere, Marlowe could not grasp the concept. So, as he often did in instances like this, Remy changed the subject.