Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  As if on cue, Skinny complained from her new perch on the dresser, safely distant from the recently flailing arms and legs. Her little fuzzy snout moved in a silent meow, as if to mock him. It’s not like I didn’t tell you. Yet she too sympathized for a fool under the spell of a wrong, furless female — because he was her fool, after all. I feel your pain.

  Ravid shook his head, and dropped his load.

  “No...you...didn’t. That’s not what you thought.” He meant that Skinny’s accusation was unfounded; that they both got fooled by the sweetness and light, which, when you thought about it, could fool anybody any time.

  The strange woman below his waist moaned with pleasure — or maybe with hope that the pathos upon them would soon return to the boundless realm of pleasure. She peeked up humbly in selfless service to her one true man. But the kaleidoscope turned on a painful refraction of a scene hitherto wondrous and lovely, gone angular, distorted and bent.

  Here was an event most esteemed in the charter community — in most communities for that matter — an excellent blowjob followed by concerns for a busy, late afternoon schedule and the best way to send this date down the road. He might even find time in the early evening to chart a new future. Who was that guy, the one who viewed this very act as proof of eternal bonding in a world turning perfectly at last, not so long ago?

  Married?

  Fuck.

  So the world turned back, eclipsing light and magic with its more prevalent, more accessible, more insistent reality. Long shadows stretched over the garden, where nothing took root except the insidious tap seeking depth and dominance. Gone were the butterflies and nature’s gentle pollination. No more the mystery and metaphor, where buttons were flowers; this tiptoe through the tulips was just another jizz fest — and a great one at that, though a bit heavy on the sappy side, no pun intended.

  Stray stimuli resurfaced like taunts, morphing to opposite meaning.

  Then love died, the perfect love of loves ending like a life of days on the last day. The perfect woman gave a self-satisfied chirp and looked up with a swollen smile to better see his moment of great good cheer, of grand victory, winner take all. Whether she saw the difference between sweet agony and agonizing loss would remain conjectural, so hurriedly did she wipe her chin and announce with regret yet again. “Oh, God!”

  Ravid felt this exclamation of disgust aimed at his lack of tact, cutting loose on four days of pent-up mustard. But what did she expect, working it like a top-drawer professional with every indication that she’d go to moonrise? Still, he stayed stuck on the quandary: Why on God’s blue earth would she tell the unstable ex-boyfriend about anything with a new boyfriend, especially marriage? Why would she not let him find out? So he asked again, “Why did you do that?”

  Glancing quickly from the window to him, she asked, “You can make more, can’t you?”

  Her response only underscored unseemly familiarity with manly function, not that Ravid Rockulz would begrudge a beautiful woman any romp in her past. He never had at any rate. But this was different. This woman was his...

  Yes, many of his beloved sexual helpers in the past had also been married or with steady boyfriends. But this was different because of the level of spirit and intimacy — not like that nutcase Marcia who kept sucking him off and swore she’d keep at it till they were eighty — or ninety! Because she loved him sooo much. My God, this wasn’t like that! Minna must have had a reason to tell her former boyfriend, her Cousin Darryl, about her new boyfriend — er, husband. Maybe telling the cousin every time she scored a new boyfriend was the ultimate revenge. Some women sorely need to beat the macho men who “own” them.

  Or egg them on.

  Some women need the lead in the machismo play. Had Ravid’s own curiosity been natural, or did Minna taunt it? Either way, curiosity had rushed headlong like an ocean swell to the shallows, with questions of who, what, when and where cresting in sordid details. Then the wave collapsed, as a very strange woman he knew very little about sucked him off.

  “Oh, God!” she said again when the claptrap rattle-bucket pickup truck roared the last half block and screeched to a halt outside, next to her car. Ravid looked out from the side of the window at the small truck from a former decade with a body four feet off the ground because of wheels and tires big enough for an airplane, two big transmissions, sixteen jumbo shock absorbers and a small fortune in extraneous hardware chromed or painted red or yellow between the truck body and the ground. Springs, shafts, gizmos, padlocks, exhaust manifolds, trumpets, U-joints and the works. Jumping from the cab to the ground, a swarthy little man with a potbelly slung low, a Fu Manchu on his lip and a handgun looked around for signs of life.

  He yelled, “You little cunt! I’ll kill every bone in your body!” Then he fired a round in the air.

  She whispered, “Sh. He’s so stupid. He’ll never find us. What’s he going to do, knock on the door?”

  Ravid whispered back, “Why are you whispering then?”

  She giggled. “Sh. God. You think you’re jealous. He’s insane.”

  It was fun, except that it wasn’t. “At least I’m not haole.”

  “Hey. You know what? I wouldn’t go out there right now and explain that to him. Okay? Aw, shit! Look! No wonder he get so mad. His windows all webbed.”

  Besides that, the irate ex then bellowed like a sad animal, “Our son needs you!”

  My Hero, I Mean, You Know?

  Wait a minute.

  “Webbed” was current slang for the web-like fractures in glass that’s been struck by a hard object. Webbing had displaced keying as most popular in minor vandalism, for its newness. Besides that, breaking a window or windshield or back window seemed no less hateful than trashing a whole paint job. And on most cruisers you could run the whole ring of keys down one side or the other to no noticeable effect.

  Who cared? She still run. But, go broke da windows. Well, that’s a nuisance of a different stripe. For one thing, the glass will most likely dribble out in little slivers and pieces that don’t cut you but feel like they could. Besides that, a thief breaks all the way in to get your stuff. Anybody can get robbed. No big deal. But getting webbed meant you got it back for doing somebody wrong, which cast anyone behind a webbed window as the victim of his own foolishness.

  Minna Somayan’s cousin Darryl couldn’t be certain if the guy who went webbing on his windows was the dude on the bicycle whose ear he tried to tickle by barely touching the side mirror to it, or was it that skinny haole suck went try fuck his woman? Hey, that bicycle guy was just for fun, and hey, the mirror missed, not even one little tickle. It was the haole suck, he knew, because of seeing the guy walk to the place where Minna guys like go for coffee and drinks and stuff and then mumbling so the guy can hear him, You fockeen haole suck. Then he went inside for find the bitch and set her straight but she not there yet, and then he went back outside not twenty minutes later, get all webbed already.

  Ravid remembered him and his truck and the challenge of reaching the windows with his backscratcher, which wasn’t a backscratcher but a billy club. Ravid was given the billy by his friend Danny Blackwell on the occasion of Danny’s retirement from sport fishing, not that Danny was anywhere near retirement age, or age thirty; he could in fact name the boat he wanted to work on because of his local knowledge, including currents, tides, shoal waters, lures, baits and the best combos, seasonal changes, what birds worked what fish and what birds lied, hooking, gaffing and, if necessary, boating the fish, any fish. But his fishing career ended when Danny Blackwell showed up on deck one morning just before first light and said he quit. He didn’t explain or give notice or respond in any way other than stooping to retrieve his billy club. Then he turned and jumped back to the dock and faded like a big one that got away, into the depths, or into what was left of the night. Danny didn’t want the billy club but didn’t want to think about it clubbing the snot out of another fish, either.

  Farther down the dock, he told Ravid that he hadn�
�t exactly woke up with his eyes open but had them opened in a dream that must have started around midnight, with this big blue marlin swimming up alongside till they were eyeball to eyeball and not saying anything but just staring and cruising for a few hours. Well, it had to be the same marlin he’d killed the day before: not a record by any means, but a big sumbitch, maybe six-fifty, seven hundred pounds, who bled till the deck ran red. “This fat fucker’d been shooting orders at me all morning, like I was his personal boy. That’s okay. As you well know, it’s the fat fuckers tip the best ’cause you took their shit. Well, you probably don’t get too many fatties, but anyway, this marlin came on playful, batting the bait around, teasing us, like it was a good day for water polo, not fishing. The fat guy misses three times, so I take the rod and set the hook for him. He reels for about a minute and turns purple, so I get the fish to the boat in about an hour, and the fish don’t look too good, not yet gray and ashy like they get but not much gold or green or blue left. But some, so he might have made it if the sharks weren’t around. Didn’t see any, but you never know. So I’m ready for the measure and release and all that happy horseshit they want to go through, and the guy yells, ‘Put him in the boat!’ I stand there and look at him, but it’s his nickel, and he wants a murder one, so the fish comes on board with my regular expertise, quick and safe, nobody gets stabbed with the bill or crushed underneath. Usually I can take a fish out with a few good shots.”

  Here, Danny hefted the billy club.

  “But this fish didn’t want to go. Then the fat fucker starts yelling at me where to hit him, and not so hard, because he wants it to last, so he can take more pictures. I killed the fish quick after that. I wish I’d killed that fat bastard. I wouldn’t feel so bad today, I can promise you that. Ravid, I’m tired of killing...”

  Danny Blackwell frowned like a small child on the verge of tears, shaking his head and finally blurting. “It ain’t even tired. It’s what I seen about that fish and that fat fucker. Man, that fish was my brother, and that fat fucker...that fat fucker...”

  “The fish seem to be more worthy of living than the anglers. I believe they have a better life,” Ravid said.

  “Yeah, man. That’s exactly how it is. I’m done. I don’t want to... I won’t...”

  “Hey, Danny,” Ravid said, taking the billy club. “You did great, man. That fish didn’t die for nothing. You think of the great fish still out there that your fish saved by showing you what was up.”

  Danny Blackwell wanted to see this light but stayed distraught, so Ravid didn’t press the issue, namely: What was he, Ravid, supposed to do with a billy club? Danny got his composure in a minute and explained anyway: “You’re from Israel. You’ll know what to do with it.” Ravid nearly made a joke about clubbing Jew baits, but he held back; the moment seemed so adequately resolved. So Danny added, “Whack some assholes with it.” And Ravid laughed, saying the world was way too populated with assholes walking freely on the streets in need of whacking with a billy club for one guy to make a dent in the problem. Danny said, “Hey, man, you’ll know what to do.”

  Ravid had heard it before and plenty over the years, especially his years in the United States, where casual reference to any problem, threat, situation, unrest or anything in the Middle East led to, Send in the Israelis. They’ll know what to do. He’d made a habit of not responding, just as he crossed the street, figuratively speaking, to avoid confronting any trouble, whether anti-Semitic trouble or trouble in general. Because he did know what to do — learned what to do in his military training beginning at age fourteen for the Sayeret Matkal. A fourteen-year-old boy or a grown man — either one is naturally scared shitless when dropping solo from a chopper hovering at forty feet over the Red Sea a few miles out from Eilat, till he’s done it so many times he loses count and his fear is down from shitless to low-grade apprehension and focus. The heaviest burden was the workload, with two guys given a task that a platoon could take a half-day getting done. The training missions ended on relief and withdrawal, with every adrenaline junkie pining for one more little fix.

  But reason must rule the survivor’s mind. Straying into emotional danger zones killed more good men than the elements or the enemy. What a military stealth diver learns later or sooner is practicality — nothing personal, just business. Every mission had components to complete with method and dispatch. Adding emotion was like smoking near a fuel tank, not a behavior of the naturally selected. Neither Ravid Rockulz nor any survivalist could tolerate a reputation as ultimate avenger preceding him.

  Danny Blackwell quit fishing five or six years ago, and the billy club Ravid now called his backscratcher proved a handy tool for webbing. Ravid had been a webbing pioneer, an original webber thriving anonymously, like the Scarlet Pimpernel with a different accent and a day job on a dive boat. The Turquoise Pimpernel? The Snorkel Pimpernel? Never mind — why would he carry the backscratcher to a solitary outing for a coffee and a Danish? He asked himself that very same question on his way out from home then picked up the backscratcher, because you never know, and besides not knowing, you sure enough needed a thing just when you left it behind. Conversely, having it on hand would most often preclude its need. Most importantly, he felt confident in his ability to out-asshole the biggest assholes out there. So he carried the backscratcher, to ensure that it wouldn’t be needed, or something. Hey, it was a game, harmless and playful and, on any given day, instructive.

  He’d used it now and then to reach an itch on his back, though he used it mostly to administer justice. His technique was to hold the Billy straight out from the window an inch from the glass with his back to the car. He would look both ways before crossing, then thrust it back into the glass for a beautiful starburst or, if you will, a lovely bang in his little Universe, so life could unfold anew. He’d laughed at the goofy truck with the big wheels — he’d have had to jump up to the running boards to gain his normal position. But coming to his senses, he’d reached up for an easy tap, which didn’t do much, so he’d whacked each window for webbings all around, which felt better than usual, and he hadn’t even known why.

  Or maybe he was wrong — willful and vindictive, facilitating a dark undercurrent. Or maybe webbing only appeared wrong on the surface. Some guys needed webbing to slow them down, to show them the error of their ways. You web a windshield right in front of the driver’s seat, the guy has to hang his head out the window for a dose of self-consciousness, with everyone knowing he got somebody pissed off enough to web him.

  But the important point here was standing up to what was wrong. That wasn’t a reaction but an application, which just so happened to be a fundamental tenet of Ravid Rockulz’s belief system. Was that so bad? Did that make him a mental case?

  Take the guy, for example, who came out for a dive and in five minutes made no mistake about Ravid’s accent or its origin, which was Israel, not France. The guy said, “Israel?” Ravid did not respond verbally but kept the guy in view, much as a snake handler would keep tabs on a viper, because the question could lead to extremes: on the one hand, tedious good cheer, on the other hand, equally tedious ill will. This guy said, “I got nothing against the Jews. It’s the Zionists I hate.” Ravid stepped up with his backscratcher over the guy’s head. The guy ducked under his arms and screeched, “Crazy fucker!”

  “I’d say you have a problem. All Jews are Zionists.”

  “No, they’re not. You think the Jews in Damascus are Zionists?”

  “Is this your mask?”

  “Yes.” The guy peeked out from behind his arms for what he correctly anticipated would be a foolish lesson in politics.

  Ravid tossed the mask overboard. “You see? You think that mask has value. I just proved that it doesn’t. Don’t worry. I’ll get it for you.”

  So the guy couldn’t dive and demanded a refund, and Ravid said he would gladly pay it, because the guy couldn’t dive from that boat anyway, because it was a Zionist boat, obviously. Then the guy said he didn’t need any charity fro
m a you-know-what, and so ended the unfortunate incident with each of the principals more firmly entrenched than he had been, confirmed in his distrust and seething anxiety required to balance the nastiness so freely engendered by the other side.

  Everyone on board had known the score. The practical problem was that the boat had been near the dive site but not yet on it when Ravid had tossed the mask overboard, a Mares deluxe model with extra-fancy mythical icons typically favored by those divers who don’t go so often but want to look good when they do. Cruising at eighteen knots less than a minute from the dive site still leaves a huge area of ocean bottom to search. The mask was not found. The guy got a refund on the dive and got his mask replaced, which didn’t make him feel any better, which was at least some consolation to Ravid. The guy was a Jew-hating son of a whore. So what? I should apologize? I should pave the way for this hate-mongering bigot? I will not.

  Ravid had been put on probation, termination pending, for three days, which proved good for calming the irate client, who had threatened to notify the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs — groan. More importantly, the brief hiatus had allowed Ravid to reclaim a composure worn thin from hard work, giving him time to run errands long overdue and return to work refreshed with no hard feelings for his boss, after all. When reminded by the boss that the tourist had gone away but the issue might not go away, Ravid asked, “What’s he going to do, call the ACLU or the Anti-Defamation League? Or B’nai Brith, or Hadassah?” When the boss couldn’t answer, Ravid said, “Oh. No. Wait — that’s me who’s supposed to call those guys. Might not go away... Fuck, man. Wake up and smell the halvah.” Then he walked away in a huff, so much as saying that it was a free country, where anyone could kiss his ass if they insisted.