The Heat of Angels

by Lisa Girolami

  “Well, obviously it wasn’t just sex to you.”

  “That’s what I mean! It’s not something to casually engage in, like lawn bowling or whatever.”

  She heard Paige snicker.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. I only laughed because I suddenly had this picture of you on a bocce-ball court, naked as a jaybird. Listen, I know you’re thinking you acted out of character. And I know you don’t take sex lightly. But something must have made it okay to go that far. Or were you drunk?”

  “No, I wasn’t.” Chris grabbed some shoes. “I don’t know why, but we were in her hallway kissing and I got swept up in the moment.”

  “When did it become a bad thing?”

  “When I woke up this morning.”

  “So last night was great?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “The way I see it is, last night, your head took off and went on a drive or, in your case, a joyride. You were feeling, not thinking. And this morning, your head decided to come back and immediately started analyzing. Am I close?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me one thing. Why wasn’t your head present last night?”

  Chris stopped tying her shoes. “I guess I didn’t want to think. But that’s the problem. I was careless. I don’t even know her that well. This is starting out backward.”

  “Sex on the second date or seventeenth date has little to no bearing on the success or failure of the relationship. As long as you both were comfortable and wanted it, I think it’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “And don’t underestimate what you said about not wanting to think too much last night. It felt good and you just went with it. Maybe you knew enough about her to trust that it’d be all right.”

  Chris took one last look in the mirror. Paige was right. Other than needing a haircut, she hadn’t suffered any damage yet. “You’re right.”

  “So go and have fun. And then call me and give me all the details.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did that help?”

  “No.”

  “I thought so.”

  Chris knew her best friend was now smiling.

  She got off the phone and went out to Abel’s kennel. She let him out and he danced away, happily looking for his ball.

  “Take a break,” she said, and when he finished, she threw the ball for him a few times and locked him back up.

  Trepidation still lurked inside her, hovering in the corners of her brain like unsettled little dust bunnies.

  Chapter Six

  The drive to the Angeles Crest Wildlife Refuge was gorgeous. Other than the smoke-tinged skies, the scenery was tremendous. Wind blew the tops of the trees, and they bent over the shorter ones like parents checking on a child. She spotted a few birds, but not as many as she’d seen before. She hadn’t been hiking in the area for a couple years and made a mental note to plan a trip soon.

  Turning off the highway, she listened to the gravel road to the refuge crunch under her tires and smiled as she bounced along, happy to be going to see Sarah. On the way, she’d had the just-chill-and-don’t-overthink conversation with herself about five times, so she was definitely ready.

  Sarah walked out to meet her as she pulled into the visitors’ parking lot.

  “Hi,” she said as Chris got out of her car.

  They kissed briefly.

  That went well, she thought, before telling herself that commentating was for sports reporters.

  “Ready for the tour?”

  “I am.”

  They walked down a cement path, past some buildings, and Chris could see large enclosures built into the hills to the right. Exotic noises came from every direction—screeching, howling, cawing—all sounding as if a political caucus was taking place.

  “This entire facility is a rehab and medical refuge for native, wild, and exotic animals. We have a hundred forty acres here, housing and providing rescue, rehabilitation, and relocation to any animal that needs help. We get them from circuses, private parties, and animal exhibits. Some are injured in the wild, orphaned, or abandoned by their parents.”

  “You’re very versed on all this. It sounds like you give a lot of tours.”

  “We all do.”

  “What kinds of animals do you have here now?”

  “Let’s see…lions, leopards, tigers, bobcats, primates, foxes, reptiles, bear, wolves, deer, and many birds.”

  “Wow.”

  “Close to forty thousand animals have been cared for over the years. We run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  She led Chris to a row of large kennels on the lowest level of the hill.

  “This is our wolf area,” Sarah said, and stopped at the first kennel. “And this is Nala. She’s been here for about two years.”

  Chris watched Nala walk toward them. She was stepping cautiously, her eyes never wavering from them. Though she looked a lot like a husky, she was much larger. Her thick, grizzled fur was ticked with brown and a little black, and Chris guessed she weighed anywhere from eighty to eighty-five pounds.

  Nala reached the fence and sniffed the air.

  “She came from Alaska,” Sarah said as she knelt down. “She had serious facial trauma and a lot of battle scars. Her teeth were damaged,” she pointed to a dark patch of fur on her shoulder, “and she had a gunshot wound.”

  “Poor baby,” Chris said, frustrated that people could mistreat such beautiful creatures.

  Sarah stood up. “She’s a very high-strung, nervous little girl, but that’s typical wolf behavior. She’s doing so much better now.”

  They walked down the row of enclosures and Sarah pointed out each wolf, some paired up and some who functioned better solo.

  As they followed the path that rose up and around a small hill, Chris said, “Arizona, Utah, New Mexico—you’ve named a lot of states, just from where the wolves came from.”

  “These animals are brought here from all over the world. And each one has a personal story.”

  “So what kind of work do you do here?”

  “A little bit of everything. The volunteers feed and work with the animals, repair fences, help in the office, construct habitats, run educational programs. Just cleaning the facilities involves hours of hosing down, and lots of scrubbing and steam cleaning.”

  “What’s your favorite thing?”

  “Really, everything. But some special moments are unforgettable.” She stopped and turned to Chris, cupping her hands in front of her. “Last week, I was hand-feeding a baby bald eagle.” Her expression, bright with fascination, captivated Chris completely.

  “What do you feed a baby bald eagle?”

  “Shredded meat.”

  “I guess that’s better than a burger and fries.”

  Sarah took Chris’s hand and it felt very natural. She liked the connection. Sarah led her to a large compound nestled in big-cone Douglas fir and some Ponderosa pine trees.

  “This is one of our primate areas. These are Guinea baboons.”

  Chris watched as a group lumbered toward them. They seemed to be as curious as she was. When they reached the fence, one baboon pushed its way to the front.

  “This is Sasha,” Sarah said. “She’s the boss. This is a troop of seven Guinea baboons. They’re the smallest of the species and weigh between twenty-five and fifty-seven pounds. We think she’s about thirty years old and we call her the furry old lady.”

  Chris nudged Sarah. “She just raised her eyebrows at us.”

  “They’re great communicators. If they grin, they’re saying ‘I’m sorry,’ and if they show those sharp teeth, it’s ‘Be careful or else.’”

  Chris held up her hand, “Sasha, no offense, but I’d rather not see your pearly whites.”

  “These baboons break the tree rule. They live mostly on the ground.” She pointed and said, “Their short fingers are better suited for ground foraging. And with their arms positioned under the shoulders, they can pick with one hand
and balance with the other.”

  “What’s Sasha’s personal story?”

  “She came from a man who had her in a shack off a highway in Arizona. It was a tourist trap and people paid money to stare at her. She’d been taken from her mother way too young, bought on the black market, and lived many years by herself. Someone emailed Angeles Crest, and she was rescued shortly after that.”

  “The guy let her go that easily?”

  “He was in violation of some animal regulations. The asshole didn’t have a choice.” The furry old lady seemed to understand they were talking about her. She sat down next to the fence and leaned against it, pushing toward them.

  “When she arrived here, we were afraid she wouldn’t be able to interact with a tribe. But she blended in perfectly.” Sarah nodded toward her. “It’s amazing, because she never had a family—no one she could relate to or who cared about her. And now she’s the matriarch.”

  “She’s beautiful, too.”

  Sarah grinned. Chris could tell she was emotionally invested in Angeles Crest.

  Sarah took her hand again and they walked a ways, past a large outdoor aviary that, Sarah explained, was home to more than a dozen species that, for the most part, had broken wing and beak injuries.

  Rounding another small hill, they approached a pen that had to be three or four acres large. In it three big cats lived among sturdy, old-growth pine trees, medium-size wooden decks, three ten-by-ten-foot cement pens, and a grass-edged pond.

  “This is our leopard pen,” Sarah said. “The fencing is fourteen feet tall and welded with six-gauge wire. The owner picked this place because of the trees. Leopards spend more time lounging in trees than on the ground. They’re exceptional climbers, so we had to find the most established trees because of that.”

  “What are the cement things for?”

  “That’s where they take a break while we go in there and clean the land and pond. It also provides shelter during a bad storm.”

  One leopard trotted up to the fence and Chris stepped back.

  “You’re safe as long as you don’t stick a finger through the fence,” Sarah said. “This is Mattie. She’s about four years old. All three—that’s Phinneas lying on the ground and Patty in the water—came from private owners who realized that a grown leopard isn’t the same as a kitten. That’s the problem with people who want to keep exotic animals. They have no idea what it takes and that it’s usually a bad idea for them and the cat.”

  “They’re so beautiful. I know it’s wrong to think, but I just want to reach in there and pet their fur.”

  “I know what you mean. If you hang around long enough, you find that they’re a lot like a domestic cat, except on speed.”

  Mattie hooked the fence with a claw and gave it a good shake.

  Chris stared at the impressive show of strength. “And steroids.”

  “Every week, we feed over six thousand pounds of meat to our cats alone.” She waved her arm toward the north, which must have been where other immense pens were located. “That includes the lions, tigers, and the rest.”

  Chris turned to face Sarah. The sun, covered in a smoky overlay, cast her skin in a deep glow, accentuating her tan. Volunteering here, with an obviously loving and caring heart, Sarah was just as beautiful on the inside as out.

  “You love it here.”

  “I really do. It’s not a real job, but—”

  “It is a job. You might not get paid, but you contribute to an incredible cause. You should be very proud of that.”

  Chris noticed that Sarah’s expression had shifted into what appeared to be sadness. It was possible that she was ashamed of not having a career, but Chris knew many people who got paid to do a lot less than Sarah. And a week-to-week paycheck wasn’t more important than making a significant contribution to charity. Sarah began explaining the immigration process for the leopards, so Chris resisted delving further into the topic.

  After another hour of walking around, Sarah took Chris back to the offices, where they had lunch in a small break room. She’d made a basket of deli sandwiches and fruit salad.

  Sitting across from each other at a small table, Chris held up her sandwich. “This was nice.”

  “It’s easy to work up an appetite hiking around all those trails. I didn’t want you to get light-headed.”

  “The only time I get light-headed is when I stand up too fast.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.”

  Chris laughed. “Speaking of remembering…” She poked a fork in her salad and brought up two speared blackberries. “Where have I seen these before?”

  “Those,” Sarah said casually, “are some of the ones you weren’t speaking sweet nothings to.”

  “Oh, the neglected ones.”

  “That’s right.”

  Chris leaned in close to the berries. “I love you just as much as the ones I took home. But I couldn’t take you all. I hope you understand.”

  “Okay, you didn’t tell me you were a weirdo.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Sarah paused before saying, “Another thing I didn’t ask was, how you are about last night?”

  Chris stopped chewing. If her brain had been a mental CPU, rapidly processing the question to search the mainframe for a good answer, she quickly realized that the screen had just frozen. Damn! What do I say? And just as suddenly, she flashed on the four or five thousand times she’d stood in front of a suspect who had the same look she must now have. And she told herself what she always told them. The truth would be good right about now.

  She put down her fork. “Last night was fantastic. Being with you was incredible.”

  Sarah studied her. Chris forged on. “There’s just this thing. I mean, it’s not a thing but a…thing. Okay, I’m not making any sense.” She looked to Sarah and grinned nervously, hoping for indulgence. “I’ve never…I mean, that was the first time…”

  “You’ve been with a woman,” Sarah said. “Oh, shit, I didn’t know.”

  Chris’s flung her hands up. “No! That’s not what I meant. This is the first time I’ve slept with someone so quickly.”

  Sarah looked down for the briefest of moments. “Oh, because of the incredible night we had, I was tempted to call bullshit on you.”

  “I guess it’s been a rule of mine for a long time.” Chris looked down at her sandwich as if the wrinkles in the lettuce would magically spell out better words to say. “I usually get to know someone pretty well before…” She looked up and couldn’t read Sarah’s face. She was screwing this up by declaring some stupid decree that now sounded just pathetically adolescent.

  She reached out for Sarah’s hand and was relieved when she felt it, strong and soft, in her own. “I just want you to know that, last night, I couldn’t have given a shit about any rules. I went with what I was feeling, and even Sasha the baboon couldn’t have pulled me away. Not that having Sasha there would have been good. That’d be kind of creepy, but—”

  Sarah squeezed her hand. “I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. And I imagine you were kicking yourself when you woke up this morning.”

  Chris grimaced from the truth. “I was. A little. So you know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean, but I don’t feel the same way. I’ve learned that rules are the ugly concrete fences in an otherwise beautiful world. I suppose I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum in that I’ve been fucked up by following rules, so I usually ignore them.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t say that to a cop.” Chris was relieved when Sarah laughed. “Sarah, it’s not that I regret it. Well, I guess I regret not taking more time before last night. There’s something to be said about a passionate buildup.”

  “There are lots of ways to achieve that.”

  “I guess there are.”

  Sarah released her hand and folded it over the other, resting them on the table and leaning closer to her. “So, what do you need right now?”

  Chri
s hadn’t thought that far ahead. She hadn’t planned on anything but just getting the past days’ worth of conundrums out. And now, seeing Sarah again and watching her as she talked about the animals, and appreciating how gracious she was being, Chris was as comforted as impassioned. “I know what I don’t want,” she said. “I don’t want to stop seeing you.”

  Sarah plucked a blackberry from Chris’s salad and offered it to her, and Chris opened her mouth. As Sarah slipped it in, her fingers lingered. An abrupt rush of adrenaline shot through Chris and detonated between her legs.

  She waited until Sarah slipped her fingers out but still couldn’t chew.

  “Well, now we have two things in common.”

  A quick but pleasing shudder jump-started her mouth. “Uh, huh…?”

  “I don’t want to stop seeing you,” she said, and then touched Chris’s lip again. “And now you’re a murderer, too.”

  Chris chewed on the succulent little berries. “I guess I am.”

  “So, where do we go from here?”

  The tightness in Chris’s pants told her to go straight back to Sarah’s house. She clutched her fork as desperately as an overboard sailor grasps a life preserver. “I’m not sure.”

  While she knew her “rules” were more than likely archaic and naïve, she was still too afraid to keep speeding along.

  Sarah then valiantly solved her Catch-22. “Let’s just take it easy and see where it goes.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t say that I don’t want you, though.”

  “Believe me, I understand.”

  “And taking it easy shouldn’t be difficult right now because I know I smell like a skunk that just mud-wrestled with a badger and a chimpanzee.”

  Sarah’s compassion was beautiful, and it made Chris like her even more. “I guess now I have to admit to something else.”

  She paused until Sarah’s expression grew serious.

  “I have a thing for badgers.”

  Sarah walked her out to her car, and before she got in, Chris said, “Thanks for understanding. I know I must sound like an old maid.”

  Stepping closer, Sarah brushed Chris’s hair back over her ear. “I was there last night, and that was no old maid in my bedroom.”