"It's DOCTOR Wilms, thank you, and I'll lower my voice when I get some satisfaction!"
"Will do, Dr. Wilms," said the man, not intimidated. A few moments later, and after some rapid clicking on computer keys: "Your account has been credited $4.99. It'll appear on next month's statement ..."
Like the first video, the most shameful moment had yet to occur, which Calliel clicked and watched this time: that of me sitting in my car slamming my fists on the wheel and shouting, "FUCKING INGRATE DUMBSHIT APEFUCK ASSHOLES! FUCKING SHIT-FOR-BRAINS BITCH! FUCKING RIPOFFS! ..."
And on and on and on.
It didn't stop there. Calliel was a good researcher, as it turned out. He watched video after video after video, studying me with Zen master-like concentration. He'd lean forward every now and again and write on an open note pad (in that indescribable language, remarkably).
He got up to pee several more times, and to fetch more beer. The bathroom runs always had me decoupled from him, only to reattach when he flushed and left. I conjectured there must be some privacy function in the anchor. After all, I wouldn't want someone to watch me piss. When it happened a fourth time I settled on that as my working hypothesis and left it at that.
The shame of my life was laid bare those long hours, and I couldn't stop the tears from welling up and spilling over. My life had been an utter failure. The proof was in the endless links and the angel clicking on them. It was digital Chinese water torture.
The saying goes that you see your life flash before your eyes before you die. Well, for all intents and purposes, it's true. At least for me it was.
I didn't question the gross unfairness of it. After all, there were bright interludes in between all these woeful and horrid moments. But I found myself praying he'd not call any of them up and watch them. Somehow they were more shameful than these shameful acts, given that the man granted them so completely polluted them by way of his actions afterward. It was like taking a gift from a loved one and trashing it with as much contempt as possible as the loved one looked on, hurt and sad and not understanding.
It was midnight when he stopped watching my awful life for a few moments and typed in the searchbar: "Nora Williamson."
The woman Calliel spoke to on the bus came up.
He smiled. So did I.
The top link read:
NORA JEAN WILLIAMSON—admitted into Heaven 9:43 pm
Chapter Three
Alone in the Living Room
~~*~~
CALLIEL EVENTUALLY turned off the computer and left the study.
I wasn’t glad. In fact, the relief I felt went way beyond that. I had become a gibbering, blubbering, pleading moron, forced to watch video after video of my misdeeds and horrible decisions and temper tantrums, or the countless pathetic attempts to curry what little power and privilege I could to myself, or the numberless instances where my naked greed and downturned mouth were displayed, or my arrogant and haughty glare, which I once took great pride in cowing students and staff with, now shown for what it truly was: pitiful. Deplorable.
The very worst of it he saved for last. It was a brief affair I had twenty years ago with a sophomore named Delia Simpson. She was a pretty brunette who batted her long eyelashes at me one time too many, and I took advantage of her naivete and awe of my mathematical smarts. She was on student aid, and fell in love with me. I can’t bring myself to repeat what happened next, save this: I got her kicked out of school by some very devious and horrible machinations, and in the process ruined her reputation. The last I’d heard, she’d become an alcoholic and had spent time on the streets. She stalked me for years after, and eventually I got a restraining order on her. I never learned what became of her after that.
So here I was, bawling like a two-year-old. Calliel disposed of his beer bottles (four in all), filled a glass of tap water and downed it, then turned and left the kitchen, switching off the lights behind him. He slumped into what I guessed was his bedroom, but I couldn’t find out, because I was suddenly disengaged from him once again. He emerged from its cavelike darkness a few minutes later in his underwear and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard a toothbrush saw back and forth in an open mouth, spitting, then his bladder emptying once more and the toilet flushing. He opened the door and went back into the bedroom. He appeared as exhausted as I was traumatized.
I was a bit panicked at this point. I felt like a helium balloon, and was terrified I’d fly up through the ceiling and into the night. The tether of his presence had become without my knowing it very comforting and reassuring. I thought once he slipped into bed I might reattach to him, where I’d float over him and watch him sleep for however long he intended to. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, and had readied myself for hours of utter boredom.
Hanging motionless in the living room, I frantically wished for that boredom, because it would be by far more comfortable than being out here by myself.
I considered that perhaps he was masturbating and that I’d reattach to him after he finished. After all, I didn’t get to watch him pee, did I? So he was beating his meat, and he’d summon me or tractor beam me or whatever after he blew his load. Sounded reasonable.
Or was it? Did angels masturbate? Did they have sex? I always found Christians’ hatred of sex appalling and ludicrous. If God created men and women and (for that matter) nature, then He necessarily created the means for all things to continue themselves. The pleasure of sex for itself, regardless if procreation was intended or not, would then be, given God’s existence, a great blessing. It was one reason I became a hardened atheist (pardon the pun). I just couldn’t put up with Christians’ shame-filled attitude about sex.
In any case, the thought that an angel was in the next room whacking off put a stopper on the tears. I was grateful.
“Make sure you’ve got tissue!” I yelled. “And hurry up! I’m getting bored out here!”
But there was no rhythmic rustling of the sheets or heavy breathing coming from the bedroom. I’m sure I would’ve heard it. It was dead silent (again, pardon the pun) out here in the living room.
Presently I heard steady breathing. He was asleep.
“Great,” I murmured. “Now what—”
What happened next I can’t adequately describe. I was in the living room, and then, the next moment, I wasn’t. I blinked, and felt a puff of very cold air sting my cheek, and then everything disappeared. My inner ear and tummy told me I was moving.
Was I leaving this vision? Was I about to smash down into the Pacific Ocean? I waited for the moment I’d see black water rush up to crush the life out of me.
I went to yell, but stopped. This wasn’t the sensation of falling. I was moving … laterally. To the right. Not down. And certainly not speedily.
I blinked again, and bam!—there I was, standing on hard ground!
I went to speak, but found I couldn’t. In fact, I was paralyzed. But also … not.
Cracked ground. I was staring at it. I felt myself leaning my forearms on something bumpy, hard, and uneven, and I felt a sure constriction about the top of my head and a seriously cold breeze blow into my left ear. That half of my head stung and felt like it was going numb.
I exhaled. It issued out of my lungs as mist and blew away with haste. I had something under my lower lip—bitter, awful.
“Whaddya got?” I heard myself say.
But that wasn’t my voice! It was Calliel’s! “I” spat. Chewing tobacco. “I” watched it hit the desiccated earth: a thick black glob of tobacco-filled saliva.
A man who had to be just feet away to the right answered: “Sorrel says the herd’s thirty miles west.”
Was I in Calliel’s body? Was I dreaming a dream with him? Was this what he was dreaming? It felt absolutely, terrifyingly real. I could even sense his anger as he said, “That’s that, then. Tomorrow morning.”
He looked at the man, who stared back. His friend was older and wore a black cowboy hat, one that looked like it had seen years of use, a sheepskin coat, and a checkered s
hirt over layers of undershirts. He had gloves on, and a bullwhip hung from his belt.
Surroundings: thorny scrub-brush, an old, faded-red barn maybe a half mile past the man’s left shoulder, and smallish brown hills on the horizon. Overcast, low, gray skies.
“We don’t need a range war,” the man said.
Calliel—I—growled. “That creek is ours, and that land too. You know damn well Shelby ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing about it. He’ll sit on his hands like he always does …”
I discovered then that I—or Calliel—was leaning against a fence. I—he—was wearing gloves and a sheepskin coat as well; I saw the tips of dirty black cowboy boots peeking out from under his—my—dust-covered work denims. He—I—stood up straight, and the vision faded, vanished.
I was back in the living room.
What the hell—? What was that? Was it an event from his past? Was Calliel a ranch hand or some such and got himself in a range war? I wondered when he died—what date it was. I never bothered asking him. He always seemed a bit out of place for modern culture. He was too honest, too forthright, utterly unschooled in the filthy urban art of couched language.
I heard him shift in bed. He emerged suddenly and shuffled into the bathroom. More peeing; the sound of the toilet flushing. He emerged yawning and sloped back into the bedroom.
My head was spinning. I wanted him to go back to sleep so I could “watch” more.
I waited, wondering how much time had passed. There wasn’t a clock within sight, but I was sure that it was hours later.
I heard him shift, and then I heard snoring. Soon after I was swallowed by a new vision.
I had a spoonful of soup in my grip. I was looking at it with delight. I mean, I could feel his, Calliel’s, delight. This was the best damn soup ever made. That’s what I felt that he was feeling.
It was vegetable soup of some kind, with what appeared to be bits of shredded chicken in it. Thick and hot and hardy. He blew on it to cool it, then shoved it in his mouth.
Wow. That was the best damn soup ever made!
He scooped up more and blew on it. Far too slowly.
“Oh, c’mon!” I yelled. “Man up! A burned roof of your mouth is good for you, builds character! Eat! Eat! Enough with the foreplay!”
So enraptured was he—was I—that it took some time for me to take in my surroundings.
He sat alone at a table large enough for four. The room was small. A fire crackled happily in a modest fireplace at the other end.
Just left of the hearth was a cozy stuffed chair under a brass lamp that shone out a homey yellow. To his right, a door. I saw these things as he saw them.
Over his left shoulder was a passageway, darkened. Behind him was, I assumed, the kitchen. The pleasant odor of baking bread wafted out of it.
There was a knock at the door.
Calliel wiped his mouth with a white cloth napkin and stood to get it. I could feel the anticipation in the bottom of his lungs, as though he’d been waiting for whomever it was and was very glad they had come.
He hurried to the door, opened it.
An older man (not the one who was with him at the fence) beamed at him. He wore a broad, toothy smile, the kind one reserves only for one’s very best friends. He looked vaguely familiar.
“Calliel!” he roared, and the two came together in a tight hug.
“Soup’s on,” said Calliel, releasing him. “You hungry?”
“A bowl of soup sounds delicious!”
The man walked in. Calliel closed the door behind him.
There was something about this old fellow. He was, like the soup, so compelling that I soon forgot about everything but him. I couldn’t figure out what it was.
He was plain enough: short salt-and-pepper hair parted on the right, a grizzled, wide, almost bulldog-like face, a shapeless nose and deep dimples when he smiled, which was often. His eyebrows were bushy and kind, his eyes dark and full of life. He was probably my height and fifty pounds heavier, with a round belly over strong legs. He wore clothing appropriate to his age, which was probably in his mid to late seventies. All in all, utterly unremarkable. Somehow, though, I couldn’t look away from him. It seemed I had seen him before, and tried to place him. Why was his face so familiar?
Calliel disappeared into his little kitchen, returning moments later with a bowl brimming with soup.
The vision faded away.
“Not again!” I yelled in the dark of the living room. “That’s no way to boost your ratings! Return me to the program!”
I don’t know why I said that, and laughed at my snark. It felt good to laugh again. To laugh without rancor or bitterness. Just joy. I laughed some more, just to hear myself. I had laughed damned few times the last months of my life.
It was then I noticed the living room wasn’t as dark as it had been earlier, before the visions began. There was a soft pink cast over the furniture. Dawn was coming.
Calliel was up maybe an hour later. He closed the door to the bathroom and I heard the shower go on. He took his time, eventually emerging with a blue towel around his waist. He’d shaved, and his brown hair was still dripping a little and tousled. I noticed several scars on his chest and upper arms—one looked like a bullet hole—and I asked aloud: “How—no, why—would angels have scars? Do you mean to tell me if I get into Heaven I’ll have to keep my bum knee or that getting injured there is just like it is here? How is that Heaven, then?”
Of course he didn’t hear me. He ambled back into his bedroom. Minutes passed.
Whoooooosh!
I sailed like a skeet shot back over his shoulders. He’d dressed: a white long-sleeved shirt with those dorky cowboy buttons, blue jeans, and boots. He inspected himself in the mirror and brushed his hair, which he left wet. Water stains graced his wide shoulders.
He smiled at his reflection, and then sighed. The smile disappeared. I knew why.
I’ve got a pretty good memory. I wouldn’t say it’s photographic, but its damn close.
The day I first met Calliel he was wearing this exact outfit.
He was about to head off to meet Dr. Ray Wilms for the first time. Dr. Ray Wilms, mathematics professor and unrepentant, sullen, and wrathful jerk.
Chapter Four
The Day We Met
~~*~~
CALLIEL WAITED patiently for the westbound 903. A woman eventually joined him. They stood silently at the curb.
The bus came up the hill ten minutes later. He got on it and took a seat at the front. My stop was six up the line. When the bus pulled up to it I stared.
There I was.
I stood like a war refugee. It was written all over my person: tired sloping shoulders, the wide-eyed stare of astonished fatigue, the restless stance. I gripped the handle of my briefcase like someone was going to steal it, secured as it was with oh-so-valuable homework and pencils and ibuprofen.
The doors opened. I was the first to board.
I don’t recall doing it, but I glanced down at Calliel, who smiled up at me.
“How are you this fine morning?” he asked politely.
I walked on as though I hadn’t heard him, though I’m sure I did. I watched as I took a seat near the rear, as I always did. I crowded up against a window and stared lifelessly out.
Hopeless. I was hopeless.
I watched as a woman sat next to me, watched as I squeezed harder into the side of the bus as though she had the bubonic plague. I was clearly irritated.
The doors closed and the bus got on its way.
Calliel made no attempt to look back at me the entire way to the trolley. He engaged the driver in small talk: “How are you this fine morning?” which the driver returned with a jovial, “Every morning is fine with the Lord watchin’ over ya.”
“So true, so true,” replied Calliel.
The driver was an obese black man with a smile that covered his entire face and a constant sheen of sweat on his brow, which he’d wipe after taking off his hat. He was a regular on this rout
e, and a driver I’d come to like, because he was very conscientious and safe without being slow. “Just gotta learn to let go,” he said. “That’s the trick to life—learnin’ to let the little things go.”
“Pretty tough trick sometimes,” said Calliel.
“Life ain’t easy. No sir! Ain’t easy at all. Ain’t fair neither.”
“It’s not at that.”
“Faith,” said the driver, holding up a finger to emphasize the point, “ain’t for wimps.”
“Not the kind that counts,” said Calliel.
“Are you a man of faith?”
The driver looked over his shoulder at him.
Calliel grinned. “You could say that.”
The bus pulled into H Street Station. As Calliel stood to go, the driver, glancing up at him, said, “You have a good day, man o’ God.”
Calliel gave him a pat on his massive shoulder and stepped off, me tagging along. I’d taken the occasional glance behind me, at me. I had sat there staring out the window the entire time, and now made my way out the back exit. The driver was wishing passengers to have a good day, which surprised me, because until now I’d never heard him do so. Something told me it was something he always did.
Calliel stopped in the shade and rolled up his sleeves. I—the I that was holding the briefcase—did as well. There were many seeking shade; it was (as I recall) going to be a hot, muggy day. He didn’t look back at me, though I was just five feet behind and to his right. Like earlier, I stood there like a civvy who’d just emerged from a bomb shelter after the shelling stopped.
I couldn’t remember what I was thinking as I stood there. It shocked me somewhat, because it came to me then that I couldn’t remember anything I had ever thought or done the countless times I stood waiting for the Blue Line. I was a cipher. In a very real way I didn’t exist.
I floated over Calliel’s shoulder and stared at me. I was a void—a void with flesh and bones. I felt more real as a disembodied spirit or mind or point of consciousness or whatever I was now than I felt standing there, corporeal and substantial.
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