A Hideous Beauty

by Jack Cavanaugh

  “They obviously believe in you,” he replied.

  I must have rolled my eyes or given some other sign of exasperation because the professor’s teaching finger appeared. “Hear me out,” he said. “I have a point to make. Do you believe in the terrorist threat al Qaeda presents?”

  “It’s not your turn to ask—”

  “Just answer my question. Do you believe that al Qaeda presents a credible threat to you as a United States citizen?”

  “I’d be a fool not to.”

  “Have you ever met a member of al Qaeda?”

  “Personally? No.”

  “Neither have I. What if I were to tell you that I don’t believe al Qaeda exists . . . that I’m convinced al Qaeda is a myth, fabricated by our current administration to distract us from problem issues at home.”

  “All right . . . I’ll play,” I said. After a moment or two of thought, I answered. “I’d say that’s exactly what al Qaeda would want you to believe. If they can get enough people to believe they are not a credible threat, better yet, that they don’t even exist, it gives them greater freedom to carry out their attacks. But Professor, surely you’re not saying that angels are—”

  The professor leaned forward and spoke in earnest. “The real battle is spiritual, Mr. Austin. Everyday forces we cannot see influence our thoughts, our lives, our world.” He paused to judge my reaction before continuing. “This isn’t the world you think it is, Mr. Austin. Our borders are being breached by a hostile unseen force. There are no government funds to stop them. Homeland Security doesn’t acknowledge they exist. Metal detectors are useless against them. Yet hundreds, possibly thousands, of enemy agents cross our borders every day.

  “They’re dedicated, insidious soldiers of destruction from a supernatural realm. They move among us virtually undetected. For millennia they have acted as sleeper agents, living among us, influencing human history.”

  You can’t stop us. We’ve been doing this for millennia.

  “The original war between good and evil never ended, Mr. Austin, and in these last days the battle is gaining momentum, and you can believe that our friend Semyaza will play a key role. We can expect fresh assaults. Whether you choose to recognize the threat is irrelevant. Believing they don’t exist doesn’t make the threat any less real.”

  I had to give him this: He believed what he was saying. But I wasn’t buying it. “Professor, I attended Sunday school. I’ve seen the pictures of angels and Joseph and Mary—”

  He cut me off. “You asked me if I believe in angels, Mr. Austin. I do. I’ve seen them. Conversed with them.”

  I scoffed. “You’ve talked to angels?”

  “Do you want to know what I believe, Mr. Austin? I believe that something big is about to go down, and that for some reason you have been selected to play a crucial part in it.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Angels. I don’t think I’ve met a grown person who believes in angels since the fourth grade, when I played Joseph in a Christmas pageant.

  Classes had let out at Heritage College. The professor and I sat in silence on the porch overlooking the parking lot. Clusters of students passed by, blowing off pent-up energy. Below us, for every car that vacated a parking space, there were two cars vying to replace it.

  The professor and I retreated to our thoughts. He was probably hoping I was pondering what he’d just told me. I wasn’t. My mind had wandered back to Sunday school and the fourth grade.

  My mother never took me to church. When I learned that other children went to church on Sundays I asked her why we didn’t attend. She said she didn’t believe in church, then laughed. She thought that was funny.

  Mother had her own ideas of worship. First, it was never done before noon because she never got up before then. Second, when she did worship, she worshipped at the cathode-ray cathedral of television, mostly old black-and-white movies. Her version of responsive reading was saying lines in unison with the actors. Communion was taken with wine, usually two glasses per show.

  Not long after I started the fourth grade, Mrs. Lipton, our next-door neighbor, invited me to her church, which was having some kind of high-attendance contest, and she happened to be the fourth-grade teacher. As it turned out, her class won and we were treated to a pizza party at ten o’clock one Sunday morning. The pizza tasted like pepperoni-flavored cardboard, but eating cardboard pizza was better than having Mrs. Lipton have us take turns reciting the names of the apostles.

  I’ve always wondered if Mrs. Lipton would have invited me to Sunday school that year had she been the teacher of the fifth grade.

  The highlight of my Sunday school stint was the Christmas pageant. A stage production, I saw it as the possible debut of an acting career. After all, I came from good Hollywood stock. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the thought of my mother attending the performance and being proud of her actor son hadn’t crossed my mind.

  When I informed Mrs. Lipton I wanted to audition for the lead role, she laughed. She said I was too big for the manger, which I learned was nothing more than a barnyard baby crib.

  I asked her what the second-best role was. She laughed again and told me if I wanted that role I’d have to wear a wig and hold a doll in my arms. Even then the part had already been promised to Louise Stouffer, the daughter of one of the church’s elders. I knew Louise from school. She was a pretty blond sixth-grader, meaner than a snake, with a poisonous tongue to match. Rumor had it that she once outcussed a high school football player.

  Mrs. Lipton cast me as Joseph because I was the tallest boy in the class. At first, I thought it was a choice role until I learned that Joseph had no lines. All he did was stand next to Mary. The manger had a bigger part than Joseph.

  When we started rehearsals I requested a new assignment. I wanted to be an angel. At least they sang. But you had to be a fifth- or sixth-grader to be an angel. Mrs. Lipton misinterpreted my request for a different role as stage fright.

  “There’s no reason to be nervous,” she counseled me. “Nobody will be looking at you. They’ll all be looking at Mary and baby Jesus.”

  As a prophet, Mrs. Lipton was uncannily accurate. On the night of the performance, I commanded as much attention as the cardboard scenery. During the manger scene, even though I was standing right next to her, when the spotlight focused on Mary, it missed me entirely.

  Louise Stouffer sat there looking beatific, cradling a plastic doll in her arms. She was the only person with a solo. To a lullaby tune the mouth that spewed curses at school sang with rapture about being the handmaiden of the Lord.

  The doll that was used that year for baby Jesus was one of those dolls that closed its eyes when it was reclined. However, its left eye was broken, and the entire time Louise Stouffer sang her song, the thing stared up at me with one eye.

  When the shepherds and wise men did their bit, my crepe beard started to itch something horrible. At first I resisted scratching it. But why? Nobody looked at Joseph.

  No sooner had I lifted my hand than I heard a hissing sound coming from Louise Stouffer. Murderous eyes glared up at me.

  “Your hand!” she hissed.

  I looked at it, wondering what was wrong with it. Nothing that I could see.

  “It’s in the light!” she hissed. “You’re casting shadows on baby Jesus, you moron!”

  The shepherds, who were third-graders, tittered.

  She was right, of course. My hand was casting shadows on the baby Jesus and everyone in the auditorium seemed to notice, aided no doubt by the consternation of the production’s leading lady.

  I could have turned crimson with embarrassment and pulled my hand out of the spotlight, but for some reason I saw it as an opportunity for a little theatrical improvisation.

  Directing the shadow of my finger to the tip of the baby Jesus’s nose, I did what any father would do—“Gootchie, gootchie, gooo!”

  That was my last Sunday at church. Mrs. Lipton came down sick and missed a couple of Sundays in a row. Soon a
fter she quit teaching the fourth-grade class.

  My mother didn’t come to see me in the Christmas production, which was just as well considering how it turned out.

  All this talk of angels reminded me of the fourth grade and the Christmas production and not being old enough to be an angel, and I wondered if the professor believed in the Christmas angels too. A couple of times I almost asked, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sitting around talking about angels. It’s just not something grown men do.

  “You’ve seen one,” the professor said, breaking the reverie.

  “You’re still talking about angels, right?”

  “In the library, a short time ago,” he replied.

  I grinned. He was pulling my leg. Big joke. I take him seriously and he retorts with, “I thought you didn’t believe in angels?”

  He stared at me deadpan serious.

  “I’ve seen an angel?” I repeated.

  He nodded.

  I thought back. She certainly looked heavenly. Miss Ling had an aura about her that was striking, especially the way the tips of her hair brushed her shoulders as she walked. Her skin was pale and flawless, almost radiant.

  But I wasn’t biting.

  “Do you really expect me to believe she’s an angel?”

  “She?”

  Humiliation torpedoes come in all sizes. Some are as small as a single word.

  The professor’s guffaw was so loud he attracted the attention not only of those on the sidewalk, but several people in the parking lot below us. “You thought I was talking about Miss Ling?” he said through tears.

  “No, of course not!” My protest had no legs, but I felt compelled to make it. “You were talking about the guy with the broad shoulders, right? I knew that.”

  “This is rich!” the professor said, wiping his eyes. “Miss Ling’s going to get a kick out of this.”

  “Only if you tell her,” I said with growing alarm. “You don’t have to tell her.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Miss Ling’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

  “Tell me what?” she said again.

  “Did the students give you any problems?” the professor asked her, giving me a momentary reprieve.

  She handed his textbook to him. “We covered the material in the chapter,” she reported. “I gave them their assignment for Wednesday.”

  An involuntary chuckle escaped the professor as he received the book and the report. He glanced at me, his eyes sparkling with mischief. I implored him silently not to say anything. “Thank you, Miss Ling . . .” he said. Unable to resist, he added, “You’re an angel.”

  We both burst out with laughter. Miss Ling didn’t know what to make of us.

  “You have an academic review meeting with Dean Atkinson in five minutes,” she said. “You’ve already postponed it twice. This morning he cornered me and asked if you were going to be there. I promised him you would be.”

  The professor nodded. Placing the textbook in his lap, he started the wheelchair in motion. “Oh, Grant . . . come to the library tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. I’ll introduce you to Abdiel. You can judge for yourself.”

  “Abdiel?” Miss Ling said, shocked. “You told him about Abdiel?”

  “I’ll fill you in later,” the professor said. He disappeared around a corner.

  I didn’t know what to do with the invitation. I’d never been invited to meet an angel.

  Miss Ling’s heels clicked on the cement as she walked away.

  “Miss Ling . . . a moment of your time?”

  She turned around, polite but chilly. “Don’t you have a job or something? Or are you so famous now you no longer have to work?” She stood with attitude, one hip thrust out.

  “How long have you known the professor?” I asked her.

  Miss Ling gave me one of those I don’t see how that’s any of your business looks.

  I explained. “It’s just that he has some rather unusual concepts of reality.”

  “You could learn a lot from Professor Forsythe,” she said.

  “Are you one of his students?”

  “Former student. Now I’m at the University of California, San Diego.”

  “Really? Do you mind if I inquire as to your major?”

  “Yes, I mind,” she said. She didn’t appear to be joking.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Yes you did. Physics, to answer your question. I’m writing my doctoral dissertation in quantum physics.”

  “Impressive . . . but it surprises me. You strike me more as the comparative lit type.”

  She sneered at me. “Is that supposed to be some kind of clever quip, Mr. Austin? Or is it a lame attempt at a pickup line?”

  Her persistent antagonism was wearing thin.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said. “It’s just that where I attended school, the quantum physics students were geeky types who played Dungeons & Dragons and attended Star Trek conventions.”

  She turned and walked away.

  I called after her. “Angels, Miss Ling? A woman of your obvious intelligence, doesn’t it bother you that the professor believes in angels?”

  She swung around with fire in her eyes. “I’ll have you know,” she said, “that Professor Forsythe is the most brilliant, dedicated, compassionate man I know. If you were given two lifetimes, Grant Austin, you would never be half the man he is!”

  “What’s with the attitude? Ever since I arrived you’ve treated me with contempt. You’ve been rude and just plain mean. Are you taking it out on me because I look like some guy who dumped you? You don’t even know me.”

  Her eyes squinted disdainfully. “Oh, I know you,” she said. “I know all about you.”

  “We just met!” I argued. “What is it about me that ticked you off? The rumpled suit? Is that it? You took one look at my rumpled suit and concluded I was a slob, right? Well, I’ll have you know, beneath this rumpled suit beats the heart of a nice guy.”

  “I suppose you think you’re charming, don’t you?” she shot back.

  “Wait a minute, you can’t say that wasn’t charming. Admit it. You found me charming right then.”

  “Apparently, you never learned the difference between charming and childish. You think you can scuff your foot on the ground and say, ‘Aw, shucks,’ and you’re being adorable. Well, let me tell you, Grant Austin, you’re not the least bit adorable. You’re disgusting, insecure, and needy.”

  “Needy? I’m not needy! I’m so far from being needy, needy is extinct in my world.”

  “Get a clue, Grant. When a woman looks for a man she wants a mature relationship, not a babysitting job.”

  I was definitely at a disadvantage. It was obvious Miss Ling was drawing on background material and I didn’t know the source. “Just who have you been talking to?”

  She grinned with sarcasm. “So, you recognize the description of yourself, do you?”

  “You’ve obviously been talking to someone who knows . . . who thinks she knows me.”

  She mulled that for a moment. I didn’t think for a moment I’d stopped her, but I had slowed her down a bit.

  “Before attending UCSD,” she said, “I earned a master’s degree at State. Lived on campus. University Towers. Roomed with an incredibly talented woman who majored in broadcast journalism.”

  “Jana,” I said.

  “Between you and that reptile Shepherd, when I wasn’t attending classes, I was helping her pick up the pieces of her life. For both being ‘nice guys,’ the two of you really did a job on her.”

  “Hold on just a second,” I protested. “Jana and I split up . . . what? Ten years ago? We were a couple of kids back then. And she left me! How would you like to be called to account for something you did ten years ago?”

  Miss Ling played her trump card coolly. “Jana called me this morning from a cab.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s it? That’s your defense?”

  “I can explai
n what happened this morning.”

  “And does the explanation have anything to do with the fact that you obviously haven’t grown up in the last ten years?”

  “I was going to call her . . . I am going to call her after I leave here. Invite her to dinner. I want to work things out.”

  “And will Christina be joining you?” Miss Ling asked.

  She walked away. This time I didn’t stop her.

  CHAPTER 9

  Fatigue stalked me from El Cajon to my hotel room in Mission Valley and I was ready to surrender to it. This time yesterday I was passed out on Myles Shepherd’s office floor. I wouldn’t call it a nap, but it was the last time I’d closed my eyes for any length of time.

  I took a much-needed shower, left a message for Jana on her answering machine, listened to Christina’s phone ring a couple dozen times, grabbed a jar of peanuts and a soda from the honor bar, and crashed onto the bed.

  Three hours later I awoke holding an empty jar. Peanuts lay scattered on the bed, the floor, and plastered on the side of my face. It could have been worse. I could have fallen asleep holding the soda can.

  From my balcony I watched the sun expand until it was a huge orange ball. It dipped itself into the Pacific Ocean. I dialed Jana’s cell number a second time, then tried calling her at the television station. They took a message.

  The six o’clock evening news broadcast Jana’s story of the freeway accident during the morning commute and the resulting traffic jam. I knelt inches from the screen and searched the crowd behind her, hoping to get a glimpse of Myles. I didn’t, of course.

  Seven p.m. How much longer should I wait for Jana? Should I order room service?

  Reaching for the remote, I sat at the foot of the bed and clicked on the television. The Los Angeles Angels were dominating the Devil Rays. I wasn’t familiar with either team and after a few innings my interest waned. I changed channels.

  Click.

  The Angels were still playing, only this time heavenly angel Christopher Lloyd was lifting the baseball outfielder off his feet to make a miracle catch.