by Tad Williams
“I don’t know, Bobby. But I think it’s out of our hands now. We just have to wait and see what Heaven decides.”
“Waiting,” I said. “I hate that.” But Teddy Nebraska had apparently decided that he hated waiting, too, and now he was finally making his big move. Clarence and I watched him walk over to our table.
The kid stood up. “I’m going to go get myself another iced tea.”
“Hi, Bobby,” Nebraska said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
I was torn between wondering why Clarence would walk all the way across the room for a drink containing no alcohol and wondering what the hell Nebraska wanted from me. I didn’t know him well, but of course I’d seen him a lot recently, with Monica. He dressed well, but with that faintly overdone look that suggested not too many decades back he would have been wearing a white Panama suit and a straw hat. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Sit down.”
“Thanks.” He slid into the booth and then just sat there. I wondered if he too, like Walter Sanders, had been approached by one of our superiors about me and had only now worked up the courage to tell me (when it was way too late to make any difference).
“What can I do for you?” I asked at last.
“Well, I’ve always admired you, Bobby—”
“Please. Today of all days, that kind of shit just makes my head hurt. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, Nebraska. Me, not so much. So please, just get on with it.”
He took a breath. “I don’t know if you know, but I’ve been seeing Monica Naber. Nahebaroth.”
“Yeah, I know.” If he thought this was the complaints department, I might have to pop him one in the mustache. “So?”
“So, I just wanted to . . . to make sure that was all right with you.”
I stared at him. I honestly thought for a moment he was putting me on. “Let me get this straight—you’re asking me if it’s all right for you to date Monica?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. First time since the snow and ash and the end of the world. “You’re joking, right? You and Monica set this up as a prank?” I pretended to look around for cameras.
Instead of being relieved or pleased, Nebraska seemed worried. “Does that mean it’s okay?”
“You’re serious—you want my permission? Did you tell Monica you were going to do this?”
“She thinks I’m crazy,” he admitted. “But I didn’t want you to think we were sneaking around behind your back. Everybody knows things have been tough for you lately.”
At another time I would have bent one of his fingers until he told me all the things that “everybody” knew, but at this point my shit was so muddled up I didn’t even care. “Look, Ted, Monica is a wonderful person. Well, she’s a wonderful angel—I’m not sure how good any of us are at ‘person.’ But she can make up her own mind, and she can see whoever she wants. Neither of us ever had a claim on each other. Frankly, she deserved better than me, anyway. If you’re the better, more power to you both.”
He looked as if a weight had been lifted. “So we have your blessing?”
I nearly said something mean. It was just so silly. I even looked around to see if Monica was watching, enjoying the whole stupid conversation, but the Compasses was pretty much stag right then, just a bunch of the boys in various states of looseness. Daytime tends to be guys-only, not because women aren’t welcome, but because most females have the sense not to spend the sunshine hours in a saloon. And as I looked around and realized I was really back—maybe not the same, but back on my home turf—a tiny bit of hopelessness lifted off me. Not enough, mind you. I still couldn’t imagine living much beyond the next day without Caz and Sam, I still couldn’t believe there was anything on this gray planet to keep me here, but at least I could see a little farther through the darkness than when I came in.
“You want my blessing? Then you have it. Monica’s one of the best. If she sees something in you that she likes, I’m willing to believe you’re a good one too, Nebraska. Be kind to her. Be kind to each other.” I lifted my hand. “God loves you.”
I wasn’t completely sure God loved anyone, to tell the truth, but at that moment, for some reason, I was willing to accept the uncertainty.
• • •
The rest of my visit to the Compasses was spent getting what Clarence had said confirmed by pretty much everyone else: Anaita’s fall was the talk of the angelic confraternity. It was known that the kid and I had been involved, and the fact that we were both walking around free suggested that the earlier bad things they’d heard about me had just been ugly rumors. I wasn’t quite so certain myself. I had confessed a whole lot of bad stuff to the heavenly inquisitor, Pathiel-Sa, and things like that didn’t just disappear. Heaven is forever, and that means the heavenly statute of limitations is at least that long.
But at the moment I was free—there was no arguing with that. I was free, and I was alive, and someone had painted my apartment. If I was going to find out what it all meant, it seemed I would have to stay alive a bit longer. I had already thought of an errand I wanted to run, and a few other matters had been nagging at me as well, although I hadn’t been sober enough to hear them very clearly.
Still, despite having at least one more day left on my personal calendar, I turned down Clarence’s offer of a ride and walked home. I also picked up another bottle of vodka on the way. These earthly angel-bodies are sturdy. You have to pour a lot of alcohol in them to shut down the kind of things I wanted to shut down, to silence the guilty, angry, lonely thoughts long enough to sleep.
I’m really not an alcoholic angel. I’m a self-medicating angel. I swear there’s a difference, even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on it just this moment.
forty-seven
pointed questions
THE OLD Bobby would have lain around a few days and then would have sobered up and started knocking shit over, trying to make something happen and get some answers. Because there were a lot of things that still needed answering.
Why wasn’t anyone in power talking to me? What about my trial? Was I still all but convicted of treason against the Highest? My heavenly superiors had to know about Caz, and Eligor, and Hell, because I’d spilled my guts to Pathiel-Sa when they had me in custody. Not to mention all the bigger questions, like what Anaita had meant when she said she should have killed me “even before” I was an angel. And that vision I’d experienced when she was brainwashing me—vision, memory, whatever it was—still made my mind itch. It had felt so real—realer than real, if you get me. Was it a glimpse of my before-death past?
Questions and more questions as far as I could see, without the smallest hint of an answer. Now I knew how my friend George the pig man must feel—shoulder-deep in shit and pretending it was normal life.
Like I said, the old Bobby would have been making trouble all over town, trying to figure it out, but this time I couldn’t get started. Despite the surge of vitality that had sent me out to the Compasses, I just didn’t care enough. I felt like a party balloon a few days past the best-use date: nobody was holding my string anymore, but instead of flying I was sort of bumping along about halfway between floor and ceiling, unable to reach either the top or the bottom. Drifting and doomed.
It’s not like I didn’t think about ending it all. I mean, really, what did I have left? Caz gone, snatched from me again. Sam gone too, at least the Sam I knew and loved, probably forever. My bosses still with the guillotine blade hanging over my neck and not bothering to tell me whether I should get up and get on with things or just lie there and wait for the drumroll to finish and the blade to drop. But it wasn’t that easy, anyway. As you’ve already seen, death and angels don’t always go together—our fates are not in our own hands. The chances were good that no matter what I did to myself—even if I went to the Ephorate and insisted on making a full, public confession of every rule I’d broken—I might only be
recycled into another body, this time with obedience reflexes more in line with current workplace standards, a bleating Bobby-sheep who didn’t ask questions. But what if they recycled me, and I still remembered what it was like to be discontented in the pastures of the Lord? And couldn’t do anything about it?
So the next couple of days dragged past, and I let them drag me along. Christmas, once only a vague nightmare, crept closer and closer, like a determined, tinsel-covered zombie. I drifted, bounced, drank, slept, and watched television with the sound off. Clarence tried several times to get me to come out, but I declined. I knew he’d try to talk me into something, and right now I couldn’t handle something. I was having enough trouble with nothing.
• • •
Okay, here’s the truth, embarrassing as it might be. When my archangel finally contacted me, I was walking back from Oyster Bill’s and a late breakfast, and I was actually trying to figure out whether I should take the toast crumbs wrapped in a napkin in my pocket and feed them to the pigeons in Beeger Square or go home and watch Maury.
I had decided on the pigeons, because I figured at least somebody should benefit from my shitty life, even if it was flying rats, when I noticed a small, Middle-Eastern looking man walking beside me. It wasn’t exactly the same body I’d seen before, but I was beginning to recognize the Mule’s Earth-body-language, if you know what I mean.
“Bobby.”
“Temuel.” I kept walking. Beeger Square wasn’t too crowded on a chilly December pre-noon.
“Don’t be angry, Bobby.”
“Angry? Me? Because you handed me over to my bosses to be put on trial?”
“You know that wasn’t my choice. I know you know that.”
“Oh, really? Funny, because I wouldn’t say I know anything like that.”
I picked the first bench that didn’t have spilled milkshake congealing on it and sat down. Temuel sat beside me. As I unfolded the napkin full of crumbs, a particularly bold pigeon dove down to get first choice. Startled, I nearly took its head off. I still hadn’t entirely recovered from being in Hell, even months later. I didn’t like things jumping at me without warning.
“If you truly thought I sold you out, then why didn’t you tell them about me?” Temuel asked. He looked exactly like the kind of harmless old guy, maybe a professor of Semitic Languages, you’d see sitting on a bench like this. I wasn’t sure where I fit in, although the pigeons appreciated me for about thirty seconds, until the crumbs were gone.
“I did. I told Pathiel-Sa about you. I told that sweet-talking witch everything.”
“That’s not what I meant. You couldn’t help that. But you didn’t mention me to the ephors when you were on trial.”
“Nobody asked me.” Which was only partly true, of course. Even during the trial I’d begun to figure out something more complicated than mere treachery was going on with Temuel. In fact, in a few ways he seemed to have taken risks to protect my secrets—Caz’s apartment still seemed unknown to the authorities, for one thing. I’d dropped by the place one day in a drunken fog and had a look around, but it had been too painful to stay more than a few minutes. Still, I’d found no sign that Heaven had been there.
“Okay,” I said, “you did a few things to make sure I had something to come back to. Did you work something special with the cab, too? Because it doesn’t seem to show up on the heavenly radar for some reason, so they have to follow me the old-fashioned way. I’m guessing that was something you arranged.”
Temuel nodded, almost shyly. “I was wondering if you’d noticed.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Thanks.” But, strangely, I wasn’t feeling very grateful at that exact moment. “So what do you want from me now? It’s all over, right? Anaita got taken down and you seem to be free and clear, but I’m still waiting to see if I get the inquisition treatment. Did you want to know if I’d go on keeping my mouth shut about you?” I tried to see the answer in his face, but Temuel was giving nothing away. “I guess I’ll do my best. But I spilled it all to the Angel of Conciliation already, so somebody in Heaven knows more than enough about both of us to drop us into the Pit for a term of forever-to-longer. It’s only a question of why they haven’t used any of it yet. In other words, if you’re worried about keeping your wings, I’m not your biggest concern.”
“No! That’s not why I’m here.” The archangel seemed a bit frustrated. “I can’t talk about any of it yet, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten about you. You have no idea how complicated things are right now, how . . . delicate.” He patted my hand. It felt just like being patted by a human being.
“And that’s all? ‘Good luck, Bobby, I’d like to help you but it’s complicated’? Okay, leave me out of it for a minute, then—what about Kainos and all the human souls living there? Did they just get disappeared?” And my girlfriend along with them, I almost said, but even now my habit of secrecy was strong. “What about Sam Riley and the other Magians who were betrayed by Anaita? Do they just stay dead? Or do they get recycled into something more manageable, angels who don’t ask questions?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You know, I’ve heard that before, and it’s not really what you expect from friends.”
“I’ve never been your friend.” He didn’t bother to make a reassuring face, but I must admit he at least looked sad. “Heaven, Hell, Earth, it’s all too complicated for anything as simple as friendship, Bobby. But I’ve tried to do right by you, and I’ll keep trying.”
“So this whole visit was to tell me what? Not to give up?”
“I’m not worried about you giving up. I’m more worried about you pushing things too far when the time isn’t right.”
“What the split-level Hades does that mean? Time isn’t right? I just brought down an angel who was running the biggest anti-Heaven scam since Satan tried to invent upward mobility.”
“Funny you should mention that,” he said, and for a moment I thought I might actually hear something useful. Then Temuel stood, ran a hand over his balding head, adjusted his glasses, and gave me another one of his wise-old-uncle smiles. I was really getting sick of that particular facial expression. “I have to go.”
I couldn’t even think of anything cutting to say. Like I said, half helium, half regular old air, dragging my string along the floor. I watched him walk away across the park. A couple of pigeons too stupid to know the crumbs were gone kept me company until I finally got up and headed off in the opposite direction.
• • •
If it had been a day like the last few, I would have gone back home and saluted the passing of noon with a drink or two. But somewhere in my subconscious I’d been waiting for Temuel to check in, one way or another, and now that he had (and had given me a lot of nothing), I couldn’t turn off my unhappy thoughts. I wandered up and down the waterfront and the dark, narrow blocks around it—oh, sorry, the Pioneer District—and considered the differences between disappearing into a bottle and just doing the job properly by stepping off a dock and into the cold green waters of the bay. For a while I listened to a guy with a guitar playing an okay version of an old Slim Harpo song that people only remembered because the Stones recorded it. The guy wasn’t that good, but he wasn’t that bad either. Eventually the proprietor of the nearest souvenir shop came out and gave him five bucks to play somewhere else, a win-win for everyone.
Strangely, it was a message from Orban that pulled me away from the hypnotic green waters of the bay and my empty, uncaring mood. He called to say that he’d finished the sale on the Matador Machine to the guy in the Pacific Northwest and that he had the rest of my money.
So it was official. My car was gone.
I’d loved that car, had spent hours with it, searching for replacement trim and the right paint and upholstery, shoveling money into the pockets of mechanics to make it run like new, and now it was leaving my life. Lot of that going on. But where
losing the Matador should have felt like a death, the actual news was more like a pinch, so much less than I’d expected that it hardly registered. Did I no longer give a damn about anything? Or had my priorities changed? Because as I walked along Parade through clusters of chilly tourists, I found I did still care about some things. I cared very much.
Caz had called me a wounded romantic, a self-destructive optimist, but I wasn’t feeling either very romantic or optimistic. Still, there’s a part of me that needs to get knocked down to remind myself of why I get up, and that part seemed to be awakening again. Heaven wasn’t going to tell me anything. Temuel couldn’t tell me anything, or at least that’s what he wanted me to believe. Sam was gone, Caz was gone, and even the ephors who should have been grilling me like a Junior Burger didn’t seem to give a damn.
But I still gave a damn. I still needed to know what had happened to me, and why.
I walked back to my place and climbed into that ugly-ass taxi, then headed west, over the hills and toward the ocean.
• • •
The surf was midwinter-impressive below the onetime nunnery. Half a dozen women in gray were dutifully hanging washing on a line outside the cabins down below the house, although I couldn’t imagine that bedclothes and nun’s habits were going to dry very fast in the biting breeze off the Pacific.
One of the nuns opened the front door and tried to tell me that Gustibus wasn’t at home. I didn’t care whether he was or wasn’t, to be honest, because I wasn’t going to leave that easily, and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. I said I’d wait, and made my way down the hallway toward the big room, which really upset Sister Kremlin or Sister Igor or whichever one it was, but she was apparently too Christian to get into a wrestling match with me.
