“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.