• • •
I was so glad I hadn’t ordered anything to eat yet.
George and I had narrowed down the candidates for Anaita’s earthly avatar quite a bit, which meant it was more like studying actual people now and not just demographics. I had suggested several variables for George’s search, including 1) apparently Persian or Persian-American—obviously, or the whole search was pointless, 2) wealthy (because why wouldn’t she be?), 3) sporadic appearances (because I figured an important angel like Anaita wouldn’t be able to hang out on Earth all that often), and 4) involved in local life but not too involved. Because of this last, I could eliminate at least four of the people George had given me, each of them with big, complicated families.
That still left me nearly a dozen to consider, but I took a flyer and crossed off the male candidates, just as an exercise. Certainly if Anaita didn’t want to be found out it would have been smarter to pick a male persona, but I had a feeling she wasn’t the type. I mean, she used to be a goddess, and unlike angels (at least as far as I knew angels), goddesses were proud of being female. And she was the goddess of fertility, right? Wasn’t that what Gustibus had said?
Eliminating men quickly narrowed the field down to three. They were all interesting, but as I sat there staring I kept coming back to one particular name.
I was just about to email George again, to ask him to get me more information about that particular woman (as soon as he could get free from his roundworm treatments) when the door of the coffee shop went ding! and Clarence walked in. With Garcia Windhover.
G-Man saw me and trotted to my table, struggling as always to keep his pants from falling down. I don’t want to sound like a cranky old guy, but come on—even rappers have to run for their lives sometimes, don’t they? How do they do that with their pants around their ankles like a spanked toddler? Not that G-Man was a rapper or anything else but a white suburban kid from a nice, slightly hippie-ish family who had taken his interest in African-American culture way beyond the bounds of good taste. Actually, his outfit wasn’t that bad this time, except for the bandana knotted in the front and, banging against his skinny chest, a ridiculous gold medallion that I could swear he’d stolen out of some ninety-year-old lady’s jewelry box.
“A’ight, Bobby!” he said and tried to fist-bump me. I refused to produce my fist. I know, petty of me, but come on. “Don’t worry, I’ma let you two talk, but I just had to come in and show you my new ink.” He stuck out his arm, then turned it over to display a patch of baloney-colored skin that had presumably been nude until recently. Now it glowed with new black—the words “Mission From God” in complicated Gothic letters. “‘Cause you told me that time that you were the Lord’s avenging angel, and that’s cool, and since you’re my boy . . .”
I took a breath. If G-Man was really just dropping off Clarence, it would be easier and safer for everyone if I kept the conversation brief and light, so instead of telling him what an idiot he was, I just nodded and said, “Yeah, bro. Nice ink.” Yes, I said it. And if I hadn’t already been to Hell, I’d say that was where I’m going someday for lying. But when I go back to Hell, it will be for dozens of much worse crimes and probably sooner than I want.
I gave Clarence a look that was meant to imply all the ways I would have liked to hurt him if I had the freedom to do so, which I didn’t. “So. You caught a ride with G-Man. I thought you had a car of your own?”
“It wouldn’t start,” the boy angel said with a distinct tone of sulk. “And you said twenty minutes, Bobby.”
“Know you two have to get on with your top-secret biznizzle,” G-Man said loudly, causing one or two of the poor bastards already eating there to turn and look. “So I’ll just go cruise around. When should I come pick you up, Harrisonio?”
While they worked out details, I just sat there with one eyebrow so far up it was almost painful. When he’d finally gone, Clarence turned back to me with a defiant look already on his face.
“Harrisonio?” I said. His earthly name was Harrison Ely, but nobody ever used it. At least nobody who was even halfway cool.
“At least somebody almost calls me by my real name.”
“I never realized you were a gondolier. Hey, I’ll call you Harrisonio too.”
“Please don’t.” He picked up the menu. “What’s up?”
“Whatever you do, don’t get the corned beef here. It’s made from people—ugly, dry people. Other than that, you’re on your own. I’ll tell you the details after you’ve ordered.”
When we had summoned a harried-looking guy in an apron and told him what we wanted, I said to Clarence, “Now, do me a big favor and run down everything that happened before you met me and Sam.”
“What do you mean? Like before I died? I don’t know that. Neither do you.”
“No, dumbass. I’m talking about your angelic life.”
“Why?”
“Just humor me.” I’d coaxed what I believed were honest answers out of the Amazons by pointing a gun at them, but that didn’t seem appropriate here. For one thing: coffee shop, broad daylight. Also, if Clarence was still a stooge for our bosses, he’d just get rebodied if I plugged him, so it wasn’t much of a threat—especially since he hadn’t already died a couple of times like some of us had, so he didn’t know yet how painful it could be.
The kid sipped his iced tea and told me how he’d woken up in Heaven, a story that was pretty much like mine until he was sent off to work in Records, which—as Clarence told it—had been a job of serene, fulfilling boredom. Fulfilling for him, boredom for anyone with half an ounce of interest in reality, including me. But I wasn’t judging, just listening.
“Then, after I’d been there a while, my boss told me somebody wanted to talk to me. I went to this place and met this angel I didn’t know, but he was really shiny, you know? Really bright. I could tell he was somebody important.”
“Who was he?”
“I didn’t recognize him.”
“And this was still in Heaven?”
He shrugged. “As far as I know.”
We paused when the food came. I was still feeling a bit unmanned by resuming my relationship with hard liquor the other night, so I mainly stuck to carbs—waffles and hash browns, with some fruit just to make me feel virtuous. I watched Clarence eat some of his blueberry pancakes before prodding him to continue.
“Anyway, so this shiny angel said that Heaven had something very important for me to do, something I was going to do that would make the Highest proud of me. It didn’t really sound like I had any choice, so I said yes. Next thing I know, I’m on Earth.”
“Really? You sure?”
“About the Earth part? I think so. It was like a warehouse or something, but it wasn’t anything like any part of Heaven I’d ever seen. And it smelled. Things I’d never smelled in Heaven. Sweat. Machine oil. And the sounds were different, too.” He stopped with a fork in front of his mouth. “Now that I’m talking about it, I kind of . . . thought differently after I got there, too. Clearer about some things, less clear about others. And I wasn’t as happy as I’d been.”
That did sound like he’d been tossed out of Heaven’s nest. “Okay. Then what happened?”
“I more or less got trained. In some very basic stuff. How to use the needle gun they gave me, and a few other things. And the phones, especially the tracking software. There were about ten other angels there, too, learning stuff like I was. We sparred sometimes.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t very good at that.”
“Hang on. You were being trained on Earth with a bunch of other angels? Trained with guns? And this wasn’t Camp Zion, the big camp in the middle of the desert?” I’d been trained at Zion, along with every other angel that has ever been in a Counterstrike unit. If someone was training angels in a different location to do Counterstrike work, that wasn’t just news to me, it was worrying news. How big was the shit going on up there?