"There's nothing wrong with her," Bill said, later.
"Dot? Stick around," said Heritage.
Bill and Heritage wheeled up lunch in huge industrial catering tureens on carts. They boomed their way through swinging doors that were plated with metal. They themselves ate and then wheeled the tureens back down.
And after lunch, they stood watch over the men and women in the common room. There were wide windows looking over the lawns, It was cold and misty, and the landscape was in layers of misted silhouette. A row of leafless trees looked like charts of nerves.
There was nothing for any of the Angels to do. Some of them were playing cards. The cards were black around the edges. There was a chess set. Pieces were missing. There were a few deserted books, all of them left a quarter of the way through, facedown. And the constant murmuring, almost musical. The sound of the Angels.
"We call this the Pearly Gates," said Heritage.
Women sat mouthing the air or rocking the ghosts of children.
"It's so boring for them," said Bill.
"Used to be a radio, but they kept messing with the dials until it broke." Suddenly Old Dot loomed next to them. She was huge, almost as tall as Bill, and even now neither fat nor thin. She was very stiff on her pins, but that lent her a kind of creeping iron dignity.
"We haven't died, you know," she said, to Heritage. "Not yet, anyway."
Heritage leaned back against the wall and gave her an amused and crooked smile.
He feels superior, thought Bill. That's it. He's not mean or anything. He just knows he's farther up the scale, and he thinks there's nothing to be done. So he won't listen.
Bill thought he knew what the old woman meant. "So you think we shouldn't call this place Heaven?" Bill asked Dotty.
"But it is," she said, suddenly fierce, drawing up. "It is, goddamn it. Take a look! I don't know. You people!"
Old Dynamite turned away, shaking her head. Heritage gave Bill another crooked smile. You see? his raised eyebrows seemed to say. Very slowly Old Dot crept toward the window. From behind, she looked far more frail, bowed, her shoulders turning inward.
She stared out the window at the mist until it was dark.
Without realizing it, Bill must have said something to Mr. Hardie, because a few days later Hardie Electrical Supplies donated a television set to the Home. It was a great embarrassment. First, it embarrassed Bill, who had not asked and thought perhaps the Home would think he had been criticizing it. Second, it embarrassed the Home, which was overwhelmed by the generosity but was worried that one of the Angels would shove a fist into the vacuum tube.
When they tried to give it back, Mr. Hardie apparently suggested that Bill be put in charge of it, to change channels, to turn it off, to wheel it around, to guard its plugs and dials and glass face.
Bill was very wary of television sets himself. He had seen an accident. An assistant at Mr. Hardie's had been carrying two picture tubes, whistling as he walked, swinging them gently. The tubes hit each other, and there was a kind of popping sound, like small pistol shots, and a gasp. Glass had been sucked in and then spat out. The assistant stood surprised and startled, rivulets of blood trickling down his face and his arms. Slivers of glass had been driven into him all over his body. Like the wilderness, like a cyclone, televisions had a nothingness in their hearts.
There was some discussion among the senior staff of the Home. It was decided to allow television only at certain times. Late evening was forbidden in case the dependants of the Home got overexcited. News would be forbidden or any program with guns or violence. The children of the Home would be allowed Captain Kangaroo and The Three Stooges and the morning game shows like The Price Is Right and Queen for a Day. In the afternoon, they would be allowed soap operas.
Bill carried in the television the first day. He switched it on with trepidation and stood guard over it.
The first show the Angels saw was Search for Tomorrow. The title appeared over a picture of the moon in a cloudy night sky.
Bill waited for the reaction. There was none. At first the old, mad people kept staring somewhere else in their own private world. Then some of the women looked up, attracted by the sound of a young female voice and the sight of fresh makeup and nice dresses.
Brought to you by Procter and Gamble.
They scowled slightly, not sure they had the thing figured out. A kind of radio with pictures. They were only mildly bemused. The whole world had passed them by so long ago that nothing made sense. But they liked the sound of families, and breakfasts, and husbands being kissed goodbye, and the softened voices of women dealing with secret shame.
At night, it was taken away.
The next day, they clustered around it, a new hunger in their eyes. Inside that little box, children bounced in and out of living rooms or wept in their mothers' arms. Grand and powerful women schemed: husbands faced bankruptcy; toothpaste was sold. Gradually the nothingness sucked in the Angels.
Old Dynamite stood with her back to it, looking out of the window. Or she sat, staring somewhere else, her mouth creased around with smiles as if her face were a pond into which someone had thrown a stone. Sometimes her eyes blazed. Sometimes she sang softly. Bill found himself growing disturbed by her.
"Listen, Bill," said Tom Heritage, "the only way you can stick this job is to put it all to the back of your mind. You start taking it to heart, you could end up like them. Once I get my license back, I'm getting out of here, drive a taxi, anything. You should do the same, boy, I can tell you."
Forty years, fifty years, in this place, thought Bill. What a waste of a life.
In November, there was going to be a movie on TV. Networks did not usually show movies, so it was a special thing, a lot of publicity. It was a kids' movie, but a lot of the staff wanted to see it. A kids' movie would not have anything in it to rile the Angels.
So it was decided to wheel out the television from nine to eleven at night. The Angels, like children all over the country, were going to be allowed to stay up late to watch it. Bill, the gentle master of the TV, took the night shift for the first time.
The staff crowded in, the caterers especially, all the employees who were still too poor to own a television. They returned to the Home in their cloth coats. Some of them brought their kids. The children looked fat and sleepy and grumpy. A few of the Angels showed up too, drawn by the excitement and by the sound and sight of children.