Frank gritted his teeth. “Ma, I’ve got a life, you know. I went to another church. Across town. With my friend Andrea.”
“Oh?” It was her incredulous ‘oh,’ not her resigned ‘oh.’ “Which church was that?”
“Grace Baptist. I know it isn’t our church, but God was still there.”
“God, and apparently this Andrea.”
“I told you about Andrea six months ago, Ma. She’s the woman from the shoe store.” He’d buried her two months ago, September. It had been a Sunday then, too.
“Oh, yes. Well, bring her over to dinner one night. Your stepfather and I really enjoyed that girl you brought over last month. What was her name… Susan. No, Shelly. No, Sharon.”
“I don’t know, Ma. Sharon didn’t work out for me, and Andrea isn’t anything to me anymore.”
“Frank, you’re my only boy, now. Will you ever settle down and get married? Have grandchildren for me?”
“Ma, don’t start.” Frank glanced over at his angel. She sat still, her eyes on the football game. He turned his back to her.
“Lord, you’re just too picky. What was wrong with Sharon?”
Everything, he thought. She wanted what she wanted, when she wanted it, and when she couldn’t get it, she cut him off. Trying to control him. Regularly. Just like all the others. “She was looking for someone more ambitious. I’m happy doing what I do.”
“Well, then good riddance. You’re a baker. That’s an honorable profession. If that’s not good enough for her, then you’re better off. God…”
“Ma, do you believe in angels?”
“Of course, Frankie, why?”
“Do you think they ever fall from heaven down here, to earth?” Frank glanced back at his angel. When she began to look at him, he turned away.
“Why don’t you ask Reverend Dooley? He’d know.”
“But, do you think so?”
Her silence told him she was either going to make up an outrageous fabrication or admit she didn’t know.
“I believe they can fall to earth, but only after they’ve committed some form of blasphemy in heaven. Then they’re cast down to hell, but might hit earth accidentally.” She didn’t know. “So, why do you want to know?”
Telling his mother would ruin it. “The sermon this morning. Baptist stuff. I wondered was all.”
“Baptists. Hmph. Oh. I see your stepfather’s finished his beer and supper’s ready, so I’ll say good-bye. And I hope to see you next Sunday.”
“Next Sunday.” If he had ever doubted God’s existence, the angel had changed him forever. He’d go to church. He’d never miss it again.
He felt a light touch on the back of his head. He spun around to find the angel there, her fingertip drawing back from him, her face unreadable. He smiled at her.
“That was my mother. Nosy lady. I didn’t want to tell her about you. You don’t mind, do you?”
She shook her head. She sent him the thought that she wanted to rest, that she needed to be ready to meet her OTHER in the place where Frank had found her. Tomorrow.
“Uh, well, I was hoping you’d want to stay with me. I know I don’t have a luxurious place or anything, and I’m not much of a host yet, but I think we could get along. Besides, I really need you.”
She looked at him the way his fourth grade teacher had, the time he’d come back from when his father died. Then, the look felt like sympathy. Now he saw it as pity.
“Look, I don’t know what you want, but I’ll do anything. Anything.”
She projected the image of herself on the forest floor, crumpled and alone, then standing with the nameless woman, embracing her. Somehow, Frank sensed how terribly important the meeting was. Maybe, he thought, he would take her, let them meet, then take the angel back with him. Cooperate. Gain their trust. Let them both know he wanted to care for the angel.
She frowned. He felt the tug of her distress. Like Denise. Andrea. Sharon.
“All right, I’ll take you back. But I just want one thing.”
She floated around him, wings shuddering, her delight conveyed in the phosphorescence of her skin. Anything, she told him, anything he wished.
The image slid into his mind as easily as muffins off a greased tin. She and him, in bed, making love, him giving her something so good, she’d never leave him. Marking her with his semen. Truly making her his angel.
“Maybe God wouldn’t want it, though.” He was shy. Awkward. “I mean, I’m not pure like you. Maybe I’d pollute you. You know, make you unclean.”
She cocked her head, her eyes becoming black holes, drawing him in. With every cell in her being, she was letting him know it was all right, that he would be made clean by her. He felt himself losing his peripheral vision, then saw stars, as if he was fainting. Then there was nothing.
He regained consciousness slowly, swimming up from a syrupy deep sleep. He was naked on his bed. By the glowing numbers on his clock radio, he saw it was the middle of the night. He reached over for the lamp, his panic palpable, certain she was gone.
There, in the amber light, she was asleep beside him. He reached down and felt his flaccid cock. It was puckered with dried jism. His mouth tasted strange. As if he’d been sucking on roses. He remembered her lack of orifices, save one, and leaned over her. His fingers deftly probed the surface of her mons. Nothing.
He closed his eyes. In flashes, it came to him. Her floating ahead of him into the bedroom. Her bathing him, pampering him with her hands, her mouth. His wanting to ravage her, but her insistence on passivity, and his inability to refuse her. His paralysis. How she seemed to make all the parts of his body feel like his cock, erect with an unrelenting trapped heat that demanded release. And her providing it. Even his hair follicles knew orgasmic pleasure.
And then he recalled something stranger, more unsettling. Her taking his hand and putting it to her lips, then sucking it in, first fingers, then hand, to wrist, his arm up past his elbow. Then, there he somehow knew to strum a place inside her, flesh stretched like catgut, smooth as velvet, vibrating like the strings of a harp. The sound she made was like a choir, singing up to the Lord. As she reached her crescendo, a place inside her wept. When she released him, his arm slid slowly from inside her. He knew to lick off all the moisture that remained—moisture with the scent of roses.
Why he’d been put into some kind of coma to experience it, he didn’t know, but he felt different now. Redeemed. She had cleansed him. Forgiven him the horrible results of his temper, his intolerance, over the years. The little deaths, and the important ones.
“I love you.” He spoke to her sleeping form. He’d never said those words before and meant them. From the bottom of his miraculously rescued heart, he meant it now.
He slid off the bed to his knees and, for the first time in twenty years, prayed.
The hotel where Frank worked was not happy to learn that he needed the day off to show an out-of-town guest around, but Frank’s assistant could easily handle the Monday baking demands.
Frank showered and dressed as if for church. His angel watched. His mind was silent, empty of her thoughts. What the hell was going on with her? He resigned himself to the fact that women mystified him. What went on inside them seemed more trouble than it was worth to learn. Hell, he thought, he had enough to say for both of them. He talked to her of how he wanted to care for her, what kind of a life they could have together. She gave him no sign she was listening.
The angel drank an enormous amount of water, but otherwise ate nothing. Frank was so hungry he almost ate the gnarled apple. Instead he devoured the animal crackers, gone hard as wood. He wanted a beer, but a wonderful feeling infused him, giving him a deep feeling of satisfaction. As if he’d already had the beer. Quite a few of them.