I was struck by three things the day I met the angel. First that she had the biggest, gaudiest diamond ring I ever saw; second, that she had the sickest looking upright human I ever saw as a husband, and third, that she was a natural blonde. I saw these things in reverse order. Two gentlemen (with whom I had a philosophical difference) had lifted me from my bar stool and tossed me out of the doorway of the hotel bar. I slid on the polished tile into the hotel lobby and came to rest at the angel’s feet, looking up her short skirt at her neatly coiffed pubis. Her elderly husband was in the midst of a coughing fit by her side, and as she reached down (improving my view) to help me up, her big-ass diamond grazed my sweaty forehead. I struggled to my feet focusing first on her beauty, secondly on her warm brown eyes, and thirdly upon the orange and black tacky Halloween decorations that dominated the lobby of the Lakeview Holiday Inn.
The coughing man extended his pale, wrinkled right hand, and said the line he had no doubt been practicing all morning. “Mr. Livingstone, I presume?”
Like I hadn’t heard that joke before. But my eyes were on the angel. I made an affirmative grunt. I also noticed the two gentlemen from the bar were staring at me with undisguised hostility. I didn’t know if it was because I was black, or because (unlike them), I had an IQ in the triple digits. The angel was blushing because she had just realized what I had seen.
“I am Dr. Nathan Mortlake and I hope to reverse your current financial difficulties. This is my wife, Angela Mortlake.” The angel nodded, her face a lovely pink. “Perhaps,” he continued, “We can talk in the lobby.”
We talked. He had been looking for me for a few months, ever since my discharge. I had gone home to Detroit only to find my wife had A) changed her gender preference and B) removed every last penny from our joint bank account. This led to point C), that I no longer had a job waiting for me at my father-in-law’s Ford dealership. This had led to point D), returning to my earlier trade of selling small packets of dried cannabis to middle class white people in St. Louis, MO.
Dr. Mortlake was in touch with all of these facts. But these were not the facts of note for him. Of note was the fact I had spent three days hiding from Taliban shooters in a small, dank cave in Chemia al Den in Why-the-Fuck-am-I-hereistan. And I had seen the statues.
Nearly forty lifelike statues of naked yogins in lotus position. When I had run into the cave, I first thought that there were naked people practicing yoga. I just hoped they would be quiet. Boy, they were quiet. After my heartbeat had slowed to merely very damn fast, I realized they were stone. Mainly male and all naked. Then I saw It.
It was a gray stone idol about the size of a cow. It looked like a peacock in the dim light. Yet most peacocks do not have multiple breasts. And I am willing to bet that none of them have two heads, nor tentacles rather than feet. It rested on a nest made of carved skulls (mainly human but with some horned goblins just for fun) and severed arms (again, mainly human). The idol seemed to be of the same stone as its devotees, but much older as it had wear and tear. I figured it was the boss of the cave, so I offered it a little of my Meal Ready To Eat. Two days later, with my food gone and my canteen pushing empty,
I took back my offering of Beanie Weenies. I hoped it didn’t mind. I heard some vehicles outside and decided that starvation was less desirable than quick death. It was another unit, lost, in the wrong valley — but with food and radios and hope. Later I talked to an army archaeologist. Forms were filled out, people nodded. There was no gold, no dope, no cached weapons, no hiding locals. And the business of living and killing, hiding and hunting, and waiting and waiting went on.
I played my cards well. I acted like I was terrified. I acted like PTSD had replaced my brain. I acted like I wasn’t broke and hopeless. I acted like I wasn’t thinking about the angel’s tiny gold promise. I don’t think he cared. I named a huge price, thinking I would do it for half. Dr. Mortlake coughed, coughed and agreed. I should have asked for twice as much.
But then there was Angela.
It was two weeks until we slept together. By that time, we were in a hotel in LA planning to catch a plane back to Whythe-Fuck-am-I-hereistan. Once we got there the romance AND the sex grew faster and faster, while everything else grew slower and slower. At first, I thought maybe she was a getback-at-Daddy girl, then I thought she was a black-on-blonde girl. Then I found out she was lonely. And in love. She even felt love for Mortlake, but she was much more in love with his millions. She had been an exotic dancer, but she had tried for a “real” career as an administrative assistant. At first, she had worked for Mortlake’s hard-drinking younger brother, who had millions of dollars in banking and venture capital. Then one night he wrapped his car around a tree. She met the frail Dr. Mortlake at the funeral. He went from a respected linguist with encyclopedic knowledge of Indo-Iranian languages to a very respected linguist with an estimated worth of a few hundred million. Dr. Mortlake was best known for his translation of a midlevel Sanskrit recension of a Tibeto-Burman ritual text commonly known as the Black Sutra. He had never managed money, never had a staff of more than a devoted but underpaid graduate student, and had never had a good relationship with a woman after the Nixon administration. He was kind, he was smart and at first had no illusions that Angela really loved him. Wedding bells rang, no pre-nup was signed and Angela devotedly waited for Nathan to die.
But he didn’t. He grew more and more excited. He had a purpose to live for, besides love. He came back from the brink of death to its general neighborhood. There wasn’t much touching, and Angela gritted her teeth when needed. She faked enthusiasm for his discoveries, and philosophically resigned herself to one, maybe two years of being Mrs. Mortlake, soon to be the rich widow Mortlake.
And then she saw me. A man who wanted her, a man with a brain (not half as big as Nathan’s), a man that wasn’t scared of death.
Nathan was terrified of death. Angela couldn’t forgive him for this. Her dad died in Operation Desert Storm. Her granddad in Vietnam. That her rich husband, a man in his 90s, a man whose education plus experience should let him know the inevitability of death, hadn’t made his peace, hadn’t gone through the five stages. I had made my peace with death when I waited in the cave of the immortals facing the deformed mutant peacock god.
When the little plane bumped its last bump into Khemia-alDen’s tiny airstrip, Haliburton was waiting. Officially they took care of logistics for US troops. In reality they did everything from assassinating local war lords, to delivering cocaine to generals, to flying the chunky local silver jewelry out. They were good at the business of war. If an old man, his hot blonde wife and a vet needed to visit a cave on the outskirts of enemy territory, then that was today’s normal. Tomorrow’s normal might be kill the old man, rape his wife and give the vet’s papers to the highest bidder in the village. Or fight their way past the Taliban and save the old man. There were three HUMVs, we rode in the middle one. The Soviets had built the airstrip back in the day. There was still a sign in Russian and Pashto. It was a short, dusty bumpy drive. They had supplies for us — food, sleeping bags, a generator. They carried us halfway up the small white hill where a tiny cave opened. They left stuff at the mouth of the cave. With some help from Angela I hustled the stuff inside. I set up the generator and the lights, started creating a little camp. Dr. Mortlake and Angela went into the two chambers. The first chamber had thirty-seven yogins. Ten were women. The first five were very weathered, older than the later statues. They had brow ridges and sloping foreheads. Dr. Mortlake explained that in archaic Indian art it was the convention to depict the followers of Shiva as horrific and beastly. I pointed out that the peacock god didn’t look much like Shiva.