Angels on Fire (4 page)

“You know—fold your wings?”

“Fold my wings.”

Lucy watched in amazement as the hummingbird-colored pinions folded themselves, one over another, and came to rest against Joth’s broad, muscular back. Despite their size, they doubled over very compactly, seeming to hug the angel from behind like a second set of arms. The simple grace and unspoken strength of the act reminded her of Mose, the old African-American man who once worked for her grandparents. However, what she saw in her mind’s eye was more like a film was unwinding in her head than a memory being sparked.

She saw Mose standing in the doorway of the old barn, harnessing the mule Pappy stubbornly insisted on keeping. His denim work shirt was rolled up past the elbows, revealing arms the color of licorice that rippled with clean muscle. She smelled saddle leather, horse liniment and Mose’s sweat, and heard his voice, surprisingly soft and sweet for a man his size, as he sang under his breath. She even saw the beads of perspiration shining on his forehead and trickling down his arms in the thick heat of an Arkansas summer.

Lucy hadn’t thought about Mose in year, not since Mam-Maw wrote during her junior year at college to inform her of his passing. He’d been a gentle, solid man—not very well educated, but far from stupid. He had a knack for working with wood, creating simple, yet lovely, tables and cupboards. She’d been quite fond of him as a small child, before adherence to social taboos of race and station were expected of her.

It was with a small shock that she realized she had never once spoken of Mose to anyone outside her family—not even Nevin. She’d learned long ago that New Yorkers simply didn’t understand how someone could grow up in rural Arkansas and not be a knuckle-dragging redneck with a Klan robe tucked away in the hall closet. They certainly wouldn’t understand her waxing sentimental over the hired hand who used to help her grandmother turn over the mattresses and made her a tiny matching table and chair for her seventh birthday.

“You are thinking of someone,” Joth said in its matter-of-fact voice.

Lucy stiffened, automatically defensive. “Oh, yeah?”

“Mose.”

Her heart skipped a beat, and then began pounding furiously to catch up. So she’d been right about the angel being telepathic. Still, it was rather disconcerting to realize someone had actually read her mind.

“How do you know his name?”

“I look into your eyes and see him there.”

“But—how?”

“I don’t know.”

She believed the angel when it told her this. After all, she wasn’t exactly sure how she breathed, but she still did it. She wondered if the flashback was directly related to Joth. Maybe it was in the nature of angels to trigger fond memories. It probably wasn’t even something it was aware of or able to control—like pheromones. Still, as pleasant a surprise as the memory of Mose had been, it had proven bittersweet—as only thoughts of times long past and people long dead can be. She didn’t know if she could withstand a constant barrage of similarly draining snapshots from her past.

“Here, put this on,” she said, handing Joth the duster.

Joth slipped into the loose-fitting coat, consternation registering on its otherwise placid features as the canvas came to rest against its folded wings. The expression on the angel’s face was similar to that of a dog forced to wear a sweater: one of mild discomfort mixed with the uneasiness that comes with doing something it knows is unnatural.

Lucy stepped back to eye her handiwork. While Joth would never make it past the doorman at the Limelight, it could pass on the street for a nondescript human being. In New York. In the East Village.

“Okay, that’ll do—at least for now,” she announced as she grabbed her leather jacket, making sure her keys were still in its pocket. She headed for the door, dragging Joth behind her like a pull-toy. “Come on, buddy—time’s a-wastin’!”

“Where are we going?” the angel asked.

“Midtown, of course! We don’t want to keep the media circus waiting do we?”

Chapter 4

Lucy stepped off the curb and into Houston Avenue’s traffic, lifting her arm to hail one of the canary-yellow taxis zipping up and down the divided street. One of the drivers spotted her at the light and cut across from the far lane, coming to a sharp stop inches from where she stood. Lucy yanked open the rear passenger door and hurriedly bundled Joth inside ahead of her. As she closed the door behind them, Judd Hirsch’s tape-looped voice was already welcoming tourists to the Big Apple and reminding them to ask for a receipt.

“Where to, lady?” asked the cabbie, reaching for his clipboard. While the driver was dark-skinned, she didn’t have to check the license attached to the taxi’s passenger-side visor to figure out that while he was, indeed, of African origin, he wasn’t African-American. If his accent didn’t give him away, the ritual scarification on his cheeks certainly did.

“Midtown; Rockefeller Plaza.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She knew the location of
The Terry Spanner Show’s
headquarters from doing temp work a year or so back for a law firm representing a family who had filed a suit against the production company. One of the guests on the show had been outted on “Family Skeletons In The Closet”—which resulted in the father having a heart attack on stage and the son’s suicide two days later. Spanner got off scot-free, if she recalled correctly.

The Terry Spanner Show
was famed for being a lower-middle-class freak show, with its parade of transsexual trailer trash, five-hundred-pound dominatrices, UFO abductees, cheating spouses, nympho grannies, and high-decibel face-offs between pin-headed Born Agains and equally pin-headed heavy metal fans who claimed to be Satanists. It wasn’t
60 Minutes
—but she had to start somewhere, and where better than a show that wouldn’t automatically call Bellevue when she told them she had a real live angel sitting in the lobby?

She glanced up as the cab came to a light and glimpsed the driver looking into the rear-view mirror, a puzzled look on his face. The cabbie—whose license identified him as John Madonga—reached out and readjusted the mirror, his eyes widening as he got a better look at Joth. Lucy tensed. Oh, God—he’s seen something—but what?

Suddenly the driver’s dark face split into a brilliant smile and he gave out a half shout, half laugh. The cabbie turned around and shot the grimy Plexiglas divider all the way back so that he could hook his arm over the front seat. Then, looking Joth right in the eye, he began excitedly chattering in a language Lucy had never heard before. As she had never seen a New York cabbie do anything except honk and swear at traffic, Lucy was too dumbfounded to do anything but stare as Joth answered in the exact same tongue as the one spoken by the cabbie.

The driver paid rapt attention to whatever it was the angel had to say, then proceeded to pepper it with what appeared to be numerous questions, all of which Joth responded to. After nearly a half-hour of driving-and-questionings, the cab came to a halt at Forty-Ninth Street and the Avenue of the Americas.

“How much do I owe you?” Lucy asked, reaching for her purse.

“You owe me nothing, ma’am.”

She shook her head, certain she hadn’t heard right. “Beg pardon?”

“I would not dream of charging one of my own!” the cabbie said, with a broad grin. “It has been many years since I left my village, and it is good to see a face from home!”

Lucy glanced at Joth, with its gleaming golden locks and alabaster skin, then back to the driver. “You mean
him
—?”

“Yes! Of course!”

“Uh—if you don’t mind me asking, how do you tell my friend is from your village?”

John Madonga gave her a curious look that made the ridges of scar tissue under his eyes even more prominent. “Why—it is as plain as the nose on his face, ma’am.” And with that the bright yellow cab surged back into traffic, to be lost amongst its brethren in Midtown gridlock.

Lucy stared after the taxi for a long moment, and then looked at Joth, who was standing patiently at her elbow, crystalline eyes fixed on her as if the towering skyscrapers and bustling pedestrians that surrounded them existed.

“Where did you learn to speak Swahili, or whatever the hell that was?”

“I am asked questions and I answer.”

“You mean—you understood everything he said and were able to hold a conversation, even though you’d never heard the language before?”

“Yes.”

Lucy had to admit she was impressed. “Wow! So you’ve got one of those Universal Translators like they have on
Star Trek
built into you? That’s cool! But that doesn’t explain why he thought you were from his village. What did he ask you?”

“Who has died, who has gotten married, and who has been born in his village since he left it.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“His second cousin married a woman from the next village, that his uncle broke his leg while herding cattle but is doing well, and that his best friend from school has become the father of twins.”

“You told him all that?”

“Yes.”

“So you lied to that guy?”

“Lied?”

“You know—said something that wasn’t true.”

“Everything I say is true. All those things have happened.”

“But—how could you possibly know—?”

“I am of the
elohim
—a servant to the Divine Clockwork. All of Creation is known to me.”

“Uh-
huh
. Okay. If you say so.”

The lobby of Spanner Works, the production company responsible for
The Terry Spanner Show,
was surprisingly decorous, given the show’s reputation. Lucy had expected something more in keeping with the audience—say, shag carpeting on the walls and vinyl bean-bag furniture— instead of muted colors and plenty of glass and chrome, with light classical pouring from the sound system.

A neatly coifed secretary sat behind an ultra-modern black-matte reception desk. The only thing that hinted at the nature of the goings-on at the company was a poster-sized head-shot of the host leering down at visitors. Terry Spanner looked like a slightly demented TV weatherman— perhaps a debauched sports announcer—with a carefully groomed but patently bogus toupee worn at a jaunty angle. He certainly had a lot of teeth—all of them capped and trimmed to a uniform length—and he exposed them to good purpose in his trademark shit-eating grin. Lucy glanced at Joth from the corner of her eye. In a way, Terry Spanner seemed more like an alien life form than the one standing beside her.

The receptionist looked up from her desk, smiling with blank inquisitiveness. “Yes, may I help you?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Spanner.”

The receptionist’s politely glassy gaze shifted from Lucy to Joth. Her eyebrow rose slightly. “Do you have an appointment, Ms.—?”

“Bender. Lucy Bender. And, no, I don’t. But it’s important.”

“Of course. But I’m afraid no one sees Mr. Spanner without an appointment.”

“I understand that, really I do. But this is different. Honest! I’ve got something big to show him! Really big! Bigger than UFOs! Bigger than Elvis, even!”

“I see—could you and your friend please sit over there, ma’am? I’ll check with one of the assistant producers.”

“Sure. No problem.” Lucy guided Joth to a tastefully upholstered couch. It had been so long since she’d dealt with a sofa that didn’t leak horsehair she almost didn’t know how to sit on it.

The receptionist spoke into the receiver and a couple of minutes later a tall, slightly frantic-looking man in his mid-thirties emerged from the door behind the desk. He was missing his suit jacket, his tie was askew and his cheeks were flushed, and he spoke with the breathlessness of a man working on his first stress-related cardiac event. He shook Lucy’s hand as she rose to greet him.

“Hello—Miss Fender, is it?”

“Bender, actually. Lucy Bender.”

“Well, Miss Bender—what is it you have to show us that’s so groundbreaking?”

By way of explanation she pointed to Joth, who was still seated on the couch.

Talbot frowned at the angel’s upturned face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Could you be a little more explicit?”

“I’ll be more than happy to go into detail, but not here—is there somewhere else where we can talk? Somewhere more private?”

“Of course. Follow me.”

Talbot lead Lucy and Joth past the receptionist and down a corridor that took them by rooms filled with partitions and computer terminals, with equally harried-looking men and women rushing from cubicle to cubicle.

“There should be an empty interview room around here somewhere,” Talbot explained, as he rattled the knobs on a couple of closed doors. The third one swung open. “Ah! Here we go!” he said, gesturing for Lucy and Joth to enter ahead of him. The room was only slightly larger than the boardroom-style table squeezed inside it. Framed pictures of Terry Spanner posed with various guests decorated the walls. “Please, take a seat,” Talbot said, motioning towards a couple of executive chairs. “As you can see, we’re busy around here. But never too busy to check on a potential guest! Now—what is it that you and your friend have to show us that is so exceptional, Ms. Bender?”

Lucy smiled, leaning forward so that her elbows rested on the conference table, her fingers steepled. “What I am about to show you, Mr. Talbot, will make your boss one of the most famous men in broadcasting. If not
the
most! How does that sound?”

“Some would say Terry’s
already
one of the most famous in the business...”

“How about respected? Do they say
that?”

“Go on.”

“What I have to show you will not only make Terry Spanner the most famous man on television—it will
also
make him the most revered tele-journalist ever!”

“Ever?”

“He’ll come out looking like Walter Cronkite! Hell, when he’s through, Morley Safer won’t be fit to fetch his slippers! How does that grab you, Mr. Talbot?”

“I’m intrigued, to say the least. You certainly talk a good game, Ms. Bender—but can you follow through?”

“This isn’t an empty boast; what I’m about to show you will change the world forever!”

Talbot leaned back in his chair, fixing Lucy with a calculating look. “Okay. You’ve got me hooked. What’s this earth-shattering secret you want to have on our show?”

Lucy turned in her seat and motioned for the angel to stand. “Joth—could you be so kind as to remove your coat for Mr. Talbot?”

A look of genuine relief crossed Joth’s face. It eagerly shrugged free of the duster, exposing its deep, hairless chest and wide, muscled shoulders. Talbot shifted in his seat, glancing from Lucy to Joth and back again.

“Joth—spread your wings, please.”

With what sounded like the rustle of stiff silk, the angel’s wings unfurled like the petals of an exotic night-blooming flower, pulling themselves up and away from Joth’s torso. The light from the overhead fluorescent bars shone on the multicolored underpinning, and for a brief moment they resembled panes of stained glass. Lucy was so moved by the beauty of it all she had to compose herself before she could turn back to face Talbot.

“So—what do you think? Is this big or is this big?”

Talbot stared at Joth for a long moment then turned his gaze on Lucy. However, instead of the dumfounded delight she had expected, what she saw was rapidly rising indignation.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Huh—? What do you mean?”

“You come in here wasting my precious time—and for
what
? Tattooed men are a dime a dozen, lady!”

Lucy looked from Talbot to Joth, whose gleaming fourteen-foot wingspan all but filled the room, then back again. “
Tattooed
—
?
What the hell are you
talking
about—can’t you see his fucking
wings?”

Talbot stood up rapidly, his face rigid. “Ms. Bender, I think I’ve seen
all
I need to. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I can’t
believe
this! I bring you the Eighth Wonder of the World and all you see is a
tattooed man
? Well, if you can’t see the wings, maybe you’ll notice a few other differences. Joth, would you take off your pants—?”

Talbot hurriedly raised his hands. “That’s
quite
enough, Ms. Bender! I’ve already seen more altered genitals than a moil—I don’t need to look at your boyfriend’s!”

“He’s
not
my boyfriend! He’s not even a
he!”

“And
that’s
certainly not new around here,
either!”

There was a sharp knock on the door and a burly man in a security guard uniform thrust a bullet-shaped head into the room. Behind his broad shoulder Lucy glimpsed the receptionist and a couple of anxious-looking interns gathered in the hall.

“Mr. Talbot—is there some trouble here—?”

Talbot looked relieved. “No, Jamal. No trouble at all. However, if you would be so kind, please see to it that Ms. Bender and her—
friend
—leave the building?”

The security guard nodded his understanding. “Sure thing, Mr. Talbot. Come along, lady.”

Lucy looked at the waiting security guard then back at Talbot, who was nervously tugging his necktie into a Gordian knot. For the second time in twenty-four hours she had done the unthinkable and Caused A Scene. No doubt Mam-Maw would have died of embarrassment, if she weren’t already six feet under.

She glanced back at Joth, who was standing perfectly still, watching her with those strange, colorless eyes, head cocked to one side like an inquisitive robin. The angel was still stripped to the waist, its unmarked flesh glowing in the light from the overheads. She had to shake her head and laugh. To think Talbot had looked at such perfect, flawless flesh and seen swirls of pigment and ink!

“C’mon, Joth, put on your coat. This is no place for you. We’re among Philistines here.”

“Please, Miss—if you’ll just come along quietly—” The security guard motioned toward the hallway. He glowered at Joth, one hand resting on the butt of the revolver secured at his hip, apparently expecting some sort of trouble, but Joth merely smiled back. The security guard looked momentarily confused but quickly regained his composure.