Freudian Slip (23 page)

J
ULES
S
HAW STOOD AT
the front of the church, his best man beside him, a gold ring in his pocket. Candles flickered and the scent of hundreds of white roses filled the air.

“Nervous?” Frank whispered.

Jules shook his head. “Not even a little. Not even a little.”

He looked over at Kate's maid of honor, her cousin Mal, who stood beaming on the other side of the altar, and winked. Mal knew. And she didn't even think they were crazy.

Then the violinists completed Vivaldi and started Pachebel's Canon. The oak doors at the back of the church opened and Kate stood there, with her stepfather, in the most amazing dress he had ever seen, with a beaded bodice. She looked like a princess.

Slowly, she walked up the aisle, tears glistening on her cheeks. And Julian had never in his life felt
anything like this. He couldn't explain it. Not to Frank, not to anyone. And neither could Kate. So they stopped trying. Maybe one day they would tell their kids a fantastical story of two souls split apart.

That night after they found each other again, they had gone back to her apartment. He knew he had been there before. He knew where everything was. He knew it as well as he knew his own place. As if his soul had memorized it. And he had led her to the bedroom and taken off her clothes and the two of them had made love.

Before the coma, he had sex with people. He had had a list under his mattress in high school. But this was different. That night, the sex was so good, it hurt him. It literally felt like his heart broke in half and poured into her before coming back into him. And though they had made love many times since then, it never got old, it never got boring, it was always that intense.

She was almost to him. He couldn't wait for her as she walked up the aisle.

And there she was, next to him. Kate reached the altar and took his arm. At her slightest touch, he always wanted her. She stood next to him and mouthed, “I love you,” and he leaned in and nuzzled her neck for a second. To hell with a hundred people looking at him. He had to kiss her.

Jules wrapped a hand around her waist. On his arm, beneath the fancy tux, he knew he had a tattoo of a hypodermic needle from his lost years. The angry years. Rock or die.

And on the other arm, the angel tattoo.

Now that he thought about it, he had never intended to get an angel on his forearm. It was from long ago, and he had been drunk. But the tattoo artist, a burly biker, had shown it to him and said he thought it was right for Julian. It would protect him from evil spirits. So Julian had agreed to it.

Maybe that was it, an angel. Because someone, somehow, had watched out for him. Had brought him through heroin and a broken life, near-death and a coma, to this moment. This one moment in time.

And life, he decided, was too complex to ever understand all the pieces, all the ways in which the journey twisted and turned to bring you to the moment.

The perfect moment.

B
ALAM STOOD OUTSIDE
the church, completely disgusted by the turn of events. At one time, he thought, you could count on the Other Side to fight fair. Which was, of course, excellent for him. He never fought fair. What was the Netherworld coming to?

Just when he thought he had won, when the restaurant was booked, the cream puffs sampled, the flowers ordered, the damn Vera Wang dress perfected, those In-Betweeners had pulled out all the stops, every dirty trick in the book, for what? To save one soul? Julian Shaw? Ex-heroin addict. Foul-mouthed prick. He wasn't worth saving. Balam had no idea why they couldn't see that.

They might even have saved two souls. No, Kate would never have done anything truly awful. But she would have shriveled, like an untended rose that dries up and the petals fall. Her soul would have been
his
by attrition, by years of loneliness.

No, they hadn't fought fair.

Balam paced on the sidewalk, seething. He hated to lose. Julian Shaw should have been his. And what really pissed him off…the weather. The one thing She could control that Lucifer and his side had no influence on. She couldn't have given them rain? Thunderstorms? It had to be this gorgeous day. It was enough to make him burst into flames.

The church doors opened. The guests poured out, awaiting the couple with little bottles of bubbles. People started blowing through the wands and iridescent soap bubbles floated through the air, dancing on the gentle breeze.

He looked down and could see steam rising off his Gucci loafers.

Careful to not actually step foot on church property, he stood at a wrought-iron fence and eavesdropped.

So in love.

The perfect wedding.

Soul mates.

There it was. Soul mates were his undoing many a time. Of course, he had won Joan of Arc and her visionary lover. But, in general, the battles to claim soul mates were always fiercest, the most treacherous. You never knew what one soul might do for its true mate.

It reminded him of a murderer he accompanied to Hell. The murderer drowned his victims. He had bragged about it. Had told Balam that his victims always struggled, fought to get to the surface. Soul mates were like that. Struggling, as if gasping for the very air, until the bitter end.

Worse. If they were reincarnated, the battle just resumed the next life. Then the next. The next. This constant battle between his side and Her side, with the Neither Here Nor There crowd caught in the middle.

Why did God make humans that way? he wondered. Why did She build into their souls this primal longing for another soul? It seemed a useless aberration. An error of design.

He stared through the wrought-iron gate as Julian and Kate emerged. It was sickening just how in love they looked. It was as if they would consume each other, breathe each other. As if they
were
two halves of one whole.

Then Julian looked right at him. The groom paused, for a fraction of a second. He locked eyes with him. And then, in the ultimate insult, Julian grabbed his bride in a fierce embrace and kissed her in a way that made two women in front of Balam
swoon.

He was going to be sick. And he needed a drink.

He turned and headed toward his favorite watering hole.
She
may have won this one, but there would be others. There were always others.

From the dawn of humanity until the Horsemen came riding through, the battle would go on.

He looked over his shoulder. “You coming?” he growled and snapped his fingers. A flame shot out of his fingers. “Let's go to Hell's Kitchen,” he said. Though with gentrification, even that no longer felt like home.

“Now!” he snarled.

And a thousand dark-suited demons fell in line behind him.

G
US TOOK OUT A CRISP
white hankie and blew his nose.

He thought he was crying real tears. His cheeks were wet.

“Was that not the most beautiful wedding ever?” he asked Albert.

“Truly lovely,” Albert concurred. “I don't think I've ever seen a prettier bride. But it was the love. You could feel it. Don't you think?” he asked their other companion.

Kate's father smiled. “She'll be fine now. I don't think there's anything that could pull those two apart.”

“Not even the threat of Hell,” Gus said.

“Thank you for your help,” her dad said. “I know there are so many who need help, but she's my little girl. Always will be. I couldn't rest until I knew she was taken care of.”

Albert nodded. “I'm a father, too. I understand.”

“Let me ask you something, Albert,” Gus said. “Do you really think the Boss doesn't know? That we got involved the way we did?”

Albert waved at the limousine as the newlyweds were driven toward the hotel where the reception was being held.

“Well now, Gus,” Albert said. “Funny you should ask that. I have looked at all the calculations.”

“And?”

“And I never switched Mallory's radio station.”

“I didn't, either,” Gus said.

Kate's dad said, “Don't look at me.”

“So, I have to think perhaps…” Albert said. “How else to explain it?”

“That She, Herself, got involved in two little people's lives? Amongst her billions of souls?”

“The plight of two soul mates. Two sparrows.”

“Shall we go visit Gideon?” Kate's dad asked. “I'd like to buy my two friends here a celebratory whiskey.”

“Indeed,” said Albert.

Kate's father, with a backward glance at the church where his daughter had been united to her true love, slung his arms across the shoulders of Gus and Albert.

“Gentlemen,” he joked. “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

And then, his angel's wings unfurling like sails behind him, he walked Albert and Gus down the street.

1. Do you believe in soul mates? Have you ever had a connection to someone that you couldn't explain in any rational way?
   
2. Do you believe angels—or demons—get involved in the matters of mere mortals?
   
3. Could you give up a sexual relationship, like Kate did, for the hope of a soul mate connection, even if it could not involve physical passion?
   
4. Albert is always trying to quantify the universe in terms of quantum mechanics. Do you think there are some elements to love that have to do with things we don't yet understand? What is that elusive “chemistry”?
   
5. Do you think there is a bigger plan than what the eye can see? Have you ever had a terrible experience, but later realized it was actually for the better?
   
6. Are coincidences accidental, or do you think sometimes the universe is trying to tell us something?
   
7. Do you believe in Heaven? Hell? Neither Here Nor There?
   
8. Have you ever “settled” for a pleasant relationship—but not a soul mate? Are you with a true soul mate now?