Metal Angel (16 page)

Back at the house, he had gotten down on the floor with the boys and played for hours, running the radio-controlled cars. Already Gabe and Mikey regarded him as a huge feathered pet and adored him. Down on all fours, he would let the boys ride him like a Pegasus.

“Bless the beasts and children,” Texas had remarked, passing through.

Mixed feelings had made it a long day.

Working on Volos's vest, Angie sewed at a portable Sears free-arm machine (bought that afternoon) set up on the table in the erstwhile dining room, now her workroom. (It had probably not been used for dining since Volos had leased the house.) In the next room, the living-room-cum-studio, Volos and his band were rehearsing. Angie listened (the amps were turned up halfway to insanity, so how could she not listen?) as they swung into Ennis's song. She clenched her teeth, rigid with anger. The nerve! But then she felt herself melt. What Volos had done with the stolen song was beautiful enough to soften anyone.

As rehearsal broke up she mentally checked herself: niceness in place, like a prayer bonnet? Temper smoothed down, like mussed hair? Inhibitions, a drab skirt, hanging straight, long enough to cover everything? This done, she called Volos into her new domain for a fitting. Businesslike, she had him stand facing away from her. “Wings up,” she directed. “Hands back.” She guided them into the armholes, slipped the reshaped vest up his arms, and as she placed it on his shoulders her left wrist brushed the primaries near the base of one wing.

Afterward, she did not think of it as an accident, because sometime it had to happen, that moment of contact in which her life changed.

Or not changed exactly. Enlarged, amplified, magnified, manifested so that the changes that had gone before, the liberation of jeans and unbound hair, the hegira, the ordeal of L.A. seemed merest tentative first steps by comparison. In that moment when she touched Volos's wing, Angela was consummately herself, more so than she had ever been in her life, yet also—him, and therefore nearly infinite. Her rage, huge; her rebellion, huge; her lifelust, huge; her striving desire, immense. She felt as never before aware of, and in love with, her own body, with its beauty, its transience, its doom, and its possibilities. She felt terribly vulnerable, yet at the same time very old, as if she had heard God throatily singing in his shower. She felt time bend like a squeezed string, a single note in a lovely, lonely dissonance, beneath a berserk guitarist's hand.

The feeling, though not so physical as to be really a shock, staggered her. Volos felt her fingers clutch for support, turned quickly and caught her. She let herself lean for a moment against his leather-vested chest, and he pressed his hands against her shoulder blades, steadying her there.

“I'm sorry!” he exclaimed. “My idiot wings, I keep forgetting—”

Interrupting, she said into the alar curve of his collarbone, “I love your wings.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” She straightened, looking up into his eyes, knowing that she had completely forgiven him for being what he was and not what she had thought he should be. Knowing also that she ought to be frightened of him but was not. “I'm all right now,” she told him, and he took his hands away.

He asked her quietly, “What did you feel?”

“I felt …” Impossible to describe it all, but what little she said was deeply true. “I want to make the most incredible music.”

“You do?” Glad. His eyes and wings were the same warm golden brown. “You are still my lyricist, Angela?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I need you.” His eyes saddened to gray. “I am what you said, a half-done thing. I failed somehow. I sing but I cannot make the songs.”

She told him gently, “Not everyone writes songs. Or sings, even.” Certainly she herself could not sing.

“But—are you sure of this?” His astonishment, childlike, made her wonder how she could ever have been angry at him.

“I'm certain.”

“But—but how can that be? To be alive is to dance and sing. How can mortals do otherwise? A fire is not a fire unless it burns.”

She had no answer, but stood looking at him. He did not grow flustered or restless, as most people would have done, but stood waiting with his wings folded over the back of the new vest. He fingered its soft, rich-smelling leather a moment, then looked back at her and smiled. Did he know how the sweetness of his mouth when he smiled could turn a woman to water?

She said abruptly, “You need to do more songs about love. It is not the same thing as sex.”

“It is not?”

“No. All you have done so far is sex and anger.… What have I been thinking of, Volos? I must write you love songs.”

Sitting in the Millican Records offices, facing a big man behind a big desk, Volos fingered his leather vest and knew he need not have gone to the trouble of covering his torso. He might have been beef naked for all the man scanning him cared. He might as well be a piece of meat that sang.

“You get that tax business cleared away?” the man was asking Brett, who nodded fervidly, explaining that yes, sir, it was all taken care of, Social Security, passport, all the necessary numbers and documents and laminated cards identifying Volos as Flaim Carson McCardle.

“About time,” Big Desk grumbled. “Okay, so now you gonna get on with arranging the fucking tour?”

“You bet. We got some concerts lined up already. Houston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia—”

“You got a show for those people? They're gonna come to see the wings, that's what you gotta give them, something to look at. Smoke, fireworks, fountains, lasers, the works. Lots of sequins on this guy, lots of outfit changes. Flash, glitter, movement, color. If I was you I'd pick a color scheme each set and go with it, wings and all—”

“It does not work that way,” Volos said.

“Say what?” The record company exec peered at him. Had not expected him to speak any more than if he had been a Wonder Wombat.

Volos said, “It does not work that way. I do not control the color of my wings. Most of the time I do not know even what color they are unless I look.”

“Well, start looking, sonny!”

“You do not understand.” The nuisance appendages in question were flushing dull red, Volos could tell that by the dark feeling just below his diaphragm. “They change color with my heart. I cannot—”

“We've got it under control, Mr. Millican,” Brett broke in smoothly. “We've got a dynamite young artistic director, Mercedes Kell, and on top of that Volos has a style all his own. He's a born crowd-pleaser. It'll be a natural.”

“I was not born,” Volos said.

The boss man, used to temperamental artists but by no means happy with them, gave him a bored, uncomprehending look. Brett scowled at him. SHUT UP, her glare commanded.

“It better be under control,” Big Desk complained to her. “I don't like risks. Best to go for the sure thing. Lights, glitz, color. Another thing, if I was you I'd get rid of that dowdy band. Get some fresh people up there, and give them a catchy name. Black Angel and the Electric Devils, something like that.”

“No,” Volos said.

Brett cringed. The mighty man behind the big desk barked at Volos, “What you mean, NO?”

“I mean no, do not call me an angel. I mean no, I will not change my band. They are good musicians. I will have them wear hats. I will talk with them and we will choose a name.”

“It better be a fucking good name!” Big Desk, huffy, cut the appointment short.

“Jesus shit,” Brett swore at Volos afterward. “You imbecile, you could have blown the whole deal. From now on, you shut your mouth and let me handle things. The only time I want you to open it is when you're singing a song.”

More than her anger, her incomprehension silenced him. Who had made him a walking lie, he himself or these others? Why could they not know him? But day after day they said to him, How do your wings work? How do you make them change colors the way you do? What are they made of? Don't you take them off even to sleep?

They thought he was human.

Was that not what he wanted? To be human?

Volos did not let Brett take him home, but walked for miles through his own lonesome valley, cloak thrown back, wanting someone, anyone, to see him truly and tell him who he was.

Texas had told him he was real—but what did that mean? And Mercedes—he had performed every conceivable homoerotic act with Mercedes, but still he felt hollow. Now there was Angela …

The thought of her comforted him. But he was a fool to feel that way, for he had wronged her, and now she would never love him. He would not ask it of her. It was enough that she would stay in the house with him, fix his clothes, write his songs. It was more than enough for a half-finished thing like him. More than he deserved.

chapter nine

Christmas in California with Volos—Angie knew it would be so different from any other Christmas she had ever experienced that she would have to reinvent it. No churchgoing, no gift-wrapped piety from her father, no martyrdom served up by her mother along with candied yams, no lump-of-coal guilt in her seasonal stocking. She was glad these things were gone, but they left a space that had to be filled. What was she to replace them with?

On Thanksgiving Day, clearing away in the kitchen after the meal, she was thinking somewhat along these lines. While it was true that boxes were easy to dispose of, she did not feel quite soul-satisfied with take-out pizza as a Thanksgiving dinner. She did not want to end up cooking a turkey for Christmas, but she did want—she was not sure what she wanted. She asked Volos, “What are you doing for Christmas?”

He was at the table crayoning coloring books along with Gabe and Mikey. At first he had colored as clumsily as either of them, but he was getting better—not to win gold stars, but because he loved the bright sticks of wax. “Nothing. I am not a Christian,” he told her without looking up from the page he was working on.

“You don't have to be.”

“I will not do Christmas. I will not celebrate that Jesus was sent to the world to be killed.”

Wiping red smears off the countertops, she looked at him. He was keeping his voice level because of the children, but she could hear the edge in it and see the darkness flowing into his wings. Quietly she said, “I don't think that's what Christmas is really about for most people.”

“What is it about, then?”

“I don't know …” She did of course know the stock answer: it was the season of capital-letter Love. But what did that mean? “God Is Love,” the Sunday School paper hearts proclaimed, and in invisible ink on the flip side was written, “Go to Hell.” Angie was not sure she knew what Love was. Anyway, she was not going to say “Love” to Volos. Even the thought made her face go hot. She said, “It's just a good time, I guess. Gifts, good things to eat, decorations.”

“Christmas tree,” put in Gabe, who had not appeared to be listening. “Candy.”

“Santa!” Mikey shouted. Zapped by his excitement, his hands flew out, scattering crayons. He clambered down from his chair, went to his mother and tugged at her jeans, suddenly anxious. “Santa bring me, Mommy?”

Was Santa going to bring him presents, he meant. “Who's been telling you about Santa?” Angela squatted down to speak with the child so he would know she was on his side even though Santa was not something he had heard about from her and Ennis. Back in Jenkins, Santa had not been allowed in the house because ho-ho-ho did not fit into her father's theology. The children had always been told gifts came from God.

“Uncle Texas.”

“Well, then I'm sure Santa will come. Uncle Texas knows about these things.”

“What things?” Volos stood over her, looking troubled.

“The Santa Claus things and the Christmas tree things and the things that say you absolutely must get him something, Volos.”

“Get Texas something?”

“Yes. Whether you like it or not. He'll be hurt if you don't.”

“Texas believes in Christmas?”

Angela stood up, starting to feel exasperated. In her experience talk about religion was good for nothing except to come between people. “It's not about that,” she said. “It's about whether you believe in Texas. Don't step on the crayons,” she added, as he turned away with a dazed look.

“Mikey put crayons all over the floor,” said Gabe severely. “He should pick them up.”

“Oh.” Volos halted and, to Angie's surprise, helped gather the bright-colored toys before he wandered out with muted wings.

It was a good thing Gabe and Mikey were around, thought Texas, meditating over his beer. A good thing for him in particular. He needed the little boys to pin Christmas on that year. It was early in December, and already he had sent Wyoma a card, not a box card but one of those big ones from a drugstore rack, he had spent half an hour picking it out and had made triple sure his return address was on the envelope, though he had signed it only “Bob.” But he knew better, really, than to expect anything in reply.

It was a good thing, too, that nothing about Christmas seemed real around this place anyway. Palm trees. Shirtsleeves. No snow. Plastic garland on the lawn flamingos. Not much like West Virginia—which made it easier not to think about West Virginia much. Especially if he kept busy.

So there he was in the middle of the afternoon sitting in the neighborhood bar and thinking about West Virginia. What else was there to do?

Volos came in. Texas saw the feathery shadow in the mirror behind the bottles and knew right away there was something on the kid's mind. Dark wings. Also, Texas had invited Volos to go drinking with him a time or two before, but Volos would not come into narrow, enclosed places like this dive unless he had his own reasons. The kid wanted to talk.

So the angel sat on the barstool next to Texas, and the bartender came over. Texas did not much like this particular bartender. The guy had spiked hair and a ring in his nose and a ring in his ear and a chain that looked like it had been swiped from a bank's ballpoint pen strung between the two. Someday there was gonna be a nice big fight to break up and somebody was gonna grab that chain and yank it.