The Mammoth Book of Angels & Demons (58 page)

“Jesus,” he said, wiping his lip. The blood felt like an oil slick in the back of his throat.

She turned her back to him and put her face into the pillow. For a moment he thought she was crying. But only for a moment.

“Honey,” he said. “Hey.” He put his fingers on her shoulder; she rolled it away from him.

“Go to sleep,” she said.

He stared at the landscape of her naked back, pale in the street light leaking through the blinds, feeling furious and ruined.

The next morning, when he came into the kitchen, Amy was already up. Coffee was made, filling the room with a fine toasted smell, and she was leaning against the counter with a cup in her hand, wearing her pink terrycloth robe. Her dark hair was still wet from the shower. She smiled and said, “Good morning.”

“Hey,” he said, feeling for a sense of her mood.

Dodger, Toby’s dog, cast him a devastated glance from his customary place beneath the kitchen table. Amy had wanted to get rid of him – she couldn’t bear the sight of him anymore, she’d said – but Brian wouldn’t allow it. When Toby comes back, he reasoned, he’ll wonder why we did it. What awful thing guided us. So Dodger remained, and his slumping, sorrowful presence tore into them both like a hungry animal.

“Hey, boy,” Brian said, and rubbed his neck with his toe.

“I’m going out today,” Amy said.

“Okay. Where to?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. The hardware store. Maybe a nursery. I want to find myself a project.”

Brian looked at her. The sunlight made a corona around her body. This new resolve, coupled with her overture of the night before, struck him as a positive sign. “Okay,” he said.

He seated himself at the table. The newspaper had been placed there for him, still bound by a rubber band. He snapped it off and unfurled the front page. Already he felt the gravitational pull of the Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet, but when Amy leaned over his shoulder and placed a coffee cup in front of him, he managed to resist the whiskey’s call with an ease that surprised and gratified him. He ran his hand up her forearm, pushing back the soft pink sleeve, and he kissed the inside of her wrist. He felt a wild and incomprehensible hope. He breathed in the clean, scented smell of her. She stayed there for a moment, and then gently pulled away.

They remained that way in silence for some time – maybe fifteen minutes or more – until Brian found something in the paper he wanted to share with her. Something being described as “angelic” – “apparently not quite a human man”, as the writer put it – had been found down by the Gulf Coast, in Morgan City; it had been shedding a faint light from under two feet of water; whatever it was had died shortly after being taken into custody, under confusing circumstances. He turned in his chair to speak, a word already gathering on his tongue, and he caught her staring at him. She wore a cadaverous, empty look, as though she had seen the worst thing in the world and died in the act. It occurred to him that she had been looking at him that way for whole minutes. He turned back to the table, his insides sliding, and stared at the suddenly indecipherable glyphs of the newspaper. After a moment he felt her hand on the back of his neck, rubbing him gently. She left the kitchen without a word.

This is how it happened:

They were taking Dodger for a walk. Toby liked to hold the leash – he was four years old, and gravely occupied with establishing his independence – and more often than not Brian would sort of half-trot behind them, one hand held indecisively aloft should Dodger suddenly decide to break into a run, dragging his boy behind him like a string of tin cans. He probably bit off more profanities during those walks than he ever did changing a tire. He carried, as was their custom on Mondays, a blanket and a picnic lunch. He would lie back in the sun while Toby and the dog played, and enjoy not being hunched over an engine block. At some point they would have lunch. Brian believed these afternoons of easy camaraderie would be remembered by them both for years to come. They’d done it a hundred times.

A hundred times.

On that day a kindergarten class arrived shortly after they did. Toby ran up to his father and wrapped his arms around his neck, frightened by the sudden bright surge of humanity; the kids were a loud, brawling tumult, crashing over the swings and monkey bars in a gabbling surf. Brian pried Toby’s arms free and pointed at them.

“Look, screwball, they’re just kids. See? They’re just like you. Go on and play. Have some fun.”

Dodger galloped out to greet them and was received as a hero, with joyful cries and grasping fingers. Toby observed this gambit for his dog’s affections and at last decided to intervene. He ran toward them, shouting, “That’s my dog! That’s my dog!” Brian watched him go, made eye contact with the teacher and nodded hello. She smiled at him – he remembered thinking she was kind of cute, wondering how old she was – and she returned her attention to her kids, gamboling like lunatics all over the park. Brian reclined on the blanket and watched the clouds skim the atmosphere, listened to the sound of children. It was a hot, windless day.

He didn’t realize he had dozed until the kindergarteners had been rounded up and were halfway down the block, taking their noise with them. The silence stirred him.

He sat up abruptly and looked around. The playground was empty. “Toby? Hey, Toby?”

Dodger stood out in the middle of the road, his leash spooled at his feet. He watched Brian eagerly, offered a tentative wag.

“Where’s Toby?” he asked the dog, and climbed to his feet. He felt a sudden sickening lurch in his gut. He turned in a quick circle, a half-smile on his face, utterly sure that this was an impossible situation, that children didn’t disappear in broad daylight while their parents were
right fucking there
. So he was still here. Of course he was still here. Dodger trotted up to him and sat down at his feet, waiting for him to produce the boy, as though he were a hidden tennis ball.

“Toby?”

The park was empty. He jogged after the receding line of kids. “Hey.
Hey!
Is my son with you?
Where’s my son?
”

One morning, about a week after the experience in the kitchen, Brian was awakened by the phone. Every time this happened he felt a thrill of hope, though by now it had become muted, even dreadful in its predictability. He hauled himself up from the couch, nearly overturning a bottle of Jack Daniel’s stationed on the floor. He crossed the living room and picked up the phone.

“Yes?” he said.

“Let me talk to Amy.” It was not a voice he recognized. A male voice, with a thick rural accent. It was the kind of voice that inspired immediate prejudice: the voice of an idiot; of a man without any right to make demands of him.

“Who is this?”

“Just let me talk to Amy.”

“How about you go fuck yourself.”

There was a pause as the man on the phone seemed to assess the obstacle. Then he said, with a trace of amusement in his voice, “Are you Brian?”

“That’s right.”

“Look, dude. Go get your wife. Put her on the phone. Do it now, and I won’t have to come down there and break your fucking face.”

Brian slammed down the receiver. Feeling suddenly light-headed, he put his hand on the wall to steady himself, to reassure himself that it was still solid, and that he was still real. From somewhere outside, through an open window, came the distant sound of children shouting.

*    *    *   

It was obvious that Amy was sleeping with another man. When confronted with the call, she did not admit to anything, but made no special effort to explain it away, either. His name was Tommy, she said. She’d met him once when she was out. He sounded rough, but he wasn’t a bad guy. She chose not to elaborate, and Brian, to his amazement, found a kind of forlorn comfort in his wife’s affair. He’d lost his son; why not lose it all?

On television the news was filling with the creatures, more of which were being discovered all the time. The press had taken to calling them angels. Some were being found alive, though all of them appeared to have suffered from some violent experience.

At least one family had become notorious by refusing to let anyone see the angel they’d found, or even let it out of their home. They boarded their windows and warned away visitors with a shotgun.

Brian was stationed on the couch, staring at the television with the sound turned down to barely a murmur. He listened to the familiar muted clatter from the medicine cabinet as Amy applied her make-up in the bathroom. A news program was on, and a hand-held camera followed a street reporter into someone’s house. The J. D. bottle was empty at his feet, and the knowledge that he had no more in the house smoldered in him.

Amy emerged from the kitchen with her purse slung over her arm and made her way to the door. “I’m going out,” she said.

“Where?”

She paused, one hand on the doorknob. She wavered there, in her careful make-up and her push-up bra. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen her look like this and failed dismally. Something inside her seemed to collapse – a force of will, perhaps, or a habit of deception. Maybe she was just too tired to invent another lie.

“I’m going to see Tommy,” she said.

“The redneck.”

“Sure. The redneck, if that’s how you want it.”

“Does it matter how I want it?”

She paused. “No,” she said. “I guess not.”

“Well well. The truth. Look out.”

She left the door, walked into the living room. Brian felt a sudden trepidation; this is not what he imagined would happen. He wanted to get a few weak barbs in before she walked out, that was all. He did not actually want to talk.

She sat on the rocking chair across from the couch. Beside her, on the television, the camera focused on an obese man wearing overalls smiling triumphantly and holding aloft an angel’s severed head.

Amy shut it off.

“Do you want to know about him?” she said.

“Let’s see. He’s stupid and violent. He called my home and threatened me. He’s sleeping with my wife. What else is there to know?”

She appraised him for a moment, weighing consequences. “There’s a little more to know,” she said. “For example, he’s very kind to me. He thinks I’m beautiful.” He must have made some sort of sound then, because she said, “I know it must be very hard for you to believe, but some men still find me attractive. And that’s important to me, Brian. Can you understand that?”

He turned away from her, shielding his eyes with a hand, although without the TV on there was very little light in the room. Each breath was laced with pain.

“When I go to see him, he talks to me. Actually talks. I know he might not be very smart, according to your standards, but you’d be surprised how much he and I have to talk about. You’d be surprised how much more there is to life – to my life – than your car magazines, and your TV, and your bottles of booze.”

“Stop it,” he said.

“He’s also a very considerate lover. He paces himself. For my sake. For me. Did you
ever
do that, Brian? In all the times we made love?”

He felt tears crawling down his face. Christ. When did that start?

“I can forget things when I sleep with him. I can forget about . . . I can forget about everything. He lets me do that.”

“You cold bitch,” he rasped.

“You passive little shit,” she bit back, with a venom that surprised him. “You let it happen, do you know that? You let it all happen. Every awful thing.”

She stood abruptly and walked out the door, slamming it behind her. The force of it rattled the windows. After a while – he had no idea how long – he picked up the remote and turned the TV back on. A girl pointed to moving clouds on a map.

Eventually Dodger came by and curled up at his feet. Brian slid off the couch and lay down beside him, hugging him close. Dodger smelled the way dogs do, musky and of the earth, and he sighed with the abiding patience of his kind.

Violence filled his dreams. In them he rent bodies, spilled blood, painted the walls using severed limbs as gruesome brushes. In them he went back to the park and ate the children while the teacher looked on. Once he awoke after these dreams with blood filling his mouth; he realized he had chewed his tongue during the night. It was raw and painful for days afterward. A rage was building inside him and he could not find an outlet for it. One night Amy told him she thought she was falling in love with Tommy. He only nodded stupidly and watched her walk out the door again. That same night he kicked Dodger out of the house. He just opened the door to the night and told him to go. When he wouldn’t – trying instead to slink around his legs and go back inside – he planted his foot on the dog’s chest and physically pushed him back outside, sliding him backwards on his butt. “
Go find him!
” he yelled. “
Go find him! Go and find him!
” He shut the door and listened to Dodger whimper and scratch at it for nearly an hour. At some point he gave up and Brian fell asleep. When he awoke it was raining. He opened the door and called for him. The rain swallowed his voice.

“Oh no,” he said quietly, his voice a whimper. “Come back! I’m sorry! Please, I’m so sorry!”

When Dodger did eventually return, wet and miserable, Brian hugged him tight, buried his face in his fur, and wept for joy.

Brian liked to do his drinking alone. When he drank in public, especially at his old bar, people tried to talk to him. They saw his presence as an invitation to share sympathy, or a request for a friendly ear. It got to be too much. But tonight he made his way back there, endured the stares and the weird silence, took the beers sent his way, although he wanted none of it. What he wanted tonight was Fire Engine, and she didn’t disappoint.

Everybody knew Fire Engine, of course; if she thought you didn’t know her, she’d introduce herself to you post haste. One hand on your shoulder, the other on your thigh. Where her hands went after that depended on a quick negotiation. She was a redhead with an easy personality, and was popular with the regular clientele, including the ones that would never buy her services. She claimed to be twenty-eight but looked closer to forty. At some unfortunate juncture in her life she had contrived to lose most of her front teeth, either to decay or to someone’s balled fist; either way common wisdom held she gave the best blowjob in downtown New Orleans.