The Stupidest Angel (20 page)

"Would it make a difference if I told you that I absolutely did not harm this alleged Dale Pearson, and neither did Lena?"

"I don't think he was alleged," said Gabe, slurring at the breasts. "I'm pretty sure he was confirmed Dale Pearson."

"Whatever," said Tuck. "Would that change anything? Would you believe that?"

Theo didn't speak right away but appeared to be waiting for an answer from the decolletage oracle. When he looked up at Tuck again he said, "Yeah, I believe you."

Tuck nearly aspirated the ginger ale he was drinking. When he stopped sputtering he said, "Wow, you suck as a lawman, Theo. You can't just believe a strange guy who tells you something in a bar." Tuck wasn't accustomed to being believed by anyone, so to have someone take him at face value . . .

"Hey, hey, hey," said Gabe. "That's uncalled for—"

"Well, fuck you guys!" said the woman in the red sweater. She jumped up from her stool and snatched her keys off the bar. "I am a person, too, you know? And these are not speakerphones," she said, grabbing her breasts underneath and shaking them at the offenders, her keys jingling cheerfully as she did, completely defusing the effect of her anger.

"Oh—my—God," said Gabe.

"You can't just ignore a person like that! Besides, you're all too old and you're losers and I'd rather be alone on Christmas than spend five minutes with any of you horn dogs!" And with that she threw some cash on the bar, turned, and stormed out of the bar.

Because they were men, Theo, Tuck, and Gabe watched her ass as she walked away.

"Too old?" Tuck said. "She was what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?"

"Yeah," Theo said. "Late twenties, maybe early thirties. I didn't think we were ignoring her."

Mavis Sand took the money off the bar and shook her head. "You were all paying her proper attention. Woman's got some issues when she's jealous of her own parts."

"I was thinking about icebergs," said Gabe. "About how only ten percent of them show above the surface, yet below lies the really dangerous part. Oh, no, I got the blues on me again." His head hit the bar and bounced.

Tuck looked to Theo. "You want some help getting him to the car?"

"He's a very smart guy," said Theo. "He has a couple of Ph.D.s."

"Okay. Do you want some help getting
the doctor
to the car?"

Theo was trying to get a shoulder under Gabe's arm, but given that he was nearly a foot taller than his friend, things weren't working very well.

"Theo," Mavis barked. "Don't be such a friggin' wanker. Let the man help you."

After three unsuccessful attempts at hefting the bag of sand that was Gabe Fenton, Theo nodded to Tuck. They each took an arm and walked/dragged the biologist toward the back door.

"If he hurls I'm aiming him at you," Theo said.

"Lena loved these shoes," said Tuck. "But you do what you feel like you need to."

"I have no sex appeal, a rum-pa-pa-pum,"
sang Gabe Fenton, in spirit with the season.
"My social skills are nil, a rum-pa-pa-pum."

"Did that actually rhyme?" asked Tuck.

"He's a bright guy," said Theo.

Mavis creaked ahead of them and held the door. "So, I'll see you pathetic losers at the Lonesome Christmas party, right?"

They stopped, looked at one another, felt camaraderie in their collective loserdom, and reluctantly nodded.

"My lunch is coming up, a rum-pa-pa-pum,"
sang Gabe.

Meanwhile, the girls were running around the Santa Rosa Chapel, putting up decorations and preparing the table settings for a Lonesome Christmas. Lena Marquez was making her third circumnavigation of the room with a stepladder, some masking tape, and rolls of green and red crepe paper the size of truck tires. (Price Club in San Junipero only sold one size, evidently so you could decorate your entire ocean liner without making two trips.) The act of serial festooning had taken Lena's mind off her troubles, but now the little chapel was starting to resemble nothing more than the nest of a color-blind Ewok. If someone didn't intervene soon the Lonesome Christmas guests would be in danger of being asphyxiated in a festive dungeon of holiday bondage. Fortunately, as Lena was moving the ladder to make her fourth round, Molly Michon snaked a foot inside and pulled the chapel's double doors open; the wind from the growing storm swept in and tore the paper from the walls.

"Well, fuck!" said Lena.

The crepe paper swam in a vortex around the middle of the room, then settled into a great wad under one of the buffet tables Molly had set up to one side.

"I told you a staple gun would work better than masking tape," Molly said. She was holding three stainless-steel pans of lasagna and still managed to get the oak double doors closed against the wind with her feet. She was agile that way.

"This is a historical landmark, Molly. You can't just go shooting staples into the walls."

"Right, like that matters after Armageddon. Take these downstairs to the fridge," Molly said, handing the pans to Lena. "I'll get you the staple gun out of my car."

"What does that mean?" Lena asked. "Do you mean our relationships?"

But Molly had bounded back out through the double doors into the wind. She'd been making more and more cryptic comments like that lately. Like she was talking to someone in the room besides Lena. It was strange. Lena shrugged and headed back to the little room behind the altar and the steps that led downstairs.

Lena didn't like going into the basement of the chapel. It wasn't really a basement; it was more of a cellar: sandstone walls that smelled of damp earth, a concrete floor that had been poured without a vapor barrier fifty years after the cellar had been dug and so seeped moisture and formed a fine slime on top in the winter. Even when the stove was cranked and an electric heater turned on, it was never warm. Besides, the old, empty pews stored down there cast shadows that made her feel as if people were watching her.

"Mmmm, lasagna,"
said Marty in the Morning, your drive-time dead guy in the
a.m.
"Dudes and dudettes, the little lady has certainly outdone herself this time. Get a whiff of that?"

The graveyard was abuzz with moldy anticipation of the Lonesome Christmas party.

"It's highly inappropriate, that's what it is,"
said Esther.
"I suppose it's better than that horrible Mavis Sand woman barbecuing again. And how is it that she's still alive, anyway? She's older than I am."

"Than dirt, you mean?"
said Jimmy Antalvo, whose faceprint was still embedded in a telephone pole on the Pacific Coast Highway, where he'd hit it at age nineteen.

"Please, child, if you must be rude, at least be original,"
said Malcolm Cowley.
"Don't compound the tedium with cliche."

"My wife used to put a layer of hot Italian sausage between every layer of cheese and noodles,"
said Arthur Tannbeau.
"Now, that was some good eatin'."

"Sort of explains the heart attack, too, doesn't it?"
said Bess Leander. Being poisoned had left a bitter taste in her mouth that seven years of death could not wash away.

"I thought we agreed not to talk about COD guilt,"
said Arthur.
"Didn't we agree on that?"
COD was shorthand of the dead for Cause of Death.

"We did agree,"
said Marty in the Morning.

"I do hope that they sing 'Good King Wenceslas,' "
said Esther.

"Shut the fuck up about 'Good King Wenceslas,' would you? No one knows the words to 'Good King Wenceslas,' no one ever has."

"My, my, the new guy is cranky,"
said Warren Talbot, who had once been a painter of landscapes but after liver failure at seventy was fertilizing one.

"Well, it's gonna be a great party to listen to,"
said Marty in the Morning.
"Did you hear the constable's wife talking about Armageddon? She's definitely taking a cruise down the Big Nutty."

"I am not!" shouted Molly, who had come down to the basement to help Lena clear space in the two refrigerators for the salads and desserts that they had yet to unload.

"Who are you talking to?" said Lena, a little frightened at the outburst.

"I think I've made my point,"
said Marty in the Morning.

THE STUPIDEST ANGEL'S 

CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Sundown, Christmas Eve. The rain was coming down so hard that there didn't appear to be any space between the drops—just a wall of water, moving almost horizontally on wind that was gusting to seventy miles per hour. In the forest behind the Santa Rosa Chapel, the angel chewed his Snickers and ran a wet hand over the tire tracks at the back of his neck, thinking,
I really should have gotten more specific directions.

He was tempted to go find the child again and ask him exactly where Santa Claus was buried. He realized now that "somewhere in the woods behind the church" wasn't telling him much. To go back to get directions, however, would dilute somewhat the whole miraculousness of the miracle.

This was Raziel's first Christmas miracle. He'd been passed over for the task for two thousand years, but finally his turn had come up. Well, actually, the Archangel Michael's turn had come up, and Raziel ended up getting the job by losing in a card game. Michael had bet the planet Venus against his assigned task of performing the Christmas miracle this year. Venus! Although he wasn't really sure what he would have done with Venus had he won it, Raziel knew he needed the second planet, if for no other reason than that it was large and shiny.

He didn't like the whole abstract quality of the Christmas miracle mission. "Go to Earth, find a child who has made a Christmas wish that can only be granted by divine intervention, then you will be granted powers to grant that wish." There were three parts. Shouldn't the job be given to three angels? Shouldn't there be a supervisor? Raziel wished he could trade this in for the destruction of a city. That was so simple. You found the city, you killed all the people, you leveled all the buildings, even if you totally screwed it up you could track down the survivors in the hills and kill them with a sword, which, in truth, Raziel kind of enjoyed. Unless, of course, you destroyed the wrong city, and he'd only done that what? Twice? Cities in those days weren't that big, anyway. Enough people to fill a couple of good-size Wal-Marts, tops.
Now there's a mission,
thought the angel: "Raziel! Go forth into the land and lay waste unto two good-size Wal-Marts, slay until blood doth flow from all bargains and all the buildings are but rubble—and pick up a few Snickers bars for yourself."