Sentinel of Heaven (12 page)

It smelled
like lasagna, when heated enough to regain an aroma.  Close enough for jazz as
far as she was concerned.

Soon Leo was
bringing it to her on a plate with a fork.  He settled once more by her chair,
her feet in his lap, helping himself to her water glass.

“I should get
more groceries soon,” she mused between bites.  “I start getting to a place
where leftovers are going bad in the fridge and I don't have the energy to
clear them out so I just lean more and more on frozen dinners like this...
which isn't best because when it comes to prepackaged, the rule is 'if it's
cheap, it's probably not good; if it's good, it's probably not cheap'.”

He nodded
amicably, blue eyes studying her face again.

“Leo... you
held your wings in for about four hours today.  Would you say that's a safe
time span?”

He gave her a
general affirmative, with a shade of optimism that indicated he could probably
stretch that time a little, if needed.

“I was
thinking about stopping on my way home from work tomorrow and getting you a
shirt or two, perhaps.”

The angel
appeared neutrally supportive of the idea, but didn't seem to see a reason
why.  Moira sighed softly.

“Having you
here... has showed me what I was missing, keeping myself to myself.  It's not
very healthy to be such a shut-in.  The problem is, I can be very shy.  I was
pretty solitary as a kid and it's only gotten worse since.  I'm thinking that
you and I could go out and do some things, perhaps.  Get me used to
recreational society again.  Like training wheels.”

He smiled.

“Once we've
got you some shirts, we could go get you some shoes,” she began dubiously but
he was waving that idea away, flicking a finger towards his eyes, towards his
feet, and slashing his palm across in a shorthand Moira took to indicate 'no
one will see my feet'.

She ate
another bite.  “I think I'm getting better at the nuances, dearheart – first I
would think that most people would spend so much time gawping at your height
that they wouldn't look down.”

The angel
chuckled silently, his crows’ feet crinkling.

“But no, now
I'm leaning towards it being something like... even if they look at your feet,
they won't realize you're not wearing shoes.  Like an illusion, or a glamour. 
Is that more like it?”

Leo nodded
approvingly at her perception.

“Is that why
the old lady at the soda bar today didn't say anything about you just going
around in sweatpants and it being mid-November?”

He indicated
yes-kinda, then slid his hand flat between them over his face and shook his
head.

“She didn't
actually see you at all?”  Not that he had turned invisible, only that his
magic had convinced her mind not to register his presence.

Bingo.  He
shrugged – wasn't any real need.

“But Chester
sure got a close look...”

The wolfish
grin made another appearance.

“Well, riddle
me this: could we have you pull in your wings for the duration of the car ride,
then let them out again once we're at our destination and you magic them so no
one notices?”

He had a few
items of feedback on that thought and illustrated them gracefully.  First he
flexed and clenched the fingers of both hands several times in succession and
then let them drop limply into his lap, panting in a theatrical fashion.

“It gets
tiring to pack them up over and over.”

He indicated a
small distance with fingertips and a happy nod, then a larger distance between
palms with a worried frown.

“Easier to
hide little things than big things, check.”

Then Leo
walked the fingers of one hand across to his other arm and 'tripped' over it
melodramatically, then proceeded to her delight to fully act out the attitude
and expressions of a man who has stumbled on the street and is now searching
for what broke his stride, his pride damaged.

“Fair enough,”
she giggled.  “What can't be seen can't be dodged.”

Leo affected a
disappointed look.

“What's wrong,
kiddo?”

He spread his
hands and tapped his temple, obviously disgusted with himself.

“You think
you've got more tricks in the stuff you can't remember yet?”

Affirmative.

She set her
fork on the empty plate and reached across to stroke his cheek, seeking to ease
away some of the sadness and frustration.  “It'll come back to you with time. 
Just relax and don't fret at it.  You have a home here with me for as long as
you wish.  It's not like you're expensive to feed...”

He smiled
again, the sweet little smile, and took her plate back to the kitchen.

“Before you
come sit back down,” she said, raising her voice slightly to carry to him in
the other room, “could you go into my bedroom?  On my dresser is a sewing box,
if you'd bring it to me, please.”

After a
moment's digging in the same box, she was able to find her measuring tape.

“To figure out
your shirt size, we can measure your neck.  That'd be the spot most difficult
to fit.  Everything else I can work with, a little – Mother showed me how to do
some basic alterations when I was young.”

Moira leaned
forward (smoothly; thank you, pain meds) and passed the loop of the tape behind
his head, snugging it under his hair and crossing it in front of his Adam's
apple.

She frowned,
made sure it was flat and flush against his throat all around, then crossed it
again.

“Leo, did you
have any idea your neck is twenty-one inches around?”

He
half-shrugged.

“As in, that's
only a few inches smaller than my waist!”

She loosened
the tape to fold it up again; he flipped his hands upside down to test the
thickness of his throat, then smirked wickedly and slid them around her
midsection, meeting the heels of his palms in front then inching around until
his fingertips touched at her spine.

“You are a
silly creature,” she scolded him lightly.

Finding her so
conveniently captive, Leo leaned in for another kiss, a shorter one than that
outside the car this afternoon, but no less engaging.

Moira watched
him with troubled eyes as he drew back.  “What is that to you?  It means many
different things for humans... what does it mean to you, Leo?”

He averted his
gaze, refusing to even attempt to answer though he kept his hands lightly
around her waist.  She thought again of the little domestic life she'd imagined
for him... was someone else the rightful recipient of these delicious displays?

“Do angels
marry, as humans do?”

He nodded
slowly.  Sometimes, he mouthed.

“Are you,
then?  Married, I mean?”

Not yet, he
said silently.

“So... you've
got a girlfriend?”

He tapped her
lightly above the heart, looking at her from under his lashes.

“No, I don't
mean a 'female friend', I mean – someone romantically, that you intend to be
with, maybe marry.”

Leo tilted his
head and stared at her a long moment, then smiled sadly.  No, he answered.

“You're sure? 
It wouldn't be part of what you can't remember?”

I'm sure, he
said.

“Because I
would feel inappropriate, being kissed by a man if he had someone else.”

No one, Leo
replied firmly.  He looked so depressed and heartbroken all of a sudden that
Moira blushed with guilt.  She stroked his cheek in concern, trying to soothe
the blue mood away.

“I'm sorry...
I didn't mean to say anything rude or hurtful.  I'm just not set up to be 'the
other woman', is all.  If you're a free man, you can kiss me as much as you
want.”

Or do more
if you want,
she wished she could say.

He stood up
slowly, giving her a gentlemanly peck at the corner of her mouth and stepping
away to put back her sewing box.

Wow, I am
incredibly bad at this,
thought Moira.

Soon he was
back, seeming more composed if still despondent.  Before he sat back down he
fluffed his nest, adding the old quilt back into the bottom layer and stirring
all the others to air them.  She saw he had changed into his clean gray pants
to keep from tracking mud and dust into his bed.

At last he
sank into the nest, gesturing for Moira to join him.

“I can for a
little while,” she cautioned.  “I should go to bed soon...”

She took his
offered hand and brought her blanket, settling down beside him.  He flipped the
warm afghan over them both and shifted to hold her, putting his head on her
shoulder.

Moira relaxed
into the tangle of his limbs, petting the hair away from his temple gently.  “I
remember a joke,” she murmured.

He snorted rudely. 
“No, really,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.  “This is a
good joke, because this is Dad's joke.  He told it a long long time ago and I
guess I happened to be in the room because I remembered hearing it, even though
I didn't understand it for years after.  It goes like this:

“Out in the
old West, there was a small town.  Two brothers were the head gangsters in this
town and they ruled it with an iron fist, putting all the honest people in
fear.

“Well, the
time came around that the younger one caught sick and died.  The older one went
to the local church and spoke to the pastor.  He said 'Preacher, you're gonna
give my brother's funeral tomorrow, and if you tell everyone there that he was
a saint I'll give you ten thousand dollars for you to use in your church, for
the poor and whatnot.'

“Well, the
preacher didn't want to lie but that was a lot of money, even more back in that
day, so he said yes.

“The next day
as they were all getting ready to put that box in the ground, the pastor stood
up and began to speak about the life of the man who had died – and he told it
like it was, giving a long list of threats and extortions, drinking, gambling,
rape, theft, murders.  You name it, that crook had done it.

“And as he got
to the end of that list of filth, the preacher turned and pointed to the
surviving man and shouted '...but compared to his brother, he was A SAINT!' “

Leo snickered
despite himself.

“It was
probably better in Daddy's telling,” she admitted.  “He'd tell a joke and then
get so tickled about his own joke he'd be laughing at it harder than his
audience... but then they'd get tickled at
him
getting tickled so
they'd laugh, and he liked when people laughed so he'd laugh even more.”

Moira sighed. 
“He was a happy man, that's what I remember.  I'm glad he was... seems like
there's a real shortage of happiness, these days.”

She bent and
kissed the top of his shaggy head, massaging the back of his neck.  “Leo...
I've got to go to bed.”

The seraph
looked up at her.  Stay with me, his eyes begged her.

“Oh darling...
I can't.  I wish I could but I can't.  I can lay on the floor for a few minutes
but if I did it for eight hours, even assuming I could sleep, I'd be so bad off
tomorrow I'd have to call out again and I can't afford it.  You understand?”

He did,
although he didn't like it one iota.

“Good night,
Leo,” she said and kissed him tenderly, then climbed up out of the nest towards
the bedroom.  The last she saw of him before she turned the lights out was his
hands, gathering the slack of the blanket around him, the blanket that held her
warmth and scent.

She fell from
dreamless sleep into the belly of a nightmare that was simply a brutal welter
of sensation – disorientation, metal shrieking, human screams.  Blood, blood
everywhere, and smoke.

(fearing for
one moment that she was hanging upside down again, hanging upside down forever
like the Hanged Man, searching for wisdom and perception and finding nothing
but an eyeball on the roof-become-floor)

When she
lifted her right hand to wipe her face clear she saw that her skin had become a
burnished brassy gold, and from her wrist down there was a shining sword blade
sprouting directly from her arm.

Moira flung
herself to consciousness like a startled fish leaping from a pond.

The dream had
been so real... she could still smell that bitter copper smell all around.  She
lay on her side and watched the moonlight creep across her sheets from the
window, dry-mouthed with adrenaline and pain.

From the living
room came a sudden noise; in her mindless state she knew there was another
person in the house but could not countenance who it was or how it came to be
there.  There was no fight left in her, no good sturdy white ash to hand – only
herself alone in her nightgown, marooned on an island of terror.

It was a tall
black silhouette, edged in faintly glowing white.  It stepped into the kitchen
and turned the faucet on, refilling a glass.  Then it came toward her.

Her heart beat
as fast as a mouse's.  The intruder paused in the doorway... then gradually
extended the tip of its alabaster wing and prodded her with it.

“L-Leo?” she
whispered.  The shadow's shaggy head nodded.  Moving slowly so as not to
startle her further, he eased into the room.

He set the
glass on her nightstand, twisted open the pill-bottle in his other hand, shook
out one pill, glanced at her uneasily, shook out another.  He pressed them both
into her shaking hands, then helped her carry them to her mouth.  Sliding an
arm under her shoulder he set the glass to her lips and watched as she took a
few tentative swallows.

“It's under my
skin,” she whispered, “and I can't run from it.  I can't escape it.  Every time
I get a little bit away, it always follows.  It chases me.”

Her wrists and
back were throbbing bands of agony.

Leo shook his
head and gritted his teeth, then came to a decision.  He flipped back her
blankets and lifted her bodily out of the bed, carrying her back to the living
room to set her gently in her chair.  A second trip brought back her pillows
and the linens from the bed to lay in her lap, all except the fitted sheet. 
She watched dull and uncomprehending as he kicked his nest to one side, closer
to the empty fireplace to her left.

Then he was
gone again, and she heard rustling and a quiet thump in the darkness.  Thumps
again, getting closer, like a bag of flour being dropped on the floor over and
over.  A brushing sound through the hallway, then the feel of something huge
rising up behind her.

Another thump
and he had tipped her foam mattress around the corner of her chair, on its
side.  Up, and thump again, to put the long side flush with his nest, then the
biggest thump at the end of letting it fall on its underside again.  Between
the bookcases on the front wall and his nest, there was just enough room.

Leo fussed
with the setup a bit, incorporating the mattress into the nest as best he
could, then lifted Moira the last time and lay her on the far side of it,
sliding a pillow under her head as if she were a large doll.  He flapped the
sheet and her blanket back into place, then crawled under it with her.  With
one wing behind him in his nest and one wing laid over them both he wrapped
himself around her protectively.

The glow in
the feathers above her face gradually dimmed until she felt like she was
looking up into the endless starry sky... like laying in the field would be at
this time of night, only the mattress yielded far more than the ground.

“Why... why
did you do this?” she managed.

Of course
there was no answer; none in words, anyway.  She was surrounded by his warmth
again, and a comfort that sought to ease her distress.

The picture
formed slowly in her mind, impressed by his gentle hands massaging her
wrists... a tiny coracle on the ocean, just big enough for her to curl up
comfortably within it.

It rocked with
the easy swells of that tireless sea, slowly up one wave and down the other. 
The time was full on night, the hour of the dead.  No moon shone; only the
million million stars, the watery depths of space above and below her.

Waves and
stars – and a temperate wind that smelled of cinnamon and spices, and the
rocking of the little boat.  No noise, no other life, only her body alone in
the embrace of the infinite.

Moira drifted
off into a sleep that was perfect and untroubled by dreams, until the alarm
clock woke her with its cruel electronic call the next morning, two rooms away.

She groaned
and scrubbed at her eyes.  “Jesus Christ, somebody just shoot me, please, I
don't want to go,” she grated into her pillow.

The heated
weight she had taken to be an old down-filled comforter lifted off of her back;
she looked up from the pillow to see the angel walking toward the bedroom.  He
shut off the loud device and came back with water and pills.

“Thank you,”
she whispered.  He waited until she'd taken the two pills and rinsed her mouth,
then kissed her thoroughly.

“Thank you for
last night... I don't know how I would have gotten back to sleep without you. 
I don't know how you managed it, but it worked.”

Leo smiled
softly.

She forced
herself to sit up, then to stand.  “I've got to shower... is there any way you
could fix my lunch?”  He nodded affirmation.

Christ,
leaving this warm bed-nest to go into the hell she called the office only proved
there was no justice in the world.

And what else
is new, girl? said a little part of her psyche in the voice that was all its
own.  You've known that since you were five.  You've still got to go.  So nut
up, Moira, and get to it!

She peeled out
of her nightgown on her way to the shower, depressed beyond her ability to
say.  She stood and let the water run over her until it was nearly tepid,
letting it try to wash away the worst of her despair.

Don't think of
the bullshit you'll be forced to tolerate today.  Think of it as the toll you
pay to come back here and be with him, tonight.

When she
stepped out of the bedroom fully-dressed, Leo was packing her lunch bag and
walked through the items silently for her perusal: the sandwich from yesterday,
a small bag of apple slices, a small bag of cheese cubes, and two chocolate
chip cookies he'd managed to unearth from who knows where. 
Hope those are
still good... 
Her small thermos had been emptied and refilled with clean
water.

“That's
perfect, kiddo – I usually eat about that much or even less, for lunch.  Thank
you.”

Moira grabbed
her laptop bag from its hiding space behind her bedroom door and slung it over
her shoulder as she picked up her cane.  “Do I get a kiss?” she asked.

Leo grinned at
her, then sank to his knees on the kitchen floor and indulged them both for a
long moment.  By the end she was pressed against him tightly, met at chest and
hip and knee by the comforting solidarity of his frame.

“My God,” she
swore softly, fingers tangling in his sleek steel-colored hair.  “That's a kiss
to keep me alive through today.”

They released
each other with no little reluctance.  He pressed the lunch bag into her hand
and held the door for her courteously, and waved as she slid into the driver's
seat of the car.

The miles flew
by under her wheels as the sun rose.  The concrete jungle folded itself around
her on the tail end of her journey and she was struck again by the city's
beauty from a distance.  The skyline was inspiring; the streets themselves were
rude and ugly.

Moira got into
the parking garage without incident and wrestled her belongings into the
building, mildly surprised as always when her badge worked and let her through
the security door.  She clocked in, rode the elevator up twenty floors, then
stumped through the cubicle maze to find the little grey desk she called her
own.

After a
weekend and two days' impromptu vacation, her email inbox was overflowing.  She
set to work in clearing it.

She'd come on
with this firm about nine years ago... originally the job had been boring but
not bad.  A lot of tax work.  A lot of bookkeeping.  A lot of commercial
bill-collection calls, ones that stayed fairly polite.  Big companies could
afford to be polite, even as they ignored late notices and racked up fees they never
intended to honor.

The firm did
contract work so Moira did what jobs were required, in her field.  “Also walks
dogs and washes windows,” she used to think.

Six or seven
years ago the company started taking on work of a different caliber for private
investigators and local police departments, even one or two jobs for the GBI
and FBI.  Moira would categorize it as “forensic accounting” and wished her
employers would as well – but they'd have to pay her twice as much an hour if
they had.

If she were
left in peace to do the jobs, she actually would have liked her work.  It
utilized both her creative mind and her analytical mind; many times it was like
a game of “Find the Lady”, where the size of the deck was unknown, there might
be no red suits, and there could be twice as many face cards as usual.

Follow the
dollars, where did they go?  Did a pastor pay a neighbor two grand from a
church account for a night of what his books called “babysitting”?  Did a
husband withdraw ten large in cash from the joint savings and suddenly his
secretary had a diamond watch that her paycheck said she couldn't afford on her
own?  Did a millionaire declare bankruptcy while his uncle abruptly came into a
purchase of surprisingly cheap land?  Did a multinational company legitimately have
at least one hand-written receipt that read “Paid C 12.5 for items”?

Follow the
dollars, see what story they told.  It was a fun game.  Even the times she'd
had to offer court testimony of her methods and findings were interesting and a
little exciting.

Moira could
have been satisfied; even happy.  Her cost of living and occasional merit
raises were mostly wishful thinking in the direction of adequate compensation,
but she would have gotten by.  It was all the other bullshit that became
tedious, then distracting, then distressing, then enraging.

Right after
her last review six months ago, Moira's team had been re-org'd to fall under a
new director – and that director's pet supervisor was named Erica.

Every
organization must have at least one person of petty power, who is unable to
rise any farther and not allowed by patron members of management to fall any
lower.  This was Erica.

Erica had one
management style: my way or the highway.  She spoke an English dialect Moira
might refer to as Confusion.  Her vision for projects and tasks changed on a
weekly basis.  She'd get bored of an initiative halfway through and simply
trash it, like a toddler destroying a woodblock castle after a delayed
nap-time.

Erica did not
understand FMLA and how it pertained to Moira's disabilities, and didn't care. 
Erica wanted her “resources” to work smarter, not harder.  Erica tripled the
number of meetings Moira had to attend without lessening the workload, and
without ever considering overtime.

Erica
volunteered Moira's services to other groups without asking; sometimes without
even notifying her at all.

Erica used the
word 'synergy' with no trace of irony.

Erica required
weekly one-on-one meetings, by which she could pretend to have an insight into
Moira's ongoing duties and tasks.  Usually they devolved into “blame-storming”.

And I hate
her big fishy lips,
thought Moira.

If Moira had
to sum up Erica in a single anecdote, she would tell this story: One afternoon
she'd heard Erica telling one of her coworkers about her dog.  Erica had a big
young German Shepherd, barely trained, who liked to break out of her crate
during the day and go on a rampage around the house.

Erica also
liked to buy three hundred dollar high-heels.  Erica kept those same expensive
high-heels on the floor of her closet, which was behind two flimsy wooden
folding doors.

More than
once, Erica's expensive heels were eaten by Erica's dog.

And Erica
would go on and blithely replace them, only to have them devoured again on the
next escape.

Never once did
it occur to Erica to suspend buying expensive heels one month and invest in a
locking metal cabinet to keep in her closet to foil the tastes of her dog.

Years ago
Moira never thought she could condone the acts of extreme work-place violence,
where dozens could be mowed down by a single disgruntled employee with a
high-powered weapon.  Then there was Erica.

“Going postal”
suddenly became easier to understand, if one imagined a supervisor like her
involved.  A pity about all the innocent lives affected, but taking down an
'Erica' could potentially make a forty-seven hour standoff with the federal
authorities and death in the blaze of a final shootout seem a worthwhile
outcome.

Moira had just
enough time to put out the worst of the fires in her inbox before printing up
the slides for her weekly one-on-one hazing ritual.  Added bonus: being made to
work up a six-month performance “self-assessment” and an additional
presentation to Erica and her manager and director regarding the projects of
her last half-year.

The big
presentation was due to occur next week, optimistically scheduled by Erica on
Black Friday.  Moira was sure that being forced to leave family and holiday
festivities to come into the office and honor obligatory meetings with peons
would endear her to salaried management beyond description.