Angels on Fire (13 page)

An ornately inscribed circle had been drawn on the wood floor with what looked to be colored chalk. She also noticed that most of the angel’s pin feathers seemed to be missing. She was reminded of Pappy’s prize rooster after the neighbor’s cat got at it. She glanced back in the direction of the kitchen to see Ezrael leaning against the doorway, wiping his hands on a towel.

“What you’re looking at is a protective circle, designed to place those inside it in a form of suspended animation. I decided we couldn’t risk a replay of what happened last night. I doubt Joth has enough long-term memory to keep from wandering off again. The circles are only good for a few hours at a time, but it should be enough to make sure our friend here stays put while you’re at work and I take a much-needed nap.”

“Whatever,” she shrugged.

Lucy worked an over-glorified data entry job, stuck in a tiny cubicle identical to fifty others on the fifth floor of a nondescript skyscraper. She had no view and no door. If she wanted to talk to her co-workers on either side of her, she had to stand on a chair to do so. Not that she
wanted
to talk to them. She learned early on that she had little in common with her fellow employees. Most of them did not treat the job as a means of making ends meet while working on personal projects, and majority had been business majors whose exposure to the liberal arts had gone no further than English Composition for Executive Reports. The conversations around the water cooler were largely about what was on TV the night before, their kids, that day’s
Dilbert
and inter-office dirt.

To her relief, no one commented on her unexcused absence when she clocked in that morning, not even Laurie, her supervisor and usual
bête noir.
For some reason, Laurie had taken a dislike to her right from the start. As far as Lucy could tell, the reason for Laurie’s resentment had something to do with the way she decorated her cubicle. Instead of the standard “You Want It When?” and “Hang In There, Baby” posters, Lucy had a reproduction of a freak show banner advertising “The Lobster Boy.”

While work was its usual tedious self that day, she found herself wondering how many of people around her were really what they appeared to be. She had known for some time that those in Big Business were two-faced, but now she questioned just how literal their duplicity might be. Could the broker down the hall be hiding a cloven hoof inside his Italian loafer? Perhaps the Chairman of the Board had a third eye under that ridiculous toupee of his? And did Laurie file her fangs as well as her nails? Towards the end of the day, a business-size envelope landed on hers desk. Laurie was standing in the “door” of her cubicle with a smug look on her face.

“What’s this?” Lucy asked.

“Why don’t you open it and find out?”

Frowning, Lucy dumped the contents onto her desk: a check for two weeks’ pay and a pink slip.

“What th
—
?”
she looked back up at Laurie in shocked surprise.

“We don’t need weirdo slackers with attitude around here, Bender,” Laurie sneered. “There are plenty of motivated go-getters out there who are more than happy to take your place!”

“B-but—I
need
this job!” Lucy stammered. “How am I going to pay my rent?”

“Too bad—you should have thought about that earlier! Yesterday was the final straw.”

“Final straw—? There were others?”

“Don’t play dumb!” Laurie snapped, pointing at the Lobster Boy poster. “You were warned about your cubicle’s appearance at least twice!”

“But—”

“You’re to clear out your desk and be out of the building in fifteen minutes or I’ll have to call security.” Laurie turned to leave, but paused long enough to glance back over her shoulder and scowl. “What the hell are
you
looking at, Bender?”

“N-nothing,” Lucy said, quickly averting her eyes from the dark tongues of flame that burned around Laurie’s head like the jets on a gas range.

The commute back on the subway was a somber one. As she stared down at the small cardboard box that held what few personal belongings she’d kept in her cubicle, she felt more numb than anything else. In fact, she wasn’t exactly sure what, if anything, she was supposed to feel. She certainly wasn’t one of those pathetic salaryman types who equated her job with her identity. However, it had paid well and been relatively easy, compared to her stints as a waitress, cashier and a telephone solicitor.

. Although it had given her some satisfaction at the time, she doubted her taping the sideshow poster inside the stall in the women’s room with a word bubble coming out of Lobster Boy’s mouth that said: “Hey, Laurie, need to pinch a loaf?” would net her any recommendations from her former employer

Thanks to Nevin never kicking in any money for the rent, despite damn near living with her full-time for almost a year, she barely had enough in her bank account to cover the next month’s rent and utilities, even with the severance check. After the weekend, eating anything more elaborate than tuna fish and ramen noodles was out of the question if she wanted to enjoy such luxuries as toilet paper and toothpaste.

The idea of having to go back out into the job market or, even more odious, file for unemployment, made her bones turn to lead and her guts cinch themselves into a Gordian knot. She had visions of herself standing in three-hundred-person long lines to interview for even the crappiest position. At best she could sign up with one of the temp agencies in the city and spend the next few months doing clerical work in the outer boroughs for a dollar over minimum wage.

By the time she reached her apartment building, the numbness had finally had worn off, to be replaced by indignation, frustration and a growing anger. As she reached her apartment, her hands were trembling so badly she dropped her keys at least once before she could open the door.

Ezrael was standing in the foyer, studying the contents of one of her bookcases. The muse had abandoned his Hawaiian shirt and khakis and was outfitted in a handsomely tailored silk kimono. Judging from the wet hair slicked against his skull, he had just finished taking a shower.

“So—how was work?” he asked.

“I got fired.”

Ezrael’s smile disappeared.
“Oh.”

Lucy walked into the living room, where Joth still remained frozen in place, hands folded over its milk-white breast. As she stared at the motionless angel, the anger she had been fighting to suppress came gushing forth.

“It’s all his damn fault!”
she shouted hoarsely, hurling the box containing her coffee mug and box of emergency Tampax at Joth. The angel did not register any sign of pain as the objects bounced off its motionless chest.

She stalked past Ezrael and headed down the hall to her bedroom, cursing under her breath as she removed her work clothes. The whole apartment shook as the door of the bedroom slammed shut behind her. A few minutes later she re-emerged, dressed in ragged jeans, a Marilyn Manson T- shirt, and her Doc Martens.

Ezrael was in the living room, picking up the fragments of broken coffee cup and scattered tampons.”Lucy? Where are you going—?” He asked as she opened the front door.

“To get drunk,” she replied.

Chapter Twelve

The bar was dark, loud, and served drinks that were strong and cheap, at least by New York City standards. It wasn’t until her third whiskey sour that Lucy realized it was the same watering hole she and Nevin had frequented when they first started dating. She didn’t really want to think about Nevin, but she was lonely and drunk and succeeding in doing nothing but getting lonelier and drunker.

She really shouldn’t have been so surprised by Nevin’s behavior. When she thought about how she felt, she was more mad at herself that at him. After all, she was the one who built herself up for such a punishing fall.

There was always a touch of scoundrel to Nevin, but then again, Lucy liked her men a little mad, bad and dangerous to know. Her lovers tended to be either boors or bores, looking for a door mat or a crutch, not a partner. That’s why Nevin seemed an answer to her prayers. He was artistic, but not a poseur. He was manly, but not a macho grease ball. He seemed like everything she wanted, if not everything she needed, wrapped up in one neat package. Of course, he had proven to be yet another dead end. She was beginning to think she had an instinctual ability to unerringly sniff out and track down Mr. Wrong, much the way that ducks know when it’s time to head south for the winter. What was the problem—was it just her, or was the world really full of fucked-up boy-men?

All her life she’d had to deal with the problem of coming across as too strange and outspoken for the men she was attracted to. She’d expected such testosterone-fueled closed-mindedness from the shit-kickers back in Arkansas, but it really disappointed her when big-city ‘hipsters’ proved themselves to be just as insecure, and neurotic to boot.

She firmly believed that humans were social animals. They needed to be together, to be mated—whether of the same or opposite sexes didn’t matter. The act of caring for someone other than yourself was therapeutic. She didn’t want to wake up one day and find herself a crazy old woman with fifty-seven cats in a one-room apartment. The way her life was going, however, it looked like she might never find the right partner for the job. How hard could finding someone to share her life
be?
If circus freaks like Lobster Boy could find a mate, what the hell was holding
her
up? How much longer would she have to keep searching for the right one? She wasn’t getting any younger, that much was for certain, and she doubted she could withstand putting her ego through the dating meat grinder much longer.

She glanced up at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She’d put her adolescent insecurities far enough behind her that she could look at herself and be able to say, with confidence, that she was far from bad looking. She was thirty, medium height, medium build, with longish hair, good skin, a nice smile, and a healthy pair of genuine all-natural breasts. She looked just as nice, normal and average as anyone else—well, outside the Lower East Side, anyway. Maybe if she were as different on the outside as she was on the inside, maybe that would make it easier to figure out the men in her life. If she had a third leg or a face growing out of the back of her head, then she would at least be certain anyone attracted to her knew what he was getting into and wasn’t easily scared off.

Now that she thought about it, she decided that she didn’t particularly miss Nevin
per se
as much as she missed the
idea
of Nevin. She missed having someone around she could joke with, complain to, and rest her head against. There was a great deal of comfort to be found in looking up from the morning newspaper and seeing a living, breathing someone sitting on the opposite end of the breakfast table. The security of knowing that someone is there, and that they are always going to
be
there, not just for themselves but for
you,
in good times and bad, was important to her. She certainly could use a strong shoulder and a comforting arm right now. Being jobless was bad enough. Being jobless and alone was close to unbearable.

Lucy was startled from her whiskey-fueled reveries by a hand coming to rest on her shoulder. She glanced up at the mirror and saw a familiar figure standing behind her.

“Hi,” Nevin said, smiling sheepishly.

The sound of her open hand striking his cheek was loud enough to cause the bartender and a couple of patrons on nearby stools to glance in her direction.

Nevin rubbed the bright-red hand-shaped welt on his face. “I deserved that,” he said evenly.

“You got that right!” Lucy slammed a wad of bills next to her half-finished drink. “I should have known better than to come here!”

“Please
, don’t
go!” Nevin grabbed her arm as she brushed past him. “I
really
need to talk to you, Lucy. And I think you want to talk to me, too.”

She hesitated, then sighed and nodded her head. “Okay. But just for a few minutes.”

Nevin smiled and steered her towards one of the back booths, signaling the waitress for another round of drinks. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t usually drink this early in the evening.”

“I’m certainly not drinking because of
you,
if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said quickly.

“Then what’s the occasion?”

“I lost my job.”

Nevin raised an eyebrow. “How’d
that
happen?”

“It just
happened,
okay?” she answered, somewhat more defensively than she’d intended.

Nevin took a deep breath and reached out to take her hands in his, but she pulled them away and hid them in her lap.

“Look, Lucy—I
know
you’re mad at me. You have every right to be! I just want you to know that what happened the other day—well—let’s just say things got out of hand between us, okay?”

“I know some who’d say what happened was burglary and assault,” she retorted.

Nevin shifted uncomfortably and massaged the back of his neck. “You’re not going to, um, report me to the
cops,
are you?”

“I haven’t made up my mind up yet,” she lied. To be honest, the thought of reporting it to the police had never crossed her mind, but she didn’t see any need to take him off the hook any sooner than she had to. “And I’d be perfectly within my rights to do so.”

“Oh! Of course you would be!” he replied quickly. “I wasn’t implying otherwise! I just hoped it wouldn’t have to come to that—for old times’ sake.” Nevin stopped massaging his neck and looked at her. “How about me returning half of what I took—?”

“Half
—
?!?”
The moment the word came out of her mouth, Lucy bit her tongue. What difference did it make now who was right and who was wrong? Nevin was the one who had the pictures in his possession, not her. Regaining a portion of her work was better than losing it all. She took a deep breath and steadied herself before continuing. “Okay—we split them fifty-fifty and I won’t call the cops.”

Nevin smiled and, to her surprise, Lucy found herself reciprocating. She always found him at his most charming when he smiled. With his dark, curly hair and mobile, open face he looked like a little boy; naughty, yet somehow innocent of the hurt he was inflicting on others.

“So,” she said, toying with the cherry in her drink. “Does Gwenda know you’re out and about?”

Nevin rolled his eyes. “She’s visiting her parents out in the Hamptons. Bunch of bourgeois know-nothings.”

“Poor baby, how difficult for you,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

To her surprise, Nevin didn’t respond with an equally vicious verbal jab. After a long pause, she was surprised to see tears shimmering in his eyes.

“Lucy—I realize that you have no reason to believe anything I tell you right now. I wouldn’t blame you if you were to get up right now and walk out that door and refuse to see or speak to me ever again. But, I want you to know—I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to hurt you, physically and otherwise. You’re a
wonderful
woman, and you deserve much better than you’ve been treated. Sitting here, looking at you, it’s starting to dawn on me what I threw away with you—And to prove to you that I’m not just jerking you around—I got Gwenda to let you back into the group show.”

“Oh—
Nevin
!” Lucy gasped, genuinely surprised.

“I knew how much it meant to you—and I thought it was the least I could do to make up for all the shit I’ve put you through. I really
do
care about you, Lucy.”

“Nevin—I—I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.

“Say you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

Lucy shook her head, quickly looking away. She was beginning to feel her resolve weaken. She didn’t want him to see the hurt and the need in her eyes. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

He reached out and grabbed her hands a second time, but this time she did not try to pull them away.

“I miss you, Lucy.”

She looked up at him and smiled through unwanted tears.

“I miss you, too.”

After a couple more whiskey sours, Lucy found herself in the back of a cab, headed for Nevin’s loft in Tribeca. During the months they’d spent dating, even though he had all but moved into her place, Nevin had insisted on maintaining his own apartment, although she had never once set foot inside it.

The loft was on the upper floor of an office building off East Broadway. The other floors housed a karate studio, a professional fortune teller, and a travel agency that specialized in air fare to and from Puerto Rico and Latin America. The ground floor lobby smelled of piss and the Chinese take-out kitchen next door.

They were giggling and leaning heavily on one another, their hands traveling in, over, between and through one another’s arms, legs and clothes as they waited for the elevator to arrive. When the door opened, the car was at least a foot below the lip of the door. Lucy hesitated, but Nevin ushered her in and punched the button for his floor. The car yo-yoed slightly, as if trying to decide if it was going to crash into the basement or not, then began its gradual climb upwards.

Nevin’s loft was easily the size of Lucy’s apartment, but without any interior walls and was what realtors in the city liked to call ‘unfinished’, which meant that its walls were naked sheet rock, the wiring was exposed, and the closest thing to a bathroom was a toilet located next to a fiberglass shower stall in the corner.

When Nevin clicked on the solitary overhead light—a feeble forty- watt—roaches scuttled for cover amidst the dirty clothes, discarded take-out containers, and old newspapers that covered the floor. The only furnishings consisted of a stained mattress lacking bedclothes and a combination nightstand/ coffee table made from a pair of cinder blocks and a two-by-four.

Normally, Lucy would have fled such a seduction chamber, but the circumstances were far from normal. She had wrested Nevin back from Gwenda’s avaricious clutches, but her position was tenuous. Her desire for him was even greater now she knew without a doubt that he was bad for her. It was the same thrill that came from driving too fast, juggling a knife, or playing Russian roulette, only with a greater potential for disaster.

Nevin’s mouth was warm and wet on her neck as he reached for the fly of her jeans. He deftly removed her T-shirt, exposing her lace bra. Lucy’s hands were equally busy, but nowhere near as sure, as she fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. After a moment spent working the clasp of her brassiere, her breasts were finally exposed. Nevin lowered his head to take one of her nipples in his mouth, teasing it with his teeth and tongue. She ran her hands through the curly mass of his hair, giggling foolishly as he glanced up at her from between her breasts. Her panties were soaked. She wanted him inside her so badly her breath was catching in her throat.

Nevin pulled her onto the mattress. It smelled slightly of dirty sheets and old sex, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was that Nevin was rubbing himself against her thigh, the head of his penis nudging her like the nose of a hungry pony. As he slid into her, her skin prickled and her hips rolled against his, thrusting toward him. She ground herself against him, her tongue flicking his earlobe. Her mouth sought and found his own, locking them in a deep, involved kiss, tongues twining about one another like mating snakes. He tasted of bourbon and cigarettes.

She reached behind him and grabbed his buttocks with eager fingers, kneading the hard little apples of his ass the way she knew he liked. Nevin groaned and increased his stroke, slamming her into the mattress. Suddenly he tossed back his curly head and gave voice to something between a groan and a shout. He bit his lower lip, eyes narrowing until they looked like gun slits, as his orgasm shook him from the inside out. He then promptly rolled off and collapsed onto the mattress beside her, gasping like he’d just broken the tape at the end of a race. They lay there for a long while, the sweat cooling on their naked limbs, until Lucy moved onto her side and nudged him.

“What about Gwenda?” she asked.

“What about her?” Nevin said, drowsily.

“What are you going to tell her? About us, I mean?”

“You leave that to me,” he replied.

“She’s going to know something’s going on when you don’t come home.”

Nevin sighed and sat up, reaching for an open pack of cigarettes sitting on the makeshift nightstand. “Lucy, you’ve got to understand—even though I
want
us to get back together, I don’t want to go back to what it was like before. I’ve done some real soul-searching, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to keep my own space. I can’t be crashing at your place all the time. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to me. We both need to live our own lives. That’s part of the problem we had before.”

She lifted her head and frowned at him. “I thought you said you wanted to be a part of my life?”

“And I really mean that. I’m not saying we
won’t
be together, it just won’t be
every
night. I still want to collaborate with you on projects. We make a great team—you said so yourself. That doesn’t have to change. But we need to cool things off—take a few steps back—decide what we want to do with our careers.”