Fallen Angel (2 page)

She felt a little prickle on the back of her neck, as if someone was watching her, but she refused to give in to the temptation to turn around and look. She felt like a child, haunted by a spectral "boogie man," and she had a sudden impulse to hike up her skirts and run for home.

She didn't run, but she definitely hurried the last block, wrapping her hand firmly around the keys in her pocket so she would be ready to stick the house key in the lock as soon as she climbed onto the porch. The house was dark--she'd forgotten to leave a light on again. As soon as the door was open, she felt along the wall for the switch that turned on the lamp inside the door, and nearly fell as something streaked between her legs and out the front door.

"Dinah!" she shouted. "Dinah, get back in here!" The cat didn't come back, though, and since she was as black as the night, there was no way Sarah would be able to find her in the dark. "Fine, stay out there, then," she said, and closed the door.

Dinah was
her
cat, as opposed to Sophie, whom she thought of as the "office cat." The two had never met, and she doubted they ever would, although she had briefly entertained the idea of co-mingling them--taking Dinah to work some days, and bringing Sophie home sometimes to sleep in the bed with them. But she never had. She didn't really want to upset either of them, and she had a feeling they wouldn't get along. Sophie was getting on in years and Sarah thought of her as she might an elderly aunt--sedate, solemn, easily disturbed by changes in routine. Dinah, on the other hand, was young, only a little over two years old, and still possessed of the exuberance and belief in invulnerability of a kitten.

She'd shown up on Sarah's doorstep a few weeks after she'd moved into the house; Sarah had nearly stepped on her as she'd gone out for the mail early one morning. The tiny black kitten lay curled in a ball on the doormat, and when Sarah stumbled over her, only looked up with hopeful eyes and a tiny "Mew?" She had lived with Sarah ever since, keeping her company during the long dark nights, and occasionally escaping, as tonight, to prowl the scrub and sea grass at the edge of the beach.

Even though Sarah doubted there was anything out there big enough to carry off a cat, she didn't like having Dinah outside. Not that there was anything she could do about it now. She could call her until she was hoarse, but she knew she wouldn't come. Let her have her adventure. She was sure she'd find her curled up on the doormat in the morning.

* * *

Dumping her bag on the floor inside the front door and kicking off her sandals, she padded into the kitchen in her bare feet. She opened the refrigerator and took stock, pulling out an apple, a brick of cheese in a plastic bag, and a half-empty bottle of white wine. Tucking the wine bottle under her arm, she found a box of crackers and a wine glass in the cupboard, then carried everything into the living room, where she put it on the little wooden table beside her favorite chair, a chintz covered upholstered one that sat in the corner by the back door. She had her special little corner built there: the chair and a needlepoint footstool, a small round table beside the chair with a lamp, a stack of books on a shelf underneath, and an afghan flung over the back of the chair for the nights when it seemed like too much trouble to get up and go to bed. She needed to stop doing that--one of the many things. She needed to start going to bed "at a decent hour" (as her mother would say) instead of falling asleep in the chair with a book in her lap. She took a bite out of the apple.

She also knew she should have a "proper" dinner, as her mother would
also
say, but that was both the blessing and the curse of living alone--she seldom took the trouble to cook for herself, and since there was no one
else
there to cook for, either, cooking just never got done. She remembered that she loved to cook once, but it seemed like a lifetime ago. She had studied cookbooks and pondered ingredients, and enjoyed creating beautiful meals. She still tried to have things that were pleasing to look at--the apple and cheese and sparkling glass of wine were at least aesthetically pleasing, if not completely nutritious--but she no longer worried about making actual meals.

Maybe once or twice a week she would eat in a restaurant with a friend or someone from the store, but more often than not it was crackers and cheese or a frozen dinner from the stash in the freezer, and inevitably the glass (or more) of wine. The wine helped to keep the demons at bay and helped her sleep, and she felt only a little guilty for needing it. Someday she'd stop, but not today, not now. She knew it was bad for her--maybe not physically, but emotionally, psychologically. She knew that she used it to dull her memories, but she figured as long as she confined it to her evenings at home and didn't take to keeping a bottle in her desk at work, she was okay. She understood what she was doing, and while it made her feel weak, well, she
was
weak, she could admit it. Until she figured out another way to handle her problems, she would keep self-medicating. She didn't fool herself that it was harmless, but it was the least of her worries for now.

Feeling a little chilled despite the warm evening, she decided a bath might warm her up. She carried her wine glass into the bathroom and set it on the counter, then lit a short candle in a porcelain dish that she kept on the sink. As the tub began to fill, she stripped off her clothes and poured a little lavender-scented bath oil into the water, then slipped naked into the tub and closed her eyes.

* * *

Sarah woke with a start, shivering, the room dark, the bathwater cold around her. The candle had burned out, and the wine stood undisturbed on the counter. She couldn't remember the last time she'd fallen asleep so easily, but, she thought, she could have chosen a more comfortable spot! She briefly considered refilling the tub with hot water, but she didn't know how long she'd been asleep and thought she might as well get out and try to get some sleep in an actual bed. As she stepped out of the tub, she narrowly missed stepping on Dinah, curled up on the bathmat, sound asleep.

"How'd you get back in?" she asked the cat, sleepily, but Dinah didn't answer.

Rubbing herself with a towel to try to get warm, she padded into the bedroom, got into bed, pulled her grandmother's quilt over her, and fell back to sleep.

3.

She woke with the taste of feathers in her mouth.

Dinah was lying on the other pillow, curled into a ball, and she opened her eyes when Sarah turned over.

"Good morning," Sarah said, then remembered the night before. "Hey! How'd you get back in last night, hm?" Again, Dinah didn't answer, and just tucked her nose firmly under her paw and shut her eyes again. Sarah snuggled close and tucked her
own
nose into Dinah's warm fur, and fell back asleep.

An hour or so later, she woke up for good, and was amazed to see that she'd slept almost the whole night through, only waking up once. Maybe this was the beginning of the end of her insomnia, or maybe it was just a fluke. It remained to be seen.

She'd been in such a hurry to get into the house last night that she'd forgotten to check the mailbox, so she pulled on her old silk dressing gown and tied it as she walked through the house to the front door. She opened the door and, still looking down as she tied her robe, and almost tripped over the man sitting on the front step.

"Shit!" she yelled. She stumbled back through the door and started to slam it shut, but Dinah streaked out through her legs and while she was trying not to shut the cat in the door, she looked out and saw that it was the man from the bookstore.

He looked like he'd been awake all night. The circles around his eyes were more pronounced, the sockets deeper. And she thought there were more lines around his eyes than there had been the day before . . . she started and drew back as she felt herself being pulled into his eyes. "What . . . what are you doing here?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I meant to be away before you came outside, I didn't expect you to wake so early. Please forgive me." And he stood and started down the sidewalk toward the street.

She let him go, standing in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe and the other holding her dressing gown closed. What was this? Was he stalking her? Was he homeless? Was she going to have to call the police? She waited until he had walked down the street out of sight, then she hurried down to the mailbox and grabbed the handful of mail inside, then nearly ran back to the house, and this time she did slam the door.

She flipped through the mail, throwing away most of it--the catalogs and advertising flyers went straight into the trash. A couple of bills went into her "to be paid" basket on the kitchen counter, and the one piece of personal mail, a card from a friend, she stuck in her tote bag to read later, when she got to work.

She suddenly remembered the crystal she had dropped into her pocket the night before. She found her skirt draped over the back of a chair in the bedroom, and she put her hand into first one pocket, then the other, and pulled out the heavy stone. She wrapped her hand around it; it fit nicely in her fist, and felt cold and smooth. She opened her hand and looked at it closely--it was as clear as glass, with hair-thin veins of silver running through it. She polished it on the sleeve of her dressing gown, then put it on the shelf in the bedroom that she thought of as her personal altar.

On it were a jumble of things--pretty seashells she found on beach walks, beach glass, a feather, small stone carvings. There was a tiny dish that she kept filled with water (when she remembered) that she thought of as an offering to whoever watched over people who lived near the ocean, and there was usually a candle or two. Also, and most importantly, there was a small sterling silver frame holding a photograph, which she brushed with a fingertip as she walked away.

Just as she was walking back into the kitchen, the phone rang. The phone was on the kitchen wall, with a small table beneath it that held pens and paper, a scatter of discarded envelopes and notes, and an empty coffee mug. She picked up the mug and placed it in the sink, then picked up the phone. "Hello," she said. "Hey, Sarah, it's Jason," said the voice on the other end, one of the two young people who worked part time at the shop. "Hi Jason, what's up?"

"I just wanted to remind you that you need to pick up some cat food on your way in this morning. I gave Sophie half of my bagel this morning, but she wasn't happy about it."

"Oh, I did forget! I'm sorry. I put the last of it in her dish last night. Apologize for me--I'll go by the grocery store on my way in. Do we need anything else? Coffee?"

"I think we're okay for coffee . . . you might get some teabags, though. Oh, and . . . "

"Some more bagels?" She smiled into the phone. Jason was twenty and perpetually hungry.

"Yeah, if you wouldn't mind. I'm still hungry."

"I'll probably be in around 11:00. Can you hold the fort 'til then?"

"Sure, no problem. See you then."

She started to put down the phone, then said, "Oh, hey, Jason? You still there?"

"Yup."

"I just remembered--there was a kind of weird guy hanging around the shop last night. Tall, dressed all in black, with an overcoat, if you can believe that."

"Overcoat? In Florida? That
is
weird."

"Yeah, I thought so, too. I'm not sure what this guy's story is, but I just wanted to mention it in case he shows up again. If he does, keep an eye on him, okay? I don't think he's dangerous, but there was something about him that just wasn't . . . right."

"Okay, sure, no problem. See you later." Jason hung up the phone, and after a moment, so did Sarah. She thought again about the man from last night. There was something about him, but what she had told Jason wasn't really the truth. She didn't feel like there was anything wrong about him, just something different. Like he was from somewhere else and didn't quite know the language or the customs, like he didn't exactly fit in.

And then with a start she remembered finding him on her porch this morning. How could she have forgotten that? Okay, maybe he wasn't just different, maybe he was dangerous. She was going to have to keep her eyes open and stop being so flaky. And try to get more sleep--last night was wonderful, and she hoped it was the end of the insomnia, but she didn't really believe that. Most nights, after she finally got to sleep, she found herself waking up nearly every hour. And the dreams! She usually didn't remember her dreams very well, but she suddenly remembered that she'd had a very memorable one last night, and she wanted to write it down before she forgot it.

She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from the telephone table, then sat down at the kitchen table. The old, white-painted kitchen table had once been her grandmother's. She had quite a lot of her grandmother’s things. Her dishes; a motley collection of souvenir salt-and-pepper shakers from the 40's; a box of old buttons and sewing supplies. And she also had her grandmother's love of all things unusual and unexplainable.

She picked up the pen and started writing down the dream.

Angels. There were angels. Not the cute little chubby cheeked cherubs that you always saw on greeting cards, but big, monstrous, masculine angels with glossy black wings. Monstrous? That didn’t seem the right word to use to describe them. Huge, anyway. Larger than life. Awesome, in the real meaning of the word, not like the current vernacular. “Awe inspiring.”