Fallen Angel (6 page)

She sat and looked at it. What did it mean? She was surrounded by sand, by water--she lived at the beach! So that wasn't terribly deep, although she supposed it was pretty strange that she would pick this card out of all of them. Surely it meant more than a woman who lived at the beach.

She looked at it again. The figure in the center looked hunched, closed. It (she?) really looked surrounded. Or maybe she was being swept out to sea. Maybe it was a whirlpool, with the figure in the center.

She was getting sleepy. She put the rest of the cards back in the box and set them on her dresser, then propped the card that she had picked against the wall at the back of the little altar. She'd leave it there for a while, think about it. The colors were nice and soft. She ran her fingers across the card, then the seashell--a cowry shell--on the altar, touched a little statue of the elephant God, Ganesha, then, as she did every time she passed the altar, touched her fingers to her lips, then brushed them across the silver frame.

"Good night, dear heart," she said softly, and went to bed.

8.

Sometime in the middle of the night, she woke, smelling smoke.

She was instantly fully awake, and jumped out of bed, startling Dinah, who had been sound asleep on the other pillow. She first checked the candles, thinking she might have fallen asleep without blowing them out, but they were all cold.

She ran through the little house, stopping in each room and sniffing the air, turning and peering into corners, and looking up at the ceiling. Wait. The smoke detectors hadn't gone off, and she had several strategically placed so they would catch any hint of smoke--they always went off when she used the oven, and sometimes when she burned too many candles at once. She always meant to see if she could turn down the sensitivity, but had never figured out if she could--so surely, if there was a fire, they would have gone off.

She stopped. She didn't smell it anymore, anyway. Maybe someone had built a bonfire on the beach, or maybe there was something on fire somewhere in the neighborhood. She opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. She didn't smell anything out there, either. Well. It must have been her imagination, she thought. You're getting too crazy for your own good. Next thing you know, you'll have ten cats and won't be able to get out of bed for the newspapers stacked around it, and they’ll be featuring you on that hoarding show . . .

She got back into bed, pulling the covers up around her neck, and snuggling her face next to Dinah's warm body. She tossed and turned, turned the pillow over, tried it without covers and with, but it was no good. She couldn't go back to sleep. Dinah huffed in annoyance and jumped off the bed to go find a calmer place to sleep.

Sarah looked at the clock and groaned. 3:00 a.m. She had to open the store tomorrow, Jason had an early class. She lay staring at the ceiling for a few more minutes, then pulled the quilt from the bed and stumbled into the spare bedroom.

Through many long nights of insomnia, she had discovered that she could sometimes go to sleep if she left her bed. Somehow, being somewhere other than her own bed made it easier to fall back to sleep, as if there were fewer expectations, as if the bad dreams couldn't follow her. Sometimes she could fall asleep on the couch with the television turned low, and sometimes she could sleep if she moved to the guestroom bed. The old bed had been her grandmother's, like so many of her things, and was smaller than her own, with an old, lumpy mattress, but Sarah would try anything to get some sleep. She curled up on the soft mattress and pulled the quilt up over her, and as she drifted off, she thought she smelled smoke again, but it was so faint that she knew it must have been her imagination, or a dream.

* * *

Sarah woke the next morning to sunlight streaming through the gauzy white curtains at the windows of the spare room. She'd always called it the "spare room" rather than the "guestroom," because she never actually had any guests. The only person other than herself who had ever slept in that room was Cate. She had stayed over a couple of times when they had stayed up late talking and drinking wine, and she hadn't wanted to walk home alone, but it wasn't a frequent thing.

Sarah was uncomfortable sleeping with other people in the house. She had enough trouble with insomnia when it was just her--when there was someone else in the house, she found herself waking up a dozen times in the night, hearing unfamiliar movements and noises, and got up in the morning more exhausted than when she had gone to bed.

She didn't like to stay at other people's houses, either. She was only truly comfortable and at peace in her own bed. The few times a year that she traveled to bookseller's conferences or on buying trips, she enjoyed staying in nice hotels, but she was always happiest to get back home.

This morning she lay in bed and watched dust motes dancing in the beams of sunlight from the window, broken by the soft curtains that blew in the breeze. Wait--she hadn't opened those windows last night. She always slept with her own bedroom windows open, but she had come in here in the middle of the night, and she knew she hadn't opened the windows. Well, she must have. They were open, and there wasn't any reason to think that anyone else had opened them. Maybe she'd left them open the last time she slept in here. Although that didn't seem likely--this was Florida, and if you left the windows open all the time, everything got salty and mildewed and damp.

Oh well. She stretched and sat up on the side of the bed, pulling Dinah into her lap. The cat must have joined her sometime early in the morning. She had slept well last night, better than she had in weeks, she thought. She smiled. Nothing like a good night's sleep to chase away the demons of the night. Maybe the bad dreams really
couldn't
follow her into other rooms.

She walked through in the bathroom, humming. She showered, and dressed in white and yellow--a gauzy, filmy layered skirt and a sleeveless top in lemon yellow. She stood at her dresser and worked the wires of long silver filigreed earrings into her earlobes, and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. It just felt like it was going to be a good day.

She decided to walk to work, and since she felt so good and the morning was so beautiful, she thought she'd take the long way. Instead of taking the sidewalk, she'd detour and walk along the beach for as long as she could.

She stuck her sandals in her tote bag along with her wallet and notebook, locked the front door, and headed down the sidewalk. She turned her face toward the sun, but as her foot touched the last step, something made her look down, and she saw a white feather lying curled on the bricks. As she watched, a breeze caught it and it blew into the air, hovering for a moment in front of her face, then blowing out of her sight.

She suddenly remembered Chicago, when she was first trying to survive her grief over James and Gabrielle, leaving her cubicle in the tall office building when things got to be too much, when she felt like she was going to explode with unshed tears. She would put on her coat and ride down in the elevator, smiling tightly at anyone that she met, praying that she would hit the door before she started crying.

She would walk around the block, hands shoved into her pockets, opening her eyes wide to keep the tears from spilling out. One morning she was walking around the block, not looking where she was going, just walking, walking. She looked up, and a white feather fell from the sky in front of her. She held out her hand and the feather fell into her palm, weightless, pure.

She looked up into the sky, but didn't see the bird that the feather must have fallen from. Nothing but wide blue sky.

She puffed, and the feather blew out of her palm and into the air, where it disappeared. It made her smile, and somehow it made her feel like God, or someone, was telling her that she wasn't alone, that she was being looked after. Hard to imagine, but maybe . . .

The feather this morning made her smile, and she walked on down the sidewalk still smiling.

The beach was beautiful. The sand had been washed clean and smoothed by the tide, and there were only a few sets of footprints walking along the shoreline. She walked slowly, enjoying the ocean breeze and the salty, heady scent of the ocean. She picked up a couple of small seashells, looked at them, and then put them in her pocket. She would wash them off and put them on the windowsill of her office. She hadn't done that for a long time. She hadn't done this for a long time, walked on the beach.

For much too long. Living at the beach, it was easy to take the ocean for granted, to think that you could always go there--tomorrow, or the day after, or next week. And then you never did. She told herself that she wouldn't let so much time go between visits. There was no reason she couldn't walk to work this way every morning. Or even come down and eat her lunch at the public beach, on one of the concrete picnic tables.

She was walking along, thinking her thoughts, watching the tide roll in and out, picking up a shell here and there, when she nearly walked into someone. One moment there was no one there, and the next she was right in front of . . . the guy from the bookstore. And the grocery store, and her front porch. Still wearing the overcoat, and still looking as if he hadn't slept. Deep circles around those beautiful eyes . . .

She shook herself. "Hello," he said, and smiled.

She couldn't help but smile. No reason not to be friendly, really. "Hello," she said. "How was the orange juice?"

"Orange juice?"

"That you were buying in the grocery store the other day."

"Oh! Right. Orange juice. It was fine. Very nice, in fact. I enjoyed it."

"Good."

She shook her head and turned to continue her walk.

"May I walk with you?" he asked.

"It's a public beach," she answered, and kept on walking.

"I wanted to apologize for startling you the other morning."

"What were you doing on my porch?"

"I was . . . watching over you. I meant to be away before you woke. I was . . . distracted and you surprised me."

"
I
surprised
you
?" She laughed. "Okay. So why do you think I need watching over?"

"Don't you?" He stopped and looked at her.

"No, I don't. And I'd really appreciate it if you stopped following me around."

"I'm not following you."

"No? Then how come you keep showing up where I am?"

"It's a small town?"

She took a deep breath. Was this guy for real? "It's not that small. Listen, really, please stop following me around. It's unnerving. If you want to watch over me, just come to the bookshop, okay?" At least there were other people there most of the time.

"Sure, but . . . listen. There's something I have to tell you."

She sighed, and rolled her eyes. "We don't even know each other. What's your name?"

"Um," he hesitated. "Zach."

"Well, um, Zach," she said, "I'm Sarah."

"I know."

"Okay. Fine. What do you need to tell me?" She started walking again, but when he didn't follow, she turned to look behind her. That was when she noticed that there was only one set of footprints marching along the shore--hers. There were no footprints at all behind him, or in front of him, or, for that matter, anywhere around him.

He seemed to take a deep breath of his own. "Sarah," he began, "I'm an angel."

* * *

"Oh, please." She turned and started walking off, as quickly as she could walk barefoot on sand, which wasn't very.

He hurried to catch up with her. "Sarah, please stop."

"An angel? Oh, come on. Surely you can come up with a better story than that."

"It's true. I'm your guardian angel."

9.

She was walking away from him, back down the beach. His voice was soft, but in spite of the noise of the surf, she still heard him. "Don't you believe in angels, Sarah?" he asked.

She stopped. "Sure I believe in angels," she said, as she turned back toward him. "Theoretically. Not as in one walking up to me to say hello."

"Why not?" He asked, as if he really wanted to know.

"It just doesn't happen, that's why not. Angels don't just show up to take care of you."

"Sure they do, sometimes."

"Not me. They don't show up to take care of
me
."

"Why not? Don't you think you deserve taking care of?"

He saw her eyes fill as she turned away again.

"No," she whispered.

"What?"

"No!" She nearly shouted. "I said no, I don't."

"Why not?"

"Stop asking me
why
! You sound like a three year old. . . . I don't know. I just don't. Go help someone else."

"I can't, I'm yours. You're stuck with me."

Just like a three year old.
"Well, what if I don't
want
to be stuck with you?" Her voice became pleading. "Listen, please, just go away. I can't deal with this. You say you're an angel, fine, you're an angel. I believe you. Now go away and do angelic things, okay?"