In ways even that demon couldn’t imagine.
“Promise me,” Sissy said.
He nodded his head once and lied. “I promise.”
She stared up at him as the sun rose ever further and the birds began to sing and life across this little part of the world got to its feet and stretched its arms, working its own after-sleep kinks out.
“I love you,” she said.
His heart stopped. Then began to thud. Except … “You don’t have to say it just because I—”
“No, I have to. Because I want you to know in case … you know, I lose my chance to. I love you, and thank you—thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I said it once and I’ll say it again. You are my angel.”
He dropped his head and kissed her—because he wanted to, but also because he didn’t want her to see what was in his expression and she was probably smart enough to recognize what the shit was.
“I love you, too,” he murmured against her mouth.
As, meanwhile, he raged inside.
“Can’t we just eat this cake? I mean, come on, Eddie.”
As Ad shoveled another huge piece of the chocolate with fake vanilla icing into his piehole—or Duncan Hines hole, as the case may be—he prayed that his buddy would just frickin’ drop the subject.
No luck. “I want to know.”
Ad took a long draw off the rim of his coffee. Eddie had made the java along with the dessert they were having for breakfast, and both were so fucking good—as was sitting across the table from the guy. It was almost like the separation had never occurred.
Almost.
“Ad? I need to know if you can fight in your condition.”
“I don’t think I’m compromised too much.” Ad put his mug down and resumed digging in. Was this his second piece? Or third? “Bit of a limp, that’s all.”
“And the eye.”
“Whatever.”
“Can I be honest?”
“Please don’t.”
Eddie’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “I’m really impressed by you.”
Ad’s brows popped and he lowered his fork. “I, ah…”
“Talk about unselfish.” Eddie nodded. “Respect, man. Big respect. And I gotta tell you, it’s not something I would have thought you’d do.”
“Your death changed the rules for me.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
Ad frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I should have heard that harpy. I should have been paying more attention.”
“No, it’s my fault. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed that whole thing. I let you down.” He put up his palm to stop the arguing. “No. I’m supposed to have your back, and I dropped the ball. Matter of fact, that’s the way it’s always been between you and me. I’ve dragged you into more dumb-ass shit and dangerous situations—”
“But it’s been fun. It’s been so fucking fun.”
Ad recoiled. “Okay … that’s not what I thought you’d say. Ever.”
Eddie finished his last bite and smiled. “Every straight arrow needs a little chaos in his life. You’re mine. We’ve had some crazy-ass adventures, and yeah, some of it was probably avoidable and very definitely dangerous, but without you? Boring. My immortal life would be very fucking boring.”
Ad ducked his eyes and smiled a little. “So this guilt I’ve been carrying around?”
“Lose it. I make my own choices, too. I could have ditched your ass centuries ago. But the truth is, I’d rather be crashing into some wall with you than going out for a Sunday stroll with anybody else.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
“Plus, let’s face it. With my colossal lack of game, I would never have gotten laid without you.”
Ad stiffened. “Yeah, about that. I’m … ah, I’m out of commission from now on.” As Eddie sucked in a little gasp, Ad shrugged. “But I can still get ’em for you. In fact, you say the word and I’ll go on the prowl. Hell, I can live vicariously through you.”
“Jesus…”
“Come on, it’s not like true love was in my picture anyway. Besides, there are only so many ways to pick up a penny, and I’ve done them all about a hundred and fifty thousand times at this point. Sooner or later, the shit was going to get old, and now I don’t ever have to worry about tenting up my pants over some hot piece. So there are advantages.”
There was a long silence.
Ad shifted around in his chair, making the thing creak. “Okaaaaay, it would be really great right now if you wouldn’t look at me like that. I still have all my arms and legs attached, you know. I’m fully functional, or sufficiently functional, in all other respects.”
“Of course.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Absolutely.”
Ah, hell, he could so have done without the awkwardness, but the guy was going to find out sooner or later. Might as well be now—
Jim and Sissy appeared in the doorway, the pair of them looking like they were on the way to a funeral. Clearly, the decision had been made.
“We’re ready to do this,” Jim said, putting his arm around the woman and moving her close—like maybe he wished his body were the one that was going to get metaphysically sliced open. “I guess we need a trip out for supplies.”
Eddie nodded. “Yeah, we do.”
And that was that, Ad thought as he got to his feet. They’d gotten the band back together … and now it was time to rock ’n’ roll, so to speak.
He just wished it wasn’t performing an exorcism. On Sissy.
Chapter Thirty-six
Of course it was the same damn Hannaford, Sissy thought, as they pulled into a parking lot that was full of average-cost cars and trucks. And yup, everything was the same as she remembered it: the lines for parked vehicles angled toward the store, the cart corrals intersecting them, the constant in and out from the store’s automatic entrances creating a bustle of activity.
Eddie put the Explorer in park and cut the engine. All at once three doors opened and the angels got out; she just put her hand on her handle and stayed in her seat.
Jim glanced over his shoulder, like he’d expected her to be right with them. Then he seemed to pale.
Ad and Eddie glanced at him, and their mouths moved like they were asking him something. As he shook his head, he said a couple of words—and abruptly the other angels looked like they’d been kneed in the balls.
Ah, clearly none of them had done the math about where they’d ended up: the very place where she’d been abducted by the demon.
But whatever, she needed to get over herself. It wasn’t as if going into the store again was going to change anything. The evil had already happened.
Forcing her door open, she got out and tugged her sweatshirt into place. “I have the list. Let’s go.”
She pushed her way through all their heavy bodies and strode to the entrance. As she went along, she passed a mother with two kids and three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries stuffed into a cart … an older man with a single bag and a jug of orange juice … two middle-aged women who were talking a mile a minute over each other.
For a second, she mourned the fact that back before all the crap had fallen on her head, she had never noticed the people around her: How beautiful it was to see a young family out buying Popsicles and Hamburger Helper. Or how noble a lonely eighty-year-old could be as he braved a trip out to the supermarket by himself. Or what a special thing it was to see an enduring friendship in its natural habitat.
Humanity was beautiful. In all its different shapes and sizes, from its survival modes to its triumphal strutting, in both its poverty and its wealth.
And most of all in its everyday, moment-to-moment activity.
Funny, the discourse of daily life, before she had had hers forfeited, had been like the breath and the heartbeat in the human body—something that happened automatically, and as such was not seen for the miracle it was. It was only after her death that she recognized the fragile power in mortality … and held it in appropriate reverence.
As she walked through the automatic doors and into the lobby-ish part of the store, she faltered. The same Muzak was playing, old Michael Bolton piped in through tinny speakers in the ceiling like they wanted to offend the least number of people possible. The lineup of carts was also just the same, and so were the impulse buys lined up on tables—cookies, bags of chips, garden tools.
She closed her eyes.
The garden tools were new, but the Lay’s potato-chip stand and the three different kinds of sugar cookies in their plastic containers were exactly what had been there before.
Amazing, she thought as she went further on and emerged into the florist’s section. Standing around the buckets of plastic-wrapped roses and the squat cacti in their little clay pots and the free-standing pastel hyacinths, she felt as invisible as she was: People were passing by her without looking over, and that somehow made the divide she felt seem all the more devastating.
Except then she realized … maybe that had always been true.
As she stared back at them, she could remember striding by countless numbers of strangers—and she had rendered them all anonymous because she didn’t know their names, faces, families. They had been sort of irrelevant, other than the fact that she hadn’t wished any of them ill or wanted to be responsible for hurting them.
But that was reductionist. She didn’t know what tragedies had come home or would come home to roost for them. Whether they had had their houses broken into the day before, or were facing an illness, or had lost a child, or had been cheated on.
Joy was worn like a new suit of clothes on people. You could see it on every inch of them, from their step to their stare. But sadness and loss were hidden, kept quiet under composure and the shelter of daily activity.
She had no idea what any of these people were facing in their lives. Any more than they knew she was standing among them, neither dead nor alive.
Invisibility was a two-way street, as it turned out.
Which was sad.
And it gave her a new idea of what she wished Heaven was like. Before, when the destination had been just a hypothetical and she’d been so very, very much younger on so many levels, the eternal resting place in the stars had been nothing but jelly beans and Jujubes, and endless Sunday sleep-ins, and every movie that John Hughes had made on a loop.
Now … she thought it was just love. A forever love that wrapped you up and kept you safe and made sure you were always with your family and your friends.
No separation, even between strangers. No sadness. Nobody leaving or getting left behind.
“Sissy?”
She jumped as Jim’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Sorry. Distracted.” She held up the list. “I’ll go get the salt if you want to handle the lemons?”
“I’m glad you called for another extra apponitment.”
Glancing around her therapist’s office, Devina smoothed her short skirt down her thighs and forced a smile, thinking maybe she should have just waited for her regular.
“I fixed the damage I did to my things,” she blurted. “Well, okay, her minions had done most of that. But she had been the one responsible for telling them to do it. “And I’m…”
She frowned as she ran out of words. Thoughts. Impulses.
“Devina?”
Feeling as though she had to keep the session going, she scrambled for something, anything, she could say. Eventually, she murmured, “You know, it was funny how I found you.”
“You told me that a friend of yours had recommended me.”
“I lied.” She glanced over to see if she’d upset the woman, but nope. Her therapist was just sitting like a Buddha on her beige-colored sofa in her beige-colored office, a beige-equivalent expression on her pleasant face. “It was much more … it was kind of freaky, actually.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, I knew that I was going to … see, I’d had the same job forever, and I was really happy in the position. I had a lot of autonomy, I was allowed to do whatever I liked. I mean, it wasn’t perfect—but I didn’t realize what a situation I had until my boss decided to change everything up. Suddenly, where I’d been was the good old days, you know? And then, from out of the blue, I was working with this new guy, in a race for this promotion thing—and one day … one day, I guess I just cracked from the stress. I was getting ready for work, sitting in front of the mirror…” She lifted her hands to her face, brushing at her cheeks. “I was putting my makeup on—you know, like I do every day. And I…”
“Go on, Devina.”
She patted at her jawline, her chin. “I was … the problem was the foundation I was using. I couldn’t get it right. It wouldn’t go over my skin … right. It wouldn’t cover up the…” She blinked fast, memories of the panic coming on strong. “I had to get it right. It needed to be right so I looked right so no one could see…”
“Could see what, Devina?”
“What I really am. Who I really am.” She stared down at her hands and smoothed her skirt again. And again. And again. “I couldn’t get it right. The foundation … just…” She cleared her throat, pulling herself out of that moment in the past. “I reapplied it. And then put more on, and did it again. And again. It became paralyzing. I went through an entire bottle and opened another one. Even though I knew I was making it worse, I couldn’t … it was like I was locked in. I was stuck in some kind of loop.”
“Promise me,” Sissy said.
He nodded his head once and lied. “I promise.”
She stared up at him as the sun rose ever further and the birds began to sing and life across this little part of the world got to its feet and stretched its arms, working its own after-sleep kinks out.
“I love you,” she said.
His heart stopped. Then began to thud. Except … “You don’t have to say it just because I—”
“No, I have to. Because I want you to know in case … you know, I lose my chance to. I love you, and thank you—thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I said it once and I’ll say it again. You are my angel.”
He dropped his head and kissed her—because he wanted to, but also because he didn’t want her to see what was in his expression and she was probably smart enough to recognize what the shit was.
“I love you, too,” he murmured against her mouth.
As, meanwhile, he raged inside.
“Can’t we just eat this cake? I mean, come on, Eddie.”
As Ad shoveled another huge piece of the chocolate with fake vanilla icing into his piehole—or Duncan Hines hole, as the case may be—he prayed that his buddy would just frickin’ drop the subject.
No luck. “I want to know.”
Ad took a long draw off the rim of his coffee. Eddie had made the java along with the dessert they were having for breakfast, and both were so fucking good—as was sitting across the table from the guy. It was almost like the separation had never occurred.
Almost.
“Ad? I need to know if you can fight in your condition.”
“I don’t think I’m compromised too much.” Ad put his mug down and resumed digging in. Was this his second piece? Or third? “Bit of a limp, that’s all.”
“And the eye.”
“Whatever.”
“Can I be honest?”
“Please don’t.”
Eddie’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “I’m really impressed by you.”
Ad’s brows popped and he lowered his fork. “I, ah…”
“Talk about unselfish.” Eddie nodded. “Respect, man. Big respect. And I gotta tell you, it’s not something I would have thought you’d do.”
“Your death changed the rules for me.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
Ad frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I should have heard that harpy. I should have been paying more attention.”
“No, it’s my fault. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed that whole thing. I let you down.” He put up his palm to stop the arguing. “No. I’m supposed to have your back, and I dropped the ball. Matter of fact, that’s the way it’s always been between you and me. I’ve dragged you into more dumb-ass shit and dangerous situations—”
“But it’s been fun. It’s been so fucking fun.”
Ad recoiled. “Okay … that’s not what I thought you’d say. Ever.”
Eddie finished his last bite and smiled. “Every straight arrow needs a little chaos in his life. You’re mine. We’ve had some crazy-ass adventures, and yeah, some of it was probably avoidable and very definitely dangerous, but without you? Boring. My immortal life would be very fucking boring.”
Ad ducked his eyes and smiled a little. “So this guilt I’ve been carrying around?”
“Lose it. I make my own choices, too. I could have ditched your ass centuries ago. But the truth is, I’d rather be crashing into some wall with you than going out for a Sunday stroll with anybody else.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
“Plus, let’s face it. With my colossal lack of game, I would never have gotten laid without you.”
Ad stiffened. “Yeah, about that. I’m … ah, I’m out of commission from now on.” As Eddie sucked in a little gasp, Ad shrugged. “But I can still get ’em for you. In fact, you say the word and I’ll go on the prowl. Hell, I can live vicariously through you.”
“Jesus…”
“Come on, it’s not like true love was in my picture anyway. Besides, there are only so many ways to pick up a penny, and I’ve done them all about a hundred and fifty thousand times at this point. Sooner or later, the shit was going to get old, and now I don’t ever have to worry about tenting up my pants over some hot piece. So there are advantages.”
There was a long silence.
Ad shifted around in his chair, making the thing creak. “Okaaaaay, it would be really great right now if you wouldn’t look at me like that. I still have all my arms and legs attached, you know. I’m fully functional, or sufficiently functional, in all other respects.”
“Of course.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Absolutely.”
Ah, hell, he could so have done without the awkwardness, but the guy was going to find out sooner or later. Might as well be now—
Jim and Sissy appeared in the doorway, the pair of them looking like they were on the way to a funeral. Clearly, the decision had been made.
“We’re ready to do this,” Jim said, putting his arm around the woman and moving her close—like maybe he wished his body were the one that was going to get metaphysically sliced open. “I guess we need a trip out for supplies.”
Eddie nodded. “Yeah, we do.”
And that was that, Ad thought as he got to his feet. They’d gotten the band back together … and now it was time to rock ’n’ roll, so to speak.
He just wished it wasn’t performing an exorcism. On Sissy.
Chapter Thirty-six
Of course it was the same damn Hannaford, Sissy thought, as they pulled into a parking lot that was full of average-cost cars and trucks. And yup, everything was the same as she remembered it: the lines for parked vehicles angled toward the store, the cart corrals intersecting them, the constant in and out from the store’s automatic entrances creating a bustle of activity.
Eddie put the Explorer in park and cut the engine. All at once three doors opened and the angels got out; she just put her hand on her handle and stayed in her seat.
Jim glanced over his shoulder, like he’d expected her to be right with them. Then he seemed to pale.
Ad and Eddie glanced at him, and their mouths moved like they were asking him something. As he shook his head, he said a couple of words—and abruptly the other angels looked like they’d been kneed in the balls.
Ah, clearly none of them had done the math about where they’d ended up: the very place where she’d been abducted by the demon.
But whatever, she needed to get over herself. It wasn’t as if going into the store again was going to change anything. The evil had already happened.
Forcing her door open, she got out and tugged her sweatshirt into place. “I have the list. Let’s go.”
She pushed her way through all their heavy bodies and strode to the entrance. As she went along, she passed a mother with two kids and three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries stuffed into a cart … an older man with a single bag and a jug of orange juice … two middle-aged women who were talking a mile a minute over each other.
For a second, she mourned the fact that back before all the crap had fallen on her head, she had never noticed the people around her: How beautiful it was to see a young family out buying Popsicles and Hamburger Helper. Or how noble a lonely eighty-year-old could be as he braved a trip out to the supermarket by himself. Or what a special thing it was to see an enduring friendship in its natural habitat.
Humanity was beautiful. In all its different shapes and sizes, from its survival modes to its triumphal strutting, in both its poverty and its wealth.
And most of all in its everyday, moment-to-moment activity.
Funny, the discourse of daily life, before she had had hers forfeited, had been like the breath and the heartbeat in the human body—something that happened automatically, and as such was not seen for the miracle it was. It was only after her death that she recognized the fragile power in mortality … and held it in appropriate reverence.
As she walked through the automatic doors and into the lobby-ish part of the store, she faltered. The same Muzak was playing, old Michael Bolton piped in through tinny speakers in the ceiling like they wanted to offend the least number of people possible. The lineup of carts was also just the same, and so were the impulse buys lined up on tables—cookies, bags of chips, garden tools.
She closed her eyes.
The garden tools were new, but the Lay’s potato-chip stand and the three different kinds of sugar cookies in their plastic containers were exactly what had been there before.
Amazing, she thought as she went further on and emerged into the florist’s section. Standing around the buckets of plastic-wrapped roses and the squat cacti in their little clay pots and the free-standing pastel hyacinths, she felt as invisible as she was: People were passing by her without looking over, and that somehow made the divide she felt seem all the more devastating.
Except then she realized … maybe that had always been true.
As she stared back at them, she could remember striding by countless numbers of strangers—and she had rendered them all anonymous because she didn’t know their names, faces, families. They had been sort of irrelevant, other than the fact that she hadn’t wished any of them ill or wanted to be responsible for hurting them.
But that was reductionist. She didn’t know what tragedies had come home or would come home to roost for them. Whether they had had their houses broken into the day before, or were facing an illness, or had lost a child, or had been cheated on.
Joy was worn like a new suit of clothes on people. You could see it on every inch of them, from their step to their stare. But sadness and loss were hidden, kept quiet under composure and the shelter of daily activity.
She had no idea what any of these people were facing in their lives. Any more than they knew she was standing among them, neither dead nor alive.
Invisibility was a two-way street, as it turned out.
Which was sad.
And it gave her a new idea of what she wished Heaven was like. Before, when the destination had been just a hypothetical and she’d been so very, very much younger on so many levels, the eternal resting place in the stars had been nothing but jelly beans and Jujubes, and endless Sunday sleep-ins, and every movie that John Hughes had made on a loop.
Now … she thought it was just love. A forever love that wrapped you up and kept you safe and made sure you were always with your family and your friends.
No separation, even between strangers. No sadness. Nobody leaving or getting left behind.
“Sissy?”
She jumped as Jim’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Sorry. Distracted.” She held up the list. “I’ll go get the salt if you want to handle the lemons?”
“I’m glad you called for another extra apponitment.”
Glancing around her therapist’s office, Devina smoothed her short skirt down her thighs and forced a smile, thinking maybe she should have just waited for her regular.
“I fixed the damage I did to my things,” she blurted. “Well, okay, her minions had done most of that. But she had been the one responsible for telling them to do it. “And I’m…”
She frowned as she ran out of words. Thoughts. Impulses.
“Devina?”
Feeling as though she had to keep the session going, she scrambled for something, anything, she could say. Eventually, she murmured, “You know, it was funny how I found you.”
“You told me that a friend of yours had recommended me.”
“I lied.” She glanced over to see if she’d upset the woman, but nope. Her therapist was just sitting like a Buddha on her beige-colored sofa in her beige-colored office, a beige-equivalent expression on her pleasant face. “It was much more … it was kind of freaky, actually.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, I knew that I was going to … see, I’d had the same job forever, and I was really happy in the position. I had a lot of autonomy, I was allowed to do whatever I liked. I mean, it wasn’t perfect—but I didn’t realize what a situation I had until my boss decided to change everything up. Suddenly, where I’d been was the good old days, you know? And then, from out of the blue, I was working with this new guy, in a race for this promotion thing—and one day … one day, I guess I just cracked from the stress. I was getting ready for work, sitting in front of the mirror…” She lifted her hands to her face, brushing at her cheeks. “I was putting my makeup on—you know, like I do every day. And I…”
“Go on, Devina.”
She patted at her jawline, her chin. “I was … the problem was the foundation I was using. I couldn’t get it right. It wouldn’t go over my skin … right. It wouldn’t cover up the…” She blinked fast, memories of the panic coming on strong. “I had to get it right. It needed to be right so I looked right so no one could see…”
“Could see what, Devina?”
“What I really am. Who I really am.” She stared down at her hands and smoothed her skirt again. And again. And again. “I couldn’t get it right. The foundation … just…” She cleared her throat, pulling herself out of that moment in the past. “I reapplied it. And then put more on, and did it again. And again. It became paralyzing. I went through an entire bottle and opened another one. Even though I knew I was making it worse, I couldn’t … it was like I was locked in. I was stuck in some kind of loop.”
