Angels on Overtime

by Ann Crawford

  David cringes as the sound of Emily’s inner thoughts scrambling all over each other fills the room: “How can I—When will he—What will I—If only I could—If only he could—When will I—Didn’t I say I wouldn’t put up with this any more? In all my life—Wonder if I could—shouldn’t be like this—”

  David backs away from her as if away from a basket teeming with hungry, angry, buzzing bees. On steroids. On a loudspeaker. At a stadium concert. And that was only a fraction of her thoughts—a fraction of thoughts for one second! We could go on for pages and pages and that would only be a few seconds of what goes through her mind.

  “How does she live in that thing?” That katzenjammer in her head has to be far worse than the minds of other humans, he thinks. In fact, it has to be worse than if every single thought of every single human on the whole planet could be put together. Okay, maybe not, but gadzooks!

  “No one said this was easy,” Angela laughs.

  “No. No one said that.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  “Great.”

  Brooke looks over the assortment of monitors on the team’s desk in the gargantuan angelic hall. The upper-left monitor shows Jack sleeping next to Lacey. Blake watches carefully, Christopher computes, and Sapphire whispers into her microphone, “You are so loved. You are a blessing. You are so loved. Thank you for all that you do.”

  On one monitor is a review of Jack’s day:

  Jack arrives at his office, which appears to be an advertising agency, and immediately has a run-in with his boss, Dick.

  Jack absently stares out his office window at the Los Angeles skyline. The clock reads 11:45.

  As the sun shines in the conference room, making it stifling hot despite the air conditioning, Jack pretends to be excited as a coworker pitches an ad campaign to a very stuffy, very displeased client.

  Jack arrives home. He joyfully picks up the children and plants numerous kisses on their faces amidst Ben’s giggling and Chelsea’s happy gurgling. Lacey drops onto the couch.

  Jack plays with the kids while Lacey stares at the TV.

  He finishes putting Chelsea’s pajamas on her and gently places her in her crib.

  Snuggled together in a small bed, the father reads a book to an enraptured son.

  The clock on the wall reads 9:30 as Jack runs on a treadmill at a practically empty fitness club.

  He climbs into bed, ignores Lacey’s overture, turns his back to her, and closes his eyes.

  Brooke notices that even more piles of the who-knows-what, more than any other room, have made it into the bedroom. She turns a dial back to a shot of Jack in his office, which is spotless—a far cry from the way his home is kept. But, Brooke figures, he’s probably just given up there, just like he’s given up on just about everything...except for his kids. At least he exercises. She lets out a big sigh.

  “Sometimes they have to make it get worse before they let it get better,” Blake tells her.

  On the monitor showing Jack sleeping, little blips of his dreams flash over his head:

  As Jack finishes delivering a speech in a large auditorium, the crowd gives him a standing ovation.

  Jack and Lacey fight in their bedroom.

  Jack frowns in his sleep and moves farther away from his wife.

  Jack tosses a baseball to Ben, several years older, who swings his bat and solidly hits the ball.

  A smile crosses Jack’s face as he sleeps.

  A compassionate smile crosses Brooke’s face as she watches Jack smile. Without her realizing it, a big smile spreads across Blake’s face as he watches her.

  Then she sighs again.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Henry says, without looking up, before Brooke’s hand even knocks on his open door. “This is not an easy job you signed up for.” He finishes the angelwork (well, he wouldn’t have paperwork, would he?) on his desk. He waves her into his office, where she drops down onto the cushiest white sofa you ever did see. “My new fourth angels always come back the first night and then not again for eleven weeks. Always. Very strange.”

  Brooke gives an angelic version of a harrumph. “He obviously adores his children, but he’s not happy with his wife and his job and maybe some other things in his life. Why doesn’t he just do something about it?”

  “There are two main ideas that these humans have to get,” Henry explains. “First, get clear. That’s ninety-nine percent of it—knowing what it is they want, fer cryin’ out loud.”

  “How are they supposed to know what they want?”

  “They have to shut the Heaven up and listen, that’s how.”

  “To us?”

  “To us, to themselves. They actually know. They just forget that they know. They go to sleep when they go to Earth and the whole point is to wake up. And to do that they have to check in—frequently and often.”

  “How?”

  “Taking a walk on the beach or in the woods, climbing a mountain, chanting ‘Om’ on a zafu, whatever. Just by sitting still. Without turning on the radio, TV, MP3 player, cell phone, or whatever else they use to fill up their minds. There’s nothing wrong with those things, but humans need a few minutes of silence here and there.”

  “Doesn’t sound hard.”

  “It isn’t. Except they make it hard.”

  As Stephanie computes, Jasper whispers, and Angela watches, David consults the numerous monitors. On the upper-left monitor, he can see Emily sleeping in a grand four-poster bed. Her bedroom decor is the same as downstairs; the same great-grandmother obviously had enough time on her hands to make a patchwork quilt that adorns the wall, crochet a bedcover, and braid two more rag rugs that warm up the hardwood floor. A bouquet of roses from Emily’s garden sits in a white pitcher on her nightstand. Two floral paintings hang on the wall over the bed.

  On another monitor is her day-in-review:

  Cleaning finished, Emily grabs her purse and leaves the house.

  She drives her red Prius along some winding mountain roads to the bustling center of her little town. She smiles at a couple of youngish children and their mother as they sip elaborate, chocolate-drizzled, frothy coffee drinks—minus the coffee—in front of the town’s old-fashioned-ice-cream-parlor-recently-renovated-to-be-way-hip-coffee-joint-too place.

  Emily enters a charming flower shop where she receives a warm welcome from Marion, the shop’s owner, a radiant woman in her mid-sixties. Marion hands Emily her paycheck as she prepares to start her workday.

  Emily holds her mother’s hand as the two women sit in the high-backed rocking chairs. They sip iced tea, relishing each other’s company as well as the late afternoon sunshine.

  Emily finishes brushing her teeth and then stares at her reflection as she brushes out her hair, which, released from the braid, cascades down her back in long, luscious waves.

  At the sound of Sam’s footstep on the front porch, Emily, upstairs in bed, quickly drops the book she was reading, turns off the light, and pretends to be asleep.

  David sighs. He looks back to the monitor that shows Emily sleeping. The contents of a dream appear in a flash over her head:

  Emily holds her arms out to a couple of very young children. The three laugh together; in a split second, they are several years older.

  David starts to look at another monitor, but does a double take as Emily’s next dream starts.

  Against a backdrop of a crimson sun setting over a cerulean sea, Emily kisses a man that is not Sam.

  The dream evaporates as Emily startles herself awake. Her angel team instantly transports to her bedroom. Emily, still flustered by her dream, glances over at her husband, recoiling as a huge snore erupts from him. She rolls onto her side, facing away from him, and stares into the darkness for a while. Her angels watch her closely, plus Jasper does his whispering. Finally, Emily’s eyes shut, and as she drifts off to sleep again, they disappear from her room and reappear back in the giant hall. They take their seats around the desk again, attentive to their assignments. />
  After several minutes of Emily-sleeping surveillance, David notices the menu along the top of that monitor. He clicks on the drop-down menu under the “Dream Implant” button. He moves the cursor back and forth between “Dreamweaving,” “Ultimate Wake Up,” and “Special Programming Options.”

  He jumps as Angela taps him on the shoulder.

  “You can’t interfere too much, my friend, much as you may want to. We can talk to them and make suggestions all we want, according to the direction they give us from down there and according to the Big Boss. But no special programming. You didn’t sign up for this job because it was easy, you know.”

  “Why are these options here then?”

  “For very extreme cases, which you don’t have.”

  David sighs and watches Emily sleep some more before turning back to Angela. “The Big Boss?”

  “You’ll meet the Big Boss someday,” she smiles. “It’s not quite time yet.”

  “Yes, I know,” Penelope says, without looking up from her angelwork, before her new angel’s hand even knocks on her open door. “It’s the hardest job in creation, getting these humans to listen—to what they want, which is all that we’re here to give them.” A dejected David plunks down in the chair in front of her desk as she continues. “You’d think they’d make it easier for themselves…and us.”

  Henry and Brooke wander back to the desk where the other three members of Jack’s angel team diligently tend to their tasks. Brooke watches the dream blips as Jack sleeps. His dreams are fun little snippets of fun things:

  Sitting in a bar on an exotic tropical beach, Jack takes the little umbrella out of a piña colada. Attempting to look very serious, he tucks it behind his ear, much to the delight and amusement of a woman sitting next to him.

  He strides into Dick’s office and hands him a letter of resignation.

  Jack and the woman from the tropical-beach dream stroll hand in hand along the Seine in Paris.

  Brooke throws her hands up. “He could do any of those things,” she cries to Henry. “He doesn’t have to do them just in his dreams.”

  “Well, dreams are where they start.”

  “He could do all that tomorrow. Just do it. Just say yes.” Henry looks at her. “Those clichés don’t always travel across the galaxies and stay in their natural state,” she mutters.

  “Well,” Henry says, “Earth can be viewed as a school. Humans can’t go from kindergarten to a doctorate program overnight. But they do have to discover what they truly want.”

  Brooke is too flummoxed even to ask any questions. She watches Jack play with Chelsea in his dream.

  “Here, you think you have problems with him? Get a load of this one.” He takes Brooke’s arm. She finds herself floating through the ceiling of a cramped studio apartment as a woman, about thirty or so, prepares her pre-dawn breakfast. With typical love and diligence, her angel team performs its assignments around her.

  “No elevator?”

  “No, hon, once you’ve been downloaded to Earth, you don’t have to keep being downloaded. You can beam yourself. That’s how you arrived back at the hall when Jack fell asleep.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.” Brooke giggles at her own absentmindedness.

  They watch the woman as she flips her frying egg to make it easy-over.

  “I want to move to France,” she announces to the air in a thick New York accent. Unbeknownst to her, the air hears her—or at least her team of angels, which fills the air around her, hears her. Her angels start moving to the left—computing, affirming, and figuring how to assist her in moving to France.

  The woman grabs her freshly popped toast and butters it. “No, I want to stay here and find a husband.” Again, the air, in the form of her angel team, responds; they start moving to the right—computing, affirming, and figuring how to assist her in finding a husband and continuing to live in New York City.

  “No, I want to live the wild-and-crazy life and have lots of lovers all over the world.” Her very obedient angels start moving to the left again.

  “No, I want a house in the country. And a horse.” Her angels start moving to the right again.

  The woman stares at the breakfast she has set on the table. “No—oh, I don’t know.” After this last statement, her angels stand around her, waving their fists in the air.

  “Waddya want?” the team leader demands. “Make up your mind!”

  “Good thing we have infinite energy, eh?” Henry questions.

  “What was the second thing?” Brooke asks him.

  “Second thing?”

  “You said there were two things humans have to do. First, be clear.”

  “Second,” Penelope announces to David, “don’t give up before the miracle happens!”

  “How are they supposed to know it’s on its way or almost here or whatever?” David wonders.

  “By stopping that incessant yammering they do inside their heads. That would certainly help. They all get all kinds of signals and hints and nudges, but do you think they listen?”

  David and Penelope walk back to the team’s desk. They look at the upper-left monitor and watch Emily sleep for a little bit.

  “Sleep was certainly a great invention to get them to shut the Heaven up,” Penelope snipes. “They have to reboot sometime.”

  David isn’t quite sure what to make of all this.

  “Here, let me show you something.” She takes him by the hand, and he suddenly finds himself on a picturesque New England beach at sunrise. David spies a middle-aged man walking his dog at the water’s edge, angel team in tow.

  “Okay, what’s with him?” David asks.

  “First he was looking for another job, and his angels were setting up interviews for him. Then he up and quits his job and goes on a joyride to Florida. He stayed there, found a job, and then asked for his life’s partner. They set one up for him—took a year—and the day before he was supposed to meet her on an escalator in the mall, he up and moved here. He started out in Ohio.”

  “Wow.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with doing all that,” Penelope says, “but if they want things, they have to give us a little time, especially when they’re not exactly crystal clear. Then they wonder what in the world is wrong with them—‘why can’t I find a partner,’ ‘why am I still in this same dead-end job,’ things like that.”

  “Can’t his angels foresee what he would be doing and arrange, oh, say the job in Florida or the partner here in Massachusetts?”

  “Well, like I told you, the future is constantly moving. It can change at any time. Instantly. We have to go by what they’re thinking in the moment. And what state they’re in—literally as well as figuratively.”

  They watch the man as he lets out a very long, very slow exhale, looking out over the ocean.

  “He keeps getting it all practically delivered to him, wrapped up with a bow. But he throws it all away, just because he’s impatient and won’t stay in one place long enough to listen.”

  The dog jumps up on her human, breaking his reverie, and the man throws a stick into the water for her. David can feel the man’s heart opening.

  “At least he has a great dog.”

  “The one thing he’d let us arrange for him.”

  Penelope and David reappear in her office.

  “It doesn’t have to be hard,” Penelope tells him. “When they’re in the flow of what they’re supposed to be doing, it’s easier than trying to force themselves to do something they’re not supposed to be doing. Challenges may come up, but that’s just making jewels.”

  “How’s that again?”

  “Irritating sand becomes a lustrous pearl. Pressure forms a dazzling diamond.”

  David nods. Penelope motions toward the door with her head. As he leaves her office, he glances back and notices that she’s returned to her angelwork, but she’s smiling and nodding her head.

  Chapter 3

  After Henry leaves, Brooke watches the monitor that shows Jack sleeping
, paying special attention to his dream blips.

  Jack kisses his wife. To the Jack-in-the-dreamstalk’s great joy, he discovers that Lacey has turned into another woman, and he quickly takes the kiss to a much more exuberant level. A smile crosses Jack’s sleeping face. In the dream, he takes the woman in his arms, and they move in a slow dance, which ends in a dip with an even more exuberant kiss.

  A smile crosses Brooke’s face. So passion is there—if only in his dreams. Unbeknownst to her, smiles cross the faces of the other three angels, as well. And they weren’t just smiling about Jack.

  On the monitor, the angels notice a sleeping Sam throw his arm over Emily, waking her up. The angels disappear from the office...

  ...and reappear in the bedroom. Emily very carefully disentangles herself from Sam’s headlock and glances at the clock. 5:30. In super-stealth mode, she slips out of bed, reaches for her robe and slippers, and leaves the room.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Emily turns on the burner under the kettle. As she waits for the water to boil, she stares out the window. A peaceful, serene air settles over her entire being.

  A mug of steaming tea in hand, Emily sits down in one of the rocking chairs by the window in the living room. She gazes out at the iridescent sky to see the red, coral, yellow, and orange clouds announcing the coming sunrise and the later rainfall. She shuts her eyes in meditation. A moment later, a creak in the floorboard just over her head brings her to a slump as her deeply peaceful demeanor becomes deeply annoyed, deeply disheartened, deeply sad.

  “Emily, my dear,” Angela says, “you’ve given it another chance. And another chance. And another. It’s clearly not working.” She motions for David to talk to their human.

  “Emily, it sure doesn’t have to be like this.” He looks back at Angela, who gestures for him to continue. “Emily, you’re supposed to be happy. You’re of much greater service to everyone if you’re happy, plus it makes the Earth journey a lot more fun.” David looks at Angela again, who nods, impressed. “For all of us.”