by Chloe Garner
She glared at him, and the smile widened just a fraction.
“All right, sis. Where are we going?”
She picked a department store, and he groaned again, but didn’t fight with her at all.
They went.
She shopped.
Tried on dresses and designer clothes and anything else she could find that might be out of the ordinary and special, but nothing struck her.
So they went somewhere else.
Finally, she found a simple white dress, floating down around her ankles, but form-fitting above her waist, and she smiled at her reflection and that was the dress. She made him take her to another department store where she sat for a woman at the cosmetics counter to give her a makeover, and once again she smiled. The woman emphasized white in her eyeshadow, in her rouge, in a lip gloss over her red lipstick. In her dress, there was no question in Lizzie’s mind that she was the angel. Even Robbie seemed impressed.
“All right,” she said, getting back into the car. “Where to now?”
“You ready to go meet him?” Robbie asked. She nodded, and he started the engine, taking her downtown to a street near where she’d gotten the tattoo. He street-parked and got out, shoving his hands into his jeans’ pockets and burying his ears against his shoulders.
Lizzie felt light.
This was happening.
She was wearing a gorgeous white dress and she looked stunning.
She was getting married.
It was crazy and perfect, and it made her happy.
Robbie turned and opened a door and Lizzie went through it, trying to prepare for anything.
It was a tailor’s shop. She stopped, turning to the side to find Trevor sleeping in a chair by the door.
In a tuxedo.
“He doesn’t have any money,” she murmured.
“It’s a wedding present,” Robbie answered, kicking Trevor’s chair. Trevor looked at his empty wrist, and then out at the sky.
“Took you long enough,” he said. “Did you get lost?”
“She went shopping,” Robbie said. Trevor turned his attention to Lizzie. He blinked quickly and stood, taking her hands as his face lit up.
“You shaved,” she said, putting her hand up to his face, and he jerked his head upward.
“Thought you’d like it. Let Sybil put some hair stuff in my hair, too.”
She looked up at the chaotic points of hair and grinned.
“I can tell Sybil did it.”
“You’re up,” Trevor said, taking a quick step back to face Robbie.
“What?” Robbie asked.
“Yup,” Trevor said. “You’re my witness.”
Lizzie pressed her lips, amused that Robbie was going to get conscripted into this, but struck that she didn’t have a single friend that she wanted to be here.
“No,” Robbie said, and Trevor put a hand behind him as he tried to back away.
“Nope,” he said. “Not going to be that easy.”
A quiet man came out from a back room and raised his arms.
“Is this the other young man?”
“Yes,” Trevor said. “But he’s shy, so be nice.”
The man gave Robbie a gentle little motion inviting him to the pedestal. Robbie hesitated, and Trevor gave him a more rigorous shove, then went back to his seat. Lizzie came to sit down next to him, smoothing her dress carefully. He grinned at her.
“You look spectacular.”
“I know.”
He grinned with an easy laugh and leaned back to watch Robbie.
“I’m glad he’s going to be there,” she said. Trevor nodded.
“Made sense. But you need someone to be there on your side.”
She shrugged.
“I would if I could think of anyone, but…” She shrugged again. He grinned and leaned back in his chair, looking down the sidewalk. Lizzie followed his glance and frowned.
“Is that…?”
“Yup,” Trevor said, relaxing into his chair again. “Looks like you spent so much time picking out an outfit she had enough time to get a tattoo.”
Lizzie felt her mouth drop.
“No.”
“Her idea, not mine,” he said as Michelle came into the shop.
“Oh, honey, you look beautiful,” Lara’s mother said. Lizzie put her hands to her mouth, reminding herself not to cry. Stupid makeup. She let the older woman hug her, then they both sat.
“Let’s see it,” Trevor said, and Michelle rolled up a silk sleeve to expose the red skin around a full angel that went from the inner crook of her elbow most of the way to her wrist with Lara’s name and dates underneath it. Trevor whistled.
“You’re a beast. I thought you’d do something this big.”
He held up fingers, and Michelle shrugged.
“She was bigger than that to me.”
The tailor brought out a shirt and held it up to Robbie, and Robbie stepped away.
“There’s a dressing room there,” the man said and motioned. Michelle shook her head.
“This is going to be hard for him.”
“Because it’s a wedding?” Lizzie asked.
“Because he has to get dressed up,” Michelle said with a certain obvious tone. Lizzie grinned.
“He did it for Lara.”
“I wouldn’t compare the two,” Michelle observed, rolling her sleeve back down.
“I can’t believe you came,” Lizzie said. Michelle shrugged.
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“But we aren’t having a ceremony.”
Michelle nodded, her hand unconsciously playing over the tattoo. Lizzie remembered the sense of something that wasn’t a part of her being permanently attached, like that.
“Only makes it more important,” the woman said.
Lizzie smiled as Robbie came back out of the dressing room in a nice shirt and his dirty jeans. The tailor tutted at him and sent him back in with a pair of black pants and shoes, and when Robbie came back out, he was transformed. This was the man her brother was supposed to have been. The athlete with the well-cut figure, the straight posture and the air of quiet confidence. The tailor approached him with a jacket and after a hesitation, Robbie let him put it over his shoulders and smooth the lapels. That was as much as Robbie could take, though, and he stepped away again. The tailor guided him to stand in front of the mirrors.
“Happy?” Robbie asked.
“Very,” Lizzie answered, unable to contain her smile. Trevor stood.
“Pay the man, and let’s get going.”
Robbie went to get his wallet out of his jeans and Michelle dismissed him with a casual wave of her hand.
“This is mine,” she said, going to the register to sort things out with the tailor.
“It’s just a rental,” Trevor consoled Robbie. “We’ll bring them back tonight.”
“I look like someone else,” Robbie said. Even his dodgy eye contact couldn’t break the spell that the tuxedo cast. Lizzie couldn’t stop smiling. She hugged him and kissed his cheek, wiping off the clear, glittering lip gloss with her thumb.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Hope it’s worth it,” he answered glumly.
“Photos,” Michelle said, turning. “There’s a photographer waiting for us at the park downtown. I just called to confirm.”
Lizzie blinked quickly and glanced at Trevor. He raised his eyebrows.
“What, you think I was planning all this?”
She grinned and looked at her shoes.
“We shouldn’t walk,” she said.
“Nor should you ride in Lara’s old car,” Michelle said. “She did her best, but she swore she got a wad of bubble gum on the seat of every new pair of jeans she ever bought.”
Lizzie nodded and Michelle motioned.
“My rental is this way. Brand new, and we’ll all fit just fine.”
Lizzie grinned and put her arm through Trevor’s, leaning her head on his shoulder. A furling went skittering past in front of the
m like a spooked cat, and she hissed at it through her teeth, sending it on her way.
“What was that?” Michelle asked.
“Nothing,” Lizzie answered.
“You saw one, didn’t you?” Michelle asked and Lizzie nodded.
“Don’t let me get in the way,” Michelle said, and Lizzie shook her head.
“I absorbed one yesterday. I shouldn’t do another one today.”
Michelle frowned, but didn’t press for more explanation, which Lizzie appreciated.
They drove the short distance to the park and Michelle identified the photographer. Lizzie made Robbie take a few pictures with her; he even smiled for a few, then she posed with Trevor, who grinned with his characteristic lack of care. That ran on for quite some time, and the photographer excused himself for another appointment, and they walked to the courthouse.
The act of signing a marriage document was simple enough by contrast to the rest of the day, but it was an elegant end to the proceedings, Lizzie thought. Michelle drove them back to the tailor’s shop and Trevor and Robbie transformed back into their normal costume, then Michelle kissed Lizzie and Trevor good luck and hugged Robbie goodbye and she left. Robbie drove them home in the dusking light, but he didn’t come in the house with them.
“Michelle got me a hotel room for tonight,” he said awkwardly.
“Thought we were supposed to get the hotel room,” Lizzie observed before she thought better of it and Trevor laughed.
“Is that what you want?”
She shook her head, and he shook his head in mirror to her.
“Angels want to be at home,” he said. “Michelle knows that better than anyone. Good night, Robbie. Get lots of room service.”
Trevor pushed the door closed and grinned at her sideways.
“Let’s see how that dress comes off.”
***
She bought him a ring.
He didn’t wear it.
She was hardly surprised.
The photos turned out, at least.
***
She finally sat in the dark in the living room, two more weeks gone, with her laptop in her lap. She wasn’t going to bed until she wrote this e-mail.
Even if it was bad, she had to write it.
She struggled through it, word by word, looking for ways to explain without explaining, for ways to leave a door open for continued employment.
Finally she finished a draft that lamely said that Robbie had needed her more than she’d expected and that she wasn’t moving back into her apartment. She asked forgiveness for not communicating, and then signed off.
She couldn’t ask for her job, after that.
She couldn’t do it.
She sent the e-mail and went to bed.
***
Nothing really changed, between them, but there was a sense that everything had changed. Trevor might have been fractionally more serious and at the same time much more intentionally playful. She got better at understanding the fights with the furlings, and even she could see that she was getting stronger, but it was still frustrating how little control she had over anything going on around her. Robbie and Dennis and the rest of them were so much more effective, working as a team and manipulating the furlings, quieting them down, dividing up the big groups, keeping them from blowing up.
Not that it happened any less often. Lizzie got the distinct impression that she was a critical component to their side of the fight and keeping the furlings from merging bigger and bigger until they did something catastrophic, but she couldn’t get the hang of whatever it was she was supposed to do, and no one could or would tell her. Sybil, one afternoon as she leaned her head against a window in the living room, announced that she’d told everyone that Lizzie couldn’t do it, and for just a moment, Lizzie felt like defending her when the room started to argue with her.
“I’m letting all of you down,” she said to Trevor one morning after he climbed in the window and lay down next to her.
“Yeah,” he said. “We should ship you back and get a new one.”
She hit him with the back of her hand and he grinned, stretching and arching his back.
“You could have gone home,” he said. She hadn’t thought about that in a while, about her old life at all.
“Could not,” she pouted. “They shot my car.”
He laughed.
“Yeah, they did.”
She sighed.
“I’m just not getting it.”
“You’re making it better,” Trevor said. “I know you can’t see it, but you are.”
She rolled her head to look at him.
“How? I can’t touch anything.”
He grinned.
“Yup. And just wait until you can.”
She heard something skittering down the hallway and she cleared her throat. The furling crawled through the door and she put her hand out to it, taking its offered paw and disintegrating it. At this point, she felt nothing, when she did it.
“You’re getting stronger,” he observed.
“But I’m not doing enough,” she answered.
“If you’re looking for me to tell you that you are, I’m not going to,” he said. “I’m having a great time. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“Even though the whole thing blew up and caused that wreck?”
He laughed at the ceiling, exultant.
“That was the best part.”
She frowned at him and he grinned, unashamed.
“What? I’m the demon. If anyone’s going to have a good time at this, it’s going to be me.”
“You don’t feel bad at all?”
“Did I cause an earthquake that resulted in half the state falling into the Pacific?” he asked. “No? It was a great day.”
She sighed.
“I can’t be positive like that, just because we didn’t accidentally end the world. I can do better.”
He shrugged, settling into the mattress with a smug look of contentment.
“Then do.”
***
They were underneath the interstate.
It was a bridge across a small gorge, both sides shallow enough to walk up and down, the foundations of the bridge buried underneath large rocks that let the water run past, but choked off most life, save an enterprising tree here or there and one bush that looked like it had struck gold, somewhere down below the basketball sized rocks.
Trevor was picking his way down the slope, and Lizzie was standing up at the top, watching the furlings crawl in and out of crevices, appearing and disappearing from view as they slid over the uneven ground. There were hooligans around, but she hadn’t seen any of them yet, and she wasn’t over a spot where she could feel them.
Trevor had gotten up that morning and looked at her over breakfast, then slapped the counter.
“If you’re going to do it, let’s do it.”
And then he had disappeared.
It was mid-afternoon, now, and she understood what he’d meant.
If she didn’t get a hold on this one, something really, truly bad was going to happen.
At eighty miles an hour.
“What happens when a furling gets hit by a car?” she’d asked Trevor, looking down at the gorge.
“Wrong question,” he’d answered, giving her a playful hair tug. “The real question is what happens when a car gets hit by a furling?”
That hadn’t helped, as she’d watched him scramble with rather more enthusiasm than she felt down to the water below and splash his way to the shadow of the bridge, where he’d squatted and almost disappeared from view. She needed to find her spot, but the enormity of the consequences of failing was still weighing on her.
She heard something move behind her and she turned her head, expecting to find a furling, but was looking at worn-out shoes that she recognized.
“Hey, Robbie,” she said.
“Lara liked to watch the battlefield for a minute, too,” he said.
“I’m not her,” Lizzie answered
.
“I know.”
He stepped forward, looking at his feet. He should have been someone else.
He straightened and looked down at the gorge with clear eyes.
“They’re going to be rolling stones into the creek,” he said. She nodded.
“Then so will you,” she answered, and he smiled.
“Yeah.”
“The fights are all going to end up down at the water,” she said, and he raised his eyebrows fractionally and nodded.
“If we can keep drawing them up the slope, it’s going to help keep them from forming the really big gangs.”
She wished she had something else insightful to say, but she didn’t. He looked at her, his hands clasped behind his back.
“You can do this,” he said. “Sybil says you can’t because that keeps them winning.”
“I won’t let her get in my head,” Lizzie said, and he gave her half a smile.
“She’s the best at stirring them up, but she does it because she likes to watch things blow up. Trevor does his best to keep it from happening, but she doesn’t. She’s more dangerous than he is.”
“I promise not to sleep with her,” Lizzie said, nearly regretting it the moment the words were out of her mouth, but Robbie grinned at looked down at his shoes again.
“Lara liked him,” he said. “And so do I.” He paused, chewing on his lower lip as he looked at the furlings creeping ever thicker toward the bridge. “I just didn’t want you this involved. Ever.”
“I understand,” Lizzie said. He nodded.
“Send ‘em into oblivion,” he said. “Every one of them you take out of play, the closer we get to winning.”
She nodded, confused, as he started to pick his way along the edge of the gorge toward the interstate. It was the closest to advice he’d ever given her.
It was time, though. She didn’t have any more time to watch. She needed to find her spot and stay there. However she was supposed to eliminate furlings, it had been made clear to her that she was to do it from there. An angel in play was a danger to everyone.
At first, she wasn’t sure where she was going, but she’d found that wandering aimlessly would typically get her there, so she started walking, picking an easy way down the gorge, away from the rocks and toward the ground that was more of the shape the stream and its periodic floods would have left it. The slope, here, was more challenging, but she was less likely to have a foot go in between a pair of rocks and twist her ankle. Trevor swore that kind of thing didn’t happen to them, because they could physically avoid the furlings, but Lizzie was unconvinced. By her logic, if humans could do terrible things all on their own, they could do dumb things on their own just as easily.