Angel City

by Jon Steele

  “Oh, get a grip.”

  She dropped the magazine on the kitchen table, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a bag of cat food. She fed the beast, scratched it behind the ears, then walked to the sink and turned on the water pump. She picked up the kettle and filled it from the tap. She looked out the window, saw the small garden at the back of the house. The garden, like the front of the house, backed up to dense forest; in fact, the whole place was surrounded by dense forest. And each time she looked at it, she felt safe. She switched on the kettle, opened her box of magic teas. That’s what she called them, anyway.

  They were from a health food shop in Grover’s Mill and they came in mason jars. Her doctor in Portland prescribed them as part of her recovery. This one in the morning, that one at midday; this tea for afternoons, that one before bed. It was part of her daily regimen. Along with no cigarettes, no alcohol, no drugs. Then again, with a box of magic teas, who needs dope? Especially when the teas had names sounding like the exotic strains of weed she used to buy at her favorite head shop on Santa Monica Boulevard. Morning Light, Midday Buzz, Night Clouds. She prepared the afternoon blend, Violette’s Garden. Something for the remembrance of pleasant memories, the man at the shop told her. There was a quote from some dead poet on the back label:

  Each violet peeps from its dwelling to gaze at the bright stars above.

  —Heinrich Heine

  The kettle clicked off. Katherine saw rain pelting the kitchen window.

  “Not here, Heinrich old boy. This is the land the stars forgot, and the sun most days.”

  She poured the boiling water into the teapot to brew. She inhaled the fragrance and a feeling of calm came over her, the way it always did. She arranged the pot and cup and saucer on a tray, and she carried it to the table. She lit a candle, sat down. She curled up her legs and pulled her bulky sweater over her knees. She watched the candle burn.

  When she first came to the house, this comfy cabin in the middle of a wooded nowhere, nine and a half kilometers from the nearest town, she was in a daze. The last thing she remembered from back in Lausanne was telling Inspector Gobet she wanted to see the cathedral once more before leaving Switzerland. And she could remember standing on the esplanade, looking at the tower for a few minutes . . . Then Inspector Gobet took her by the arm and led her back to the car. They gave her a shot on the way to the airport, one of those shots that sent her off to Neverland. She didn’t even remember boarding an airplane. Next thing she knew, she was here. And if they told her “here” was Miami Beach instead of the boondocks of Washington State, she wouldn’t have known the difference.

  She remembered wandering upstairs and downstairs and through the halls. The fat furry cat she’d carried all the way from Switzerland was still in her arms. She found her way to the kitchen. A small wooden table stood in the center of the room, two wooden chairs tucked under it. She walked around the table, counterclockwise, three times before dropping Monsieur Booty to the floor and pushing the table and chairs to the side of the room, blocking a counter and some cabinets. She had no idea why she’d done it, other than the table felt out of place where she’d found it. The next morning Katherine returned to the kitchen to find someone moved the table and chairs back to the center of the room. Katherine shoved them back to the wall. It went on like this for a week, till she wrote a note and tacked it to the kitchen door:

  Whoever the fuck you are, leave the fucking table where I fucking put it.

  The next day, the table was left against the wall. And every day since, Katherine would sit alone at the table with a pot of tea, watching a candle burn. One day, after a long week of rain, her eyes were drawn to a ray of light passing through the open door. She looked out to the garden, saw the clearing sky, saw the snow-covered peak of Mount Hood glowing in the light, and she realized why she needed the table to be here. It reminded her of the small table jutting from the wall in the belfry loge of Lausanne Cathedral. And some afternoons, sipping her tea, Katherine could almost see the crooked little man who lived in the loge . . . and after a time she remembered his name: Marc Rochat. Then she remembered how he found her running through the streets, knowing she was hunted by a pack of killers. He brought her into the cathedral to hide her because . . . because the crooked little man thought she was an angel who needed to find a way home. She remembered how he’d sit with her at the table and stare at her with a half-mad look in his eyes, telling her he was back with her in “nowtimes,” and that he’d been in “beforetimes.” And he had the funniest stories about the people he’d met along the way. She remembered how the belfry loge shook at the ringing of the hour, how it scared her to death at first. Rochat told her it was only Marie-Madeleine telling Lausanne the time. She remembered how on that last day, amid the cacophony of all the bells, the crooked little man saved her life, saved the cathedral he imagined to be a hiding place for her and all the lost angels in the world. She remembered looking down from the belfry and seeing him dead on the ground. She remembered calling his name, begging him to come back.

  And there was another man, she thought, but she could never remember who he was, or if he was even real. As if the man was there and not there at the same time. Sometimes she thought she could almost see him, but each time her memory searched for a name, the man disappeared.

  The clock above the kitchen door chimed four times.

  Katherine stared at it, feeling something very strange, as if coming back to nowtimes. She looked at the calendar hanging from a hook on the wall.

  “Two and a half years ago. Two and a half fucking years.”

  She poured a cup of tea and inhaled the fumes, wishing to remember more, but she couldn’t. That’s what made her feel she was still losing her mind—what was left of it, anyway. She talked to her doctor about it. He told her the depth of her trauma had altered her memory of events. Rewritten them into a scenario that made it easier for her to accept. The doctor told her it would be best to just let go of them. Better for her, better for the child growing within her body.

  Katherine sipped her tea, laughed to herself.

  “And wasn’t he just the little surprise?”

  Max Taylor.

  Not Maxwell, no middle name, just Max. Six pounds, four ounces of screaming joy. Katherine took one look at him and called him Max, thinking the gooey runt was going to need all the help he could get. She sipped her tea and the memories continued to play through her mind like a film.

  It wasn’t till she got to Grover’s Mill that she even realized she was pregnant. And not just a little pregnant, but four and a half months’ worth of pregnant. At first, she thought she’d been putting on weight from the medications her doctors had prescribed, not to mention her appetite suddenly knowing no bounds. Then came the morning she stepped from the shower and saw herself in the mirror.

  “Wait a minute—no way in hell is that thing my butt.”

  The more she studied her body, her breasts and her hips, the more she tried to remember the last time she had a period. She couldn’t.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  She threw on a robe, stormed out of the bathroom, and marched down the hall for a what the fuck? session with Officer Jannsen.

  “Anne!”

  Officer Jannsen ran up the stairs, her sidearm drawn, ready to fire.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know damn well what’s wrong.”

  Officer Jannsen holstered her weapon, leaned against the wall.

  “Someone move the kitchen table again?”

  “Fuck the kitchen table.”

  “All right then, what’s the problem?”

  “Problem? What could possibly be a problem? Everything’s just so fucking fine. By the way, when were you planning to tell me about this?” Katherine said, pointing to her belly.

  Officer Jannsen led Katherine to her room and sat her on the bed.

  “You were brutalized, Kat
herine. You suffered severe mental and emotional trauma.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s all about me. But in the middle of all this caring and sharing, why didn’t anyone bother to tell me I was fucking pregnant?”

  “The doctors in Switzerland, your doctors in Portland, all thought it best you discover it on your own. It would be a positive sign that you were reconnecting with reality. Telling you sooner would have created more shock and stress harmful to you and the baby.”

  “The baby? What makes you guys think I even want a baby? What makes you think I don’t want to call Abortions-R-Us and get rid of it, like right fucking now?”

  “Is that your choice, Kat? Is that what you really want to do?”

  “What? Four and a half months gone, and now you offer me a choice? Why didn’t all those fucking doctors in Switzerland make the decision for me? I was crazy, I was certifiable, wasn’t I?”

  “None of us is allowed to make that kind of choice.”

  “Why the fuck not? You choose everything else about my life. Where I live, who my doctors are, what I eat and drink. Jesus, I don’t even know who the father is. I was gangbanged . . . How am I supposed to . . .”

  Katherine felt a jolt, and she touched her belly. Officer Jannsen watched the look on Katherine’s face.

  “What is it?”

  “The little bastard just kicked me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I think so.”

  Officer Jannsen sat next to her and rested her hands over Katherine’s belly. There was a kick, then another, as if demanding to be part of the conversation.

  “Seems to be of an opinionated mind. Like his mother, I’d say.”

  “You think?”

  Officer Jannsen nodded.

  “Listen to me, Katherine: We’ve monitored the baby from the beginning. You were given everything you needed to make sure the baby would be healthy. He’s fine.”

  “It’s a boy?”

  “Yes, Kat, it’s a healthy boy.”

  That night, after a triple shot of Night Clouds tea, Katherine lay in the moment of half sleep and she imagined herself standing in the nave of Lausanne Cathedral. It had been one of her favorite falling to sleep dreams. Light pouring through the giant leaded-glass window in the south transept wall. Bright, warm . . . like standing in the middle of a rainbow. She could feel the colors seep into her body. But that night, falling to sleep, she heard a voice in the dream. A voice telling her to be not afraid, that the life within her was pure, that she was the bearer of the light. Katherine knew it was a crazed imagination. But just now, drifting deeper into sleep, it was comforting.

  Early the next morning, she decided to sneak out of the house for a walk. She wasn’t twenty steps before Officer Jannsen stepped out from behind a tree.

  “You’re not supposed to leave the house alone.”

  “I’m not alone, I’m carrying a passenger, remember?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. Town, I guess. It’s only nine kilometers.”

  “Nine and a half. I’ll go with you, Kat.”

  “I don’t want you to go with me.”

  “Too bad.”

  Katherine watched Officer Jannsen pull a cell phone from her belt, dial some numbers, hit send. Then came the Glock from under her coat. She checked the magazine. That done, she pulled two matching gold rings from her pocket. She held one out to Katherine.

  “Cripes sake, Anne, it’s just a walk.”

  “You want to walk, this is how you walk. You don’t like it, we go back to the house.”

  Katherine held up her left hand.

  “Okay, I do.”

  Officer Jannsen slid a ring on Katherine, then herself.

  They walked down the wooded drive to a narrow road. The road wound down a hill, not passing another house or driveway till they reached Carson Highway. They stopped at the edge of the road and waited for a timber-laden eighteen-wheeler to come and go. Katherine looked at Officer Jannsen, noticed the backpack over her shoulder was rather large.

  “What’s in the bag, a bazooka?” Katherine said.

  “One ballistic blanket, spare nine-millimeter clips, four stun grenades, one field medical kit, two liters O-neg blood.”

  Katherine rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Louise.”

  They crossed Carson Highway onto Rainbow Falls Road for six more kilometers before it ended at Grover’s Mill; population 970, not including the bus tours to Rainbow Falls that passed through town, twice a week on Tuesday and Friday afternoons like clockwork. Officer Jannsen turned to Katherine.

  “All right, we walked to town. Now what?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “There’s food at the house.”

  “If I wanted food at the house, I would have stayed at the house.”

  They walked along Main Street to a place called Molly’s Diner. Katherine had seen it in passing once, after a trip to the doctor down in Portland with Officer Jannsen and two bodyguards. Katherine remembered asking if they could stop and go in and have a cheeseburger and Coke. The answer was NO. The answer was always NO. And now, damn it, Katherine was going to have it her way.

  The place was filled but for a corner booth. Katherine walked to it and slid in. Officer Jannsen followed her, took off the backpack, and set it on her side of the booth. There was a small jukebox mounted to the table. Katherine flipped through the selections.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad. Nobody even tried to kill me.”

  Officer Jannsen pulled out her cell, hit a few keys, pressed send.

  “I’m not against you going out, Kat. But we have to be with you.”

  “Every minute of the day?”

  “Yes.”

  Molly herself came over wearing a tie-dyed dress and a necklace of amber stones and peace symbols. Her hair looked like it had been born free and stayed that way all her life.

  “Howdy, ladies. New to town or just passing through?”

  Officer Jannsen delivered the cover story. She was from Quebec, Katherine was from North Carolina. They met at Mount Holyoke in an art history class and had been together ever since. Katherine was expecting a baby, and they moved to Washington to take advantage of the state’s domestic partnership laws; that and to get as far away as possible from Katherine’s right-wing nutter family who didn’t approve of her lifestyle choices.

  Molly thought that was just fine, because she was all for women doing whatever the hell they wanted in this man’s world, and she said they’d have plenty of quiet in Grover’s Mill since the town was full of old hippies growing medical marijuana and other related artsy folk who just wanted to keep to themselves and live quietlike.

  “So what can I getcha, girls?”

  Officer Jannsen ordered a coffee. Katherine wasn’t sure what she wanted till Molly said her homemade flapjacks with natural maple syrup were just the thing for a woman with child. Katherine said that sounded perfect and asked for a glass of water to wash it down.

  “No problem, honey,” Molly said, heading for the kitchen.

  Officer Jannsen pulled a bottle of water from the backpack.

  “Here, I brought water from the house.”

  Katherine watched her set a bottle on the table, push it across. One liter, no label. Katherine unscrewed the cap, took a sip.

  “We use well water at the house, don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s it come from?”

  “Where does what come from?”

  “The water. Does it come from a spring, a lake?”

  “It’s water.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. Not today.”

  Officer Jannsen spoke softly.

  “Lausanne.”

  Katherine belted out her surprise. “Lausanne, as in fucking Switzerland?”

 
“That’s right. And how about keeping your voice down?”

  Katherine dropped the decibels.

  “Are you telling me tap water from Lausanne gets shipped halfway around the world and we fill our well with it? That’s fucking crazy. I mean, what’s the matter with the water that was in the well in the first place?”

  “The chromium levels were too high.”

  “For a woman who’s knocked up, you mean.”

  “Knocked up?”

  “Pregnant. Bun in the oven. In the female way.”

  Officer Jannsen scanned the diner, then leaned across the table.

  “Lausanne’s water has certain minerals you can’t get anywhere else. The doctors say they’re necessary for the baby’s development.”

  “I bet they do.”

  Officer Jannsen stared at Katherine.

  “What’s on your mind, Katherine?”

  “You knew I was pregnant from the beginning. You never told me.”

  “Those were my orders.”

  “Do you know who the father is?”

  “It’s not my concern who the father is.”

  Molly delivered the espresso and flapjacks, talked about the weather a minute, and left. Officer Jannsen looked around the diner again.

  “Once more, what’s on your mind, Katherine?”

  “How long do I have to stay in Grover’s Mill?”

  “Until Inspector Gobet says otherwise.”

  “Why? You told me the bad guys were dead.”

  “They were part of a much bigger organization, a very deadly organization. Our intel says you’re still in the gravest of danger if you try to live in the open.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It isn’t bullshit, it’s real. You know how real it is. And you know it’s as deadly as it is real.”

  “Then how come you guys are here and not the FBI, or the CIA, or the fucking YMCA?”

  “What?”

  “How come there are no American cops protecting me? Why you guys?”

  Officer Jannsen smiled.

  “Do you think we could be here, in America, without the permission of the American authorities?”