by Alicia Ryan
“Charlie?” Herman asked.
Another wail, and Charlie was down off the table, running between Herman’s legs, out the door and back into the hallway.
“Crap,” Herman muttered, hurrying to follow.
At the end of the hall, he saw the door of the stairwell open, and Charlie scoot past a stunned Oscar.
Oscar looked wide-eyed at Herman as he approached. “Dude, was that a beaver?” he asked. “A real, no kidding beaver?”
Herman nodded as he passed.
“Huh.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Herman called back as he followed the creature through the stair door.
The door closed behind him, shutting off the cacophony Charlie had stirred up in the office. Herman remained still and listened for any sound that would tell him if Charlie had gone up or down.
Then he heard it- a soft, but regular, flap-flapping as Charlie the beaver ascended the stairs.
“Charlie!”
The flap-flapping got faster.
Herman started up the metal stairs, taking them two at the time. The door to the fourth floor was closed when he reached it, so he kept going, up to the roof. There, the door stood propped open about a foot – easily enough space for beaver Charlie.
Herman pushed the door open and stepped out, taking care to close the door securely behind him.
The rooftop was covered in white-gray rocks and dotted with HVAC units and other metal objects Herman couldn’t put a name to. Black tar paper peeked through a few bare spots, and a concrete lip about a foot wide ran around the roof’s edge.
The sky was blue, of course, as was the norm for central California, but there were no majestic panoramas to admire. The Office Supply HQ building wasn’t tall enough to give a view of the rolling, golden hills Herman had seen on his way in. The only view was of the tops of other buildings. So as the sun beat down on the roof that afternoon, there was just Herman, the dismal view, and one nervous beaver standing about three feet from the ledge.
“Charlie?” Herman called out tentatively.
The beaver’s head turned toward him, and Herman decided to take that as a positive sign. He moved a step closer, putting his hands out in a gesture intended to be non-threatening.
“Charlie,” he repeated.
The beaver shook its head vehemently, then turned and ran to hide behind the nearest air conditioning unit.
“Charlie, don’t be like that,” Herman said. “I’m here to help you.”
The beaver let out another wail, but the hideous sound morphed into the sobbing laughter of a human being.
“Help me?” Charlie’s voice called out. “Did you see what just happened?” He stood up, now back in his human form and fully clothed, which Herman spared a moment to think was odd. “I just turned into a beaver in there!” Charlie shouted. “How are you – or anyone else – going to help me?”
“That’s a fair question,” Herman acknowledged. “And yesterday I wouldn’t have had an answer for you, but today, being dead and all, it kind of puts things in a whole new light.”
Charlie knitted his sandy brows together. “What did you say?”
“That’s right,” Herman said. “I’m dead.”
The word hung between them like a weight on a taut line.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “Did you say D-E-A-D – dead?”
Herman nodded. “Yep. Yesterday I woke up, went to work and came home the same as anyone. Then a jet engine fell out of the sky and landed on my house – with me in it. And that was the last breath I took among the living.”
Charlie’s expression turned reproachful. “That’s not funny, Herman. You seem like a nice enough guy, but my…my…condition isn’t a joke, and I don’t appreciate being made fun of.”
“I’m not making fun of you, Charlie,” Herman hurried to clarify. “I’m making fun of me, and I’m telling you the truth. I died yesterday.”
“Yeah, right. Look, I don’t know who you are, but please leave me alone.”
“I’m Herman Morrie, recently deceased.”
Charlie came out from around the air conditioner. “You’re serious.”
Again, Herman nodded. “As a jet engine.”
“I can’t believe it,” Charlie muttered, not seeming to address Herman in particular. “I just can’t believe it.”
“It’s not really as weird as being a were-beaver, if you think about it,” Herman offered.
Charlie gave a short laugh. “That’s not what I meant. I just meant that you’d think not being able to control my shape shifting would be enough that fate wouldn’t feel I also needed to be haunted.” He looked up into the blue sky. “Are you sure this is necessary? I mean, it’s not like I was doing great before. Was I really just begging for a haunting?”
“No, wait,” Herman said, eager to rectify the mistake. “You’re not being haunted. I’m not a ghost. I’m an angel – a guardian angel.”
Charlie shot him a pointed look. “No offense, but you don’t look much like an angel.”
Herman looked down at his khaki-clad frame. He was tall and lean, with dark hair and ordinary features. Not Jimmy Stewart or Charlton Heston by a long shot. “Well, I’m new,” he offered.
Charlie took a few steps toward the edge of the roof and looked out. “Makes sense they’d send you here, then.”
“What do you mean?”
Charlie looked at Herman over his shoulder. “So let’s just say you’re for real, okay? You’re brand new, so this must be the worst assignment, right? Last pick on the guardian angel list – Charlie Woodson.” He smiled wryly. “But I’m last on pretty much every list.”
“Hmm. I don’t know about that,” Herman said. “I don’t think that’s the way it works.”
“But you don’t know, do you? Or do you have an answer for that, too?” Charlie moved closer to the edge.
“Charlie? What are you doing?” Alarm raced into Herman’s voice to match the adrenaline in his veins.
Charlie turned back to him. “I think I know why you’re here,” he said.
“You do?”
“Yeah. You’re here to give me the courage to kill myself.”
“What? No! Charlie, that’s not it at all.”
Charlie shook his head. “No, that’s got to be it,” he said. “Look at you.” He moved his arm up and down, gesturing at Herman’s frame. “You don’t even have wings. You’re like a telegram from God telling me how pathetic I am. I don’t even rate a real angel.”
“Hey!” Herman said. “I’m a real angel!” He looked down at himself. “Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”
“And that’s what I’m going to do,” Charlie said, turning around, “start over.”
“Wait!” Herman called out. “You can’t!”
“Why not?” Charlie asked, sounding suddenly weary.
“I…I…What about your family, huh? Think of what it would do to them.”
Charlie lowered his head. “There’s only my father and my uncle. My father spends half his time convinced it’s still 1969 and the other half pretending it is. The only person he would mourn is his hemp supplier.” Charlie nodded back toward the door. “And you’ve met my uncle.”
Herman scratched his head. “Then give me a chance,” he argued. “You’re my first case, Charlie. How’s it going to look for me if you commit suicide on the first day?”
Charlie looked back over his shoulder with a raised brow. “That all you got, Herman?”
A fluttering sound, like a flock of birds taking flight, drew the attention of both men to a spot about ten feet to Herman’s right where the air had started to shimmer and blur.
As they watched, a young man with dirty blond hair and a day’s worth of beard growth stepped from nowhere out onto the pebbled surface of the roof. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt with a picture of a rock band and the words “Appetite for Destruction” on the front. Most noticeable, though, was the pair of charcoal gray wings he sported, each one extendin
g about four feet beyond his shoulders.
“Friend of yours?” Charlie asked Herman.
“Uh…maybe?” Herman replied, vaguely remembering something about a partner.
The young man strode over to Herman and clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry I’m late, big guy. There was a party last night that you wouldn’t believe.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “My head still hurts, if you want to know the truth.”
“And you are…?” Herman asked.
The man dropped his hand and studied him, wide-eyed. “They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Herman noticed the man’s eyes were almost the same shade of gray as his wings.
The young man shook his head. “That you had a partner. Who’s your handler again?”
“Uh…N, for Norton.”
“That figures. Norton likes his cloak and dagger routine. Well, don’t sweat it, I’m here now.” He extended his hand. “Name’s Price.”
“Is that a first name or a last name?” Herman asked, accepting the handshake.
“Just Price for now.”
Herman rolled his eyes, and Price laughed. “Don’t much care what you think, Rookie.” He glanced over to where Charlie stood perched at the roof ledge. “Looks like I got here just in time. You must be Charlie.”
He crossed the space and joined Charlie in a hearty handshake. “It’s just like they say, you know. The first step’s a doozy.” He laughed at his own joke.
Charlie cut an uncertain glance at Herman, and Herman shrugged in response.
“So why are you here exactly?” Herman asked, feeling a certain need to protect his unwilling charge.
“To keep you from totally screwing it up,” Price responded. “All the newbies get partners for their first few assignments.” He looked at Charlie again. “Cause almost all of them get it wrong.”
“What side are you on?” Herman asked, eyeing Price’s dark wings.
“My own,” Price answered. His eyes followed Herman’s gaze. “But Hell has the best parties, so if you ever need to find me, you should probably start there.”
“I chose to go Good. Why do they send us partners from the dark side?” Herman asked.
“Well, first,” Price said, “your choice isn’t really made until your wings come in. And they tend to pair you with someone from the other end of the spectrum so you can see the other side first-hand.” He nodded in Charlie’s direction. “Plus, just like Woodchuck here, lots of our assignments benefit from a more even-handed approach.”
“Even-handed? I don’t think that’s what’s called for here,” Herman said.
“No? Let me guess. You’ve been telling him how things really aren’t that bad, how he doesn’t really want to jump, blah, blah, blah…” Price was opening and closing the mockery of a mouth made by the thumb and fingers of his right hand.
“And you’d tell him something else?” Herman pressed.
“Damn straight,” Price answered, looking at Charlie. “I’d tell him to take a deep breath and get it over with.” His gaze shifted back to Herman. “I mean, the man’s a beaver, for God’s sake. A beaver. Not a wolf, not a wolverine, not a leopard. A beaver.”
Herman opened his mouth, but his response took just a little too long.
“You know he’s right,” Charlie pointed out quietly.
Herman shook his head. “No, I do not know he’s right. I don’t know anything like that. I’m a guardian angel, that’s all I know. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do or say or how I’m supposed to help you, but I know, at the very least, I’m supposed to guard you against harm. And falling off a four-story building qualifies as harm in my book.”
Charlie looked to Price for a rebuttal.
“Never said it wouldn’t hurt,” Price admitted. “Hell, you might screw it up and wind up some god-awful vegetable thing, laying in a hospital bed for years not even able to wipe your own ass.”
Charlie’s sanguine expression took on the taint of dread and fear.
“I don’t know for sure what happens if you die,” Herman continued. “I know what happened to me, and…” He wasn’t sure how to navigate this part. “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I expected, I’ll grant you that, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t value my life. I’d go back if I could, Charlie. There’s plenty of time to be dead without jumping off buildings when you’re barely twenty.”
“Twenty-four,” Charlie corrected, turning once more to look out at the horizon, and moving a step closer to the edge.
“Hey, that’s how old I was when I bit it,” Price commented.
Charlie looked at him. “What happened to you?”
Price’s gray gaze grew more clouded. “Cancer,” he said finally,” but sometimes I tell people I died in a motorcycle crash.”
“Why?” Herman asked.
Price shrugged. “Dunno. Just sounds cooler, I guess. Plus I don’t like to talk about what the last few weeks were like – when I was sick.”
“Did you have a family?” Herman asked, pretty sure he already knew the answer.
“No, I was footloose and fancy free,” Price said with a grin. “Working construction during the day and partying every night. Vegas, baby.”
“So you never had a home or family of your own? Never got to grow old with someone? Never got to play catch with your son or blow out the candles on your sixtieth birthday cake?”
Price frowned. “No. I told you. I was…”
“Footloose and fancy free,” Herman repeated dryly. “Yeah, I got that part, but I’m trying to make a point to Charlie here that, despite the cool wings, there are some things you can’t do when you’re dead.” He turned to Charlie. “Life may have good things in store for you yet, Charlie. I mean, you’ve been sent not one, but two, guardian angels. Maybe your luck is changing?”
Charlie’s face relaxed as he considered this. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I can always decide to kill myself later.”
He put one foot on the roof’s concrete lip and pushed off it to turn toward them. “Do you really think you can help me?”
Before he’d finished his question, his foot slipped, throwing his head and torso out over the edge of the roof.
Herman sucked in a shocked breath as Charlie’s head disappeared from view. His legs waggled helplessly in the air for a moment before they, too, dropped out of sight.
Herman and Price both bolted to the edge of the roof. Herman closed his eyes as he leaned out, then opened them, bracing himself for the sight of Charlie’s broken body on the concrete below.
But it wasn’t concrete below. It was nylon. Nylon fabric inflated into the shape of a giant pencil, to be exact. Charlie had fallen about two stories and landed on the pencil balloon Herman had seen earlier out in front of the building. His weight had caused it to sink further, leaving Charlie and balloon now only about 10 feet above the ground.
Price gave a short laugh when Charlie lifted his head and looked around. “Will you look at that?”
Charlie moved, and the balloon started to tilt. Charlie began to slide, unable to get a hand hold, and the further he slid the more radically his end of the balloon tilted toward the ground. As the angle increased, Charlie slid faster and faster until he inevitably dropped off the edge and onto the ground below.
Herman stood up after a few seconds when Charlie still hadn’t moved. “Come on,” he said to Price. “We need to get down there. Charlie may be hurt.”
Price was still looking over the edge, shaking his blond head and laughing. “Oh, he’s fine. See, he’s sitting up now.”
He stood up, turned to Herman, and tucked his wings in tight behind him. “You know what this means, though, don’t you?”
Herman shook his head.
“It means we are going to have our work cut out for us, that’s what, because – Judas Priest! – that boy can’t do anything right.”
Ambulance sirens momentarily cut off further commentary.
“We can meet him at the hospital,” Price announc
ed. “Looks like he may have broken something, after all. But first,” he rubbed a hand along his stubbled jaw. “I need a shave and a shower, so let’s swing by the apartment.”
“Apartment?”
Price shook his head. “Yeah. And while I’m doing that, you can finish reading the materials Norton gave you – including those minor details like where you’re going to live and how Charlie has a condition that turns him into a beaver when he’s under stress.”
Herman’s mouth made a silent “O”.
“Do you have a car?” Herman asked.
Price gave him a look. “Wow, you are new. I haven’t had a pure rookie for quite a while.” He took two long steps, crossing the distance between them. “We’ll get other transportation eventually,” Price said, “but for now, just grab on to me.”
Herman raised his brows, and remained motionless.
“What?” Price asked. “I don’t bite. Now stop being a baby and let’s go.”
Herman wrapped his arms around Price’s chest, trying to keep at least an inch of space between them.
Price snickered, wrapped his arms around Herman and pulled him tight to his body. “Don’t be such a pussy, Herman,” he said.
Then he extended his wings, brought them down hard against the air around them, and sent their joined bodies soaring into the air.
Chapter Three
Their flight ended almost as soon as it began, with Price’s wings fluttering about them as they settled lightly on the sidewalk in front of the Sainte Claire Apartments. A little theater done up in true Spanish mission style sat next door, and the Sainte Claire seemed to benefit from the theater’s proximity in that some authentic stone trim and arches appeared to have migrated over. Otherwise the apartment building was three stories of plain white stucco.
Herman looked around as he stepped away from Price. A wide street lined with huge palm trees ran in front of the building, but passers-by were few, and none of them seemed to notice a gray-winged angel had just dropped into their midst.