by Alicia Ryan
“That’s all?”
She nodded.
Tuesday shook his head. “Wait. I thought there were five women at the house.”
Ariel smiled. “I suppose I have one more confession to make.”
“No,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “No more confessions. Let’s just go to bed.”
“It’s a very small one by comparison.” She suddenly shifted form, and he found himself looking at Lydia. “I take the form of Lydia at the house.”
“So you…are her? You mean it’s been you all along?”
She nodded. “I hope you aren’t angry. I did deceive you, but I couldn’t bring myself to let you go once I’d seen you.”
He shook his head. “But you saw me as Herman.”
“I’ve always seen you as Tuesday. You’ve been Tuesday for longer than you know.”
”And I’m really Tuesday, an angel, and for some reason you want me?”
“Now you’re getting it. Except for the part that I want you now – making love to me instead of talking – unless it’s to say something unreasonably dirty, of course.” She winked at him, and he stopped resisting her pull.
He resisted nothing the rest of the night, burning up with her time and time again.
In the morning he woke tired, and then dejected when he realized he was lying in his own bed back at the apartment. He looked down at his naked chest and arms, seeing that he was still Tuesday, and the mark of Ariel’s defiance still encircled his wrist.
He rubbed it with his other hand, and it began to glow an ethereal light blue. It also began to feel warm – a comforting warmth that soon spread all over him, reassuring him. With a shock that would have staggered him if he’d been standing, he realized that, whatever other purposes the mark might serve, the mark also connected him to Ariel. She hadn’t really left him after all.
Chapter Seven
Tuesday pulled on a pair of jeans – another new, tighter, trendier pair - and went to knock on Price’s door. When he got no response, he started pounding.
“What?” his roommate yelled. “For Pete’s sake, it’s Saturday, and I have the hangover from hell. Literally. Leave me alone.”
“It is Saturday, and we’ll be lucky to make it out to the diner by lunch time. Now get your ass out of bed. We’ve got work to do.”
Grumbling, stumbling, and then a girlish yelp.
“You made me stub my toe!” More grumbling, followed by “Why do the Good ones always have such a damn work ethic? Is there some reason you couldn’t just be a lazy angel with good intentions?”
Tuesday wanted to smile, but restrained himself. “Hurry up. I’m sure they’ll have cheeseburgers and fries - and coffee.”
Another groan, resigned and defeated this time. “Fine. I’m getting in the shower, which is going to hurt like the dickens by the way.”
“Are you still drunk? What are you talking about?”
“At some point last night, I found myself on the receiving end of Angie’s whip. Don’t recall minding at the time, but those little cuts hurt like a bitch now.”
Tuesday winced. “Can’t you just…conjure them away?”
“No, dipshit. Injuries from other non-humans stick around.”
“Well, suck it up and get in the shower. We’ve got to go.”
“Prick.”
“Pussy.”
Price laughed. “Why do I like you better today? I must still be drunk.”
Tuesday shook his head and went back to his own room to do as he’d just commanded Price.
Minutes later, they met in the kitchen, both wearing jeans and wet hair. Price had added his usual grungy t-shirt, this time a gray one with white lettering so faded and gothic as to be illegible. Tuesday had on a maroon t-shirt and a black leather jacket.
Price raised an eyebrow. “You do know its California, right?”
Tuesday nodded. “Yeah, but we’re taking the motorcycles – and its sexy, right?”
Price’s mouth quirked up in a one-sided smile. “Since when do the words motorcycle and sexy come out of your mouth?”
Tuesday shrugged and reached up to get a glass out of the cabinet. “Since today, I guess. Aren’t I supposed to be sweeping Mary off her feet?” He poured himself some orange juice, and turned to see Price staring at his wrist.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“I’m certain I have no idea what you think it is.”
“I think it’s the mark of one of the fallen ones.” He grabbed Tuesday’s wrist to get a closer look, sloshing orange juice onto the floor in the process. “Snakes. That’s the archangel who went to Eve in the garden. How did you get this? And who is it?”
Tuesday frowned at him. “How do you think? And you know very well where I spent the night. You sent me there yourself.”
Light dawned in Price’s gray eyes. “Ariel is the other archangel?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
Price shook his head. “She doesn’t advertise. I thought she just ran the whorehouse and gave great parties. I mean, she’s beautiful, and most of the Fallen aren’t. I never considered she might be an archangel; I just assumed she was like us.” He finally let go of Tuesday’s wrist. “An archangel. That’s…Did she mention what she sees in you?”
“That’s really none of your business.”
“And she gave you that?”
“Uh, not really. It’s more like a punishment from Lucifer - for associating too closely with her.”
Price grinned. “I’d take a punishment to associate closely with her.”
Tuesday drank his juice.
“Okay,” Price said. “Just nod if it was as good as I’m imagining.”
Grinning, Tuesday put down his glass and nodded for nearly thirty seconds while Price stared, slack-jawed. He stopped nodding, and Price’s astonishment turned into a pout.
“I hate you. You know that, right?”
“And you can tell me all about it over lunch.”
“And don’t make your bike look like mine,” Price said, turning his back on Tuesday and moving toward the door.
“Yes, Dad.” Tuesday quickly changed the image of the bike in his mind to the one from the ad where he’d gotten the idea for Tuesday in the first place.
Outside in the parking lot, Price stared at the two motorcycles. “I hate to point this out, Romeo, but being able to think up a motorcycle doesn’t mean you know how to ride one. Do you know how to ride one?”
“Oh, crap,” Tuesday said, feeling suddenly deflated. “I didn’t even think of that.”
Price shook his head and turned to look at him. “Screwing an archangel doesn’t seem to have made you any smarter.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I will be an ass if I feel like it, and right now, I most definitely feel like it. But we do have to get to the diner, and we can’t ride together - that’s no sort of manly image.”
He looked Tuesday up and down. “How about an old 60’s convertible – one of those great big boats with the tail fins, leather seats, and chrome all over the place?”
“I was thinking a Porsche.”
Price shook his head. “You can’t seem established. You’re transient, remember? In and out.” He grinned. “Of her life, I mean.”
Tuesday rolled his eyes, but thought for a moment and remembered a red, 1964 Mercury Comet he’d seen come into his father’s shop one afternoon. It was just as Price had described – a sleek, winged, beauty of a car. He made it black, gave it a convertible top, and felt it turn from desire into reality right there in the parking space where the useless motorcycle had been.
“Sweet!” Price exclaimed.
Tuesday opened his eyes and had to agree. The car gleamed in the sunlight, but the black and chrome made it shine in a dangerous sort of way. It was perfect, and he knew he’d keep this car around for quite some time.
“Drive on, Tuesday, my friend,” Price said, climbing into the passenger seat. “I’m actually starting to look forwar
d to this trip.”
Tuesday got in, wrapping his fingers around the leather-bound steering wheel, with its dual spokes and round center decal. Frog-eye dials stared up at him from the dash as he turned the key and shifted, smiling, into reverse.
Neither of them spoke as the car rolled out of town and sailed down Route 8 toward the desert and the tiny diner at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. The drive took slightly under an hour, but Tuesday felt like he’d come to a different world.
There was nothing as far as the eye could see except two intersecting lines of blacktop, cacti taller than his head, and a silver diner with a red neon sign out front that said ‘Route 8 Eats.’
“Did you ever see that Twilight Zone episode?” Price asked as Tuesday pulled into one of the many empty parking spaces. “The one with the diner where the guests are trapped in a storm and they know one of them must be an alien?”
Tuesday laughed. “I remember that one - the one where the cook turns out to have a big third eye, right?”
“That’s the one.”
“Come on,” Tuesday said, getting out of the car and slamming the heavy door harder than he’d intended. “What are you worried about? We’ll be the strangest things in there.”
Price snorted. “Wanna bet?”
“Geez, you were just in hell. What’s to be scared of in this place?”
“First, please eliminate the word ‘geez’ from your vocabulary. Second, I’ve only ever been to the sixth level of hell, and some places on earth are scarier than that.”
“And you think this is one of them? Come on, it’s just a diner.”
“Just a diner in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, and the only other car in the lot is that jeep over there that looks like it’s been cobbled together from about six other cars. Probably came upon them broken down on the highway and still has the passengers’ bodies in his basement.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but aren’t you supposed to be encouraging just that sort of thing – you know, evil?”
“Oh, no.” Price shook his head. “I encourage hedonistic indulgence and general selfishness and irresponsibility, but not wanton destruction, not cruelty.”
“Is that why your wings are only gray?”
Price nodded.
“They’d be black if you were really cruel?”
“That’s pretty much the way it works, yeah.”
“Well, you do remember you’re already dead, right? Even if he’s Freddie Krueger meets Mad Max, there’s nothing he can to do you, and it’s all the more reason we need to get in there and rescue Mary.”
Price got out of the car. “Right. Damsel in distress. But just so we’re clear, you’re on your own after this. Charlie is my project. You can woo sweet Mary out here all by yourself.”
“Deal. Now stop stalling. We’re going in.”
Price bowed and extended his arm toward the door. “You first, lover boy.”
Tuesday ignored him, and pushed open the glass door on the right – the one with the big sign that said “PUSH”.
“Think there’s anybody here who can read that?” Price asked.
Tuesday looked over the row of red plastic booths to his left and met the cloudy blue gaze of a man of indeterminate age and an unbelievable amount of wiry gray hair. It stood out from his head in all directions and flowed down the sides of his face and into a beard that would have made Moses proud. Tuesday’s first thought was that he looked like a cagey, old wolf.
“I think you should probably lower your voice,” he whispered, nodding just slightly toward the wolfman.
“Oh, perfect. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Two?” asked a feminine voice.
Tuesday turned to see Mary Louise staring expectantly at them. She wore a white dress that came to just above her knees, with a black plastic name tag and a short black apron. Even he had to admit it didn’t flatter her pale, delicate complexion.
He nodded in response to her question, and they followed her to a booth on the other side of the room from the wolfman. Their window looked out into the mostly empty parking lot.
Mary Louise put a menu in front of Tuesday, then Price.
“Hey,” she said. “Don’t I know you? Aren’t you Charlie Woodson’s friend?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Price answered, playing dumb to perfection, “we met at the hospital the other day.”
He looked around the diner. “What are you doing way out here? I thought you worked with Charlie. Or did I get that wrong?”
A shadow flitted across Mary’s still-bruised face. She’d taken pains to cover it with make-up, Tuesday noticed, a lot more than she usually wore.
“No, that’s right. I did work there, but I’m, you know, trying out a career change.” She forced a smile. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Coffee,” Price answered. “Lots of coffee.”
“Same for you?” she asked, turning to Tuesday.
He detected an almost imperceptible widening of her eyes, quickening of her breath. Good signs, he thought.
“Nah,” he replied. “I’m not quite as hung over as Price. I’ll have a Coke.”
“Long night?” she teased, looking between them and showing her first genuine smile.
“The longest,” Price confirmed with a groan.
“And you came all the way out here to get coffee?”
“Heard it was good,” Price muttered.
Mary leaned in a bit. “You may have been misinformed.”
“We heard the scenery was nice, too,” Tuesday added, looking only at Mary. When she blushed, he knew she’d taken his meaning.
“I’ll be right back with your drinks,” she said, scurrying off into the back.
“You’re going to have to go slow if you want her to leave Red Bull for you,” Price offered.
“I don’t want her to leave him for me; I want her to leave him for her.”
The bell on the door jingled as some new patron walked in. Tuesday saw Price’s eyes go wide.
“You are just not going to believe this,” he said.
“What?” Tuesday didn’t turn around.
“Okay, he’s sitting at the counter. Turn around and look over your left shoulder.”
Tuesday turned, purposely looking toward the kitchen door. In his line of vision, the newest customer had taken a seat on a red vinyl barstool. He had an extraordinarily long face and sandy hair cut into a shaggy mohawk, and sported a ragged black t-shirt, jeans and worn black sneakers.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Tuesday asked, turning back to Price. “Other than that he dresses like you?”
“Very funny. Take another look and tell me that you’d be surprised if he suddenly neighed or whinnied.”
Tuesday turned around again and appreciated that the man did indeed resemble a horse, at least from the neck up. “Okay, I’ll give you that one,” he conceded.
“This place should be called Animal House.”
Mary returned with their drinks. “Let me go speak to this gentleman, and I’ll be right back to take your order.”
Price leaned forward as the young man ordered a diet soda.
“You aren’t really expecting him to whinny are you?” Tuesday asked.
“No, but maybe he’ll sound like Mr. Ed.”
Mary came back to their table. “Ready to order?”
“I know what I want,” Tuesday replied, again looking directly at Mary.
“I’ll just have a cheeseburger and fries,” Price said.
“Same here. Tell me, Mary. I’m going to be in this area for a bit. Do you work lunch every day?”
“Um…yes – breakfast and lunch. But I think I should tell you I’m not supposed to flirt with the customers.”
“I think you’re safe. You’re not flirting with me at all. I’m flirting with you.”
Mary smiled. “You’re very forward, aren’t you?”
“You’re very pretty.”
She blushed, but looked at the floor. “Thank y
ou. I’ll get your orders to the kitchen now.”
Price looked at him. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Yep.”
“Since when? Did banging an archangel give you the ability to read minds?”
“You know, sometimes you just don’t know when to shut up.”
“I never know when to shut up. It’s part of my boyish charm.” He grinned.
“Well, I’m not going for boyish or charming, so let me do this my way.”
“Manly and determined, then?”
“Something like that.”
“And just how are you going to get all the way out here and still keep your job at Office Supplies from Hell?”
“The sign on the door says they open at six. I’ll just have to come for breakfast.”
Price grunted. “That would be a lot easier if you had wings.”
“You could bring me.”
“And come back and hug you in the parking lot every morning? Might cramp your style. Besides, I told you I’m not coming back to this zoo.”
“Fine. I’ll leave at five, get here by six, have breakfast, and be at work by eight.”
“And woo your one true love for an hour a day?”
“Slow and steady wins the race, right?”
“I think I’d just kill this Red Bull character and have done with it.”
Tuesday frowned. “We’ll call that Plan B.”
“Hey, I was just joking. I’m pretty sure Good angels aren’t allowed to kill people, and I’m not going to whack some guy just because he beats his girlfriend. If that’s the standard, I’d have to become a mass murderer.”
“What – you don’t want black wings?”
Price thought for a moment. “Not really, no. I’m perfectly happy hanging out in the gray zone right where I am.”
“Here you go,” Mary said, returning with their food. “Two cheeseburger plates. Ketchup and mustard are over there.” She pointed to the red and yellow squirt bottles at the other end of their table. “Anything else I can get you?”
“You’re not wearing a ring. Do you have a boyfriend, Mary?”
“That’s really none of your business…” her voice trailed off. “What did you say your name was?”