A glimpse out of the window confirmed that this was, for a second time, merely an increase in the volume of rain outside. Odd how it kept happening, though. And how dark it had become.
The instructions on the page were short, and the ingredients it called for were not unduly hard to come by.
Marcia still hadn’t returned.
Dan didn’t see how he had much choice but to give it a try.
Half an hour later he was standing on the roof of the hotel. This hadn’t been easy to bring about, but the recipe stipulated that the invoker must be both outside (in the sense of “not within a structure”) and at the highest place available within one hundred horizontal feet of his or her position when the book had been most recently opened. Once he’d worked out what this meant, Dan took the elevator to the highest floor of the hotel—the twelfth—but knew somehow this wouldn’t be enough. Plus, if something was going to happen, he didn’t want to be interrupted by another guest heading back to their room. A certain amount of poking around led him to a door around a corner, which was marked STORES. There were indeed stores inside, and Dan helped himself to a bath towel, but at the back was another door. Opening this led to a dark interior staircase which led upwards.
At the top was a metal door. It was locked. Of course. Dan kicked at it, impotently. He could hear the sound of rain beyond it. He was so close. He kicked again, the lock clicked, and the door swung open a foot.
The sound of rain was suddenly far louder, and Dan saw it was now pelting down outside. Putting aside the question of why the door was now unlocked, he wrapped the towel around his head, left the book on the floor where it wouldn’t get wet, and stepped outside.
A very large, flat area lay in front of him, the roof of the hotel. Various protuberances stuck up here and there, some disgorging steam or smoke, many with fans which lazily cycled round. Piles of forgotten wood and other detritus lay against the low wall which went right around the edges. The grey surface of the roof was hidden in places by sizable pools of water, which reflected a blackening sky which seemed to be getting lower and lower.
Dan walked right out to the center of the roof and stopped. London was spread around him, albeit obscured by sheets of rain and gathering gloom. The towel was soon soaked, and he took it off. Evidently you just had to take this experience as it came. He had memorized the invocation. It wasn’t hard. It was so straightforward, in fact, that it was ludicrous to believe it would achieve anything.
Nonetheless, he unwrapped the hand towel he’d brought up from the room. Inside were three things. A small sample of his saliva, in one of the room’s water glasses: a “secretion” had been called for, and saliva was as far as he was prepared to go. A few strands of Marcia’s hair, easily gleaned from her brush, wrapped in a piece of toilet tissue, and also put into the glass. Rather more trickily, a postcard to Marcia’s sister. The recipe called for “a sample of both their words,” and didn’t explain it any more clearly than that. This defeated Dan until he noticed the postcard, written the previous evening in the bar and now lying on the desk awaiting a stamp. Most of it was in Marcia’s hand, but he’d added a cheery sentence at the bottom. Would it do? Dan supposed he was about to find out. He rolled the postcard and put it into the glass, too.
He straightened, and quickly threw his hand up into the air. He was a fool, he knew, and braced himself for the immediate return of the glass, possibly onto his head.
It didn’t come back down.
After a second he looked up, and saw that the glass had disappeared. The rain had started falling harder, too, and now it really did sound like wings.
Parts of the sky slowly seemed to detach themselves from the rest, patches of darkness gathering as if a cloud were settling over the hotel, wisps of it catching on the buildings across the street, like the ghosts of future fires.
The sound of traffic seemed to get both louder and further away. Dan listened to it, and to the rain as it fell, until the two noises became one and entered his head, and disappeared, leaving it empty and still.
“Seventy-eight percent,” said a voice.
Dan turned. Behind him, something was sitting on the low wall at the edge of the roof.
It was about twelve feet tall, the white of old, tarnished marble, and difficult to see. It seemed to sit hunched on the wall, huge wings hanging off its shoulders. It appeared a little uncomfortable, as if finding itself in the wrong place, somewhere either too hot or too cold.
“Are you the angel?” Dan said.
“Over the length of the marriage, you have spoken twenty-two percent of the time,” the figure said. Its face was turned away from him, hidden behind long wet hair. Its voice was cold, dry, and seemed to come to Dan both via his ears and up through his legs. “If you limit the enquiry to periods of discussion that could be considered of academic or of purely hypothetical interest, then her contribution rises to eighty-six percent. This peaks, under the influence of alcohol, at ninety-four percent.”
“Then I am right,” Dan said. “I knew it.”
The angel gave no indication it had heard. “If considered in terms of total words uttered, rather than time spent speaking, the breakdown is about the same. The shortness and lack of fluidity of your sentences is somewhat counterbalanced by the speed of your attempts to pack them in the short intervals available.”
“Now hold on,” Dan said. He started to walk forward, but a loud, heavy movement of the angel’s wings warned him to stay where he was. Somewhere, far away, there was the rumble of thunder. “What do you mean, ‘lack of fluidity’?”
“Caused merely by the lack of opportunity for you to get into your stride,” the angel said. “Of course.”
Dan nodded, mollified. “Thank you,” he said. “Now. How do I ...?”
“Sometimes she even talks when you’re not there,” the angel said. “Quite often, in fact.”
“And you listen?”
“Of course. It’s what I do.”
Dan frowned. “What kind of things does she say?”
“She hopes your kids are safe.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Yes, but she says it out loud. And her words are heard.”
“Okay,” Dan said. He was cold. Unbelievably, it was starting to rain harder, the sky pressing closer down. His hair was plastered to his skull, water running down his face. “What ... else does she say?”
It seemed like the angel was turning to look at him, but when the movement was finished it was still looking another way. “She says it makes her sad when the children call, and you hand the phone straight to her, after merely grunting hello. She tries not to resent the fact you make no effort with her friends, and that—and these are my figures, not hers—you are on average responsible for less than four percent of the conversation when they’re around. She has issues with the fact that you seem to believe her having a massage once in a while is a big indulgence, when you spend three times as much every month on books which you’ll mostly never read, and often don’t even open again. She feels hurt when you look at her as if wondering what she is harping on about, and why. She wishes that once in a while you would handle her in the way you do an interesting book—and says you used to, once.”
Dan smiled tightly.
“Well, that’s all very interesting. Thanks for your time. And your unbiased opinion.”
The angel rolled its shoulders, as if preparing to leave. “She cares about things. Who do you think we’re in favor of: those who care about things, or those who don’t?”
Dan said nothing.
“And the colds,” the angel added. “Who do you think they’re worse for, her or you?”
“I’ve got to go,” Dan said. “I assume you will let yourself out.”
He headed back toward the metal door, sloshing straight through the puddles. He didn’t want this anymore. Sometimes the person you love is a pain in the ass. He wished he could have left it that. The rain drummed on the roof like the turning of a million dusty pages.
He felt suddenly tired, fifty years of coffee gone sour. With each step it became harder to remember what had just happened, or to believe it, or to remember why he’d wanted to know.
He was reaching for the handle on the door when the angel spoke again. It sounded different. Quieter, further away, as if only a memory of itself.
“When she cannot sleep she lies awake and hopes you still love her.”
Dan stopped dead in his tracks, and turned. “Of course I do,” he said, stricken. “She must know that, surely.”
The angel was fading now, the steady flap of its wings turning back to rain, the grey of its skin becoming cloud once more. As it stood, it turned into rising mist in front of his eyes, its words coming to him as cold wind, blown his way by the beating of those wings.
It said: “For her, the sound of the two of you talking together is like the smell of books. Do you think she doesn’t notice, when you believe you’re being good about being bored? Sometimes that’s why she keeps talking, because she panics when she fears you might not find her interesting anymore.”
It said: “This ‘peace and quiet’ you believe you want so much: what is it for? What thoughts do you harbor, so valuable they are worth wishing quietness upon someone who loves you so much? Meanwhile she fears for all the ways that things can go wrong in the world, and become still, and lose strength and fall apart.”
It said: “If she dies before you do, which she might, will you then still wish you’d spent more time in silence? When you live in that endless quiet after, in those years of deadening cloud and solitude, what might you be prepared to promise, to give, to hear just one word more from her?”
Then the wind dropped and it was gone.
Dan stood on the roof a full five minutes longer. When he stepped back through the metal door into the hotel, he found the book was gone. He hurried down the stairs, through the store cupboard, and ran to the elevator.
When he let himself back into the hotel room, he heard the sound of Marcia in the bath.
“Dan?” she said quickly, “Is that you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Where have you been?”
“Got caught out in the rain,” he said, carefully, not yet wanting to go in, not yet ready to see her face. “I’m sorry. Had to hunker down and wait inside somewhere while it passed over. I called the room. You weren’t here.”
“Fell asleep,” she said, sheepishly. There was silence for a moment. Then she said: “I missed, you.”
“I missed you, too.” He took his jacket off and hung it up in the wardrobe to dry. “You okay?”
“You know, I think I’m coming down with a cold.”
Dan rolled his eyes, but called room service to bring up tea, lemon and honey, before going to help wash her hair. She told him about the spa in the hotel. He told her about his walk, leaving out Pandora’s Books. The two of them sat companionably with their words in the warm bathroom, the world cold and wet outside. They decided to order food to their room. They watched TV, read a little, went to bed.
In the small hours of the night, while Marcia fitfully dozed, the listening angel came into the room and touched her brow, whispering to her to worry no more, for a while.
When Dan woke in the morning, Marcia was asleep next to him. It rained a little as they ate breakfast together, but after that the day was fine.
NOVUS ORDO ANGELORUM
Jay Lake
Desire
THE ANGEL OF DESIRE bares her breasts, nipples hard in the dreaming wind of night. Her hair flows from her head like smoke in the autumn sky. It is every shade of black and grey—desire is the province of each age of life, not just callow youth nor addled dotage nor even obsessed middle years.
Desire’s wings stretch wide as any angel’s, but their plumage is rare. They look to have been patched together from a very congeries of birds; the mountain teratornis and the lammergeyer, the great golden eagles of the Arabian desert and the condor in his snowbound fastness. Every child dreams of flight, waking to be mocked by the birds. Her wings bear the burden of those dreams, which unfold in later life to the wretched obsessions that drive men mad.
But it is in her eyes, the gaze of Desire, where this angel’s true power lies. They are rimmed with kohl, draped with lashes like a dark spray of rust. Their brown depths are drowning pools of lust. To catch her glance is to feel your heart stop, to feel blood cold in your arms and hot in your groin. No one, no age or gender, is safe from her eyes, so Desire wears a mask of silk and leather with a coiled snake worked upon it in tiny rubies formed from the blood of those she has loved.
In her hooded beauty she reminds us that Love is the greatest and most terrible of God’s gifts.
Despair
Desire’s fraternal twin Despair is a young man with hollow eyes and a sunken chest. His hair is the eerie pallor of the starving, the icy white frizz grown by a corpse in its coffin. His skin is so pale as to be almost blue. Despair looks like every student pulled from a morgue freezer, caught on the wrong side of that balancing point between potential and disaster.
His wings are different from his sister’s, composed of what might be called the ghosts of feathers, only brittle shafts and lacy ribs, without soft plumage to fill them out. Despair wears them wound close and tight to his body, just over the leather greatcoat that flaps around his calves. He dresses in torn black denim and an array of ropy scars. Everyone who ever cut themselves in his name has inflicted their own wound upon him.
Despair’s power is in his body. Even in shadow, the angle of his repose can cause a man to slump, a woman to turn away with tear-burned eyes. To meet Despair full on, his every muscle broadcasting the hopeless music of the world, is to lay down meek in the street and end your struggle.
He is both God’s invitation and warning to stray from faith.
Chance
There is another angel, distant cousin to those already named, the angel of Chance. Chance is an elegant young man. His blond hair flips back in a wave. He favors pastel polo shirts and stylish white slacks. His wings are discreet, a clever accessory to be admired by the matrons of River Oaks or Telegraph Hill, while granddaughters at the country club blush behind their Shirley Temples and whisper youthful scandal of Chance’s single silver earring.
Chance is not concerned with wagering, or the lottery, but rather the common happenstances of life. A missed flight, that relieves the annoyed traveler of death by burning jet fuel hours later in an Iowa cornfield. The flat tire that keeps the family Camry from a patch of black ice, leaving slick, spinning death for someone less favored. Hands bumping together over a book on sale at Powell’s, leading to coffee, then pizza, then a wild night of passion followed by a lifetime of contentment.
You could pass Chance on the street and never really know him except by the twenty-dollar bill you later find stuck to your shoe. Chance is God’s reminder to us that order is not one of the forces of the world.
Flora
Flora is the angel of plants and flowers. Her work is found among the world’s oldest and quietest citizens. She wears flowing silks borrowed from her friends among the mulberry leaves, and crowns of whatever blooms that hour and season, be it the moss rose or the orchid. Her wings are spiders’ webs, pale traceries glimmering by moonlight. It is the sight of Flora moving through the gardens of night that gave rise to legends of fairies.
Flora’s hair is all the colors of the natural world, a rainbow turned to river. Her eyes are the brown of soil one moment, the blue of water the next. Her smile is tiny, pursed, a soon-to-open rose. Her heart is just as thorny.
Do not mistake Flora for a benign power. Trees with their roots rend the mightiest works of man. The least lichen is the death of rocks. Your bones will someday be her province, once the worms have cast you out. More patient than Time, she carries worlds in her hands and love of all that grows in her heart.
No one knows what God thought when He set her into the world, but remember that it was sweet Flora who set the order o
f the plantings in the Garden. It was she that tended the orchards. It was she that placed the fig leaves where a shamed man might find them, and it was she that grew the apple tree where a woman of intellect might climb on advice of a snake.
Word
Word is the oldest angel of all. He is sometimes called “God’s grandfather.” He carries his age well. It shows only in the webbing of lines around his pale, blind eyes, and the stiffness in his step. He has a shock of red hair that lifts in a mutable fire from his head, so that Word is always as tall as he needs to be. His skin is dark as well-baked bread. His face is the face of Everyman.
Blind as he is, Word needs no cane, for his wings serve him well. They arch high as a house, more like the wings of a moth than a bird. Their sensitive fibers build for him a picture of the world. He wears no clothes for textiles would block his wings and pain his senses. Even in his nakedness Word is wrapped in glory.
Visitants-Stories of Fallen Angels and Heavenly Hosts Page 29