by Nina Post
She wore Mr. Orange’s wool pea coat, left hanging in the closet of his SSI office, one of the rooms where the SPs liked to watch the Cluck Snack Cartoon Hour. Mr. Orange was embroidered on an inside pocket. Did his mother call him Mr. Orange? His wife?
Af wore an unbuttoned dark coat and no hat, but the last time he went out in weather like this, he was in his angel of destruction form, and impervious to many conditions, including cold, she supposed.
More than fifteen minutes later, the fake Archie stepped out of a black Town Car, with Macarena in tow. The sturdy woman wore the least flattering dress possible, with a waist line right across the middle and a pleated sequined skirt. Her bun was pulled mercilessly tight.
No way she was his wife. Archie wasn’t married, and she imagined the Impostor, who waved to the crowd, would at least get that right. He held a fake smile all the way to the base of the Ferris wheel.
“It’s like A Face in the Crowd,” she muttered.
“What’s that?” Af said.
“Nothing. We can get a table in a minute.”
She watched the Impostor claim his Ferris car with Macarena, who did not appear to be a scintillating dinner companion. Kelly nodded to the wheel operator, who surreptitiously took down the ‘Out of Order’ sign on one of the Ferris cars.
The reservations agent gave her a thumbs up.
“Wow, eight p.m. is late, huh?” Kelly said to Af. “Hard to believe we’re outside.”
“I don’t leave my apartment before 10 p.m.,” he said, in that low, gravelly voice. “And I don’t get back in until three or four.”
All of a sudden, Kelly felt a ball of hot static form behind her nose and forehead as she remembered how her mother would come home later than that from a job, usually at dawn, and with an adrenaline high that would last the whole day. She turned her memory into a 2-D image, folded it, inserted it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, addressed it to Mongolia, and dropped it in a blue post office box. Done. But somewhere, a mail drop in Mongolia was stuffed with memories she didn’t want to deal with.
Stheno arrived alone in a bright red dress that clashed with her maroon-colored red snakes. Within a minute, Stheno located the Impostor, walked closer, paused, then walked even closer. She smirked, narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and tapped her claws against her snakeskin purse. Kelly shuddered; did Stheno have that purse made from the skin of her own snakes?
Stheno gave Macarena a withering once-over, and leveled a scathing, dismissive glance at Ferris as a whole before turning on her heel and stalking back to her car.
Kelly and Af climbed in to the empty Ferris car, which normally accommodated six people. The wheel operator left the door open. She took advantage of Af’s disguise and sat right next to him, their thighs, hips, and shoulders touching.
A waiter stepped into the car and served the bottle of Riesling she had pre-ordered. After he left, the wheel operator closed the door hard until it latched. The operator blew a golden whistle, and a moment later, the Ferris wheel was on its way for the first cycle.
She moved closer to Af and kept an eye on the Impostor, eating in the next car. The wheel moved up and soon the Imposter was below them.
Af stretched his arm around Kelly’s shoulders and pulled her closer. She rested her head on his arm. It was so easy. Why couldn’t she do this when as himself? Why couldn’t he?
“A toast.” He poured her a glass of wine. “To our date.”
“To our date.” She clinked her glass against his.
When they rotated back down to the base, a waiter rushed in and served their entrees, whitefish with risotto.
“I hope the fish isn’t from this lake,” she said, referring facetiously to the polluted lake underneath them. The waiter gave her a blank look and stepped out.
“They never get that.”
The wheel rotated back up. When they were almost to the top, she saw a shadow in her peripheral vision and glanced out the left window. A winged iguana the size of an orca let out a battle shriek before it bared its teeth and claws at a squid worm with spiraling appendages and compound eyes on stalks.
A stalky-spined slug with a long tail swooped in from the east, shooting darts from its head at the iguana.
Even when the darts penetrated its side and stomach, the iguana swung the hinged bones at the edge of its bird-like wings, slicing the slug under the spine and spilling white pus-like fluid that spattered across the Ferris cars.
They ducked. Customers screamed.
The iguana seized the slug by the tail and hurled it at the squid worm. The slug screamed with an urchin-like mouth, revealing rows of teeth that glinted like quartz, caromed off the squid worm and bit a chunk out of their Ferris car in consternation.
“Of course it bit our car.” She pulled a roll of electrical tape from her pocket and patched up the hole.
“What was that?” Af held the edges of the plates to keep them from sliding off the small table.
“Just Roger.”
“Roger!” Af looked astonished, but squinted at her like he had no idea who Roger was. “Wait, who’s Roger?”
Kelly sighed and checked on the Impostor. He read the paper with his glasses on and Macarena stared straight ahead. Weird.
She’d play along with Af and pretend that he didn’t know Roger. “Roger Balbi. He was the manager of Amenity Tower, got promoted to regional manager, then ascended into a giant winged iguana.” Which he saw happen, but she wouldn’t mention that.
She considered the situation, studied the monsters’ kinesiology and attitude, and took a deductive leap. “You know how Amenity Tower is Pothole City’s finest luxury condominium?”
Af dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “I suppose.”
Like he didn’t know. “Yeah, well, Claw & Crutty has other regional managers, so maybe Roger is defending his territory against them, or regional mangers from other cities. Or he just likes fighting other flying monsters. Hard to say, really.” She leaned over the narrow table and scooped up the last of her risotto.
“When?” Af asked.
“Now. It’s not a ticketed event. Maybe you noticed the giant slug gnawing on our car a second ago?”
“He still works for them, Claw & Crutty?”
“As far as I know, he was promoted, but you’d have to check his LinkedIn page.”
“This promotion must not require much paperwork,” Af murmured.
The squid worm pushed Roger further back toward the Ferris wheel.
“So you’re eating a lot earlier than normal, huh?” She raised her voice over the battle cries in the sky.
Af cringed. “Yes. I normally don’t eat this early. Because I’m a night owl. I own a bar, and sleep during the day…”
She smiled. He was terrible at this, at being someone else.
The squid worm thumped against their cab at the top of the wheel, sending a vibration through her bones. It squeezed the top of the car with its muscles, spiral appendages bouncing in front of the west-facing window as it rocked the car.
The plates went flying and shattered. Af swore.
“Do you have family in town?” Kelly asked, after the squid worm flew off again and the Ferris car had finished rocking wildly.
“I have family far away, but I have some here, too.”
“Oh? Tell me about them.”
A wasp the size of a helicopter buzzed in from the northeast. It clasped its serrated legs onto the slug, flew it over the lake, dropped it, then buzzed back and hovered in front of the Impostor’s cab. The Impostor pounded on the windows, hysterical, while Macarena remained unruffled.
“I’m not from here, and they made me feel less alone,” Af said. “They made me want to stay, even when I wanted to go back home.”
That sounded a lot better than Medusa’s family.
The slug blasted up like a rocket by the huge wheel.
“Hold on.” She grabbed a pipe in the car and gestured for Af to grab the opposite one.
The slug clutched the top of the wheel, causing
the wheel to sway and the cars to rock.
“I think he’s recovering before he goes back out again.” Kelly pointed to the slug’s red spiny tail that snapped back and forth, randomly smacking Ferris cars, cuts dripping white goo.
The slug roared, but lacked the puissance it displayed earlier. She read the slug’s roar as, “I’m sick and tired of battling another manager to the death for a lousy regional position that’s probably not worth the effort. I went to all the trouble to ascend and look what it got me. Maybe I’m not cut out for this line of work. I think I really want to work with wood, but I don’t know how to de-ascend.” But she could be wrong. She could be projecting. She knew what it felt like to work hard to achieve a goal and then feel empty and dissatisfied.
The slug got its second wind and bit into their car again with that adamantine-toothed urchin mouth, and peeled off the entire side. Kelly and Af held on to the left side as the slug tore the car right off the wheel and bounced it on his tail like he was getting ready to serve it over a net.
“Get out and grab something!” Kelly yelled to Af, happy she had gone with dark jeans and boots instead of the dress. They jumped from the car before it fell into the lake with a splash, and landed on the Impostor’s Ferris car. She took out her phone.
“You’re calling someone now?” Af said.
“Seems a good a time as any.”
Af shook his head. “Suit yourself. I’m outta here. Gotta open the bar soon, anyway. I’ll call you.” And with that, he slid down the center pole to the bottom.
She looked down and watched him jump onto the operator’s base before lowering himself to the ground. He waved, and ran off.
Maybe he was better at being someone else than she thought, because that Af would never leave like that. Was his new vessel influencing him somehow? She exhaled and shook her head.
A moment later, she had Hamlet Gonzalez on the phone.
“It’s Kelly, with SSI.” She kept one arm curled around the bearing that connected to the wheel and latched another part with her foot.
“Thank you for calling me,” Hamlet said over the phone, “but we won’t be needing SSI any further on this matter. We found our missing president.” He sounded pleased with himself.
“No you didn’t,” she said, matter-of-fact.
“We did!” Hamlet said. Still pleased, with a defensive note creeping in.
“Describe him.”
“Tall, confident, with a beautiful new bride on his arm.”
She laughed, then maneuvered herself so she hung upside down from the top of the Impostor’s Ferris car. The Impostor and Macarena didn’t even notice her head suspended in their front window.
Macarena displayed the facial expression and body language appropriate to misplacing one’s reading glasses after a long day on the firing squad, whereas the Impostor shouted hoarsely as he pounded the side window with a fist, as though a passing helicopter might stop to rescue him.
The wind chilled Kelly to the bone and made her eyes water. The tears ran over her forehead and into her hair, and she wished she had had the foresight to bring the polycarb goggles.
“I have a strong feeling that the real Archie Driscoll is neither tall nor confident,” she said in a raised voice on the phone to Hamlet Gonzalez. “Also, that ‘beautiful new bride’ is a Bolivian wrestler known as “The Pulverizer.” She’s frequently hired by drug kingpins and dictators for wet work. That’s just not Archie Driscoll’s type.”
“Hm. Now that you mention it, that does sound… not right.” Hamlet’s voice lost its cheerful sureness. “Where are you calling from? I hear a strange noise in the background.”
“I’m at Ferris. That noise you’re hearing is the wheel falling apart.”
“Oh. Oh my.”
“So I should go,” she said, as the wheel turned. “But think about what I said, Mr. Gonzalez.” She tossed the phone into the lake far below.
The iguana formerly known as Roger Balbi, beloved local access host of What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi, rolled in a mid-air tussle with the squid worm toward the wheel. The slug flicked his red stalky tail and launched off the top of the wheel to either get out of the way or jump into the fray, bending the metal in the process.
She tightened her legs around the connecting bearing on top of the car and raised her arm to wipe her eyes with her sleeve. Her eyes watered but it had also started to rain down what the meteorologists called a wintry mix, and her coat had slipped off her and dropped into the lake.
The Impostor’s car swung side to side. Something metal snapped, and the car tilted precariously at an angle. He scrambled out and grabbed on to the wheel below Kelly.
She took hold of the bar above her, slick with whatever the slug had been bleeding out, and slipped. Her palms gripped the sides of his car as she fell. She landed on the car below his with a thud and grabbed a pipe.
The wheel shuddered to a stop with a grinding sound, as though the operator had finally looked up and noticed a monster battle in the sky.
She hung from the pipe, knowing she couldn’t hold out that long despite her physical strength and mental endurance. The slushy rain plastered her hair to her eyes and soaked into her clothing. Hypothermia would set in soon.
She thought about Af and his new vessel, and wondered how it afected him. She took the thought and made it into a hummingbird that buzzed off into the night. But then she pictured Tubiel bringing it back to her. Note to self: don’t turn unwanted thoughts into small birds.
The Impostor’s car snapped all the way off and plummeted to the lake but she didn’t hear a splash. A moment later, Af rode up on the iguana, outfitted in his original Angel of Destruction form.
“Af. Roger.” She nodded politely at Af and the gigantic winged iguana, as though this was a completely normal situation, as though most of her dates went like this, and as though she didn’t also happen to be hanging onto a Ferris car for her life.
“Mind if I paint this on the side of a van?”
Her fears about Af’s new vessel were assuaged. Roger flew closer and Af took her in his huge hand. He curled his black claws around her and took her off the wheel, setting her down on Roger’s rough back.
“I feel like Fay Wray,” she said. And a block of ice.
Even though she wanted to enjoy this aerial tour of Pothole City on the back of the former manager of Amenity Tower, and with the angel of destruction she was kind of dating, she fell asleep after thinking that she did know Af.
The situation was so strange, she also idly worried that she died on the ferris wheel, and conjured this fiction her mind constructed to smooth over the liminal edge of her death.
“She can fall asleep anywhere and eat anytime,” she heard Af saying as she fell asleep. She smiled, maybe just in her head, because it was true. She could sleep anywh …
Kelly woke up on the roof of the SSI building.
Af, the size of a brontosaur, blinked at her with shiny black eyes.
“Just be Af,” she mumbled.
“What?” He tightened his brows as he bent closer to hear her.
She tried to sit up as she realized she said that out loud. “Um. Where’s Roger?”
“He left after I taped him up.” Af held up her roll of electrical tape, which had stayed in her one of her jean pockets the whole time.
“Did he win?” Kelly pressed her temple, then rubbed her eyes.
“He held his ground,” Af said. “It’s not over yet, though.” He lifted her in his arms like she weighed no more than one of the SPs, and hopped off the roof onto the fire escape, but his muscles absorbed the impact and she barely felt a thing. He opened the window and put her inside on the marble floor before squeezing through himself.
“Wait, Archie’s Impostor!” She leaned against the wall, dizzy. “His ferris car―”
“We caught it and put it on the ground.” His voice sounded like the Amenity Tower Barry Blower motor in the mechanical room. “Actually, we dropped it, but they’re probably
fine.”
“And the rest of the people in the cars?”
“Evacuated.”
“Their bowels? Wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Evacuated from the cars,” Af said.
Kelly shivered.
“Go take a warm shower.”
Tubiel emerged from Mr. Orange’s office wearing pajamas with penguins on them. He took her shoes and ran into her bedroom as she walked down the hall toward the bathroom on the left, which had four toilets and two showers.
Kermit took her jacket, and Dave steered her toward the right door. She looked over her shoulder. Tubiel carried a pile of folded clothing over something fuzzy. He padded down the hall to the bathroom and put the stack of clothes on the hamper.
Ten minutes later, Kelly emerged wearing SSI-labeled blue sweatpants and matching sweatshirt. Af sat by the wall, huge legs pulled up to his massive chest, arms around his knees―but with the SPs around him.
Kermit lassoed Af’s horns, Firiel peered at Af’s thick maroon-colored skin with a magnifying glass, Ilaniel pushed back Af’s cuticles with a stick, Zack stuck banana labels all over Af’s back, Methiel buffed one of Af’s huge canine teeth, and Dave rested against Af’s flank, napping.
“Stay for coffee?”
Af stood, though he was still hunched over. The SPs scattered, some of them into Mr. Orange’s office. “Changing forms makes me tired.”
She almost said, ‘Keeping the same form makes me tired.’ It was changing her form that energized her. “I was on a date.”
“Oh, really?”
She cocked her head. “He took off, though.”
Af opened the window with one claw. “Hard to blame him for that, but he sounds like an idiot.” He stepped onto the fire escape, closed the window behind him, and flew off.
“Bye,” she said, exhausted.
She crawled into bed. Tubiel and Firiel softly played xylophones outside her open bedroom door.
he three fallen angels on the Board of Directors of Amenity Tower were reluctant to form a quorum, owing to the absence of their treasurer and the member-at-large. They spoke quietly in their chairs behind the round table by the window. Residents took seats.