I wouldn’t call it winning. I don’t know what I’d call it. But at least it seemed we were free.
“Yeah,” I told her, settling on the easiest reply. “We won.”
5
Strong whiskey was the order of the day when we got back inside, because Lord, did I need a drink. Jameson’s in glass tumblers, noice. I had the waitress leave the bottle at the table where Nita and I sat with Miki and her friend Tommy.We still had a half hour before Miki and I had to start our next set.
“I can’t believe you let me go into that so blind,” I told Miki.
“Shut up and drink your whiskey.”
“No, really.”
“I told you why. It was so that the butter spirit wouldn’t get a hint of what I had planned.”
“But how could you know the Grey Man would swallow him and let me go?”
Miki shrugged. “I listened to your story, then I talked to Nita about it. I knew the butter spirit didn’t have a hold on you except for his malice. He couldn’t offer you as a tithe. But if I’d mentioned it to you, he could have heard and made a different plan.”
I was only half-listening, my attention now focused on the other thing that had been so troubling to me.
“And I can’t believe you put Nita in that danger,” I told her.
“I had to make sure you were both free of his spells. She had to be here for that. Besides, although you won’t get them to admit it most of the time, the spirits are big on courage and true love. I figured with the two of you there, you’d show both.”
“It’s okay,” Nita said, putting her hand over mine and giving it a squeeze. “Once she told me how it would go, I agreed to it.”
I shook my head and used my free hand to have another sip of the whiskey. I knew I’d be playing very simple chords when we got back onstage for the next set.
“I don’t even know how she got hold of you,” I said.
“Oh, that was dead simple,” Miki told me. “Once I knew she worked for the city’s social services, it was easy to get her number.”
I glanced across the table at Tommy. Of the four of us, he was the only one not drinking the whiskey. He had a ginger ale on the table in front of him.
“You don’t seem much surprised by any of this,” I said to him.
That seemed to be the tag line of this whole sorry affair.Maybe I should have been more surprised by people not taking it all at face value.
He shrugged. “I grew up on the rez with the aunts. There’s not much that surprises me anymore.”
“I never got to thank them.”
“I’ll pass it on for you.”
“So, are you happy?”Miki asked.
She looked from me to Nita, beaming with the look of someone who’d not only got the job done, but got it done well.
“Very,”Nita assured her.
“And will you be together now?”Miki asked.
I met Nita’s gaze and saw the love shining in her eyes, just as I knew it was in my own.
“Of course you will,” Miki went on before we could answer. “Lord, I love a happy ending. I should go back to Ireland and take up matchmaking. It’s a respectable profession there, you know,” she told Tommy.
“Yeah,” he said. “I saw the movie.”
“What movie?”
“The Matchmaker.”
“Oh, please.”
I gave Nita’s hand a little tug, and we left the two of them to go on at each other while we went outside to get a breath of air. It was a gorgeous night, the sky so full of stars that even the electric aura of the lights of Harnett’s Point’s couldn’t put a damper on them.
“It’s hard to believe we’re finally free of that little bugger,” I said. “I didn’t think we’d ever be able to do anything but talk on the phone.”
“Stop wasting time,”Nita told me.
Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and drew me down for a long, deep kiss.
Peace in Heaven?
BY ANDREW M. GREELEY
No one in The Commons that Samhain night could have imagined that they were witnessing the possible end of a war in heaven.
The Commons is an elegant and excellent little restaurant in the basement of Newman Hall, site of the original Catholic University and unhappy home for several years of both John Henry Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Just across the street on the Green is the marble bust of your man who wrote the dirty books. On that particular Sunday evening the diners were refined and polished disciples of the Celtic Tiger who had for the most part come downstairs after Mass in the chapel. No one would confuse the Sunday night crowd in The Commons with a crowd in a soup kitchen, not that there were any such in the city by the black pool anymore, or a pub on Sean MacDermott Street.
These discreet haute bourgeoisie would never stare at anyone. Quite the contrary—when someone appeared who might merit a stare, they would lower their eyes, much as novices of both genders had been taught to do in an earlier form of Irish Catholicism.
Yet when the last two couples entered the dining room, everyone else violated the behavior code of their culture and stared, particularly at the two women. They were, truth be told with the usual sigh, well worth staring at. The woman in the first couple was tall and statuesque, with burning red hair piled on top of her head. She wore a form-fitting white cocktail dress, sustained in place by thin straps on her shoulders. Her husband was even taller, silver hair, searing blue eyes, devilishly handsome in a flawless dinner jacket and a blue cummerbund. Someone very important whom you knew you had seen recently on the telly. But you couldn’t quite remember his name.
They were followed in five minutes by a second couple, even more striking. The man was black, very tall, and with a diamond in one of his earlobes and a scarlet cummerbund as though he were a cardinal. By the solid build of him, an athlete, again someone you’d seen on the telly, maybe in a film (pronounced the correct way “filum”) in which he was the leader of the good ones.His consort was the most striking of the four, snow-white hair flowing to her shoulders, arctic blue eyes that took in everyone in the room in a quick blink, flawless buttermilk skin on which rested a pale gold pendant, a strapless pastel blue gown that clung to her full-figured body, and a faint smile that suggested that she was in charge. She might have stepped out of a Celtic revival painting of Irish antiquity.
As the other diners returned to their conversations and focused their eyes on the salad and the hock in their glasses, they wondered in whispers who the four were and, most important, how old they were. They were not children or adolescents or even young urban professionals. They had reached a certain age, probably between forty-five and sixty, but had the time and the money to take care of themselves. They were bushed and smoothed and shaped—exercise and diet and cosmetics and well-fitted bras and support garments and certain kinds of reconstructive surgery, aristocrats of one sort or the other, probably not Irish even if they spoke to the maitre d’ in the finest upper-class Dublin English—finest English in the world, it is often said.
When seated at the table they began to talk a foreign language, magical in its soft and melodic hum, not The Irish, not anything remotely like The Irish, yet somehow peaceful and reassuring like The Irish as it was spoken on the far reaches of the Gaeltacht where the waters from Newfoundland washed up on the sands.
The men among the other diners tried their best to keep their eyes off the two women, a challenging task. The women diners noted with some curiosity that the formalities when the two couples met, the kisses and the handshakes, were a bit strained, almost artificial, as though there might have been a difficult history among them and some doubt that the future would not be equally difficult. It was, one woman who worked for the foreign office thought, not unlike the preliminaries of a meeting about the next phase of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
In that respect she had the right of it. However, she and the other diners were not close to the truth in their estimates of the age of the four and in their gue
sses about the amount of exercise and corsetry that might have been necessary to turn out the apparently flawless figures of the women. All four handsome people had been around for a very long time and were quite senior among their own kind.While ethereal bodies, like all bodies, do decay, the process is very slow. No one in either constituency had yet died of old age, though that was always a possibility. They knew they would die eventually, one way or the other, as many of their kind had. Till then, however, they would take care of themselves and love as though tomorrow might be the end. Moreover, the wondrous bodies of the women were not exactly their reality. Rather they were surrogates for even more dazzling beauty.
As they sipped Bushmills Green (straight up, of course, because whatever they were, they were not Yanks who put ice in everything), they chatted amiably about the things that Irish men and women discuss at Sunday evening suppers—sports, the latest political scandal, the stupidities of Church leaders, the world news, the idiocies of American foreign policy. Not a word under the circumstances could be said about children. They avoided any mention of the reason for their meeting. Only when the plates had been removed and the sweets consumed, and the coffee and the port served, did they, like all the other Irish, turn to the matter at hand.
“Well now, Mike,”said Maeve, she of the scorching red hair, “what’s this about reconciliation? We all of us know that question was closed long ago.”
Michael lit his cigar and puffed on it thoughtfully.
“You know as well as I do,Maeve, that the Other never closes the door on anyone.”
The two couples, you see, represented the remnants of the original war in heaven—Mike and Gaby the side of the Seraphs and Maeve and Mac(Lir) the side of the Shee. Gaby, the smartest and most perceptive of these distinguished folk (not for nothing had she been sent to Nazareth), thought that she would much rather sit down across the table from Ian Paisley than persuade the Shee that peace was possible between the ancient rivals. She loved Maeve and Mac—Seraphs are programmed to love, though not fated to do so. Yet there had been so much hurt, so much pain . . .
“We are not all persuaded,”M ac said, a touch pompously, “that we want forgiveness. We have been Shee for so long that it seems rather more appealing than being Seraphs.”
Gaby had told the Other in no uncertain terms that it had been a mistake to send the Shee to Ireland. “They’ve been there so long,”sh e had argued, “that now they think and act like they’re Irish. They never say what they mean, and they never mean what they say.”
Many of the Seraphs said that Gaby was the Other’s favorite. Hence she could say more than anyone else would dare to say, and the Other would merely laugh, like an amused parent with a winsome little girl. Gaby insisted that the Other had no favorites. However, she knew better.
“That’s not the issue,Mac.”Mike sipped his cognac thoughtfully. “You don’t have to become Seraphs . . . In fact, you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”
“Why is the Other suddenly so interested in forgiving us?”M aeve demanded, her face turning red. “We’ve been out of favor for a long time? Why can’t he leave us alone? Why has He changed his mind about us?”
Gaby pictured the Other as a She, not a He. However, the Other combined the perfections of both. Yet as she often said, if you’ve ever held a newborn offspring, you know that’s how the Other feels about all Her creatures.
For a millennium of millennia the Shee had complained about being outcasts. Now they were arguing that they liked being outcasts. Typical. Gaby wanted to respond furiously that implacable forgiveness was in the very nature of the Other.However, she tried to contain her displeasure.
“The Other hasn’t changed, Maevie. You’ve never been out of favor.”
“Do you call endless exile in this soggy, foggy island favor?”
“But you picked it,”M ike pointed out. Gaby’s companion was a great and good being, but logic was not what the discussion required. Gaby had warned the Other that the Shee had absorbed the Irish love of an argument for the sake of arguing.
“Much choice we had!”M ac joined the argument. “The Other said it was time to go to work running this crazy universe and that if we didn’t choose to work, we’d have to leave our home and go live on earth.We saw this green island down here, as green as home, and said we’d go there because it was the place on earth most like home. We didn’t realize that it was green because it rained all the time. And the Other didn’t warn us that we’d have to share it eventually with the Celts—noisy, contentious, drunken savages.”
Poor Mac was still angry and still giving speeches.Well,we’d have to let him vent for a while, though it might take him another millennium or two.
There had never been a real war in heaven. And it wasn’t in heaven anyway, but in the home where they had all lived in peace and plenty and happiness.Mike had never waved a fiery sword at anyone. The Other had not sent anyone plunging into flames. He had merely made it clear that those who didn’t want to work would have to go somewhere else, anywhere else. No one had thought it would ever come to that. But some of the angels had backed themselves into a corner and walked out because they didn’t think it was fair. The angels, you see, and especially the Seraphs, tend to pride, and, as they themselves would have said in defense, they have a lot to be proud about. They were also vain, but they had reason to be vain. Gaby was very vain about her human surrogate and was delighted at the attention she attracted.
She tried again, knowing that she was digging the hole deeper.They were replaying the scenario of a millennium of millennia ago. It seemed like only yesterday.
“You can come home,”sh e said, sipping from her jar of Bailey’s. “Or you can stay here in Ireland, which will become for you just like home, and we all can visit back and forth.”
“Gabriella,”Maeve said, her green eyes sparking fire, “you always were a silly little bitch. “The Other wants us to admit that we were wrong.We’re not about to settle for that shite.”
“That’s a little strong, dear one,”M ac cautioned his companion. “There is no point in offending the Other.”
Maeve took a deep breath, then reached out and touched Gaby’s fingers. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. Sure, it’s not you I’m angry at.”
If any of the other diners had been watching closely, they would have wondered if they had not seen a stunning display of multicolored lights leap back and forth across the table, lights into which the two women were transiently absorbed.
“ ’Tis all right, old friend.We understand.”
Mike waited till the strength of that sudden blast of love had abated before he spoke.
“We’ve been separated too long,my friends. It’s time to end it.”
“I wonder if that’s still possible.”M ac became the orator again. “It’s been a long, long time. You have found your work to be satisfying, even though it’s nothing more than correcting some of the imperfections in the Other’s cosmos. We, on the other hand, have become content with the joys of Irish country life. Why is not the Other content to let it be so? Surely He doesn’t need our help merely because of globalization?”
Filled with love for these two old friends, Gaby tried to cut to the quick.
“Are you satisfied with night rides on your splendid steeds, dancing till dawn in the meadows and scaring the living daylights out of these poor people . . . Besides, do they scare that easily anymore? Has not the Church finally won out? Does anyone believe in the Shee?”
“Does anyone believe in Seraphs anymore?”M aeve shot back.
“Have you seen the angel shelves in bookstores?”M ike asked.
“You are not claiming, are you, that the people who write such books understand what you really are?”M ac said. “The readers are mostly frightened and superstitious people. As are the people in the West. They love it when we scare them. They’d be brokenhearted if we ever stopped.”
Gaby tried to return the discussion to the issues. It was a difficult task because the Other had gi
ven no hints about the reasons for declaring peace in heaven, a peace the Other seemed to believe had always been there.
“As we all know,”sh e tried to state the question, “the Other often does not reveal His strategies. Now there is to be peace in heaven, peace between you and us and between the Other and you. Or more precisely, the Other wants the existing peace accepted and recognized. That’s all.”
“Like nothing ever happened!”M aeve was becoming angry again.“What about those who have died? Are they forgiven too? What about the offspring which we have all too rarely? Is the Other going to make all of this retroactive if we are willing to take an occasional assignment?”
Gaby would not touch the offspring question. She had always believed that offspring required passion between companions, and that passion was incompatible with a lazy life.However, it was not the time to suggest that. If the Shee could be stirred out of their lethargy, they would mate more often, and there would be more offspring.
Mike intervened again.
“We have suffered losses too,”h e said soothingly. “We live with hope and the fidelity of the Other to the Promises. As you know, Gabriella lost her first companion to a sudden burst of negative gravity.”
Maeve touch her hand again. “The good Light Bearer. I’m so sorry, Gaby love. So very, very sorry.”
Tears sprung into Gaby’s eyes, as they always did when the Light Bearer was mentioned. For a moment she felt fury at the Iranian influence on popular Christianity that implied that the Light Bearer was a bad angel, when in fact he had been the best of the angels.
“We will all be together again,”sh e said with a sigh that was almost Irish. “All of us.”
Maeve was crying too, her lovely surrogate breasts moving up and down with emotion. Doubtless the male human diners would be stricken with desire by such movement.Well, they could work that out with their wives later. Gaby spread some seraphic dust in the dining room,which would make the humans more attractive to their companions. If they could see life-bearing Seraphs as we really are, she thought, the beauty of our nurturing organs would drive them mad with hunger.
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