It was Charles’ turn for elation. “He cannot open doors!”
“Aye, he’s too weakened by the symbols of good that surround him.” Death toasted Angelico with the wine. “And the monks will not assist him, I assure you.”
“But what has that to do with Kha'zar?” Charles said.
“Weakened though he is, Torquemada is outside of hell and still has the remnants of a will. Satan will send Kha'zar to rescue him lest he hear the sacred name and repent,” Angelico said. “And Kha'zar does not know of your reconciliation. If we send word you are disgruntled with the tribunal’s decision, Satan will believe you’ll conspire again.”
“You are suited for the role of traitor, having played it well before,” Death said.
“What my dreaded friend means to say, if clumsily, is that your one stellar performance deserves an encore,” Angelico interrupted.
Charles cast his eyes to the corner of the room in hesitation, then shrugged. “If you say so. But how do we let Satan know of Torquemada’s predicament without tipping our hand? ”
Before their eyes, Death turned horrible and said, “Tonight at midnight, an executioner will release the spirit of Madman Michael Stokley, whom I will escort to the Styx. I will call upon my brother, and tell him the outcome of the hearing did not please all who attended. And it’s true. Torquemada most certainly was not pleased. Suffering will assume I am speaking of you, Charles, and will gleefully tell the demons who come to taunt the damned.”
“Kha'zar will waste no time applying a disguise, and you will arrange to meet him on Earth to make your plot. We’ll take it from there. Agreed?” Angelico said.
Charles held out his hand and a skeletal hand rested on his. “Agreed,” Charles said. They looked at Angelico, and the monk briefly clasped his hands together in prayer before laying his hand over the cold bones of Death.
****
As beginnings go, the meeting had been strained but fruitful. Charles exited in his finery, sworn to secrecy—a heavy burden for one known for bravado—and leaving his coconspirators pondering the uneasy truce and other important matters. Once more afflicted with genius and without Maddie's affection to temper its predations, Albion Rector was sliding into insanity.
“What does Stoker see in his dreamscapes?” Angelico said. “Does he not leave the man messages of sensible self-regard?” He busied himself with sweeping up the ruffled feathers Fate had left behind.
“He hasn’t a knack for making oatmeal and warm cocoa.”
“Magic remedies are a woman’s talent, that’s true.” He picked a peacock’s eye fallen from Charles’ hat and marveled at its iridescent blue and green. He wanted to keep the feather in a golden vase to challenge his mixing mastery, but handed it instead to Death who eyed its beauty closely.
“And Stoker says drugs keep Rector’s spirit shrouded in fog.”
“Raphael complained of the same about many he tried to reach.”
Death sneezed. “Credo keeps Kha'zar away from Angelo, but Rector has no protection from the demon’s constant pestering.”
“All the more reason we mustn’t fail. Does Maddie know, I wonder, how important she is to so many? Mother, wife, lover, and friend.” He put his broom and dust pan in the corner, and saw that the Dark One had returned to the window where outside canaries and orioles competed with the sun for yellow brilliance, and noted Death seemed diminished, as all men were, by things they cannot control. The forces of the Spirit World could best Hell’s best warriors, but could not fathom the ways of women.
Brought Down
"You're important to the plot, so say your lines and let Death recoup his pride," Time advised, seeing Charles moping about his mansion in a pinstripe suit and patent black shoes.
"He vexes Albion Rector at some place called Old Town. I knew it once as Mexico." He changed his attire to Aztec leather and a beaded and plumed headdress, then again into a madras shirt and cut off shorts. Time laughed. "Yes, I know how ridiculous these humans appear in their costumes," he said, and she remembered why he was called "the charming".
"In his studio?"
"Oh, no. Genius bars the door while Rector works his miracles with the brushes. It's when the artist tries to resume his life that Kha'zar taunts him to distraction. I hear he's become quite hideous. Unkempt and wasted."
"Demons are always ugly."
"No, I mean Rector." He wrinkled his face and grew a beard. "There, a fitting face for skullduggery." He sighed at his reflection in the mirror. "I must go."
Kha'zar had sent his message by a scraggly pigeon that found a home in Fate’s rafters. Time, now a child of seven, threw bread crumbs on the floor. "I'll wait for you."
Charles passed through the streets of the neighborhood unnoticed, as the aged often are, observing the varied forms life took on earth. So many people. So few animals. But everyone seemed pleasant, as they meandered through their spaces. Perhaps they were content to breathe without a preplanned purpose.
He paused to watch the Spanish dancers and spied Khaz’ar darting among the crowd. He picked the pocket of a man gazing into the eyes of his sweetheart, and knocked an ice cream cone from the hand of a child who puckered his face and cried. "There you are, you little imp," Charles said when Kha'zar passed by him.
"There's an old cemetery two blocks from here," Kha'zar said, and they transported to a deserted field filled with broken headstones hidden by weeds and wildflowers. An "off-limits to the public" sign hung on the fence, and a small Cat bulldozer stood in the center.
"I hear you lost your case," Kha'zar began. He'd assumed the guise of a California tourist and Charles resumed his SoCal shirt and shorts.
"The Guardian is remembered as a hero while I am scorned. Earth isn't the only place where insanity reigns."
"Well said. Look at this." He had opened the purloined wallet and tossed the man's credit cards into the air. "Bits of plastic. And a condom."
"Evidence of greed and hope. Why did you send for me?"
"To console you, of course. I know what it's like to be a laughing stock and I owe you a favor."
"It's always a pleasure to thwart the mighty Death. No legal acrobatics can compensate him for the invasion of his fortress." Like Satan's rage at another spy imprisoned cannot be soothed by the knowledge of temporary chaos in the Spirit World. "The Spirit World is full of pride and needs a catastrophe now and then to remind its inhabitants they aren't in heaven yet."
"If I'd been in the courtroom with the high and mighty, I'd have spoken in your defense. The Guardian must himself be guarded." Kha'zar felt his breastbone. "Like Samson blinded by Delilah's treachery, he stumbles, feeling his way down hallways and through doors—how I long to comfort him. But Death forbids me to visit."
"Perhaps Death needs another lesson in humility." Charles was only half deceiving, still chafing from being outwitted as well as shunned. Yet, to hear Khaz’ar speak of Angelo’s condition made him cringe. A demon bringing comfort—impossible.
"Then let's educate him."
"But how?"
"Inside the Dominican monastery is a captive spirit yearning to be free."
"One of the huddled masses?" Charles looked around casually. Where was Death? Had he forgotten the time?
"Indeed." Kha'zar produced a glass of bile and Fate changed it to lemonade. He leaned against the eucalyptus tree and fixed a look of thoughtful sadness on his face. "A reluctant monk grown tired of a wholly holy existence. A friend of mine from ages past, now suffering behind a door he cannot open."
"That's all that keeps him in?" Where was the fool Death when he was needed?
Kha'zar nodded. "That's all. You have but to open the door when the others are at prayer, and he can find his way out of that vile penitential place, and enjoy the delights virtue forbids. Especially if you take him a suit of clothes, he won't be recognized."
Charles feigned deliberation, and looked downward. Slowly, silently, the weeds were knitting into twine. "Tell me how he came to be a captive."
Kha'zar began his lies, telling how Death stole the hapless monk away in the middle of the dalliance with the shepherdess, not noticing the vine snaking around his ankles.
"You mean he died in the middle of...rutting?" Charles met the demon eye to eye, as though listening intently to the lurid tale, and Kha'zar, believing he was tempting Fate to impurity became all the more engrossed in his yarn.
"A virgin from Cordoba. Young and beautiful. With peaches on her chest and hair of waving wheat…"
Like an iron bear trap, the weeds snapped tight around the demon's legs, and Death appeared to grow out of the ground, grinning and grotesque, without a sound, snared the demon in his net, and disappeared without a word.
Charles stood still with wonder. Death’s stealth was great in the Spirit World, but nothing was more powerful on Earth. In human form, his feet planted in the earth, Kha'zar was as weak as any mortal—if only humans knew—and Death had come and gone before an eye could blink.
Alone with the broken remains of those who once had been bound by the law of gravity, Charles knelt and watched a potato bug crawling across a name engraved and fading on a headstone: Victoria Morales. This is why humans preferred freedom to Fate. Life was tragically brief. He remembered the young wife of Manuel Morales, ravaged by the pox. He nudged away the grass and saw the letters M-A-N.
"It grows late," Stoker said, and Charles looked into his smiling face. "Rector will be in his dreamy fog, but I'll try again to give him a message of hope. Without Kha'zar to interfere, I may get through tonight. Thank you."
Stoker to disappeared, and Charles looked to the Western sky and saw the sun move downward. It doesn't really, he knew, and yet the artifice was a beautiful imitation of the splendor that awaited on the other side of life. "Wait," he said too late for Stoker to hear. He wanted someone to see the brilliant pink sky with him. He found the potato bug, let it crawl on his finger, lifted it up, let it breathe a higher air, and called it Brother.
****
Gratitude from Stoker and pity for Angelo. Feelings too heavy to be borne in a single day. Charles sat in his orchard, waiting for Death to pay a job-well-done call, and contemplating what an apology should sound like. He could simply offer his hand and say, “Let bygones be bygones,” but that had the ring of equality between bygone-ees. Given the nature of another expected visitor, it wouldn't be the case.
“Tell me every detail,” Time had insisted when he returned. But there were no details worth relating except he wished she’d come with him. That was impossible, she’d asserted. The demon would have discerned a plan afoot. So he told her the barren truth. The capture had been quick and without incident. Death can linger or strike like a rattlesnake. He’s quite agile for his age, were the only embellishments he added. He did, however, happily yield to her wish to keep the pigeon as a pet.
Perhaps, Death waited for him to initiate the rapproachement. He imagined sitting before his hearth telling Stoker to make sure there was enough of his favorite wine to honor him, and decided he would bring his ghastly friend his favorite apples, and, depending on the response from Rodin, good news.
“You asked me to come,” Rodin said, “And I am here.”
Resisting the inclination to return ice for coolness, Charles welcomed the sculptor with a handshake. “Let’s sit here where it is most pleasant. That way, if I must entreat you, my knees will feel soft sod and not stone tile.”
“You invite me here to ask a favor?” Rodin sat down, more from dismay than from preference.
“Yes, but hear me out. I don’t want anyone to know the nature of my request lest they be tempted to praise it as a good deed when it is not.”
Rodin, no longer near sighted but habituated to having spectacles sit on his nose, adjusted his glasses. “When good deeds are discussed, your name is rarely spoken, I assure you,” he said with a slight smile.
“It’s about the Guardian—Angelo, I suppose we know him now.”
****
Rodin took the child’s left hand, although to all who saw it, it looked as if the child stretched it out of curiosity, and guided it along the neck of the horse, over the withers, and down the leg to the hoof. Now the right hand felt the fetlock, and ascended the back of the leg, up across the spine, and around the rump. Angelo eagerly, with both hands, felt the hair of the animal, the line of its neck as it bowed its head and nuzzled his shoulder as Credo often did in affection. The ears, the mane, the head, the jaw, and down the neck again.
“I see it,” Angelo whispered.
“Angelo!” his mother cried, “come away from the beast before he steps on you.”
“No, Mama. He won’t.” The hide was soft, the muscles supple to his touch.
“He’s alright, Signora,” Luka the wagon driver said, and lifted the boy onto the horse’s back. “This old girl wouldn’t hurt a horsefly.”
“Let the boy go,” Father Gonzaga said. And he said yes, when Angelo begged for some clay. Gonzaga brought him a five pound block and watched as the boy sunk his hands into it, and then squished it between his fingers.
“There’s a horse inside this clay,” Angelo said. “I’m looking for him.” The priest laughed, but day after day he came by the Ballesteros house to see how much of the horse Angelo had found overnight. “I need to see the backside,” Angelo said, and Gonzaga remembered the boy had not felt the tail.
Like Rodin had done, the priest guided Angelo’s hands up and down the back legs, and through the flowing tail. “It’s whitish-yellow,” he said though he knew Angelo had never seen color. He didn’t have to. He wouldn’t paint the rust-colored clay. When the statue was finished, it had the same knot on its knee joint that Luka’s Maderi had on her knee.
“Angelo’s hands are a gift from God,” Charles told Death as the two met at the pasture where Credo once roamed. It was, like Earth, a neutral place where neither Spirit need feel diminished. “To deny him his art would be a sin. Rodin’s agreed to be Angelo’s Muse. Already the boy has fashioned the face of his mother, a likeness, it’s said, that reveals her soul.”
“You knew of his talent and made sure it could find expression.” Gentle Death could not have foreseen Charles’ change of heart, nor his desire to keep his role a secret. “What moved you to mercy for the Guardian?”
“It’s said, Time waits for no man, but yesterday she waited for me.”
Reunited
Alby held one eyelid open, and stared up at the Maid. "Father Kellan's downstairs," she said, "shower and shave while I make coffee."
Since when does an employer take orders from the help? His other eye opened. "Did he say what he wants? Candles? Incense?"
"Don't be mean to a man of God."
Was she really digging in his dresser drawers and laying out clean underwear? Yes. He propped up his chin with a fist. "I'm not getting out of bed with you here. I'm naked."
She emerged from the closet, a shirt and jeans in hand. "Ayii, loco diablo.” She looked for his other shoe.
He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and hurried to the bathroom. "Tell him I'll be down in a minute," he called from the shower. Hurry is what he was trying to do. His legs felt like lead, and his hands were shaking. The electric razor would have to do.
"You look like hell," Kellan said when Alby staggered into the kitchen.
"You’re pale as death." He scratched his cheeks. The Priest could scare sinners into repentance with that fashion statement—long black cassock and a vulture’s neck. He steeled himself for an announcement of another church emergency. “Don’t tell me, the roof leaks and you need a humanitarian.”
"Your children see you like this?"
"The Children are in very expensive Catholic academies while their mother’s gone a’whoring." They glared at each other across the breakfast bar.
"You don't mean that."
Oh hell, he'd forgotten to comb his hair. He raked it with his fingers and smoothed it flat. "No, I don't. I'm pissed she doesn't even need my money. What fu
n is an ex-wife if you can’t complain about alimony with your cronies?" He didn’t have cronies. He was probably one of the few Southern Californians who didn’t. It made him special.
"Speaking of, Maddie sent me these." He handed Alby a set of photographs, who glanced at them quickly and put them on the counter face down. Lupe brought them a tray loaded with coffee and donuts, but neither man paid her any mind. Kellan devoured a chocolate glazed in under twenty seconds. Alby counted them. The Priest was nervous about something.
"So she's taking up sculpting. Not bad. The horse looks like a horse. The face looks like a face." He looked at the pictures again, studying the lines and curves of the figures. There were two views of the horse, two of the woman's face, and two of a statue of a man walking. "Who did these?"
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