Sleeping Late on Judgement Day

forty-six: bobby’s blessings

I CAN’T REALLY tell you what happened next—well, not much of it, anyway. I remember Caz wrapping her arms around me. I remember turning to put my face against her neck because losing Sam hurt so much that I didn’t know what else to do. Just as the fact struck me that she was actually there, Caz herself, the woman that I loved enough to go to Hell for, we were surrounded by astonishingly bright light. I couldn’t hear anything but the beating of wings and something that I swear to Jiminy Cricket was the sound of the world’s biggest, most spiritually committed choir. Then everything flew up into the air, or at least I did, we did—Caz was still there, sort of, but we were both fractured, flying apart, breaking up like light shattered by a prism.

And then nothing.

• • •

I woke up in my apartment. Not Caz’s apartment—mine. The one that I’d moved out of because of the infestation of swastika-shaped occult creatures, among other reasons. That apartment.

I had about three seconds after consciousness rolled in when I could lie there and tell myself that none of it had happened—that Sam was still alive, and Caz hadn’t been snatched out of my arms yet again. I wanted to believe it. God, how I wanted to. But although I was in bed, I was fully dressed except for shoes and yet not even slightly hung over. Something was definitely out of whack.

I jumped up and ran out of the apartment, then down to the street, stepping on sharp things I could feel through my socks and not even caring. I was desperate to know what day it was, and I got halfway down the block, stumbling and staring and probably terrifying the shit out of the other pedestrians before I thought to check the phone in my pocket for the date.

December 11th. Time had passed. It had been five days since Clarence and I stepped through that mirror smeared with my blood and into Kainos. Which meant that everything I remembered had actually happened. My world really had ended, and now I was alive again in some pathetic imitation place where everything I cared about was gone.

I returned to the building slower than I’d run away. I didn’t bother to go check the apartment where the Amazons had been. I was pretty sure the cleanup crew from Heaven had scrubbed away all forensic traces. It was probably even rented again. Heaven is thorough.

I found my most recent gun, a Glock 17, stashed in my sock drawer, along with several of my favorite knives. Like I said—thorough. They could do everything except put my heart back in my chest.

I got on the phone and called the office. Alice answered. “It’s me, Bobby,” I said.

“Oh,” said Alice. “Hurrah.”

Everything back to normal. Except it wasn’t, and it never would be. “What’s my current status?”

“Don’t worry, Dollar. I’m happy to drop everything just to answer a question that you should already know the answer to.” I heard a wrapper crackle, then the sound of Alice eating something crunchy while she searched the official database, or pretended to. “You’re currently on compassionate leave, whatever that means.”

“I want to talk to Temuel.”

“So go talk to him.”

“I want him to call me. Give him a message from me, tell him that.”

“I live to serve, Master.” Crunch, crunch. “Done. Any other ways you want to annoy me?”

I couldn’t think of any just then, so I hung up.

It was interesting to discover that I could have my insides torn out and still keep functioning as if I actually cared about living. While I waited to hear from Temuel, I called Clarence, just to see what the kid had to say. Ominously, his outgoing message, after a few formalities, continued, “And if this is Bobby, please let me know when I can call you. We really need to talk.” I didn’t leave a message, but I checked my own voicemail. Sure enough, the kid had left several over the last couple of days, all variations on a theme of “Call me,” but I just didn’t want to. Clarence had come through the disaster with flying colors, and I was pretty sure he was missing Sam just like I was, but I couldn’t bear the thought of one of his optimistic chats right then. I’d talk to him later, if I went on living.

While the Mule continued not to return my call, I wandered around the apartment like a depressed robot, checking things out. Heaven’s cleaners had been hard at work. The paint was new, the carpet was new—hard to get out those squashed-swastikid stains, I guess—and there was even food in the refrigerator, although it was laughably unready-to-eat. Somebody had badly misread my personnel file if they thought I was going to make a stir-fry from scratch. However, some brilliant soul had also left an unopened bottle of vodka in the freezer. Good stuff, too. So after another hour or so of waiting for a call from my archangelic supervisor and trying to find some music in my collection that didn’t make me feel like I wanted to bash my head against the wall—even Kind of Blue made me jumpy, which should tell you something—I gave up and opened the bottle. My kind superiors had offered me a first-class ticket to oblivion, and the only alternative I could see was to stay sober and sit around thinking about Caz and about Sam and about the big empty that had once been my afterlife. I decided it would be rude of me not to accept Heaven’s invitation.

• • •

A day later, give or take a few hours, after a long drunk and a series of nightmares so bad I’m not even going to talk about them, I was back on Planet Apartment, a bit hung over but more or less sober again, and in need of something to do to avoid going seriously, permanently crazy. It wasn’t like the heartache I’d had the first two times Caz had been snatched away from me. I didn’t have the strength for that, I guess. Maybe I had finally accepted the fact that the universe hated me. I felt like I was in a car with the fuel tank almost empty, the engine sputtering, still moving, but pretty soon all the momentum would be gone, and I’d coast to a halt in the middle of big, big nowhere. Until that happened, though, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but keep rolling forward, even though it was all but pointless. There were still some things I didn’t understand, and I figured I might as well satisfy that curiosity while I still had a little strength.

I called the kid and told him to meet me at the Compasses, hoping he’d have a few answers. I still didn’t know why I was even alive and free instead of banged up in Heaven’s equivalent of a supermax detention facility. Our bosses usually don’t like loose ends, and I was about as loose as they came.

To my shock and horror, I discovered that although everything else had been fixed up for me and returned to normal (as if such a thing was even possible), when I checked the parking spot for my apartment I found the same horrible yellow thing I’d been driving, Temuel’s taxicab. Apparently the universe was still having a few laughs at my expense. Just looking at it depressed me, so I decided to walk.

Clarence was waiting when I got there. Quite a few regulars were around as well, and it might have been my imagination, but it seemed like they were all trying not to make it obvious that they were watching me with keen interest. The only person who acted normally was Chico the bartender, who grunted in recognition, slid me a vodka tonic, then went back to cleaning glasses with a bar towel.

“I’m really glad you called me,” Clarence began, but I held up my hand.

“Just a second.” I downed half the drink. “Okay, better. You were saying?”

He gave me a look that had a little too much of Sam in it, except more disapproving. “You don’t need to do that, Bobby.”

“What? Drink? The fuck I don’t. Look, just tell me what you know and don’t slather it with happy-sauce.” I lowered my voice. “What happened? Is Anaita really gone? Dead?”

“Not dead, but definitely in heavenly custody. They froze her in some big blue block of . . . I don’t know what. Then they took her away. I’ve heard she’s already been tried and convicted.”

“What? Tried? You mean they had a trial already—the biggest one in centuries? Was it public?”

“In Heaven?” Clarence snorted. Some of my cynicism appeared to have rubbed off on him. “No. But everyone knows.”

I looked around the bar where everyone knew lots of things that I probably didn’t know. They looked like that didn’t bother them, but it sure bothered me. “What about the Mule? Why won’t he call me?”

Clarence shrugged. “Can’t say. I haven’t heard anything official about him, and I haven’t seen him either. But he’s still in charge of the San Jude departments, as far as I can tell.”

“Shit. They’re just going to sweep the whole Anaita thing under the rug, I bet. Did you make a report?”

“Report?” His smile was not a happy one. “I’ve been grilled by every fixer on Heaven’s payroll, I think. They wanted to know everything. Everything.”

“Shit. And shit. What did you tell them? Did you tell them . . . ?” I looked around. Nobody was paying attention except Monica’s friend Teddy Nebraska, who, as usual of late, was looking at me like he wanted to say something. I didn’t particularly want to be said-something-to, so I looked away. “Did you tell them about Caz?”

“No.” He frowned. “And they didn’t ask. I don’t know why. They didn’t ask about your trip to H-E-double-hockey-sticks, either. But they wanted to know everything about your . . . conflict, I think that was their word, your conflict with Anaita.”

I stared at him. The thing with Clarence, I could never tell if he said things like “H-E-double-hockey-sticks” to be ironic, or if he really was some reincarnated youth minister. “Okay, let me try another one. Why the hell am I free? Why did the cleaning crew go to all the trouble of re-doing my apartment and even filling my fridge with fresh crap I’ll never eat?”

“I don’t know, Bobby. But I think it’s out of our hands now. We just have to wait and see what Heaven decides.”

“Waiting,” I said. “I hate that.” But Teddy Nebraska had apparently decided that he hated waiting, too, and now he was finally making his big move. Clarence and I watched him walk over to our table.

The kid stood up. “I’m going to go get myself another iced tea.”

“Hi, Bobby,” Nebraska said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

I was torn between wondering why Clarence would walk all the way across the room for a drink containing no alcohol and wondering what the hell Nebraska wanted from me. I didn’t know him well, but of course I’d seen him a lot recently, with Monica. He dressed well, but with that faintly overdone look that suggested not too many decades back he would have been wearing a white Panama suit and a straw hat. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Sit down.”

“Thanks.” He slid into the booth and then just sat there. I wondered if he too, like Walter Sanders, had been approached by one of our superiors about me and had only now worked up the courage to tell me (when it was way too late to make any difference).

“What can I do for you?” I asked at last.

“Well, I’ve always admired you, Bobby—”

“Please. Today of all days, that kind of shit just makes my head hurt. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, Nebraska. Me, not so much. So please, just get on with it.”

He took a breath. “I don’t know if you know, but I’ve been seeing Monica Naber. Nahebaroth.”

“Yeah, I know.” If he thought this was the complaints department, I might have to pop him one in the mustache. “So?”

“So, I just wanted to . . . to make sure that was all right with you.”

I stared at him. I honestly thought for a moment he was putting me on. “Let me get this straight—you’re asking me if it’s all right for you to date Monica?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. First time since the snow and ash and the end of the world. “You’re joking, right? You and Monica set this up as a prank?” I pretended to look around for cameras.

Instead of being relieved or pleased, Nebraska seemed worried. “Does that mean it’s okay?”

“You’re serious—you want my permission? Did you tell Monica you were going to do this?”

“She thinks I’m crazy,” he admitted. “But I didn’t want you to think we were sneaking around behind your back. Everybody knows things have been tough for you lately.”

At another time I would have bent one of his fingers until he told me all the things that “everybody” knew, but at this point my shit was so muddled up I didn’t even care. “Look, Ted, Monica is a wonderful person. Well, she’s a wonderful angel—I’m not sure how good any of us are at ‘person.’ But she can make up her own mind, and she can see whoever she wants. Neither of us ever had a claim on each other. Frankly, she deserved better than me, anyway. If you’re the better, more power to you both.”

He looked as if a weight had been lifted. “So we have your blessing?”

I nearly said something mean. It was just so silly. I even looked around to see if Monica was watching, enjoying the whole stupid conversation, but the Compasses was pretty much stag right then, just a bunch of the boys in various states of looseness. Daytime tends to be guys-only, not because women aren’t welcome, but because most females have the sense not to spend the sunshine hours in a saloon. And as I looked around and realized I was really back—maybe not the same, but back on my home turf—a tiny bit of hopelessness lifted off me. Not enough, mind you. I still couldn’t imagine living much beyond the next day without Caz and Sam, I still couldn’t believe there was anything on this gray planet to keep me here, but at least I could see a little farther through the darkness than when I came in.

“You want my blessing? Then you have it. Monica’s one of the best. If she sees something in you that she likes, I’m willing to believe you’re a good one too, Nebraska. Be kind to her. Be kind to each other.” I lifted my hand. “God loves you.”

I wasn’t completely sure God loved anyone, to tell the truth, but at that moment, for some reason, I was willing to accept the uncertainty.

• • •

The rest of my visit to the Compasses was spent getting what Clarence had said confirmed by pretty much everyone else: Anaita’s fall was the talk of the angelic confraternity. It was known that the kid and I had been involved, and the fact that we were both walking around free suggested that the earlier bad things they’d heard about me had just been ugly rumors. I wasn’t quite so certain myself. I had confessed a whole lot of bad stuff to the heavenly inquisitor, Pathiel-Sa, and things like that didn’t just disappear. Heaven is forever, and that means the heavenly statute of limitations is at least that long.

But at the moment I was free—there was no arguing with that. I was free, and I was alive, and someone had painted my apartment. If I was going to find out what it all meant, it seemed I would have to stay alive a bit longer. I had already thought of an errand I wanted to run, and a few other matters had been nagging at me as well, although I hadn’t been sober enough to hear them very clearly.

Still, despite having at least one more day left on my personal calendar, I turned down Clarence’s offer of a ride and walked home. I also picked up another bottle of vodka on the way. These earthly angel-bodies are sturdy. You have to pour a lot of alcohol in them to shut down the kind of things I wanted to shut down, to silence the guilty, angry, lonely thoughts long enough to sleep.

I’m really not an alcoholic angel. I’m a self-medicating angel. I swear there’s a difference, even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on it just this moment.