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Disclaimer: “The Pretender” and all its characters belong to MTM or The Nazi Broadcasting Company (Fox) or one of those groups of rich white guys. I’m just playing and I’ll put them all back good as new when I’m done. Don’t sue.

Other legalities. This story is mine under common-law copyright, but it may be archived. October, 2000. Send all ego-boosting and critical comments to: cousindream@msn.com Flamers may be sent to Dick Cheney or Clarence Thomas. Rating PG-13 for sexual situation.

Summary: Jarod is cold, despondent, suicidal, sitting on a railing over a swift deep river, and not ready to confront Miss Parker.
Today’s uplifting high toned almost quote from soneone we all love and admire: “Do I look like I’m Little Miss +&%$^#@ Sunshine?”





IT’S A WONDERFUL PRETEND!

by R. Schultz







The snow - no, sleet - stung me, and there seemed more of it every minute. I pulled my jacket collar closer about me, but it didn’t warm me in the slightest. I understood now how a person could be frozen to the core. Frozen to the soul.



One side of my face appeared to be without sensation, and my shoes clattered on the bridge railing like I was doing a fast dance step. I debated taking my clothes off before I dived into the dark swirling waters. It was what suicides did, I’d read. Making a neat ending.



Unfortunately I doubted very much if I could get any of my buttons or zippers undone by now. So I just sat, shivered, and looked at the innocents I’d killed.



There seemed more of them than there had been three or four hours ago. Sir Gawain Jarod, seeking out the perfection of abstract justice, and not counting the bodies left in his wake. Not a pleasant thought, but I wouldn’t be on this railroad spur line bridge waiting to fall in if I could nerve myself to jump.



God, but it was dark! That little pair of lights at the far edge of the bridge, and the pair on the roof of that little building didn’t seem to shed much illumination on things. Just made the sleet and snow falling on me look prettier than it felt.



Watching faces flowing by, underneath my feet. There was that lady bartender, she hadn’t survived long, not with the Mob unhappy with her. I’d dragged her into my justice.



There was the undercover cop posing as victim to attract a serial rapist. I hadn’t realized I was watching the wrong fellow cop. Now she had eternity to relax from her marathons.



There were the two young Black secretaries. Out in the sunshine on their lunch break, enjoying the fountain behind them, the laughter of camaraderie. I hadn’t known my Target had prepared his own suicide in the form of a small bomb. Now both innocents beseeched me for their vanished youth’s.



And there was little.... But there were many. Practicing my Sims I had never fully understand how capricious Dame Fortune could be.

All those faces........



I was so cold I could begin to feel a razor-edged numbness deeper within myself. I welcomed that sensation. Let the nothingness center and grow and grow until I disappeared into it. Peace at last. Down there in that foam speckled blackness. My teeth had ceased chattering. I was.... I was....



“Sweet Holy Hell, Jarod,” she said, “couldn’t you have found some *&^%$#+ place without quite so much &^%$#@ snow and pain involved?”



Sleet was forming on my eyelashes, making it imperative for me to brush them clear before I could see. Looking down on the figure beside me.



Miss Parker.



She smiled up at me, taking a deep pull on her cigarette. “I thought you’d quit smoking?”



“The tales of my entrance into a non-smoking state of being have been greatly exaggerated.” Miss Parker pulled a new cigarette from a pack inside her leather jacket. She had to fight to light it from the old one she had been smoking. “A crock of merde,” she explained.



She flipped the old butt into the night, the arc of the glow disappearing suddenly into the swirl of angry river below. I almost fell in, watching it vanish. It was easier watching the woman beside and below me.



Here we were in upper state New York, on Christmas Eve, and she was dressed to stalk down her familiar corridors at the Centre. Nice dark red blouse, I thought it satin maybe. I could see much better now that a series of little lights had gone on in the girders of this maeger little bridge.



She was in her usual leather mini, and quite possibly in her four inch heels as well. It was hard to tell, in the storm. Strapped shoes must be hell by the time the snow gets as high as your ankles. She should have worn slacks and boots.



The gray leather coat looked infinitely warmer than mine did. Her mittens looked warm and comfortable as well. The sleet kept building up in her hair, however, and she continually had to clean snowy buildup off her panty-hosed legs. She didn’t look very uncomfortable, though.



“I don’t know about you, Jarod, but it looks like it’s colder than Lyle’s heart down there. I certainly wouldn’t want to jump into that. Give me a nice comfortable firefight with my sweet adorable step-mother, Brigid, any day of the week. At least you’d die reasonably warm.”



Miss Parker just stood there, comfortable as a catfish in mud. I’d heard that somewhere, but I’d forgotten where. A lot of things were getting confused by now.



“Well, if you’re going to take the coward’s way out, I wish you’d do it. That shed over there has a little stove in it and unless I’m mistaken there’s a fire in it. I’d bet it’s just Peachy keen and warm in there. I could be there instead of out here. This snow is destroying my hairdo. I don’t suppose you care, do you?”



The smoke she exhaled disappeared immediately in the snowy dark, and ice was forming up on my eyelashes again. Miss Parker circled around a couple of times, beating her arms against herself. I had been right. Heels with straps.



“Not to distract you, Jarod, but do you think you could share with me whatever the hell it is you’re so &^$#@% determined to suffer for? I mean, it’s cold out here, and I want to go home. Want to enlighten me a bit?”



“It’s the innocents,” I finally began. “I keep leaving innocent people behind me who didn’t deserve to die. They died because of my Pretends. They were bystanders who paid for my obsessions. They needn’t have died, but they did. Because of me.”



For a moment she looked up at me with that sour lemon quirk to her lips, and then shook her head, gazing down at the river. “If you say so, Lab Boy, but it seems pretty arrogant to me for you to claim everyone’s deaths to be because of you. I mean, doesn’t blind chance factor in this at all? You do something and because of that other people die?”



“Or get hurt very badly. Innocents.”



She puffed away, tapping the snow off her cigarette when it got too bad. “Tell me, Jarod, if you’re that important in the scheme of things, what happens when your socks don’t match. Is there another revolution in Asia? Or stub your toe. Do landslides occur in Venezuela? Or is that when your stomach grumbles?”



“I didn’t expect you’d understand...” I began.



“You better believe I fail to understand.” She had trouble glaring up at me with snow lodging in her eyelashes. Then she reached back and pulled out her Baretta. Nope. The black hole facing me didn’t seem any different or less menacing with snow accumulating on the barrel. It looked cold as Hades, snow or no snow.



“Listen, Jarod, you’ve got to stop this *&^%$#+ guilt pilgrimage and get down. There’s a nice warm fire in that shed’s stove and we can talk about your stupid soul-searching in there as well as out here. Did it ever strike you that I might be uncomfortable out here?



“Personally, I think if you don’t stop this romancing of your dark side, I should shoot you. That’d give you a fresh perspective!”



“I hate to remind you, Miss Parker, but you’re threatening to shoot a man who’s ready to fall into the river. Actually, go ahead. Then I won’t have to kill myself. You can do it.”



“Right,” she said. “Not a smart move.” She put the pistol back, then stuck her mittened hands in her armpits, trying to stomp her feet in those four-inch heels.



“Jarod,” she began. “You’re a very good swimmer now, aren’t you?”



“Not when I don’t want to save myself, no.”



“But you were a lifeguard once, right? Do lifeguards have an oath? You know, like Doctors do? On my honor I will do my best not to let anyone drown. Or something to that effect?”



“No oath, Miss Parker, especially one to save myself.”



“Nonetheless you’d feel obligated to jump in to save someone floating by underneath, though, wouldn’t you? Especially a non-swimmer like me, correct?”



It took me a few seconds. The cold was fogging my brain I guess. Hypothermia clouds the thinking processes. By the time I had turned, one foot swinging to turn me back onto the bridge surface, Miss Parker had firmly gripped the railing and had performed as neat a standing jump as you could find in the Olympics. Her feet swung to one side and over, her arms trailing behind her as she plummeted to the river’s surface. “Hheeelllppp!” she screamed. When she resurfaced she hollered for someone to save her. What else could I do?



Eventually I broke surface, right underneath the struggling Miss Parker. I grabbed hold of something, trying to breathe and figure out where the river bank was at the same time. Unfortunately we both toppled over again because I had my arm around her thigh. This time I was fully lost when I felt an arm go around my throat from the back. I struggled a little, I think, but I immediately realized the one with their arm around my neck was paddling the both of us to the shore. When I felt bottom under my feet I tried to stand, but I stepped into a hole even as I tried to stand.



I was dragged ashore, and my rescuer levered me forward a few more inches with my help. I puked a half dozen times, flushing out the river water I’d swallowed. It was then I realized just what the word ‘cold’ really signified.



Miss Parker pulled me upright, we both fell down again, and then we managed to steady each other this second and successful time. It was dark and neither one of us could speak, but she slapped my face hard enough so I felt it. Her arm pointed back upstream to my bridge. There was that little building, shed, there. A fire.



Eventually we stumbled up the talus by the bridge, supporting each other and shaking from the cold so much we should have sounded like a pair of matched maracas. Bones rattling inside our frigid flesh.



The shed was open, and we nearly passed out from the sudden warmth. After a few seconds Miss Parker pointed to one side and told me to strip. She didn’t need to tell me twice.



Somewhere along the way I realized she had found rope and looped it back and forth in the warm interior. We both hurried to lay our freshly squeezed clothing on the rope to dry. About the tenth time we bumped each other I remembered we were both nude. It did not seem deathly important at the time. I had trouble focusing in any event, for my head was bouncing around so much from my teeth chattering.



Miss Parker had quickly ransacked a pair of chests on the bridge side, and was pulling things out of it. There were incredibly dirty overalls, odd colored socks, no two alike. Also T-shirts and towels with tears and holes in them. And a small thick plaid jacket of almost no color, one sleeve torn off. Two shirts I could wear, greasy and torn. A pair of mis-matched half-boots I could wear if I put three socks on each foot first. Don’t ask how I managed that feat. I don’t know.



Treasure.



When I didn’t feel like a genius-sicle any more, I dashed out and gathered some of the pile of wood to the back. Chopping it up into lengths suitable to toss in the stove almost got me feeling human again. Me and my yellow-painted axe.



Miss Parker grabbed some from my pile on the littered floor and promptly boosted the fire in the cast iron antique. Then collapsed onto one of the chests, her face and hair still looking cold. But improving.



“You saved my life, out there, in the river, didn’t you?” I think she nodded yes, but maybe her teeth were still chattering.



“You said you couldn’t swim!”



“Angels don’t swim, or at least I didn’t think they did. Miss Parker swims three or four dozen laps in the Centre pool at least three times a week. She won trophies at that school of hers and won gold in three years of All-State competitions. I guess that’s where I learned to swim. Becoming Miss Parker completely.”



She shrugged her shoulders inside the ancient plaid jacket. “It looks like we Angels can swim after all.” She sighed and looked over each shoulder.



“I suppose it’s because I don’t have my wings yet. Some Angel I am. It should be much harder to swim when I’ve got my full set. But then I could fly and wouldn’t need to swim. Works out fine. Peachey!”



I stared at her, trying to follow that line of conversation. “Angel?”



“Yes,” she smiled. Hard to do when your lips still looked faintly blue. “I may look like your Miss Parker, but that’s because you had her in your mind, sitting on that bridge railing. I’m really an Angel.” I stared.



“You know. Angel. Heavenly host, sing Hosanna’s to the Highest, that sort of thing. I could show you my wings, excepting the fact that I haven’t earned mine yet, and it might not be a good idea to unfold them in this confined space if I did have any. Works out great! Just Peachy!”



“Miss Parker.....are you well? I mean, are you feeling, well, sort of disoriented? Hit your head or anything?”



“Oh, no! I feel just Peachey. Angels are immortal, after all. We never get sick. I think. I’ll have to ask. Michael would know. I might be a mite uncomfortable but I can’t die. Even a young one like me is going to be around forever and ever!”



I was about to go over to sit by her when she lifted a finger into the air, an expectant smile on her face. “Ooohh, there goes another one now!”



There was suddenly the sound of a small bell inside the shed, and Miss Parker burbled and clapped her hands. I continued staring. It has got to be the cold.



“That bell?” she smirked. “That was a friend of mine, we call her Rho Chi Answoer Beta Null for short, she just now got her wings. Every time you hear a bell like that, that’s some Angel finally getting her wings. There’ll be Ambrosia and Nectar for everyone in Heaven tonight. New Angels have to provide a treat when they make it. It’s traditional. I can practically taste it now!”



“Angels eat and drink?”



“Only on special occasions. That keeps them special. Angels never eat or drink unless one of us gets their JourneyAngel Card. We don’t need to. Never have. Not there, that is, though I’ve heard rumors about the fallen.”



Wonderful. Crazy woman.



“Bye the way, think you,” she commented.



At my blank look, she continued. “You thought I had a beautiful body, back when we were both cold and naked. You wanted to bend me back and kneel in front of me and then start by kissing the backs of my knees, It was terribly sweet of you to want to kiss my....”



“Whoa! Wait a minute! Angel’s aren’t... I mean.... You can’t... Can you?”



“I’m an Angel. Of course I could see myself through your eyes! That was a terribly wicked thing you wanted to do to my ass, but I’ll forgive.



“Just so long as you keep thinking those beautifully sweet thoughts. It has never ocurred to me how important scent and taste could be to two people doing that to each other. Do you really think I’d taste like daisy and singed clover honey there? That one raises goosebumps all over my human body.



“I don’t know if Angels can do some of those things you were wishing you could do to me, but so long as I’m a simulacra of your dream woman I guess we could. Some it sounded fascinating, but I don’t think either one of our bodies are capable of allowing you to .....”



“Stop!”



“Not without a large amount of lubricant first... Ah... That should be possible then. My body might even enjoy it. Yes, Miss Parker has done that before...



“Oh, you’re no longer in the mood? If you ever get back in the mood, I’ll let you know. Angels are above earthly sins, and we don’t even think of them without having a corporal body to anchor us to your space and time. Yet I think it would be just Peachy to try some of them out. Especially the one where I get on my hands and knees...”



“Angels don’t talk like that!”



“Some of it I’d like to attempt, though. It sounds like fun. Peachey! Unless I’m wrong, I think we’re all capable of enjoying that. Just so we have a body to play with.” I was glaring.



“You’d be getting a virgin. I think. Or maybe not, so long as I’m Miss Parker, but then maybe the thought is what counts....”



“SHUT UP!”



“None of us are like that TV show, you know. Holy we may be, but just not in the ways they show there.



“I’ve lived forever and I always will be alive, but don’t expect too much in the way of enduring words of wisdom of the type they have on that TV series. It’s not my....bag. Now, if you want to talk about eternal bliss and singing loving Hosanna’s to the Highest, I can give you all the skinny. Ask me anything!”



“Are all Angel’s always so talkative as you?”



“Ah Hah! I’ve got you half-convinced, haven’t I? No problemo! My task here does not necessitate your belief at the beginning of your pilgrimage, just so at the end....”



I rose, walked over to her, Miss Parker, Angel, whatever and softly placed a hand across her mouth. “Please....” I began.



“Would you please explain in simple words what is happening here? I’m a little confused and am half-believing I’m already dead and am hallucinating all of your statement. Could you back up and try again?”



“I’m sorry, it’s still hard for me to think in the way the life on Earth does. You’re all obsessed with time being something that moves in one direction only, whereas it’s a variable according to where you stand in the gravametric sphere, and one day you’ll find that out, but not now. It makes my work here so very interesting, having to find words to delineate concepts you Earthlings won’t have the faintest clue they exist until after Tzu Lien does the first math eighty-nine years from now.... Oh. I’m chattering again, aren’t I?”



I nodded my head yes.



“Let’s see, how to do this? Okay, let’s use some of your recent myths.



“Now, there are zillions of Angels throughout the Universe’s, and one of our tasks has to do with gaining our wings. We’ll call them wings.... And it’s no fair thinking how you’d like to kiss Miss Parker’s mouth when I’m trying to straighten things out... Oh, why Thank You! I’ll have to remember that one. Oh, now where was I?



“One of the things an Angel has to do is provide a service on one of...let’s just say, on Earth. There are rules, but we needn’t go into that. I have a job to do before I can gain my wings. Oh, if only you could see them! Such glorious things they are, shining with light... Anywise, I have a job. Saving you.” I goggled at that one.



“You can’t let yourself die tonight, Jarod, because there’s too much yet to do, and we need you for everything to fit the way it’s supposed to. I’ve got to convince you to stay here on Earth a while longer.” She spread a wicked smile on her face.



“Once we’ve done that, do you think we could come back here, or someplace else, and do some of those things you were thinking of before? I really don’t have to go right back to Heaven once we’re done.... I think I’d love to have your mouth on my nipples.”



“Angels are NOT ... Sex mad ...” Words failed me. “They’re someone to watch over you..... I mean, they have big wings... Uh, they do good deeds....” Sort of what I’d hoped I would be when I started fighting injustice. Me? Conceited? Naw...



“How many Angels have you ever met, Jarod?



“Uh huh, that’s what I thought. Do you think you can go for a trip with me tonight? You think you’ve failed, and that special BarBQ sauce of Clairemont’s hasn’t helped any...”



“Sauce?”



“Remember that party you went to Biloxi when you were after that boat equipment manufacturer? The party around the pool where you and that ten-year old were pushed in by the dog?



“One batch of the sauce was contaminated with a hallucinogenic the arrogant fat slob, his son, had dumped into his father’s super-special rib delight sauce as a not-very-practical joke. He didn’t mix it and you wound up getting a third of the junk on your very own tasty ribs. Real great sense of humor the kid has. Takes after his old man. What? You don’t think Angels should use judgmental words like arrogant? Boy, have YOU some illusions to lose.



“The acid is why you’ve been on an emotional roller-coaster ride the past four months. Normally you wouldn’t be this cyclic, but you’ve had some help. Which is why you were on that bridge tonight. Well, to be honest, some of the reason. Part of the problem of being The Crusading Pretender is you can’t stick around to see how things blossom afterwards. You only get a chance to see part of what goes around in this world.”



“You mean watch people die afterwards, don’t you?”



She puffed her cigarette (WHEN the HELL had she gotten THAT?) and shook her head at me. “I’ve got to do this the hard way, don’t I, Jarod?



“Okay, get your clothes back on, and let’s go for a trip. And no, I’m not a creature from Dickens. We’re just going to see a few things. No spirit of Christmas Past. Just me, and I can’t show you the future.



“Come along! Change! Let’s get this Starship on its five year mission... Oh, you’ve never seen Trek ..... Never mind. I’ll explain later.”



Miss Parker, or Angel, or whatever, began pulling still-damp clothes off the makeshift clothes line. Well, maybe just a little damp. Miss Parker stood up and began heaving clothes off herself. It took me by surprise to realize I was staring at her breasts (beautiful bright areolae, sweet chewable nipples, they looked like they were getting enlarged) and she was wriggling her pants off herself, exposing a lot more Miss Parker than I could have wished for, this morning. She stood there, big smirk on her face, letting me worship with my eyes her belly button indenting her flat stomach and emphasizing her bold black triangle of....



WHOA! TIME OUT!



I was standing, my eyes squinched shut, back to her, trying to control my breathing, and trying not to believe this angelic vision behind me was an Angel... Bad choice of words.



“Will you please get dressed?” I asked.



“When you do, Lab Boy.” I was still blushing and trying not to notice how sweet and angelic her tinkle of laughter was....



I kept my back to her, trying not to show very much of myself and failing miserably. When I bent over she ran her hand down my butt, and giggled at my indignation. I didn’t dare turn around and see the naked Miss Parker again. Then I realized I could see her clearly in the reflection of the panes of glass in the window. She smiled and tweaked her nipples between thumbs and fingers. Could this be a fallen Angel? It certainly wasn’t the sort of Angel they showed on TV. It was hard to conceive of my ... virtue being endangered by a wingless Angel (with a capital A), but it was getting easier.



It was then I noticed my clothes were dry. When I looked at the Angel (no, not Miss Parker) she chuckled. “Just a little parlor magic. David Copperfield would love to see it.”



In minutes we had our clothes back on, as ready for the cold as we could be. I was not really very happy to be going back out into that sleet.



Miss Parker/Angel zipped up her leather jacket and put her arm through mine. “We’re going to see and do a few things, but no one will be able to see or hear or feel us. We’ll be ghosts, just like in the Dickens story. You ready?”



For what? I nodded as Miss Parker huddled closer to me. Without a blink we were elsewhere. It was a graveyard, and there was a flashlight in Miss Parker’s hand. I looked a question at her.



“You remember the owner of that bar? The woman? You liked her, didn’t you?”



Nodding. “Is this her gravestone?” Her name was still freshly craved in the red marble. There were other names on it.



“They’re her parents. They’ll be buried on each side of her. Her baby brother, crib death, he’s at her feet now. There’s room for her other two brothers as well, but they’ve got their own families now. The lights over there are White House, in the middle of Tennessee. She’s finally come home.”



“And I killed her. If it weren’t for me trying to hurt a Mob figure... He wasn’t even a Made man, but they did get revenge for their own being hurt.”



Miss Parker cocked her head at me. “Think you’re pretty important, don’t you?” she pointed out.



“Okay, hold on. Off we go........”



We were flying over a large lake, and it looked cold even though I felt nothing but a comfortable warmth. We were on a ramp to hit the black water in another minute....



Suddenly we were surrounded by dark water. I continued to breathe, realizing I was still warm and dry. Still moving fast through the water. Then we slowed, and by Parker’s flashlight we could see a crummy mud bottom. “Where are we?”



“You should ask when, Jarod. We’re in a world now where you never were. It’s as if you never existed or could exist. You are nothing and always have been nothing, in this place. It’s the world without your spark in it.”



I felt a chill, then another as I found we were creeping closer to a shapeless something in the water.



“We’re at the bottom of Lake Superior, Jarod. You never existed in this world. What do you see?



I looked closer as we creeped closer to the lump. Oh dear God, no...



“That’s right, Jarod. It’s a body. Genuine classic Mob method of body disposal. Feet in a big lump of solid concrete.



“Not much left by now. Lots of hungry life in the lake. Without you she died anywise. In this world they threw her overboard, still screaming for her life. She was in the way. They solved the problem in a fashion they were accustomed to. Personally I would have opted for a bullet in the heart to dying this way.



“Would you like to see White House again?” Suddenly we were there, the snow still flying.



“Where’s the headstone?” I asked.



“Her parents never put one up. They believe their daughter is dead, but they’ll never be able to have resolution of their fears. They cry together sometimes. Missing the little girl they used to give list’s of don’ts and dos to, spankings, and a billowing dark blue taffeta dress they bought for her first prom. They have nothing to comfort them, nothing known for sure about their girl, not in this world.”



Miss Parker looked at me, tightness in her words. “Grab my arm, Jarod. Time for our next visit.”



We were plummeting down into a large city now, and suddenly I was standing in a small kitchen. Two women were sitting over coffee, and they were talking in the sad way defeated women sometimes talked. One was the mother of three boys, the other a grandmother. Both sitting in the Grandma’s house. Upstairs I was shown the three grandchildren, waiting for Christmas. It looked sparse under the tree. Then Parker held me close again, and we were in another city. It must be hundreds of miles away. This I somehow knew.



There was no grandmother here, just a large Black woman wrapping a few last presents. The tree looked meagre here, as well. I was shown a boy, maybe ten, tall for his age.



“He’s got a dropped foot, Jarod. He’ll be old enough to get surgery this year except her mother can’t afford to have it done. She makes too much for Welfare. The boy already has a reputation for being a bully in his school.”



“Where are the father’s?” Suddenly another cemetery, headstone set into the ground, small and cheap. Then we were high above another large lake.



“The one had his ashes spread over Lake Huron. The other one was buried by the Policeman’s Fund.”



“Did I kill them?”



In reply Miss Parker pointed a finger and they were watching a happy home for once. The parents had both had too much wine, and the mother wandered off for a much earned rest. The husband went down into his basement. Parker and Jarod watched him become secretive, glancing over his shoulder, listening. He pulled out enough so that Jarod realized he was making a bomb. He remembered the man now.



“He was on the bomb squad...”



“In this world he was never caught. He’s married to a divorcee, and they still think he’s a hero. He’s still making bombs. It’s a sickness, an addiction now, he won’t stop by himself. He needs the rush of destruction. He doesn’t defuse many now. He lets them explode. He let’s them kill and maim. This one’s going to be a mail bomb.”



“The two women I saw...?”



“Widows, thanks to our uncaught psycho. In your own reality, the husbands are still alive. Okay, so maybe they’re not ideal fathers. At least they’re still there.”



We stopped to look under the bomber’s tree. Plenty of goodies there. It was the victim’s survivors who were suffering. Miss Parker grabbed my arm again.



They were in a bedroom, it was a young Black couple under the covers. They were giggling, touching. Enjoying the presence of the other, lovers, happy.



Suddenly another kitchen. A Black family again, a giant of a man was pouring champagne in cheap flutes, then proposing a toast to the missing Mother of the three girls around the table.



I looked in Miss Parker’s eyes, not much wanting to question her again.



“Remember the looney tune who offed himself and took two secretaries with him? This is the world where you never lived. If not for you these two would have never died.” I felt shrunken under those words. I WAS a murderer....



A new bedroom, then another one. Solitary people sleeping lonely in a large bed. Then a third, a worn wife helping her crippled husband to bed. A fourth, vacant, smelling of long neglect.



“These people sleep alone now, Jarod. Or their loved ones are gone. People unlucky. There is another being cared for in a VA hospital in St. Louis. All these people have had their lives changed in this world because you never stopped that psycho.



“Two versus four...do the numbers give you much comfort, Jarod? I didn’t think they would. On to Texas.”



We were in a small room. Two barely pubescent boys were examining something under the beams of their flashlights. They were arguing how much a ring might be worth.



“Pretty ring, isn’t it, Jarod? It’s a wedding ring, and they found it in the sand of this resort island this morning. New it would sell for nearly four thousand in any jewelers shop. The boys are trying to think of a way to sell it without their parents finding out.”



“A ring?”



Another front room. An aluminum tree looking very cozy. The mother and the daughter were arguing, and the husband was pointedly watching meaningless inspirational TV. The boy....was too hot in the eyes.



“Yes, he’s using drugs. You’ve been a cop, a pharmacist and a doctor twice, you know the signs. This is a dysfunctional family, but then everyone has problems.”



“Is this my doing?”



“In a way. Look at the Mother’s ring finger, Jarod. Everything froze, as a movie on pause in a VCR might. Parker lifted the finger for me to see more clearly.



“Those boys...”



“Had this ring. Yes. Remember that boat equipment manufacturer in Biloxi? In the world where you never lived this entire family went out on their big new boat.” I stared. “And were never seen again. Faulty equipment.



“The Gulf of Mexico can be as unforgiving as the Norwegian Sea in winter, when it wants to be. The shore where the boys found that ring, there are dozens of small bones and fragments there. No one’s ever noticed them. That ring is all that’s left of an entire family.” Could bitterness and sarcasm tinge an Angel’s voice?



“But, hey, they were a family with problems. Now they have no more problems. And all those other faulty boats are still out there, waiting for the next storm. Just because you weren’t around to be the Wild Card that caught that murderous cheapskate. Feel better?”



“Surely not all of them...”



Another kitchen, an older woman holding a photo.



“Remember that reporter? Did you think no one but you could understand what was happening? That he was creating bloody confrontations so that he could get hot news items? His mother grieves for her son. Everyone thinks it was just another mugging. It wasn’t. It was revenge, by the gangs. He died hard, and it took a while.



“In the world where you lived....” Another view of the old woman, on her couch, crying for her son. “He’ll be out in two more years, and with any luck he’ll be able to rebuild a sort of new life. His Mother just got back from the long bus ride to the State Prison. She’s crying, but she still has a son. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to give a person hope.”



“Please... No more...”



“I have dozens more to show you, Jarod. They are...”



“Please. Don’t.”



“Just three more. Then I won’t give you any more.”



We slid into the Centre, floor after floor, coming to a cafeteria on the fourth SL.



“This is day before last, in the world where you never were. See? There’s Broots. He’s going to sit with Sydney.” We floated closer. Dr. Green did not look happy to have company.



“Hiya, er, Sydney, er, could I have a moment?” Sydney mumbled something. “It’s about my daughter...”



Soft, compassionate....irritated. “She’s gone, Broots, her mother has her, and you should understand and move on. She’s not coming back. For Courts rarely reverse themselves, and you haven’t the money to fight it. And no, I won’t loan you any more money. Face facts. Let it go and try to move forward into the future.”



“Debbie, she says her Mother’s latest boyfriend, he’s been, well, he’s been touching her and her Mother doesn’t want to hear any more of what she calls dirty jealous lies. What can I do? I’ve got to do something.”



Sydney got up, abandoning his meal. He patted Broots on the shoulder, smiled at him, and moved away at some speed. He had another new child to work on. Maybe this prospect would be where he’d give Raines what he’d been trying for. He rubbed his hands. Slightly. Quickly. Smiling.



Sudden movement again. Miss Parker and Ie were crouched in a large junction, inside the ventilation system, air blowing past our heads. Angelo was playing a cat’s cradle game with some shapeless figure Jarod only gradually realized was female. “This is also a world where you never were, Jarod.”



“We’re still in the Centre,” he realized. “Who’s that with Angelo?”



“Did you never wonder what the Centre would have done without you? They would have continued looking for their miraculous Pretender, and Raines would have continued seeking the answers through chemicals. They would have never stopped.”



The hackles rose on my neck.



“She’s your sister, Emily, and I’m afraid Raines didn’t leave her with any more personality than Angelo has. She’s pregnant, by the way. Many men have used her. None with her permission. Only Angelo is her friend.”



By the time I stopped crying, we were in a dark office. The Angel walked behind the desk, to stand alongside the figure bent over the paperwork and documents. My breath caught to understand what an exact copy the Angel was of Miss Parker. Even the blouse was the same bright red color. I could see the gray leather jacket on a hangar, the black knit cap on the top of the clothes tree.



“This is the world without you, Jarod. She looks the same, doesn’t she? Piss and vinegar, tough as nails.”



The angel bent over to lightly kiss the cheek of her twin. Miss Parker twitched, waving her hand as if to brush away a flying insect.



“Her ulcer is a little bit worse, here. Here she hasn’t stopped smoking once, not in ten years. She’s a rising young star in the Centre firmament. A real go-getter. She barely knows Sydney or Broots.



“She has had three lovers in three months, but none of them have been able to break through to her any more than any have in the past ten years. So much is meaningless to her, now. Success is hollow for her, without enjoyment. She thinks she’s enjoying herself.”



Suddenly we’re at Miss Parker’s place. I know it. We wander through the rooms.



“She watched a friendly bunny rabbit in a pet store in Baltimore. She wanted it, for some unknown reason. Eventually she walked away. She didn’t need a pet. She doesn’t need anything at all.”



In her bedroom, more messy than I remembered it, the Angel opened a drawer for me.



“How many bottles of tranquilizers do you see, Jarod? Give the man a prize. Five it is. Most of the time she doesn’t remember she has them. Most of the time. Sometimes she lays awake at night remembering. Then she has to have something to drive the demons away.” A mostly empty bottle of Stolchniya Orange stood under the bedside table.



In the kitchen the Angel lifted the lid of the trash receptacle. “How many bottles do you see, Jarod? A few, yes. She’s her Daddy’s little Angel, here. He thinks she could become Director some day. Leader of the Triumvirate. He’s proud of her. Thinks of her as a trustworthy ally, an asset. He doesn’t even know of her drinking. To him, she’s successful and happy.”



Back in Miss Parker’s office. “I guess he’s right. I mean, she doesn’t look too troubled here, does she? She just keeps those five bottles of tranquilizers around to quiet her nerves. If she ever needs them.”



Angel held on to my arm. “There is no one in this world to save her, Jarod. But then, hey, what’s that compared to the satisfaction of knowing how guilty you are? All that misery and death you’re sure you’re responsible for. She’s just one person, right? She’s got to make her own life. You’ve got your own problems.”



Angel leaned across the desk, her eyes on mine. She kissed the hair of Miss Parker, then strode forcefully back to me.



“She needs you the most, Jarod. Of them all, her need is the most desperate. Do you want to leave her at the mercy of Raines and Lyle? Of her father? Or do you want to save her? You have to live, to exist, to save her, Jarod. You’re the only one who can. If you want to have a goal, well, now I think you can have one. It’ll take some doing, but without you there is no hope.”



We began to rise through the walls and floors of the Centre. We wafted through the locked front doors. There was a garish big aluminum tree there. The only Christmas tree in this place, probably. “Can we leave this world now? I’m tired, and I need to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow I will have to start slaying Dragons again.”



“Dragons are easy,” the Angel smiled. “All you need is a magic sword. Duck soup. A whack here, a whack there, and justice and honor is triumphant.” She swung an imaginary sword and we were in a parking lot of a strip mall. I recognized the place, it was near to my bridge.



I shook my head, willing the Angel to cease her tour. “Without a magic sword?” I managed.



“You’ve already got one, Jarod. You just need to believe in it, that’s all.” She took my arm again. “I think it’s time now. Time to go back to the bridge.”



Then we were there, back at the little shed by the bridge. The railroad tracks gleamed wet and sick. It was warming slightly and the sleet was just a misting sporadic rain now. The snow would last until tomorrow night. It would be a white Christmas.



Once in the shed the Angel, Miss Parker, turned to me. Her hands rubbed my chest through my jacket, her mittens touched my stubble and caught on it. She pressed close, then she was breathing on my lips. She kissed me, all hunger and want, excitement and eagerness. An Angel wanting me, my body, to do things with me. Offering me Miss Parker’s body. I could not kiss her back.



“You’re an Angel,” I pointed out. “You look beautiful and you feel real and warm, and you smell of Miss Parker’s scent and I can feel your breasts against me, even through both our clothes.



“I can’t do it. You’re not Miss Parker. You’re an Angel and I can’t do that. That. Have sex with you. Here, now, tonight. I came here to die and I’ve got to think on this a little bit first. Please?”



“I want you, Jarod. You would be my first man and my last. You could show me things I’ve only observed through other’s eyes...”



“I’ve got to go.”



Miss Parker stepped back. With a face of stone. “I know you want me, you’re hard for me right now, why won’t you let me stay with you tonight? We can go somewhere else....”



“You’re not Miss Parker.” Angel looked at me funny, cocking her head in confusion.



“You want her body, and I can do that for you.” I nodded. “You want her to come to you in her own good time, too, don’t you? Gotta have your cake and eat it too.” Again a nodding.



“&%$#@!”



I opened my mouth to protest. Then closed it. Like she had said before. What did I, any of us, know about Angels? True Angels? Maybe they could be here on earth and do things and be untouched by sin. I didn’t know. It had already been a long night and a longer day. Maybe I’d just had a night’s fill of illusions. I only knew this Angel was not Miss Parker. If she were... No. She was only wearing somebody else’s body like an expensive suit.



“Jarod?” she asked. “Do me one favor tonight? Will you smile for me the next time you hear the sound of ringing bells? Oh, they’ll be so glorious, my new pair of wings. So large, the light shining out of the center of them, the music they’ll make when I beat them in the night ..... Will you be glad for me? Promise? Pretty please?”



I kissed her hands, promising in my heart.



She was gone. Just like that. I looked around, searching, confused. No sound of tinkling bells. Nothing. Just a little Estee Lauder still in the air, that and the faint cleanliness of a woman’s hair.



The night was still bitter cold, but my Voyager started right away when I stuck the key in. I rolled the window down, staring at the shack, realizing I had wanted the Angel. This Angel. The one that looked like Miss Parker.



I told my body I’d give it a cold shower later. In my space near town, my three rooms and bath in the basement. They were paid until the end of next month.



Time for another Pretend. They were becoming heavier and harder as time went on, not easier. So be it.



There was this suicide in Jackson, Michigan, that maybe was not a suicide.... Tomorrow. Sleep first.



The roads were slick, but at least everyone else was driving carefully, not just me. The drunks were probably wrapped around a bottle somewhere, unhappy at their bars closing down this night.



“Mikey’s Place” looked especially warm tonight, and on impulse I pulled over. Get a sandwich, a even a soggy BLT would be nice, and milk; something to eat. It had been a long day, all of it without food. The little convenience store was still open, and I braved the rain to get some chocolate milk for later.



Paying at the counter, I realized my target, Big Jimmy DePlace, was going out the door. I’d missed confronting him, and glad of it. He was out on bail, I supposed. The holidays. A rich man already, and he had had to cut corners the way he had. Two women maimed and his cousin the Deputy hiding evidence, withholding proof the parts were already old before they were put on the car. Both of them would be put away for their crimes. Maybe not so long as they deserved, but I had stopped hoping for anything more.



When I exited the little store Jimmy had a short woman, in a long cheap brown cloth coat, backed up against the wet clapboard wall. The short curly blonde hair told me immediately who it was.



It was Ernie, the young widow who’d gotten me the codes for the computer system. Ernie, Ernestine, not at all the sort of woman who is always a victim, forever being misused by a cold fate. However, this little yellow-haired woman was outclassed by DePlace by a hundred pounds and four inches of reach.



DePlace was growling at her, his hands lifting the young woman by a grip in her collar bone which had to be exquisitely painful. He was telling her of what he’d have done to her once he had this case quashed. What he’d do to her himself and how much he’d enjoy doing it to her. Where, and how frequently, and what with.



He didn’t even see me coming.



I’d been a jujitsu instructor once, and an assistant in a tae kwon do police academy class in Nashville. It was easy.



While Big Jimmy was bent over in the mud, losing the rest of his supper, Ernie, Ernestine, stood next to him and kicked him hard in the face with her boot.



Square on.



Lifting him, rolling him into another dirty puddle, spilling blood all over his expensive shirt and suit. I pulled her away before I could say “Atta Girl!” Like I said, not one of those perpetual victims.



Crusading Knights on a Quest for Justice were supposed to refrain from kicking a man when he was down. Wasn’t me that did it.



Mikey, the old restaurant owner, he put in a call to the State Police first, then the township police. The State cops got there first. The locals never showed up. Only the fact my cover had been blown prevented me from staying to investigate the local and probably dirty officers of the law.



If the laws are different for one person than they are for another, pretty soon there are no laws.



I ate my BLT on Deli Rye while Ernie gave her statement to the State cops. They took both our statements and put Big Jimmy in the back of the police car.



Ernie was still upset, and she huddled next to me in a booth. Mikey got her the usual box of cocoa puffs and milk in a bowl, then returned to cleaning the grill in back.



Three sad truckers were waiting for Midnight. Maybe none of them had families. Maybe their jobs demanded their making a Christmas run with their rigs. Their bosses. They probably had rooms in the Motel across the street.



I happily ate the last of the Boysenberry pie, then three slices of cheesecake. Heaven on earth, that cheesecake, even a local variety. Ernie fell asleep against me, and I let her. I could smell her clean hair. I adored smelling clean women, it did something so satisfying to something inside me. Maybe I was remembering my Mother. The sign outside was shut off.



Then I heard it. I heard it coming, somehow, and I jumped to attention, hearing it coming. Ernie was looking at me strangely, confused. Me with one finger in the air.



“There! Do you hear that?”



She looked puzzled. Then the bells tinkled. Loud in this silence.



“So? Just some bells somewhere.”



I smiled my patented Jarod The Sly smile for her.



“When you hear a little jingling of bells like that, it means another Angel has gotten her, it’s, wings.”



“That’s cute, Jarod. I like that in you. Men don’t like to be thought of as cute, but it doesn’t seem to bother you. Your boat just doesn’t always have all its oars in the water. Sometimes you’re just like an adult eight-year-old. Didn’t your Daddy ever tell you how real men never grow up to be cute?”



“I never knew my Father.” Ernie looked up at me for a moment, then tried to wrap herself around me.



“That makes two of us. I never knew my Father, or my Mother, either. Grandma was a wonderful person, but she missed my Mommy as much as I did. Did you love your Mommy, Jarod?”



When I shook my head in a no, explaining I never knew her, she reached up and pulled my head down. The first kiss was friendship and sympathy. By the fourth it was too hot in the restaurant.



“Ernie,” I began. She was, what? Five years older than I was?



“Please, Jarod, stay with me tonight. I’m going back to Boston. I don’t want to spend another Christmas Eve alone. Don’t make me do that. It hurts too bad. Pleaseeee, Jarod, don’t make me beg. You’re the only friend I have in this town now. I’m going back home this weekend. But until then... Jarod? Please? Stay with me tonight?. Just hold me until I sleep?”



Twenty minutes later she had won and I had won and we were going to her place. Let what happens next be what would happen next. We would comfort each other more than anything else. It was part of being a Crusading Knight. Sometimes you just held tight to someone else. Tonight was a night for not being alone.



At the door Ernie laughed, an angelic sort of a tinkle. She told me to get the Voyager warm, and I would then follow her in her truck. First she had to pay the bill. She took a couple of tens from me, letting me be gracious and male. I went out into the cold rain, feeling quite warm inside. It’d be a good Christmas Eve for me as well. I was humming “Frosty the Snowman” as I passed through the doors.





-----------------------------





Dale was just a working slob, he always said. Dale could also see things. Sometimes. At the damnedest times. He’d learned not to mention his visions because no one else saw them.



Tonight he’d been fascinated by the vision in the booth opposite him. A guy and a gal. No big thing.



Except this dark-haired gal was a knockout in a mini and a gray leather jacket. Little knit cap on the top of her head. Real dark auburn hair, maybe. Nice.



What he’d been fascinated with was the tremendous wings growing out of the brunette’s back. Just moving and waving, as active and articulate as a pair of hands.



Pure white, maybe eight feet tall folded, a sort of golden light from inside, prettiest things he’d ever seen. Like an Angel’s wings. Growing right out of her back. No one seemed to notice them but himself. So pretty. She caught him looking at her, his mouth open in awe. She put her finger to her lips. Like she was asking for something to be kept a secret, just between the two of them. The trucker and the Angel. Co-conspirators.



He’d tipped his cap, and she gave him the prettiest angelic smile. It made his whole Christmas, right then and there. He’d be home day after next. Almost Christmas.



He had to chuckle, though, later. She had a dickens of a time following the man out through the doors. Man, those wings were big. So heavenly white. They didn’t want to fit through those double doors. Those long legs looked really nice in that mini as well. He envied the man. With those wings, she’s probably going to have to be the one on top.



Jeez, what lovely music those wings made when they beat in the air.







THE END









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