There was pain. That was the first thing she noticed. When the pain began to dull, she noticed other things. Sound. Loud sound. Scents. Powerful, awful smells. Then, she opened her eyes. Light.
"No… no… no!"
The voice came from beside her. She turned her head to see a man, as naked as she assumed herself to be, curled up against the wall in the fetal position. He was shaking his head violently and sobbing.
Slowly, moving her body for the first time, she sat up and looked around. The intensity of her senses was starting to dull to the point where everything was bearable. She could analyze the information her body was giving her instead of being overwhelmed by it. The two of them were alone in the dead end of an alleyway in some dirty city. A large dumpster shielded her view of what she thought must be the street by the sound of it. The place reeked of garbage, exhaust and human sweat. What a difference the world seemed, she noted, when seen through human eyes.
She crawled over to the sobbing man and put an arm around his shoulder.
"Get away!" he shrieked as he pushed her aside and shuffled further from her. His red eyed face looked betrayed. "This is all your fault!"
"My fault? How is this my fault?"
"I don't know!" he screamed. Then he looked down at his knees, still pulled up against his chest. "It has to be your fault," he said so quietly that she almost didn't hear him. "I didn't do anything to deserve this."
"What makes you think I did?" She settled into the corner where he had been sitting when she first awoke. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her companion began to sob silently again.
"Why this?" he asked the dirty pavement in a broken voice. "Why here? It could have been anywhere but here. He could have sent us to Hell and it would have been better than here."
"I don't think you would rather be in Hell," she said, looking at the dumpster.
After a moment of silence, he replied, "Maybe Hell wouldn't be better, but it certainly couldn't be any worse."
His sobs stopped. His voice had the hoarse quality of one who has been crying for a long time. "What did we do to get sent here?"
She was still contemplating the dumpster with calm silence. "Maybe," she said after a pause, "this isn't a punishment."
The gaze he turned on her was a mix of surprise, horror, and disbelief. "How could it not be?" his raw voice screamed. "He made us human! Tell me how this could not be a punishment!"
At his harsh words, she put her hand to her eyes to try to keep from crying. She turned her reddening face towards the wall, away from him. The last thing she needed now was for him to see her cry.
They spent a few moments in silence like that. How long has it been, she wondered. Minutes? Hours? Days? She had yet to develop a concept of time. She turned again to look at him. He was still curled up with his chin on his knees, except now his back was to her. For a moment, she looked at the curves of his body, the colors of his skin and hair. Yes, she thought, things certainly look different from a human point of view.
"Maybe," she said. "We're here to learn something."
His voice was sardonic. He didn't turn around. "What can we possibly learn from being human?"
She watched his blond head move as he spoke and his back shift as he breathed. "Why do we help them?" she asked. "Why do we watch over them and care for them and guide them home when their time here is over?"
"Because He tells us to."
"But why does He tell us to? Why does He care?"
He shrugged and didn't answer.
"I mean, what makes humans so different? Why do we watch over them and not over frogs or gerbils?"
He shook his head. "What's your point?"
"There must be something different about humans. Something He cares enough about that He sends us to watch over them. Maybe we're here to find out what that something is."
He turned his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye. "So why couldn't He have turned us into humans and just kept us in Heaven? Why did He have to send us here?" He turned away from her again. "Having to come here as an Angel is bad enough. Having to stay here as a human is unbearable."
"Maybe that something we have to learn only happens while humans are alive. Maybe we're here to find the meaning of life."
"'Maybe', 'maybe', 'maybe'! Always 'maybe'!" He spun around so he was facing her, his eyes rimmed with red and cheeks streaked with tears. "Why don't we know? Why didn't he tell us? Why did he send us here to learn something and not tell us what we're here to learn? Why?!"
Her own eyes were tearing now as she unconsciously leaned back as if to avoid his verbal assault. "I don't know," she whispered.
"Because it's a _punishment_, that's why!" He was shouting now. She was leaning back so far that her head was against the wall of the alley. She began to sob.
"I don't know," she whispered again.
He turned away and lay down curled up on the alley floor and was silent. She slowly slumped down against the wall so that her back was almost completely on the ground and cried until the darkness of sleep washed her tears away.
************
She shivered. It was cold in the alley.
That thought brought her fully into awareness. She surfaced from the depths of sleep like a deep-sea diver that just realized his tank was three seconds away from empty.
It was cold. Being cold meant she could feel. Feeling meant that she was human.
The reality of the situation finally hit her. She realized that last night, or whenever she had fallen asleep, she had been in denial. Now, awake again and still human, it was for real.
For a long time, she wept uncontrollably. She cried out repeatedly questions of "Why?" and "What did I do wrong?" At one point, she screamed, "Help me, Lord! Take me back! Don't forsake me! Please!"
And for the first time in her existence, she received no answers.
When her lungs burned and her eyes had spilled all the tears they had to offer, she was curled up on the floor of the alley, looking at her companion's still sleeping form. She was calm again. After all the crying, she was too exhausted to be anything but resignedly calm. She noticed that he was shivering in his slumber.
Then she looked down and felt her own nakedness. A rush of modesty claimed her and she tried to cover herself as much as she could with her hands before she realized that there was no one here to see her and her hands weren't doing a very good job, anyway.
She shuddered with cold, then looked at the dumpster.
************
"Wake up."
He opened his eyes when he felt something soft hit his face. Whatever it was was covering his eyes so he saw nothing but blackness. He panicked, sitting up suddenly and gasping.
He saw her legs and butt hanging out of the dumpster in front of him. Sounds of rummaging came from the inside. She was wearing a tattered and patched pair of blue jeans and two different shoes (one was a boot, actually), both with holes in the bottoms. Some unidentifiable article of clothing flew up and out through the opening in the dumpster's lid that was being held open by her waist. He noticed that what had been covering his face when he woke up was a ripped woolen sweater.
She climbed down out of the dumpster. Her upper body matched her lower. A white T-shirt sporting the logo "Bermuda or Bust" was showing from underneath a black torn coat that must have once been filled with down, but now was just a mostly empty nylon shell. Every once and a while when she moved quickly, the coat would vomit a tiny spray of white feathers. A faded green knit cap that was almost too full of holes to be of any use covered her dark hair. "Here," she said as she tossed him something she had salvaged from the dumpster, along with the unknown she had thrown out moments before. "Put these on."
He made no move to catch the things as they landed in his lap. He unconsciously noted, though, that she had perfect aim and hand-eye coordination. It took most humans years to perfect skills like that when they grew from infants. In the back of his mind, he wondered what else these bodies could do.
"What if I don't want to?" he asked, glaring at her.
"Then you'll freeze to death," she said, gingerly peeling a sticky piece of pepperoni from her sleeve.
"What if I want to die? Maybe I can go back to Heaven."
She looked up at him over her wrist, the pizza topping dangling from the fingers of her opposite hand. "He put us here for a reason, and whether that reason is a punishment or for us to learn something, do you think He'll be happy to see us again so soon? I don't think Heaven will be your destination." She made a face as the pepperoni stubbornly clung to her fingers when she tried to shake it away.
He kept glaring at her. Then he picked up the sweater and started to pull it over his head.
"It'll be more comfortable if you put something else on first," she said. "Wool can be itchy."
He had paused when she spoke, sweater blocking his view of her, but he finished what he was doing just the same when she was done. When he could see again, she had walked away from him and was proceeding to climb back into the dumpster.
What does she know anyway? he thought, pulling on a pair of black sweat-pants with a large bleach stain plaguing one leg.
"Ooh, a scarf," came her metallic sounding voice from the inside of the garbage receptacle when the first snowflake touched the ground.
*********
"Hey, Mark," the dark bearded man said as he nudged the short man sitting beside him. When he got Mark's attention, the man jerked a thumb towards the door. "Here comes Billy. Hey, Billy!"
The young man, no more than 25, who had just walked in the door was wearing a long faded trench coat and a blue baseball cap with a red brim that had lost whatever logo it once advertised. His blue eyes glared at his announcer as the man took his place in the line.
"What's he doing here?" a white haired, wrinkled woman across the table asked through a mouthful of potatoes. "Didn't he go get himself a job?"
Brownbeard laughed. "Guess not."
Billy walked over to the table after his tray had been filled with meager portions of potatoes and a small slice of beef. He sat down next to the woman in silence, the brim of his hat hiding his eyes.
"Hey, Billy!" the bearded man said, a sardonic grin on his face. "What, didja miss our company so much that you decided to come back here? Or didn't that job pull through?"
Billy lifted his head just enough so the man could see his glaring eyes under the cap, then looked back down and stuffed a piece of beef into his mouth.
"Leave him alone, Greg," the old woman said. "An interview's more than you ever got."
Greg shut up.
"Thank you, Martha," Billy said in a quiet voice, eyes not leaving his plate.
"So, Billy," Mark said. His clothing consisted of a brown winter jacket with one half of the zipper missing, safety-pinned shut, and a ratty looking pair of hunter green earmuffs that he was wearing even indoors. "What happened? We all thought you had dat job. You was perfect for it. If anyone was gonna get dat job, it was you. I mean, you finished high school!"
"So did I," Martha reminded him.
"Yeah, but that was, what, two hundred years ago?" Mark said.
"Fifty six," she mumbled.
"Whatever." He turned his attention back to Billy, who was starting on his mashed potatoes. "So what happened?"
Billy placed a forkful of potatoes into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Without looking up, he said, "They found someone who had finished college."
"To do dishes?" Greg said, a little too loudly.
Billy nodded. "To do dishes and get paid under the table less than minimum wage." Another forkful of potatoes went in.
Greg leaned back in his chair and relaxed his neck so he was staring at the ceiling. "What the hell is this world going to?"
"Too many kids with college education and not enough jobs for them," Martha said. "So what do they do with people like us?"
"Give us some meat an' potatoes once a day an' tell us to stuff it," Mark answered, throwing down his fork. "An' not damn near 'nough, neither."
They sat in silence, watching Billy eat.
"Hey," Mark said. "Lookey here." He was straining his neck to look over Billy's head at the doorway to the street. "Newcumas."
Martha and Billy turned around and Greg leaned to the side to see a man and a woman enter the charity cafeteria. The woman was dressed in a ripped black winter jacket, tattered jeans, half of a yellow unraveling scarf, and a faded green knit hat. The man wore a pair of stained black sweat-pants, a woolen sweater, and a pale blue coat that was obviously too big for him with all of the buttons missing and the hood drawn up over his head. They both looked around the room like they were afraid someone was going to jump out and mug them. The man saw the food and started towards the serving station. Immediately, he was set upon by the members of the line he had cut. He and the woman went to the back of the line. She waited patiently. He tried to, but didn't have much success.
After asking for a larger portion size and being politely turned down, the duo made their way among the tables. As always, the place was nearly filled. Someone would have to move over on a bench somewhere to make room for them to sit down, and, as always, no one wanted to move.
Billy turned back around and started to scoot over. Martha obliged him and moved over, as well.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Greg asked. "Do you _want_ them to sit with us?"
"They have nowhere else to sit," Billy answered. "Now shove over."
Mumbling, Greg and Mark shoved over. The new man and woman, seeing the opening and seizing on it, sat down. The man was next to Billy and the woman next to Mark.
"Thank you," the woman said, removing her hat to expose long brown hair. "I was afraid we'd have to eat outside, and it's very cold out there." The man said nothing, but picked up his slice of beef with his hands and took a bite out of it as if it had been beef jerky.
"Your welcome," Billy said. He glanced at the newcomer who was ignoring his plastic silverware, but made no comment. He continued to cut his own beef into small pieces as he ate, and he noticed that the woman watched him closely for a few minutes before she picked up her own silverware. "You must be new here," he said. He extended his hand to her across the table. "My name's Billy."
She stared at his hand for a moment, then extended her hand likewise. Billy made a weak grin to acknowledge her joke, then took her hand and shook it. He decided not to bother the man beside him, who looked like a starving hyena attacking its meal. "This is Martha, Greg, and Mark." Each of his friends extended their hand in turn, and the woman actually shook them this time.
"Pleased to meet you," she said, then continued to eat.
"So," Billy said after a short pause. "Do you have a name?"
"No," she said simply.
Mark and Greg looked at each other.
"No," Billy repeated. "Not even a nickname? What do people call you?"
She shrugged. "People usually don't call me anything."
"Then how do you know when someone wants you? Do they just point? They have to call you something."
"No, they don't call me anything. They don't need to. When someone wants me, I know."
"You know?" Billy repeated.
She nodded.
"How do you 'know'?"
"I just know. We all do. We don't talk at all, actually. We just know."
"Who's 'we all'?"
"The Angels."
Greg and Mark burst out laughing. "You caught yourself a live one, Billy Boy!" Greg said. He nudged Mark as if the smaller man hadn't been sitting right next to her. "Hear that? She thinks she's an angel!" He leaned across Mark to look the woman in the face. "What'cha doing here, angel-girl? Fall out of heaven and can't fly back up? Where are your wings?"
She was turning red in the face. The man still refused to notice anything but his food. "It's not my fault!" she yelled. "I didn't want to come here! He made us human and just sent us here without telling us anything!" She started crying. "I want to go home!"
Greg stopped laughing. He might like to make fun of people, but he knew when to stop. He hit Mark and the small man's laughter died off abruptly. "Hey," Greg said softly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, really. Stop crying."
Billy made shushing sounds and reached out to pat her hand. She calmed down a little and wiped her eyes with a corner of her hat. "You okay?" he asked.
She nodded, looking down at her plate.
"Take my advice," Billy said. "Don't go around telling people that you're an angel. From folks like us, you'll get the same reaction you got from those two." He pointed to Mark and Greg. "But from important people, people with jobs, you might get a different reaction. A worse one. They'll put you in a hospital. You don't want that. No one's going to believe that you're an angel."
She sniffed and looked up at him. "Do _you_ believe me?"
Billy sighed. "Honestly, no. But I don't blame you for being a little confused. A lot of people get that way after being here for a long time."
"What's the meaning of life?"
All five members of the little group turned to look at the man who had just finished cleaning his plate and had been silent up until now. He looked at the woman. "That's what we're hear to learn, isn't it? The sooner we learn, the sooner we can go home. So, what's the meaning of life?"
Mark and Greg looked at each other. Billy sighed. "It's not that easy."
"I've been alive for seventy four years," Martha said. "If anyone here would know what the meaning of life is, it's me."
"And?" the man said. "What is it?"
"I haven't the foggiest."
The woman looked at Martha. "You mean, you've had over seventy years and you haven't found the meaning of life yet?"
"Dear," Martha said sympathetically, "most people never do. The meaning of life is one of those mysteries that mankind has been pondering for as long as we've been able to ponder."
"Great. Just great," the man said, staring into his now empty tray. "We're never going to get out of here."
*******
"So what should I call you?" Billy asked, keeping his eyes downcast. It was a habit one developed after years and years of living solely on the charity of others. Their footsteps made soft crunching sounds on the sidewalk. It was too early after the snowfall for anyone to have cleared the sidewalks yet and there was still an inch covering everything.
"I don't know," the woman walking beside him said. "You pick a name."
Billy looked up at where they were walking. Buildings towered above them on their right and left. The road next to them paved the way ahead, cutting a line into the structures like a river in a canyon. The sky was a strip of darkening gray, fading to pink ahead of them as the sun set. Anywhere else, the snow and the sunset would have given the world a feeling of calm silence, but that silence was brutally shattered by the nature of the city. Cars zoomed over the road as if every one belonged to a husband rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital. White headlights on one side and red taillights on the other provided a striking contrast. Horns blared as people defied death by making drivers angry, cutting them off or driving too slow. Parents yelled out of apartment windows for their children to come inside before it got dark. Police cars with sirens blaring sped by faster than the regular cars, if that was even possible. Dogs barked, street vendors yelled out their wares one last time for the day, and beggars accosted travelers for alms. But the two people walking side by side, each dressed in the castoffs of others, went in silence. Their world was limited to the sunset, the canyon of buildings, and each other.
"How about Angel?" Billy said after a long pause. "I've always liked that name."
"How would you like it if I called you Human?" she replied. Once again, they lapsed into silence.
"Selene."
"What?" The woman looked at him as if she had forgotten what they had been talking about.
"Selene. It's Greek. It means 'moon.'"
"It's pretty. I like it. Selene." Suddenly, she stopped walking. Billy walked a couple more steps before he realized she wasn't beside him anymore. He turned to look at her questioningly.
"Pleased to meet you," she said, holding out her hand. "My name's Selene."
He smiled and also held out his hand, but made no other move to shake. Selene laughed, and grabbed his hand.
************
"Don't talk much, do ya?" Greg asked.
The man in the blue coat and woolen sweater didn't look up. "Would you feel like talking if you had just been kicked out of Paradise?"
The three figures walked down the sidewalk, walking in the footsteps of the two others ahead. The nameless man stepped exactly in each footprint made by one of the leading pair, though he didn't realize he was doing it. His companions, if you could call them that, walked close to him. Greg was on his left and Martha walked a few steps behind them.
"No," Greg murmured to his worn scarf. His words evaporated into the cold air on a breath of vapor. "I suppose not."
They're just humoring me, the man thought. They don't believe a whit about the Angels. They probably think we're fit for the mental institution, and that's why we're out here on the streets wearing the castoffs of sane men. They're probably keeping an eye on me so that I don't hurt anyone. How sweet of them.
"So," Martha piped up behind him in her scratchy voice. "Nice weather out isn't it?"
"It's cold enough to make a polar bear run to the nearest specialty shop and splurge for a new fur coat," Greg replied sourly, then flinched as Martha took off her knit hat, hit him with it, then put it back on. "What?" he asked. Martha gave no reply.
Idiots, the man thought.
"I suppose that since you're an angel, too, you don't have a name either," Greg said.
"Nope."
"Well, if you're going to be hanging around with us for a while, then we'd better find something to call you."
"Who said I was going to be hanging around with you?" the man asked without looking up.
"Well, your lady friend up there doesn't look like she has any intention of leaving anytime soon." Greg pointed to the couple walking in front of them.
The man looked up and stopped walking. Sure enough, his companion seemed to be in a long conversation with one of the humans. Billy? Yes, that was his name. He looked down and noticed that he was standing in the set of footprints that lead up to her. Like it or not, he didn't think he had much of a choice in the matter whether to stay with her or to go.
Greg had stopped a few steps in front of him and Martha had walked up to his side. He looked down at his feet again and began walking, still following the trail exactly. "Call me whatever you want." Perhaps she was right to want to stay. They probably had to talk to people to find what they were looking for. Absentmindedly, he reached a hand inside his sweater to scratch.
"Do you have a preference?" Martha asked. "Or do you just want us to call you anything?"
"Just not late for supper?" Greg supplied.
"Whatever," the man shrugged, ignoring Greg's pathetic excuse for a joke.
"Greg! Martha! Billy!"
The shout came from behind. Greg and Martha stopped and turned around. The man saw Billy up ahead stop and turn, too. He looked to see Mark running down the sidewalk towards them. He stopped in front of the trio. He spoke fast. "They opened the church for the night and are only letting a handful a' people in. They wouldn't let me save any spaces. Hurry up unless you wanna spend another night on the street." And with that, he spun around and bolted back down the street.
"Good ol' Mark," said Billy, startling the man who hadn't heard him walk up. "Loyal as a dog." He started jogging down the street after Mark.
"Come on, Martha," Greg said as he hoisted the old woman in his arms.
"Where on earth does he get all that energy?" she asked as Greg settled her weight and began jogging.
The unnamed man realized that when Mark had stopped to talk to them, he hadn't been out of breath in the slightest. Energy indeed.
"Come on," his companion said, tugging on his sleeve before she, too, ran after the others.
The man hadn't moved, but as soon as he saw the other angel running away from him, he felt an almost overpowering sense of loneliness and fear. "Wait for me!" he shouted and ran to catch up.
He was panting by the time he caught up with her. "What's the big rush?" he asked.
"Didn't you hear? We're going to the church to spend the night."
"So?"
"So do you want to sleep out in the cold again?"
The man didn't get a chance to reply when Mark, far ahead of them, shouted, "Come on guys! A line's forming! Hurry up!"
"Come on," she said and increased her speed.
"Wait up!" the man panted as he stumbled behind her.
Up ahead, Greg turned sideways so that he could look at him, yet still keep moving forward. "I got a name for you, boy!" he shouted with a grin. "How about we call you Slowpoke? Or how about Chaser?"
"Yeah, come on, Chase!" his companion said, smiling. "Hurry up!"
He grumbled and ran faster, blue coat flapping in the wind. Billy's trench-coat flew behind him like a cape, Greg's old work-boots made a clop-clop-clop sound down the snowy sidewalk, the angel's coat was leaking feathers, and Mark, standing outside the church towards the end of the new line, was waving furiously at them to move quicker. Chase sighed and realized that he was going to have to deal with this for a very, very long time.
*****
It was small for a church. No wonder they were only letting a few people in for the night. The sanctuary looked like two medium apartments with the wall between them knocked out. In fact, that's what it was. At one time or another, some worshipper of Christ had bought a small apartment building in an effort to bring religion to the masses of the city. It was recognized as a church by everyone except the tax collectors, much to the reverend's dismay. Due to this oversight, charitable actions were few and fundraisers were many in the small religious community. Because the reverend couldn't afford the cleaning bill and was reluctant to take up the daunting task himself, the church didn't open up often as a sleeping area for the homeless. Tonight, however, he was feeling generous. But no matter how charitable he felt, he couldn't expand the walls of the sanctuary. For now, God's arms were open only to the few who managed to get there first.
Since they were some of the first to arrive, the Angels and their company had to take on the task of removing the pews from the floor to make room to sleep. This was not a difficult task, since the "pews" were actually several dozen fold-up chairs arranged in rows. After this was completed, old furniture from when the building used to be a furnished apartment complex was dragged into the sleeping space. The six companions hurriedly claimed furniture pieces before they ended up sleeping on the bare floor.
Greg dragged the furniture they had claimed to close off one corner of the room, far from the doorway, giving the illusion of privacy in the small space. Billy, being the tallest, got the sofa. Greg staked his claim to an old recliner stuck in the reclining position. Mark, the shortest, unselfishly took the love seat, knowing he would be the least uncomfortable on the midget couch. These three pieces made up the walls to their little room within the sanctuary. They faced inward around the only other piece of furniture they had claimed, one mattress of a full-sized bed. Selene, Chase, and Martha shared the bed. Martha got the mattress because she was the least able to conform to the contorted positions one tends to assume when lying on living room furniture. Selene and Chase ended up on the bed out of common courtesy. They group they had fallen in with seemed to treat them as guests in their house, instead of two new beggars competing for a living on the streets.
It was too early for sleeping, but not more than one or two of the group could leave their little shelter at a time for fear of any of it being stolen. Even in the arms of God, His children fought for comfort. So the six of them sat among the furniture and talked.
"So what's heaven like?" Greg asked, looking idly up at the ceiling. He was lounging on his armchair as if he were sitting in the living room of his own house without a care in the world. Selene studied him with her new human eyes. His shaggy hair and brown beard looked as if they had seen better days. An old tan cowboy hat was sitting on his chest. It had been wrinkled so many times that the individual wrinkles didn't stand out but instead gave the hat a generally limp appearance. His denim jacket lay between him and the chair, thrown off in the church's comforting warmth. What looked to be someone's botched job at a tied-dye shirt covered his torso with an ugly cacophony of yellows and reds and greens that came together in various shades of brown. The khakis he wore were littered with uneven stitches and colorful patches that made them look like they came from an alternate reality where Frankenstein was a tailor. Work boots that had seen better days were lying on the floor, another casualty of the warmth-induced shedding. Two hole-ridden and mismatched socks, one green and one that probably used to be white covered his feet. Selene took all this in at a glance, but what interested her most was not his clothes or his beard or his shoes. What made her curious about this man was his hand, or, to be more specific, what was on his hand. He wore a woman's engagement ring.
After a moment or two of silence Greg looked at Selene, and only then did it register that he had been speaking to her. "It's hard to describe," she said. "No, it's impossible to describe with words. It's easier to describe with feelings, but humans can't communicate that way." She looked down at the sudden feeling in her eyes that she had recently learned came before tears. "It's so beautiful that it hurts to think about when you've lost it."
Greg looked down and mumbled an apology into his beard for bringing it up.
"No, it's alright," Selene said, looking up. The feeling had passed. No tears had come. The memory of Heaven was fading away every hour she remained human, she realized. She had tried grasping at it to make it stay, but it was like trying to catch a bar of soap in the bathtub. The harder you squeezed, the quicker it shot away. What was more, every time she grabbed for it, it brought her pain. With a sickening sense of finality, she decided to let it go. For now, she told herself. Only for now. I will see you again someday, God willing.
The conversation that sprang up around her in the little corner was uninteresting, and she paid little attention to it. Mark told obscene jokes, which everyone except Chase and Selene had already heard twelve dozen times. Chase ignored the little man, even though it was obvious Mark joked for his benefit. He just stared at the crucifix hanging above the doorway to the makeshift sanctuary with unseeing eyes. Martha scolded Mark for thinking such thoughts in a place of worship, never mind saying them aloud. Greg poked fun at Billy's ineptitude to find a job, and Billy calmly spit back scathing remarks about how Greg's position wasn't any better. If Selene hadn't known better, she would've thought the two of them were bitter enemies. But when one of them would say something extremely funny, Greg would burst out laughing with his loud guffaw and Billy would crack a smile and shake with his silent chuckle, no matter which one had been at the butt of the joke. Selene didn't understand it at all, except that words that seemed like they were designed to bring pain brought joy instead. Perhaps, she thought, things are not always what they seem in the human world. Not every malicious action held malicious intent.
"Greg," Selene said during a pause in the joking. "Can I ask you a question?"
"You just did," he answered. When Selene showed no sign of understanding, Greg sighed and explained. "'Can I ask you a question?' is a question. So you already asked me a one."
"Oh." She said, pretending it made sense. "Well, can I ask you another one?"
"Shoot."
"Why do you wear a woman's ring?"
Greg looked down at his hand almost as if he had forgotten the ring was there. His mouth moved like he was trying to work moisture back into it. The joviality that had been in his face a moment ago was gone, replaced briefly by a look of great sadness and pain. But that look faded so quickly that Selene could doubt that she had ever seen it in the first place. "I stole it," he said after a pause.
Selene felt something twist deep inside her, something that would remind her, if she ever began to doubt, that she was still part Angel. He was lying. "No you didn't," she said.
There was a moment of silence. Greg was still looking at the ring. "No," he said quietly. "I didn't."
Billy looked over at him. "Greg, you told me you stole that ring from a jewelry store in the south end of town. That's why you'll never go down there, just in case someone from the store recognizes you."
At first, Greg did nothing. He just stared at the ring. Then Selene saw that his head was moving ever so slightly from side to side. The movement slowly became more exaggerated until he was shaking his head in an obvious "no."
"Greg," Selene said softly. She knew this was a tender subject with him, but it was something that needed to come out. "Where did you get the ring?"
He looked up at her. She saw that his eyes were wet. "I kept it to remember her," he whispered. "Everything else was gone."
"Who?"
"My wife."
"You never told me you were married," Billy said.
"Technically, we weren't." Greg looked down at the ring again as if the answers to every question lay beneath its sparkling surface. He took a deep breath. "Her name was Amanda. We met when I worked construction. We were making an office building for some software company. Amanda was one of the heads of the company. She came down to the site every week to check on our progress. I had never met a woman like her before. She wasn't afraid of anything. Once a week, she'd just walk past the fence with her briefcase, put on her hardhat, and stroll in like she was walking through the park. The jackhammers and welders didn't phase her a bit. Sometimes, she'd go up on the elevator and we'd show her everything we did since she was last there. She'd walk right out onto the beams, carefully, of course. But it always seemed to me that she was trying to avoid stepping on flowers instead of stepping out into twenty stories of nothingness."
Greg took a moment to swallow, then continued. "One day, I decided to ask her out. She said yes, and I took the money I had scraped together for the last month and we went to a fancy restaurant. That was the first of many times we had gone out. At first I was ashamed of my low income and avoided taking her to my apartment, but soon I realized that money didn't mean that much to her. And that was when I realized that it didn't mean that much to me either. Some of my friends from the construction site used to joke with me that I was going out with her for the money, but I knew that wasn't true. After watching her walk through that site full of loud and dangerous machinery and not seeing so much as a flinch from her, I knew that I would have loved her if she was poorer than I was. When the company decided that it wanted to wait a few months before finishing the construction of the new building, and Amanda leant me as much money as I needed to keep my apartment, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. A few weeks after the construction resumed, I proposed. She said yes."
Once again, Greg took a deep breath. When he began speaking again, his voice was quivering faintly. "Two weeks later, she came to the site just as she always had. We brought her up to the top of the building and showed her the new level that we had started. It was still all beams and wooden catwalks, no real walls or floors yet. She had the plans in her hand and was pointing to where rooms and hallways would be, the same way she always did."
He stopped. His lip was vibrating slightly. Selene reached up a hand and clasped Greg's right hand, the one without the ring, in her own. He looked into her eyes. Selene saw pain in those eyes. Pain, loss, grief, and love. "Go on," she whispered.
He swallowed and took a shaky breath, but went on. "Sh-she didn't watch her feet. She was looking at the blueprint and s-she stepped on the edge of the beam. I saw her eyes when she realized that her foot was only half on metal and half on nothing. I-it slipped off the edge and she dropped. I reached for her, but I know now that I would've followed her off if the guys h-hadn't grabbed me first." He gave a loud sniff and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then continued. "I-I watched her fall. It was almost 25 stories. She hit five beams on the way down. I saw her body contact each one. I heard the smack of flesh and bone on metal and saw her spin in the air like a rag doll dropped from the top of a tree, hitting branches on the way down. She struck the first one square on the head, and I knew she died then, but I rushed into the elevator anyway. When we were at the bottom I-I ran over to her." Greg sobbed. "Her body was contorted and bloody, almost unrecognizable. I called out her name over and over again and cried myself silly. When I heard the ambulance pull into the site behind me. I was afraid. I don't know what I was afraid of, but suddenly I didn't want to see anybody. I kissed Amanda goodbye, then I noticed her hand. It seemed like the only part of her body that wasn't covered in blood. It was lying on the ground, almost as if it were pointing towards me. I slipped the ring I had given her two weeks before off of her finger and ran. I ran until I collapsed somewhere downtown."
His tearstained eyes looked to Billy. His voice dropped to a whisper again. "I never went back. There were too many painful memories. The building was on the south end of town. I'm sorry I lied, but I didn't want to remember. It hurt too much."
Billy had tears in his eyes as he looked at his friend. "I'm sorry, Greg," he said. "I had no idea."
The two men embraced, Greg sobbing onto Billy's trench-coat shoulder. "I'm sorry, Greg. I'm so sorry."
Selene bit her lip to keep from crying and stood up. She climbed over Billy's sofa and quickly walked out of the sanctuary.
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