Angel entered the spacious, beige room warily.
" Liam," the twenty-something psychiatrist smiled at him as she extended her hand before saying, "I'm so glad you could make it. You sounded unsure on the phone, and that usually means my client won't show up."
As Dr. Lanette took Angel's hand in her own, he noticed she had a strong grip. Glancing into her eyes, he found them hypnotic, and they held his gaze with ease.
"Please, sit down", Dr. Lanette said, and Angel realized he had been standing there staring at her for what was certainly too long. Angel wondered if alot of her 'clients' did that.
"So, Liam, tell me a bit about yourself and why you've decided to look for a therapist," the brunette said warmly.
"Uh, it's not a reason, exactly, well, it's something that I did. A long time ago. It's something ...I guess I just have problems with my sexual... fantasies", Angel finished, taking a deep unnecessary breath to help him conclude his sentence. He was glad then that he was incapable of blushing, as he looked the other way.
"Well, that's a good first step," Dr. Lanette said encouragingly before adding, "by the way, call me Valery. First names are important in recovery. If you can't even speak to your therapist without a title and a mask of anonymity added to her name, there's something wrong with both of the people in that relationship. Well, moreso than usual."
Valery was pleased with the way her new customer seemed to have a shy manner about him in her presence. Years of experience in medicine and dating told her it was an act. Outside of her office, he would be stubborn, headstrong, and sometimes violent. She could handle it.
"Liam, I'm going to be frank with you," she said. "Many people do things in their youth, or even in their adult lives that they realize are hurtful and wrong only later on, when they are ready to heal from the traumas that led them to hurt others in the first place. I suspect that's the case with you. I can see that you're nervous and this is probably your first time with a therapist." Angel smiled slightly and slowly started to relax. He liked her, she was gentle with him and made him feel welcome. Suddenly, a pang of yearning that he had thought long dead strained within him, and he wondered how different his life would have been if only Patricia had been like this woman. He had wanted so much to have a mother who had cared.
Patricia had cared, in her own 'special' way. Every scraped knee was an opportunity to kiss her son all better when he'd fallen down; more likely, when his father had beaten him down. Her idea of 'kissing it all better' was different from most other mums, though. She would pull him into the kitchen when no one had been right in front of them to see. There, she would reach into his pants and molest him. Sometimes she disgusted him, and sometimes her actions aroused him. It had taken him years to realize that it hadn't been his fault, not even when he had gotten physically aroused. That was the only time she'd been tender with him; the rest of the time she had beat him and Lauraly as mercilessly as his father, stopping short only of death on several occasions.
This woman was oddly familiar, she reminded him of how his mother might have been if she hadn't been the walking dead. At that thought, Angel suppressed a rueful smile. Like mother, like son.
"However," Dr. Lanette continued, bringing Angel's mind back to the present," we both know that you're not usually a nervous man. You're the type who takes things standing up, at least in the last few years anyhow, am I right?" Angel felt an uneasy sensation travel up his spine as he looked at the woman in front of him. How did she know about him, who had sent her? More importantly, what would it take for her to die?
Valery saw the slight change in his gaze which alerted her to his apprehension, but continued unalarmed. "You have a strange relationship with your own body. You've gone back and forth so many times, claiming sometimes to have inner peace and sometimes feeling comfortable setting women on fire or using them sexually. These are all symptoms of a survivor of sexual abuse. What's importan here-"
Suddenly Valery was cut off as Angel's hand shot out and slid around her neck, holding it tightly.
" Who sent you here? I would let me in on it, cause if I don't find out in the next five seconds, I'm going to have make it a slow kill to compensate."
Angel was unprepared for Valery's response. She laughed, and calmly pulled his his hand away from her neck, displaying incredible strength in the process.
"Angel," she began, the man before her tensing at her use of his name, " I know who you are. You're infamous in occult circles, and you play a crucial role in the potentially impending apocalypse. Do you really think a human-oriented therapist would take on clients at night unless she was trying to extort money or brainwash them?"
"Then you shouldn't have taken me on as a client. I didn't ask for a paranormal therapist, and I have a thought that Wolfram and Hart asked you arrange this little rendezvous. Where's the real shrink - in a duffel bag in the closet?"
With that, Angel began frantically dissecting the room. Moving to the large mahogany 'closet', which was really a cabinet, he pulled on the handles. Feeling a resistance, he realized it was locked and yanked the handle off the cabinet door. The cabinette interior revealed a framed portrait of the poem "Footprints", and a few plain canvasses. Paint jars and brushes lay beside them, nestled on a bed of rags.
The bizarre contents of the cabinet caused Angel to look at Valery - Dr. Lanette - whatever she was - in silence for a stunned moment. Then he strode to her metal filing cabinet and broke open the drawers one by one. Stacks of paper in folders were crammed into each drawer , except for the bottom one. A few loose folders were ripped aside, and the cabinet drawer yielded a strange red and blue finger painting.
"What's this?", Angel said, pulling the paper out to confront the psychiatrist with. " A demonic summoning visualization? Listen, I'm hip to your little secret, Valery, so why don't you cut the bullshit right now."
Valery calmly said, "My daughter drew it. She's seven. It distracts some of my clients, so sometimes I keep in my filing cabinet. I keep it here because it reminds me of her."
A numbness flooded Angel's hand where he touched the paper. He had crumpled it slightly.
"I'm sorry," Angel said quietly, before tentatively reaching out his hand and offering Valery the painting. When she didn't take it immediately, he set it gently onto her desk, before stepping back from it.
"I should go. I'm sorry", Angel said, before turning on his heel and heading for the door.
"Angel."
The word stopped Angel in his tracks.
Angel turned to Valery and ruefully said, " Look, I don't think you can help me. Even if you could, I don't trust you."
And with that, Angel walked out the door of the cozy downtown office and into the lonely night once more. Valery sighed and began tidying up her office absentmindedly. At least she would be able to spend some time with her daughter tonight, she thought with a bittersweet chuckle. Valery loved her only child very much, but she tended to service a clientele that were, to put it facetiously, of the non-Abrahamic traditions. Her patients were more often than not human, and those that were tended to be witches and such who couldn't see a regular psychiatrist and be honest about their lives without fear of being institutionalized.
It wasn't important, Valery tried to tell herself and she picked up her phone to call her daughter. Whatever this Liam Angel Soul Boy needed to work out, he would do so when the time was right. She couldn't help people - or beings, more accurately - unless they wanted to help themselves.
A busy signal jarred Dr. Lanette's train of thought and brought her back to the present. Valery laughed. Her daughter, only seven, had already begun picking up on the precocious feminine habit of living vicariously through fiberoptic signals. She hung up and began calling her daughter on their additional phone line. Thinking better of it, Valery put the phone back in it's cradle and reached for her coat and bag. They rarely got to spend an evening together on weeknights, so it would be better to surprise Emily.
Meanwhile, Angel decided to take the long walk back to the Hyperion, hoping to find something or someone to fight to alleviate his pain and hard ons.
It was as he was walking down Coco Boulevard that he slowly began to realize someone was addressing him. Turning to his right, he noticed he had entered into one of the red light districts, and it dawned on him then that prostitutes looking for a trick had probably been calling out to him for several minutes.
The most recent one, a thin woman with fair skin and what his vampire sight could discern in the half-darkness as deep-cyan blue eyes said, " Hello, sugar. I think we should get to know each other better."
With that, the woman of no more than twenty walked toward him in her short, cherry-red dress and grey pleather snakeskin boots, her hips swaying with the timeless rhythm of a woman readily available. As she got closer to him, Angel noticed the crisp scent of her body mist. It was probably something fast fading bought in drugstores with a name like, "Apple Delight". Beneath that, the smell of sex, undetectable to others, was almost overpowering to him. And it reminded him of .... . another person who's heart and body he'd broken in selfish pursuit of soul-induced desires.
Angel walked down the street, staring off into space like he was a Verve video, and remembered.
This one had been older, twenty five. Of course, at two hundred, he'd been older too. His birthday. He'd celebrated it in the hotel. This was before Evelyn, before the fear demon, before his ensouled self would have become someone who would let a demon take out a hotel full of human beings. Angel had always had his own prejudices, he knew. When it came to humans, they all bled the same and they could make him feel... well... human. More than just human. Alive and purposeful.
His birthday, and walking down - shit, was it really - it was. Coco Boulevard, fourty nine years ago. He hadn't wanted sex, he knew that any woman who got near enough to him to touch him would be able to tell from his cold skin that he wasn't human. Prostitutes often knew about the nosferatu, but they didn't call them that. They just thought we were bad johns who could always seem to find them, and the ones that did find out didn't usually get to die and tell.
Coco Boulevard. Back then it had actually been kind of classy, not just whores and junkies lining the streets, but night clubs and coffee houses. Angel had liked walking down the boulevard back then. There was so much beauty, and sometimes if he was tight for blood or board money, he would sit on a curb and do portraits for a nickel.
Angel had been walking around that night with five dollars in his pocket, and wondering if he would stop by the butcher's or just get a rare steak. And then he had heard the sound in the alley. He knew it was a Briglosha. He'd only heard that sound once berfore in China, just before he and Darla had parted. He would never forget the sound; it curdled human blood. That was the reason there was so little written about Brigloshas; it was rare for a human to survive long enough to record it.
Angel turned his head toward the sound, and realized it was coming from the alley at the end of the block. Always the alleys. Angel lowered his head momentarily, wondering if he would survive this night long enough to enjoy a bloody rare steak. When he raised his head, his forehead was ridged. Angel bounded into the alley and saw a helpless young prostitute, about twenty five, standing there, her face twisted into a mask of horror and silent tears slipping from her eyes. The woman's face was twisted into an 'O' of shock and fear, but no sound would emerge past the confines of her lips.
Angel's eyes sped quickly around the alley, searching for a weapon. Finding none, he attacked the Briglosha head on. The demon quickly dropped his prey and attacked the undead beast clamouring for his attention. They fought toe to toe. The woman crouched in the alley stared at the brawl too afraid to move.
Soon, however, Angel killed the demon. The Briglosha's defenses were mostly centered on the ability to kill their victims through sound, and Angel was already dead. The Briglosha fell to the ground with a loud thud, leaving the vampire and lady of the night alone in the alley.
Angel slowly walked towards the woman in what most people who didn't work in her environment would call dishabille. She quickly looked away from him and at her ruby strap sandal pumps in shame.
Rona wasn't ashamed of being a prostitute, or of her slutty crimson dress. She was so way beyond shame for that. No, it was the shame of her crouched on the floor of an alley in fear. She was ashamed of alot. What she took from her pimp, the johns who'd actually managed to rape her despite her strength and defenses, the way she willingly fucked white men who's faces she could easily see plastered in a sepia-filtered 1850s photograph, and the way she knew their grandfathers had been as comfortable with their slaves as whatever pink man was above her. At the moment, she was ashamed of not being able to fight off a beast of some sort. It had seemed sort of human, but she could easily tell it wasn't. She'd seen things like this before, she'd fought and won against some, scared off others, and run like the devil was after her from most of them.
Rona looked up at the cute white man standing above her with his hand outstretched, and wondered whether or not to take it. The humiliation of this night could not get more complete, and if she took his hand, she doubted she would be able to get out of paying him with pussy.
Rona looked down at her version of the ruby slippers, and then told the urban manifestation of Glinda, "No."
It was a simple word, one word that was said with finality.
Angel recognized the tone, and simply said, "I'm not going to hurt you".
He wanted to reassure the trembling young woman before him. He had experience, and had learned to wait out finality until it faded like everything else.
Rona, unable to hold back the tears anymore, keened as her self esteem was squeezed once more from her eyes. She would have to fuck him. And maybe fuck... some other dickhead...(s). You'd think facing this would get easier with time, Rona thought to herself.
Rona raised a shaking hand above her into the night air, and as Angel caught it, a jolt of something he couldn't name went through him. The woman cowering on the alley floor felt it too, and she looked up at him, more fear in her eyes. Rona tried to take her hand back, but Angel kept it.
"I told you," Angel said again, " I'm not going to hurt you."
Despite the fact that she had just been attacked by a large otherworldly being and was now crouched on a filthy alley floor with her hand extended to a... well, let's face it, Rona admitted to herself, she didn't know what he was, but he wasn't a man...Rona laughed. Jesus, was it genetic? White men were so pompous sometimes.
Angel stood there nonplussed, wondering whether to be relieved or something else. At least she didn't seem to be afraid anyomre, and he was greatful for that. Rona leaned on Angel's hand for support and he helped her to her feet.
"Listen, what you saw-", Angel began before being cut off by Rona.
"I know what I saw. I know what I'm seeing... no offense, but I know you're not that different from what I saw."
"What? That's untrue. How can you say that?", Angel querried, beginnig to feel insulted. " Is this because I'm white or is it because..."
Angel's voice trailed off as he realized he was sounding ridiculous and insane. And she was right, he thought to himself with self-pity. He wasn't human, and his demon was no different than the murdering being he'd just fought.
"Thanks for the hand", Rona said, swaying her hips powerfully as she walked past her knight in a shining pompadour. As she exited the alley, she could almost pretend that her life had not flashed before her eyes moments before.
Rona was able to keep up her facade until she was down Coco Blv. Once she reached the red stop light outside of the then-avante-garde beatnik Coco Bongo Club*, the tears escaped her heart and shot out through her clenched eyelids. Her shoulders jerked in sobbing torrents that shook her to the bones. She was supposed to be strong. What a joke that was, Rona thought to herself. She wasn't strong, she had never been stronger than the bare minimum necessary to survive.
The June heat was getting to her. Rona looked down at her wine coloured dress and suddenly felt disgusted. The night, the smell of the last two tricks she'd had that evening, they clung to her. Her own failure clung to her. And she was a failure, she was sure of it. She was supposed to be strong. She was supposed to get up in the morning and work a cheap job and have kids and support them, maybe nail a husband, a decent husband out in L.A. was an even higher goal. She was supposed to face adversity with fearless eyes. She was a black woman. She wasn't supposed to let it get to her. She wasn't supposed to feel attracted to a white man. With a rueful laugh, she acknowledged that she certainly wasn't supposed to find a white thing attractive.
She wasn't supposed to be finding a white thing attractive when she had almost died. Well, she was good at some things. Fucking was one of them. Many men had let her know when she was growing up.
Suddenly, she felt a cold sensation on her shoulder and turned around in a defensive shock. Her knight stood before her, his hand still firmly on her bare skin as Rona's eyes betrayed first her shock, then cool apprehension.
"Look, are you ok? Do you want me to, you know, walk you home or...wherever. Do you maybe want a cup of coffee?"
Rona laughed and said, "Look, it's twenty five for an hour, and I don't do vamps."
With that, she turned on her heel and stalked off into the night. Angel watched her go, wondering why he had offered to walk her home. More likely, back to her pimp who would probably beat the shit out of her for bringing a john back to him, or for coffee. Coffee. Sometimes, he was a stupid vampire. How to approach a subject without making it seem like an innocent offer for friendly safe beverage consumption was some skanky offer to fuck?
Rona felt the vampire's eyes on her back even when she knew she was out of his sight. The searing heat shooting out from his stare was almost piercing. With dressed up confidence, she walked the streets back to her low-rent flat in New Harlem.
As she walked the steps up to her apartment, she ignored the shouts from Churchlady Doris, who screamed at Rona to get her "trampy ass out of this good neighborhood!"
"Get out of here, you little hussy! No one needs harlots like you ruinin' our neighborhoood. It's a good neighborhood! Aren't you ashamed in the eyes of the Lord, child? You're bringing a bad name to this block, you little tramp! Tramp! TRAAAAAMMMMMMP!"
Doris screamed her indignation at high midnight down to the young woman unlocking the main door to their shared building. How she hated that hussy, bringing her nastiness down into her own good neighborhood. How colored folk were supposed to get ahead when sluts like that were giving it away, Doris would never know.
Rona let the front door slam behind her as she walked into the building foyer. She knew it was unkind to do it at this hour, when most of her neighbors were sleeping. But she couldn't always stave off her temper with Doris, and she figured Churchlady Doris's tirade had woken up everyone on the block by now. Rona ran a hand through her dreadlocks and shifted her weight on to one foot, sighing with a weariness she had not allowed herself to acknowledge earlier tonight. In the beginning, it had been fun. It had even made her horny sometimes, being that nasty, being what her abusers had told her she was 'born' to be. It had been nice getting compliments from the sweet looking Christ-lookalike white boys who would come through from the local college. Then, it had been a job. Now, at twenty five, despite the fact that she was faring better than most other hookers in her surroundings, it was breaking her down, piece by piece.Rona resigned herself to climbing the steps to her apartment.
The staircase was the best part of the whole building. The apartments didn't have great heating, and her neighbor's messes sent cockroaches into her own apartment. But the staircase was from another time; maybe even another universe.
The banister was black laquered steel, handmade and gilded so ornately and beautifully that it's standing was a gravitational marvel. The steps were fashioned from real marble, and at each ending a stained wood panel archway could be found. Rona wondered if that was what her life would be like. The best part of arriving at a new step was being past an old one, until, when she reached the blessed end, she would croak.
And while Rona went through her evening ritual and stripped herself of the evidence of her job, Angel had watched, unseen, from a rooftop nearby.
"Hey, ya know what time it is?"
Suddenly, Angel was jerked back to the present. The polyester suited man in front of him looked flushed, as if he were drinking earlier that evening. In fact, he had accosted Angel outside of "The Eager Beaver". Angel could tell by his smell that he'd probably just come from the titty bar.
Of course, he couldn't be sure. Lost in thought, he hadn't noticed anything around him except his own thoughts.
"Sorry", Angel said brusquely to the man before him.
As Angel walked into the night, he put the thoughts of his sister, of Rona out of his mind once and for all. He concentrated on walking home. To the Hyperion. Where he belonged. Today.