IGMS Issue 8 (10 page)

"What do you think of it?"

"Sucks."

John shifted in his seat. "How's your girlfriend?"

Paul rolled his eyes. "I broke up with her two months ago."

"Paul, I'm not quite at my best right now. Your mother -- she never told me about this."

"Why should she? You couldn't have done anything about it. And you were busy being a best-selling writer, anyway."

Jackie came back into the waiting room. "She's awake. She wants to see you. Alone."

Paul glanced in John's direction.

John stood. "All right."

"I'll show you the way."

She led him down a hall, past a nurses' station, and around a corner. She stopped at the door to room 1430 and opened it for him. They exchanged strained smiles as he entered. She closed the door behind him.

It was a semi-private room, one bed mercifully empty. The curtains were closed, casting a pall.

Marie turned to him. Hooked to an IV, she lay under a single hospital sheet that accentuated the bony outlines of a body gone shrunken and frail. Her once blonde hair had thinned and grayed. Her face had become so gaunt and wizened as to make her appear ninety years old. It had been only two months since he'd last seen her.

He flashed on the last time he had seen her in a hospital bed -- just after Paul's birth, almost fourteen years ago. The difference between that exhausted but radiant woman and the cruelly wasted one before him --

He looked away, unable to bear the sight.

"John." Her voice was hoarse. "Thank you for coming."

He approached the bed, still averting his eyes.

She extended a skeletal hand from under her bed sheet. He took it gently, forced himself to look at her. "Marie, why --"

"Why didn't I tell you?" She paused to take a rattling breath. "Not sure. I guess I thought I'd wait until you noticed something was wrong. Until you asked. But you never did, John. You never did. That made me angry."

"I'm so sorry. I --" But he could think of no way to complete the thought. In a choked voice, he said, "Are you in much pain?"

"Some. I can medicate whenever I want." She nodded toward the IV. "But for now, I'd rather have the pain. I need my mind clear."

"Are you sure --" He cleared his throat. "Are the doctors sure nothing can be done? We can get a second opinion. I can bring in specialists to --"

"No. That time is long past. I'll hold out as long as I can. For Paul, you understand. But I can't hold out forever. That's why you need to listen right now."

"What can I do? I'll do anything."

"I'm glad to hear you say that." She took another raspy breath. "When I was first diagnosed, Jackie and I had long talks about Paul. She agreed to take care of him should anything happen."

"Jackie? What about me?"

She leveled a stare at him, blinking once, slowly. "I didn't think that would be a good idea."

He released her hand. "I'm his father. Haven't I always made sure he was taken care of? Have I ever missed a child support payment? And his college tuition is already in the bank, if he wants it."

"You were never tight with money. That much I'll give you. Time, on the other hand --"

"My career --"

"Enough. I don't have the strength to argue right now."

He fell silent, ashamed.

She coughed, and slowly wiped spittle from her chin. "What I need to say to you is this: when I'm not doped up on morphine, when I have time to think -- as best I can through the pain -- I realize Jackie is kidding herself. She has four children; she's already stretched too thin. Raising Paul would be too much for her."

The shock that had so recently worn off settled in again. "So you want me to take him, after all."

"There's no one else. You're my best option. Which goes to show you how rotten my options are at this point." Her mouth twitched in a grim smile. "Paul needs more than money. He needs time, lots of it. I know that will be hard for you. You never had time for him. You've never forgiven him for not being Steven."

"That's not --"

"Spare me the righteous indignation. It's true, and you know it." She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. "Anyway, I'm offering you a chance to prove me wrong. Will you take him or not?"

He considered, or tried to. He found he could focus coherently on only one thought -- that Marie's first inclination been to leave Paul with Jackie instead of him. That rankled. It hurt.

"I'll take him. If he'll have me."

She opened her eyes. "He will."

"Are you sure?"

"He'll do it if I ask him. Bring him in here."

John brought him in. Marie was right. When she told Paul, he nodded.

September 29, 2039

Sometimes, the adjustments are subtle, minute, even easy. Sometimes, you actually think you're getting a handle on your new circumstances. And other times . . .

Paul came home today with a snake tattoo on his face. It winds its scaly way across his forehead, between his eyes, beside his nose, across his upper lip, around his mouth, and terminates somewhere under his chin.

Apparently, it's something of a fad among kids born of cloned cells; God knows why. They wear them like badges of honor.

Paul got the idea from his buddy Keith, of course. Keith has a large lizard on his left cheek. Bad enough that he's a hulking delinquent three years older than Paul. He seems to be Paul's only real friend, and the influence he exerts scares me. Sure, they're both clone-conceived, but why can't this kid hang out with others his own age? On days like this, I wish Paul was the only clone at his school, that he had no friends at all.

A snake. Perfect. I can only imagine how well that will go over during job interviews.

Naturally, I was livid. Paul just nodded when I asked him if it was permanent. I'm sure he was expecting me to explode. God knows I wanted to scream, but his mother's last request hangs uneasily over me, over both of us. We say very little to each other.

I wonder if Steven would have been so defiant, had he lived to become a teenager. Would he have turned against me, too?

Tomorrow I have my first appointment with Paul's junior high guidance counselor. Maybe he can help.

. . .to be continued in issue 9 . . .

The elevator stops on three as I'm going up, and an angel gets on. He has a terrible time finding room for his wings and arranging them to his satisfaction, standing right up by the buttons to make room for them, and they still bump against the ceiling. He smells sweet and funky like singed feathers baked in honey, and he glows like the elevator buttons. I huddle in the other front corner and try to act casual. He follows me off at six and down the hall, all the way to my apartment.

"Brian Stark," he says. "I'd like a word with you."

"You have the wrong guy," I say, sliding the key in the lock, turning it, and leaning on the door. But the door won't budge, not one little bit, like a brick wall.

"No, I don't," he says. "Don't lie to an angel. It angers us." He brushes my cheek with the feather tip of his glowing wing, and I scream, or try to. The scream won't budge either, lodged in my throat like a cork in a bottle, and I strangle on my pain. I brushed up against a Portuguese man-o-war once in the Gulf. That was a lover's kiss compared to the angel's touch. "I've come to ask you a few questions about Melanie Waters. Are you going to let me in or not?" He smirks, sniffs. "You have
free will
, after all. Yes, or no?"

"Yes," I gasp. My door flies open, and I fall into my apartment screaming.

He steps over me and slams the door behind him. He frowns at the ceiling fan whirling lazily near one wing and it stops dead, the paddles falling like a blossom wilting. He stands with his back to the sofa against the long wall and spreads out his wings, knocking over a table lamp with a crash and then crushing the glass on my Monet print. He rests his wings on the back of the sofa and seems to relax a little. I stand before him and tremble.

"Do you love Melanie?" he asks.

"Love her? We broke up a couple of years ago. She dumped me. We were only together
maybe
three years." I start to suggest maybe, just maybe, he
does
have the wrong guy, but think better of it. My cheek is still on fire.

"Is that a
no
?" the angel asks.

"I'm not sure. Could you tell me why you're asking?"

"She's about to die, so she's being judged.
Weighed
in the balance." He holds up imaginary scales suspended from one of his perfect hands, eyes them like a cat eyeing a canary cage, a smile like a crescent moon. "Is she . . . religious?"

All I can think of are a few yoga classes, making fun of TV preachers. "Not -- not exactly."

"Exactly not, I should say. No
faith
." He eyes the imaginary scales once again. "That leaves good works and the high regard of others to weigh in the balance. And
mercy,
of course." He smirks and sniffs again. "Her good works are, as you are aware, nothing exceptional. She was asked if there might be a single soul in the vast universe who still loved her, and she came up with you. I told her I doubted it, but she was quite sure that you were her best bet. Her only chance, you might say."

I
had
told her I would love her forever, no matter what; that should she ever change her mind, all she had to do was call and I'd come running. Guys say crap like that. Who knows if we mean it? She never called, of course. But now there's this . . . this
angel
in my living room. The smell is starting to make me nauseous. There's something like spoiled chicken underneath the sweetness. I need a drink of water.

"You want something to drink?" I ask.

"I don't partake of material substance."

"Is that a no?"

"Don't get cute with an angel," he says, his wings coming off the sofa.

I back up against the wall with a thud. "I wasn't. Honest." A wing hovers ominously, then withdraws. I desperately change the subject. "I guess Melanie's in a lot of trouble, huh?"

He smiles. "No more than anyone else. You're all being judged all the time. That's how we achieve" -- he almost touches the tip of my terrified nose with a wingtip, but stops just short -- "
justice
." He draws out the final syllable in a hiss, like something sizzling. "We weigh everything, then act judiciously." His feathers rustle like a dry wind through a dead cornfield. His eyes glow and never blink.

His head is beautiful like a snake's, with smooth, graceful lines -- hairless, featherless. The feathers start at the base of the neck as a down. Skin and feather are the same marble white. He could've stepped down from a tombstone. He wears no clothes and has no discernible genitalia. No discernible humanity. He's the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm afraid I'm going to piss myself.