Falling (18 page)

I am awake and on my feet instantly. I pull the door open
before Tarren even knocks. Whatever sleep he got wasn’t much and didn’t make
any improvements on his demeanor. He looks at me, and his face goes hard.

“Where are your gloves?”

“They itched,” I say lamely.

He spots the dead rabbit sprawled on the floor.

“Oh that —” I begin, but Tarren shoves past me into the
room.

“Gabe?” Tarren keeps his voice calm, but his energy spikes.
He strides to the bed where Gabe is only a mop of wavy hair atop a tangle of
covers. When Gabe doesn’t respond, Tarren’s energy explodes out, white-tipped
at the edges.

“Gabe?” he chokes and reaches out to touch his brother.

“Uh?” Gabe turns his head and blinks. “Oh, hey. What time is
it?”

Tarren snatches his hand back and turns toward me. He
doesn’t say anything, but his eyes have those daggers in them again.

“6:00 AM, Jesus,” Gabe groans and throws the blanket over
his head. “Snooze. I call snooze. Maya, hit Tarren on the head, and maybe he’ll
come back in fifteen minutes.”

“The angel killed a preacher last night. The police have
officially opened up an investigation into his death,” Tarren says. “They’re
looking to question an unknown female who was seen standing over the body.”

He gives me a nice big scowl for my performance last night.
It’s good to know that no matter how small or how stupid I already feel, Tarren
is always willing to step in and pile it on just a little bit thicker.

A muffled “fuck.” The blanket comes off, and Gabe sits up.
He runs both hands through his tussled hair. “We should have tried to get
everyone out of the park last night.”

“The police have sealed off the park,” Tarren says. “They
are setting up their own search teams.”

“Which means now they’re in danger. Stupid cops.”

“Which means they’re going to scare the angel off,” Tarren
corrects. “We’re running out of time.”

“Yeah,” I say.

Tarren looks at me. I give him my best full-blown western,
tumble-weeds-gusting-between-us squint. Fucking pink pajamas.

“Put your gloves back on,” Tarren says softly before leaving
the room.

* * *

When I get out of the shower, Gabe is wolfing down an Egg
McMuffin and staring at his computer screen.

“Protein. The eggs,” he mumbles through a mouthful of food.

“You know, if you can buy a full meal for a dollar, it’s
probably not really food,” I tell him.

“Tastes like food,” Gabe swallows and takes a long swig of
coffee.

“That’s exactly what the highly-paid chemists want you to
think.”

“Alright Ronald McBuzzkill.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up; I’m doing really serious work here.”

“You’re on Facebook! No, you just switched the screen, but I
saw it. Since when is your status ‘in a relationship’?”

“I have a girlfriend.” Gabe picks the melted cheese off the
wrapper and brings it to his mouth.

“Look, I’m sure Keira Knightly appreciates your daily fan
letters, but you can hardly call that a healthy relationship.”

“Ha! I’ve got four girlfriends actually. And they’re real.
Got screen names and everything. We go on mind blowing dates all over the
world. I even got my own love island.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a nerd!” I roll my eyes. “No one is
on Second Life anymore.”

“WildStarz2346 is. We go on roller coasters together.
LizKup4U prefers the waterfall jacuzzi. Then there are the nymph twins. Oh,
those two are naughty. You can buy some crazy toys in Second Life. Genitalia
too.”

“What about…” and here I make my voice all breathy and
romantic, “Francesca?”

“Ah, Francesca. My heart of hearts will always belong to
her.” Gabe is smiling, trying to play it off as a joke, but his aura is so
transparent, picking up speed, beating lavender humming bird wings that grow
dark as plums or the edge of the sky just before the sun sets. “But we need to
finish the mission first. Things aren’t…they’re not safe yet. So, you know, a
guy’s got to get a little nymph love every now and again.”

I laugh, but it sounds forced. I keep forgetting how alone
the Fox brothers are, how much the fight costs them.

Gabe scrunches up the wrapper, tosses it toward the
wastebasket, misses. “Wind resistance,” he says. “Anyway, I’ve got something
you can help me with.”

* * *

I glance at Gabe’s sheet, double checking the phone number
out of habit, even though my angel brain automatically memorized the full list
of numbers the first time my eyes scrolled through. I hit the dial button on my
prepaid cell, and the connection trills four times before going to voicemail.

Man:
This is Bob…

Woman:
And Kathy McGee. We hope you
are having a blessed day.

Man:
We can’t come to the phone
right now. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you right as soon as we
can.

Together:
May the Lord be with you!

It takes me a second after the beep to gather my bearings.
“Uh…hey there, my name is Mercedes. Great message by the way. Super positive.
Yeah, so I’m calling about the litter of puppies you advertised on Craigslist
last week.” I squint at Gabe’s crowded writing, “Tabs, what, oh Labs. Labs.
Great dogs. Just love those little guys.  And I was wondering if you have any
left. I’m looking to adopt, you know give a puppy a good, uh, Jesus-filled
home. I’m great with dogs, by the way. So, yeah, just give me a call back and
let me know either way.” I leave my number and hang up.

“This is stupid,” I tell Gabe.

He’s typing into a password field, grimacing each time it
rejects his inputs. A second window is plastered with an unreadable block of
code.

“No, no, it’s very important,” he says without looking up.
“Damn it, I need my lucky hat.” He stands up, stretches his arms up over his
head. “It’s all cool to go commando out into the night with guns blazing, or
dress up as a sheriff to break into a crime scene, but that’s only a small part
of the job. This here, the grueling research, this is where the real breaks
come. Tarren? He’s not going to get anything at that park.” Gabe kneels on the
floor and rummages through his messy duffle bag. “No, we’re going to find
something here.”

“This is montage stuff. I want a montage.” My voice sounds
whiny even to me.

“Ah!” Gabe pulls the cap out of his bag and brushes it off.
“No montages in real life. Just hard work and some really awesome hacking.
Hey…” he reaches under his bed and pulls something into his arms. A
white-splashed face peeks out from the nook of his elbow. Its nose twitches.
Gabe laughs and scratches the rabbit behind its long, floppy ear. Looking at my
brother’s face, I realize that I’ve just lost my lunch. Little fucker.

* * *

Gabe and I sit in the room all day searching for something
that will lead us to the angel’s identity. It’s tedious, mind numbing,
incredibly frustrating. If there was any mercy in the universe, I would have
been granted my montage and we’d be skimming right over this endless minutia on
the hard hitting chords of some appropriate soundtrack addition.

Tarren comes back long enough to drop off food and practice
some more scowls. Gabe gets a burger, and I get another bag of fish. Pointless
darts of energy. Almost not worth the effort of killing, except I’m hungry
enough to start zapping ladybugs at this point.

“Weird dream last night,” Gabe says between bites as we
lounge on our separate beds. At first I don’t know which one of us he’s talking
about, and then I do and this is worse, because he must have remembered his junkie
roommate shivering over a dead animal carcass…again.

“I was in a lake, and I couldn’t swim even though I can in
real life. My arms and legs were really heavy. It was storming; we’re talking
torrential rains, wicked lightening, humongous waves. Every time I tried to
breathe, I kept getting water in my mouth.”

“You were probably trying to eat your pillow,” I suggest as
I drop another extinguished fish behind me onto the folded napkin.

“And you were next to me in a little boat ,” Gabe puts down
his burger, “reaching out your hand to pull me in, but you didn’t have your
gloves on and your hands were all like…” he pauses, and I assume his tact is
finally catching up with his mouth. I am mistaken. “…like, glowy, like ahhhh.”
He jazzes his hands as if this somehow pantomimes the split skin, the bulbs,
the glow, the monstrosity.

“You were saying ‘Gabriel, take my hand. Take my hand,’
which is weird because Mom was the only one who ever called me Gabriel. I knew
that if I took your hand you would ice me, so I was screaming at you, ‘where’s
Tarren? Go get Tarren,’ and you pointed behind you. Tarren was standing on the
shore watching us. I screamed his name, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.
I begged you to go get him, but you just kept saying ‘Gabriel, take my hand.’ I
wouldn’t and you got mad and started cussing me out.” Gabe picks up his burger
and resumes eating. “Wild huh?”

Another note about living a sequestered life — it tends to
foster under-developed social discretion. In other words, the inability to realize
that if your dream happens to remind your roommate of her darkest, most
soul-crippling fear, maybe you should just keep your god damn mouth shut about
it.

I don’t really want to know, but in a small voice I ask,
“What happened? Did I kill you?” A fish blunders into my hand, and I pull it up
out of the water.

“Course not. Francesca dove in and saved me. Turns out she
was once a Navy Seal. She pulled me to shore, and I pretended to be unconscious
so she would give me mouth-to-mouth…”

“Now you’re lying, I can tell.” And I can. His teases
express themselves as little greenish whirls in his aura.

“What really happened?” The writer in me knows that dreams
often unmask the unconscious mind. Despite Gabe’s assurances, his easy smiles,
the sheer power of his shrugs, some part of him recognizes the threat I pose,
the way it could end between us…

A noise erupts behind me, and I almost upturn the bowl of
fish. I grab my phone with a dripping hand.

“Hello?” I venture.

“Hello!” a chipper voice replies. “Is this Mercedes?”

“Yes, yes it is,” I say.

“Oh, wonderful! I’m Kathy McGee. You called earlier.” She
speaks in a singsong voice that I immediately associate with heart-dotted i’s
and no less than five winking emoticons per email.

“Of course, the, uh...”

“I’m so sorry, but we gave all the Labrador puppies away
last week. Such precious little things.”

“Oh, right. Well, shucks, that’s too bad. I really love that
brand..er, breed. I hope they all found good homes.”

“Oh, they sure did. She seemed like such a wonderful woman.”

“One woman? Did she take them all?” I ask.

“Well, yes, she has quite a large farm and….”

Gabe snags the phone out of my hand. I grasp for it back,
but he pushes my arm away and turns around.

“Hello there, this is Agent Adama with Wildlife Protective
Services.” His voice is smooth and low. “Oh no, no, you’re not in trouble. Not
at all. But we have reason to believe a puppy mill may be operating in the
area….oh yes, I know…terrible business….the things I’ve seen. Anyway, I’ve had
my assistant looking for suspicious activity.” Gabe turns around and grins at
me. I give him my Wild West Squint O’ Death. “Such as one person buying an
entire litter of puppies. Classic sign of a puppy mill at work… Well, it may be
nothing, but we have to check into it. You understand... Good, good. Anything
you can tell me. Anything.”

Gabe sits back down and starts typing into his computer,
clucking his tongue and murmuring, “good, good, no, that’s definitely
important. You’re doing good. Anything else?” And finally, “I will. No harm
will come to those puppies, not while Agent Adama is on the job. And God bless
you too.” Gabe hangs up and tosses the phone back at me.

“What’ve you got?” I ask.

“Could be nothing. Hispanic woman, drove an old Corolla.
Doesn’t really sound like our usual MO.”

“There’s an MO for angels?”

“Old, white, male and rich. Like any exclusive club, it’s an
old boy’s network. The original members were mostly industry magnates, and they
were careful about who they let into the clubhouse. That’s changing now. Membership
is starting to trickle down. We’ve been to Harlem. An Indian reservation in
Nevada. Man, if you ever want to see poverty…holy shit, I think...” Gabe
doesn’t finish. His fingers pound the keyboard.

“Got it,” he murmurs to himself. I tense in response to the
flare in his energy. Gabe swings around in his chair, lifts the lounging rabbit
off his bed and gives it a big kiss on the forehead. “I am a friggin’ genius!”

“See if you can keep up,” Gabe says. The rabbit is sprawled
on his shoulder, strangely passive in his care. It chews on the ends of his
hair, though Tarren brought back a new bag of salad mix.

Tarren stands near Gabe’s bed, arms crossed, hair still wet.
He’s changed out of the sheriff’s uniform that fit him tight in the shoulders.
Rain taps against the window trying to get in, and the thick banks of clouds
are already diminishing the sunlight. I keep my eyes away from the rabbit, away
from the boys too. I’m sitting on my bed, hands pressed firmly against the
comforter.

“So, we got a lead on a woman who picked up a whole litter
of puppies last week,” Gabe tells his brother.

“That was me,” I add. “I mean, not the one who picked up the
litter. I found it. Found her.”

“Hispanic female, 30-40 years old. Maria H something. Drives
an old, red Corolla. She’s average height, little overweight. Let’s say 150 -
180 pounds. So…”

“DMV,” Tarren says. “Do you always have to do this?”

“Hey, I put in a lot of work here,” Gabe says defensively.
“I demand some appreciation. So yeah, DMV. I expanded the search into
neighboring counties, and that gave me a good amount of hits to work with. Next
up was credit reporting agencies.”

“That’s legal,” I say.

“Totally not. That’s where I got a hit on the list.” Gabe
turns to me and explains, “Whenever we have a stationary angel, I use an
algorithm to put together a list of likely suspects in the area based on the
angel MO we talked about — old, white, male and rich.”

“You can’t just find all that information about people,” I
accuse.

Gabe laughs at the audacity of this statement. “Oh, I
certainly can. Big Brother is out to get you Maya! Oooooohhhh. He’s
everywhere,” Gabe intones in a spooky voice. “He knows you spend all your time
on Robert Pattinson fan sites.”

“Wow, you actually think you’re funny. That’s kind of sad,”
I retort.

“Stop it.” Tarren says, because fun is being had. I swear he
must have been a mall cop in all of his past lives.

Gabe composes himself. “Alright, so turns out that one of
our Marias works for a guy on my list. She’s an administrative assistant to
Howard Krugal. Venture capitalist. Box seats. Total high flyer. He would have
the money and connections to hook up with the angel network. And best of all,
his McMansion is three miles outside the park.”

“It’s compelling,” Tarren says.

“Ms. Secretary bought a whole litter of dogs last week,
three days before the homeless guy was iced. Said she had a farm. Unless by
farm she meant a two bedroom/one bath condo in the city, then her pants are
totally on fire.”

“We need to move now.” Tarren’s voice is all business. “It’s
almost sun down. We’ll lose him if he gets to the park. We’ve got to take him
at home.”

“Got all his info. Address, house layout, everything,” Gabe
says, and his voice is losing its humor. He tugs his hair away from the rabbit
and sets the creature down on his bed. My heart is picking up, tuning to the
rise in both their energy levels. The shadows have been here the whole time,
but now I notice how they cut chunks out of each of us — taking off Gabe’s
hand, stealing Tarren’s leg, splicing me in half.

“Alrighty,” I say stupidly as I stand up from my bed.

“You’re not going,” Tarren says to me almost as an
afterthought.

“What? No! I’ll do better this time, I swear.”

“This isn’t sitting in the trees with a sniper rifle,”
Tarren says. “We’re storming the house. Sometimes bullets fly. You’d get in the
way.”

“Then give me a gun.”

“You don’t even know how to use a gun,” Tarren’s voice is
growing quiet, edgier.

“Of course I do. Point and pull the trigger.”

Gabe clears his throat.

“What?” I snap at him.

“The safety. You have to take the safety off first.”

“Yeah…” I pause a beat too long, “clearly that goes without
saying.”

Tarren is already walking toward the door. “Twenty minutes
Gabe.”

“Wait!” My voice is shrill enough to check his steps.
“You’ve been doing this your way forever. I get that, but I’m here now, and
this is my fight too. After everything I’ve been through…” My voice catches.
For once in my life I’m not acting. This is pure turmoil burning my cheeks,
crowding inside my throat. “I need to learn how to fight. I need…”

“Maya,” Gabe’s voice is soft, “please, don’t do this. We’re
trying to protect you.”

“Because you’re so fucking good at that!” I cry.

Tarren bristles, and he’s as good at bristling as he is at
growling. “You’re untrained, which makes you a danger to us and to yourself,
and you’ve already proven that you’re over-emotional. We can’t be in there
babysitting you while we’re trying to kill this thing.”

I turn to Gabe even though I know he’s even more entrenched
than his brother. “Gabe, come on. Please.” My voice is dust. “I have to be a
part of this.”

Gabe shakes his head. “You don’t want to do this. Killing
people. Seeing the things we have to see. This isn’t a good life.”

“I’m not asking for a good life. I’m asking for purpose.” I look
between them, searching for a breach in their faces. There are none.

“Fine.” I lie down on the bed and tuck my hands beneath the
pillow. “Go.”

“Twenty minutes,” Tarren says and walks out of the room.

* * *

In fifteen minutes a Gabe lookalike emerges from the
bathroom, his skin raw and patchy from the pumice. Instead of torn jeans and an
over-washed t-shirt, he’s wearing a trim black jacket, black pants, black boots
and black gloves. No lucky hat. Whoever he is, he hasn’t learned my brother’s
smiles or the way his energy is supposed to take even strokes around his thin
frame.

“Still mad?” He asks.

I lay my head back down on the pillow. “You’re doing this
for my own good. I understand that.”

“We are Maya.”

“Gabe, I want to learn how to fight. I want to kill Grand
more than anything in the world.”

Bizzaro Gabe sits on his bed and pulls the rabbit onto his
lap. He takes a while before answering, another thing the real Gabe wouldn’t
do. “I know it hurts…” A pause. “Maya, I know. Would you believe me if I said
hate isn’t worth the heartache?”

I look up at the tiled ceiling trying to find something
meaningful in the geometric patterns. Whatever I’m searching for, I come up
empty.

“Grand ruined my life. I’ve lost everything. All I can think
of is….”
Ryan in a coffin. Eyelashes turning to dust. Worms
wriggling through his eye sockets.
  “Revenge.”

Bizzaro Gabe winces. Again, he takes his time in answering.
“If you let the hate consume you, then you really will lose everything. Don’t
let that happen. Please, Maya.”

“That’s cliché.” I’m in no mood for soft landings. We can’t
all laugh our hurts away, or pretend there’s a happy ending coming just because
we deserve it.

“Did you know you can house train rabbits?”

I turn away from the tiles to stare at the person who is Gabe
again.

“I looked it up,” he says.

“So?”

“So, I need you to do me a favor.”

“Great, I’m in a favor granting mood.”

“Swear you won’t kill him.”

“Who?” I sit up.

“Sir Hopsalot.” Gabe strokes the rabbit’s long ears. It
turns its face up into his hand. “I’m gonna keep him. That means he’s family
now.”

“Okay, Gabe. I swear on my beloved floppy hat.”

“I’m serious.”

I’m pissed at him right now. Beyond pissed. Blood boiling,
steam-shooting-out-of-my-ears pissed, but I can’t say no to Gabe. Not with his
sad smiles and mischief eyes. Not when his energy calms every time he picks up
the damn thing.

“Sir Hopsalot?” I ask.

“Awesome, right?” Gabe looks down at the rabbit and smiles.
“He loves it.”

“Sir Hopsalot,” I say formally, “I hereby solemnly swear
that no harm shall come to you by my hand. I humbly apologize for my previous
attempts to kill you. Let us be friends hereafter.”

“Ha! Hear that?” Gabe picks up the rabbit between his hands.
“I think she likes you.” And because he’s Gabe, the matter is closed. If I
could be grateful for silver linings it would be that I was given such a good
brother who cannot read minds, because when I’m looking at his tousled, damp
hair, his too-vulnerable-for-his-own-good eyes, what I mean is that I’m seeing
those things in spite of the energy that pulses around him. Blue as blue, true
as true. The song is always here, and it always comes first.

“Are you two done?” Tarren is standing in the room, suited
up, his face affixed with an expression of heroic stoicism. He looks like
someone whose daring exploits are accompanied by theme music, or at least
someone who has daring exploits.

Gabe lets Sir Hopsalot down on the bed. “Pee in the corner
if you have to,” he whispers to the rabbit. Then he shoulders his backpack, and
his energy is changing again, turning in tight circles.

“Be careful,” I say to them. Well, mostly to Gabe.

As soon as they shut the door, I close my eyes and slowly
count down from 10. The sounds crowd in.

10 – Rain turning angry against the windows

  9 – Rabbit’s heart tapping inside its ribs

  8 – Car pulling into the parking lot, breaks wincing

  7 – Television audience erupting in laughter from the next
room

  6 – Pipes rattling as water flows through them

  5 – Girl talking on the phone in the room above, laughing a
loud honking laugh

  4 – Steps along the corridor outside

  3 – Old man humming a song in the room to the right, his
voice raspy as wind    
        blowing across dead leaves.

  2 – My own breath running the circuit of my lungs

  1 – The song, haunting in the background. Louder than
everything else.

Gabe was smart enough to power down his computer before
jumping in the shower, but he doesn’t realize how easily I can follow his
keystrokes even from across the room. His password is CDTTGMF. Gabe really
shouldn’t have saved all of Krugal’s info in a folder on his desktop. A girl
could get curious.

I turn the water cold in the shower. It helps with the pain
of scrubbing off my skin for the second night in a row. Then I suit up in my
angel-killing uniform — the one with the stretch pants and heart holding teddy
bear. I try to be all serious and professional while doing this. I don’t
succeed. It doesn’t matter; I’m getting used to looking stupid.