Metal Angel (7 page)

“No.”

Why was he so stubborn about this one thing? She was annoyed, but not enough to make her stop wanting him. Driving home with him, even though his booted feet were marring her upholstery, she felt so turned on at the thought of him that she could barely talk or look at him. He was exquisite.

Over the eons Volos had often watched humans in coitus. How many angels can crowd onto the head of a pin, and how many can hover in any given bedroom? But that had been in his ethereal time. Then, his interest had been that of a bodiless voyeur. It was different now, feeling the demands of his own warm, rousing flesh. He felt no special attraction to Brett just because she was blond and thin—he had seen many generations of mortal beauty, and this bumpy-fronted modern type, all ribs and erectile breasts, appealed to him no more than the seallike sleekness of the Venus de Milo might, or a soulful Renaissance courtesan made mostly of dark eyes and a sweet face. But he went with Brett. How could he not go with Brett? His body was clamoring.

Once in her apartment he took off his cloak. He had found it advisable to wear the thing over his wings in public places—but this was not a public place.
Not quite
, Volos thought, dropping the garment to her pussywillow-gray carpet, standing in her living room and looking around at black tables and white chairs, at pink calla lily lamps in front of beveled-glass mirrors. “Deco,” he remarked to show that he kept track of human transience, “very Art Deco.” Hearing his own voice he knew at once that he should have kept silent. The words had slopped, and his torso felt watery and warm. What she had given him, that drink, whatever it was, that margarita, it had made itself a oneness with the ebb and flow of his blood, it had gone straight to his body. The mirrored walls were sea deep, the lamps pink phosphorescent kelp swaying in the room's dim private currents, in the sex-scented wash of the world.
Drunk
, Volos thought,
so this is drunk
. He did not dislike it.

Brett had taken off some of her clothes, and suddenly he was seeing her, really seeing her with the attention he usually reserved for himself. Pale, moon-like curves above satin and lace—her breasts. Yes, he wanted to touch them.… Why had she not taken off her shoes? Was she not going to do this thing with him after all? Surely … yes. Volos understood that the absurd heeled shoes worn by modern women were designed to increase their sexual appeal. He had heard this, but now for the first time he comprehended. To his bones he comprehended. His whole body saw how her tiptoe stance made her breasts tilt toward him, her back arch, her hips swing as she stepped nearer. Moreover, the shoes were of functional use, giving her the height she needed as she kissed him.

She is kissing me
—

Lips, she was moving her lips against his lips, and sweet demons of hell, he had seen this thing done how many times yet never known how lips could tickle like feathertouch and tingle like fire and how the effect was not limited to mouth; he felt it lifting his hands to the curve of her back, felt it quicken the tempo of his breathing, felt it amplify his shoulders, his chest, his buttocks. His body, responding to hers. Lips moving in response. Tongue moving in response.

So this is a kiss
…

It startled his heart, it filled him, it ran like electric shock straight from his mouth to his groin. He felt her nipples against him, heads up beneath thin cloth. He felt—himself, that important forbidden part of himself, hot and rebellious and ecstatic, straining against the zipper of his Levi's. The feeling and the realization excited him so that he broke the kiss and blurted aloud, “It's—all right!”

“You like, baby?” she murmured against his face.

“My God, yes!”

Desire, it burned like fire, she rocked her hips against him and pleasure tore him like pain, he wanted to scream.… Hard-on, big dick, crotch rocket, trouser snake—the well-researched expressions skidded across his mind. He wanted to sing them, all of them, every word he knew for penis, cock, phallus, willy, wedding tackle, boner, dong, tool. He felt heat in his wings and knew they had to be flashing like neon in Vegas. He wanted to shout an announcement, he wanted to dance, and most of all he wanted to get out of his pants and into her.

“Soon?” he whispered. “Please.”

“Now be good.” She backed off; she was a tease. Smiling into his eyes, lifting both arms so that her breasts swelled above her camisole, she traced the top line of his shoulders with her fingertips. Said, “Just you wait.” Said, “We've got all night. Take off those Hollywood wings first.”

“I can't.”

“They'll get in the way, baby.”

“I can't! They're part of me.” How could she look straight at him and not see? Yet she did. Most people did. There was something in humans that could not face the truth. So far only Texas knew him truly.

“Hey, it's them or me, lover.” Lightly Brett tugged at his left shoulder, urging him to turn his back; he resisted her. “Come on. I'll help you. How do you get them off?” She reached past his neck to find the Velcro, the clasp, the catch, and found the crisp overlapping smoothness of his covert feathers instead. For just a moment she lightly touched before she jerked her hand away as if something had stung her.

She backed away, off balance, teetering on her high heels, her face spooked, yet uncertain. How could she be frightened without comprehending what it was she feared? Yet she managed it. Humans had always managed these seemingly impossible contradictions. It was quite possible, apparently, for this woman to decide about him without even trying to understand. Watching her, Volos felt all his desire sag into despair, the fire in him turn to a smoldering anger.

She said, “I think maybe I'm too tired tonight after all.”

“Of course.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“It is of no importance.” He said this as a matter of ontological truth, though his body, and therefore his mortal being, did not believe it. He picked up his cloak, fastened it on. It would protect him from some of the gawking, some of the foolish questions to which people never believed the answers.

Seemingly out of nowhere Brett said, “It's just as well not to be intimate if we have to work together. You'll be seeing a lot of me, Volos. I'm going to make you a star.” She told him this with the utter certainty of one who has looked destiny in the eye and touched its wide wings.

Yet she had said none of this before. Volos was bemused. “You are what?”

“I am going to make you big, Volos. Very, very big.”

“Big,” Volos said. “Yes.” For a small while—all too small—she had already done so. He felt the sticky place bigness had left inside his jeans. A few moments later, out on the street, he stepped into an alley and unzipped and used his fingers to smell it.

All smells were new to him. His first bodily memory of this world was that of the smell of the ocean in the air, salty as his sweat. Since then he had smelled oleander and McDonald's, vagrants and Brett's perfume, sun-baked concrete and a wet poodle and the tar pits at La Brea and the reek of perm outside a beauty salon. All smells were exciting to him—but this one, the fetor of his own sexual arousal, raised his neck hairs and shivered down his spine, so brutal was it and so much unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Dawn air in the city smelled like petroleum, Texas noticed. He discovered this because he hadn't slept, had given up on sleep and was sitting in his open window, stony lonesome, watching the rockers head home for their lofts pale as if they never saw daylight, wondering what Volos was doing and trying to write a letter to Wyoma: “Dear Wyoma,

Sorry I haven't written. It's been a strange week, and not the way you're thinking.”

He was working himself up to tell her about Volos, but how the hell was he supposed to do that? He couldn't. There was no way on earth she was ever going to understand. When when was the last time he had looked at her and seen understanding? He couldn't remember. That attempt got crumpled into a ball and tossed. He tried again: “Dear Wyoma,

Please notice the new address. I am staying at the Y near the bus station and am looking for some kind of job.”

He tossed that one as well. Too much like a business letter. It was not as if he were writing her to conduct business or out of a sense of duty. The truth was he really wanted to connect with her. But God, he felt farther from her than miles could tell.

Dear Wy,

I have not cheated on you or gone drinking or gambled or made a fool of myself much of anyhow since I've been here except that I wasted money on a new hat and boots. The hat got ruined already and the boots are scuffed. You are probably wondering what the hell I am doing here then and so am I. All I can say is it feels like I am looking for something. Maybe my mind which it appears I have lost. I think I better stick it out awhile longer and see. Please note new address.

Bob

McCardle really couldn't figure out why he didn't just give it up and go home. Unless it had something to do with Volos.

He hadn't seen the kid for almost a week. Volos had been welcome to stay in the hotel room with him awhile, and he had told the youngster so. But as soon as he felt better, the day after the fever broke, Volos began to pace and sweat. The angel couldn't stand the feeling of being boxed in.

“I came here to live, Texas! Not to sit within walls.”

“Just stay a couple days longer till I get a chance to show you how not to get hurt!” Really, Texas knew, a person could spend a lifetime trying to show a kid that, and not succeed. Every parent knew that. “Where you going to live if you go? And what on?”

“Pardon?”

“How are you gonna earn your living?”

It took maybe five minutes of confused conversation before Volos caught on to the human concept of making a living, of exchanging money for shelter and food. Then Texas did not at first comprehend what the kid tried to explain to him, that these concepts did not apply to him.

“I did not imagine myself to eat or sleep.”

“Kid, you got to eat and you got to have a place to sleep, or you die!”

“I will die, yes, but not of those things.”

“What the hell you think you are, an exception to the rules?”

“Yes, that is right. I thought it out. A lifetime will seem very short to me, you see. I did not want to spend it on those things.”

Only because he had nursed the stranger for three days and had seen how hunger did not affect him was Texas able to understand. “You mean—for you, food is fugging
optional?
”

“Yes.”

Texas had been badgering Volos to eat, buying him soups, bread, sliced turkey, fresh fruit, then urging the stuff down him. “Jesus,” he said, his first thought a petty one—he could have been saving his money.

“But pleasant,” Volos added.

“Oh. Well, in that case.” Texas let it go, spurring his thoughts onward. “There's still gotta be some things you need. Clothes. You can't wear that same pair of jeans all your life. Bus fare.”

“A guitar,” Volos said.

“Right.” It did not surprise Texas that Volos intended to be a singer. That last night in the hotel he had heard the music of a strange dark angel. Unsleeping, Volos had sung softly to the shadows, and in Texas each note had turned to a bright-colored, yearning dream, making a bittersweet ache stay with him into daylight. It was with him as he spoke, softening his eyes but sharpening his voice.

“So you need to buy a guitar. They don't come free. What d'you plan to use for money?”

And Volos did not respond to his tone, not even with lifted eyebrows, but merely reached into a jeans pocket and pulled out a flower of solid gold.

So that the kid would not get hassled or cheated, McCardle was the one who went out and pawned the thing. On the way back to the hotel he had an idea and stopped at some of L.A.'s secondhand stores, which were well stocked by California-style upward mobility and by the movie industry. Without too much trouble Texas found what he was looking for: a cloak. When he got to the room he made the kid put it on before he let him leave.

And handed over the money. He did not keep any for himself, and probably wouldn't have done so even if the kid had thought to offer him any, which he did not. Volos thanked him, but not, Texas sensed, with any real comprehension of how much Texas had invested in him. But that was all right, if Volos didn't realize about the money and about the rest of it, the investment that was not money. It was part of a kid's job to be thoughtless, to take a lot for granted.

So there went Volos. Typical kid.

Texas had stood watching him walk out into the city of angels. Had looked down from the window until he was gone. Had remembered the sound of an angel's voice in the night, and remembering, had known he would never forget, maybe not even when he was dead.

That was what was keeping him in L.A. all right, and he might as well admit it: Volos. The kid might need him for something sometime.

Dawn heated into day. The smell in the air took on substance, became visible, called itself smog. Texas added a line to Wyoma's letter: “P.S. Wy, I did get into one fight, which is how the hat got ruined.”

There had been no chance for him to show Volos how to punch, how not to lead with his chin. He tried not to think of the kid as hurt. Instead, he imagined him singing out there in the city somewhere, on a rooftop maybe, watching sunrise light up a thousand billboards. No rented room, no apartment, no condo for that one. He could be in Watts, La Habra, Van Nuys, Chinatown, wandering anywhere from the harbor to the hills. No sleep, few possessions. Texas envisioned Volos showering in a fountain. Conversing with a wino. Touching a hooker with his wings.

Okay, maybe hurt. Somewhere in this huge city. Texas felt a cold wind of fear start to blow through his mind. He had to get up out of his chair, go find him. Unless he did, he might never see the kid again—