Accidental God -- Section 03

[I like these characters. Also, for some reason when writing for adults, I feel more free to explore tangents of all varieties. Different writing gives different opportunities, I suppose.]

    "Rise and shine," said Atty, pushing open the curtains in his Washington Avenue condo. Luther blinked up at the ceiling from his bed on the couch. The ceiling was lined with track lighting and painted in the kind of pristine white most people expected from an angel. Atty liked the pomp and circumstance of the job and it showed all through his apartment--except for the collection of board games, the one over on the wall, lined up in a rainbow pattern of color.
    "I still don't get the board games," said Luther. "I've never even seen you play one."
    "Not yet," said Atty, "but you never know."
    "Never know what?"
    The angel dropped into the cream, overstuffed chair across from the couch, brushing back his freshly showered hair with one hand. "I keep having this dream," said Atty. "I don't know that I'd call it 'prophecy' or anything like that. It's just a dream." He smiled and bobbed his brown eyebrows. "You're giving me that look, Luther."
    "Which look?" Luther tried to wipe the skepticism off his face. It wasn't that he didn't believe in prophecy--he certainly did--but it was never a gift he'd had, and, to be frank, he'd always been a bit jealous of those angels and mortals who had it. Not that Luther would know what to do with prophecy, even if he'd had the opportunity. LUTHER, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR JOB ON YOUR BIRTHDAY.  Yeah, maybe prophecy wasn't such a great thing anyway. "Sorry," he said. "Tell me about your dream."
    "No," said Atty, pulling out his smart phone and scrolling through menus. "It's not your birthday anymore, so I don't have to be nice to you."
    Luther pulled his arms out from under the cream-colored blanket that had buried him all night--who made blankets with this much 'poof' to them? Children could be lost in this blanket for months. It was downright homicidal. He rubbed his hands over his face and felt the same lack of energy he'd felt since yesterday. The feeling like he was missing a limb or two, or that he'd forgotten how to walk.
    "I'm sorry, Atty, for looking like that. Can you forgive me this once? It would be very angelic of you."
    Atty rolled his eyes. "Fine, you putz, I'll tell you, even though you pulled out the 'angelic' card."
    "Sorry about that, too," said Luther.
    "No, you're not."
    "No, I'm not."
    "Thought so."
    "The dream"
    "Right. I keep having this dream that I have a god over to visit, and he's brought a date, and it is AWKWARD."
    "Bad first date?" asked Luther.
    "You have no idea. You know I'm not the most sensitive guy around--I mean, I do my best, but even I admit that I'm a surface dweller, and the deeper movements of social interaction are like the earthworms beneath my feet."
    "Earthworms?"
    "Moles, then. Or hobgoblins."
    Luther found himself laughing. "You're not very complimentary of the subtleties of society."
    Atty waved his hand dismissively and tapped on the screen of his phone. "I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I know I'm naturally a bit superficial, and I've come to accept that. I try to dig deeper, but it's like trying to scuba dive without a mask, and I can only hold my breath so long. It's not easy for me. Anyway, the point was that--in my dream--things aren't going well for our little godling, and I look over at the wall, and I say, 'Anyone for Monopoly?' So I keep board games."
    Luther blinked at him. "When you say 'godling,' you don't mean it's a child? Because we haven't had any child gods for centuries."
    Atty's eyebrows ducked down in concentration, he stopped messing with his phone, and he finally looked up. "No, he wasn't a child. Young, sure, though most gods look young, but...I don't know...out of his teens at least. But that's funny. I've always thought of him as 'the godling,' and never really figured out why." He shrugged and slipped his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. "Something to figure out later. I need to head out. Spare key is on the table by the front door. You going to be good for food? I'm not much of a shopper."
    Luther sat up, shoving the immense pile of a blanket onto one end of the couch and leaning back into the thick cushioning on the other. "I'll be fine," he said. "Probably head back home, or find a bagel or something. What time is it, anyway?"
    "Around six."
    "Six? What are you up for?"
    "I do morning services at the temple. Didn't I tell you that? Chuck isn't a particularly intense god, but he is very insistent that morning supplicants get the same attention as the people who wake up at reasonable times of day. And, as a matter of fact, I've discovered that I like it. You might be wearing off on me, Luther."
    "Passing the torch to the new generation," said the ex-archangel. "I'm proud of you."
    Atty stood up and looked down at his friend, his face suddenly serious. "Thank you," he said. "That means a lot to me."
    Luther blinked up at him and smiled. "Sure," he said.
    Neither moved for a while, then Atty sighed and looked at his watch. "Time to go. Hey, I'm sorry about your job. You really can stay here as long as you want. That offer stands. We can even get a bed for the study."
    Luther shook his head. "Home is home, and I've god plenty of money saved up. Never been much of one for vacations, so it's not like I'm short."
    "Come on, Luther. You know I wasn't talking about the money."
    Luther tried to smile, and it wasn't working too well. "I know. I'll be okay, though. I'll get through this. Maybe it IS time for a vacation. I might take things too seriously sometimes."
    Atty snorted. "You think?"
    Luther glared, then looked back at someplace through the wall. "I will get through this, Atty. I'll find work. Someone worthwhile must need an angel. And even if there's nobody, I'd be pathetic not to learn at least one thing from mortals over the last two-thousand years: you don't need wings to do good." He looked up at his friend. Atty still looked concerned, an emotion that looked foreign on the angel’s face.
    "Eat something," said Atty.
    "I will," said Luther.
    "I'm serious," said his friend. "Everyone feels better with a full stomach, even angels."
    "Get going."
    "Right."
    Luther felt the change before he saw it, a pulse through the air that smelled like hot soup on a cold morning and sounded like a street singer who just found his real voice, and it was beautiful. Wings of light, almost too bright to look at, spread out from Atty's back like opening the gates to a small, sweet heaven, and then his friend waved, and then he was gone, and Luther was alone.
    He reached up absently and wiped the tears away from the side of his nose. "Chuck seems like a nice god," he said to himself. Then he stood up to find a tissue and to search out that bagel place he'd seen on the corner.


    There was only one stool empty at the bagel place, along the counter that lined the street-side window. Bradley was floored by the number of people there, eating bagels. It was like there was a world over the rainbow he'd never known before, but instead of being populated by the Lollipop Guild and moving scarecrows, it was full of fit people in everything from suits to abbreviated jogging outfits that made Bradley slightly embarrassed to not look at, or at least only out of the corner of his eye. Everyone felt somehow artsy, like they must discuss modern sculpture for fun and listen to music that was ugly on purpose. Fortunately, the older guy next to the empty stool looked more real and less like he'd been fed from his birth on organic bean sprouts.
    "Hey," said Bradley, walking up to the man.
    "Good morning."
    "This stool taken?"
    The man shook his head. "Please." He took a bite from what looked like a cinnamon-sugar bagel, and Bradley decided his guess had been right on the money: a real human being, who probably had never had membership in a gym. Not that the guy was much out of shape. He looked healthy enough, but like he did real work for real people. Gray hair, blue eyes, a little scruff. His clothes looked slept in, but not homeless. Still, was the guy okay?
    Bradley sat down and addressed his own bagel sandwich. Roast beef, veggie cream cheese, and the same cluster of vegetation that the lady in front of him had ordered on her extra-healthy-everything bagel. Somehow, it had seemed expected, and the lady behind the counter had looked at him with those hazel eyes that demanded vegetables on EVERYTHING. True, Bradley might have been projecting just a little--a snowball of insecurity that had started its downhill roll the moment Olivia walked back into her apartment and closed the door--but he ordered the vegetables. Better safe than ridiculed by the bagel crowd.
    Bradley took a bite and glanced at his neighbor again. The guy looked worn out. Too clean to be homeless, unless homeless was a new thing for him, but that wasn't the vibe Bradley was getting. Just discouraged. Did the guy need a friend? He seemed pretty self-contained, misery closing around him like that egg-crate foam that blocks out sound and makes it hot and hard to breathe.
    Normally Bradley wasn't exactly a social person. He wasn't opposed to people, not in general, but he was usually happier with a good book than with a good friend. In fact, he had a book with him--some mystery that he'd found in a twenty-five-cent box outside Under-Written Books. He had no idea what it was about, but the cover had a cob of corn crossed with a pistol, and that guaranteed that, if not good, the book would at least be wonderfully terrible.
    But, surprisingly, the book stayed in his jacket pocket where he kept it (always available for emergencies), and Bradley looked back to his neighbor.
    "You okay?" he asked.
    The man looked at him--bright blue eyes--then back to the remaining third of his bagel. He smiled, seeming genuinely amused by something. "Not particularly, but thank you for asking." The man's voice was a rich bass, like a radio announcer. That seemed likely to be the end of the conversation, but something in Bradley nudged his mouth back open.
    "Want to talk about it?" he asked. "It's not that I want to pry, but you just seem--I don't know. I mean, I lost my job last night, and that was after I accidentally sent a guy to the hospital, and I don't even know if he's okay, so I'm not exactly someone who's good at advice or anything, but it's just that sometimes saying what's crappy about life makes it better. And besides, you'll finish your bagel and walk out of here, and I'll eat this overstuffed monstrosity, and then I'll leave, and we'll never see each other again. So what do you have to lose?"
    The older man looked back over at him, still smiling. "You're a funny kid," he said.
    "I'd say I'm more witty," said Bradley. "I'm not usually 'ha-ha' funny."
    "What's your name?" asked the man.
    "Bradley."
    "I'm Luther."
    They shook hands.
    "You're right," said Luther, spinning the remains of his bagel on his napkin on the counter. "I just found it funny that YOU were the one telling ME to talk about my life. Bit backwards for me."
    "How's that?" asked Bradley, when it looked like Luther wasn't going to add anything.
    Luther breathed in, a long sigh through his nose. "I lost my job yesterday, too. I was in counseling, of a sort, for a lot of years. And now...I'm not."
    Bradley looked out the window at the lightening world. Who knew the sun rose this early? "That stinks," he said. "I mean, it does stink, right? I don't know if you quit or retired or--I didn't want to assume."
    "Don't worry," said Luther, smiling again. "It does stink."
    They sat in silence for a while, and Bradley worked at his bagel. The crisp veggies were surprisingly pleasant, along with the salty-sweet roast beef. Luther finished his bagel and took a pull at an insulated cup.
    "Coffee?" asked Bradley.
    "Hot chocolate. Never had much need for coffee."
    "Oh, you're one of those natural early risers, aren't you."
    "Something like that," said Luther. "You?"
    "Oh, I've always been more of the vampire type."
    Luther glanced at him sharply.
    "Not...a real vampire," said Bradley, confused by the reaction. Luther didn’t seem nuts. "I just meant awake at night, asleep during the day. I mean, there aren't really...vampires."
    "Of course not," said Luther, turning back to his hot chocolate. "So what gets you out this morning?"
    Bradley shrugged. "No idea. I woke up, felt good, and here I am, answering the siren call of the bagel."
    "She is a cruel temptress," agreed Luther. "What was your work?"
    "Waiter. For all of four hours. I'm a student, too. Graphic design program."
    "Cool," said Luther. "Artist."
    "Or something," said Bradley. "I mean, I draw well enough, but it's the relationships between things that I like best. Seeing the way the world fits together, then putting those pieces together in miniature. Making thought into reality. I guess that's what I like best."
    "And graphic design is the place to do that?"
    "I don't know," said Bradley, shaking his head. "It's the next thing, I guess. I mostly just wander around, bumping into life and falling down, then getting up and wandering in a new direction. It drives my mother nuts. She worries."
    "That's what mothers are best at," said Luther.
    "At worrying?"
    "No," said the man, shaking his gray hair. "At loving. Worry is just a part of that. So no more work as a waiter, huh?"
    "Guess not," said Bradley, "though, to tell the truth, I think they should have fired the chef, not me. Guy asked for no peanuts but had an allergic reaction to something anyway."
    "Easier to find a new waiter than a new chef," said Luther. "What's next?"
    "No idea," said Bradley. "What's next for you?"
    "No idea."
    They sat in silence for a while. Bradley looked down at his bagel and decided he wasn't much hungry. Instead he felt restless. It was time to move, to go, to walk someplace, though he didn't know where. He wrapped up his bagel in the broad sheet of paper they served it on and stuffed his leftover napkins into a pocket.
    "Heading out?" asked Luther.
    "Yeah," said Bradley, looking out at the slanted morning sunlight. "It's time to go."
    "Where?"
    "I'm not sure." Bradley laughed, standing up off his stool. "Does that sound crazy?"
    "In my kind of work?" said Luther. "No. Not crazy. It was nice to meet you, Bradley."
    "Good to meet you, too, Luther. See you around."


    Luther watched as the young man pushed open the door to the bagel shop, the bell ringing over his head. The ex-archangel narrowed his eyes in thought. There was something about Bradley. He didn't know what, but it was something. The boy reminded him of an egg.
    Luther wondered what was about to hatch.