The angel was seven feet tall and the enormous spread of his wings frightened her.

When her husband asked her why she was behaving more nervously than usual, she replied, “There’s an angel following me around.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” David told her.  “There’s no such thing as angels and they don’t follow people around.”

“Fine,” she replied.  “Have it your way.  There’s a seven foot tall blond man with nine foot wings following me around.”

“Deidre…” he said warningly and she sighed.

***

“You’re late,” he told her when she reached the restaurant, in case she didn’t know it.

“Yes, I know, I had a flat tire.”

He frowned.  “Did the service station change it?  Did you have the truck towed?”

“The angel changed the tire for me.”

“Deidre, I’m getting tired of this.”

“So am I.”

David gave her a hardlook and spread several documents on the table.  Deidre looked at them. “I thought we were having lunch.”

“We ar ehaving lunch,” David said, annoyed.

Deidre tried again. “I mean, I thought we were having lunch together.”  She tried to smile.

David looked up,irritation touching every feature.  “I’m here,” he said carefully, in case she was an idiot.  “You’re here.  I’m here.  We’re having lunch. Together.”  He spread his hands, looked around, looked at her one more time, and went back to his documents.

“David, couldn’t you not work?  Just through lunch?  Really be with me?”  She knew she was pushing it but she was tired of missing him when they were together.

David gave a harsh sigh and shoved the documents away.  He folded his hands in front of his face and rested his chin on them.  “Deidre, this man shoved an innocent woman– a wife and mother– in front of a bus.  She’s in critical condition.  I don’t want to make any mistakes in this case.  I want that man in prison.  She’s a wife and mother, for Christ’s sake.  It’s a matter of life or death to her.”

Sure, thought Deidre, that wife you pay attention to; she’s not yours.  She bit into a dry bread stick and tried hard not to cry.  “I should have brought a book,” she said but David only grunted.

***      

“I should push you in front of a bus,” the angel said, sitting next to her in the car.

Deidre gasped and swerved, over corrected, and finally realigned her car in her own lane. “Don’t do that,” she said.  “Why would you want to push me in front of a bus?  You said you were an angel.”  She looked at him suspiciously.

“Because then he would pay attention to you.  That’s what you want, isn’t it?  And look at how much attention he’s giving that woman.”  The angel looked reasonable and blond.

Deidre sighed.  “I don’t want to be pushed in front of a bus, thank you.”

“Don’t say I didn’t offer,” said the angel, and vanished.

***         

“But aren’t you even coming home for dinner?” Deidre wailed into the phone.  “I spent three hours making Beef Wellington!”  She tried to keep the wail moderate.

“Deidre,” David said in his patient voice, “this man raped and battered a young woman.  He stole her life, left her adrift.  Her fiancé left her and everything.  I want to make sure there are no mistakes in this case.  I want this guy to go to prison.  It’s a matter of life or death.”

“I understand,”she said softly.  “I love you, David,” she added, thinking it just as important.

“What?” David said, distracted.  She could hear the pages turning over the phone.

“I said I’ll see you when you get home,” and she hung up the phone and jumped.  The angel was sitting next to her on the couch.  “Don’t say it,” she warned. “Angels aren’t supposed to offer to rape and batter people.”

He grinned and the light was intense.  “I could make someone else do it.”

She shook her head. “I’m beginning to wonder about you,” she said and went off to take the Beef Wellington out of the oven.

***

“I got it all wrong!” the angel said, appearing beside her at the breakfast table. Deidre sputtered on hot coffee and mopped at her lap where the rest of the coffee had spilled.

“What?” she asked when she could speak again.

“I got it all wrong,” the angel repeated. She admired his blue eyes and the way the sunlight coming through the window picked out the gold highlights in his hair, the same highlights David’s hair had when she actually saw him in sunlight, which was rather rare anymore…. She pulled herself together.

“What did you get wrong?” she asked, wondering if she should offer him a cup of coffee or if she was psychotic.

“It’s not you I need to push in front of a bus– it’s David!”

“No!” she shouted but the angel had vanished, grinning and looking pleased with himself, and the phone was ringing.

She was suddenly afraid to answer it.

***

Deidre got to bring David home from the hospital almost a month later.  He came equipped with crutches and pills and therapy instructions and a whole new attitude.

They spent the afternoon on the porch in the sunlight, Deidre watching the sunlight play off David’sgold hair and swimming in the love in his blue eyes, marveling at the accident that had reunited them.

And later that evening, when they lay in each other’s arms, he smiled into the crook of her neck and whispered almost shyly, “I love you.”

“I love you,too,” she answered, and pulled back to look into his eyes.

The angel looked back out at her.

___________________

©2011 Jennifer Rachel Baumer

Jennifer Rachel Baumer lives, writes, runs and procrastinates in Reno, Nevada, with her husband and best friend, Rick, and a household of finicky felines.

“What’s this?” Jake asked, holding the card between two fingers and staring at the dealer. 
 
The dealer barely glanced at him, not very interested in getting into it with some gambler, local regular or not.
 
“You said hit you,” she said.
 
“Yeah, but I meant a real card,” Jake said, slapping the offensive piece of waxed cardboard back down in front of her.  It lay staring up at him with garish colors.  On the face, a tower cracked wide open, hit by lightning from a dark and swollen sky and, come to think of it, the thing looked kind of familiar, like those cards Nancy kept on the bookcase and used to tell him things he never believed.  What were they called?  Terror cards.  No.  Tarot. 
 
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the dealer, and shuffled, dealt, round the table again.
 
Jake glanced at the people next to him, an older woman, here alone, two guys on his other side, engrossed in their cards and beer, occasional conversation.
 
“This is one of those Tarot cards,” Jake said, flinging it back.
 
“Are you out of the game, sir?”
 
Jake squinted at her name tag, which seemed to read “Nancy.”  “No.”  He brushed the cards against the table and the dealer tossed him a card.  The game continued.
 
Jake picked up the new card.  The tower put him over anyway.  Sixteen.  A sixteen?  He thumbed the card the dealer had just slapped down.  Death.  Unlucky thirteen.  Jake’s hands started burning.
 
“Don’t go out tonight,” Nancy had said.  “It feels wrong.  It doesn’t feel lucky.  Please, for us,” clinging to him, trying to hold him back, and behind her, looking frightened, Kelli looking on, her nine year old eyes big.
 
“But I’ve been so lucky lately.”  Not pleading but this was for them.  It wouldn’t go on forever, this lucky streak, and the instant he started to lose, he’d quit.  But in the meantime, the winnings were paying off medical bills and credit cards, and paying, just maybe, enough into a high yield fund they’d be able to buy a house in the next couple years, get out of the duplex and into a new house where everything worked, where the pilot light stayed lit and the carpet wasn’t stain-colored.
 
Another card slapped down in front of him.  He couldn’t remember motioning that he wanted one.  He glanced up at the dealer again.  “Kelli,” her name tag read.  The casino around him seemed silent, dreamy.  Jake looked over his shoulder at the lights flashing, coins falling from slots, people’s faces, cocktail waitress raising her brows at him, was she wanted?  He shook his head, looked back down at the card. 
 
Hanged man.  Number twelve.  Didn’t put him over, but this was crazy.  He closed his eyes.  Could he remember anything she’d ever told him about the cards?  Twelve.  One plus two equals three.  Three of them at home, Jake, Nancy, Kelli.  One of the big cards in the pack, like a king or queen, a face card, weighed in more than the others.  And somehow this one was dangerous, too.  Something involving the three of them.
 
It wouldn’t come.
 
Motioned for the dealer to hit him.
 
Sudden cards.  Too many.  Jake started as they pattered the felt in front of him.  The world card, 21 right there, the world staring up at him with Nancy’s face, Kelli’s.
 
Lovers, six, pointing out at him, his face and Nancy’s, entwined, together, crossed with Judgement and the Fool.  He looked up at the dealer, her face blurred out of focus and her name tag reading “KN.”  His hands motioned and the cards pattered down, the chariot, and death, and the Wheel of Fortune.
 
Jake stared at them.
 
He’d quit the minute he started to lose.
 
No way was he going to lose it all.
 
He looked back at the dealer and gasped at her face, a twisted corpse-face, burned beyond recognition, only the name tag readable.
“Wife and Daughter.”
 
Jake ran.
 
“What’s his problem?” one of the guys asked.
 
The man next to him shrugged.
 
#
 
He burst through the door, into the cold of the duplex, and smelled it right away, too sweet, cloying, an instant headache of gas fumes.  The pilot light gone out again, and the fumes were strong and coiling around his face as he ran, past Kelli’s parrot, lying upside down in the cage, feet curled, head limp, past the living room and bathroom and back to the bedroom where Nancy asked “Whaaa—” sleepily and collapsed around his neck.  Dragging her to Kelli’s room, still breathing but he could barely rouse her, dragged them both, not willing to put one or the other down, out into the fresh cold of the night air, coughing, spitting, walking the two woman who were his world while the cards swirled through his head and the lucky streak continued.
 
#
 
He went back to the casino a week later, after they’d had the landlord fix the heat and had filed a report and were actively seeking another place.  The same dealer, and tonight her name tag read “Tanya” and it didn’t surprise him at all.  And it was still there, after all, the lucky streak.  He still felt very lucky.  Picked up the first deal and stared at the cards, motioned against the felt: hit me.
 
Tanya/Nancy/Kelli flicked out the first card to him.
 
Ace of Coins.          

 

©2009 Jennifer Rachel Baumer

Jennifer R Baumer lives, writes and runs in Northern Nevada with her husband and best friend Rick and a household full of pushy cats.