“Hi,” I whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear me or see me.
She squinted. Could she hear me?
“Hi,” I said again.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. How could she hear me? Was I messing with her? What was happening?
I bent near her ear and whispered, “Evey, next time, in the next life we’ll be together—that’s how this will be corrected. This will be righted. This can’t be our forever fate. Next time we’ll live together, we’ll die together. We’ll experience every war together, inside ourselves and outside in the world. We won’t be out of reach, unavailable, unattainable, just love longing to be. Let’s keep moving fast in opposite directions. Keep praying we meet on the other side. I’ll see you there; I know I will. I have to believe that. Watch for me. I’ll be barreling toward you, arms wide open, and then we’ll crash into each other with the force of two spent lives yearning to be one.”
When her eyes opened, one stray tear trickled down her cheek. I touched her shoulder, and she relaxed. She squeezed her eyes shut again, took three deep breaths, then dozed off. I wished I could hear her thoughts.
I took Mona’s advice and got on Tinder. It really was a disgusting mechanism, but I was horny. During magic hour that night, I met Zina in room 1203 at the St. Francis Hotel. We had a corner room with frilly old-timey curtains and a floral bedspread.
“This is the old part of the building,” Zina said as she kicked off her heels.
She was tall with very dark hair and wings. Yeah, the carpet always matched the drapes. Blond angels had blond wings and so on. She was exotic and similar to me, which meant we were both old. Think operating systems on your iMac. We were basically the same version. As time went on, with each new version, God or someone got lazy. The older angels were stronger and better-looking, in my opinion. By the way, I’ve heard Jobs is one of us now, so don’t expect Apple to crash and burn anytime soon.
“You’re about my age, huh?”
She was undressing with no modesty. “No, I’m older. We’ve met. You don’t remember me?”
“I drink a lot.”
She sat on the bed in her expensive lingerie and crossed her legs. She was trying to recall when we had met before. “I think it was the late fourteen hundreds.”
“Da Vinci,” we said at the same time.
“I remember now,” I said. Somehow, even after my little debacle with Joanie “I speak to God” Arc, Mona had still been willing to assign me to da Vinci. Those were prideful years for me.
“I’m still kind of pissed at him for making me ugly in theVitruvian Man. And my you-know-what was not exactly to scale. He didn’t want other, less fortunate men to get a complex.”
“Mmkay,” Zina said. “So you revealed yourself to him.”
I undressed and sat down next to her. “We were great friends. I trusted him. We trusted each other.”
“Is it true that he was…?”
“What? Gay? I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you anyway. He was the most interesting man I’ve ever met. Truly a genius and a workhorse. He was tireless. I only revealed myself to help him more. The Plate tectonics theory was all me.” I grinned.
Zina had a fluttering, cautious laugh like a wise, classy woman. My dick twitched.
“It’s coming back to me,” I said. “You were playing a courtesan in Venice. A poet. I thought you were a human at first. I didn’t understand what that was all about. How you were able to hide your wings from me.”
“Old trick of the trade. I’ll teach you. Anyway, those years were a mistake. I was trying to protect one of my souls at the time—a young woman who was selling herself cheaply and dangerously. I was teaching her the ropes, or trying to.”
“So you revealed yourself?”
“That was the only time, and I regret it. She fell madly in love with me, and I with her. She took her own life after I tried to remove myself from her thoughts. Something went terribly wrong.” Zina looked as though she was about to cry. She shook the thoughts away. “That was a long time ago.”
Zina was definitely older than me but not by much. I could tell by the way she talked. After hearing Zina’s story, I felt sick over what I had done to Evey. I worried about her.
“You and I slept together, didn’t we?”
She laughed again. “Am I that forgettable?”
“No,” I said instantly. “You’re gorgeous… captivating.”
A moment later, our bodies were connected. I moved in and out of Zina, caressing her smooth skin while she made beautiful sounds. Her wings were spread high above her head, and her hands were bracing my sides. We moved together for a long time. It felt good, but something was missing. I finally came twenty minutes later when I closed my eyes and thought about Evey.
