Nativity In Black

I was provoking protestors to riot when I first saw her. They were pressing the barricades, shouting, fists pumping, demanding justice. Police held the line, desperate for an excuse to open fire. There would have been bloodshed had the crowd not parted to reveal a pocket of fresh air in the poison, her serene flash, golden skin under the clouds. I tore off my mask and dropped it at her feet, kissing her hand. She giggled.

“Where you from?” I asked, standing up and yanking off my gloves so I could touch her. Her hand was softer than I expected.

“Iowa,” she said.

“Me too!” I cried, and it was only half a lie.

We talked a lot that day, as I conveniently bumped in her a couple more times. It turns out my own little farm town was not too far from her identical farm town 30 miles away. She wouldn’t believe in expensive cars and suits, so I took a bus that let me off at a chipped green building with the lights off in the middle of the day. No sign was there to tell me where we were, or even a good place to sleep.

A dog-eared phone book was chained to a payphone down the street. I found her parents’ name and called her mom. She was hesitant to give out an address or phone number, no matter how much I recalled high school. She politely offered to convey my information. When I broke in later that afternoon, the address was the first place I looked, pinned to the refrigerator door.

Her college was in the flats outside Burlington, where everything was a vibrant shade of emerald in Spring, when I decided to visit. One of my boys was up there on a job, so I had him divert and track her down so I could know her routine before I arrived. I stopped in Pittsburgh to deliver wire cutters to a bomber for his big escape, and deliver pictures to a gun-happy husband in West Virginia. He turned himself in the next morning, but even if free he’d never duplicate what he did that night. He’ll hang himself in a month or so anyway.

I took Rt. 7 up the west side of Lake Champlain. My boy nosed out everyone in Burlington with something to sell. We partied, but I couldn’t stay focused on the task. Her smile was all I could think of, an agonizing cliche. There had to be something in the sack that could keep my mind off her. I was not accustomed to nervous.

I ate breakfast two tables down in the mess hall the next morning to see what she looked like. I didn’t have what it takes to talk to her and let her go. You’re not paid to feel in my line of work. I found her on Church St., where hippies dodge, side-step, and hackeysack around the kids on the nod. She was sitting on a boulder at the end of the cobblestone walkway. It’s called “the punk rock,” because it blocks traffic and achieves Jello Biafra's ultimate goal. I called out her name, and a second passed before realization struck her, then shock.

“No shit!” she cried, hopping down to give me a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“In town,” I said with a shrug.

“Nice suit,” she says.

“You really think so?” It’s Italian.

She raises an eyebrow. “If you’re in to that kind of thing.”

I bought her fallafel and then tofu ice cream from a street vendor and then she suggested we smoke a joint down by the lake. At sunset, a long trawler rolled past us, fanning its wake against the shore. The fishermen held up their catch to us as they passed. She looked upset. I’d rather seen the lake monster, but the evening was still good enough for me.

I hung around through the Spring, talking about everything under the Sun. No woman alive heard poetry like I wrote her those months. We made plans for Costa Rica that summer, collecting macaws and ants on the black sand beaches. I could have taken what I wanted, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch her, not as dirty as I was. I didn’t get much work done.

She became withdrawn as summer approached. Communication was no longer so open. Inside I panicked, but struggled to stay calm each night. We sat quietly on the couch, occasionally curled, watching TV, but I didn’t take action. Was she scared too? It paralyzed me and kept my hands in my lap. One time, she even swooped in to kiss and I froze up paralyzed. I wanted that more than anything, but I walked away. Her guilt was unfounded, because she took every initiative to throw herself at me first. I turned her down more coldly than I ever feared she’d do to me. She tried.

Honesty hurts more than a lie. I went to Maine for the weekend to think. I didn’t even tell her I was going. I stood on the beach and smelled the predatory aroma of the ocean, acidic in the back of my nose, primeval. My boy came up behind me, but I didn’t turn to look.

“You don’t talk to us,” he said, getting closer than I thought safe. “Don’t you like us anymore?”

“I’m doing other things,” I said, standing up so he’d know I was serious. I still didn’t turn and see him, that would promise a fight.

“I bet you are.”

“What’s it to you?”

“When are you coming back?”

“Who knows? Maybe never.”

“You don’t just walk out on us, boy.”

“I’m ready to pay my tab.”

I tensed. When I turned, he was gone. I felt cheated.

I’m tired of the game. I want out. I was willing to crush everything in my path for that laid out before me. If I can’t keep it forever, a short time will have to be enough. I need to tell her who I really am. Only that will assuage the guilt I feel for my desire. She does not deserve what I give to her, not without knowing the albatross I carry. My feet make wet slaps in the sand as I walk up the beach. The ocean is dark when I head back into the west guided by a tiny shining blade that sinks beneath the mountains.

A fifteen hour drive delivered me with sunrise at her door. Maybe doomed from open, not decided without me. Some call my greatest accomplishment incredible existence. She’d laugh, call me drunk. To believe or accept me, she needs no shadowed doubt I’m speaking true. She must see.

She looked sad when she opened the door, but smiled a forced, practiced smile at sight of me. Those smiles lead trauma. Her eyes and nostrils were swollen and wet.

“Let’s talk.” She sat on the bed. “I’ve been thinking all weekend, but I’m scared of the reason.”

“You can tell me anything,” she said. Not true of her as well.

“Anything,” I said, and before she could answer, “Angels can become human. It’s not hard to do.”

“What?”

“I’ve done a lot of bad things in my time,” I told her. “Very bad things, some you couldn’t even imagine.” She opens her mouth to speak, but I wave her words away. “It was my job. I never regretted any of them. It's what I'm supposed to do.”

“My God, what have you done?”

I shook my head. “I’m a lot older than you think. Ages older. I’ve committed more crimes than you could fit in the Universe. Since the first time I rose from the blackest pit of Hell, as far from Heaven as I could get, and with balled fists raised to the sky screamed, ‘From this day forth, Evil be thou my Good,’ I have committed more crimes than numbers could count, and I have never regretted a single action... Until I met you.” I turned away from her. “I felt something that I haven’t felt since Michael cast me from Heaven. Now, with fear in a heart that has been cold since before the clocks began to tick, and assurance it’s behind me forever, I tell you this, woman, my name is Lucifer, please take my hand.”

She looked up at me, lip curled, eye narrowed in confusion. “Is this for real?” she asked and limply covered a chuckle. “What are you talking about? Look...” She shook her head. “Look, things are not like they were.”

“I know, but please understand, my life is undone...”

“I’m not going to Costa Rica,” she said. I may have a word or two in response, but none held any meaning. Her eyes on mine, stony, resolute. This is what she’d been practicing. “I’m going to Spain.”

“You'll hate Europe!”

“I’ve met an anarchist from Norway, he wants me to meet his family.” She tries an encouraging smile, but I look down, stomach heavy and fingers tingling. “I leave after graduation.”

“But... the ants and the black sand!”

“Did you even buy tickets yet?”

My wings tore out of my shirt and I left her no doubt that I told the truth. You’re not paid to feel in my line of work.

I lingered after the funeral, hands in my jacket, hat pulled low against the rain. An old man in a suit leans over. I strain to hear what he whispers in the boy’s ear. “Even God cried the day your grandmother was put in the ground.” Is God crying for me today? Probably not. We dig our own graves, make our own hells. Telling the truth never worked for me.

I look down over the wet city. Cold rain on my face. If I jumped from here, I would not get the peace and absolution of a human being. I would get up, dust myself off and move along on my business. She gave me every chance, and I looked away. I can’t dwell long. I have a job to do.

End.