Devine Intervention (15 page)

Fifteen minutes left.

S
HE WAS STILL
a little loopy from the anesthesia, which is why she thought at first the angel who'd materialized in front of her might be Vincent Lionheart come to life. The aura around him was that beautiful. Then he took a step closer and she realized he wasn't Vincent. Not even close. And if he was an angel, she felt a tiny bit less sad about not getting into Heaven. The angel was homely, shaped like Mr. Potato Head, and dressed in an oversize plaid shirt that hung over a belly the size of an Easter ham. A blot of pizza sauce hung below the corner of his lower lip. His expression, simultaneously creepy and eager, made her shudder.

But his voice was friendly enough, so she decided to give him a chance. Everyone deserved that.

“I have found you at last,” he said. He pressed his hands together, as if in prayer, and bowed.

“Me? Why were you looking for me?”

“I have come for your soul,” the angel said, gesturing at her with one palm. His aura pulsed when he said
soul
.

So this was it. Someone was taking her to Heaven. She expected to feel happier about it. The truth was, she'd hoped that someone would be Jerome. He'd been there for every other step in her life and it felt wrong to take the last one without him.

“My soul?” She tried to keep her voice down so Corinne wouldn't hear. She was also stalling for time. She wasn't ready to go just yet. There had to be a way she could put Jiminy back together.

“Your soul!” the angel said. He flung his fingers wide on either side of his ribs. Jazz hands. Megan did it all the time to make Heidi laugh. But she couldn't let herself laugh at someone who by all or at least some appearances was a messenger of God.

“Where's Jerome?” she asked. “Did he send you?”

“Jerome is about to be sentenced to eternal damnation,” the angel said. His voice echoed magnificently. “Think of him no more.”

It was hard not to think of Jerome. Her head had been painfully empty since she'd left him. And as angry as she'd been, she still wanted to know he was okay. She wanted to hear his voice again, if only one more time. She hoped he'd forgiven her for hitting him. And she hoped he knew she'd forgiven him for everything else.

“Eternal damnation?” she said, hating the way the words sounded coming out of Jiminy's mouth. “Like, forever?”

“Oh, who cares?” the angel said. “Jerome's a world-class ass.”

This time, his voice didn't have the fancy echo. In fact, he sounded like he maybe had a sinus infection. He cleared his throat, and the echo returned. “And now thou shalt come with me.”

Heidi couldn't believe it. He said “ass” and he didn't get a shock. Maybe he was a higher-ranking angel than Jerome. If that was true, she'd have to obey him even though she wasn't ready to leave. She felt her options go from zero to less than. She stalled for time.

“Where are we going? I don't think the vet's going to let us walk out of here.”

“Thou shalt leave that detail to me,” the angel intoned. He reached inside his flannel shirt and removed what looked like a television remote control. He pressed a couple of buttons, mumbling, “function, function, glow level seven,” and was instantly bathed in light that made the ones in the operating room look defective.

“Am I supposed to go into that?” Her heart thudded. Oh, God. This was it.

“Only if you want to crash into me,” the angel said. “Duh.” He shook his head and scratched again. “Humans.”

“I'm actually a dog right now.”

“Only the unimportant part,” the angel said. “In fact, we might as well ditch the pooch carcass here.”

“No! I can't. I —” Footsteps. Corinne was coming back.

“If you don't, it will make things so much more difficult,” the angel said.

“What things?”

She moved in for a sniff. Something was off about him, something she wanted to understand. Beneath the outer layer of pizza rolls, he didn't have a scent. Nothing. Most people, she'd noticed, especially since she'd become a dog, smelled like something, something soul-heartening. Bread. Grass. Sweat. Shampoo. When she was close to him on the train, she noticed Jerome's comforting musk. But this angel smelled … empty. The fur between her shoulders rose.

She was probably being silly. Yes. That was it. It had been a long, terrible night and she was still woozy from the surgery.

“I don't have time to explain,” the angel said. “And more to the point, you don't have time for me to explain.”

The only way he could've known her soul was about to dissipate was if he really was an angel. She'd have to go with him. But maybe he'd give her just a few moments more.

“I need to keep my dog alive,” she said. “Until I can get his soul back in his body.”

The angel slumped his shoulders and let his head fall toward his chest. He sighed heavily.

“I have never been able to understand earthly attachments,” he said. “When I was a human, I had none. I was happy.”

“Is that how you became an angel? No attachments?”

“An angel? Ha —” The angel paused to scratch his nose. “Yes,” he said. “I am an angel, and a lack of attachment is how I achieved my exalted state.”

“Please help me.” Her voice sounded so pathetic. “Please.”

“Help you?” the angel said. “We have to get you to my — my esteemed colleagues.”

“If I'm going to spend eternity in Heaven, there has to be time for me to do this one last thing on Earth. I need to do this. I need to save Jiminy and say good-bye to the people I love.”

“Gahhh,” the angel said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Fine. Follow me.”

He fiddled with the remote control again and the world around her went hazy.

“I don't want to do it,” she said. “I don't —”

“What, you don't trust me?”

She didn't. But she didn't want to seem rude or offend the one soul who might help her now. She opened her mouth to speak, and the bell on the door of the veterinary office dinged. A thirtysomething guy with a head half full of long hair walked in. What was it called when a balding guy had a mullet? The melting pony?

“Cori!” he said.

Corinne walked out and stopped abruptly. “Mike?”

She wanted to watch what was going to happen. She had that fluttery feeling you get when you're watching a movie and you know there's going to be kissing.

The angel's white light spread until it swallowed her. She felt something tug her fur. She staggered outside. The angel whisked away the light as a magician retracts a silk handkerchief, leaving her shivering on the sidewalk in a softening bank of slush. Her leg ached. A maroon Chevrolet
was parked crookedly nearby, its lighter-colored door hanging open.

“Come on, then,” the angel said, glancing back over his round shoulder. “Let's get all that stuff over with. We're late enough as it is.”

Five minutes left.

I
FELT NAKED
without my jacket and drunkish from getting whacked on the head, so I stumbled a bit as I walked into group. People were at activity centers, which is how we start sessions. A couple of guys were playing Yahtzee. I hate how the dice rattle in cups. It makes my arrow hurt. I would rather play poker, but that involves bluffing, which Xavier and Gabe view as a form of lying and so we're not allowed.

I tripped on the leg of the Yahtzee table and knocked my arrow on the corner of it when I went down. It hurt so bad I thought I'd never get up. I grabbed my head and listened to the moaning sound coming out of my mouth. It was like a herd of cows was in my throat. Then I saw a pair of tasseled loafers in front of me. Xavier.

“Jerome,” he said. “It's hard to talk with you when you're in the fetal position.” His knees popped as he squatted next to me. “What's wrong? I know there's no food poisoning in Heaven, and we upgraded your sensor to keep you out of Applebee's, so don't pretend you're having another Riblets incident.”

“Xavier,” I said.

My voice sounded like someone had stepped on it, but at least the lisp was gone. I stared at the carpet real hard, wishing the strands would rearrange themselves into letters telling me what to do. He put his hand on my back, right where the wings sprout out on greeting-card angels. I turned my head and squinted. Xavier obviously didn't know what I'd done or he wouldn't be doing the comforting thing.

“So what's the verdict on the carpet?” he said. “See anything interesting there?”

“Smells,” I said. “Like feet.”

Xavier offered me a hand up.

“Don't need any help,” I said.

“Regardless of whether you think you need help,” Xavier said, “I am offering it. That is what I am here for.”

He stood and did his little clap-clap thing to let people know group was starting. The echoes were not a sound I needed just then. Everybody put down their half-finished lanyards and Yahtzee dice and headed to the folding chairs. They socked each other's shoulders and settled down in their seats like it was any old group session where we'd report on our humans and then sing uplifting hymns and wait and see if anyone had accumulated enough points to fly up.

I'd never felt more alone in my whole life or any of the years that came after Mike shot me. It's bad enough to know you're going to Hell with the weight of someone's lost soul on your shoulders. It's something else to know you're going by yourself and to see everyone just doing their thing like nothing unusual was happening.

Once everyone was seated, Xavier glided to his chair, cleared his throat, and said, “Does anybody have anything he'd like to share?” He looked right at me.

A new kid named Irving piped up because he hadn't learned yet that sharing in group is likely to lead to uncontrollable confessions.

“Um, Xavier?” he said in his squeaky little unchanged voice. “I don't think Howard is here?”

“Why, thank you, Irving, for helping watch over my flock.” Xavier squinted and scanned the room. “Has anyone seen Howard? Is he not feeling well?”

I wasn't going to open my snack hole at first. I didn't know where he was, but I knew what he was doing, watching Heidi's soul disappear from the world forever, and loving every second of it. Xavier put one long finger on his temple and massaged. He put his other pointer finger in front of his mouth and shushed us.

I'm calling him
, he mouthed, like we couldn't tell.

He let Howard's skull phone ring and ring, and his face got more confused-looking by the second. I don't know if skull phones are like those things that suck the water out of air, but the waiting was having that effect on my mouth. My tongue felt like a lump of cotton. A lump of nasty cotton living in the armpit of a bum who has an
apartment at the dump and not even the good kind of dump with busted car parts. The kind with fish heads, banana peels, and old transvestite wigs.

Xavier lowered his finger. “Does anyone know where Howard is? We've had reports of Canadian succubae sightings. Or he could have been detained by a wayward hellhound. If anyone has information he isn't revealing, this will count as a blot on his soul. I don't believe I need to say that for some of you striding the edge of expulsion, those may very well be the points that send you through the double doors.”

He pointed and made his fingertip audio equipment do a thunder sound.

Troy, who'd come into group right after me, crossed his arms over his chest. My jacket was way too big for him.

“Jerome!” Xavier used his loud voice.

I had to shake my head to snap out of it.
Look cool. Look cool.

“What?”

“Your face,” he said. “It looks troubled. Is there something you want to tell me?”

He made church-and-steeple hands and looked at me with his lips touching the steeple part, like he was daring me to let a lie creep out of my mouth in a holy place.

I have lied in all sorts of places, both when I was a human and since I became a rehab soul. I've gotten to where I don't think of words as truth or lies anymore. They're things I put out there to do what I need. They're like a socket wrench or a hammer or my favorite tool, the Sawzall, which does exactly what it sounds like it does
unless you take it to the bumper of your dad's Pinto, because then it becomes a Sawznothing.

I opened my mouth with the idea of lying, but then I looked in Xavier's eyes. I started thinking about ripples and I couldn't stop, and I knew that no matter what, I didn't want my last ripples to be false ones.

I closed my eyes to make them stop stinging, and I used my skull phone to call him so the other guys wouldn't hear. It was hard sending a message with my brain because normally I use my mouth. But I guess my brain has some usefulness to it, because he nodded right at me and whispered, “Hallelujah.” Then he did clapping hands again and announced that during the rest of group today, it would be A/V time featuring a showing of
Steel Magnolias
.

I almost hurled until I remembered that I wouldn't be watching it. I'd be confessing my sins with Xavier and Gabe. The movie screen swooshed down and there was a lot of clanking as the guys rearranged their chairs. And then I was out of the group room and in Gabe's chambers, and he and Xavier were in front of me. Waiting. That's when the clock struck nine.