The Stupidest Angel (18 page)

"Sure it was."

"No, I remember. Someone snuck in and put more oil in the lamp. But I will grant a Christmas miracle tomorrow. I must go." With that, the blond man backed away, hugging his candy bars to his chest. "Shalom, child." And in an instant he was just gone.

"Great!" Sam said. "Just great. Throw that in my face!"

Kendra—the Warrior Babe of the Outland, combat mistress of the hot-oil arena, slayer of monsters, menace to mutants, scourge of the sand pirates, sworn protector of the cud-beast herdsmen of Lan, and intramural Blood Champion of the Termite People (mounds seven through twelve inclusive)—enjoyed cheese. So it came to pass, on that twenty-third of December, with her noodles wet and congealing in the colander, that she did raise her well-muscled arm to the sky and call the wrath of all the Furies down upon her higher power, Nigoth the Worm God, for allowing her to leave the mozzarella at the Thrifty-Mart checkout counter. But the gods do not concern themselves in the affairs of lasagna, so the sky did not explode with vengeful fire (or at least not that she could see from the kitchen window) to incinerate the mingy god who would dare desert her in her most dire hour of cheese. What happened was nothing at all.

"Curse be unto you, Nigoth! Would that my blade was not broken, I would track you to the ends of the Outland and sever your thousand and one eyestalks, just to make sure I got your favorite. Then I would feed them raw to the most heinous—"

Then the phone rang.

"Helloo," Molly sang sweetly.

"Molly?" Lena said. "You sound out of breath. Are you okay?"

"Quick, think of something,"
said the Narrator,
"Don't tell her what you were doing."

The Narrator had been with Molly almost constantly for the last two days, mostly an irritation, except that he
had
remembered how much oregano and thyme to use in the red sauce. Nevertheless, she knew that he was a sign she needed to get back on her meds ASAP.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine, Lena. Just buffing the muffin.

You know, gray afternoon, storm coming in, Theo's a mutant—I thought I'd cheer myself up."

There was a long silence on the line, and Molly wondered if she'd sounded convincing.

"Completely convincing,"
said the Narrator.
"If I wasn't here, I'd swear you were still doing it."

"You're not here!" Molly said.

"Pardon?" said Lena. "Molly, I can call back if this is a bad time."

"Oh, no, no, no. I'm okay. Just making lasagna."

"I've never heard it called that before."

"For the party."

"Oh, right. How's it going?"

"I forgot the mozzarella. Paid for it, then left it at the check stand." She looked at the three cartons of ricotta sitting on the counter, mocking her. Soft cheeses could be so smug.

"I'll go pick it up and bring it over."

"No!" Molly felt a jolt of adrenaline at the thought that she'd have to push through a long girlfriend session with Lena. Things were getting so blurry between Pine Cove and the Outland. "I mean, it's okay. I can do it. I enjoy cheese—shopping for cheese."

Molly heard a sniffle on the other end of the line.

"Mol, I really need to help you with the goddamn lasagna, okay? Really."

"Well, she sounds as nutty as you are,"
said the Narrator. Molly swatted at the air to shut him up—did a finger-to-lip emphatic rocking shush mime.
"She's a crisis junkie if I ever saw one."

"I need to talk to someone," Lena said with a sniff. "I broke up with Tucker."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Lena. Who's Tucker?"

"The pilot I was seeing."

"The guy with the bat? You just met him, didn't you? Take a bath. Eat some ice cream. You've known him two days, right?"

"We shared a lot."

"Cowboy up, Lena. You fucked him and kicked him to the curb. It's not like he stole your design for a coldfusion reactor. You'll be okay."

"Molly! It's Christmas. You're supposed to be my friend."

Molly nodded at the phone, then realized that Lena couldn't hear her. True, she wasn't being a very good friend. After all, she
was
sworn protector of the cud-beast herdsmen of Lan, as well as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, it was her duty to pretend she cared about her friend's problems.

"Bring the cheese," she said. "We'll be here."

"We?"

"Me. Bring the cheese, Lena."

Theo Crowe showed up at Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines just in time to miss everything. Robert Master-son, the owner of Brine's, had called him as soon as he'd seen the mysterious blond man talking to Sam Apple-baum, and Theo had rushed right over, only to find that there was nothing to find. The blond guy hadn't hurt or threatened Sam, and the boy seemed fine, except that he kept babbling about changing his religion and becoming a Rastafarian like his cousin Preston who lived on Maui. Theo realized midway through the interview that he was not the guy to enumerate the reasons why one should not spend his life smoking dope and surfing like Sam's cousin Preston because he: (A) had never learned to surf, and (B) didn't have the foggiest idea how Rastafarianism worked, and (C) would eventually have to use the argument:
And look at what a complete loser I am—you don't want that for yourself, do you, Sam?
He left the scene feeling even more useless than he had after the verbal bitch-slapping he'd taken from the pilot at Lena Marquez's house.

When Theo pulled into his driveway at lunchtime, hoping he might be able to patch things up with Molly and get some sympathy and a sandwich, he saw Lena's truck parked in front of the cabin and his heart sank. He debated shuffling over to the commercial pot patch and smoking a sticky bud before going in, but that sounded an awful lot like the behavior of an addict, and he was simply on a little slide from grace, not a blowout. Still, he came through the door humbled, not sure at all how he was going to handle Lena, who might be a murderer, let alone Molly.

"Traitor!" Molly said from over a pan of noodles she was layering into a pan with sauce, meat, and cheese. She had sauce on her hands up to her elbows and looked like she'd been engaged in some very messy surgery. The back door out of the kitchen had slammed shut as he came in.

"Where's Lena?" Theo said.

"She went out the back. Why, are you afraid she'll reveal your secret?"

Theo shrugged and approached his wife, his arms out to the side in a "gimme a break" gesture. Why was it that when she was angry her teeth looked really sharp? He never noticed that any other time. "Mol, I was just doing it so I could get you something for Christmas—I didn't mean to—"

"Oh, I don't care about that—you're investigating Lena.
My friend
Lena. You just went to her house like she's a criminal or something. It's the radiation, isn't it?"

"There's evidence, Molly. And it's not that I got high. I found fruit-bat hairs in Dale's truck and her boyfriend has a fruit bat. And the little Barker kid said—" Theo heard a car start up outside. "I should talk to her."

"Lena wouldn't hurt anyone. She brought me cheese for Christmas, for Christ's sake. She's a pacifist."

"I know that, Molly. I'm not saying that she hurt anyone, but I need to find out—"

"Besides, some fuckers just need killing!"

"Did she tell you—"

"I think it's the pot that makes you reveal your mutant self." She had a lasagna noodle in her hand and was waving it at him. It sort of looked like she was shaking a living creature, but then, he was still a little buzzed.

"Molly, what are you talking about, 'my mutant self'? Are you taking your meds?"

"How dare you accuse me of being crazy. That's worse than if you asked me if it was my time of the month, which it isn't, by the way. But I can't believe that you'd imply that I need to be medicated. You mutant bastard!" She flung the noodle at him and he ducked.

"You
do
need to be medicated, you crazy bitch!" Theo didn't deal well with violence, even in the form of soggy semolina, but after the initial outburst, he immediately lost the will to fight. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. Let's just—"

"Fine!" Molly said. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, then tossed it at him. In dodging it, he felt like he was moving in blurred bullet time in the Matrix, but in truth he was just a tall guy who was a little baked and the towel would have missed him anyway. Molly stomped through the little house, into their bedroom, and dropped to the floor on the far side of the bed.

"Molly, you okay?"

She came up holding a package the size of a shoe box wrapped in Christmas paper with a few dust bunnies clinging to it. She held it out to him. "Here. Take it and go. I don't want to see you, traitor. Go."

Theo was stunned. Was she leaving him? Asking him to leave her? How had this gone so wrong so fast?

"I don't want to go. I'm having a really bad day, Molly. I came home hoping to find a little sympathy."

"Yeah? Okay. Here you go. Aw, poor stoned Theo, I'm so sorry that you have to investigate my best friend the day before Christmas Eve when you could be out playing in an illegal pot patch that looks like the jungle plateau of the gibbon people." She held out his present and he took it.

What the hell was she talking about? "So
it is
about the victory garden?"

"Open it," she said.

She didn't say a word more. She put a hand on her hip and fixed him with that "I am so going to kick your ass or fuck your brains out" look that excited and terrified him, as he wasn't always sure which way she would go with it, only that she was going to get satisfaction one way or the other and he was going to be sore the next day because of it. It was a Warrior Babe look, and he realized fully, then, that she was having an episode. She probably really was off her meds. This had to be handled just right.

He backed away a few steps and tore the paper off the package. Inside was a white box with the silver seal of a very exclusive local glassblower, and inside that, wrapped in blue tissue, was the most beautiful bong he'd ever seen. It was like something out of the Art Nouveau era, only fashioned from modern materials, blue-green dichromatic glass with ornate silver branches running through it that gave it the appearance of walking through a forest as he turned it in his hand. The bowl and handle, which fit his hand perfectly, appeared to be cast of solid silver with the same organic tree-branch design seeming to leap right out of the glass. This had to have been made just for him, with his tastes in mind. He felt himself tearing up and blinked back the tears. "It's beautiful."

"Uh-huh," Molly said. "So you can see it's not your garden that bothers me. It's just you."

"Molly, I only want to talk to Lena. Her boyfriend threatened to blackmail me. I was only growing—"

"Take it and go," Molly said.

"Honey, you need to call Dr. Val, maybe see if she'll see you—"

"Get out, goddammit. You don't tell me to see the shrink. Get out!"

It was no use. Not now, anyway. Her voice had hit the Warrior Babe frenzy pitch—he recognized it from the times he'd taken her to the county hospital before they'd become involved as lovers. When she'd just been the town's crazy lady. She'd lose it if he pressed her any more. "Fine. I'll go. But I'll call you, okay?"