The Dirty Streets of Heaven

place. Maybe I’m an angel today because the white running shoe mafia bumped me off.

“Is this your tribute to Rocky Balboa?” I asked him.

He looked down at his clothes. “I guess. Come on in.”

He didn’t have any beer, but he got me a soft drink out of a refrigerator that was almost as big as my apartment. The house was huge too, one of those Frank Lloyd Wright-ish things, all wood and tile and concrete, mostly open plan so you could see from one room into a couple of others without moving. One of the bigger rooms was even open to the sky, although you could close it off with sliding doors in bad weather and make it into an interior courtyard. I wondered again about Clarence’s roommates. They must be rich valley kids with high-paying jobs, but they also must have a maid service because the place was quite clean.

We sat in the kitchen, and I told him about everything that happened right up until I crawled out of the Redwood River and called Caz, because that was obviously not only my own business but totally against the rules and thus not the kind of thing I was going to discuss with a new and almost unknown quantity like this kid. I still sort of liked him, though, even though I didn’t trust him, which was a fairly familiar situation for me. (Because I don’t really trust anyone, get it?)

“I saw Chico’s gun one other time,” Clarence said as I rehashed the Gunfight at the Compasses Corral. “That machine-gun thing. Wow.” He sounded like Piglet talking about Christopher Robin’s blue braces. “He asked me to take a tray of drinks off him while he answered the phone, and I saw it stashed behind the bar. That thing is huge!”

“And it still barely slowed that bastard of a ghallu down,” I said. “So I’m having to rethink the whole thing. Meanwhile, I need your help with something.”

A certain trapped-animal look crossed his face. “Really? Like…like what?” I could see he was imagining being deputized and dragged into a new shootout with the Nightmare from Nineveh. “Because I…I’ve got a lot of stuff to…”

“Shut up, you have nothing. I talked to Alice and made sure you have the night off. We’re going to upstairs.”

He involuntarily looked toward the staircase.

“Not that upstairs, Clarence. To the Big House on the Hill. Headquarters. Heaven.” A noise from the other side of the room made me grab for my piece, but before I got it out Junior leaped out of his chair and skittered between me and whoever was coming in the side door. (I found out later it led in from the driveway.) A nicely dressed Caucasian couple of a little past retirement age stopped in the doorway.

“Oh, hello, Harrison,” the woman said to Junior. She was handsome in a slightly hippie-chic way, an old Northern California liberal with money. “We didn’t mean to startle you and your friend. The movie was terrible and Burt had a headache.”

“The movie gave me a headache,” said the man, presumably Burt. “It was the kind of thing that Sheila likes, but it leaves me cold. Subtitles, people staring, nothing happens at the end.”

“We didn’t see the end, so how do you know?” Sheila asked pointedly, then smiled at us to show they were acting out old, familiar roles.

“I saw enough of it. I know.” He headed across the kitchen. “I’m going upstairs. You coming, Sheil?”

She looked at us. “He was right,” she said in a stage whisper. “It wasn’t very good. But he always thinks foreign films are going to be bad, so I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.” Out loud, she said, “Yes, Burt, I’m coming.” She turned in the doorway. “Oh, when I was at the store today I saw some of that cereal you like, Harrison-the one with the grain and nuts and dried fruit. So I got a couple of boxes.”

“Thanks, Sheila,” said Clarence, looking as though he wanted to slide through the floor and disappear.

“Well, I remember you liked it,” she said brightly. “Help yourself to anything, boys. Goodnight!”

He was still watching the door long after she’d disappeared, probably because he didn’t want to see the expression of incredulity on my face. “You’re kidding me,” I said. “Those are your roommates?”

“What? They’re nice people.”

“Did you go out shopping for a mom and dad? Or did you answer an advertisement? ‘Wanted, surrogate child for older couple’?”

He colored very impressively. “Lay off, Dollar. You’re not funny.”

I started laughing. It took me a while to stop. “Okay, sorry. Nevermind. I’ve got more important things to do with you than argue about your weird domestic arrangements.” I leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder in my chummiest manner. “After all, we’re going to have a slumber party tonight.”

“Slumber…”

“In other words, I’m sleeping over and we’re going to Heaven together.”

“Ssshhhh!” He looked absolutely panicked. “Jeez, what if they hear you? Can you imagine how that would sound?”

I chortled again. “Pretty funny, now that you mention it. And it’s going to get worse, too, because I’m going to bunk down in your room. Just find me a spare blanket and a pillow. Maybe we’ll even tell ghost stories.”

“You’re going to sleep in my room? Isn’t that…kind of gay?”

“No. If I suggested we play Twister in our underpants, that would be kind of gay. Now shut up and find me a blanket and lead me to your room. You do have your own room, don’t you? You don’t sleep in a crib at the foot of Sheila and Burt’s bed or anything?” I know I was being a bit nasty to the kid, but I still didn’t trust him and I was interested see if I could get him riled up past his haplessness act.

He only stared morosely. “You think you’re funny, Bobby, but you’re not.”

“I do like to see a junior angel sulk,” I told him. “It smells like victory. Now drink up all your milk and then let’s get to bed. Little Clarence has a busy night ahead of him.”

twenty-five

misremembered

The kid and I met up in the Fields of Glory. Clarence was late and appeared over the brow of a green Elysian hill, waving his hands like a semaphore nostalgist. I wasn’t happy about the delay. It wasn’t so much the waiting, it was just that it left me thinking time, and thinking time meant thinking about Caz. I didn’t want to do that just at the moment, not least because I already missed her fiercely. The subject was simply too confusing, and it also made the miserable handful of options I had suddenly seem ten times worse. Either I had betrayed Heaven or I had fallen in love with someone so impossible for me that she made Dante’s untouchable Beatrice look like a Vegas street hooker.

“Sorry!” the kid said. “I had trouble falling asleep!”

“We’ve got a long walk. You’ve been here before?”

He straightened in indignation. “Of course! More than once!”

I was amused in spite of myself. It really was like dealing with a kid. He might be a complete and total traitor for all I knew, dropped into the Whole Sick Choir by my superiors to report back my every anti-Heaven grumble, but if his earnest goofiness was a complete front it was a very good one. I kept wanting to like him, and I couldn’t help wondering what kind of trouble that was going to get me into. Had Caesar enjoyed teasing Brutus right up until his best pal stabbed him?

We set out together through the brilliant green fields beneath the invisible sun that warmed everything in Heaven. One thing I did like about Clarence was that he asked as many questions as I did. The thing I didn’t like is that he asked them all out loud. He was curious, as always, about how things operated behind the scenes for our angelic business on Earth. He even asked me how the Zippers and Outside work, which is kind of like asking a Juggalo to explain magnetism.

“Okay, you don’t know how they work,” he persisted, “but can anyone do it besides an advocate? And what if someone closed it behind you? Would you be stuck there?”