A Touch of Heaven

“Won’t you give me a chance to explain?” The sadness in his voice twists my heart. It sounds so genuine, and yet it could be another trick. If he’s anything like what I fear him to be, he’s as fiendishly clever as he is adorable to look at. Adorable with tragic eyes filled with pain.

Slowly, more laboriously than I’ve ever seen him move, he climbs off the bed. It’s as if I’ve aged him overnight with my disapproval. I want to surge forward and embrace him and hug away all the pain, but still…still…

Oh, I just don’t know. I think I need a little space.

“Very well.” His words are barely audible, but they’re louder than the ones that I only thought. Whatever or whoever he is, his mentalist powers are extraordinary.

Relief gusts through me like a wind as he walks away towards the open French window. But it’s a cold and wintry blast, despite the balmy summer night. Again, I battle the urge to rush to him and cuddle away his sorrow and our conflict.

At the threshold he pauses. “May I come to visit you tomorrow? During the day time perhaps, in the garden? So we can talk?”

So we can talk about what? About his ridiculous claims? How he does what he does? Talk about the infinitesimally slight and frankly terrifying possibility that he might actually be telling the truth.

“I don’t know. I need to time to think. Some space.” I babble the usual cliches, everything inside me helter-skelter. I do need to be alone so I can attempt to find a calm place.

“Very well.” Patrick already seems to be in a calm place, but I’m not too sure he likes it. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.” He yanks in a breath, and his exquisite old-young face shifts and changes in a rapid shadow-play of stark, conflicting emotions. “But…well, I might not be here too long now, and I’d like us to come to some kind of agreement and to be friends before I go.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe.”

He nods and the moonlight glints on his hair. “Goodnight, Miranda.” He starts away across the balcony, and like an idiot I do scoot across to him. But I stay on my side of the divide, in my darkened room.

Still at sixes and sevens, I say the first stupid thing that comes into my head.

“Aren’t you going to fly then?”

He jumps, looks completely taken aback. A flare of hope lights his eyes for a second then dulls again.

“No, not this time.” With a final nod, he starts away down the stairs.

While I head for the kitchen, seeking a cup of tea, my body still shakes.

The next day, I have my time and my space, but I still don’t arrive at any conclusions. I fumble through a morning at the charity shop, making so many mistakes that they send me home early. And a while later, I’m sitting in the kitchen, comfort eating a chocolate eclair and turning over everything I heard and saw and felt and did during my two brief but astounding interludes with a man who may or may not be an angel-or a confidence trickster-when the phone rings.

“Hello, Miranda, love. How are you doing?”

My ex’s familiar voice used to make my heart flutter but today that organ feels indifferent to him and disappointed that it’s not another voice. The voice of someone I’m wishing and wishing and wishing would come around and see me, even if he is probably as bad for me as my ex-husband.

Even so, as Steve and I chat, I start to warm to him, and it’s as if I only remember the good times, not the bad. We skip from one inconsequential topic to another at first, but pretty soon I begin to hear the tension in him, the edge I recognize from the beginning of our end. When I ask if anything’s wrong, it all spills out, a tale of woe.

His business has failed. His new relationship is rocky. He misses me, or so he says. Part of me almost believes him. But when massive debts are mentioned, I grit my teeth, indentifying the real reason for his call.

Of course, he couches it in a touching display of regret for what he did to me, and heavy- handed intimations that we should get back together again, but we both know he’s really tapping me for money. And quite a lot of it.

As we talk, it’s like I’m in a play or following the action in a book. The real me is thinking, what would Patrick do? I don’t know why, but it seems important to know what he thinks and to take the course that he’d approve.

Why? Why? Why? I’ve only known him two days and he might well be even more self-serving than the man I’m speaking to. Or he might be just the one to set me on the true, right path.

When Steve gets my unspoken message that I don’t want him back, he comes out and lays his cards on the table. He asks for a loan.

“I’ll pay you back when I can, you know that, love, don’t you?”

What I do know, or at least suspect, is that if I give him it I’ll never see it, and probably him, ever again.

I’m on the spot. I must decide. Apparently, Steve borrowed the money from people that he shouldn’t have, whose methods are unscrupulous.

After what he did, I should say no. And yet, I still remember a time when he made me happy, and I can’t deny the love that we once had, even if mine was greater.

I say, “Okay,” and then feel light and dizzy. In my mind, Patrick seems to smile and nod.

Later, I lie on my mattress beneath my parasol out on the balcony. I feel strangely calm about the money I’m going to give to Steve, even though it’s a sizeable bite out of my assets and I might end up having to find a job again.

It’s the other beautiful young man who’s making me restless. The one whose very nature I turn and turn over in my mind.

Thoughts whirling, I begin to regret the two glasses of wine I had with lunch. I don’t normally drink during the day, but these are special circumstances. I’ve never been faced before with such a conundrum.

Who are you? Who are you? What are you? Who are you? Who are you?

It beats like a mantra in my brain until I’m hypnotized and feeling drowsy. The afternoon is warm, the scent from the flowers below is sweet and soporific, and the wine was good stuff and packed a punch. Before long I feel myself drifting, and I welcome the haze. At least if I sleep I won’t have to think. Or ponder. Or even just wait.

In my dream I’m still warm, though the heat is diffuse, not like the sun. I feel as if I’m floating, yet lying down, curled on my side, perhaps on a soft couch, or maybe even suspended in mid air, unbound by gravity or weight. I’m no longer wearing the light day dress I lay down in and my eyes are closed, yet still I seem to see a mellow glow.

I’m relaxed. I feel free. No doubts and fears and worries assail me. I smile as a presence gathers against my back, molding to the shape of my spine and buttocks.

Patrick.

I know it’s him, even though I can’t see him and he doesn’t speak. Warm arms circle around me, sweetly familiar, and I feel completely safe and happy as if the real world and its questions don’t exist. He grips me lightly at breast and crotch, and his mouth is soft as velvet against my ear. Loving his touch, and yes, loving him, I arch against him.

His lips feel heavenly pressed against my skin, and his hold on me tightens, keeping me close against him. Then we seem to roll and turn and float. There’s a sound like beating and long, deep flapping, and I realize-without surprise, because it’s a dream-that we’re flying. He’s gripping me securely against his body while his great wings bear us aloft.

The sensation is beautiful, transcendent, and it seems perfectly natural that he should start to caress me intimately. He curves his hand at my breast and cups me, thumb working slowly on my nipple in time to