She waited around for a minute, then figured what the hell.
Taking a step forward, and another, and another—she had to stop. The weightlessness and the lack of any breeze whatsoever, coupled with the perfect seventy-degree temperature, made her feel like she was walking through bathwater. And you would have thought that was perfection.
Instead she felt carsick.
Forcing herself to keep going, she eventually got used to it, and all that Italian food stopped rolling around in her gut. The landscape’s beauty helped. It was so bucolic, so peaceful, assuming you could get used to feeling like you were about to float off the undulating ground.
It was as she ascended a rise that the music became clear enough to decipher, and as she placed the beats and the lyrics, all she could think of was… yeah, wow, that was an oldie. And the only reason she knew what the song was was because—
Up on the plateau, two rainbow-striped plastic folding sun loungers had been set up side by side. Between them was a little table on which were an old-fashioned portable radio with the antenna angled out to the side, a pair of pineapples that, given the pink umbrellas, had tropical drinks in them, and a bowl of guacamole.
Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” floated over on the non-breeze.
Lassiter, the fallen angel who had succeeded the Scribe Virgin as the spiritual head of the species, was stretched out on the chair on the left. His blond-and-black hair was up on the top of his head and tied ina pink scrunchie, and he was wearing a coordinated set of pink, yellow, and bright green Tommy Bahama swimming trunks.
Naturally, his sunglasses were twin pink flamingos whose cocked legs poked into the angel’s cheeks as he smiled.
“Hi!” He indicated the vacant chair with the bag of Tostitos he was about to open. “Join me in a nosh?”
Lyric blinked. A couple of times. But here was the thing. The tension in her drifted off as she approached, all the chaos in her mind settling, the tightness in her shoulders and neck gone as if it had never been. She’d been expecting some kind of formal audience, with Lassiter in ceremonial robes—and, like, maybe an ancient tome tucked under his arm. This was…
Well, exactly what the male was like.
Lyric sat down as the angel popped the bag open, and as he tilted the Scoops! to her, she reached in for some and then went for the dip just to do something with her hands.
“So their standards are slipping.” He took out a chip. “Does this look like a scoop to you?”
He turned the disk around, examining it from all angles. “This is flat. Maaaaybe slightly concave. If it says ‘scoop’ on the label, you expect scoops. All scoops. Not these Frisbee things thrown in every four or five of them. How’my going to guac this. Come on, Frito-Lay, do better.”
Having no idea how to respond, Lyric eased what she’d filled into her mouth and bit down— “Mmmmm.”
“Good, right? Should we add queso? I feel like we need queso.”
With a pop and a curl of smoke, the table got bigger, and a bowl over a little tea light appeared.
“Perfect.” The angel picked up his pineapple and took a draw from the straw. “Just fruit juice, mind you. I don’t drink while driving, so to speak. And actually, that’s a lie. I don’t drink at all, I’m high on life. Cheers!”
Figuring in for a penny, in for a pound—or in for the chips-and-dip, in for a sip—Lyric palmed up the scratchy exterior of the one left for her and brought the straw to her lips.
“Oh… my God.”
“Right?” Lassiter took his flamingos off and gave her a wink. “Only the best up here.”
As the Madonna song switched to another pop-ish melody about walking like an Egyptian, she looked out over the lawn and wondered who tended to it. There didn’t seem to be any lines associated with mowing—
“It is as it is.”
She came back to attention. “I’m sorry?”
“The lawn. The flowers. The trees and the buildings. All of this is as it is. In this respect, the Sanctuary is like destiny. There is nothing to attend to because the immutable requires no gardening.”
Lyric glanced down into her pineapple. “Then why do we have free will.”
“To keep things interesting,” Lassiter said with a smile. “And to give the illusion that people have some control over their nights and days. Otherwise they’d just give up and bed rot—not that that isn’t appealing and appropriate from time to time.”
“So is everything…”
“Meant to be?” The angel shrugged. “Does the answer to that really matter? It’s not going to change your experiences.”
