Page 63 of Angels Fall

That’s not my job. My job is to argue with the angel. Point-counterpoint. Basically, I’m just here to make sure you don’t turn into a total fucking dishrag. And if you take shit from people, you owe them. You wanna be indebted to your mommy and daddy? You’re twenty-five, bitch! Fuck is wrong with you?

They are family. Family is there for each other, says the angel.

Yeah? Satan and God were family once too, and look how that turned out.

That doesn’t even—

Fuck you! It makes sense!

I don’t need this shit right now.

“Everybody ready to eat?” Mom says, jolting me back into the present.

We all nod a ‘yes’ and are just about to head into the restaurant when from behind us, I hear…

“Georgina? Simon?” We all turn to see a man approaching from across the lobby. He’s wearing a kind of ill-fitting suit with a Mandalay Bay nametag on it that says “Jack.” The Four Seasons doesn’t have a casino in it, but it connects to Mandalay, which most certainly does. Jack is one of the pit bosses there. I know because I know him. Or used to anyway.

Jack Morgan.

Tyler’s dad.

He reaches the four of us, walks right past me and Tyler and straight up to Mom and Dad. I look at Tyler to see if I can get any read off him at all.

Nothing. His eyes are dead. All the light is gone.

“What’s up you guys?” Jack wheezes, wrapping them in a hug. Mom, in particular, cringes. “Whatcha doing in town? You’re not still in Monaco?”

“Oh, yeah, we are,” Dad says. He kind of steps in between Jack and Mom. Jack Morgan was well known to have tried lots of inappropriate things in inappropriate ways with many women. Oftentimes the mothers of his sons’ friends. To the best of my knowledge, nothing ever happened with Jack and my mom, but there were some whispered stories that maybe something almost did. A couple of times. “But,” Dad continues, “we’re just in for a few days for Thanksgiving to see, uh—” He nods in my direction.

Again, I look at Tyler. Again, nothing.

“To see…?” Jack echoes as he turns and sees me and Tyler standing there. And suddenly, there is recognition in his eyes. “Oh. My. God. Is that Maddie?”

He grabs me in a hug and I can smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes. Not new cigarette smoke. Years of cigarette smoke. I gag a little. Which is entirely to do with the hug and not at all to do with the smoke.

“Jesus, look at you,” he says, backing up to take me in. “Wow. I ain’t seen you in, hell, must be, what? Ten? Years?”

“Um, probably more like twelve,” I say. “At least.”

“Ho-ly cow. Ain’t that something. Look. At. You. Look just like your mother, which is a compliment! Believe me!”

The light in the usually sunny lobby seems to have almost all but disappeared.

“So you’re all staying at the Four Seasons? Well, ain’t you in high cotton?”

I don’t even really know what that means.

It is notable to everyone present that he hasn’t yet acknowledged Tyler.

And then… He does.

Kind of.

“Hey, I’m sorry, man,” he says to Tyler. “Jack Morgan. How ya doing?”

He sticks his hand out to Tyler for a shake.

Time stops.