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“Gonzo, no hand is going to break up through a stone mausoleum, okay? Chill out.”
“Yeah, okay,” he says, letting out a deep breath. “This could be zombie heaven, man. Dude, I wish we were making a horror film. That would be mad awesome!”
Gonz snaps a few pics with his cell phone. Weird shit like his hand resting clawlike against a headstone so that it looks like he’s rising from the dead, horror-movie-poster style. These are accompanied by “aargghs” and “aaaahhhs” and various zombie-esque grunts made deep in his throat.
“Funny. Can you stop playing Dawn of the Living Ass-Hat long enough to help me find Junior’s message?”
A few feet away, three blond girls jabber on in German as they snap photos of the decaying headstones. One of the girls asks me in halting English if I’ll take a picture of them together.
“No-a speak English,” I say, turning away.
“Here, I’ll do it,” Gonzo says.
I start to remind him we’re here for a purpose, but he’s already got their camera and is using a mix of Spanish, English, and hand gestures to direct them while they bump into one another in confusion and laugh.
“Copenhagen Interpretation?” one girl says. She plays a snippet of song from her phone, and Gonzo nods, smiling, and they all nod, smiling.
I wander off down the narrow lanes till I’m alone. The air is heavy with the rain that won’t come. It presses down on me, making my legs heavy and my chest tight. I find a place to sit on the stone steps of a gravestone hidden by a weeping willow. The moss hangs so low it tickles my cheek and nose. It smells like sorrow.
“Hey, cowboy.”
At the sound of Dulcie’s voice, I whip around, left and right, searching.
“Up here,” she calls.
“Ah. Very cute.” She’s posed on the top of a white, churchlike mausoleum, her wings folded, her chin resting on her hands like the Thinker Angel. She could blend right in, except for the boots and the bright pink hair.
She hops to the ground with an impressive thud, her boots sending puffs of ancient Southern dust onto my jeans, and settles onto the new grave of a soldier. “So what do you think of the Big Easy?”
“I don’t know,” I say, sitting next to her. “It’s kind of depressing.”
Dulcie puts a hand on my shoulder. “Cam, you’re in a graveyard.”
“Funny.”
Dulcie nods at the sunglasses in my hands. “What are those?”
“Sunglasses.”
“Going for the literal. Okay. I’m game. Where’d you get them?”
She could be putting me on. For all I know, she’s been watching the whole time and has seen everything. “This guy named Junior Webster,” I say, waiting for a reaction. But her expression doesn’t change and I figure she really doesn’t know anything, which means she’s the lamest angel ever. I go ahead and tell her about our night, the Wizard of Reckoning and his Fire Giants—the dark energy—showing up to our little party, Junior’s death. The only thing I don’t tell her is how scared I am. In the distance, I can hear a smattering of German and laughing. I can make out Gonzo playing director. He’s telling one of the German girls to act like a zombie.
“Junior told me I’m supposed to bury these under the angel and wait for a message. Thing is, there are, like, four billion angels in this cemetery.”
Dulcie nods. “That’s a toughie.”
“I thought maybe you would know where? Like maybe that might fall under the category of special angel-privy info you could share?”
She leans back, crosses her legs and swings one out, touching me lightly each time with her boot. “I told you, Cameron, I’m just a messenger.”
I put my hands up. “Fine. Junior Webster wanted me to bury these sunglasses under the angel? I’m on it. If this doesn’t work, I really don’t give a shit anymore. Move your feet.”
Dulcie sweeps her boots to one side. I make a small hole in the fresh dirt of the soldier’s grave, drop in the sunglasses, and cover them up. I wipe my hands on my jeans and sit beside Dulcie to wait. Gulls circle overhead, crying. After five minutes, I check the ground, but there’s nothing.
“So where’s this secret message?”
“Beats me,” she says, dipping into a secret stash of ChocoYums. “But I love the not knowing. The sense of mystery. Don’t you?”
