The Devil’s Walk

“David, did you know that when you die, —“

I cut him off. I hated when he did that. “Jereal,” I said, “how long have we known each other?”

“I don’t know, about two weeks.” 

Bullshit, he knew the exact time to the minute. But he pretended to be stupid because he thought it made him approachable. I let that go because I had a different point.

“Jereal, you’re an angel,” I said.

Jereal confirmed this with a warm smile.

“And I’m a person. Just a normal human person. So when you start a story with ‘did you know,’ you already know whether I know. So no. I don’t know that most fish are lonely, or that saints have short fingers. I don’t know the mystical powers of the letter J.”

Jereal let me go on like that for a while, and then he started over. 

“David, did you know that when you die, you get to watch a movie of your life?”

I slouched into the sofa, game controller in hand, staring at the glittering gems on the TV. “No, I did not know that.”

For the past hour, Jereal had quietly watched me play a video game about matching little colored gems. I was playing this barely-a-game on my 55-inch super-high-whatever TV, with something-something multi-stuff sound. I spent five hundred bucks on this next-generation gaming console, and another thousand on the TV, and yet this was what I used it for: a game I could have played on my phone.

“Your entire life,” Jereal resumed, “Presented for your review.”

“I think I’ve heard this one,” I said. “When you die, your life flashes before your eyes.”

“Oh yes,” said Jereal, “That sometimes happens. But that is a biological response, and it is over in a few seconds. This is something different.”

“Okay, go on.” I cleared one level of gems and moved on to the next. This one was labeled “super-hard.” It was somewhere in the low nine hundreds.

For a while longer, Jereal sat in silence and watched me play. He was telling me, in his particular way, that I was wasting my life. But the world was in lockdown, three months running with no end in sight. I had no job and no real way to hang out with friends. Actually, I had hardly any friends. So honestly, wasting time seemed like the best option. Not that I needed to explain that to him.

After a suitable period of judging me, he told the rest of his little story.

Apparently when you die, your transition to the afterlife begins with a detailed replay of your life, narrated in your own voice. But unlike your living self, this voice knows everything. Like how that lost contact lens was stuck to your sweater for three days, or how your interesting blind date showed up five minutes after you left. She was a wildcat in the sack, but she was also a thief, so it’s probably just as well that you gave up on her.

And so on.

This review goes into great detail at interesting parts, and sometimes it skips over the boring parts, like the things you do the same way every day. 

The recap of 2020 would be brief indeed.

“We do that in software,” I said. “It’s called a postmortem.”

“Interesting,” said Jereal. I am sure he already knew that. 

In my head, I perform tiny postmortems all the time. Should I have said that? Should I have kept quiet? How’s my relationship? Am I realizing my life’s full potential? Did I leave the iron on?

Quarantine had been a soothing break from that. By the middle of June, I was down to self-doubting about five times a day. There was almost nothing left to doubt, just a vague sense that I was going nowhere, because there was nowhere to go.

“It seems to me,” I said, “That this review helps people acclimate to the afterlife, by presenting them with a story they already know, but in a new context. It helps the person accept the reality of the new paradigm, without directly confronting them with it.”

“Very good,” said Jereal. He always acted impressed when I told him obvious things. Maybe he was actually impressed, I don’t know. But I think he just pretended to be, because he thought it strengthened our friendship. Even at this early stage, I didn’t really care.

“What about babies?” I asked.

“Babies?”

“If you die, but you’re five days old, there isn’t much of a slide show.” 

“True,” he said, “but then again, the child is not so anchored in this world. He is born ready for something new, so the afterlife is just another easy step. As people grow older, they become more attached to the world they know, and they find it harder to let it go.”

That sounded like me.

- • -

I think if I had been fifteen years old when lockdown started, I would have taken to it better. Just treated it like the next natural step. 

I could have made a fresh life plan, living in my mom’s basement and becoming some kind of “content creator.” I could react to movies or review video games, and move effortlessly forward into a new life. 

But now I was pushing 40, and feeling locked into the grind. I was stuck on the idea that “content creators,” the YouTubers who make their living on movie reviews and unboxing videos, don’t actually create a damned thing. They are leeches surviving on the output of real artists, who are the actual creators of content. But I can’t make any kind of real art, and it’s too late to learn, and that’s my excuse for not doing that thing.

So I’m doing nothing in lockdown, because I think I don’t have permission from the world to do the one thing I’m good at. Somewhere along the way I must have decided that I needed permission. And that I was too old to learn anything new.

Back in February, I worked at a major software company. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Chances are, you’re running some of our software right now.

The pandemic got serious in March. We went home and hunkered down for a while. They said the lockdown could last three weeks. Maybe even four. A “quarantine” is forty days, right?

It felt like a long vacation. So I set up my PS4, subscribed to some movie channels, and built a cute little backdrop for pants-optional video conferencing: two Ikea shelves holding every book in my house.

But the lockdown dragged on, week after week, month after month. By April, I had no work. By May, I had no job.

- • -

It was too early one morning in the middle of May. A beeping sound dragged me from sleep. Did I set an alarm? Why would I do that? 

No, it was my phone. Ringing. My boss.

I blinked at the lock screen and thought, fuck, Martin, is the building on fire?

This thought was encapsulated perfectly by the particular way that I answered, “What.”

“Hey, good morning David. It’s Martin.”

“Yeah, hi.” We all have cell phones, Martin. I know it’s you.

“Sure. Okay. Just calling to check in. How’s life treating you?”

Bullshit, Martin. I’ve heard the rumors. This smells like a layoff.

I tried to tell Martin to save us both a little time and give it to me straight, but what I said was “Let me guess, the cat is playing on the roof?”

“The what?”

“Never mind.”

“Look, David, we’ve had to make some difficult staffing decisions this week...”

I get it, Martin. Things are tough all over. Your billion dollar company can’t afford to pay me anymore, because Capitalism and the end of corporate citizenship and so forth. Whatever. I’m going back to sleep.

After that, instead of three pointless Zoom calls every day, I got to collect unemployment once a week. I didn’t even need to wear a shirt anymore.

Time got faster and slower at the same time. Days of the week lost their meaning. I experimented stochastically with polyphasic sleep. Which is to say, I napped whenever I wanted. And then I played video games.

Soon it was mid-June and getting warm. My air conditioner was weak. I dug a little into my savings. I dusted off my resume, mostly out of boredom, pretty sure that no one was hiring.

Then one morning there was a knock on my door, and I met Jereal.

- • -

Jereal is an angel. A literal ethereal mystical being. He says that everywhere in nature, there is a perfect balance between positive and negative energies. For every force, there is an equal and opposite force, keeping the universe in balance.

That means that for every angel there is a devil. They are partners, existing in constant conflict, tugging on the strings of the physical world. Angels strive for peace and stability. Devils seek chaos and change. Too much or too little of either, and the world falls out of balance.

But Jereal was alone. His devil had disappeared a long time ago. He found himself without direction or purpose. And when he noticed that I was stuck at home and bored, he decided to introduce himself. 

- • -

“Hi, partner,” said a voice on my front porch. It was a high voice, old and gravelly, with an accent I couldn’t place. There was no knock, just this strangely informal hello.

The yellow curtains in my front room had been closed since February. My door had no peephole. I had no idea who I was talking to.

Despite all this, my first thought was, who the hell says “partner”? 

I realized I was wearing nothing but boxer shorts. My hot day quarantine uniform. Could I answer the door like this?

“It’s not a problem,” said the voice.

“What is?”

“The boxers.”

I made a grunting noise that meant “Who the fuck are you and how did you know what I was thinking?”

There was a moment of silence. Then the voice said, “Lucky guess?”

Okay, so it was like that. I did that little mental check to see if I was dreaming. Nope, def awake. Next steps unclear.

I kept a mask by the front door, for greeting delivery people and such, so I threw it on and cracked the door. The chain snapped taut.

“I’m Jereal,” he said with a smile. He was a delicate man, about four feet six, with dark olive skin and a halo of frizzy white hair. A stiff breeze might have carried him away. “I’m your neighbor.” He gestured down the street, towards the little house on the corner.

In his hand was a measuring cup.

“Hi.” I said. My mind was blank.

Jereal didn’t seem to know what to say next.

“You need?” I prompted, pointing at the cup.

“Oh yes. Sugar!” He exclaimed.

Sugar.

“Yes,” he declared with pride. “I am baking. And I have run out of sugar.”

“I don’t cook,” I said. This was a lie, but I certainly didn’t have sugar for random strangers. Or patience, when you come right down to it.

“No matter,” he said, and there was another quiet moment. 

I told him that Helen, who lived in the house across the street, might have sugar.

“No thanks,” he said. And then he smiled at me like an old friend. “Did you know that for every force in the universe, there is an equal and opposite force?”

I closed the door as he spoke. And then I stood silently behind it, watching his shadow on the curtains until I was sure he was gone.

- • -

Quarantine life is stupid. For the first month we all sterilized our mail. We shampooed our shoes. We sang twenty-second songs about washing our hands. As time dragged on, we got lazier about these things, but we told ourselves we were getting smarter.

I went for groceries once a week, watched television eight hours a day, and never saw anyone. It was actually pretty nice.

Sometimes I thought about calling Stephanie. I texted her a few times, and always regretted it. Maybe I was feeling sorry for myself, or sorry for her, or maybe this was just the price of boredom. I would find myself missing the good times, and then I would quickly remember everything else. It was good that she never texted me back.

I didn’t like hanging out with anyone from work, even when I still had a job. Most of my actual friends were locked down in other parts of the city or other parts of the world. I read Facebook, scrolling through random crap from people I barely knew, but never posted anything. I was content to be a hermit.

But one day, about a week after I met Jereal, I found myself standing in the baking aisle, staring at a four-pound bag of sugar.

I bought two.

- • -

I figured I’d make a goodwill gesture. Our first meeting was a little rough, but maybe I could do better if I had a plan.

I got home from the store and put away the milk and the eggs and my own new four-pound bag of sugar, right next to the half-empty bag from 2015. I kept my outside clothes on, cradled the sack of sugar like a new baby, and steeled myself for a walk down the street. But as my fingers reached for the front door latch, I saw a shadow on the curtain.

The fuck, I thought.

Silence.

“Hello?” I said.

The angel’s voice was hesitant, and muffled by the door. “Four pounds?” he asked, congenially.

I nodded because I guess that’s what I did, and I guess he saw me do it somehow, because he’s a goddamned angel.

“That’s sweet,” he said.

Two beats. “Is that a sugar joke?”

“Sure,” said Jereal, and he then politely knocked to announce his presence.

I opened the door. I stared at him for a while. He smiled patiently, still holding his measuring cup. I grasped the bag of sugar and handed it to him. He accepted it with grace. And still I stared.

“Jereal,” he said, acknowledging that his name might have been hard for me to remember.

“David,” I replied, and then, “Won’t you come in?”

And he did, quietly parking his measuring cup on the windowsill.

- • -

We sat in the kitchen. The afternoon sun bounced off the yellow kitchen table, blinding me. I spent my spare cycles computing how much time the sun would take to move out of my eyes. I guessed twenty minutes.

Jereal sat watching me. His bag of sugar sat beside him on the table.

“Did you know,” he said, “that for every force in the Universe, there is an equal and opposite force?”

I said that I remembered hearing something like that a few days ago.

“And so it has been, and so it shall be, for all time,” he said. “Except... not always.”

“Would you like something to drink?” I asked, grasping for any excuse to get my face out of the sun.

“That would be splendid. Water?”

“Water, sure.” I had some bottles in the fridge.

“How much do you know about angels?” he asked, as I dug around in the crisper drawer.

“I don’t know. They like to dance on the head of a pin?” 

Jereal chuckled sweetly. “Perhaps,” he said. 

I handed him a water bottle. He glanced at the tap in the sink, but said nothing. He accepted the bottle graciously but didn’t open it.

“What were you making?” I asked him. 

“Mm?” He glanced back at me as if he had lost his train of thought.

I looked at his bag of sugar.

“Well, to be honest,” he said seriously, “I was hoping to make a friend.”

I thought of many asinine retorts, ranging from mock outrage to jokes about Frankenstein. But with the sun behind his old white hair, Jereal looked so innocent that I melted a little and took him at face value. “That’s sweet,” I heard myself say, and he chuckled.

Sugar joke.

- • -

Here’s what I know about angels now. They are condescending bastards. That little glance at the sink wasn’t meaningless. He was quietly bitching that I offered him bottled water instead of some from the tap.

I think Jereal hates making any impact on the environment. And I don’t mean “The Environment” in the Green Party, Save the Whales, Eat the Rich sense, but on his actual immediate surroundings. He barely wrinkles the fabric in the chair, hardly ever opens doors for himself, and would clearly rather drink from the questionable municipal water supply than from a perfectly safe plastic bottle in my fridge.

Also, he knows literally everything, so it’s infuriating to play cards with him. Every time I win, I know he’s just playing badly on purpose. 

He always acts surprised, but I know he can read my mind. He can see the future, for fuck’s sake. Yet still we play, because hanging out with an angel is slightly more fun than hanging out all by myself.

- • -

Jereal came over fairly often, about every other day, but never on Sunday. I wasn’t sure if he kept the day holy, or if he expected the same of me, or if he was literally just fucking with me, because all of these possibilities were equally likely.

His favorite game was gin rummy. I asked him once if he knew any others, and he rattled off a bunch of nonsense words. One of them had a clicking sound in the middle. Now that I think of it, maybe those were ancient games, and gin rummy is just the only game he has learned in the last two thousand years.

We usually played cards in the kitchen, sometimes in the front room. One afternoon in the front room, I heard Helen’s Prius park outside. I peeked through the curtain and watched her unload groceries, sack after heavy sack. 

She took several trips, and I thought briefly about how I maybe ought to help her. But even before the pandemic, Helen and I hardly ever spoke. We had introduced ourselves sometime in the week she moved in, and then over the next two years, we probably spoke less than ten times. Just a simple “hello” if we happened to pass outside.

Before the lockdown, I would never have summoned the courage to bother her, even with a simple offer of help. If I was at home for some reason in the middle of a weekday, I’d have pretended not to be.

Now I had an actual excuse: the tiniest chance of spreading the virus. Even if I wanted to help, I’d only be able to stand on my porch and holler at her that she sure looked like she needed some help. So it was better, probably, to hide inside and do nothing.

It was a weird kind of helplessness, but also a kind of freedom, to be able to blame the pandemic for my being a total jerk.

“Pass,” said Jereal, and suddenly I was back in the game.

I looked at my hand and the discard. “You dealt,” I said. “I’m supposed to have first option.”

“You seemed distracted,” he said.

Helen went back and forth with a second load of bags, but the trunk was still open. “Do you think it would be safe for me to go talk to Helen?” I said. “Pandemic-wise?”

Jereal gave me his not-knowing look. I don’t know what else to call it. It’s a quiet stare he gives me when I ask him something he’s not supposed to tell me.

“Come on,” I said. “Pretend you don’t know everything, and make a guess.”

“I can’t do that,” he smiled.

“Well then, how long before this pandemic is over?” I already knew what he would say.

“I can’t tell,” he said. See, I knew that.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“No, I mean I can’t tell.” This exchange had become a ritual.

“I don’t understand your rules,” I said. “You obviously break them all the time. You told me you’re an angel, you tell me stories about the afterlife. So why clam up about Helen and the quarantine?”

“I’m sorry,” said Jereal, “You’re right. Sometimes I share things that you couldn’t know. But I believe they are things you could imagine if you wanted. However, with specifics about the future, I am not sure I know what to tell you.”

“You mean you don’t have the answers,” I said.

“Perhaps you don’t have the right questions.”

Helen’s trunk slammed. She had grabbed the last few things and headed back inside. Another seven-day grocery run on the books. I wondered briefly what she was cooking for dinner. And then Jereal let me win another hand of gin rummy.

- • -

“She’s playing on the roof.”

You probably know this joke. A guy goes on vacation, and he asks his dad to look after his cat. About a week goes by, and he calls home to check in. He says “how’s the cat?” and his dad says “She’s dead.”

The guy says, Jesus, Dad. Don’t just go and tell me a thing like that. Make up a story at least. Say the cat was playing on the roof, and she slipped and fell, and we had to take her to the vet, and she was hurt pretty bad, but finally we decided it was best to let her go. Break it to me slow.

And the dad says okay, I get it.

“So, how’s Mom?”

Two beats.

“She’s playing on the roof.”

- • -

It was late on a Thursday evening. I was washing dishes and Jereal started talking. I had honestly forgotten he was there.

“David, did you know that when you die, your afterlife is determined by your final words?”

“No kidding,” I said, mostly ignoring him. Something was stuck pretty good to my cast iron skillet.

“Indeed. No matter your traditions, for example, if you call out for Jesus Christ in your final moments, you are delivered into the Christian Heaven. Or, if you should say a prayer to Thor, you spend eternity in Valhalla.”

“What if you scream ‘I’m an atheist’ as the plane goes down?”

“I suppose you would vanish from existence,” said Jereal. “But to my knowledge no one has ever done that.”

“Good point.” This crap on the skillet must have been some oil that burned when I made corn bread. The soap would not take it off. “So why is this the rule?” I asked.

“It’s not a rule, exactly. It’s the product of something called the ‘honest wish.’ Every creature has the power to make a perfect wish. If they wish it honestly, and with all of their heart, it is granted. Most earthly creatures achieve this several times in their lives.”

“But not humans?”

“But not humans.” He glanced away for a moment, perhaps reflecting on something he didn’t want to tell me. Then he went on. “Sometimes a person will make an honest wish in the middle of life, but it usually only happens at the end.”

“Why does it work then?”

Jereal seemed unsure. “Death grants a clarity of purpose, we think. Or perhaps the wish itself realizes that it has not yet been spent.”

The wish knows. “That is the weirdest rule,” I said. Scalding water was doing nothing. The grease was baked into the metal.

I watched Jereal silently contemplate the difficulty of not knowing, or perhaps the difficulty of dealing with humans. Some trouble that only angels know.

“Have I used up my wish?” I said, though I knew it was pointless to ask.

“Most people have not,” he answered, in that way that was both informative and unhelpful. “But some do. They waste it on food, or a night of great sex, or becoming president. And then their afterlife is left completely up to chance.”

“President?” I said. “Who became president because of a wish?”

Jereal smiled as if to say, well obviously, all of them.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s say I really want a million dollars. I want this with all my heart. Can I use my honest wish to buy a scratch ticket and win the lottery?”

“Maybe,” said Jereal. “But ask yourself. Is there a voice in your head saying you don’t deserve to win? That perhaps you should earn the money honestly, through hard work? Or that some other soul deserves this prize more than you?”

Maybe. “I would try to avoid listening to that voice.”

“That is harder than you think,” Jereal said. “And what’s more, if you truly had this gift, you would not even need the ticket. The wish alone would be enough.”

“Cool,” I said. Parts of the sponge were sticking to the pan. Whatever this crap was, it was not coming off. 

“So if I’m not going to win the lottery, at least I can think about what to say when I die.”

“That might be helpful,” said Jereal. The “might” meant “probably not.”

“Seems like this might be the core purpose of religion,” I noted as I grabbed the steel wool. “To embrace a belief so completely that you don’t make a mistake with your dying words.”

Jereal looked distant again.

“Do angels get a dying wish?” I asked.

He looked for the first time as if I had offended him, which took me by surprise. Then he softened but did not answer.

And then I asked, “Can angels die?”

Jereal had a way of moving his hand like he was finishing a pipe, but there was no pipe. It was probably a gesture older than the pyramids and I just didn’t understand it. But it always meant we were finished with the conversation.

I spent the rest of the evening re-seasoning my skillet and thinking of things I had better not say at the moment of my death. 

- • -

That night I had a dream.

Jereal and I were sitting by the piano in my front room. There is no piano in my front room. It was a late afternoon, a sunny day in autumn. Some friends were there, talking quietly in small groups around the edges of the room. I didn’t recognize all of them. Some were very old.

Jereal looked at me with concern in his eyes. “David, do you remember the day we met?”

“Of course, why?”

“What were you doing before I came to the door?”

“I was probably playing video games.”

“Why do you say that? Do you remember?”

I thought about it a bit. “No,” I said. “I was cleaning something.”

Jereal nodded.

And in the morning, that was all I could remember.

- • -

“The Council of Nicea,” Jereal said. We were sitting in the kitchen on a Tuesday morning. I was making pancakes. The skillet was healed. 

“The what?”

“The Council,” he said again. “Of Nicea.”

Hearing the words again did not help.

“The year was 325 AD,” explained Jereal. “The Roman Emperor Constantine convened an assembly in the ancient city of Nicea, in Anatolia, to unify the Christian doctrine.”

“Sure,” I said. I was starting on the third round of pancakes, pouring them four at a time. The skillet was getting a little too hot, and they were browning before they cooked through. Electric cooktops are the worst.

“Being a Christian, I thought you would know it,” he joked. Jereal knew that the full extent of my faith was shouting “Jesus” for emphasis, and having a strong opinion on when malls should play Christmas music, which was never.

“Was this where they decided there were exactly twelve days of Christmas?” There was no point in cooking any more of this batter; I was full, and Jereal was only eating to be polite.

“I suppose. I wasn’t there.”

Was this enough batter to save? Should I just cook it, and wrap up the leftovers? These were the questions troubling my mind.

“I mention Nicea only by way of example,” said Jereal. “Celestial beings also have ecumenical councils.”

“Oh yeah?” These pancakes were finished. Or rather, they were still wet in the middle, but about to turn black on the outside. So off they came.

“At the Gemote of Dzana, for example, we elected to cease intervening in the affairs of humanity. That was eighty thousand years ago.”

“So, you mean you’re not allowed to talk to humans any more?”

“No, not for quite a while,” said Jereal.

“But… you’re talking to me right now.” 

“Am I?”

I assumed that he meant he wasn’t technically allowed to say anything valuable or secret, since he was clearly talking to me, but he had never told me anything useful. I guess “hanging out” was okay as long as it didn’t change anything. Like helping a child take her turn at Candy Land. Doesn’t really affect the outcome, but it moves the game along.

I picked up a very dark pancake and tried to save it with butter. “So, do you still talk to animals and plants and shit?”

“Oh yes, all the time. But humans are off limits.”

Butter can only accomplish so much. Everyone knows this. I quietly wondered why Jereal was telling me this piece of ancient history, but not enough to ask.

“There was a revolt,” he said.

“A revolt?” The rest of this batter was going down the sink.

“In the afterlife,” he said. “Mankind, in the Eternal, rose up against the celestials, and demanded the right to communicate from beyond. To share the secrets of the Universe with mortal man. And they were clever enough to do it.”

“Eighty thousand years ago?”

“More or less, yes.”

“And then?”

“At Dzana, we chose to deny humanity the right, as this power was not safe in their hands. We taught you skepticism, the urge to deny all which you cannot reconcile with earthly laws. 

“Our judgement echoes today in fables like Prometheus and Eden. We ceased communication with mortals, and severed the bridge linking the living world with the Eternal.”

“Jesus. Did that work?”

“In a way. Starved for eternal truth, you sought earthly truths instead, splitting the atom and building vast cities of steel. But thanks to the Dzana Provision, you’re still squabbling over the basics.”

“You mean, like how to make a good pancake?”

“No, you have mastered that.”

Clearly by “you” he meant “humanity” and not me specifically. I threw three wet-brown pancakes into the garbage, and washed the last traces of batter down the sink.

“But the fables are strong. Even now, as you stand talking to me, you’re only half-sure that I’m real.”

That was true. I couldn’t spend five minutes with Jereal without doubting everything about him. I was a schoolboy obsessed with seeing through a magic trick. Desperate to peek behind the curtain, to see the cheap answer that gives the magic away.

I could not imagine simply believing.

- • -

Jereal and I stood by the piano in the front room. There were fewer people this time, and the hour was late. Also, this was not exactly my front room, but more like the living room of the house where I grew up. 

“David,” he asked me, taking my hand. “Do you remember the day we met?”

“Of course. Why?”

“What were you doing before I came to the door?”

“I was playing video games, probably.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No wait. I was cleaning something.”

“Cleaning what?”

“My hands.”

“Your hands?”

And then I woke up. Again.

- • -

It was a rainy afternoon in August, and we were all glad for the break in the heat. You could smell the rain on the dry city streets, washing away a month of dust and oil. 

Jereal and I sat at the yellow kitchen table, playing gin rummy. He let me win about half the time, as usual.

For the first time, he asked me about Stephanie. So for the first time, I told him about her, though I was sure he already knew.

“Everyone is the hero of their own story,” I said.

Jereal raised an eyebrow and picked up my discard. It was a seven of hearts, probably filling one of his runs. I saw that coming, but I couldn’t use it.

“What I mean is,” I continued, “When two people are in a relationship, they both think they’re right. Being right is part of who you are.”

“And was she right?” 

“Sometimes. I don’t know.”

I think Stephanie was always trying to prove herself, but she had never really figured out what that meant. She came from a rich family, in the entertainment business. You’ve probably heard of her uncle. So she grew up with money, but she seemed to have no idea where it came from. And she needed to prove that she deserved that wealth, trying everything except actual hard work.

She started wild projects with no plan. Fashion jeans. Restaurant supplies. Egg-based clothing dye. And I was always the asshole telling her how things were never going to work.

“Did they ever work?” 

“No, but it didn’t matter. She thrived anyway.”

Jereal discarded a seven of diamonds. Yep, I filled his run. Sadly this card was of no use to me. I drew a Queen and pitched it.

Stephanie’s family would bail her out after every failure, and then she’d walk right up to the plate and take another swing. So maybe I was wrong, and maybe she had every right to take wild shots until something landed. This was who she was, and I was a fool for trying to tame her.

Proving herself meant something different to Stephanie than to me. I thought she had to succeed; she only thought she had to try.

“I have heard,” said Jereal, discarding a King, “That in true love, your partner becomes the hero of your story.”

If Jereal was ditching random face cards he was getting close to knocking.

“Yeah, I heard that too, on the Hallmark Channel.”

Jereal appeared to spend a good deal of time deciphering what that meant. 

I couldn’t tell you where Steph and I went wrong. Over those three years I slowly changed from a knight to a monk to a hermit, and somewhere along the way we realized it was over. For me, I think it was that day in November when she said, “This is over.”

They say that when you meet someone, you know why you will leave them. I knew Stephanie was flaky, but at first it seemed charming. I called her “wild” and “carefree” and all the better ways to say it. I thought her crystal-waving anti-vax homeschooling mindset might somehow pull me out of my rut. And the sex was great. 

But I ended up sweating all the small stuff, sick of constantly trying to explain actual science, and never knowing what would happen to us next.

Love fades. New becomes old, charms become flaws, and we grow to know the ugliest versions of each other. It’s a slow-motion replay of the morning after, as you both slowly realize in the harsh light of day what a piece of work you took home last night.

For a while, the only gravity that remains is your shared fear of failure. Eventually that fades too, and either you learn to be separate people together, like my parents did, or she moves back in with her mother and gets a job at a bakery.

“Is it always a bakery?” Jereal asked.

I had been holding this conversation in my head for ten minutes, but of course he could still hear it.

I asked Jereal, “Do you think that’s what happened between you and, what’s her name?” I was speaking of Jereal’s devil, his counterpart for eternity.

“Her name is Fero,” he said. “No.”

“Why not?”

“We were celestial companions, ordained by the laws of nature. We could not choose to separate, any more than we could choose to be together.”

“And yet?”

“And yet,” said Jereal. And yet here he was, without her.

- • -

It was past midnight on a Sunday and I was gaming in the dark. I had been in the zone for hours, playing my stupid gem-matching game on my stupid giant TV, and had never even bothered turning on the lights.

The crystal explosions mesmerized and soothed me, cutting a shining tunnel through time and space, as I crushed level after level of this life-consuming distraction.

Over the music of the gems, I heard a strange noise outside, someone clanging and banging in the street. It sounded like someone was trying to fix his car in the dark.

I learned afterwards that the catalytic converter in Helen’s Prius was worth, basically, more than the car. They were full of precious metals, and stupidly easy to steal. So nice going, auto makers, I guess.

Luckily, I caught the guy early. He was just getting started when I flipped on my porch light, cracked the front door, and said “Hey.” 

It was a cold, clear night, and my voice carried like a bell. I suppose “Thief! Begone!” would also have worked. But yeah. “Hey.”

The asshole grabbed his tool kit and took off down the street.

My good deed for the month.

- • -

I told Jereal I wanted to write a blog about our time together. Then I spent a decent chunk of time explaining to him what a blog was. Basically a diary that the whole world could read. 

He was surprised and intrigued. Like, actually surprised, as if he had never really considered the far-reaching implications of modern technology.

Of course, as soon as I “had a blog,” I did nothing except put it off. As if my need to procrastinate had been bottled up for six months, just waiting for a project to murder. 

However, my nonexistent blog did inspire Jereal with a new way to look for Fero. He asked if it might be possible that someone had written a blog about her.

Sure, it was possible. If Fero had befriended a human, and that human actually wrote a blog instead of just thinking about it, we might have a chance of finding her.

We searched for a while, a few hours on random afternoons. I operated the magical calculating machine, while Jereal sat behind me remarking on the miracles of technology.

Some sites felt close, but none of them were right. Jereal went out to check a few of the leads himself. But each time, he told me with regret that he had not located his other half.

I suggested that Fero might be as close as Helen’s house. I was really fishing for anything he could tell me about Helen, but Jereal shook his head, spun his finger, and said “fifty miles,” which I took to mean the radius where he’d already made a fine-toothed sweep.

- • -

Between card games with Jereal, the search for Fero’s blog, and quietly wondering about Helen, the summer stumbled quietly into fall. A hot dry August slipped into a cool wet September, and fallen leaves began congregating in the gutters outside.

Outside.

Where nobody goes.

This lockdown had become ridiculous, more than any sane person could stand. And let me be clear: I had spent my whole life practicing for this. Sitting at home, playing video games, surfing the internet, shopping by mail, avoiding other people like the literal plague. I had been training for lockdown since high school.

But after six months enough was enough, even for me. Lord knows how it was affecting everyone else.

I saw that Helen’s schedule was about as regular as mine. One or two short grocery trips each week, occasional package deliveries, awake in the daytime, lights out at midnight. No pets, no kids. And apparently no friendly angel.

- • -

It was one of those rainy late afternoons that’s also sunny. Jereal and I stood by the piano in the living room. My parents’ living room. They never had a piano. I never learned to play.

“I was cleaning my hands,” I said.

“Your hands?” said Jereal.

“My… arms.”

“What was on them?”

“Blood,” I said quietly. “Maybe I was cooking. I had cut myself.”

“There was a knife,” he said.

“There was a knife,” I repeated. “I had cut myself.”

Then I looked down at my hands and saw the blood and started to cry, even though by now I knew I was asleep.

“David, you died that day.”

“Yeah,” I said, and looked up at him. “I guess I did.”

This eternal lockdown was my paradise, my forever, my honest wish. My last words had been something like “this will never end.” And for a while, that wish came true.

“David, it has been a privilege to know you.”

“Thank you, Jereal. I’m ready now.”

He took my hand. And then I woke up. Again.

- • -

It was a bright, chilly afternoon in September. Jereal and I sat in my front room talking. On the yellow curtains, the shadows of trees danced in the wind.

Jereal was distant. Or perhaps he was the same, but I was still stuck in that dream. 

For the first time, I told him about the dream, and asked him what it meant.

His first remark was that my parents had never owned a piano.

Then he told me that he was having a similar experience: a dream, if you will,  that he had died when Fero left, and that my home was his purgatory. I was his host, put there to ease his passing from the eternal into nothingness.

I don’t think angels dream, or die, but maybe he was explaining his experience in terms I could understand. Perhaps Jereal was just as confused about our time together. Or, and this is still very possible, he was still just fucking with me.

Whatever the truth, I’m glad to tell you that those dreams disappeared about the same time that he did.

- • -

Jereal took off on the equinox, Tuesday, September 22. He didn’t make a big deal of it, but he did stop by to explain that he was leaving, and to thank me for an enlightening summer and many enjoyable games of gin rummy.

I had become fond of Jereal, but I was also glad to see him go. He clearly needed to find something that was not here, and I wished him luck.

A few days later, I finally started to blog about my time with Jereal, and that is what you’re reading now. I assume no one will believe this, and I don’t really care. It was a weird summer for everyone, and I don’t believe it all myself. 

Stephanie found this blog pretty quickly, and texted me about it, basically to see if I had gone crazy. That was thoughtful of her, and we had a pleasant talk about her mom, the bakery, and her plan to start a tire shop for women. I wished her good luck with it.

- • -

A few days later, I was typing at the kitchen table, when I had a strange feeling like Jereal might be at the front door. This was odd, because I’d never felt like that before.

“Is that you?” I asked through the closed front door. 

There was a pause.

“Not exactly,” said an old woman’s voice.

I cautiously opened the curtains. Six months of dust tumbled into the afternoon sunlight. On my porch stood a tiny, ebullient grandmother in a gossamer white smock.

She smiled at me, and the sun drew a golden crescent along the top of her short brown hair.

“I’m Fero,” she said. “I’m Jereal’s angel.”

That sonofabitch.

- • -

We shared a pot of tea at the kitchen table.

“I want to apologize,” she explained. “I lost touch with Jereal some time ago. I’m sorry for any trouble he might have caused you.” Then she added, “I’m very grateful for your blog.”

“Oh, you’re welcome.” So this is how she found him. I guess our plan worked backwards. “Is Jereal with you again?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she explained, without explaining anything. What a pair, these two.

Turns out, Jereal and Fero had split up quite a while ago, almost five hundred years. Fero wasn’t sure exactly when, because afterward she fell asleep for long time. Jereal might have spent all that time looking for her, though I wasn’t clear on whether he was also the reason they split up. Frankly I wasn’t all that clear on anything.

The conversation amounted to me asking questions, and Fero giving vague answers, but we got through it with dignity. Fero assured me that Jereal hadn’t meant me any harm; he was just extremely bored from sitting on the sidelines for so long. It hadn’t occurred to me until then to wonder if he was malicious. Now I can’t stop wondering.

Fero also gave me the impression that Jereal was seriously breaking the rules by even talking to me. But then, so was Fero, so what are the rules, really?

After a pleasant half-hour, Fero bid me farewell, and told me that I would not likely see either of them again. That sounded fine to me.

- • -

That night, I noticed Helen pulling up outside, her hatchback loaded with the week’s groceries. As usual, it was more than she could carry.

It was time to say a proper hello. I headed for the front door and popped on my mask and shoes.

On the window ledge, I noticed Jereal’s measuring cup, hidden all this time behind the yellow curtains.

What the heck. I grabbed it. I just might need a cup of sugar.

- • -- • -- • -