Do-over Page 2

  “Has it occurred to you that you live in a really shitty neighborhood?”

  “Yes! I’m a student! It’s a requirement! What kind of guardian angel are you?”

  Dagiel scowled. “I’m the accidental kind, Einstein!”

  “And how do you become an accidental guardian angel?”

  Dagiel flushed—and since his skin was porcelain with a hint of rose, the flush really did travel gracefully in fluid lines along his throat and his cheeks and the line of his messy dark hair. His wings turned scarlet too. Even his halo burnished pink, and for a moment, Engall was caught up in the wonder of making an angel blush.

  “We just won’t talk about how that happened,” Dagiel said with some dignity. “Let’s just concentrate on how this next try is going to go, shall we?”

  Engall perked up. He’d been stopping for condoms—Chandler had just seemed so damned close, that was all. Even though he hadn’t really remembered the first time he had died, it had all come flooding back the minute he’d seen another gun. Frankly, it had really sucked when he’d seen another robber about ready to shoot him—dammit, hadn’t he been trying to change his ways?

  “This time,” Dagiel muttered to himself, crossing his arms in his robes and gnawing his lower lip. “This time, I want you to stop at the Rite Aid instead.” He looked up, pleased. “Yes! Absolutely! The crime rate is much lower at drug stores. You’ll totally make it to the party this time. It can be done!”

  Engall looked at him with an actual surge of optimism. Well, why not? He’d called his folks this time—that had been a plus. He’d gotten off, and his mood had been much better as he’d died this time, and that was also better. Once more into the breach, right? Third time was the charm?

  “I TOTALLY didn’t see that coming,” Dagiel said, and Engall looked at the bus, which had come skidding out of nowhere, and at the splat that his big, ungainly body had become, and had to agree.

  “Well, if I’d seen it coming, I wouldn’t have stepped off the curb, would I?” he snapped back unhappily.

  Dagiel grunted, scratching his head, and sighed. “Okay. Okay okay okay. So, this time, I want you to get all that other shit done earlier on in the day.”

  “Even the whacking off?” Engall asked, and Dagiel’s eyes widened. And then his wings turned scarlet.

  “I, uh, didn’t realize that had become part of the agenda,” the angel said into the awkward silence, and Engall’s ears turned red again.

  “It’s, uh, the reason I keep remembering the condoms.”

  Dagiel nodded. “That’s actually very wise of you,” he said sincerely. “But I don’t think you’re going to have time to do that with my next plan.”

  Engall actually breathed a sigh of relief into the gray nothingness that surrounded him whenever he died. “Oh, good. Another plan? Well, I’m sure this one’ll be a winner!”

  The angel Dagiel cocked his head at Engall and graced him with a smile. “You know,” he said wonderingly, “I’m usually not a big fan of humans, but you, my friend? You could be an exception.”

  Engall smiled, pleased. “Aw, well, thank you, Dagiel. That’s really kind of you to say. Shall we let the do-over commence?”

  “By all means,” Dagiel said, and Engall awoke once more.

  “YOU what?” Cristina asked again in wonder, and Engall felt his ears get warm. She sounded so pleased for him, and he was damned pleased himself.

  “I came out to my parents this afternoon,” he said, and then he gave her what even he knew was a lopsided smile. “I’m gay.”

  Cristina squealed and jump-hugged him. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God… Engall! I’m so proud of you! How did they take it?”

  Engall was only a little put out. “They took it like a Lifetime Television family—disgustingly perfect. You knew?”

  Cristina shrugged. “I don’t walk around in my underwear in front of straight men, sweetheart. Consider it sort of an acid test.”

  Engall nodded. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “And that’s how you failed the test.” She put her hands under her generous boobs and fluffed them under her strategically engineered bra. “Honey, even if you don’t like the face or the ass, if you don’t notice this rack, the odds aren’t good for heterosexuality, you know?”

  Oh. “Oh,” Engall said wonderingly. “You know, that should have tipped me off too!”

  “So what did tip you off?”

  Engall felt his ears grow even warmer, and he suddenly couldn’t look at his trig textbook with nearly enough intensity.

  He mumbled, and Cristina said, “What? Honey, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Chandler!” he said loudly, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Oh, honey! He’s throwing a party tonight, did you know that?”

  Engall shook his head. “Crissy, I don’t even know if he’s gay.”

  Cristina nodded. “He has to be! Have you even seen his apartment?”

  “What, is there some sort of gay-man’s apartment handbook?” Engall looked around their apartment. It was pleasant and plain, with hand-me-down furniture and Toulouse Lautrec posters and a clean coffee table and stuff, but Cristina was shaking her head.

  “No, sweetheart. He’s got this whole feng shui set up and pieces of art and sculpture, and… well, it’s pretty amazing. I think he did it all on a budget, too. But seriously—I mean, he seems really nice, and he has lots of friends who are gay. If you, I don’t know, tried to flirt with him, he wouldn’t crap all over you, I don’t think. Why not come?”

  Engall refrained from commenting that he’d actually already come, after he got home from school and before she got home from work, when he’d finished the disturbingly cheerful phone call with his parents.

  “I don’t know,” he said in answer to the question she’d just asked. “I’ve got trig homework and—”

  “And nothing! You don’t have work tomorrow! Do it tomorrow, or Sunday, after work! C’mon, Engall, you just came out of the closet and it was practically painless! Even if Chandler’s got a girl on each arm, let’s go to his fantabulous apartment and meet people who don’t live in our crappy one! Puhleeeeeeeeezzzzze?”

  Engall smiled and shook his head. “Okay okay okay…. Do we need to bring anything?”

  Cristina nodded. “Yes. Us. And I think you bought potato chips today on the way home. Why did you do that, by the way?”

  Engall shook his head, unwilling to explain the sudden, seemingly fruitless urge to buy condoms. “I have no idea,” he said. “Here, let me shower!”

  They left a few moments later, deciding to walk the two blocks. They were crossing the block by the Rite Aid when they heard the sudden squeal of brakes.

  “I’VE got to admit,” Dagiel said, taking Engall’s hand and walking him away from the carnage, “that was a class act, shoving her out of the way.”

  “Thank you,” Engall said glumly.

  “And you seemed much happier this time around. You had the world at your feet when you left the house this evening.”

  “I did. That did make the whole event much more of a surprise.”

  “And it’s not like either of us put together the fact that if you didn’t stop the bus when it was up a block it would still be out of control when it got to you here.”

  “Admittedly,” Engall said, nodding, “we should have thought of that.”

  “And seriously, we seem to be getting to the root of the thing—”

  “Dagiel?”

  “—because really, I think God is telling us—”

  “Dagiel.”

  “—that what you’re supposed to be doing is—”

  “Dagiel!”

  “Don’t say it!” Dagiel cried, visibly upset. His wings were a mournful mix of brown and blue. “Don’t say it. It’s not true. Look at yourself. You’re happy, you’re full of confidence—you did not get this way in order to just die!”

  “Are you sure?” Engall asked gently. “I mean, Dagiel, you’re right. I’m happier now
than I’ve ever been. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t about meeting my soul mate. Maybe it was about being happy whether or not there was another person in my life. Maybe it was about being myself and happy with that. C’mon, Dagiel—this hurts a lot every time it happens. Maybe all this has been is better dying through painful experience, you ever think of that?”

  “No,” Dagiel said. He sank down onto the foggy floor that they seemed to be walking on whenever Engall died. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, dammit! You’re not supposed to die!”

  “What makes you so sure?” Engall asked, sitting down with him and crossing his legs. Dagiel glared at him.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” he snapped. “We’re going to figure this out.”

  “Well, yeah, but how do you know?”

  “Because,” Dagiel said plaintively, toying with his rumpled robe. “Because Hamon said so.”

  Engall blinked. “Who’s Hamon?”

  Dagiel suddenly cracked a small smile, although he never stopped toying with his robe. “Hamon is beautiful,” he said softly. “He’s kind.” Dagiel looked up at him earnestly. “I’m not really that high up, you understand. I’m the angel of fish.”

  “Fish? There’s an angel of fish?”

  “Well, of course! They’re one of the world’s biggest food supplies, they’re huge in the food chain, they’re wildly diversified—fish!”

  “Okay—I hear you. Fish. I mean.” Engall grasped desperately for one of the few things he knew about the Bible. “You had a pretty big moment with that whole loaves and fishes thing, didn’t you?”

  Dagiel managed to look abashed. “I don’t like to brag about that,” he said, clearly pleased.

  “Well, so good. You’re the angel of fish. So, um, why me?”

  Dagiel looked at him intently. “You really didn’t think you were beautiful, did you?”

  Engall shrugged. “Not on the physical plane, no.”

  “Well, it’s irritating that the physical plane is all humans can see. I hate it. So there we were, Hamon and me, and we were watching the time stream—we like to do that.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Always?”

  “Well, yeah. Hamon likes the time stream because he gets to watch humans. I like the time stream because humans remind me of fish. And suddenly, there you were, swimming upstream and landing on the bank, and Hamon was watching your whole little tributary and he saw that and got really sad.” Dagiel stopped and swallowed, and Engall noticed that he suddenly looked more than mussed. He looked young. Of course, angels probably all looked young, but Dagiel?

  He looked… new. There were still freckles on his cheeks, when before, Engall had sworn his skin was flawless and glowing and hardly even skin at all. “I hate it when Hamon gets sad,” Dagiel confessed. “He’s really beautiful. He’s all… just brilliant and splendid and everything an angel should be. And he watched you flop on the bank and said, ‘Oh no. That’s so sad when that happens. It could have been true love forever.’”

  Engall nodded, feeling warmed from the toes up. “Well, that’s sweet, but how do you know he was talking about me? Did he mention my name? I mean, it’s sort of a dangerous night out—are you sure I’m the only lost fish in the time stream?”

  Dagiel flashed him a look of pure annoyance, and for the first time, Engall noticed that his nose wrinkled when he did that. “Well, of course you are! I mean, you and the guy you were destined….” Dagiel trailed off. “You were the guy with something to learn…,” he muttered, and then he looked at Engall again. “Except, you really didn’t have anything to learn, did you? It was just a little bashfulness. You would have gotten over that. I mean, look at you. You’re practically fully evolved!” Dagiel looked down again and grunted. “So, if you’re the fully evolved one, who are you….” He trailed off again and then suddenly brightened. “Destined to be with,” he said, smiling widely. “It’s all about the destiny, isn’t it?” The murky blue-brown of his wings metamorphosed into a translucent gold/silver glory, and Dagiel hopped to his feet.

  “One more time, Engall. One more time, I swear. Just once. One more time, and you won’t even know this ever happened. You’ve learned everything you need to, you understand all you need to be happy. You’re perfect! You’re wonderful. Don’t change!”

  “Well, is there anything I need to remember?” Engall asked, completely bemused. Dagiel’s enthusiasm was catching—but then, Engall had already established that it didn’t take much to make him an optimist.

  “Yeah,” Dagiel said, nodding. “Stay home. No M&Ms, no condoms, don’t go to the party, just stay the hell home. You hear me?”

  “But what if—“

  “Look—if you fall in the shower or get electrocuted by the toaster or hit by a wrecking ball, I’ll let you call it quits, I swear. But right now? Just stay home. I think this will all work out.”

  Engall looked at him, skeptical but game. “Dagiel?”

  “Yeah?” Dagiel was still gnawing on his lower lip, and he looked so hopeful that Engall almost wanted this more for the young angel than for himself.

  “If this doesn’t work out? It’s okay. I’ve really lived a good life, you know.”

  “It’ll be so much better, I swear,” Dagiel said fervently. “Finding your true love is going to make it all worth it.” His optimism faded for a moment. “For you, that is.”

  And then Engall woke up again.

  CHANDLER saw Cristina walk into the party unaccompanied and felt his heart plummet down to his toes. He made his way through the crowd, trying to be happy and charming and funny as he went, but really?

  He was just dying to know why Engall hadn’t come.

  “Cristina!” He finally resorted to calling her name and waving at her frantically, and he was relieved when she turned her head and waved back, working her way through the throng. As soon as she was in reach, he grabbed her hand and dragged her through all the people in his house, most of whom he even knew, and back through the hallway to his bedroom.

  He liked warm colors, so one of his walls was a blood orange and his coverlet was a combination of beige and rust and warm ginger brown. That was the first thing he’d noticed about Engall: that his hair was ginger and his eyes were warm. The pitcher ears had been amusing at first, because Engall was just so damned earnest, but as their time in school had progressed and the two of them had run into each other more and more, Chandler had found those ears more and more charming.

  He’d started to live for Engall’s smile. The guy would be in the middle of hopelessly fucking up a physics lab, and Chandler would step in, more to save Engall’s ass than for any desire to pass the class himself, and Engall would look up and smile and….

  And Chandler’s world would suddenly be filled with sunshine.

  Chandler had known he was gay for most of his life, but his parents were giving him a sweet ride through school, and, well, he was reluctant to put that free ride to the test by doing anything as foolish as coming out of the closet to his ultraconservative family. But that smile….

  Well, Chandler thought that if he could get that warm smile turned on him, and him alone, maybe that would be worth coming out of the closet for, right?

  Besides, he thought now, as he looked at Cristina’s pleasant patience, somebody had to talk the guy out of being an engineer. Engall was hopeless at it. Horrible at math, worse at puzzles, completely clueless at physics—Engall defied every law of momentum and space and vectors just by walking across the quad. He was all elbows and knees—by all physical laws, he shouldn’t have lived this long. Engall was constantly walking into doorframes and walls and tripping over his own feet.

  If Chandler wasn’t there to watch out for him, he wouldn’t have a chance in the world, would he?

  “Why didn’t he come?” Chandler blurted, and Cristina’s expression turned gentle.

  “Engall?”

  “Yeah. Why didn’t he come?” His disappointment was painful—damned
near tragic. Chandler had wanted him there so badly. You could get intimate at parties—Engall would have needed to lean over and talk into Chandler’s ear, and then maybe Chandler could have talked him into his room to show him the new painting he’d gotten from one of the artists at school, and then maybe Chandler could have put a hand on the small of his back and….

  Oh God. Why hadn’t he come?

  “He had sort of a big day,” Cristina said with a small smile. “He came out to his parents today, and you know, I think he’s thinking about changing his major.”

  For a moment Chandler couldn’t tell which thing made him happier, and then, as he started to grin, he had his winner.

  “Came out?”

  “Yeah, baby. Came out. Does this mean something to you?” She was looking at him meaningfully, and Chandler nodded, not caring if she’d known before or not.

  “God, he’s beautiful,” Chandler said, his throat closing at the perfection that was tall, plain, gangly Engall, with his sweet smile and his way of caring for you whether you were expecting it or not. Last semester Chandler had missed class for the flu, and Engall had actually asked his mother for a chicken soup recipe to make Chandler feel better. It had tasted decent, but the thing that had really made Chandler happy was the idea that Engall was sitting in his living room, doing his homework and crashing on his couch.

  He really was beautiful, wasn’t he?

  “You should go visit him,” Cristina said coyly. “I don’t know if he realizes how beautiful he is to you. I mean….” She gestured to Chandler’s house, which was his parents’ money mostly, and Chandler flushed.

  “He’s gotta know, right?” Chandler asked, thinking, Oh my God! What if Engall didn’t realize that Chandler thought he was perfect?

  “Well, Chandler,” Cristina said, rolling her eyes, “you are actually physically built like a god. Do you think maybe a mortal might need a little confidence approaching your feet?” She looked down to his feet, long and tan in flip-flops. “Oh, hell—even your feet are pretty. Jesus, did it ever occur to you that he just needs a little more encouragement than you do?”