Authors Note: For those not in the loop, Sam's Club is a huge (re: size of three warehouses) store that sells everything from clothes to electronics to furniture. But this testament to America's consumerism sells mostly food: four-box packs of Cheerios, spices by the pound, meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, poultry and fish - all at 'members only' prices. Everything you could imagine. Restaurateurs and bulk-buying moms shop there because buying more at such a store means paying less per unit.
One of the happiest days in Gabriel's innumerable years of existence was when he discovered Sam's Club. Or, more accurately, the dessert and bakery section at Sam's Club.
Gabriel had been zipping along his merry way, intent on causing fatal mischief to someone yet to be determined, when his ever-keen nose caught whiff of delicacies. Namely, of the sweet variety. This discovery brought his hunt for a punishable mortal to a screeching, midair halt. He hovered there, invisible and flapping his large wings, above the shopping center, triangulating this scent of sugar like a satellite. Target acquired, he zeroed in with all the accuracy of a Hellfire missile, ghosting right through the roof of the large building from which the scent emanated.
Suspended just below the fluorescent lights, Gabriel drank it all in. There were boxes of nearly every food imaginable, and in quantities that, in millenia past, would have fed a whole family of Cro-Magnons for a winter. People with shopping carts the size of luxury bathtubs scurried about, taking down boxes nearly their own size of paper towels, oatmeal, and cream of celery. But where was that sugar?
Gabriel spun and, with a comical gasp of delight, surveyed the bakery. The smells of caramel, chocolate, and cinnamon wafted up to his willing nose. He had to contain a holler of joy that would have shattered every flatscreen TV and window in the place. Heaven? Close enough.
Jumping forward a few hours in time was, literally, a snap for the archangel. The store was dark, the employees all gone, the shoppers MIA. Gabriel landed, folded his wings, and wandered through the aisles of wonderland.
Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Could it be?
Surely, he was dreaming: such glories did not exist outside his Father's realm.
Yet, there it was.
Sinking to his knees before the display, Gabriel reached out with fingers shaking in awe to caress the ten-gallon bucket.
It was a display of 30-pound buckets of buttercream icing.
"Sorry, baked goods and confections," whispered the angel, pulling the tub to settle between his crossed legs on the floor and conjuring a spoon out of midair. "I know to whom my heart belongs." Ripping off the sealed lid, Gabriel murmured, "Father, bless this icing to the nourishment of my human vessel, and my body to your service. A-men!"
When the employees of Sam's Club opened the store that next morning, Marvin Gaye's song 'Let's Get It On' was on constant loop over the intercoms and every last pastry, muffin, and fudge square was gone, their empty containers strewn everywhere, perfectly clean.