The Angel's Friends
Aziraphale let out a contented sigh as he lowered himself into his favorite armchair in the back of his shop, a mug of cocoa steaming pleasantly beside him and a well-worn book in his lap. It had taken ages to get Crowley off the phone; after arranging to go out that night to the Ritz, the demon had chatted about Heaven knew what for a good half an hour before finally realizing that Aziraphale was only answering in distracted murmurs and "yes dear"s and had diplomatically hung up. It had been some time since the angel had had an opportunity to read, but at last he was back in London, with all afternoon free and a heaping stack of books piled up next to his chair.
He had barely begun the first sentence before a jingling from the bells above the front entrance interrupted him. Irritably, he shut the book and stood to see what poor unsuspecting customer dared disturb him. He prepared his best stern face, setting his lips into a disapproving frown and narrowing his eyes in a way that made him look unapproachable without being too offensive about it. He even allowed himself to radiate a decidedly less-than-angelic vibe of unfriendliness—anything to scare off whoever it was as soon as possible.
It was a girl*. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back with a blue ribbon, except for a few unruly strands that hung about her narrow face, and she looked around at all the cluttered bookshelves with a strange mixture of shyness and rapture. She noticed Aziraphale standing in the threshold of the back room and offered him a tentative, lopsided smile, ducking her head in a nervous manner. Her pale blue eyes were very wide, and a pair of glasses perched precariously on her nose magnified them, giving her a look of bewildered innocence. He couldn't help himself; his face relaxed into a less hostile expression and the belligerent aura he was emitting shut itself off. "Can I help you?" he asked in a voice much warmer than the one he normally reserved for visitors to his shop.
"Oh, I'm just looking, really, if that's all right," she said.
"Of course, let me know if you need assistance," he said. He saw his gaze was making her bashful, so he averted his eyes deliberately and began to busy himself behind the cluttered counter where the cash register was. He watched from the corner of his eye as she began to roam about the shelves.
After ten minutes she was still there, pouring excitedly over various tomes and giving no sign that she intended to leave any time soon. Sighing, he went and fetched his cocoa from the other room, reheating the cooled liquid with a thought, and settled down in the chair behind the counter so that he could read while keeping an eye on her. A part of his brain chided him for not trying to chase her out (what if she bought something?), but for once the more angelic portion of his mind won out, and he couldn't bring himself to really regret letting her stay. There was something about her—the undernourished look to her thin frame, the timidity of her movements—that made his heart go warm at the excited gleam that the books brought to her eyes.
It took the girl a while to figure out Aziraphale's organization system, if he could be said to have one—on each shelf, books were ordered haphazardly, so that one could find the latest romantic pulp side-by-side with some battered sci-fi novel from the fifties**. But he did tend to keep works he was fond of (he favored nineteenth-century Romanticism, for example, and had a soft spot for the Victorians as well) safely separate in their own bookcases. And these were the ones she lingered over, once she discovered them.
This should have made him anxious; typically, whenever a customer meandered too close to his favorite books he'd advance rather menacingly and hover around them with an unsettling grimace until they felt a sudden chill and recalled an appointment or felt a sudden urge to go shoe-shopping instead. But while she flipped through many a volume with obvious delight, she always placed each back on its shelf, gave its spine a gentle pat, and moved on.
After a while Aziraphale became absorbed in his own book, forgetting to glance up occasionally as the story got good, and the next time his reading was interrupted was when the front door threw itself open with a good loud rattling of its bells. He didn't need to look up to know that he'd see a tall, dark figure swaggering into the shop as if he owned the place.
"Aziraphale, really, most would consider it close to suicidal to keep me waiting, not to mention it's downright rude—" Crowley paused, noticing the bookstore's extra occupant. "I thought you close at five on Wednesdays?" he said to the angel, giving the alarmed girl what he intended to be a reassuring smile but what turned out more like a vampire's sneer.
Aziraphale glanced at the clock on the wall. "Six o'clock already? Goodness me." He looked at the girl. "Looks like it's past closing time, my dear, you'd best be on your way," he said to her. She replaced the book she was holding and scampered out the door, casting one last apprehensive look at Crowley on her way out.
"How long has she been in here? Skittish thing like that, you could've scared her away before she'd so much as touched one of your precious books."
"Now my dear, I don't know what you could possibly mean by that. 'Scared her away,' what am I, a demon? This is a shop, anyone's free to look around."
Crowley snorted, but he had to admit to himself that he was too glad to see Aziraphale again to tease him too much. "Just get your coat already, angel. It's been too long since I last got you disgracefully drunk in a fine-dining establishment."
*Well, a young woman, probably around twenty-five years of age—but to a being as ancient as he was, anyone under forty or so was practically a baby still.
**This choppy system was completely intentional, of course: he knew where every book was, but anyone else who came looking for a particular text would have a hell of—a god-awfu—a very hard time finding it.
Aziraphale didn't open shop till long past noon the next day. He and Crowley had gone to the demon's flat for a quick drink* after the Ritz, and they'd only sobered up around nine in the morning to go and feed the ducks before the demon dropped him off at his shop. A few people wandered in, but he could tell by the disinterested looks on their faces that he needn't worry about them making a purchase, and each was gone again within five minutes.
Around three, though, the wide-eyed girl returned. Aziraphale grew nervous—what if she'd brought money today and planned on buying all the books she'd only examined yesterday?—but at five she left without having approached his counter at all.
The next day she was back around three again. Aziraphale found himself smiling as she pulled the same book she'd last looked at the day before from its shelf and stood there, reading. It was a rare, annotated edition of Frankenstein signed by the author; the angel silently applauded her taste. He noticed that she was very careful with it, only opening it halfway to keep the binding from cracking, and he suddenly felt a strange gush of affection for her well up inside him**.
"You could sit, my dear, you know," he said from his place behind the counter.
She almost dropped the book.
"I-I'm sorry, I wasn't even going to come inside today, I haven't got any money to buy anything. I'll just put this back and, and go," she said hurriedly.
Aziraphale smiled kindly. "To be honest, I prefer it when people have no intention of purchasing my books. It's all well and good for humans to read, but, well, I'm a bit selfish with my copies."
Encouraged by his smile, she grinned back. "I don't blame you, you've got some really great stuff in here," she said, gesturing at his dusty collection of Romantic authors.
"There's a reading nook right over there, my dear," he said, pointing to a cozy armchair that had only in that moment materialized between two bookcases in a corner of the shop. "Go on and sit." She gave him another shy grin, and settled herself down to read.
...
A week passed without her coming again. And then one day, she was back. Aziraphale was reading behind the counter when she came in.
"What are you reading?" she asked before she could stop herself. She blushed when he looked up.
"In Memoriam," he replied, surprised that he didn't feel so much as a twinge of annoyance to be interrupted.
" 'I held it truth, with him who sings / To one clear harp in divers tones'…" She trailed off.
" 'That men may rise on stepping-stones / Of their dead selves to higher things,'" he finished for her. "You're a fan of Tennyson?"
"Oh yes, he's wonderful," she said. Aziraphale agreed wholeheartedly. He'd known the man, as a matter of fact***.
They chatted about Tennyson and poetry all the afternoon. Aziraphale was startled to discover that this tiny wisp of a being, barely out of her diapers to his ageless eyes, could bring him insight into poems he'd read countless times, penned by a man with whom he had once walked and talked and laughed and cried.
At a lull in their conversation, he glanced at the clock. "Oh, dear, it's five? I promised Crowley I'd meet him at the pond at a quarter till," he said. "He'll probably be storming in any minute to chew me out."
The girl had been jabbering on enthusiastically just a moment before, but now her old shyness crept back. "Crowley…is that your…friend from before, with the suit and the shades?"
"That's the one. I'm sorry if he scared you last time he came; he's a dear boy when you get to know him, really. But you'd best be off if you don't fancy running into him."
"Yeah, I'll do that," she said. Then she smiled. "By the way, we've been talking for two hours now, and you never asked my name."
"Oh, my dear, I suppose I haven't. What is it, then?"
"Alice."
"And I'm—" he hesitated, considering giving her his alias, Ezra, but then decided on his true name—"Aziraphale."
"Well, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Aziraphale." She stuck out her hand.
He shook it, replying, "Pleasure's all mine," and was surprised to realize he meant it.
*What Aziraphale called a "quick drink" had consisted of three bottles of some truly exquisite wine; Crowley had been saving for centuries for a special occasion, and he felt that Aziraphale's return after a year and a half abroad counted. They'd drunk it slowly together as the angel recounted his trip with ever-increasing jollity, and then Crowley had detailed his own recent exploits with so many hisses and slurs that Aziraphale only understood about one word in thirty, but guffawed heartily in all the right places nonetheless.
**One might expect sudden gushes of affection to be commonplace for an angel; but angels were really expected to hold only a vague sort of fondness for humanity—loving them all collectively, but not focusing tenderness on any one person.
***While Crowley had been snoozing the nineteenth century away, Aziraphale had been interacting more personally with individual humans than he usually thought was wise—he and Crowley had discussed in the past, while well-suffused with wine, the dangers of getting too fond of any one person, seeing as the poor things were apt to die when you least expected it. Pop out of town for a few decades, and come back to find them deteriorating in their graves. But Aziraphale hadn't been able to resist interacting with some members of the 1800s, which had given birth to so much genius. Alfred had become a close friend, for a time.
Alice visited frequently from then on, getting the hang of his erratic opening hours. Sometimes they'd wile away an afternoon discussing literature or linguistics, and sometimes she'd sit in her little nook, absorbed in one work or another. He allowed her to take books home with her, and she always brought them back in as good a condition as they had been.
One day Crowley stopped in while they were in the middle of a lively debate about Marlowe's Faustus. Even though the door burst open with its usual thunderous bang as he sauntered in, neither of them looked over.
"I agree completely with you, dear, Faustus had free will and his fall was completely his doing—he's human. But if Mephastophilis hadn't tempted him into it…"
"I like Mephastophilis," the girl interrupted him. "I think he can be read as a sympathetic character, Aziraphale. And at some points his tempting was pretty halfhearted—look at this part, he almost seems to hope Faustus won't submit, knowing that it will doom Faustus to the same torments he faces"
"But really, dear, sympathy for a demon? And Mephastophilis especially—"
"Because Aziraphale wouldn't know a thing about sympathizing with a demon, oh no," Crowley sniggered. Alice jumped; Aziraphale blushed and looked up.
"Hello, Crowley. I didn't mean it like that, um…"
"No, no, don't mind me, carry on your conversation, it's very interesting. I'll team up with the young lady on this one, though, you can't blame a demon for trying to get another soul under his belt; old Mephastophilis got quite the commendation for that one—"
"My dear," Aziraphale said warningly, shooting a look at Alice, who was watching their exchange with a bemused look on her face, "it's just a story, fiction, you know."
"Right, right," he drawled. He turned to Alice. "Anyway, I've seen you in here before, haven't I? A. J. Crowley, at your service."
She shook that hand he proffered. "Alice," she said bravely.
"I was just dropping by to tell you a new sushi bar just opened a few streets down, care to join me there tonight?"
Aziraphale couldn't keep his eyes from lighting up. "Certainly, dear boy."
"Great, I'll pick you up at six. I'll be going now, I've got some…errands to run."
He swiveled around lithely on his heel and pulled open the door. As he was heading out, however, he glanced over his shoulder, and did a double take. The girl was looking at Aziraphale again, and her expression was, well…Crowley didn't like it one bit.
...
Being brand new, the sushi bar was packed to bursting, but Aziraphale and Crowley had no trouble getting a table*. They sat enveloped in their own little bubble of conversation as people chattered and moved about around them. The sushi was very good.
"Reminds me of that time we ate in Edo, remember that, which century was that, dear?"
"Eighteenth. And it's called Tokyo now."
"Ah yes. Well, it was very good, a bit more sour than this stuff, you know, but the Japanese certainly knew what they were doing, I'd say."
They crammed themselves with as much sushi as their stomachs could hold**, then sat in companionable silence for a while, sipping wine and watching people passing in the street below.
"So…does that girl visit you often, angel?"
"Alice? Oh, yes, as often as she can between school and work and looking after her mum. She's a very sweet girl."
"I'm sure she is." There was silence for a moment. Crowley felt inexplicably uncomfortable, but Aziraphale was blissfully oblivious to this, gazing tranquilly out the window. "But, angel, I, er, well…you know we've decided in the past that it's a bad idea to get caught up intimately with individual humans, it's…not sssmart." He blessed mentally; he was not going to start hissing. What was he getting so worked up for, anyway?
Aziraphale sighed. "I'm an angel, my dear; it's my job to be fond of people."
"Well, yes, but from afar! All right, look, I'm fine with you making friends, that's not my business, but…be careful, okay? And besides, apart from, you know…the inevitable, in fifty or sixty years' time…well, for the present, I'm worried about you hurting her."
Aziraphale turned from the window to meet Crowley's golden-gleaming eyes. The demon had removed his sunglasses, and now wished he hadn't, mentally squirming under the angel's gaze. "Whatever do you mean?" Aziraphale asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
"Honestly, Aziraphale, must I spell everything out for you? She likes you—you know…likesss you, likes you."
"My dear boy! I'm quite a bit too old for her, don't you think?"
Crowley huffed impatiently. "It's not as if she sees a six-thousand-year-old angel when she looks at you. In fact, ever since you returned from your last discorporation, you've looked younger than ever***. You don't look a day over thirty, and she's what, twenty-five? It's not such a huge age gap at all."
"Do I really look that young now? Goodness me, thirty you say, that's the youngest I've looked in a couple millennia…" He picked up a spoon and attempted to study his reflection in it.
"Yeah, well, don't go putting on any airs, angel, thirty doesn't sit any better on you than forty did."
"Then there you have it, Alice can't possibly fancy me. I've hardly done anything to lead her to believe I harbor romantic feelings for her, Crowley."
"Oh, no, you just welcome her into your shop when you scare all other customers away, and chat with her about boring gibberish that no one else in the world would want to discussss, and cast those lovey-dovey angel eyesss on her, and call her dear."
"Please, I call everyone dear—I even call you dear, and goodness knows I don't fancy a demon."
There was another silence, and this time both of them felt uncomfortable in it. For some reason, Aziraphale felt like blushing. "My d—Crowley, how about we leave off it? Let's change the subject, I don't want to have a row already, not when I've only just got back to London."
Yes, all right. Crowley allowed himself to relax, and gave Aziraphale his wickedest smile. "Okay then, angel. I've got to tell you about the spot of tempting I did this afternoon, with an old woman and her grandson at the grocer's, you'll die you'll laugh so hard…"
*The greeter had told them they'd have to wait for other diners to leave, but they'd pointed out to her that there was an unoccupied table for two right over there by the window. She'd blinked at it and then laughed and said, "silly me, of course, right this way gentlemen." Crowley had smirked and muttered, "nice one, angel," but Aziraphale pretended not to hear.
**Which was a great deal more than a normal human's stomach could possibly have held.
***And not completely unattractive, either, though Crowley would never admit that to the angel, who was conceited enough as it was. Besides, give it a few years of accumulated biscuits and a comfortable layer of pudginess would take the edge off his counterpart's slim new limbs.
Crowley told himself to let the matter drop, but in the next few months his worry grew. It was clear enough to him that the girl was completely infatuated, but the stupid angel remained stubbornly clueless.
Then one day Aziraphale turned down dinner plans with him because Alice had invited him to go out to get coffee with her.
"That'sss cool angel, I get it. Enjoy your date," the demon hissed.
"Nonsense, she has never said a thing about dating. Honestly, why is this is any different from going out with you? Crowley, please, I thought you'd dropped—" he hung up before the angel could finish.
The next day was Saturday, and he'd promised to meet Aziraphale at the pond. He didn't much feel like it, but he went.
They were quiet as they tossed breadcrumbs to the ducks. Both were reluctant to start an argument. Crowley spoke at last, his voice carefully neutral.
"How was your…coffee?" he asked.
"It was fine," Aziraphale replied shortly. "It was just like sitting in the bookshop, only with coffee and scones. We didn't hold hands or something, if that's what you're thinking." He knew that had come out sharp, and winced.
"Aziraphale…" Crowley had been thinking last night about what he had to say. He did not want to say it, knew his words would be like barbs to the angel. But he plowed on. "Don't you remember what happened when you befriended Will…you know, Shakespeare?"
As he'd expected, Aziraphale stiffened beside him. His hand, half raised to toss more crumbs, remained frozen in midair. Crowley hated himself for being so cruel, but a small voice in his head taunted him—he was a demon, wasn't he? He should enjoy watching an angel's pain. And he despised himself, because he was pretty sure that part of him did enjoy it.
He kept his voice emotionless, cold. "You kept insisting he knew you were just friends, Aziraphale. And then, lo and behold, suddenly he's churning out love poems by the handful for you." Crowley felt sick; the stricken look on his counterpart's face was like a stab in his own heart. But he was relentless. "How did that one go, Aziraphale? 'The better angel is a man right fair,' right? And who could forget 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temp'—"
"Stop it!" Aziraphale unfroze at last; he was shaking, whether with anger or anguish Crowley couldn't tell. Crowley felt goose bumps as his hair stood on end; the angel's aura was rolling off him in waves. The ducks took the hint; they paddled off to the farthest side of the pond as quickly as their webbed feet could carry them.
"Angel, I'm sssorry, I really am." Crowley took a breath. "But every time you do this, every time you let yourself care for a human, it ends in heartbreak, and not just for you. If you hurt this girl, you'll hate yourself, and I can't bear to see th—"
"Be gone, Crowley." The demon risked a look at Aziraphale's eyes; they were not the eyes of Aziraphale his friend, the sweet-toothed bibliophile with the wrinkled jumper and distracted smile. They were distant, inhuman—the gaze of Aziraphale, righteous Principality of Heaven. His Enemy. Crowley didn't have to be told twice; he fled.
A month and a half passed without a word exchanged between them. Before the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't, this wouldn't have been odd; but lately they'd been meeting up weekly or more, when both were in London.
Crowley went about his work, tempting people and messing things up, but all the time he had to admit that he missed the stupid bastard.
Getting ready for bed alone in his flat one night, he sighed. Had it been the wrong thing to bring up Shakespeare? He didn't think so. It was one of those topics neither of them ever mentioned without having to explain that it was taboo. Both had had their share of making friends with humans and having to watch them age and die. Crowley had decided a few centuries back not to let himself do that ever again. But he understood why the angel had done it. Neither of them had any friends except for one another—and the truth was that they weren't exactly two peas in a pod. Crowley wasn't about to have a nice long chat about the evolution of rhyme scheme through the ages, just as Aziraphale could hardly hold up an end of a conversation about cars or computers. Beings of angelic stock weren't nearly so dependent on companionship for their wellbeing as humans were; but spending six thousand years on Earth had endowed both of them with certain humanlike qualities, and secretly Crowley knew that he sometimes felt lonely, just as Aziraphale did. The angel deserved to have a friend who'd jabber on with him about Byronic heroes and Greek tragedies and other such gibberish, and Crowley just couldn't be that friend.
So Crowley came up with a plan. He'd see to it that the foolish angel could keep his friend without breaking her heart in the long run. Go on and reading your books and sipping your tea and being oblivious, Aziraphale, he thought to himself. You can leave it to the demon to sort it all out.
...
Aziraphale was puttering around the back room, brewing himself some cocoa and pondering which book he ought to read tonight, when the front door flew open* with a familiar crash that he hadn't heard in all too long. He smiled to himself, then frowned worriedly, remembering why he hadn't seen the demon in a while.
Crowley breezed into the back room with a slither and a smirk. "Hiya, angel," he said. "I was wondering if I could crash here for the night—Down Below has been trying to reach me all day and if I go back to my flat they'll just invade my telly and force me to chat."
Aziraphale paused. Crowley seemed to be pretending that the…incident at the pond had never happened. Well, he was more than happy to do the same. When he spoke, his voice was very warm. "It's good to see you, Crowley. Can I tempt you to some cocoa and a nice meringue I just whipped up**?"
*It had been locked, but it had known better than to remain so when Anthony J. Crowley wished to enter through it; he had that effect even on inanimate objects.
**He meant that it a literal sense; he had in that very moment whipped it into existence out of thin air.
Crowley lounged in bed* till very late the next afternoon. What he was waiting for was the tinkling of the shop bell and a young woman's greeting, which he finally heard a little before three.
"Hello, Aziraphale!" Alice's voice was clearly audible through the thin floorboards. Crowley grinned. Time to put on a show.
Alice was roaming the shelves for something new to read and Aziraphale was tidying up a bookcase when Crowley swaggered down the stairs and into the front room.
"Thanks for letting me stay the night, angel," he said, smirking as they both jumped a little at his voice.
"No problem at all, my dear," Aziraphale replied, dusting off a worn tome as he looked over his shoulder to beam at the demon. Then he turned back to the shelf.
Crowley saw Alice's naturally-wide eyes go even wider, and he made sure she was watching as he slithered over and wrapped both his arms around the angel's waist from behind, resting his chin on Aziraphale's shoulder. "I had a really good time."
Aziraphale froze at the unexpected contact, but only for a second. "Really, dear boy, I'm a bit busy," Aziraphale said absently, shrugging Crowley's chin off gently.
"That's fine, angel, I've gotta get going anyway. Cinema tonight, though; you can pick the movie…and then we can go spend some time at my place."
"Yes, my dear," Aziraphale murmured distractedly, intently studying a stain that had somehow appeared on the cover of one of his precious books.
Crowley looked over at Alice. She was gaping at the oblivious angel, and he watched in delight as her mind connected the dots. Give it a moment…and…there it was. He saw realization dawn on her, and she turned her gaze on him. He turned his smirk into a simper, gave her a jaunty wave, and strutted triumphantly from the shop, letting himself succumb to not-very-demonic-sounding giggles after the door had shut behind him.
...
Crowley was pretty sure Aziraphale had no idea that he'd turned the two of them into a couple in Alice's eyes. She continued to visit the shop regularly, the only change being the one that Crowley had been aiming for—he no longer caught her looking at the angel with anything but friendly affection.
After Alice graduated college, she got a job a little ways outside of London, and was only able to visit Aziraphale once or twice a month. Eventually, she got married—both Aziraphale and Crowley were invited to the wedding—and as the years passed, they attended countless birthday parties for three children who loved getting visits Uncle Azi and Uncle Crawly, who always brought them such interesting presents**.
Alice sometimes wondered at the seeming agelessness of her friend. As gray strands began to replace the brown in her hair, and wrinkles worked their way around her ever-wide eyes, time didn't lay a single finger on Aziraphale's head. He did gain a comfortable layer of pudginess around the stomach, but that was it; his hair stayed golden and his brow unlined. She knew there was something special to him; she'd always sensed it and the passing years gave her proof. But she never said anything.
When she published her first book, it was dedicated to him.
*Aziraphale had a bed in the small flat above his shop; he never slept in it himself, it was more for show—but Crowley had occasionally used it in the past, as he was now.
**Aziraphale had to give Crowley a stern talking-to the time he'd gotten little Ella a fully-grown python for her sixth birthday.
Sixty-five years after a shy, bespectacled wisp of a girl had made her way into a tiny bookshop in Soho, Crowley picked up the angel on a gray, rainy spring morning. Aziraphale had forgone his usual jumpers and tweeds for a rather ill-fitting, slightly rumpled black suit. They were silent, but not uncomfortably so, as the Bentley (which was ancient to the point of incredulity by this date, but still as sleek and smooth-running as the day Crowley had bought it) drove them out of London to a quiet little church in a quiet little town.
Crowley held the angel's hand all through the service. After the coffin was piled over with fresh earth, and all the humans had paid their respects and shed their tears and made their way out of the cemetery, one figure stood over the peaceful little grave in the twilight. The figure was draped in an ill-tailored suit, and had a bit of a paunch and unruly golden hair that whirled every which way in the light breeze, but as the sun threw out its dying rays and cast his silhouette against the crimson sky, he looked regal. As all turned to shadow, two startlingly white wings erupted gloriously from his back, bathing the grave in an ethereal glow.
Crowley, from where he stood some twenty yards away, watched as the angel plucked at a loose feather and set it lovingly down in front of the smooth grey stone.
After a long while, Aziraphale turned from the tomb, refolding his wings as he made his way back to where Crowley waited for him.
"It was worth it, angel. She was a good friend."
Aziraphale didn't need to ask what Crowley meant; he simply nodded. Neither of them ever went looking for friends, and it didn't happen often, but sometimes a human slipped inexorably into their lives. And Crowley was right: it was worth the pain.
They didn't exchange any more words. They didn't have to. As stars became visible overhead, peeping out from among the clouds, two figures picked their way through the many gravestones and left them all behind. The cemetery, the church, the town all faded into the distance as an old and well-loved car drove them unhurriedly back to the city they had come to call home.