"Rule Nine of Engagement – Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst"
That's the one that stood out the most when Spencer read the guide, her second or third night back on Earth and bored with television.
All the others seemed… well, doable and like the kind of instructions you might get when putting a bookcase together yourself.
As long as you found the English language side and not the Chinese, eventually you'd have a pretty sweet shelving unit to hold all your cookbooks or novels or what-not.
But this one rule, it suggested that things would go wrong – as if you couldn't avoid it – and so don't get your hopes up too high.
Because the higher you rise, the harder you fall.
And Spencer doesn't have wings, not yet, so it would probably hurt to hit the ground that fast.
The green of grass and the gray of sidewalks and the surface of the world is quick to approach, though, and Spencer isn't prepared for the impact.
As if sensing her there, the door is flung open and Ashley's face is a mirror of wounded shock – like a soldier shot in the chest by a friend, a traitor, a turncoat – and then it is morphing into fury.
"You told him. You fucking told him, didn't you?"
And Spencer tries to recall the day on the beach, with Ashley in wonder and in awe by her side.
And she tries to remember Ashley watching that old film, with chocolate lips and warm eyes.
And she thinks about running, hand-in-hand, in the rain and kisses and the build-up of some kind of special love… the kind that people dream of and Heaven banks on and Satan fears… the kind of love that can withstand peril and mistakes…
And Spencer watches it all slowly and sadly slip away again.
"Yes, I did."
"Get the hell out of here. Now."
"Ashley…"
Raife Davies voice is so unexpected that Spencer just blinks, as if in a daze, and she watches as Ashley keeps her gaze focused ahead – staring hard at Spencer as if just a look could turn back time and keep the woman safe from those who might betray her… keep her safe from angels with too much time on their non-human hands…
"Neither of you have the right to interfere in my life. You…" And Ashley is pointing a trembling finger at her father.
"…lost the right to interfere in my life the day you decided to fuck our family over, decided to fuck me over for some piece of ass."
"Ashley, you are walking on some thin ice here—"
"Fine then, I'll go. Get yourself another partner."
"Ashley, please—"
But the woman is gathering up her rage, shaping it and forming it like Mother Nature does the wind, and she is blowing doors off of buildings now.
She is a tidal wave and she is a typhoon. She is out of control and Spencer would give anything to calm this storm… but Spencer caused it and Spencer must weather it right to the end.
"And you… damn you, just… damn you, Spencer Carlin… get the fuck out of here and out of my life…"
But the woman is breaking into a billion shards, too.
She is falling apart at the seams and the needle stands silent in Spencer's hands.
"I told him because he needed to know, Ashley. He needed to realize that he was going to lose you forever."
"I told you not to tell anyone!"
The yell is deafening and it ricochets along the walls and it further pierces Spencer's soul – it rips another piece of her all-too-human feeling heart down and stomps on it.
"…I couldn't let you drown yourself, Ashley. I couldn't let you flounder. I had to… I had to save you somehow… someway…"
"Who put you in charge of that? Who the hell put you in charge of my life or my death or anything else? It wasn't me. You just stepped the fuck in and… I trusted you… damn it all, I trusted you…"
"You still can, Ashley, please… you still can—"
"No. Get out. Don't come back. Don't you dare come back here. This is over, you got it? This…"
And Ashley's hand is trapped between the two of them, unmoving and accusatory and broken.
And those brown eyes finally crack and shed beautifully tragic tears, a steady stream of sorrow over those lovely cheeks and hanging precariously off that soft chin.
"…This is over. Just leave. Just… leave."
And just as quickly as it was opened, the door is shut again.
There is muted talking on the other side, but that is only the way Spencer is hearing it – the talking is really fighting and the fighting is loud… not at all subdued…
But she cannot comprehend the sounds, not really.
And she blindly walks out of the law-firm, unnoticed by the few people wandering into another work day.
She walks and walks and finds her feet have taken her back home.
But, of course, it is not really her home.
That nice bed is not really hers, nor are the clothes on her back.
L.A. isn't her city and she can't ever go back to New York… and she certainly can't run and hide in Ohio anymore – can't find solace in her mother's embrace or in her father's voice anymore.
There is just a book of rules for angels and a phone number to call in times of trouble.
And the damn phone is ringing as she walks in the door, but – unlike this morning – she picks up and readies herself for giving up.
Because she has failed in a most spectacular way… and God might not want her in his endless garden.
/// /// ///
"Do you want to come back?"
"I think it might be for the best."
"Okay. We can do that."
"…Great."
"Don't worry, Spencer. We all make first-time blunders. You'll have a chance to do it again and it'll be easier."
"Can't I just… isn't there a desk job I can have or something?"
Gabe's laugh is delicate and kind and Spencer grins to herself – but it is a desperate kind of tiny smile – one she has to force so that she doesn't sob herself to distraction.
"I'll see what I can do. But, just turn the lights out and wait outside your apartment building. I'll send someone to pick you up."
"Pick me up? Like a… heavenly taxi service?"
"…Not exactly."
They hang up at the same time and she takes one last look around her make-believe life and she clutches the angel manual to her chest and she begs her mind to forget Ashley Davies as best she can – but she fears it'll never work out that way.
There has to be punishment of some kind for fucking up so royally, so being plagued by the memory of the one woman I've ever loved sounds about right…
And she stands outside, where it is a little warm and the breeze is a little humid and the sun is high in the sky – signaling noon – and she knows this is the last time she'll ever see a California day.
And it hurts like hell.
"Well, you certainly outdid yourself, didn't you?"
Spencer turns slowly and her shoulders just have to sag.
"Did you volunteer for this little jaunt just to piss me off?"
"As if I'd suggest myself for this. Just my turn… much to my chagrin."
"You know what? It's been a really bad day, so can we just skip the banter and get going?"
But Raphael's smile is everything but angelic and he takes her reluctant arm in his own and pulls her along in a casual stroll.
"Hey, it's been a while since I've been down here… maybe I want to see the sights, catch a film or two… hit up Pink's Hot Dog for a foot-long…"
"As great as all that sounds, I want to leave. I'm done down here, okay? Ready to hand this over to someone more… seasoned or whatever… and put it behind me."
"Well, we don't always get what we want, do we?"
"…Apparently not."
And Spencer glares at the angel, but even she knows it is a weakened version of her usual bite.
All of this interaction is weak and pathetic and she isn't sure how to get back any sort of… of…
"Oh, lay off it already, blondie. So, you screwed up and now you are all… angsty. Before you know it, a million years will have gone by and you'll forget this blip on the screen."
"Can you… read my mind or something?"
"Nope, just very perceptive. It's a talent."
"Oh yea, what am I thinking right now?"
Middle finger, right at you, you annoying jack-ass…
"I don't have to be a mind-reader to know that look."
"Because you get that look so often I'd imagine."
"There she is, feisty little Spencer Carlin… thorn in my proverbial side…"
"Glad to be of service."
"So… hot dogs first and then a movie? Or vice versa?"
Spencer pulls back from Raphael and she can feel the confusion lurking all over her features.
"Seriously, what are you doing? Aren't you supposed to, I don't know, beam me up or something?"
"This isn't Star Trek."
"You know what I mean… why are we hanging around?"
"A transfer of duties is not a simple matter, Spencer. It takes some time, which is why I now have time to kill… with you, Heaven help me."
"This is ridiculous."
"So are tube socks, but you don't hear me complaining."
"You are ridiculous."
"So, let's see a movie first… it's on me."
What Raphael's 'it's on me' really meant was just walking in the theater without buying a ticket, which prompted Spencer to ask another round of questions.
"What do you mean we can't be seen?"
"Your time here is done, so no one needs to be able to see you… thus you are invisible. As am I. Consider it your Christmas Carol moment."
"So… we could do anything and no one would know…?"
"Pretty much, but that is not encouraged, of course."
"You just got us into a movie without paying. That's wrong."
"And it is about to start, so shut up."
"You shut up."
"Spencer, don't be a brat."
"I'm not a—"
"Shhh!"
Wait, I was wrong again, wasn't I? This is the real punishment, isn't it? Spending a day with Raphael… wow, God, you really know how to torture a girl…
/// /// ///
It is a meaningless movie, filled with stupid laughs and false love… and Spencer hides the fact that she is crying as best she can in a candy-bar she can barely taste.
She felt kind of bad for taking it, because it is like stealing – but she figured that God owed her one for being put through this agony Raphael's company on the worst day of her life.
Or non-life as it were.
In her other life, the one where she actually was alive, she guess the worst day should be the one where she stepped off that subway and couldn't stay upright.
It should be the moment her motor functions ceased and her blood ran cold in her veins.
That should be the worst day ever – the one that took her life and took her from her family and her friends and from the world as she knew it.
She'd never get to wake up to a snowy New York morning again, frost on the windows and the leaky faucet in her kitchen or the way Mrs. Sanderson's cat would always run in Spencer's door and hop onto her space heater like it wasn't a dangerous thing.
She'd never get to run to catch a cab in traffic, waving her hands and laughing and flinging her purse into the dirty leather seat – late to work and still no one could ever fire her, they like her too much and she knows it.
She'd never know if, in that other life, there would have been someone to share her embrace with… if there was some woman unknown in the Big Apple, just waiting for the second they would meet and lock eyes and fall in love.
That should be the worst day ever, the day that Spencer Carlin ceased to be.
But it isn't, not in the slightest.
Because today is the worst day.
Today, with no one able to see her save Raphael and a sappy film before her and a tasteless candy-bar in her mouth and a damp face full of sadness… today is the shittiest day Spencer has ever had the misfortune of going through.
And Ashley is all she can think about, all she can hear in her ears, all she can see in her watery gaze.
Ashley Davies…
…with her untamed hair and delicate smile and her damn sexy legs and the sensation of her lips on mine and the joy I witnessed in her as we lay underneath the stars and the weight of her hanging onto my hand – from a rooftop and over a fence and rushing down the streets…
…Ashley Davies, the love of my life and my afterlife and forever…
"I can't stay here…" Spencer whispers in between heaving sobs and she flees the theater, pushing out into the masses of people who can't even see her as she loses everything that ever mattered at all.
/// /// ///
"Did I ever tell you about the time I was sent to Tokyo?"
She had thought that, maybe, she had lost Raphael somehow.
But that was a silly thought.
Spencer can't lose herself and she can't shake the angels at her back – she can't disappear from what she is anymore.
Even though she wants to.
But here they sit, on the Santa Monica Pier, with the sun slowly dying in the sky and hoards of faces moving past them – brushing by them, passing through them…
Spencer doesn't answer, she just keeps staring ahead and watches the sky go from a pastel blue to something darker, the coming of dusk and the hinting at nighttime.
It is lovely and grand and she soaks it up like she is dying all over again – she is taking the chance to watch the world fade from view this time, unlike the first time… where it was all just ripped from her.
"It wasn't my first time back on Earth, but it might has well been. It was during World War Two and I was so full of myself… you know, I had done such a good job the first time around with my subject, got her to rethink abandoning her child and it all worked out great. So, I was eager. Stupidly eager… but eager nonetheless…"
Spencer watches a couple walk along the shore and the kiss and they laugh and she wants to hate them – but more than that, she knows she envies them and that burns hot in her body… it burns so hot that she is sure she'll spontaneously combust and be nothing more than phantom dust.
"And there he was, the guy I was supposed to keep from drinking himself to death and, subsequently, ruining his mother's life. And… he was just… so gorgeous. Really and truly, Spencer… just wonderful.
And talented! He could draw so well and paint… and I couldn't understand why he would want to pollute his body all the time and hurt his family. So, it became my mission to not only save him, but to fix him.
Because, surely if anyone needed to be whole and happy, it was him… and I was the one who was going to make it happen."
Spencer inhales and exhales and her chest is tight and she turns her gaze onto Raphael – fearful of his story and, yet, needing to hear it.
Just like this sunset and its overwhelming finality… she needs to hear this tale and how it spirals out, how it unfurls and where it flutters to.
"He couldn't join in the war due to a heart condition and his father was ashamed, so that is what started the drinking. And his family never supported his artistic inclinations, so he drank more. His body was dying on him and I found him one night, blood on his lips, and so I made myself known.
I would talk to him and he'd ask me where I came from, but… somewhere along the way… all his stories became my stories, too. And he got me to thinking about… about my home and those I had lost when I died… and there I was, Spencer, trying to save him and ended up thinking only about myself.
And, like the good man I knew he was, he comforted me. Me, an angel who was sent for him… and he was wiping my tears away…"
Spencer tastes Thai food on her tongue and recalls a tearful remembrance in a midnight office, a tender shoulder and a shy arm, Ashley Davies holding Spencer Carlin up when it should have been the other way around.
"And I fell in love with him so quickly. I loved his fingers and the way they would hold bits of charcoal to a blank canvas. I loved the sound of his laugh in the morning. I loved the scent of him when he would hug me, timid and still brave, wanting to give me everything he thought he could never give to anyone.
And all I wanted, in that moment, was to stay with him.
Just to be with him… and I would have been content for all of time…"
Spencer feels a hand upon her stomach and warm breath on her neck and the beating down of the sunlight through tall windows, Ashley Davies wrapped around Spencer Carlin on Christmas morning and she wanted for nothing more… she needed nothing but this woman against her…
"But… that is not how it goes and I didn't know if I had a heart anymore, but it broke. It broke and I cried and I had to walk away when all I wanted was to cling to him.
I couldn't save him, not in the end. The alcohol had taken its toll and his liver failed him and all those drawings got burned by his family. I failed so badly and in so many ways and I vowed to never get that close again. But it isn't easy… because it wasn't just him I fell in love with, it was being here again. It was feeling alive again that I loved, too. It was feeling anything at all that I loved. It was heady and blissful… and it outweighed God and Heaven. It still does. But it does get easier, Spencer… it really does… you'll see…"
And suddenly she is pitching sideways and holding on tightly to Raphael and she isn't sure if she ever stopped crying at all – not from the theater and not from that closed up park and not from that office and not from New York… Spencer Carlin isn't sure of another time where she has been this weary or so ruined.
"I love her so much…"
"I know you do… I know…"
"Y-You've got to promise me… that it g-gets better… please, promise m-me…"
And it is like she is a child, the most innocent child ever and all those fantasies are being trashed and fucked up… and she needs someone to say it'll all be okay, that she'll survive this blow and be able to smile again… one day… one day… one day…
"One day, Spencer, it will. I promise."
And Raphael's arms feel safe, so she stays there as the sun finally lowers and night falls over the sand and the ocean and over all things.
/// /// ///
TBC