A New York Romance (11 page)

Over the next couple of days Charlie read each letter, as new ones continued to arrive. Nurses, doctors, and other patients visited his room, some wanting advice, others, just a simple look at the man who called himself Cupid.

Early one morning a nurse walked in to find that Charlie had cut the casts off his legs and arm. Immediately she called for the doctor. Julie awoke on the couch from all the commotion. She saw the litter of broken cast and plaster piled like sawdust on the floor. Charlie was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed looking out the window. The morning light was shining like a halo around his head.

“Charlie, what are you doing?”

He turned to her wearing a smile like a bronze Buddha statue.

“I’m feeling better.”

The doctor came in as Charlie put his feet on the ground, stood up, and started walking.

“You can’t do that. Your legs are not healed yet,” the doctor said.

“Umm, they were never broken,” he responded mysteriously. “You must have made a mistake.”

The doctor bent down and examined Charlie’s legs as he stood before him. He pulled the chart and looked at the x-rays and felt where the femur had been broken on the one leg and the tibia and fibula on the other leg. “That’s impossible,” he whispered to himself looking back and forth at Charlie’s legs and the x-rays. Charlie just giggled at the ticklishness of his touch.

“Maybe you mixed my x-rays up with someone else’s,” he said, flexing his broken arm like nothing ever happened to it.

“That’s impossible,” the doctor said again. “Even with the time in your coma, your legs should not have healed yet. Or your arm. I want to get another x-ray.”

“If you must. I’ll follow you down,” Charlie said.

The doctor immediately called for an x-ray of Charlie’s once-broken bones. He summoned the nurse for a wheelchair but Charlie insisted on walking, but relented to appease the doctor’s wishes. They wouldn’t want a lawsuit on their hands if he did fall.

While the doctor discussed the new x-rays with his colleagues, Charlie and Julie returned to his room. When satisfied, the doctors entered their room with a few nurses.

“We don’t understand,” the lead doctor stated. “Not only are your bones healed, there are no signs that they were ever broken. When the ambulance picked you up and brought you in, you also had signs of internal bleeding. Your lungs were filled with blood. By the time we put the chest tube in you, the blood was gone and there was no sign of internal bleeding. You were healed before you got to the emergency room. We still put casts on your broken bones, so I’m certain they were broken. Your left femur was shattered in three different places. I looked at it myself. We were even afraid you might not walk again due to damage to your tendons and muscles.”

“Like I said. We all make mistakes, Doc,” Charlie replied.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” the doctor insisted. Hesitantly he added, “You’re free to go, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Charlie replied.

The doctor and his colleagues left the room with only Nurse Betty and a couple other nurses remaining behind.

“How did you do that, Charlie? You had two broken legs, a broken arm, and who knows what else?” Julie asked.

“He’s Cupid,” Nurse Betty said, recalling the stories he told them over the past few weeks when he lay in a half comatose state. “I’ll be right back with your release forms, Mr. Daniels.”

“Charlie? Were you being honest with me?” Julie asked after the nurses were gone. He stood up and walked toward the window of the hospital room staring out over the spring city. “Are you really an angel? A Greek god?” He looked down on the people walking along the sidewalk and wished them love and happiness. He turned and faced Julie looking deep into her eyes. Then he turned back to the window.

“Yes,” he said. “I come from Olympus, or what do you call it these days,
Heaven
? I thought the days of true love were over so I came to Earth of my own will to see for myself.” He paused as he watched a couple walk hand in hand through the small park on the hospital grounds.

“Did you find what you came here for?” Julie asked.

He thought carefully before he answered. He thought of his own lovesick feeling when she was away. He thought of how everything he knew about love was being challenged and redefined.

“No,” he said somberly, “I found something quite different.”

Julie walked up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She didn’t claim to understand him. But she felt the sincerity in his plight.

She stood beside him and rested her head upon his shoulder.

“I think the world needs you more than ever now, whether they want your help or not.”

The doctors who witnessed Charlie walking told the other doctors that his bones were healed. Those doctors told their nurses, who told their assistances, who told their patients. Within the hour, the entire hospital knew of Charlie’s healing. He gave all the presents he received to the other patients. On the way out of the hospital, everyone who could stopped to see him and cheers were yelled out by the patients and staff as he left the building, “Goodbye Cupid,” “Bring me a good man Cupid,” “Stick an arrow in my husband’s ass.”

“You are so lucky,” a few nurses whispered in Julie’s ear as she passed by, hanging on to Charlie’s arm.

Julie was silent until they exited the hospital, “So you really are Cupid?”

“Yep,” he gulped.

“Well that would explain the Air Supply thing,” she thought to herself out loud.

Charlie looked at her, puzzled for a moment.

“You do not know who they are. Do you?”

“Russell and Russell?” Julie questioned. “No, who are they?” she asked, realizing he was speaking about much more than their names and their band, Air Supply.

“Graham Russell is the composer for the Heavenly Orchestra and Russell Hitchcock is the lead vocalist and director of the Heavenly Choir of the Heavenly Orchestra,” Charlie explained.

“Are you saying they’re angels also, or Greek gods?” Julie asked.

“Yes, you didn’t know that? I thought all humans knew that. Just listen to their song and voice and you can tell.”

Charlie started singing
Even the Nights are Better
. Julie cringed immediately covering her ears.

“Charlie, you don’t have to sing. I believe you,” she started to beg as the people on the street stared at them, horrified at the sound of his voice. Young children began to cry but Charlie could not hear them over the sound of his crescendos.

“Charlie!” Julie screamed.

“What is it, Juliet? Are you all right?” he asked, very concerned.

A woman burst from a local store with a broom in her hands, “What the hell was that? It sounded like cats screaming.”

“No,” an older gentleman emerged from the neighboring store correcting her, “It sounded like a cat stuck inside a squeaky fan belt.”

“It felt like the devil was scraping his nails down my spine,” another man said.

“It sounded like demons from hell opening the rusty hinges of the underworld,” yet another woman yelled, still covering her ears.

“I didn’t hear anything strange. Did you, Juliet?” Charlie asked as they passed another woman, clung to the wall of the building; hand over heart making sure it was still beating.

“Ah, no,” Julie answered.

The woman with the broom continued out of breath, “Sweet Jesus! I thought the devil was coming to get us all.”

“He wouldn’t do that ma’am,” Charlie said to her as she walked back into her store.

“Are you alright, Juliet?”

“Ah huh, it was nothing,” she answered.

“Do you have a headache?” he asked, noticing the tension in her face.

“Yeah, just a little one, don’t worry.” She clenched her teeth one more time to release the tension and opened her jaw wide to try to stop the ringing in her ears.

“You know I used to sing in the Heavenly Choir,” he stated.

“You did?” she questioned in disbelief.

“Oh yes, then one day, one of the Russells just came to me and said I was being promoted, just like that! I said, ‘But I love to sing in the choir.’ That was when God told me the importance of true love on Earth and gave me this job,” he explained.

“Ah huh,” Julie gulped. She could see how it really went down. The Russells begged God to get him out of the choir in a way that didn’t hurt his feelings so they came up with the whole promotion scheme.

“But I still love to sing,” he said catching a glimpse of the fluffy white clouds, drifting just above the skyscrapers under the sea-painted sky.

They walked along the streets as they had so many times in the past with not any particular place to go. Charlie carried the duffle bag filled with letters. Spring had surely arrived and all signs of winter were gone since he had been in the hospital. He looked at the flowers that bloomed in neatly trimmed patches along the edge of the buildings, acknowledging their beauty and scent as something uniquely precious. He thought of the bugs that spent the winter under the snow and how delighted they must be, now that spring had arrived. He thought of all the new bugs being born and wished them love and happiness. He saw the bees dancing among the flowers. He remembered ancient Egypt, how sacred they considered the bees, the only creature believed to appear the same in the heavens as it did on Earth. He missed Egypt in its peaceful days with women pharaohs and how easily the people learned of true love and shared it with each other. He felt for a moment as if he were walking invisibly among the Egyptian cities once again, but the noise, the dreadful noise of the traffic and toxic air—this was no ancient Egypt or Greece. Only sparse signs of nature sprung out among the endless concrete. Vans filled with pesticides drove down the street, filled with the chemicals designed to kill the creatures he loved.

Charlie looked at the faces he passed on the modern day New York streets and wondered if any of them had written to him in the hospital, needing his help with true love. He smiled, wishing them love no matter if they wrote to him or not.

“So how do you plan to help all these people?” Julie asked, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Where will you start?”

“Watch where you’re going, you idiot!” a man suddenly yelled at Charlie, as they bumped into each other, spilling a little of his black coffee on the lapel of his suit. Charlie turned around and watched the sharply dressed man walk into a law firm with his brief case at his side, coffee in other hand. Charlie noticed the fine pinstriped suit, the freshly shined shoes, the slicked back, black hair, and the smell of expensive cologne. The doorman opened the door for the suited man and he did not say a word, not even a nod of thank you in return. Pin Stripe walked confidently through the doors the way he walked through them thousands of times.

“Come on, don’t worry about him,” Julie said. Charlie turned and kept walking.

“What
is
an idiot, Juliet?” he asked.

“I don’t know the Webster’s definition of it, but did you see that guy who bumped into you? That’s an idiot.”

Charlie felt an irritation boiling within himself. He once considered the feeling a flaw of the human body. The feeling was accompanied by thoughts and the desire to put Pin Stripe in his place. It was not a feeling he welcomed before but was learning to pay attention to. It was something that all humans seemed to suffer with. He stepped back and looked at the whole of the human predicament. For many, love had become a quest to find a lover to reduce their daily pains. And many tried to satisfy themselves with pinstriped suits, power, worldly achievements, status, money, and sex. But true love eluded them. Charlie found his irritation quickly vanished. His frustration transformed to compassion and a desire to direct Pin Stripe toward true love rather than retaliate for his rudeness. Transforming negative emotions to love was something that was easy for him to do, but he suspected such and endeavor felt like an impossible task to most humans.

He brought his attention back to Julie and proceeded to answer her question about how he would help people and where he would start.

“I think I will start by reading these letters again and visiting them one by one.”

“One by one? Can’t you just sprinkle some dust in the local water supply?” she said jokingly. “One by one will take a long, long time.”

“Love takes time, Juliet. Love takes time.”

She noticed the determined look in his eye glancing back at the lawyer’s office building. He saw the fourth floor office light turn on. The sharply dressed man was clinging to the phone as he stared out the window in Charlie’s direction over the crowd. Charlie doubted a feeling of love was radiating from him to all the people below.

Charlie turned his attention back to the few bees that buzzed among the sparse flower beds. He paid special attention to the small signs of spring, the buds on trees and the insects returning to the air. He radiated the feeling of love and happiness every time he saw them, along with the children and elderly couples he was happy to see walking hand in hand. When he saw them, he felt a need to touch Julie’s hand. But he never did.

Above all things he felt Julie’s presence walking next to him. He noticed how different it felt when she was by his side and when he was walking alone. He could not deny that he felt a sense of human happiness when she was near, ‘the days seemed brighter and even the nights were better’ to quote the lyrics of his friends, better known to the world as Air Supply.