The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (49 page)

Yes! All of it was true! Ettrich stepped back because he was aghast and because he needed some space between himself and this goddess. He was sure he’d never seen her before. But how then could she know about Kitty, his Audi, and the high blood pressure? How could she know such trivial, intimate details? How he bit his lip ...

The doors slid shut, the tram began moving again. All this had happened in two minutes. People were staring. Now he was trapped with her in here until the next stop.

“How do you know those things?”

She tossed her head in complete exasperation. It was beautiful. “How do I know? Because for the past three
years
every time you’ve come to Warsaw, you stayed with me. We pretended we’re a real couple. But I can’t pretend anymore, Vincent! I want a life but you won’t give it to me. So I have to find it with someone else.”

He couldn’t bare it any longer.
“But I never met you before!”

Her large soft lips tightened, relaxed. She looked about to say something, but stopped. In a way that no one could see, she stepped closer and put her hand between his legs. “I love your little birthmark down here. I always thought of it as our secret. I’ll miss it.”

The tram began slowing and eventually stopped. She moved away. “Please leave me alone Vincent. At least you owe me that.”

In awe, he watched her go down the steep metal steps and walk briskly away never once looking back. His mouth was open. He realized he had an erection from her touch. Glancing down at himself, he thought about that birthmark. It had always embarrassed him. He looked up quickly—how could she have known about it?

She wore a jade green coat. He caught a last glimpse of it, of her, just as she disappeared into a building he had never seen before.

I
T BEGAN THE DAY
our new refrigerator was delivered. A big silver thing that looked like a miniature Airstream trailer turned on its side. But Rae loved it. We had bought it a few days before. In January I told her as soon as my raise comes in, you get your fridge. And I kept my promise, all six hundred and thirty-nine dollars of it.

Two puffing deliverymen came in the pouring rain to curse and shove it into place in our kitchen. Both guys were in big bad moods, that was plain. But no wonder—who wants to deliver appliances in a ripping thunderstorm? When they were finished and I’d signed the delivery papers, Rae offered coffee. That perked them up. After they’d done stirring and sipping and settling into the chairs one guy, “Dennis” it said on his shirt, told a strange story that got us thinking.

For the past few days while driving around making deliveries, they’d seen piles of furniture all over town stacked in the middle of sidewalks. That didn’t seem so strange to me. But Dennis said they saw it at least ten times overall: Big piles of furniture heaped up, just sitting there unguarded usually.

“No that’s not true,” his partner Vito piped in. “Remember when we saw the man and woman standing next to a pile up on Lail Avenue, arguing? They were really fighting! Arms flying, pointing fingers at each other ... It was like one had thrown the other outta the house with all their stuff, but you couldn’t tell who’d thrown who.”

“Just furniture? Nothing else? No moving vans there or anything? No people guarding the stuff?”

“Nope, that’s the weird part. These piles of furniture and boxes, like whole
households,
stacked up and no one around. Go figure.”

The four of us sat there drinking coffee, thinking it over. Then Dennis said, “We saw another pile coming over here today. Remember that nice blue leather couch and TV I pointed to? Jeez, stuff looked brand new. Big screen TV ... Just sitting out in the rain getting drenched.

“Times are tough. Maybe it’s coincidence, but I hear a lotta people are being thrown out of their houses by the banks.”

“All at the same time? I don’t think so, partner.” Vito said sarcastically to him and winked at me.

Dennis straightened up and threw him a black look. “You got a better explanation, genius?”

“Nope. Just that it’s weird. Never in my life have I seen stuff that nice left out alone on the street unguarded. And so many times. In the rain? Makes the whole town look like a big yard sale.”

Right then Chapter Two began but none of us knew it yet. Before anyone had a chance to say more, the doorbell rang. I looked at Rae to see if she was expecting someone. She shook her head. Who now?

I got up to answer it. A second after opening that door I wished I hadn’t. Standing on my porch were two guys looking like wet seals. One glimpse and you wanted to say, “No thanks to whatever you’ve got,” slam the door in their faces and run for cover.

Naturally they were smiling. But you know the kind—totally fake. No one smiles like that without putting too much face into it. Or they got a gun stuck in their back. These guys were wearing identical brown suits freckled dark all over with rain. Bright yellow plastic nametags were pinned on their breast pockets. White shirts with the top button buttoned but no ties. Both had bowl haircuts that made them look like monks or The Beatles gone bad. And they smelled. I’m sorry to have to say that, but they did. They smelled like they’d lived in their buttoned-up rayon shirts way way too long.

“Good morning Sir! I’m Brother Brooks and this is Brother Zin Zan.”

“Brother
who
? You want to say all that again?” I stood back and gave them a lot of room, just in case they exploded and their crazy went all over my porch.

“Brooks and Zin Zan. Would you have a few moments to spare? It may just change your life!”

I knew where this was leading and was just about to adios them, but a thunderclap shook the house and rain came down like a tidal wave. What could I do, shove them back out in that flood? Really unhappily I asked, “You want to come in a minute?”

Their faces lit up like Yankee Stadium for a night game. “We certainly would! Thank you very much.”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Want some coffee? Looks like you could use it.”

“No thank you, sir. But it’s certainly kind of you to offer.”

“Well, come on in.” They stepped into the hall and I closed the door. They both wore black basketball sneakers with a brand name written in white on the side that I couldn’t make out. I thought it was kind of strange that Bible guys would be wearing sneakers. Much less underneath a suit.

“Bill, who was it?” Rae called out.

“Brooks Brothers and Sen Sen.” I couldn’t resist saying. And you know what? Brooks started laughing.

“That’s very funny, sir. People always make that mistake. But actually, it’s Brother Brooks. And Brother Zin Zan. He’s from New Zealand.”

“New Zealand. Is that right? You’re pretty far from home. Sorry for the mistake. Come on in.”

I went first to see what would happen. When Rae and the delivery guys caught a view of who was following me, they got exactly the same look on their faces—Whaaat?

“Everybody, this is Brother Brooks and Brother Zin Zan. They say they can change our lives.” I said it like I was introducing an act in Las Vegas.

Picking right up on it Dennis said, “That sounds good to me. Anything to stop delivering refrigerators!”

Rae stared at me like I’d gone nuts. Both of us hate door to door preachers with their ridiculous religions and too many teeth. Her face asked why had I let these guys in? Suddenly our house was like the dog pound—every stray in town under one roof, dripping on her carpets.

I sat down but the Brothers kept standing. To my surprise, Zin Zan started talking. He had a strong accent. Then I remembered he was from New Zealand. The whole time he spoke, Brooks gave him an all-attention smile that looked as phony as a tinfoil Christmas tree.

“We represent a brotherhood called The Heidelberg Cylinder. Our avatar is a man named Beeflow.”

“Beef-low?” Dennis looked at his partner and me, then wiggled his eyebrows and O’d his mouth.

“No sir, Bee-flow. We believe we are entering the Second Diaspora. It will formally begin with the Millenium and continue for another 16,312 years.”

“Sixteen thousand, you say? With or without intermissions?”

My sweet wife tried to smooth that one over. “Would you two like some juice?”

“Thank you, Ma’am, but we don’t drink anything but water. Beeflow says—”

“Who’s this Beeflow?”

“Our spiritual master. Chosen avatar by—”

“What’s a
avatar
? Sounds like that new model Honda.”

Brother Brooks liked that one too. He smiled and for the first time it looked like a real smile. “No sir, an avatar is an incarnation of a deity. A kind of God in human form, you could say.”

“What did your Mr. Beeflow do before he became God?”

Maybe it was the way Rae said it, so respectful and serious. Or maybe because Dennis and I were watching each other when she spoke. Whatever, as soon as my wife asked her question so gently, the three of us guys cracked up. I mean big time. We laughed so hard we choked.

“He was a travel agent.”

“Good career move!” I said, which brought down the house again. Except for Rae. She Fed-Ex’d me her stone face and I knew what
that
meant. I shut up fast.

“So what do you guys believe in? I mean, like a quick wrap-up of your religion?”

“We believe in rent control, a river view when possible, and forced air heating.”

The living room got silent fast. Real silent.

“Say that again?”

“Room, sir. We believe in the just and proper distribution of room. Human space. Apartments, houses, it makes no difference. A civilized place to live.”

“Geodesic domes.” Zin Zan added, nodding.

“What the
Hell
are you talking about? I’m not following you here, Brother Brooks.”

“Well sir, have you noticed all of the furniture out on the streets of the town recently? Piles of it, looking like it’s waiting to be picked up?”

“We were just talking about that!”

“It is the first sign of the beginning of the Diaspora.”

“What’s that?”

“A Diaspora is the breaking up and scattering of a people. The forced re-settling of people far from their ancestral homelands.”

“You mean they’re being moved out?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“By who? Who’s moving them?”

“Satan.”

I cleared my throat and snatched a quick glimpse of Rae. She gave me a look that said, “Don’t make trouble with these guys.” So instead of cracking wise about the Satanic Moving Company, I looked at the others to see if they were going to snap at the bait.

“All those piles of stuff out on the streets are there because the Devil’s throwing people out of their houses? Why’s he doin’ that?”

Zin Zan picked it up. “Because Hell is filled to overflowing Sir, and Satan needs the room. He plans to re-populate the earth with the fallen.”

I didn’t know about the others but I was so embarrassed by the direction this conversation was taking that I could only stare at the floor and hope those Brothers would evaporate by the time I looked up again.

“So you’re saying that if I’m bad and die now, there’s no room for me in Hell and I may end up back here, living next door?” Vito said in a voice full of “you gotta be shittin’ me.”

My eyes still down, I heard Zin Zan’s thick accent field the question. “Why do you think the world’s in such bad straits, Sir? New fatal diseases being discovered every day, crime the likes of which defy human imagination. How do you explain people’s vast and unfailing indifference to one another?

“Because so many of them are dead. They have no souls. This has been going on for some time. The dead bring death back with them when they return to earth.”

What can you say to something as looney-tuney as that? I felt like taking a nap. I felt like getting up from where I was sitting, maybe or maybe not giving a wave to everyone in the room, and walking right out of there into the bedroom and my pillow and about an hour of nighty-night. My brain felt tired and like it had had something lousy and too heavy for breakfast.

“Yeah? Well prove it,
Brothers
.” Dennis spoke like he was spitting and said that last word like a black soul brother. You know, he said it ‘bruddas’ and there wasn’t any respect in the word.

Not that it touched the Heidelberg Cylinder boys. They smiled on like two “Ken” dolls on a date with Barbie. Brooks politely asked, “What do you mean, sir?”

Dennis pointed a ‘it’s your fault’ finger at him and shook it. “You know exactly what I mean. Guys like you have been coming to my door for years, talking about how the world’s gonna end tomorrow. God’s gonna kick my butt for sinning unless I repent. Armageddon’s coming so watch out! Well you know what? Armageddon pretty damned sick of hearing that stuff from your like. If you think you’re so right about what you’re saying,
prove
it. That’s all—show us it’s true. You say the Devil’s on earth moving dead people out of their houses? Show me!”

Vito put a thumbs up. “I agree! Show me too!”

I kind of felt like doing it too. I myself was sick of gleamy-eyed wackos coming to my house with their cheap pamphlets and ‘God’s-gonna-get-you’ threats. Having the big fat nerve to tell me I’d done everything wrong with my life. And I’d better start dancing to their tune or else. Oh yeah? How do you know; you been watching my every move?

What I resented most was how damned sure people like this were that they were right. Hey, maybe they were, but how could they be so convinced? I admit I wasn’t sure of anything in life, much less how His Majesty upstairs in heaven makes things work. But at least I admit it. Listening to these duds talk, or others like them who’d appeared over the years with their own smudged magazines and weird smiles, God was as easy to understand as the baseball scores.

“Well?”

The not-so Righteous Brothers blinked at the same time and smiled again. But kept their traps shut.

“Huh? Can you prove you’re right? Or are you going to tell me to wait till Judgement Day rolls around to find out?”

“Oh no sir, we can show you right now. That’s not a problem.” Brooks spoke and his voice was as nice as rice. I mean he spoke like what Dennis had just asked was the easiest favor in the world to grant. You want me to show you Satan? You want me to open up the back of the big clock and show you how it ticks? Follow me, sir—This way to Satan. Just like that. Simple.