The Company Of Winos

“I do like you, Bobby, I suppose.” He gave me a grandfatherly look, or it would have been if the grandfather in question were a piss-soaked degenerate. “But of course that’s not all that’s going on. Of course not. Karael, Terentia, Anaita, they’re all much, much more powerful than I am — and they’re not even part of the High Host, His most important servants. They’re just Third Sphere like the rest of us, watching over Earth. There are powers above the Powers, you know.” He spread his blackened, crack-nailed fingers as if to illustrate the universe as a string game. “My goodness, it goes up and up and up!”

“Yeah, I get it, I don’t want the higher-ups thinking about me so much. So what am I supposed to do about this unwanted attention? Get down on my knees and stay there?”

“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea, at least for the moment.” He was stern again, an Old Testament prophet in a grimy pea coat. “Just try to keep a low profile for a while, will you? Don’t ask for time off. Don’t draw attention. And stop moving around, for goodness’ sake. You’ve had several apartments in the last year, not to mention your tour of various unsavory motels.”

“I could have stayed in better ones if Heaven paid us anything decent to live on.” As you can guess, I wasn’t the biggest team player even before all this nutty Third-Way, angels-and-demons clusterfuck got going. “Look, I know you’re trying to help me. I get that, and I’m grateful. But you know why I had to move all those times, right? You remember the various things that were trying with extreme prejudice to kill my ass?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter to Heaven, because it doesn’t happen to the other advocates. It’s you, Bobby. You’re a magnet for trouble, and even the Powers that want . . . even the Powers that don’t have anything against you are beginning to wonder why your name comes up so often.”

“Yeah, I get it — don’t make waves, don’t do anything weird. But it’s the weird that keeps coming after me.”

Disappointment, this time. I was getting the full treatment. “You know there’s more to it than that.”

And he was right. Yes, crazy shit does keep happening to me, but a big part of that is because instead of minding my own business, I go over to crazy shit’s house and say, “Hey, wanna come out and play?”

“But the stakes are too high for me just to quit,” I said. “You know why I went where I went. To that place.” To Hell, I meant. “And why it didn’t work out.”

“Don’t tell me anything.” Temuel lifted his hands as if to cover his ears. He looked like that Munch Scream painting. “Just, please, what- ever else you do, stay out of trouble. Stay visible to the folks upstairs. Stay in one place. And do your job, your real job. I’ll help when I can.” And then he abruptly got up and walked away across the square.

You know your life is pretty screwed up when even the winos turn their backs on you.

http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Late-On-Judgement-Day/dp/075640889X