angels | Saying nothing in particular

Many years ago, I don’t even remember when, Connemoira’s mother gave me an oil pastel rendering of an angel. “God told me to give you this,” she said.

She was always telling me what God wanted me to do and I was a bit of a wimp. If people wanted to tell me what God wanted me to do I generally listened. Then I usually did what I was going to do anyway. Mrs. Seagrass was very very good to many many people and I will never be able to repay her for all her kindnesses to me when I was growing up. But I wasn’t into angels at the time and so I stored the pastel in the closet. In the back of the closet. Did I feel guilty? Oh yeah. Especially as the years went by and one by one the Seagrasses have disappeared. Some have died and others still dwell down by the river. Much quieter than before.

But the last couple of months I haven’t had any power over what will be. I can see it coming but nothing I can do will stop it. This I know. And so I’ve been rearranging the paintings and furniture like a teenager in a B horror flick desperately trying to outsmart the Devil himself and, in the process, I created a space perfect for a medieval angel.

It is lovely isn’t it? Even if you don’t believe in angels, it’s a fine piece of work. Shame on me for hiding it in a closet.

I guess it’s time to finish posting the story of Daniel and the three girls he takes under his wing on the mean streets of New York City. I’ve been dragging my feet because it’s hard to shift gears from paradise to the Bowery circa 1969 but, I try to finish everything I start, so here goes …

First to recap:

A woman named Sandy has been invited to an art exhibit/memorial for a childhood friend. Once there she’s told by the woman’s son that, although the two women had drifted apart, there was something in each of his mother’s final and very disturbing paintings that she specifically wanted Sandy to see, a face from long ago. October of 1969 to be precise.

Flashback to a rainy evening in October 1969. The scene is a service station in Manhattan’s notoriously dangerous Bowery. Three young women drive up to the pumps and, spotting a young man in the phone booth, plead with him for help. The young man, Daniel, is an enigma: an intelligent and well-educated young man but a drifter. Although he works at the station, he cannot help them because the owner has shut down the pumps and left for the night. Then he remembers he has a friend who, at one time lived not far away, in a place of relative safety. However, getting there proves to be a challenge when a “behemoth” drags one of the girls back into an alleyway. Daniel, who is half the man’s size, is powerless to stop him. The girl waves a crucifix in the man’s face which causes him to roar with laughter and lose his grip on her.

Finally they reach the street his friend once lived on. The rain has let up but they have one more obstacle.

Tomorrow Words Better Left Unsaid.