Angels Don't Cry Read online

I enter the boardroom dressed in a nice toned-down gray suit with a white shirt. The top button's open and I'm not wearing a tie. God doesn't like to be upstaged, and today does not sound like a day to test his patience. Most of the others are already in attendance. I push through the crowds of cherubim and lesser angels and head straight for the big boys' table where the archangels are gathering. The main table is this heavy thing of mahogany with gilded legs in the shape of lion paws. Eight matching throne-like chairs are carefully arranged around it, one for Him and seven for us. The rest of the heavenly host gets to stand.

  I haven't been here since the last board meeting, way back in 1933, but nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes here. The boardroom is pretty cozy, if one likes painted vaulted ceilings à la Sistine Chapel and a daunting, oppressive echo. To the right of the table, on redwood paneled walls, we have the Ten Commandments written out in every Earthly language, even Esperanto and Klingon.

  Across from the Commandments, God has hung up his favorite pictures. Him creating the world (before and after photos). He's actually grinning in them; He was so optimistic back then. There's a picture of Him and us engaged in a mudball fight during the sculpting of Adam. Him and Abraham. Him and Jacob. Him and Reagan. Him cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the First Temple in Jerusalem. Cutting the ribbon at the Second Temple. God fishing with Jonah. Us in war paint and combat fatigues right before the Tower of Babel mission. All in all, this place would not have a bad ambience if God never showed up.

  But He does. He rolls in as dark as storm clouds. As He enters, my iPod reshuffles and starts Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. God's in his cosmocrat mode, all serious and preoccupied. I look to my crossword. Seven letters for God's mood right now? With the tip of my No. 2 pencil I etch in "FURIOUS." The previous couple of millennia have left serious marks on him. He's haggard and irritated. Hell, I don't even remember when I saw him smile last. It's funny, people always read these eulogies at funerals that say the dearly departed is in a better place now, with God. Well, I'm with Him now, but I'd rather be with the dearly departed. God is just too depressing. I glance around the room and notice that all my brethren are immediately on edge as well. The younger ones start fidgeting when His depthless eyes pass over them.

  He sits at the head of the table and places his folded hands on top. He's dressed in this immaculate white suit with no collar. Black pips of onyx stand in for buttons. With his white hair and beard and the monocle he looks a little like Sigmund Freud, only bigger, maybe like what Freud would have looked like on steroids.

  "I call this meeting to order," I say, trying to keep irritation out of my voice. God is a stickler for protocol. I'm charged with keeping the minutes because I'm the highest-ranking angel here.

  "It's over," He says immediately. We all look to each other, confused. I vaguely remember hearing these words somewhere before. The Flood? Was that it?

  "I'm tired of getting a wet shoulder from them!" He means a cold shoulder. He slams his fist into the table and the pillars of creation shake. "I can't do it anymore. I won't do it anymore! We're ending this now!"

  The eyes of my friends all designate me as their voice and I ask halfheartedly, "Ending what?"

  After a well rehearsed theatrical pause, He gives us one of his famous 'vengeful-God-of-the-Israelites' smiles. "The World."

  "Uh huh," my words carry the same relieved sound that I hear from the other angels. "Sure, the World." I grin, winking at him and wondering what this is really about.

  "I'm warning you, Gabriel, don't patronize me!" God puts the fear of God into these words. Don't patronize Him? The others are just as stunned as I am. Faces grow somber, their chuckles and smiles vanish as the last vestiges of joviality slowly fade.

  "You're serious?"

  "Damn straight!" He says. "Making eggs, breaking omelets." These words are uttered with a violent spasmodic twitch of His neck. I truly don't know why He said that or even what that means, but He's been all neurotic lately, ever since the Crusades. I guess it's hard to be infinite.

  "But... why?" Michael asks, voice shaking.

  "'Cause I'm tired of playing dog and cat with them! 'Cause ever since their creation they've been the most dimwitted, egoistical, pigheaded bunch I could ever envision." He rubs His forehead, gnawing on a lip. Then He looks up. "Did you see their latest television programming? Nuns and hookers? Nothing's sacred." He mutters, shaking His head in bewilderment.

  "Fine," I retort, trying to buy time, trying to imagine some way we could avert this. "Mike, start cracking on a Messiah. Raphael, take as many cherubim as you'll need and start implementing the first phase of the Apocalypse. Uriel, you'll..."

  "No, no, no! Uh-uh, no way," God interrupts my energetic, desperate orders. "None of this Biblical nonsense." An eight-letter Norse word for the end of all things? "RAGNAROK" appears in the neat, little squares in the wake of my pencil.

  "No survivors?" Sariel, another one of my fellow archangels, asks timidly.

  "Not even cockroaches," He says with sweet anticipation. The glass of the monocle glints like a sniper rifle's scope. The iPod's now playing Metallica's Creeping Death. The kick drums start beating ominously and the tempo goes double-time.

  "What about the righteous?"

  "I said no one."

  "But the Bible promises Rapture, Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Final Judgment, End of Days." Michael sounds especially offended, probably because he was the one who had to dictate the whole Book of Revelations to John. It took him fifteen years. "You can't just..."

  "Of course I can. I'm God."

  We just stare at him. Angels don't cry, that's the way He made us, but we're pretty close to it now.

  He sighs. "Look, it's just not working out. I tried. You guys know I did," He says dejectedly. "How many epiphanies, theophanies, visitations and appearances do they need? Zarathustra, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Nostradamus, Bob - how many prophets is it going to take? They just don't get it! An apocalypse won't change anything!"

  In a way I start feeling bad for Him, the frustration and utter defeat in His voice is too sincere to dismiss.

  "I mean, it got so bad that I even gave them detailed instructions and still nothing! They covet and steal and worship idols and kill..." the list just keeps growing, accusations targeted against the whole of the human race. He's naming all the things my kind has come to love them for. I just sit back in the chair. It's His own fault. We told Him not to give them the Ten Commandments. Hell, Adam couldn't follow just one in Eden, and here He expected lesser men to follow ten? What was He thinking? "It's time to turn over a new tree." Yeah, with a memory for proverbs God did not grace himself. "I just can't do it anymore. I'm tired, okay?" He looks around the boardroom, all hopeful that his fiery little PowerPoint presentation won us over.

  No such luck. All my brethren are glowering at Him, their crystal eyes throwing silent rebukes at the Creator. In my crossword puzzle I jot in "IRONY" for five letters for an event marked by incongruity. I mean, people's faith in God and His goodness is unshakable, while His faith in people is nonexistent. Omnibenevolent my pristine, virgin ass.

  I want to show Him Lisa's soul. I want to scream into His face about the beauty, the intricacy, the wonder that I see every second I'm on Earth. But I don't. It would all be useless. It wouldn't work. It didn't work before the Flood either. Heartless bastard. I just stare down at the crossword. Huh, what's an eleven letter word for God's attitude towards humanity? Ah! Diligently I write in "MISANTHROPE" in big, block letters.

  Finally, when we realize that He's deadly serious and there's no way to reason with Him, we react. Half of my divine kin start breaking out harps and trumpets. They form choirs and start singing Him praise. That usually pacifies Him. God knows He loves angelic choirs, music of the spheres and other such junk.

  The other half gather behind the worn, suffering Lucifer, threatening to rebel. Poor Lucifer looks like he would have had a heart attac
k if he actually had a heart. The whole Satan/Fallen Angel legend was just a PR spin. He didn't really fall and neither is he the embodiment of evil. (God's got that angle covered well enough. I mean, God's infinite. Good and bad and the whole smut in between.) Truthfully, Lucifer loves people even more than the rest of us. He's been helping them develop since day six. All he dreams of is becoming human. Well, the legend did get one thing right; he is God's ultimate adversary, at least at this exact moment.

  "Silence!" God screams and breaks off both, the threats and the hymns. "I put this to a vote," He says. "All in favor of destroying Earth?" He's the only one with his hand up. "All opposed?" The rest of the board of directors raise their hands - that's me and the other six archangels. "Duly noted. We'll leave this to the shareholders," He says darkly.

  I knew He'd say that. That's it, Earth is doomed. My iPod clicks for a moment and then I hear REM's Losing My Religion. Even though, on His whim, we restructured our celestial hierarchy to resemble a corporation, He's the only shareholder, controlling one hundred percent of the stock. All this form is just a flimsy democratic veil to hide his vile dictatorship. Why we have to go through this ridiculous charade, I don't even know.

  "You know what, God? Sometimes you can be a real..." I trail off as He stares me down. Under His gaze I sit back in the cushy chair and look into my crossword puzzle. A five letter word for a shallow mark made by a pointed instrument? "PRICK."