Angel

Angel

By Pat Cadigan

But have a face, I said. You’ve always had a face.

I’m different, said the Angel.

You sure are, I thought, looking at him. Angel had a beautiful face. That wasn’t why I took him home that night, just because he was there, his beauty. The way you think of a man being beautiful, good clean lines, deep-set eyes, ageless. About the only way you could describe him – look away and you’d forget everything except that he was beautiful. But he did have a face. He did.

Angel shifted in the chair – these were like somebody’s old kitchen chairs, you couldn’t get too comfortable in them – and shook his head, because he knew I was thinking troubled thoughts. Sometimes you could think something and it wouldn’t be troubled and later you’d think the same thing and it would be troubled. The Angel didn’t like me to be troubled about him.

Do you have a cigarette? I asked.

I think so.

St. Andrew United Church, 117 Bloor street, Toronto. Photo by Elena

I patted my jacket and came up with most of a pack that I handed over to him. The Angel lit up and amused us both by having the smoke come out his ears and trickle out of his eyes like ghostly tears. I felt my own eyes watering for his; I wiped them and there was that stuff again, but from me now. I was crying silver fireworks. I flicked them on the table and watched them puff out and vanish.

Does this mean I’m getting to be you, now? I asked.

Angel shook his head. Smoke wafted out of his hair. Just thing rubbing off on you. Because we’ve been together and you’re – susceptible. But they’re different for you.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martin’s Press, 1988.)