Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

I observed this. I observed it with keen interest.

I noticed the way that he packed these treasured books in the bulging suitcase. He thought about other religious books that he loved, including aLives of the Saints, but he had no room for them. He took the streetcar downtown and, outside the first hotel he reached, he caught a cab to the airport.

Only once, it crossed his mind to call the police, to report what had happened. But then he felt such rage that he put these thoughts out of his mind forever.

He went to New York. Nobody could find you in New York, he figured.

On the plane, he clutched his lute as if something might happen to it. He stared out the window and he knew a misery so deep that it didn't seem possible life could ever hold a particle of joy again.

Not even murmuring melodies to himself of the songs he most liked to play meant anything to him. In his ears, he heard a din as if the imps of Hell were making a horrid music to drive him out of his mind. He whispered to himself to silence it. He slipped his hand into his pocket, found his rosary, and prayed the words but he didn't meditate upon the mysteries. "Hail Mary," he whispered under his breath, "... now and at the hour of our death. Amen."These are just words, he thought. He could not imagine eternity.

When the stewardess asked him if he wanted a soft drink, he answered, "Someone will bury them." She gave him a Coke with ice. He didn't sleep. It was only two and a half hours to New York but the plane circled for more than that before it finally landed.

He thought about his mother. What could he have done? Where could he have put her? He had been looking for places, doctors, some way, any way to buy time until he could save everyone. Maybe he hadn't moved fast enough, been clever enough. Maybe he should have told his teachers at school.

Didn't matter now, he told himself.

It was evening. The dark giant buildings of the East Side of the city seemed infernal. The sheer noise of the city astonished him. It enclosed him in the bouncing taxi, or battered him at the stoplights. Behind a thick window of plastic the driver was a mere ghost to him.

Finally banging on the plastic, he told the man he needed a cheap hotel. He was afraid the man would think he was a child and take him to some policeman. He didn't realize that at six foot four inches of height and with the grim expression on his face, he didn't look like a child at all. The hotel was not as bad as he'd expected.

He thought about bad things as he walked the streets in search of a job. He carried his lute with him.

He thought of the afternoons when he was little and he would come home and find both of his parents drunk. His father was a bad policeman, and everyone knew it. None of his mother's people could stand him. Only his own mother had pleaded with him over and over to treat his wife and children better.

Even when Toby was small, he knew his father bullied the loose women in the French Quarter, forcing favors out of them before he would "let them off." He'd heard his father brag about that kind of thing with the few other cops who had come over for beer and poker. They'd shared those stories. When the other men said that his father ought to be proud of a boy like Toby, his father had said, "Who, you mean Pretty Face over there? My little girl?"

Now and then when he'd been very drunk, his father had taunted Toby, pushing him, asking to see what Toby had between his legs. Sometimes Toby had gotten a beer or two from the icebox for his father to move him along to the time when he'd pass out and doze with his arms crossed on the table.

Toby had been glad when his father went to prison. His father had always been coarse and cold, and had a shapeless and red face. He was mean and ugly and he looked mean and ugly. The handsome young man he'd been in photographs had turned into an obese and red-faced drunk with jowls and a roughened voice. Toby was glad when his father was stabbed. He couldn't remember any funeral.

Toby's mother had always been pretty. In those days, she'd been sweet. And her favorite words for her son had been "my sweet boy."

Toby resembled her in face and manner, and he'd never ceased to be proud of that, no matter what had happened. He never ceased to be proud of his increasing height, and he took pride in the way he dressed to wring the money from the tourists.

Now as he walked through the streets of New York, trying to ignore the great booming noises that accosted him at every turn, trying to weave amongst the people without being knocked about, he thought over and over again,I was never enough for her, never enough. Nothing I did was ever enough. Nothing. Never had anything he had done been enough for anyone, except perhaps his music teacher. He thought of her now and he wished he could call her and tell her how much he loved her. But he knew he wouldn't do this.

The long dreary day of New York suddenly switched dramatically to evening. Cheerful lights went on everywhere. Store awnings sparkled with lights. Couples moved swiftly along to movie theaters or to stage plays. It wasn't hard to realize that he was in the Theater District and he loved looking in the windows of the restaurants. But he wasn't hungry. The thought of food revolted him.

When the theaters let out, Toby took up his lute, set down the green velvet lined case, and began to play. He shut his eyes. His mouth was half open. He played the darkest most intricate music by Bach that he knew, and he saw every now and then, through a slit of vision, the bills piling in the lute case, and heard even here and there applause from those who stopped to hear him.

Now he had even more money.

He went back to his room and decided he liked it. He didn't care that it looked on rooftops and a shiny wet alley below. He liked the real bedstead and the little table, and the large television that was an infinite improvement on the one he'd watched all those years in the apartment. There were clean white towels in the bathroom.

The next night, on the recommendation of a cabbie, he went to Little Italy. He played on the street between two busy restaurants there. And this time he played all the melodies he knew from the opera. Poignantly he played the songs of Madame Butterfly and Puccini's other heroines. He went through stirring riffs and wove together the songs of Verdi.

A waiter came out of one restaurant and told him to move on. But someone interrupted the waiter. It was a big heavyset man in a white apron.

"You play that again," said the man. He had thick black hair and only a little white at the sides over his ears. He rocked back and forth as Toby played the music fromLa Bohme, and attempted again the most heart-wrenching arias.

Then he moved on into the g*y and festive songs ofCarmen. The old man clapped for him and wiped his hands on his apron and clapped some more.