I dreamed of angels falling on the earth like a hailstorm. The place I saw in my dream was unlike any I’ve been to, yet it felt strangely familiar. It seemed to be a deserted provincial road, lined with trees and overgrown grass.

I could see the angels’ shadowy wings scattered on the muddy soil, their bodies stretched out and barely moving, like white blood on red snow. The air was filled with fine down, as if a giant feather pillow had been slit open in the breeze. Some angels landed on their feet, but some lay sprawled on the ground, and some even seemed hurt, or perhaps, asleep. There was a pile of them on the asphalt road as well, angel heads hidden among angel feet. I looked up to see if more would drop from the sky. I felt a sudden, manic desire to run around like a chicken little clucking that sky was falling. 

My body lay unraveled between pillows, my legs tangled in the bed’s skin. The air conditioner hummed ever so softly. He was still asleep. He lay on the bed so peacefully it was hard to imagine that anything could ever be wrong. 

He had seemed so content just the year before. His black hair was longer then, it had often been in a ponytail. The short spikes now stuck out in tufts from his head. He had been darker then, too, browned by all the hours he put in the soccer field. Now his skin looked like coffee that had been overwhelmed with milk. He was growing up, and he was growing away from me.

I turned away from him to watch the world from his window, my face pressed to the glass. The promise of a shining sun had already begun to stain the dark sky crimson. 

It was cold. I wished he hadn’t insisted on turning down the temperature so low. I hugged the comforter closer to my body. My feet burrowed deeper under the thin blanket. I was silently curling my toes, wishing my whole body could curl itself as well. 

“Oh shit,” I muttered under my breath. I had forgotten to tell my roommate that I wouldn’t be going home today. There was a phone on the bedside table. I picked it up as silently as I could.

“Nix!” I whispered as soon as I heard her drowsy, “Hello?”

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked, irritated. “You didn’t call me back!”

“I couldn’t. I don’t get service here.”

“His place? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you when I get home. Maybe in an hour.”

“I hope you have your keys because I’m not sitting up to wait for you.”

I heard an abrupt click as Nix hung up.

“Come back beside me,” the man on the bed called in a whisper, still half asleep. He woke up just after I had replaced the receiver. His eyes were only half open as he placed a hand on my forearm, caressing it gently in invitation. I smiled, and shook my head. I pushed back the covers and got out of bed. I crouched down the floor, fishing for something to cover my nakedness. He pulled himself up and propped his head on a pillow. He lay on his side, staring at my unsheathed skin. The carpet seemed rough to the touch. Finally my hands came to what felt like last night’s cotton shirt. I pulled it out from under the bed. It was big and light blue.

I went back to the bed and sat down. I kept my gaze away from him even as I felt him move. I heard a zipper travel the metal teeth of his pants. We kept our backs to each other as we hurriedly covered ourselves. Our bodies were suddenly shy of each other’s scrutiny. 

His shirt fell almost past my knees.

I stood up and walked across the room. I got a stick from the pack of Marlboro Lights that lay on top of the TV. The small apartment he was renting seemed to reverberate with the sound of my every move. I sat down on the couch by the door and lit my cigarette. The ashtray on the table beside me had been overturned, and ash had spilled from the glass top and on to the floor. I looked around the room, taking in the bamboo floor, and the paintings on the wall. I knew most of them were his. They were all in bold colors, full of naked angels and other tortured souls. In the midst of the darkness they seemed ready to jump out of the canvas. He hauled himself over to where I was, a cigarette between his fingers, and the whole pack on his other hand. He stood by the door, shirtless. A hint of stubble marked his chin.

“Are you okay?” He asked me, as if he was genuinely concerned.

“Sure,” I replied, a practiced smile breezing through my lips. He sat on the arm of the couch and kissed the top of my head. I looked at him. He grinned and started playing with my hair. “You want to get breakfast or something?”

I shook my head. “I’m not hungry. But I can make you something if you want.”

“No, I’ll just have coffee.” He put an arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek, his hand twiddling the silver necklace I always wore. I flicked off the ash from my cigarette, my arm grazing his thigh.

Then I saw it. A framed picture of a pretty girl perched on the table, black-haired and doe-eyed, all pearly whites and creamy chocolate skin. I had never seen it before.

“Who’s this?” I asked him, studying the girls’ saccharine smile. 

“Valerie.” He replied uneasily, his hand suddenly still.

“Oh.” I answered planting my cigarette on the ashtray. “The girlfriend.”

“Uh, yeah.” He smiled cautiously.

“Hmmm, this is definitely something new,” I teased. “Any special reason you want her here?” I asked, attempting to keep it light, although I felt strangely jealous.

He put down his cigarette and took up the picture instead. He fingered it for a moment before putting it down. I saw his eyes cloud over with all the thoughts he had tried to push out of the way. They now came rushing back, released by the light of the sun that was gently streaming through the windows. The spell was broken. The tenderness in him receded like the darkness. He looked at me again, but this time the affection was gone. “I just think a lot about her nowadays,” he said.

I was quiet as I remembered that he had picked me up from the apartment that day smelling faintly of cologne. He had never bothered to put cologne on for me before.

“But he’s so ordinary.” Nix complained when she first met him.

“I know”, I whispered back.

The first time we met was in a bar on Essex. Drunk and miserable, he plopped on the chair beside me right after we were introduced.

“So, how are you?” I asked him, bored but trying to be polite. Undoubtedly, it was the alcohol that had made him go off into a tirade on his pathetic life and his too-conservative family.

“I’m only 24 and they’re already talking about business and heirs!” He had lamented. “Five years from now I’m going to end up just like my dad.” I had to smile at his melodrama. There he was, a lost little boy in all his vulnerability, pretending to be grown up. And at that moment I felt an urge to help him, to let him forget his problems, even for just a little while.

I stepped out of the shelter of the trees once I felt sure that the celestial downpour had stopped. My hysteria was gone, and in its place, a calm sense of purpose. I waded through wings and arms, feet and faces, and through the heap of angels I spotted one with the face of a young man. He was badly hurt. His wings seemed to have been crushed by the pile of angels around him. I helped him as best as I could, but I knew that soon I would not be enough, and he would have to turn to his own kind. 

“Hey, I just need to take a shower, okay?” He said, breaking the silence abruptly, his tone painfully light. I nodded. He stood up and walked to the bedroom. He reappeared holding a towel and was on his way to the shower, when he stopped abruptly, hesitating.

“Are you gonna be alright here?”

“Of course.” I answered with all the false assurance I could muster.

I knew he would think of Valerie as the water from the shower flushed away memories of last night. He would wonder at the pretty angel of a girlfriend he had loved for almost two years. He would think about the hundred sacrifices his parents had made on the altar of his future. He would no longer be unsure, no longer faltering. I had become an exclamation mark to everything I was not, a mere frame to hold the portrait of his angels. 

I went back to the bed and collected the clothes I had discarded on the floor. I exhaled the last drag of my dying cigarette. I dressed slowly and took a last peek through the window. 

I noticed an envelope under the phone. It was addressed to me. 

I went to the door and opened it as silently as I could. In the hallway were so many doors just like this one, perhaps housing a thousand other secrets. I stepped out and turned to peer at his studio one last time.

Outside was a safer place from which to watch the night uncoil.

The outline of the sun was in the sky now. “Last one”, I promised the empty corridor. I closed his door carefully and hurried to the elevator. Finally I stepped out into the morning, hearing the fluttering of wings overhead. The city birds seemed cheerful today. I walked round the bend where the taxis would be waiting, discreetly counting the money in the envelope along the way.