Prologue
Phil chose the neighborhood tavern so he wouldn’t have to drive home. He still harbored the hippie aversion to the police and didn’t want to risk a DUI. The bar was a storefront off the main roads on a quiet side street. It sported a shabby, weather-worn sign proclaiming it was Hank’s Place.
Two blocks over was Pacific Coast Highway, cutting its way through Huntington Beach, California. Across the highway was the ocean. The hike over from his efficiency apartment was a half-mile. During the hike, the sky cleared as the sun burned off the morning fog. The smells of the ocean became stronger as he neared the goal of his trek.
The bar was clean but cramped. The smell of the ocean competed with the stale smell of alcohol. Shuffleboard was against one wall. Dartboard against a second wall. Beyond that was a dinky pool table. At the back was a beaded curtain that allowed entrance to the restrooms. Today only locals were in attendance as summer was spent. The locals were a colorful lot of tanned youth alongside leather-skinned elders. Shorts, T-shirts and sandals were the uniform of the day. Except for one elderly woman who wore a long-sleeve sweater and slacks over her spare frame.
Phil was in uniform, but his brown hair was short and balding. Nor was he, as yet, in ideal shape. His belly was soft, but he was tanned from surfing this summer. Even so, he came this afternoon to celebrate his divorce. He began the celebration with a shot of tequila backed by a Mexican beer. Things blurred rather quickly. He wasn’t much of a drinker.
What he remembered later was Manuel showed up, dressed in the proper uniform, on the adjacent bar stool. Those were round, plastic-covered stools that swiveled with the resultant squeak of age.
“Hey, Phil,” the blond-haired archangel began. “This is one way to alter consciousness.”
“What are you doing here?” Phil demanded.
“Slumming.”
“Can these people see you?” Phil wondered. He didn’t want anyone thinking he was psychotic -- talking to someone who wasn’t there would be evidence of that condition. Too many people already thought he was out of his head.
Manuel looked around and nodded to a couple of people and smiled, “Of course, they can see me. They’re in an altered state. We mess with drunks and addicts all the time because they can see us. You should have been with me and Awar the day some politician peppered his hunting partner with birdshot. They were drinking and Awar pretended he was a quail. Boom! It was great fun.”
“Who is Awar?” Phil slurred.
“A demon of lubricity.”
Phil knew he couldn’t get his mouth to recreate the phonetics, so he settled for, “Don’t know the word.”
“Lubricity. It’s like lewdness,” Manuel explained. “The slippery slope of sexuality -- made all the more slippery with fruit of the vine.”
The bartender, a pot-bellied aging surfer with straggly blond hair, flowered shirt, and the requisite shorts and sandals, ambled over, “Another one for you. How about your friend?”
Manuel held up his hand, “Designated driver.”
The bartender nodded and poured Phil a shot of tequila and slowly retrieved another beer. Then he returned to his corner of the bar to watch a baseball game on the flat screen T.V.
“I’ll have to introduce you to Awar one of these days,” Manuel went on. “He’s got all the dirt on Muslims. It’s why he was at the party with the politicians. Some oil sheik was there. Besides, Awar is a fun angel. In the glory days of the al-Andalus we used to combine forces to bring down the pompous. I think Awar was upset the Almohads pushed Maimonides out of Spain. He really had it in for them, the Almohads, after that.”
Phil had no idea what Manuel was talking about, nor did he care. Today the solemn project was celebration. Freedom was now his to enjoy. So far, though, it wasn’t much fun. The dislocation brought on by his divorce was startling in its power.
Ejected from a 20+ year marriage; fired from his job; then, there were the adventures with Manuel (which could be blamed for the loss of both the marriage and the job) -- all these produced a kind of psychic death. Inside, he was constantly trembling (only alcohol could soothe it). When he focused on the mundane details of his life, he couldn’t remember simple things. He was distracted, oddly morose, and wandering adrift on the ocean of his own destiny.
On the other hand, he deliberated as he brought himself back to the task at hand, thank God he was out of that marriage.
He downed the tequila and turned toward Manuel to reiterate, “What are you doing here?”
“Your buddy, Pastor Mike, is in a nuthouse,” Manuel explained. “He was never too tightly wrapped anyway, and this last ordeal put him over the edge.”
Phil sipped his Mexican beer and wondered if he actually cared. He liked the pastor, but Phil’s current emotional turmoil left scant room for empathy.
“He’s in some institution up by Santa Barbara,” Manuel went on. “He’s been asking for you.”
“How do you know?”
“Azazel told me.”
“So how does he know?”
“Azazel is the one who pushed him over the edge,” Manuel concluded.
Phil continued to sip his beer as he considered the dilemma. Azazel was a desert demon with whom Phil tangled before. The first consideration was Azazel might be baiting another trap.
“No trap,” Manuel spoke to Phil’s thoughts, which the angel could read. “Well, the trap isn’t for you, anyway. Hell can’t claim crazies. Since Pastor Mike is falling into that category, I think Azazel wants you to get Pastor Mike back so he can eat his soul.”
“Great,” Phil muttered and finished off the beer and signaled for another. Then he wondered, “Where do crazy people go?”
“We don’t know,” Manuel answered. “Somewhere in the Clouds of Mystery after they die. They are uniquely cared for by God his-own-very-Self. When they come out of the Cloud, they reincarnate like normal people and seem to have no memory of what happened. Ezekiel was the most famous. He was schizophrenic. And then there are the epileptics. We’re not sure what that’s all about either, but quite a few epileptics end up connected to God.”
“Weird,” Phil commented as he slammed home the tequila and picked up the fresh beer. Then he wondered, “What is the problem with Pastor Mike?”
“Well, he’s hardwired in a way that he could be a prophet. And I don’t mean fortune-teller. The Biblical prophets let the people know what was going on with God. So, it has to do with pathos.”
“And Pastor Mike is what? Somehow torn between his life as a pastor and his possible life as a prophet?”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t know how much help I could be.”
“Me either, but enough of that,” Manuel sighed, and shifted on the stool to face Phil, “What are you up to these days?”
“Got a job,” Phil smiled lopsidedly. “Ecology in action. I’m a consultant to a consortium of green industries, and I’m going to save the fucking world from pollution.”
Manuel laughed softly. Not only was Phil not much of a drinker, he rarely used profanities. Manuel seemed to be enjoying both these aberrations.
“You see,” Phil leaned in, “if we can show businessmen how it’s to their financial advantage to clean up their messes, we win.”
“Is it not abundantly obvious fouling one’s own nest is stupid?”
“Nah. They see it as fouling someone else’s nest,” Phil rejoined. “But the cool thing is I can work from home or wherever my lap-top can plug in.”
“So you won’t have any problem visiting Pastor Mike.”
“Guess not.”
“I’ll make the arrangements for you to stay at a Buddhist monastery,” Manuel offered. “It’s about time you got a real social life.”
