Of Heaven and Hell Page 12

  Alone with little aside from the ceaseless susurrations of the sea and a supply of sandwiches, Hubert found time a little tricky. It could take the ruby crown of the sunset hours to sink into the waves, but in the blink of an eye he’d eaten the last of the immeasurable, endless stash of sweet pickles. Had Bartholomew been gone five days, five years, or five seconds? In eternity, did it matter?

  Desperate as he was to behold the Glory, it mattered to Hubert, and when one day a speck on the blue horizon flapped steadily closer and revealed itself to be Bartholomew, Hubert ran down the hill to greet him. “Hi!”

  Bartholomew alit on an elegant foot and folded his wings with a fluid series of tucks. Once he was firmly on the ground, the jeans reappeared, and he gave Hubert a hearty handshake. “Hi.”

  Hubert tried to read the angel’s face. There was no grin of triumph, but no bowed head of bad news. Bartholomew pursed his lips in what Hubert pegged, after he started talking, as a look of You asked for it, you got it.

  “We don’t really do this,” Bartholomew said, “but your Reverend Jarvis’ angel Karnchana is a friend of mine. We talked to the Creator, I explained your position, how important it is to you to see heaven as your Reverend will see it.” Hubert nodded eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’d guessed where this was going, but if he didn’t hear it in plain English soon, he worried his head would explode. “It’s all but unheard of, you understand. But I like you, and the Creator likes me. This is a very special favor the Creator’s willing to do for you.”

  The anticipation was more than Hubert’s humble heart could contain. He wept. “You mean...?”

  Bartholomew shrugged. “You’re in. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

  “Oh, Bartholomew!” Hubert flung himself into the angel’s arms. He cried and sniffled and laughed and choked out a hundred Thank Yous. He kissed Bartholomew smack on his little bow-shaped mouth; then his eyes bulged in horror.

  “Oh no!”

  Bartholomew chuckled and gave Hubert a patient smile. “It’s all arranged, Hubert. Don’t worry about it. You’re in. You, alright? Please don’t worry yourself trying to ‘act right’ or be something you’re not. You can kiss me all you want.”

  Now Hubert’s face flashed affront and arousal. Their mouths were inches apart. Bartholomew’s luscious lower lip hung apart from its pert, peaked partner, and Hubert’s need to nibble on it was stronger than Hubert’s neck, which dipped until his mouth was pressed against Bartholomew’s again. Hubert jumped back as if the jolt bouncing through his brain had come from an electric fence, and Bartholomew laughed again. “Or not,” he said.

  Hubert was still dancing in Bartholomew’s arms. He’d made it! He’d managed to pray himself into Paradise. “Can we really go?” he asked.

  “We can go whenever you want,” Bartholomew told him again. “We can go now, or if you want to bask here in your own heaven for a while first, we can do that.”

  “I’ve been basking,” Hubert promised. “I love it here. Can we please go now?”

  Bartholomew laughed. “Hey, I had to ask.” He turned Hubert so his back was snug up against Bartholomew’s front and held tight to the wisp of his waist. “Ready?”

  Hubert nodded, and Bartholomew sailed with him into the sky.

  In all the torment around his temptation, Hubert had forgotten how fun it was to fly. Even though his spirit had strained to jump out of his skin in its hurry to see Salvation, Hubert felt a sharp pang of hesitation when Bartholomew touched down on a tropical, tree-lined boulevard and turned Hubert loose from his arms. A smiling angel floated down from the pillared veranda of a grand hotel on a veritable river of swirling dark hair and jewel-tipped feathers to bid Hubert welcome. Where Bartholomew glittered gold, she shone a burnished bronze underneath a gauzy gown so diaphanous Hubert may have been imagining it. She tucked her wings behind her the way Bartholomew did as she covered the last few steps to join the men, but her hair danced with the wind even when she stopped walking and extended her hand.

  “Hubert, this is Karnchana. Welcome to Reverend Jarvis’ heaven.”

  “Is this Paradise?” Hubert asked Karnchana.

  She smiled, tossing a wink to Bartholomew. “I’m pretty confident he’ll think so,” she said.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Bartholomew said.

  This surprised Hubert. “You’re leaving?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “But... I thought... ain’t you my angel?”

  “Karnchana will take good care of you, Hubert. But this is really her show.”

  So Hubert had been right—Bartholomew was a temptation; he’d all but admitted it. Obviously Paradise wasn’t peopled with golden-haired, hard-bodied sexpots. The smiling angel who took his hand and led him into heaven’s hotel radiated beauty, but she didn’t arouse Hubert to the slightest degree. This was more like it. He turned to wave good-bye to Bartholomew, but his last chance to corrupt his body and guarantee he got the boot from God’s good graces had already taken wing. Karnchana pulled a heavy wooden door that led into the sun-soaked lobby and stood aside to let Hubert pass. Heaven, he rejoiced, here I come!

  Lazy fans creaked in slow circles from high ceilings. Well-worn hardwood floors led down two long hallways, intricate area rugs tossed here and there among the wicker and wood furniture that clustered between Hubert and a wall of French doors. “Your Reverend Jarvis traveled in Southeast Asia as a young man,” Karnchana told Hubert. “When he thinks ‘Paradise,’ he thinks fine hotels and sugar-sand beaches. Not that I’m complaining.” Chuckling, she walked Hubert over to the French doors, opened a set, and invited him through into the riotous green garden. “You see the grounds are quite extensive. You can’t see it from here with all these trees, but the beach is only about a hundred steps up this little path. Listen.”

  Hubert stood very still and did as he was told. Sure enough, he heard the ocean. Not the crashing surf of the Sonoma coast he’d left to come here, but rather a steady hello-goodbye of warm water lapping gently at the sand.

  “Naturally, you’ve got the run of the place,” Karnchana went on.

  “Oh, I don’t know....” Hubert turned on his spot in the garden the better to absorb the opulence. “Reverend Jarvis always said I’d be lucky just to get here. Maybe just a small room?”

  Karnchana laughed. “Yeah, there’s not much in the small-scale department around here. That’s not really the Reverend’s style. Shall I show you to your suite?”

  Who was Hubert to argue? He supposed the earthly luxuries of a glamorous hotel suite might well be penurious by heavenly standards—look how utopian just the waiting room had turned out to be. He followed Karnchana up a sweeping staircase, and then up another, whereupon she opened a wide, white door and welcomed him in.

  A ceiling fan turned here, too; this one more aggressively agitating the air than those on the ground floor. There were French doors again; these opening onto a clay-tiled lanai at tree-top level that afforded a view of an unending turquoise sea. A canopy bed the size of a bakery truck was the suite’s most remarkable feature, and Karnchana invited Hubert to make himself at home on it.

  That line hadn’t worked for Bartholomew. It certainly wasn’t going to work for a woman, no matter how lovely. “Um, no thanks,” Hubert said. “I’m not especially tired.”

  “The Reverend’s a big fan of the en suite massage,” Karnchana explained. “They’re a pretty major feature of our service here.”

  Three young women in abbreviated cocktail dresses—young girls, Hubert would have thought, if the idea weren’t so unseemly—padded barefoot into the suite and urged him in heavily accented English to make himself comfortable on the bed. One pulled at the snaps on his shirt, another worked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers, grinning lasciviously as she mimed pulling them down past his hip bones.

  “Oh. No thanks,” Hubert said again, doing his best to extract himself from their busy hands. “I’ve never had a massage.”

  �
��You’ll love it,” said one of the girls.

  “Very nice,” said another.

  “Relaxing,” assured the third.

  “I ain’t that comfortable bein’ touched.” He appealed to Karnchana. “Please?”

  She nodded understanding, said something to the girls in a language Hubert had never heard. The girls objected mightily to whatever Karnchana said, flinging themselves at Hubert with loud protestations. The one latched onto his waistband so that when Karnchana made to physically sweep the girls from the room she had to wrestle Hubert away before she could close the door.

  “Don’t worry,” Karnchana said. “I took the liberty of ordering some room service. That should be more to your liking.”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  She shrugged. “So he won’t bring food.”

  Wait....

  There came three light raps on the door, which cracked open with a creak on the third. “Knock knock,” called a hearty male voice. “Room service.”

  “Ah, Joseph,” Karnchana said. “Please come in and meet Hubert.”

  In swaggered a wall of tattooed Thai youth in a sarong, whose brawny beauty knocked Hubert’s knees right out from under him. Joseph swept in to catch Hubert and scooped him up into his arms. “Hi,” he said, with a smile that would have bowled Hubert over again were he not already snuggled in safety.

  “Hi,” Hubert managed.

  Joseph carried no tray. He pushed no cart. He didn’t offer so much as a piece of fruit or a wafer-thin mint before he tossed Hubert onto the bed and clambered up onto it after him. “I thought you said ‘room service,’” Hubert said, crawling to a corner of the bed and burrowing under the protection of a pile of pillows.

  Joseph grinned. “Sure, boss. Unless you want me to service you somewhere else?” With one tug Joseph whipped off his sarong; then he advanced naked on his knees to drape it playfully around Hubert’s neck. With it, he pulled Hubert’s face close to his own, but Hubert closed his eyes tight. Whimpering, he jerked his head this way and that, and Joseph let go of the sarong.

  “Why’s he doing that?” he asked Karnchana. She shrugged, but jerked her thumb to encourage Joseph to get off the bed. The splendor of his unobstructed nakedness was more than Hubert could bear, and his whimpers verged on wails.

  “Maybe you’d better go,” Karnchana told Joseph in Thai. “He just got here. Barty said he was a little nervous. Maybe later?”

  Joseph shrugged. “You know where to find me.” He reached for his sarong, but Hubert was clutching it and recoiled with a cry from Joseph’s advance. Joseph looked to Karnchana for guidance.

  “Nobody’s gonna see you,” she said. Then she winked at him. “And if anybody does see you, they won’t complain.”

  He smiled, and then trundled from the room.

  “Hubert...?”

  He opened one eye to make sure he was alone with Karnchana; then he flopped back with a pillow over his face. “What is this place?” he cried. “Why did Bartholomew bring me here? Why would you let those people just attack me?”

  “I do apologize,” she said. “Barty said you craved heaven as envisioned by Reverend Jarvis, I just assumed....”

  Hubert sat abruptly, sending pillows flying. “This is nothing like Reverend Jarvis’ visions of heaven!”

  Karnchana smiled, considered her response. “This may not align with any visions he preached,” she said, “but believe me, he’s gonna be in heaven when he gets here.”

  Hubert shook his head. “That’s not even possible. Lust and temptation everywhere? Those girls weren’t here to give me no massage. Room service is just a naked dude? That Joseph guy was a... a...,” he lowered his voice, practically whispered, “ho-mo-sexual. It’s the greatest sin the Lord can conceive. Reverend Jarvis preaches that literally every single day. It’s the Holy Unbreakable Truth.”

  Karnchana shrugged with a little laugh. “Yeah, well, you gotta figure he’s obsessed with it for a reason.”

  Hubert was aghast. Reverend Jarvis preached and railed against homosexuality all the time. It had to be the biggest, most grievous sin in the world. Why else would a grown, married man at the helm of a Christian church—who could have been feeding hungry people or providing care to sick people or offering babysitting, clean clothes, and job skills to poor people—build his entire ministry around monitoring people’s sexual behavior?

  “You never found his fixation with homosexuality... I don’t know... a little gay?” Karnchana asked gently.

  “It’s. A. Sin.”

  “Come on, Hubert, I know Bartholomew’s already told you this: we don’t judge around here. Everybody’s got their thing. You should see the billion different ways heaven can look. We don’t concern ourselves with what this or that culture, this or that century, considers a sin.”

  “Yeah, well, obviously. Is there a way I can go back, or am I stuck here?” Again there came a light rap at the door, and again the door swung open, this time with a rustle of feathers. “Could I at least get a lock for that door?”

  “There’s no need.” Bartholomew’s thunderous voice filled the spacious suite.

  “Nice pants,” Karnchana cracked when he came into view in his favorite jeans.

  Bartholomew waved a hand in Hubert’s direction. “He makes me wear them. C’mon, Hubert. You wanna go home?”

  Hubert had never been happier to see anybody. The only one in the room without wings, he still nearly flew into Bartholomew’s arms. “Yes. Please.”

  Karnchana walked the men across the room and out onto the wide lanai.

  “Thanks,” Bartholomew told her.

  “We were glad to have him,” she said, giving Hubert a friendly good-bye pat on the back. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “He’ll get the hang of it,” Bartholomew predicted. He kissed his friend on the cheek, threw an arm around Hubert’s waist, and leapt out over the trees.

  “I DIDN’T do it to be mean.”

  Bartholomew and Hubert had returned to Hubert’s Sonoma-style cliff top and were sitting amongst a pile of rocks, watching the waves roil and boil below.

  “It was mean.”

  “You asked to go there! I had to pull some strings, buddy. And I met that Joseph kid. That beach, that bed, with that guy? I can think of lots and lots of adjectives to describe the travel agent who’d arrange that little getaway. ‘Mean’ does not exactly spring to mind.”

  Hubert allowed the barest of smiles. “But what was he doing there? I mean, in Reverend Jarvis’ idea of Paradise...?”

  Bartholomew shrugged. “I imagine Joseph is in pretty high demand. Karnchana told me Jarvis isn’t his only gig.”

  Hubert’s shoulders slumped when he sighed. “So he doesn’t even believe his own teachings? That I built my entire life around....”

  Bartholomew, whose acquaintance with the Reverend was recent and brief and entirely third-hand, was taken somewhat aback. While Bartholomew figured anybody who spent fifteen minutes in a room with Clarence Jarvis would exhaust even a generous grain-of-salt supply, this was a genuine revelation for Hubert. Bartholomew scooted around from the rock he’d been perched on to be next to Hubert, who leaned into the hug when it was offered without taking his eyes off the water.

  “I dunno, Hubert. Maybe he does. Realization digs pretty deep when they’re putting heavens together. Not every desire sits right on top of a person’s consciousness, right? It just seems to me—and you’d know more about this than me, I mostly know him through you—but it does seem like he mostly preaches about what other people should be doing. I s’pose it’s probably easy to believe what other people should do if you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself.”

  After the day he’d had, Hubert couldn’t find the energy—and he looked for it—to defend Reverend Jarvis on this point.

  Bartholomew persisted. “He gets his heaven. And just the way he likes it, Karnchana’s right. Why should you be any less worthy?”

  Hubert shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I
dunno. Cuz I’m queer, I guess?”

  Unimpressed, Bartholomew shook his head.

  “Cuz I’m skinny and ugly?” Hubert practically whispered.

  “Hubert.” Bartholomew put his arms around Hubert. “Please tell me that sounded like a terrible reason to you, too.”

  He shrugged. He looked at his feet. He wanted to look into Bartholomew’s friendly face, but he couldn’t. “It’s what they always taught me.” A tear escaped his left eye, and Bartholomew wiped it gently with a golden finger; then he placed his hand against Hubert’s chest.

  “And in your heart,” he said, “does that sound true?”

  Hubert couldn’t push his answer past the lump in his throat, and when he tried, he broke down in sobs. Bartholomew took Hubert in his arms, kissed him sweetly on the forehead, and said, “Good. Cuz it sure shouldn’t.”

  MONTHS FLEW by in seconds; seconds unfolded over months. “We don’t really have ‘time’ here,” Bartholomew had explained. “Not the way you think of it. But there’s hardly any point in putting this beautiful house on the edge of this beautiful ocean without plopping a sunset into it every once in a while, is there?”

  They often watched the sun go down together, from the deck or from the cluster of rocks near the edge of the cliff. Other than that, for a long while Hubert kept mostly to himself. If he needed anything, which was rare, or just wanted something, which was almost never, he called on Bartholomew, who was always happy to provide, but otherwise went about his business. Which seemed to consist mostly of riding the wind like a roller coaster and frolicking in the surf with mermaids from neighboring heavens. Sometimes Hubert went for what felt like days without seeing him, but had only to whisper his name to bring him striding through the front door.

  One evening as the sun set about sinking into the sea, it washed Hubert’s entire heaven with a golden glow. Hubert felt as though he had to push through great curtains of light to make his way down the gentle slope to where a radiant Bartholomew stared out to a sea that glittered like glass. My, but those jeans were snug. Bartholomew had lately exhibited the littlest belly pot—someone had to frolic in those chocolate waterfalls—and the extra pounds hadn’t done his plump rump any harm. His ringlets danced on the breeze that ruffled his feathers and carried their light lavender scent across the lawn, and his face was a study in serenity when Hubert sidled up beside him.