Murder of Angels Read Online Free Page A

angels.
    “Are you okay, Niki?” he asks. “I thought I heard you talking—”
    “Just a nightmare,” she answers quickly, and she knows the look on his face, the doubtful scowl, even though it’s too dark to see his eyes.
    “You sure about that?”
    “A bad dream,” she says. “That’s all. I’m fine.”
    “Yeah, all right. You need anything before I go back to bed?” and she shakes her head no. “I’m fine,” she says again.
    “You’re sure about that?”
    “ Yes, Marvin,” and he shrugs and rubs at his eyes with hands the color of roasted coffee beans. His black skin so dark that he’s little more than a silhouette against the light from the hall, and somehow his always being there for her only makes Niki miss Daria that much more.
    “I’m going back to sleep,” Niki says and lies down.
    “Sounds like a good idea,” Marvin mutters and stops rubbing his eyes. “You call me if you need me,” and then he’s gone. And she’s alone again. Alone still .
    Listening to the thunder.
    And the waves.
    The ticking clock and the ceiling beginning to crack under the weight of the twitching, dangling thing.
    Her heart and an airplane passing overhead.
    It’s almost daybreak before she’s finally asleep again, and if there are dreams this time, she won’t remember them.

PART ONE

Disintegration

Buy the sky and sell the sky and lift your arms up to the sky And ask the sky and ask the sky…

    —R.E.M., “Fall on Me” (1986)

    Usually, in mythology, the hero wins his battle against the monster. But there are other hero myths in which the hero gives in to the monster. A familiar type is that of Jonah and the whale, in which the hero is swallowed by a sea monster that carries him on a night sea journey from west to east, thus symbolizing the supposed transit of the sun from sunset to dawn. The hero goes into darkness, which represents a kind of death.

    —Joseph L. Henderson, “Ancient Myths and Modern Man” (1968)

CHAPTER ONE

Dark in Day

    “W ell, then what were you doing, Marvin?” Daria Parker asks and jabs him in the chest with an index finger. “I mean, Christ, what the fuck am I paying you for? You’re supposed to watch her.”
    “I have to sleep sometime,” he says, and that makes her want to hit him, slap his face and never mind how hard it will be to get a replacement, someone else to keep an eye on Niki for what Daria can afford to pay. But his exhausted, bloodshot eyes and the stubble on his gaunt cheeks are enough to stop her.
    “Can you get me a fucking drink? Can you at least do that much for me?” she growls, tamed and broken lion growl, burying the violence deep in words and not taking her eyes off Niki curled up small and naked on their bed, fetal Niki with her bandaged hand asleep beneath a framed print of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia . Beautiful, lost Ophelia, floating along with her bouquet and her face turned towards unmerciful Heaven. Her skirts filled with air and buoying her up, but she’ll sink soon enough, the very next moment after the artist is done with her. And right now irony is the last thing Daria needs.
    “It’s not even ten thirty,” Marvin says. “How about I get you some coffee, instead? Or there’s juice—”
    “Marvin, are you my goddamn mother now? Did I fucking ask you for coffee or juice? Please, okay, just get me the damn drink?”
    The little room is bright, morning sun off eggshell walls, a blue vase of Peruvian lilies on the table beside the bed. Daria turns away from Niki and Ophelia and stares out the second-story window of her big, apricot and cream–colored Victorian house at the busy morning traffic down on Steiner Street and the neatly mown green swatch of Alamo Square laid out beyond. This too-big house she bought for her and Niki right after Skin Like Glass went platinum and Rolling Stone was calling her the next Patti Smith. The next Angry Voice of Misunderstood Women Everywhere, and then the world spins three hundred sixty