Angels on Overtime Read online

  Sapphire whispers into Jack’s ear. She’s the sweet librarian type—you remember that truly great librarian, the one you wondered about and asked your friends if they thought she had a life? At least a life that didn’t involve reference desks and card catalogs? Or for those of you younger ones who have never researched away from the Internet and are wondering what in creation a card catalog could possibly be, picture instead a woman who loves to look on her computer to see what wisdom is found where. At any rate, this librarian from your hometown library just loved researching things and helping you find information. She was born to work in a library, and you thought, wow, it’s really good we’re all interested in such different things, so it all gets taken care of. (And yes, everyone thought she had a very boring life, but oh how wrong they were—you wouldn’t believe the life she had!) Behind Sapphire’s thick glasses and tightly wound bun, she is actually very, very beautiful.

  They’re all beautiful. Honestly, have you ever seen an ugly angel? Or, if you’ve never seen an angel, have you ever imagined an ugly one? Impossible. Just like humans. Maybe there are some less-than-attractive humans, but most are pleasant looking. A small percentage fall in the absolutely-breathtakingly-beautiful category and an even smaller percentage fall in the far-less-than-absolutely-breathtakingly-beautiful category. But they’re all beautiful—all angels, all humans. You know what we mean.

  Sapphire’s job is to whisper continuously in Jack’s ear, which is exactly what she’s doing now. And what does she whisper? A compendium that goes something like this: “Jack, you are so beautiful. You are loved. You are a blessing. Thank you for being here. Thank you for blessing us. Jack, you are such a wonderful being. Jack, you are loved. You are so dear. You are such a blessing. Thank you for all that you do.”

  Well, you get the idea. Everyone, everywhere on Earth, has an angel whispering to him or her like that. So why isn’t life a steady stream of perfection? Because very few can hear these words. But that’s starting to change, at least here and there.

  Next to Christopher and Sapphire stands Blake. Remember your favorite high-school coach? Well, he probably was very Blake-like. “Atta boy,” or “Atta girl,” he’d say to you when you did a particularly good maneuver on the playing field. Or, if sports were not your thing, he’d say, “Nice try, kid.” And you’d know that while he didn’t understand how in the world sports weren’t first and foremost in your every thought, he really could tell you tried, and he sure did appreciate that.

  Blake pats Jack on the shoulder. “Jack, you’re a wonderful father. You’re a wonderful businessman. But you know what? There’s more for you to do, son.” He pats him again—if Jack could’ve actually felt that pat, he probably would’ve fallen over.

  “Hey!” Christopher exclaims, watching a graph on his computer. “Check it out—his awareness just went off the charts! I think he heard you. It looks like he might finally be getting it—no, no, forget it…just a passing thought.”

  “Nah, he didn’t hear me,” Blake says. “His heart is open from playing with his little boy. You’ve seen this before—happens every day when he’s with him. With his baby girl, too. But it doesn’t stay.”

  Meanwhile, Sapphire simply whispers in Jack’s ear: “You are so dear. You are such a blessing. Thank you for all that you do.”

  “Jack, Jack, Jack,” Blake practically hollers to him, clapping his hands. He bends over next to him, hand on Jack’s shoulders, like a coach trying to pep up a reluctant-but-necessary player sitting on the bench. “It’s time to run with the ball, son. Time to know there’s even a ball in play. Time to know you’re even on the ball field. Time to know there’s even a game going on!”

  Henry looks at the clock on the mantle. “He’ll be off to work soon,” he tells Brooke, “but he’s getting as much as he can of the most joyous thing in his life before he drops him off at preschool. One of the most joyous things, anyway. The other joy is his daughter. And this is Lacey, his wife,” he says, pointing to a form that has very successfully merged with the couch.

  Brooke glances over at Lacey, who’s still doing the most wonderful job of potatoing. Yes, well, everyone on Earth has his or her special talent, and if a higher talent isn’t cultivated and nurtured, the lowest common denominator talent tends to prevail. Lacey might have been prettier in her day, and she could be on this day, if she wanted to be. Nope, doesn’t want to be: the bulge is winning this particular battle, dark roots are taking over the blond in her stringy, shoulder-length hair, her hazel eyes have long gone slack.

  Surrounding Lacey are her three angels. If this team’s computer aficionado was from Earth, you would think she’s from Southeast Asia, and she’d be gorgeous if she weren’t so bored. She watches Lacey for a moment and then sighs as she starts to play a game of solitaire on her computer. There aren’t too many charts to watch when the human is so, well, uninvolved with life.

  A chubby, adolescent-looking angel plays paddleball while an even younger-looking angel plays jacks on the floor. Adorable? Off the charts.

  “Have they given up on her?” Brooke asks.

  “Oh, no,” Henry answers. “But they have to wait ’til she turns off the TV. They’ll work on her when she gets up to use the bathroom. Can’t work on people while their minds are fully occupied with rot.”

  “Why such young angels for her?”

  Henry laughs. “Those two are ageless, timeless, eternal beings, just like all of us. But young-looking ones tend to act more young-at-heart. Sometimes angels like that are the only ones who can reach people like Lacey here. Special assignment.”

  Brooke looks over at the couple’s son.

  “And that’s Ben, their three-year-old.”

  Ben’s three angels huddle around him, devoted to their tasks for him. (You’ll never see an angel working hard, but always with immense devotion and diligence.) One whispers in his ear, one studies her computer, one watches Ben carefully.

  “You are so loved,” whispers Ben’s whisperer into his ear. “You are such a light. You have so much to give.” A smile spreads across Ben’s face.

  Brooke glances into the kitchen. Piles of dishes from meals obviously long past sit in the sink, drops of milk and cereal decorate the placemats on the table, and there are more piles of that who-knows-what everywhere. Brooke notices that piles even surround Lacey on the couch.

  Brooke points to Jack. “So he’s my assignment?”

  “In living color,” Henry says.

  Brooke watches Jack as he and Ben work on their creation, a dinosaur made of Legos. Giggling, Ben adds pieces of Legos in the shape of what you could guess is an elephant’s trunk. Jack chuckles. Wow! His shoulders start to move down to a level far more appropriate for a human shoulder. Lacey laughs—snorts, really—as a television announcer jokes, however; even though he doesn’t look up at her, Jack’s shoulders zoom right back up to his ears and his jawline goes rigid again.

  “He doesn’t exactly flow with the go,” Brooke sighs.

  “Go with the flow,” Henry corrects her. But he ponders for a moment. “Actually, I like it better your way.”

  “Oh, Jack,” Brooke whispers to him, this man who clearly could be so very handsome and vibrant, but for some reason lives far, far below where he could be living. His son looks like a happier version of him in miniature: curly brown hair, big brown eyes, irrepressible smile. As Ben adds a giraffe’s neck to the dinosaur, Jack’s demeanor softens and relaxes—until Lacey snorts again, that is.

  “At bottom, everything is a choice,” Henry says. “Everything.”

  In another office, another sign on the office door reads MANAGER, ANGELIC AFFAIRS. Penelope, a middle-aged (in Earth Time), plump-and-pleasant angel sits behind her angelificial desk while David, another neophyte, sits in front of her.

  Now David also looks like what you might picture an angel to look like, if you were to picture an angel who looks like the blending of the nations of Earth. He has caramel-colored skin, large dark-brown eyes, the black
est hair. You can see Africa in his eyes, Europe in his facial features, the subcontinent in his mannerisms, the Americas in his build, Asia in his hair. That’s if his ancestors really came from all those places, which they could have, if they were humans. But, really, we all come from the same thing: Life. Actually, David has come to this galaxy via the far side of the Carina Nebula, if you must know. He looks to be about twenty-eight or so in Earth Time.

  “Why would you want to do this?” Penelope demands of him. “It’s the hardest job in the universe!”

  David musters his moxie. “It’s all anyone can talk about—here, there, everywhere: Earth. Earth. Earth. The line is way too long—light-years!—to get in as a human, so I figured I’d try it this way.”

  “These humans can be absolutely impossible. You know that, don’t you? Sometimes they just refuse to get it, even after several thousand lifetimes. Why don’t you go to Sirius and just be content with peace, love, and instant manifestation?”

  “This is what I want to do,” David insists. “More than anything in the universe.”

  “Alright then,” Penelope sighs. “Follow me. It’s not like we couldn’t use a willing volunteer down there.” But she smiles to herself, as if at some joke.

  Penelope leads David through a tiny part of the infinite room with the thousands upon millions upon billions of cubicles with the thousands upon millions upon billions of angels at their computer terminals—a different part of the room than the one you saw Henry and Brooke walk through. They pass two angels conferring over their computer screens while a third whispers into a microphone. The upper-left monitor exhibits a young man sleeping.

  “As you can see,” Penelope explains, “a lot of this computing and arranging happens while their assignment sleeps. This guy is a late sleeper! Could be a drug dealer.” She turns around to look at David for a second. “It’s all simply divine,” she says to the look of surprise on his face. “Everything, every last thing, can be a path of awakening.”

  “Isn’t most of this planned out before they incarnate?” David asks.

  “Often their main lessons are planned, yes. But as for the details, well, the future is always in constant motion,” Penelope says. “Always. Their lives can change at any instant, depending on a change in intention, a new belief, a sudden cracking open and waking up, or anything at all.”

  They pass another cubicle where two more angels confer quietly; a third angel speaks into a microphone as she watches a monitor, which reveals a sleeping woman. “You are a miracle,” she whispers softly. “You are a blessing. You are so very loved.”

  “Few of them remember hearing that when they wake up,” Penelope says, “and even fewer hear it during their waking hours.”

  Penelope leads David past an office door. EXTRA SUPPLIES OF INERTIA, the sign on the door reads.

  “Extra supplies of inertia?”

  “You’d be amazed at what these humans call in to slow themselves down. Popular item, that.”

  They continue walking and pass another set of three angels; two are studying a computer while the third one whispers into a microphone.

  The first angel points to a monitor. “Well, she said she was here to help her daughter, no matter what. And,” she fast-forwards through some recorded snippets on the monitor, “her daughter is looking for a conscious cowboy.”

  The second angels sputters. “A conscious cowboy?”

  “Well, there must be one somewhere,” the first angel responds.

  The third angel pauses in his whispering and turns to them. “Oh, you’d be surprised at how many conscious cowboys there are. They just don’t advertise it.” He returns to his whispering.

  “Texas is a big state,” the first angel remarks, just thinking out loud. “Hmmmmmm....”

  Penelope and David pass cubicle after cubicle with similar tableaux and arrive at the elevator. Penelope presses the down button while, nearby, three more angels study their main computer screen as a fourth angel whispers.

  “How many angels does each human get?” David asks.

  “Everyone has at least three. When they’re ready to wake up, that’s when they get their fourth, because the workload has just increased dramatically.”

  “For them or us?”

  “Yes.”

  Ping! The elevator arrives and they climb aboard. Out of two hundred and fifty buttons with different codes, letters, and numbers, Penelope locates E. She pauses before she pushes it. “E for Earth. It’s still not too late to choose A for Arcturus or S for Sirius.”

  “I’m good with E,” David says.

  Penelope presses E and turns to him. “Love and remember. Love and wake up. That’s all these humans have to do. And you’d be amazed how many twists and turns they put in their own roads.”

  “Wow!” David exclaims as the beautiful blue orb of Earth appears in the window of their elevator/rocket ship.

  “A jewel, isn’t it? One of the masterpieces of the universe. Well, everything is a masterpiece, of course, but this is the masterpiece of masterpieces.”

  Through the bottom of the elevator, the mountains of Idaho zoom into focus.

  “But they’ll get it,” Penelope says. “That’s their job—to get it—and they have eternity.”

  “They do?”

  “If not here, somewhere.”

  The mountains of Idaho are now right beneath them. Penelope turns to David and brushes some unseen angel lint off his shoulders and fluffs up his aura. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “YES!”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You sure you’re sure?”

  “I’m SURE I’m sure!”

  THUD! The elevator lands on E. The door opens and David gasps. From their vantage point, the veil is lifted and they can see a field of grass—and every single blade of grass has an angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow! Grow! Grow! Thank you for being here. You’re such a blessing. You are a miracle. Grow! Grow! Grow!”

  David looks toward the horizon and sees more and more angels tending to their tender charges, a single blade of grass. The trees have thousands of angels hovering around them, one whispering to each leaf. Beneath the angelic whispering is a deeper hum.

  “That’s from the trees,” Penelope explains. “Powerful beings, those trees.”

  David spots a lone car traveling down a country road. He and Penelope can see the driver, a very forlorn and extremely overweight—obese, really—woman in her fifties with three angels around her. Two talk to the woman while the third consults her computer. A half-eaten bag of donuts sits in the woman’s lap, and she brushes crumbs away from her mouth. A strange, somewhat bluish light shimmers all around her billowing body.

  “You are so beautiful,” the first angel whispers to her. “You are so very beautiful. You are a gift. You are a blessing. You are a miracle. You are so beautiful.”

  “You are so beautiful,” the second angel whispers. “You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful.”

  “You are so, so beautiful,” the first angel continues. “You are a gift. You are so beautiful. You are a blessing. You are so beautiful.”

  The computer-watcher angel puts her computer down and starts to whisper, as well. “You are so beautiful. You are a gift.”

  The car disappears over a hill, but not before David witnesses a tear running down the woman’s face as she reaches for another donut.

  “All three were whispering.”

  “Yes. Special case.”

  “Will she ever hear them?”

  “It’s up to her. You sure you want to do this?”

  For the first time, David hesitates before answering, but then delivers a very firm, “Yes.”

  “Yours will be a little easier than that one,” Penelope assures him.

  David sighs with relief. “Oh, good.”
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  “A little little.”

  “Oh.”

  Penelope and David float by a nearly deserted gas station and convenience store on the side of the road. A robber points a gun at the store owner, who grabs at the cash in the register. Both have a group of three angels, all speaking to their respective human.

  The robber’s lead angel tries to appeal to him. “You can do better than this! It’s time to give up your habit!”

  The robber’s second angel speaks to the store owner’s angels. “Tell him to say something that will reach him!”

  The store owner’s first angel speaks to him, referring to the robber. “Tell him he can do better than this! Tell him he can get help for his addiction!”

  The terrified store owner throws a fistful of cash to the robber, who shoves the money in his pocket and then bolts. All six angels groan, throwing their hands up in frustration. The robber’s angels disappear out the door as the man dashes to his car.

  The store owner pauses and then runs to the doorway. “You can get help to get off drugs you know!” he yells after the robber.

  After a moment of surprise, his angels high five, fist bump, and hug each other. “Yes!” one shouts.

  “But he said it too late,” David says to Penelope.

  “But it shows that he heard them, that they got through to him, which is over ninety-nine percent of the challenge. And they both have eternity to get it all, so nothing is ever too late.”

  The two angels float over a few tree-covered hills and dales until they arrive at a cozy mountain home, which has the usual assemblage of angels standing over every blade of grass.