Archive of Our Own

Prologue- What Do You Do with a Problem like Georgia?

     It had all started five years ago, over an offhand comment she had made at Der Waffle House, on Dia de Los Muertos, a few hours after a rough Halloween night.  Mason, Daisy, Roxy, and George had been divvying up the bright, cellophane wrapped horde Mason’s bag of candy, and she had needled him into taking some. 

     “I wouldn’t mind a little peanut brittle, Peanut,” he had said.  She gathered it in her hands and looked at him over the pile.  Dumping it in front of him, she dropped ten little worlds that had set off an emotional atom bomb inside of him.

     “That’s not who I am anymore,” she said, dark leather jacket and eyeliner seeming to give untold credence to her words.  “I’m not that girl.”

     As soon as the first sentence was out of her mouth, he knew the truth of it, same way he knew the sun rose in the east, that bacon was meant to be served so crispy it crunched when you bit it, and that nothing in life was ever, ever fair.  “No, you’re not.  But happy Halloween anyway.  Peanut.”

     Ten little words, only one of them polysyllabic, and his very carefully controlled world, with neat little boundaries like a well planned suburb, had collapsed into chaos.  He didn’t show it, had managed to impart his old man wisdom about All Souls, and then made his break for it. 

     He remembered meeting Lucy for the first time.  She was being hassled by some neighborhood toughs outside the tenement he was living in at the time.  He vaguely remembered someone mentioning a new family in the building, six or seven people in three tiny rooms on the third floor, down the other end of the hall.  Now, here was this spit fire, haranguing at them in some Eastern European language as they tried to pull at her jacket and tug at her hair. 

     He had yelled at them, and because some of them knew him, and knew what he did when times were tough, they cut and run.  She had turned, and with her hands on her hips, sniped at him in accented English, “I can take care of myself.”  She had stormed up the stairs.  Later, sitting in his small end apartment, he had been surprised by a knock.  There she stood, with a bowl of warm soup in her hands and a shy smile on her face.  She apologized for yelling, thanked him for helping her, and things just built from there, little by little, day by day.  Two years later, as they sat on the roof to catch a breeze from the August heat, she had looked at him, and asked if he was ever going to ask her to marry him.  He never knew what she saw in him, but there it was.

     It wasn’t that he was oblivious that Georgia had been special to him.  He remembered the time he scoured three flea markets to get her that bicycle that had later gotten stolen.  He thought about sitting with her on her parents’ porch the night she thought someone else in her family was going to die.  And he remembered telling her that she was loved, in this afterlife of theirs, the day her tombstone had gone up on her grave.  The realization of how those feeling had shifted, though, threw him for a loop like riding a tilt-a-whirl.

     He kept his discovery quiet.  After all, what drew a woman to a man in the 1920s probably differed from what drew women to men now.  Besides, he was her boss, and her mentor, and it would be wrong. It would be taking the worst sort of advantage.  It would damage team morale.  There were one million reasons why he shouldn’t think on it any more.  And for five years, he had taken cold showers two or three times a day.  He had taken to carrying a stress-ball in his pocket.  He had tried to limit his contact, without hurting her feelings.  Five long, long years, until he just couldn’t take it anymore.  So he had written a letter and left it on the door a month ago, and since then, nothing had changed, nothing until last night, when his envelope from the messenger brought sometime extra.  It was a post-it of his own, electric blue.  Los Angeles.  September 20^th.  Looking at the calendar, he realized this gave him less than ten days.  After finishing the list, he called the number of the first 24 hour moving company in the book. 

     He suspected Angela had known he would be coming before he did.  After all, Los Angeles and its environs had been the scene of her death and afterlife for more than sixty years.  So it was no surprise to him that when he called, the first thing she had done was offer him the pool house behind her home in the Hollywood Hills.  Angie had always been a class act like that.  As long as he needed it, she had said.  Never worry.  No, she wouldn’t mention it to anyone.

     He had sent his things on ahead, and booked a flight.  On the 19^th, he sat at his usual corner of the usual booth, wondering idly what the cover would be, who would be the new crew chief.  Because he had asked not only for the transfer, but for it to be done in such a way that the others would think it was his lights, that he was gone on to whatever they went on to.  Sitting there now, watching them bicker, he studied each of their faces a little bit harder.  Even Mason.  He was a fuck-up, but he had been Rube’s fuck-up since the early 1970s and he would miss him.  Glancing around, he caught George staring at him. 

     As they all got up to leave for the day, she stopped him.  “What’s wrong?”

     “Nothing’s wrong, George,” he said.  “Why?”

     “You look pensive, like when Rosie died.  Who’s gonna die, Rube?”  She was standing there, looking at him from the edge of panic.  Putting out a hand, he squeezed her shoulder.

     “No one’s you know is dying, Peanut,” he said.  “Now, have a good day, okay?”  With that, he drew her in for a last, quick, guilty hug, breathing in the scent of her hair.  Then he let her go.  She gave him a look riddled with confusion and concern, and left to make her reap.  He watched her go, and then went to hail a cab for the airport.

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Part 1- Leaving on a Jet Plane

     One weird routing through Denver later, he arrived at LAX, the biggest, noisiest pain in the ass he had ever encountered.  Struggling to find his way out, he looked at the cab line and breathed a long, hard sigh.  Suddenly, a woman walked up beside him, a scarf around her dark curls, and big sunglasses on her face.

     “Welcome to Sunny Southern California,” Angie said, taking his arm.  “Want a ride?”

     “Thank God,” he mumbled.  “I fucking hate airports.”  She laughed at him, and led him in the direction of short term parking.  He sort of suspected she would drive something nice, but non-descript, to make up for her eclectic clothing style.  Instead, they walked over to a cream colored, 1940 Buick Special Sedan Convertible with a dark brown interior.  “You never did do things by halves.”

     “Do it by halves, the patient dies,” she murmured.  Opening the door, she got in and reached over, unlocking his door.  He tossed his bag in the back and got in.  “Old habits die hard.”

     Soon, she had them out of the airport and onto the freeway.  Benny Goodman was coming from the sound system as Angie expertly navigated the twists, turns, and awful drivers of the city of Angels.  Rube watched the rows of palm trees fly by them, thinking that he hadn’t seen one outside a botanical garden in nearly thirty years. 

     An hour later, Angie pulled into the drive of her home, a stately mission style house in the Hollywood Hills.  Rube remembered her writing him, when the elderly, widowed, childless patient she had been doing home care for had passed, leaving her everything.  She hadn’t been hurting for money before, but that had made her a lady of leisure for the most part, what with careful investing and frugal living.  She pulled around back and parked. 

      “The pool house is around that side, if you want to settle in,” she said.  She nodded towards her patio.  “I have dinner in the oven, and then I told Arnie I’d go with him tonight…for after.”  Rube knew she was talking about her crew chief, whose place he was taking.  Arnie’s last reap, and then he’d move on.  He briefly wondered who would have been the new boss, if he hadn’t transferred.  He wasn’t planning to ask, since she seemed sad to see Arnie go.

     “Thanks, Ang,” he said, quietly.  She looked at him, and slid her glasses down.  Her eyes showed off a mixed bag of emotions.  Curiosity, sadness, and something warm, like a friend glad to see him.  “You’re a good friend.  I can come, tonight, if you want.  I’d like to meet Arnie before he goes.”

     She nodded and left Rube to his own thoughts as he walked around to the small building in the back of the yard, around the side of the in-ground pool.  He opened it, and walked in.  A small living area, with a little kitchen, a dining nook, and a living space occupied the front part of the house, all wood floors and warm colors and Mexican tile on the counters.  He noticed a piece of paper with a set of keys on it.  They were laid out and labeled- house, pool-house, car.  Moving into the small hallway, off the dining room, he found a small, full bath, and then the bedroom.

     Angie had had his furniture moved in, and whatever normally filled the rooms was probably in storage.  Setting his bag down on a chair near the bed, he pulled out three picture frames.  The old silver frame with the picture of Lucy and Rosie went on one bedside table.  A second frame, cherry wood, with a picture of his crew in Seattle, as he had seen them, went next to it.  On the table on the other side, he placed a black metal frame, with a candid of George, taken from her house the last time he was there.  George, her face dissolved in laughter.  George, her eyes bright and shining.  Rube felt his heart ache, deep and long, and then he turned, and went to meet Angie for dinner.

     At eight-thirty, Angie and Rube had made their way down to a street four or five blocks off the Sunset Strip, close enough that the occasional tourist wandered over by mistake but only rarely.  With a name like Arnie Sawyer, Rube was expecting an older Irish guy.  To his surprise, a dapper black man, who looked to be maybe thirty or thirty-five, stood across the street from the address Angie had written into a leather planner.  She made her way over to him.  They had about twenty minutes to go, based on the ETD from the list. 

     “Hello, Arnie,” she said, softly.  Her eyes seemed to take in the light linen suit and tan hat he wore.  “You look very nice.  Myrna will be glad to see you.”

      The man gave a kind, warm smile.  “Kind of you to say so, Miss Angela,” he said.  “I am powerful ready to see her.”

     “I never will get you to call me Angie, will I?” she asked.  He shook his head and they both laughed.  “Arnie, this is Rube Sofer.”

     “Mr. Sawyer,” Rube said, offering his hand.  Arnie took it, a good strong grip, and shook. 

     “You take good care of my people, Mr. Sofer.  They’re good folks.”  He pulled out his watch from his pocket and looked at it.  “I best go take care of business.  Don’t want to be late.”

     Angie stepped forward and hugged Arnie.  “You give my best to Myrna, and if you see my Andy, tell him I love him and I’ll see him soon.”  Rube could see the bright glitter of tears at the edges of her eyes.  “It’s been an honor, Arnie.”

     “And a pleasure, Miss Angela,” he replied, hugging her back.  “A real pleasure.”  He pulled away, and tipping his hat, he turned and walked into the small bodega across the street.  A minute later, he came out and walked slowly down the street, carrying a small bag, as a young man in a hoodie walked in.  A minute later, Rube and Angie heard the gunshot from the alley they had stepped into.  The young tough came running out, and headed in the opposite direction from where Arnie had walked.  A minute later, glittering lights appeared and a figure down the street stepped into them, and was gone. 

     Rube heard Angie make a soft, sad, sigh.  Then, she squared her shoulders and walked over to the bodega and the scared looking young Asian woman standing in the door, starring back in at her own bleeding body.
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     Angie had settled Helen Kwan into her guest bedroom in the main house, and then returned to the den, a large wine glass in each hand.  She gave one wordlessly to Rube, who had arrived home to find a thick envelope stuck under his door.  Angie had left him to it while she dealt with the nearly hysterical young woman, finally getting her calm enough to sleep.  He was sitting at her desk, carefully going through the list, which reminded him of Seattle, during the heat wave, five years before.  It had been before his realization of his feelings for…he shook himself, and returned his attention.  This new crew had twelve…no, now thirteen reapers, an ominous number.  More disturbing, it was one of four external influence teams in the greater Los Angeles area.  They primarily dealt with old Hollywood and the surrounding environs.

     Angela tucked herself into the corner of a warm, red sofa and sipped her glass slowly, savoring the nice Pinot Grigio.  Rube had been careful not to comment on the slight smear to her carefully applied mascara when she had returned to join him.  He guessed Arnie had predated her own tenure, and it made sense that she would be deeply troubled by his leaving.  He wondered how…no, this was not the time.

     “Penny for your thoughts, Rube,” she quipped.  He paused to gather them, taking a sip from his own glass, and then swirling the wheat colored contents around the bowl where it met the stem.

     “Arnie Sawyer seems like a hard man to replace,” he replied, carefully.  Her face shifted, the forced frivolity replaced by the grief and gentle sadness he had seen before.  “What’s his story?”

     Angie sighed softly.  Setting the glass down, she stood and walked to the desk.  Reaching down near Rube’s leg, she opened a bottom drawer and removed an antique picture frame.   Handing it to him, she returned to her seat.  “That’s Arnold Avery Sawyer and his wife Myrna, in 1909, in Natchez, Mississippi,” she said.  “She was pregnant with the first of their three children at the time.  Arnie’s grandparents had been slaves until emancipation.  His father became a carpenter, and Arnie ran the first country store serving the black population in that area. He was really proud of that.”

     “I can see how he would be,” Rube interjected, giving her time to gather her thoughts.

     Angie starred into her wine.  “Arnie died in 1912.  A woman who had been fooling with her husband’s hired man gave birth to a little boy with skin like creamed coffee, and Arnie’s was the name that popped out of her mouth.  No one knows why.”  She stopped, fiddled with the throw on the back of the sofa, and then sighed again.  “He was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, and lynched for being a black man in the South.”

     “I’m sorry,” Rube said.  She shrugged and tucked her knees up under her chin. 

     “He transferred to Los Angeles in 1918.  Said it was too hard to stay and watch what he couldn’t have anymore.  He and Joey, the morgue attendant who collected me after my death, were the ones to really train me up.  Charlie, the chief at the time, couldn’t be bothered,” she murmured.  “He was the last person in the group who was here longer than me.  It’s odd, being oldest.”

     He could understand the feeling very, very well.  It was a sensation that he and Penny had ruminated over, more than once.  And it had been at the forefront of his mind, these last few years, every time he looked at her, sitting there, across the booth…damn it.  He shook himself again, and returned his attention to her.  “I was thinking that my shepherding duties have tripled.  That should be fun.”

     “It’ll be fine,” Angie said, shifting back towards neutral ground.  “Helen’s the first new reaper in four…no, five years.  Right after I was in Seattle the last time, Joey got his lights.”  The sadness returned to her face, but she shook it off.  “Everyone is at least decent.  Marco probably needs the most watching, but he’s solid enough, if you don’t give him too terribly much rope.  Great guy, but impetuous.  If you want, I’ll mentor Helen, show her the ropes.  It will be fine.”

     “Thanks, Ang,” Rube said.  Standing and stretching, he set his glass down.  “I’ll be over to ride with you and Helen early.”

     “Sure,” she said, her mind wandering to other things, the wine in her hand forgotten.  “Good night, Rube.”

     “Night, Angie.”

     There had been some shock and sadness in response to Angie’s news to the group in the morning that Arnie was gone.  Marco, a tough looking Italian, started to argue that Angie was the obvious choice for the new crew chief, but she shut him down, introduced Rube with a glowing reference, and then settled Helen into a chair and put food in front of her.  The young woman was still almost catatonic from the night before, and he was glad not to be responsible for settling her in.

     Assignments were handed out, and the crew dispersed.  Rube found himself sitting alone with Angie while Helen used the bathroom.  He picked at his eggs, and bacon, and thought how different it tasted from home…Seattle…shit.  How long would it take to move on, to forget?  He shoved the plate from himself and threw down some money.  “You’ll get used to it,” Angie commented, eating her own fruit and yogurt and sipping her juice.  “Or you can have us move.  You are the boss now.”

     He shook his head.  “No, I don’t want to create undue animosity,” he said.  “Are you two good for today?”

     “Sure,” Angie replied, adding money for her food and Helen’s to the pile.  “We’ll do my reap, and then we’re going to Helen’s autopsy later.  Light day, all things considered.  Want the car?”

     Rube nodded gratefully, and watched her head towards the bathroom to collect her charge.  He suspected he had taken her natural place in the line of probable secession, and marveled again what a kind, giving individual she was.  He left and headed out into the wilds of Los Angeles, to make a date with a “homes of the stars” tour.

     He arrived back at Angie’s place a little before seven.  Going into the pool house, he changed out of the blood spattered t-shirt he had been wearing, and pulled on an old, comfortable plain black one.  He was considering doing some cooking with the groceries he had picked up and thought he’d offer Helen and Angie some, since Angie had cooked for him the night before.  He went back around the pool, which had been cleaned sometime that day, and walked up to the back door, which had been left open a crack.  He pushed it in, and was about to call out when he heard Angie’s voice, speaking to someone from the living room.

     “Oh, honey, I am so sorry,” she said.  Rube walked in, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Angie looking daggers at him.  Helen was watching the interplay of Angie, the phone, and Rube’s frozen figure from the couch, equal amounts fascination and trepidation on her face.  “I had no idea it was coming.  None of us do, even crew bosses.  He probably had seconds of awareness of it before he was gone.  Oh, George, honey, please don’t cry.  I know it’s awful, and how important he was to you.  Who’s in charge?  What?  No, I don’t know him.  He what?  Oh, holy hell, that’s not good.  Georgia, you keep me posted, okay?  I know it’s hard.”

     Rube stood, watching the shift of emotions on Angie’s face, oscillating between fury, empathy, and confusion.  He desperately wanted to sprint to the kitchen and pick up the extension, to hear her voice one more time.  However, he was pretty sure Angie would throw the heavy crystal paperweight from her desk at him if he did. 

    “George, I want you to stop that.  Pulling a Betty is not an option,” Angie said, and Rube felt his stomach drop.  “From the sound of it, you have lots of work to do there.  Important work.  Think about what Rube would want you to do.  I’ll see what I can do from this end, see what channels can be gone through.  I promise, we’ll get through this.  You just take care of yourself, okay?  Good girl.  I’ll call tomorrow.  Good night.”

     She set the phone gently in its cradle on the desk.  Rube could see her right hand, gripping the wood of the chair’s arm, and thought he heard her counting to ten under her breath.  Helen chose this moment to quietly rise and slip into the hall, headed for the room she had been staying in.  As she heard the door close softly, Angie looked up at him, and in a neutral, controlled voice, said, “We should have this conversation in your living room.  Helen doesn’t need to hear it.”

     Rube could only nod and turn, leading the way back to the pool house.  She stalked through the door he had opened for her, and spun around, arms crossing over her chest.  “Look, Ang…”

     “Do not ‘Ang’ me, Rube Sofer,” she snapped, her voice colder than ice and hotter than lava, all at once.  “Of all the stupid, inconsiderate, asinine, insensitive crap to pull…you are some kind of piece of work, you know that?  George is beside herself.  She thought it was some little test, at first, but when you didn’t show up with sage words of wisdom, she believed the line.  How could you, Rube?”

     “What was I supposed to say, Angela?  ‘Gee, guys, I am sorry.  I find being your boss intolerable, so I am transferring.  But, you know, best of luck.’”  Rube shot back.  “Would that have been kinder?  Gentler?  Fucking politer?”

     “Intolerable?  You were fine that summer I was there.”  Angie flopped down, her anger burning out, replaced by confusion.  “You people got on like a house on fire.  A sort of dysfunctional house, but all the same.”

     “The world changes.”  Rube too found the fight leaving him, and he sank into the chair opposite her.  “People change.  Circumstances change.  I had to do what I thought was best for the group.”

     “I don’t see it, Rube,” Angie said.  “You were happier than I’ve ever known you.  And I’ve known you a long time.  Now, it’s like the old you, the one I met in 1947.  The one who doesn’t smile too often, who goes through the motions, but isn’t truly happy.”

     “You my shrink, now?” he growled.  Angie looked at him long and hard.  He felt small.

     “I’m your friend Rube,” she replied.  “Right now, apparently the only one who doesn’t think you’re long gone.  Did you at least tell Penny the truth?”

     He looked down and rested his hand on stapled fingers.  “I couldn’t risk it.”

     “Fucking hell.”  He looked up.  He had never heard Angie used that particular curse word before.  “Did you know they weren’t promoting from within?”

     “What?”  His head came up and he looked at her.  “It should have been…”

     “Roxy?  She’s a good basic level reaper, but she’s never broken through that wall to truly giving a damn,” Angie said.  “Mason?  I love him like a brother, but really?  Or Daisy?  That leaves George, and she wouldn’t be a bad choice.  But she’s still a little untested.  They aren’t going to go from you straight to her.”

     “So who the hell has my job?”  Angie smirked a little at his wording.  “You know what the hell I mean.”

     “Cameron Kane,” she said.  “It rings a really, really distant bell, but I am coming up blank.”

      He sat and thought for a bit.  Like Angie, the name meant something, but he had no idea what.  “Not off the top of my head.  Why?”

      “Sweeping changes, apparently.  Different restaurant, he’s given them Blackberries to use instead of post-its,” Angie said. 

     “What do fruit have to do with anything?”

     She laughed, for the first time since he had seen her that night.  “It’s a cell phone thing that can get text messages.  He texts them their reaps.”  She paused as Rube absorbed this news.  Not for the first time, she thought about what a Luddite he was.  True, they hadn’t had most of today’s conveniences when she had lived, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love her laptop.  “George said he gave her the wrong time.  When she went to try to reap the guy at the hospital, after missing him at the scene, the soul wouldn’t reap.”

     “Shit.  Fuck.  Damn it.”  Rube punctuated each curse with a fist into his palm.  “Roxy?”

     “No help, according to George.  All of them apparently think Kane’s swell.  She’s on her own up there.”

     He sighed hard.  “I don’t know…I’m not there anymore.”

     Angie shook her head and stood.  “Well, if you won’t speak to her, at least be MY go between with upper management.  Ask them what’s going on.  You are the boss after all.”  She looked at her watch.  “I am going to check on Helen, and then I have plans.  Let me know what you find out.”

    Without waiting for an answer, she rose and walked to the door.  Before she walked through it, though, she turned back.  “And Rube?  Don’t ever put me in a position where I have to lie to my friends again.”  With that, she was gone.  Rube watched her shadow through the gauze curtains, and then turned back to the kitchen.  Sighing, he picked up his bag from the store and began putting things away.

*************************************************************************************

     His notes for upper management got no immediate response.  Angela was polite but distant with him as she focused on easing Helen’s transition to undead life and dealing with everyone’s feelings about Arnie.  He found himself sitting alone in the evenings, listening to records and drinking scotch, ruminating on things he could no long control.  He knew Angie was talking her down most nights, but Angie wouldn’t say a word to him about it.  The first time he had asked, she gave him what he had come to think of as the death glare, and he let it go.

     He was surprised at how quickly Helen was coming along.  Once she had gotten over the reality of her death, had seen the funeral, and learned that there was no going back, she took to the process of being a reaper like a duck to water, with the same dogged determination she had used to help run her elderly parents’ bodega.  Angie had taken her on her first few reaps, but after two or three days, she was flying solo with no problems.  He wondered if it was the cultural difference that made Helen question her lot hardly at all, while she…fuck.  Another cold shower.

     The rest of the group had, more or less, reached a tentative acceptance of Rube’s presence.  Marco still grumbled under his breath, and seemed angry or pissed most of the time.  Normally, he would have asked Angie if this was normal, but she seemed to have her hands full, so he let it slide for the time being.  No point in riling up the whole pond for one snapping turtle.

     The volume of reaps surprise him, but everyone was competent and efficient, most of them following his and Angie’s mold of reaping in advance, and no one trying things like delaying appointments or no-showing.  Mostly, he felt…unneeded.  Which was exactly the sentiment his troublesome young Italian friend chose to convey one week after his arrival.  Angie wasn’t at breakfast, having asked for her assignment in advance so that she could attend a breakfast meeting for the charity board she worked on.  After he had doled out the assignment, everyone had drifted off into their day.  Except Marco.  Marco continued to sit across from him, arms folded, one eyebrow cocked, dark hair spike up in a way that reminded Rube of a very proud rooster he had once met.  Finally, Rube found himself lowering the paper he had been trying to read and looking straight at him.

     “Something on your mind, D’Gorgio?” he asked.

     “You got a lot of nerve, Sofer,” the man…boy…he was not quite sure how old the kid had been at his death.

     “You wanna vague that up for me? Cause I got no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”  Rube took his own opportunity to quirk an eyebrow, but there was no cowing Marco.

     “I don’t know how the hell shit works in Portland…”

     “Seattle.”

     “Where the fuck ever,” he growled.  “But in LA, we had a system.  It worked good.  Oldest reaper has the floor.  I’ve been in this town fifty years, and first it was Susannah.  Then it was Joey.  After Joey, Arnie.  And now that Arnie’s gone, it should be Angie.  So you, being here, fucking sucks.”

     Rube sat back.  He had begun to suspect as much, but hadn’t brought it up. 

     “Suddenly, we’re stuck with some guy who doesn’t know the field, doesn’t know the players, and it’s like Angie’s just some fucking line coach to you, does all the heavy lifting while you get all the glory,” Marco said.  “And Angie, she’s quality.  She doesn’t deserve that.”

     “I’m sorry, Marco,” Rube said.  “For the record, when I asked to transfer, I never specified where.  Upper management sent me here.  No explanation, just a where and a by when.  And I care about her too, for the record.  I’ve known her longer than your afterlife, and I wouldn’t want to take anything away from her.  So, I do apologize.  I’m just trying to play the cards I’m dealt.”

     The younger man sat and looked at him hard for a few minutes before finally nodding.  “Fair enough,” he said.  “But you pissed her off somehow, and that takes a lot.  You need to make that right, and soon.”

     All Rube could do was nod.  He knew Angie was unhappy with him, and he was thinking on a way to fix it, but so far, nothing that wouldn’t compromise his leaving Seattle had come to mind.  Even so, Marco seemed to take the nod to acquiescence, and got up, leaving him alone with his undercooked bacon and his thoughts

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Part 2: Here Without You

     She thought it was some kind of test.  Like those stupid questionnaires they had to fill out every year.  Some kind of sick, wrong joke.  So she had even played Devil’s Advocate with Roxy over breakfast, saying if Rube was there, he would find them, and never believing it was true.  She had believed it right up until the point she walked out of the Cameron’s house after catching him with Daisy.  She had been unable to reap the soul of H. Hart.  Any minute now, she had thought, Rube was going to pop out and be proud, or disappointed, or increasingly, these last five year, kinda distant.  But standing there, having watched her sister leave the hospital, helpless to do her job or help her, having Roxy tell her none of what they did really mattered,  the realization that reliable, dependable Rube wasn’t coming to help her hit her.  Ever since the moment of her death, Rube had been the one truly constant thing in her life.  Whether he was upset or disappointed or proud or concerned, he was there for her. 

     She broke into a run for her car, threw it into drive, and sped out into traffic at an insane speed.  Screeching to a halt outside his building, she locked the car and ran inside.  The lift ground up to the fourth floor for an eternity before disgorging her with a saccharinely cheerful ding.  Her hands were shaking as she flipped through the keys, finding the one he had given her for emergencies, almost five years before.  It slid into the lock with no real effort, and the door opened onto….nothing.  The apartment was empty of all its familiar trappings, the old bed with its rich red velvet, the little hot plate where he had cooked her dinner from time to time, the silver frame with the picture of Lucy and Rosie.  It had all vanished.

     George walked to the middle of the room and closed her eyes, counted to ten, made promises to whoever was out there if it would just all be a dream.  If she could open her eyes and never have to have seen her sister’s grief at yet another death, never have had Kane’s cold, dry lips against hers, never had to hear that he was gone…

     Her eyes opened to dust motes and light from the street lamps outside and empty space.  It felt like a mule kicked her in the chest.  Gone.  Gone, Gone, Gone.  Rube was gone.  The noise was otherworldly and she had no knowledge of ever having made anything like it before.  She had never had anyone she loved this much leave her.  Betty’s…jump had been heartrending, had torn her up in ways she couldn’t imagine, but somehow, she still thought Betty might reappear someday, somehow.  This was different.  This was Rube, who had held her hand and yelled at her and forced her to be better, to live deeper, to engage and disengage and navigate what unlife meant.  Rube was elemental to her existence, like breathing, a part of her.  She had never known how big a part until he was physically ripped out of her by this empty room.

     She had flirted with Rube, had fought with Rube, had laughed and cried and joked with Rube.  She had started to notice him as more than her boss, had started to sense him as more than her mentor years ago.  It was a sentiment she had expressed in the early hours of Dia de los Muertos, when she recognized she wasn’t a kid anymore; that she largely understood their world and how it worked.  At first, she assumed it was normal, getting a crush on your older, male boss.  Or teacher.  Look at Charlotte and her father.  So she had just…lived with it and expected it to pass.  After a year, instead of the feelings fading, they intensified. 

     Rationally, she assumed Rube couldn’t possibly feel the same.  He thought of her like a daughter, or niece.  She figured she’d never be a woman to him, since she would look forever eighteen to his eyes.  And so she had just…dealt with it.  She had talked to Angie for tips on satisfying any physical needs she might have on her own, and focused on her jobs and her friends, and moving out on her own.  It was hard sometimes, not to say something, but she figured having Rube in her life any way was better than freaking him out and having to transfer, so he would be in her life in no way at all.  Never, ever had she thought he’d just disappear on her.

    She didn’t realize the Trio was in her hand until the voice answered on the other end.  “Hello?” Angie’s voice came across the line.  Suddenly, she was sobbing into the phone.

     “Rube’s gone, he’s gone, Angie, I don’t know what to do, tell me what to do,” she said, her breath coming in hiccupping gasps.

     “George?” Angie had asked.  “George, slow down, breathe.  I can’t understand you.”

     “Rube’s gone,” she said.  She heard Angie take a breath.  “He got his lights.  He’s gone, Angie.”

     “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Angie had said.  George told her about Cameron Kane, about Hudson Hart and Reggie, about Roxy, and Mason, and Daisy.  Slowly, her sobs turned to sniffs, as Angie murmured encouragement and support over the line. 

     “I don’t think I can do this, Angie,” she said softly.  “Not without Rube.  What if I…followed my next reap?  Like Betty?”

     “George, I want you to stop that.  Pulling a Betty is not an option,” Angie said.  ““From the sound of it, you have lots of work to do there.  Important work.  Think about what Rube would want you to do.”

     George found herself nodding.  Angie promised to do all she could to find out what the hell was going on.  Sitting there, on the cool wood floor, she made Angie a promise that she would hang in there, that she would make Rube proud.  After they had hung up, she stood and dusted herself off, and then slowly locked the door and left the apartment.  She needed a drink, and then she needed sleep.  She had a lot of work in front of her.

     She knew Rube would be disappointed that she was meddling with Reggie.  That his cardinal rule was non-interference, and she knew he was speaking from experience.  But Rube wasn’t here.  He had left her alone, and stuck with Cameron Kane.  And somehow, she wondered if helping Reggie would allow her to complete her reap on Hudson.  So she meddled.  She went to work.  She did both her jobs, as best she could.  And she watched her friends imploding from a distance. 

     She knew the bus accident had been a hiccup, one Roxy had caused.  She had seen the reviews of Daisy’s play.  And there had been nothing she could do about that.  They had to figure things out on their own. 

     She had always tended towards the insomniac, but this was different.  Now, she either had startling erotic dreams of Rube, dreams where an argument dissolved into passion, into hands and lips and skin and she would wake up sobbing with need.  Or, the flip side happened, and she dreamed of standing at her grave, of Rube giving her one soft, sad kiss and then slowly walking away into a fog.  She tried to run after him, screamed for him to turn around, not to leave her, but he just disappeared from sight.  Those times, she woke sobbing with grief.  On average, she was getting maybe two or three hours of sleep a night.

     She called Angie one or two times a day, sometimes in the middle of the night, and she would cry into the phone.  And Angie would talk to her; tell her that loss was a part of life and of afterlife, and that that didn’t make it any less horrible.  Sometimes Angie would cry too, and they would share their grief.  On the fourth night of this process, she whispered the truth of what was tormenting her for the first time.  “I love him, Angie,” she said, her voice barely audible. 

     “I know, honey, we all did,” Angie said.  George found herself laughing bitterly.

     “No,” she replied, though she suspected that Angie already knew.  “I’m in love with him.”

     Angie was silent for a while.  Finally, she said, “It’s the worst feeling in the world, honey.  And it’s the best feeling in the world.  And if I could fix all of it, I would.  But I know how you feel, and I am so sorry.”

     “Me too,” George whispered.  “Me too.”

     It was like the ghost of what never was had decided to stalk her.  Everywhere she went, things reminded her of him.  The feeling of leather, soft and worn, like his old green coat.  The smell of pipe tobacco wafting through the air.  Some joke that she knew, instinctively, he would have found hilarious. 

     Since she wasn’t sleeping, she decided to go out, and found herself in a club downtown.  A local act that seemed about to make it big was playing, and a thin, pretty red head was playing piano and singing.

     The world carries on without you

     But nothing remains the same

     I’ll be lost without you

     Until the last of days.

     In the dark back corner where she was sitting, she found tears sliding down her face again.  Silently, she let them come and tried to believe that someday, it was going to get easier.

**************************

Part 3: You Must Remember This

     Angie had known something was up when Arnie had handed her two post its one morning in the first few weeks of September.  One was a traditional reap post-it, name, place, and time.  The other simply said, please meet me at 5:00 at Adamson House, a state park and historic home overlooking the beach.  Arnie would normally have asked her verbally.  They didn’t keep big secrets in this crew.  Secrets led to resentment, resentment lead to unhappiness, and unhappiness led in general to stupidity.

     It had been a beautiful, warm September day, with the sun slowly descending towards the horizon.  Arnie had been waiting when she got there, standing on the second story veranda of the mission style ranch, looking out over the lawn and down towards the waves.  She walked up next to him and leaned on the railing.  Without a word, he handed her a piece of white paper.  She read it while he watched the sea birds swooping for the waves.

     “Rube wants to transfer?  Why?” she asked.  “He’s a crew chief, his people are terrific.  He seemed so….contented when I was there in 2003.  Why take a demotion?”

     “Miss Angela,” Arnie said, and she looked at him.  His eyes told her what he hadn’t said, and all of the air had rushed out of her chest.  Rube wouldn’t be getting a demotion.  Arnie would be getting THE promotion.  It had been barely five years since Joey had left them, and usually, the new crew chief was good for ten or fifteen years, at the least.  Arnie and Joey had been her dearest, closest friends, ever since she had become undead.  Losing Joey had been unbearable, and this…this was just too soon.

     “Oh,” she said, quietly.  She quickly looked away, turning her attention back to the sea.  Salt pricked her eyes and she slid her sunglasses down to cover it.

     “I haven’t told them yes or no,” Arnie said, reaching over and squeezing her hand.  “They said it was my call, as current crew chief, but you would have been next in line.  I won’t okay this without your say-so.”

     She breathed deep and stared out at setting sun, casting the sky around the water a fiery orange.  She wasn’t territorial about being the next in line for the job, that didn’t matter to her.  Losing Arnie, who, for all his charming, old fashioned formality, was like a brother, mattered.  Being the last of the true old-timers mattered.  And why on earth Rube would want to leave Seattle mattered.  It had been his home for years and years.  His wife and daughter were buried there.  She thought back to recent letters and phone calls from him, from Mason, from George.  George had mentioned there had been a strange sense of distance that had been growing these last few years, and that had made the young woman sad, but otherwise, things seemed to have gone on.

     “He’s a friend, Arnie, and if he needs to come, I’d be happy to have him,” she finally said.  “I just can’t imagine what’s making him want to leave home.”

     She had been expecting him to call before he had expected to call.  She didn’t ask his motivations, because she knew he’d probably tell her when he arrived.  Instead, she had offered her home to him, and her friendship and contented herself to wait.

     Arnie had let her know when Rube’s flight was coming in, and she had gone to meet him, her happy face firmly in place.  If she ruminated on Arnie’s leaving too much, she knew she would lose her composure, and that wasn’t going to help anyone.  The navy nurse in her knew that what was important was soldiering on in the face of adversity, and so she would keep it together.

     He had been so relieved to see her standing there, ready with a ride and a smile.  He had never liked travel, and LAX must have looked like some fresh hell to him.  He had also been withdrawn, riding the whole way to her home largely in silence.  Her own mind drifted to Joseph Connell, Arnie’s predecessor.  Joey, a young Irish immigrant, who had died at the age of twenty-three in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and had transferred to Los Angeles not long after.  Joey, who had taken her hand in the chaos of police and detectives that filled her small house around the bodies of her and the man who had killed her, and led her into her new existence.  Who had yelled at her for contacting Andy, even if she did it in a way that he would never know it was her.  Who had fed her toast and tea when she cried, and told her time healed all pains.

     Joey had gotten his lights not long after she had returned from Seattle the last time.  She and Arnie had been asked to go with him as he made that reap, to shepherd their newest team member, a young man named Julio.  Watching Joey go into his lights had hurt more than she expected.  Angie had never had siblings, or even really cousins.  So it shocked her that the loss was so visceral, like a brother had died.  She and Arnie had gotten Julio settled in her guest house that night, and then sat in her living room.  She had made the investment a long time ago in one of those sound systems that holds tons of CDs and swaps them at random.  When “Danny Boy” started to play, she had broken down in sobs.  Arnie had sat there, murmuring comfort and rubbing her back.  His own face had been wet with tears.

     There was no one else nearly as old as she was.  Most of the current team had died in 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and then a small contingent from the late 1980s and early 1990s.  No one who she was close friends with.  She knew Marco was closest, but she had always maintained a distance rather than give him false hope.  The rest of the team had looked up to them more like parents, or leaders.  She didn’t know how she was going to get through this, even with Rube here. Rube was a dear friend, but looking at his face, she knew he was a man with troubles of his own.  So she had steeled her resolve and told herself that as soon as she had the new reaper settled, as soon as Rube was firmly in his place as crew boss, she would ask for a few days and she would go away somewhere and grieve.

     Taking Helen in hand gave her a focus.  The young woman was deeply catatonic from the whole experience.  It gave her something to think about, something to do.  But in the back of her mind, she felt adrift and alone for the first time since her death.  Rube’s questions were probably meant to help, but they made her tired, and maudlin.  After he had left, she went back to the drawer in her desk and removed the pile of photos.  One for every reaper who had come and gone before her, at least the ones who had pictures. 

     Harriet, who had died of when a horse kicked her as her wagon train had reached over the hills.  Jacob, killed in a shoot out in an old west saloon.  Charlie, killed in shipping accident.  Gabriel, a missionary priest who met his end falling through the railing of the choir loft of his church.  Li Chen, killed in an accident building the Southern Pacific railroad.  Susannah, drowned by a wave that caught her unawares on the beach.  Joey.  Arnie.  Katherine.  Marcus.  Tom.  So many now gone, and her left with her memories.  Placing them all carefully back into their drawer, she downed the rest of her wine, and took herself to bed.

     She had taken poor Helen with her on her reap, and then to the girl’s own autopsy.  She was slowly coming around to the reality of her afterlife.  On impulse, and because they were close, she took them to a nearby Catholic church she knew, one built in the old mission style, and catering largely to the disenfranchised in old Los Angeles.  She had been raised nominally Catholic, though it was more in name then in practice.  Christmas and Easter Catholics, her father had called it.  She hadn’t been to confession in over a year when she had died.  But spending so much time in old L.A., she had become close to Father Rob, who had been shepherding things here the last ten years.  She came to mass from time to time, and even engaged in the occasional, limited confession.  She knew he would be out this time of day, doing outreach with the homeless, so she slipped them both in through the Mary gate.

    Helen sat down in the back to think, and Angie pulled her scarf up over her head and walked up to one of the side chapels.  A Spanish style virgin and child stood tucked back in a niche, with a tiered table of votive candles in front of it.  Dropping money into the offering box, she took one of the long matches and used it to light a candle.  She kneeled at the prayer bench in front of the altar set up and set to asking for guidance.  “Hail Mary, full of grace….”

     Helen was sitting in the den with her, asking questions about her new position in life, when the phone had rung.  She had absently picked up the extension behind her.  “Hello?”

     “Rube’s gone, he’s gone, Angie, I don’t know what to do, tell me what to do,” said the voice on the other end of the line.  Hiccups and sobs muffled the voice, but she thought she knew who it was.

     “George?”  She forgot Helen was there and focused on the other end of the line, where George sounded like she was in full crisis mode.  About two minutes into the call, the door from the back yard opened, and Rube walked in.  She could only imagine what her expression looked like, as the situation suddenly illuminated and she understood what he had done.  Confusion warred with anger and sympathy all at the same time.

     After ten minutes or so, she finally had her calmed down enough to get all the details.  She made a note carefully on the pad of Cameron Kane’s name, to try to see what she could find, and then extracted George’s promise to hang in there.  She said good bye and then hung up.  Knowing Helen was sitting there; she took a deep breath and waited.  She heard the young woman get up and leave, and silently thanked her for her foresight.  Turning, she leveled her best steel-eyed gaze and said in a dead calm voice, “We should have this conversation in your living room.  Helen doesn’t need to hear it.”

     They had it out there, and slowly, through the conversation, an idea began to form for her.  She wasn’t sure of the direction of his affection, though she thought she could probably rule Mason out.  Of the remaining options, one made the most sense, but if she knew anything in the long, long afterlife, it was that love didn’t always make sense.  She had left him alone, and checked on Helen, who had gone on to bed.  Then, she had picked up her bag, gotten in her car, and driven.

     She hadn’t expected Rube to remember what day it was.  It had been a busy two weeks for him.  She drove towards the western end of Los Angeles.  Visiting hours were long over where she was going, but she had figured out the back way in years ago.  Leaving her car a few blocks over, she walked, careful not to be seen, and slipped in through some shrubberies.  After that, it was a matter of ghosting across the acres of land to the right section. 

     The headstones stood side by side, which was unusual for spouses, since they were rarely both military and usually, wives were buried in a double stack with their husbands.  Angie had died while in active service though, and so when arrangements were made, a space was reserved next to her for Andy’s eventual needs.  She sat down with her back against her headstone and pulled the bottle of champagne out of her bag.  “Hi, sweetheart,” she said to the silent stone next to her.  “Happy anniversary.  I miss you, my darling.”  She opened the bottle, and poured herself a small glass.  Drinking it down, she felt the tears come to her eyes.  Then she upended the bottle over the two of them, shaking it out for good measure.  “Maybe next year, we can actually touch each other.”  She stayed for a while, humming their song under her breath, and then she slowly rose and walked back through the night.

     As days went by, she avoided Rube for the most part, did her reaps, got Helen started on her day to day job, and tried to think of ways to help George.  She had her phone forwarded to her cell, in case she called.  And she pulled out her laptop and googled Cameron Kane.  What came up was an obituary in a trade publication of a high flying, ruthless corporate trader who died during 9/11.  Described in terms like piratical, brutal, and cold, it was not what she would consider flattering.  But there was still something at the back of her mind that she couldn’t place.

     One thing that had made Angie’s career as a reaper unique was how often she was loaned out.  She had a talent for coming in and being an unobtrusive assistant to local teams, and so about once every year, she was on a plane to somewhere, to help out with something.  Consequently, she knew reapers around the world, and most of them who used email were in her address book.  Being careful to exclude anyone who was currently posted to Seattle, she sent out a very basic query and waited.  Within hours, she had news.

**********************************

Part 4- It’s the End of the World As I Know It

     Rube was struck by the date too late when he went to borrow a pen after his died and found the marriage license in her drawer.  “Fucking beautiful.”  He knew her anniversary, because he had been there for it with her in Korea, three weeks before Andy had died.  He just couldn’t seem to get it together.  Though it was his bed, it felt like something from a hotel, where no matter how he twisted or turned, it just didn’t feel right.  And he was dreaming, either vivid dreams of George’s wheat gold hair or her soft, smooth skin, or he was imagining her leaving him, which was stupid.  He had left her, stranded there in Seattle, with the team falling apart and a boss who was fucking everything up. 

     He hadn’t been one for true self-loathing in years, not since Lucy had remarried after his death.  Penny had snapped him out of it that time, and he had got on with business.  But now, he found himself frequently returning to the bungalow behind Angie’s home when his work was done, pulling out his bottle of aged scotch and pouring a double.  Sometimes he would put on a record, but even songs seemed to draw him into his memories.

     He was frustrated, because he had received no answers from upper management about this Kane guy, and he felt guilty for the stress he had put George under.  He hadn’t realized how bereft she would be without him, and so he felt like the biggest shit in the world, figured she felt like she had lost her father all over again.

     And he was frustrated with Angie and how…fucking pissed she was at him.  He couldn’t quite understand why this was all so very personal to her, beyond her upset on George’s behalf.  Because the feeling he was getting was that this had all touched her personally, and that he was wrapped up too deep into it to figure it out.  Then, in a spate of scotch and jazz, he started putting names and comments together.  Joey had been the one to collect her after her reaper had gotten her lights. Joey had been her boss the last time she had been to Seattle.   Joey had gotten his lights shortly thereafter.  And then, Arnie, who had been her boss and friend, and now he was gone.  Shit, no wonder.   She was grieving her own losses, and he was just now realizing it.

     He was a little surprised three or four days after their initial confrontation when there was a knock on his door in the middle of the afternoon.  Angie was standing there with a paper in her hand and a look of shock on her face.  “I tried to call George directly, but she wasn’t answering.  We have a problem,” she said, handing it to him.

     It was a computer print off of an email.  “Angie,” it said.  “C.K. was sent to New Orleans in 2003 to replace a leaving reaper.  Sewed discord and dissension, caused many to shirk duties, disrupt the balance.  A year later, we had Katrina.  Be very wary, warn your friend to do the same.  No clue WTF upper management is doing.  Best, JJ.”

   “Who’s JJ?”

     Angie sat down at the little bistro table in the kitchen.  “JJ is JJ Montrose, one of the head reapers in New Orleans.  I did a three week stint there after Katrina.  That’s why I knew the name.”  She suddenly looked so very tired.  “It was a really awful time.  One of the older reapers, a guy name Boudreaux, was a voodoo Houdon in his life, and he was going on and on about the dangers of messing with the balances of the Universe and how this is what comes of ‘raising Kane.’”

    Rube grabbed a glass of water and set it in front of Angie.  She took a big sip and then put her head down on the table for a minute.  She wasn’t tiny the way George was, but right this second, she looked so small and so broken.  “Angie, I’m sorry.”

     “I know.  Me too.”  Her head had yet to leave the table.

     “For what?” Rube asked.  “I’m the one who has managed to make a clusterfuck of everything.”

     She sighed and turned her face so she was looking up at him with one eye.  “I’ve had…well, a lot of stuff on my mind, very little of it to do with you, and I think I took out all of that on top of what you might or might not have deserved.  That isn’t fair of me.”

     He suddenly laughed, for the first time in days.  “We are a really mess, aren’t we?” he chuckled.  “By the way, I know it’s late, but happy anniversary.”  He had expected her to laugh too, but instead, she suddenly dissolved into tears.  Shit, shit, shit. “Oh, Angela.”

     “I’m fine, I’m fine.  Dammit,” she said, sniffling and wiping at herself with her sleeve.  Finally, she stopped swipping and pulled out an old fashioned handkerchief.  “It’s just…Arnie used to be my person for that day, helped me do my little ritual, and all…and I didn’t realize how much I leaned on that until it was gone.  It felt…hollow this year.”  Soon, the tears had stopped.  She wiped her face clean and then accepted the cold wash cloth Rube handed her.  Her eyes were puffy but she at least had the ghost of a smile.

“You could have told me.”  Rube reached out and gave her hand a squeeze.  She just shook her head, and he realized in the midst of everything, no, she couldn’t have.  “I’m truly sorry.  I haven’t been a good friend, but I’m working on it.”

     She smiled and squeezed his hand back.  “So what now?” she asked.

     “I can send another note to upper management, but I am not sure it will do much good,” Rube said.  I’ve left four for the messenger already, and nothing.”

     “I’ll forward this on to George,” she said.  “And I can try to call Mason or Roxy, or Penny.  See what I can get moving on that end.” 

     Rube sat down and rubbed his temples.  “This is all my fault.”

     “What are you running from, Rube?  Really?”  He looked up into her face, into the eyes that lacked any judgment, that were so full of compassion it was almost physically jarring.  “I just want to help fix whatever all this is.”

     “I can’t…I’ve been fighting Angie, to keep it inside, under control, and its taking everything I have to just break even,” he said, his voice broken and strained.  “I feel like if I say it out loud, I might just combust.”

     She looked at him, stood, and walked over to the sink, where she opened the rough pine door with her foot and grabbed something.  Coming back, she hauled the kitchen fire extinguisher up and on to the table, setting it in reach.

     “Fucking smartass,” Rube mumbled.

     She laughed then, the husky laugh of a woman coming out of the fog of darker emotions.  “Let me try then.”  He looked up.  “It’s pretty damn clear you ran because something was troubling you on a very personal level.  And you are a fairly stoic man, so the only thing I can think of is love.”

     Rube felt all the blood drain from his face.  She went on, conversationally, like she wasn’t fucking reading his mind.  “It’s not Mason, because you have never been swish when it comes to guys, and besides, if that sort of thing turned you on, it would have been an issue decades ago.  Daisy’s beautiful, but she’s also vapid, and that’s not you either.  You and Roxy have been attracted to each other on a physical level, but not on an emotional one, and physicality in that case wouldn’t make you run.  How am I doing so far?”

     He grunted non-commitally and wished hard for a glass of scotch to materialize.  Instead she pushed her water in front of him.  He gratefully gulped some and waited for her to finish her devastating analysis.

     “That leaves two people,” she said.  “Penny and Georgia.  Penny would, to most outsiders, be the obvious choice.  A long simmering friendship suddenly flames to passion.  Very Harry and Sally.  But I know you, Rube Sofer, and you are also a contrary being, which Penny is not.  You met your match in Georgia Lass and that scares the crap out of you.  So the minute the attraction entered your mind, you gave yourself a million reasons why it was an awful idea, and you held on to those until they couldn’t keep you afloat anymore.  Then you jump ship.  And here you are.”

     Rube dropped his head back into his hands and muttered the only thing he could think of.  “Godfuckingdammit.”

     “Amen,” Angie replied.  “So, you told her, and she freaked, and you ran, or you got to the line of having it slip out and you ran?”  He continued to worry the space between his eyes with one hand and just held up two fingers.  She sighed a long-suffering sigh.  “I see.  For the record, I think I knew before you did.”

     Rube looked up at her.  “Through your scary witch-like powers, you knew this?”

     “You weren’t trying to protect me, Rube,” she said.  “In Seattle.  You were trying to save George pain.  And when she was in pain, you wanted to make it better.”

     “I was trying to teach her how to be a reaper.”  Rube looked up.  “She’s my student.”

     “And the pain you tried to spare her would have been a good teacher, but you tried anyways.”  She looked at him.  “She’s been special to you from the outset, it just took you time to realize how and why.”

     Rube really, really wanted that scotch now.  “Well, thanks for the head shrinking Angie.  Now that I have learned little I didn’t already know, I think you should go send George that email.”

     “Oh, Rube,” Angie sighed, shaking her head.  “When you are ready to stop running, let me know.  I’ll help however I can.  And think on this: I would do anything for one more minute in Andy’s arms.  Anything.  So if love comes along, you should hold tight and not let go.”

     She stood and left him sitting there, ruminating on the sad state of things.

***********************

Part 5-  Losing my Religion

     George was almost all cried out.  She felt…empty, like the person she had been was gone, and nothing was there to take its place.  She wasn’t seeing Roxy or Daisy or Mason…Mason, Mason, Mason.  She could use a good Mason inspired laugh right about now.  They had all run headlong into the line of bullshit Cameron fucking Kane had laid down, and she was pissed at them, and worried for them, and she missed them.  She had finally given in to her need for sleep and had bought something at the pharmacy.  It didn’t kill the dreams, but it tamped them down enough where she cried herself out without waking. 

     As she had been sorting her laundry the other day, she found a yellow post-it crumpled in the pocket of her jeans.  She had sat for a while, her fingers tracing the letters of his neat, efficient handwriting.  She thought he might have called her Peanut when he gave it to her, she couldn’t be sure.  She had always hated that nickname when he had been here, but now she would give just about anything to hear him call her that one more time.

     Her Trio had beeped at that point, indicating an incoming email.  She had almost ignored it, until Angie’s name had popped up.  She scanned the brief, forwarded message and Angie’s warning to be careful.    She quickly used the text option to send a message to the others, asking them to meet her at the restaurant the next morning.  However, when she got there, no one else came.  Starring at her oatmeal and her paper, she felt the last of her great good give-a-damn drain out.  She would do her job.  She would reap Hudson Hart.  And she would try to help her sister along the way.  So fuck Cameron Kane and the lot of them.  Then, when she was through, she was going to put in for a transfer.  Idly, she wondered if she could get posted to Los Angeles.  At least Angie was sane in a world upside down.

     She began to ghost in and out of the hospital, sneaking in changes of clothes for those times she didn’t have to be at Happy Time.  She even had a few wigs, a thoughtful gift from the usually less than thoughtful Daisy, that she switched out to alter her appearance.  She also started following Reggie from place to place.  She watched her serving frozen yogurt and ice cold lemonade from across the street.  Outwardly, Reggie seemed completely together, but George suspected otherwise.  Finally, she had gone into the little shop and interacted with her.  That should have been the end of it, but then Reggie had seen her at the hospital, and had forced her hand.  Now, she had shown up in time to see George get fired.

     This time, as they went back to the hospital, George tried to explain all the reasons she couldn’t take her sister in, tried to make her understand.  However, once she had been forced to reap Hudson right in front of her sister, she had found tears once more.  She had stopped Reggie’s self-destruction, but she had also confronted the fact that this was it.  She had to leave her family alone, for Reggie’s sake, or her sister would likely have a serious breakdown.  So she had hugged her, and told her how much she loved her, and then she had left her on the curb outside the house she and Joy now lived in.  Then she drove to a place overlooking the sound and sat, crying for everything she had lost, for everything she had never had, and for everything she never would.  She cried for her family, for her friends, and for the hole in her soul that Rube had left behind.  An hour in, she had called Penny. 

    The older reaper had welcomed her in to her home and made her tea.  When the tears started again, she held George and murmured comfort, stroking her hair.  Penny had been around long enough to have seen this sort of thing before, and she silently cursed the universe for taking everything that had made the afterlife worth living for her young friend.  Penny had heard Rube had disappeared, and had been shocked and more than a little suspicious.  The pieces of the puzzle weren’t making sense.  She had thought about doing a little investigation, but things had been busy, and she hadn’t had time. 

     What she hadn’t expected was the depth of Georgia’s reaction.  She had suspected for a long time that the girl felt something for her boss, but she had never imagined.  “You’ll get through this,” she said, patting George’s back as she lay huddled in a heap on her couch.  “It’s what life’s about.  Everything changes.”

     George gave a hiccupping, laughing sob.  “He said the same thing, almost, once.  Right after Betty…left.  I was so angry at him for that, but it’s the truth, isn’t it?”

     “Oh, kiddo,” Penny said, her own voice cracking with emotion.  “It’s the shittiest truth.  I wish you had been spared it.”

     “Angie said I should do my job, that it’s what Rube would want.”  The girl was wiping at her tears with a tissue that Penny had handed her.  “But with Cameron in charge, what’s my job?  This one reap has taken me days.  Days.”

     “I know,” Penny said.  “Something is going to have to give there.  But Angie is right, Rube would be proud of you for holding it together, even when everyone else took leave of their senses.  Now, try to sleep.  You look like you need it.”  Penny had pulled the blanket over her and left her to her own devices. 

******************************

Part 6- I’ve pushed you down deep in my soul for too long…

     Angie had tried calling Mason and Roxy, and had gotten no answer at all.  Tonight, Helen was out with Julio, Marco, and Hannah, having some fun.  “Don’t call me plastered at 3 am this time, okay?” she had said.  Helen’s eyes had been huge when they all left.  She sat, nursing a glass of wine and contemplating the phone call she was about to make.  On the one hand, it was going to be a betrayal of Rube, and it killed her to do it.  On the other, George needed back-up that was in the know, even if she herself couldn’t be informed.  Everything she was hearing about Cameron Kane sounded like he was a danger, and since she couldn’t go up there herself, she was going to give her friend a fighting chance to get through this.

     “Hello,” said the perky voice on the other end of the line.

     “Penny, it’s Angie,” she said.  “Are you alone?”  A thousand miles away, Penny looked down at her couch, where Georgia Lass had cried herself to sleep an hour ago.  Moving quietly into her bedroom, she pushed the door shut.

     “Angie, did someone call you about…”

     “Rube?  Yes, George did,” Angie said.  She tried to figure out how to proceed when Penny began ranting.

     “I could kill that son of a bitch,” she said.  “It’s all gone to hell up here, and Georgia...  Well, poor George.  And the rest of us….He was the first reaper I trained, Angie.  I feel like I lost my child or something.”  The tremor in Penny’s usually no nonsense voice was making this even harder.

     “Penny,” she said softly, her voice surprisingly calm and even.  The other woman stopped and drew a hard breath. 

     “Oh God, what now?” 

     “Penny, I need you to sit down,” Angie said, trying to be gentle, the way she had learned to be during her nursing program all those years ago.  “I am breaking a confidence by telling you what I am about to tell you, but I honestly am not sure how we are going to fix all of this otherwise.  So take a deep breath and try not to come unglued.”

     She could hear the creak of Penny’s rocking chair over the phone, and waited until her breathing had equalized.

     “Penny, Rube’s here.  In Los Angeles.  He transferred.” 

     “Oh, I am going to cut his balls off the next time I see him,” Penny growled softly.

     “I know you’re upset.  I was too.  But Penny, he’s…he’s broken right now.  He reached something he saw as an impossible chasm with no way to turn around, and so he threw himself into the abyss.”

     “Angela, I love you like a sister, but what the hell are you talking about?  Are you on drugs?”

     “I haven’t been sleeping, since...well, never mind.  He fell in love with her, Penny, and he talked himself into just enough rope to believe that was some kind of hanging offense.”

     “Angie, who are you talking about…Georgia?!”  Penny exhaled into the phone.  “Well, shit, that makes sense.  The only thing is she…”

     “Loves him too, I know.  She never said a word, assumed he would run from her,” Angie said.  “I feel very much like a cross between Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Friar Francis in Much Ado About Nothing.  I’m just not sure if this is a comedy or a tragedy yet.”

     “He has to come home, Angie,” Penny said.  “If he doesn’t, the balance could be thrown off completely.  George can’t balance it all alone, she already exhausted.  And she needs him, badly.”

     It was Angie’s turn to sigh into the phone.  “I know, Penny, but he may not be able to.  Like it or not, there are 5 reapers in that division, even if 4 of them are worthless at the moment.  It’s a full slate.  He can only go back if Upper Management okays it.”

     “How did things get this far?” Penny murmured.

     “Georgia’s stubborn, and Rube is the most unaware romantic in the world,” Angie said.  “I am working from this end, but I haven’t told Rube what George is feeling.  I can’t figure out how to.  And hell, I am not sure she’d even want me to say.”

     “She’d hate for you to say, but from where I am sitting, it might be necessary.”  Penny was rocking again, the creak of old wood crossing the miles.  “Do you have a speaker phone?”

     “Yes,” Angie said.  “On the kitchen extension, for when I am cooking.”

     “Have Rube in there tomorrow afternoon,” Penny said.  “I’ll make Georgia call.”

     “Penny, Kane is…”

     “I know,” Penny said.  “I can see it from here.  I’ll do what I can to keep them safe.”

    “You take care, you hear me.”  Angie’s voice dropped its calm veneer, revealing a treble of urgency and disquiet.  “More loss is not something I can handle just now.”

     “Angie?” Penny said, noticing the first time how not right her old friend sounded.  “Do you need to..”

     “Another day, hon.”  Penny started to protest but Angie stopped her.  “I just…not right now, Penny, please.”

     “Oh, Ang,” Penny breathed.  She was suddenly afraid for her friend, and grateful for what she was putting herself through.  “Thank you.”

     She hung up, and looked out the window, trying to see the stars.  Like a baseball through the glass, something deep inside her seemed to break.  She grabbed her keys and her purse and stood, knocking the chair over hard.  Moving quickly to the back entrance, Angie shoved her door open and came close to knocking Rube into the pool.

     “Whoa, where’s the fire?” he asked.  Something in her face made him stop and look closer.  Naked, complete heartbreak robbed her of her color, left her blanched out like old curtains too long in the sun.  Her hands were shaking so hard, she dropped the keys.  She stumbled as she tried to pick them up.  He stopped breathing for a second, before he realized that this had nothing to do with Seattle.  He stooped and took the keys from her.  His heart might be somewhere else, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a duty to these people, to this woman, his friend.  “I’ll drive,” he said softly, pushing Angie’s hair from her face.

     Her voice was a jagged whisper as she told him where to go.  The car slipped through the night silently, almost like a ghost of the Los Angeles of yesterday.  Warm winds, the last offering of the Santa Ana’s, ruffled her hair.  He parked the old Buick where she directed him, and then took her arm to steady her, letting her lead him to the gap in the fence and the hedge, and then across the silent ground.  She had jerked against him suddenly, like she was burned, and then sank to her knees in the grass.  He quietly lowered himself down near her and put his arms around her.  Her hand reached out to caress the soft marble in front of her.

     The noise she made was like nothing he had ever heard.  He had been standing with her when Andy had crossed into the light, on a god-forsaken road in Korea.  She had smiled, and told him she’d be with him soon, and a lone tear had slipped from her eye as he looked back one last time.  And then she had turned and started walking back up the road to their unit.  Her shoulders squared, her face calm.  This, though, this was a shattering in her, a grief and a loss delayed nearly sixty years, and then compounded with more pain, more loss, friends and family ripped from her life.  Her hands had clutched his arm tightly, so hard he was afraid she might crack his ulna.

     The…howl trailed off into keening sobs as Rube held her tight to his chest, gently rocking her in her anguish, stroking her hair, and murmuring words of comfort in Yiddish his grandmother had said to him when his mother had died, so many lifetimes ago, he hadn’t known he still knew them.  After a long while, the sobs had broken down to ragged breaths, and her hands had loosened their death grip on him.  His hand continued to idly smooth her hair, and he pressed a chaste, almost fatherly kiss to the back of her head.  “Shhhh, you’re okay,” he whispered. 

     Angela leaned her head back, resting it in the crook of his shoulder, and starring at the matched stones.  “I don’t…I just…it’s never been like that,” she whispered, trying to wipe her nose with her sleeve.  “I’ve never felt…why now?  I can’t afford to feel like this now.”

     “You never had the time to grieve before, at a moment where the grief was connecting with you,” Rube said.  “I’m sorry, Angela.  I brought grief to your door.  This is on me.”

     “No,” she said softly.  “I thought I was…I know that I’ll see him again someday.  But suddenly, tomorrow seems like too much time to wait.”  Her body seemed to grow heavier, as the high pitched energy she had been running on left, leaving her spent and exhausted. 

     “Come on, Angie,” Rube said, picking her up physically.  “Let’s get you home.”

     He sat in the chair next to her bed.  She had cried again on the way home, silent tears streaming down her face for most of the forty-five minutes it took to get back to the hills.  He had walked her inside, made sure she put on pajamas, and tucked her into bed.  Now, he sat there, contemplating what loss was truly like.  It had been so very long since he truly lost Lucy, lost Rose, that the ache was mostly dimmed.  Even being there when Rose had actually died, he mostly felt at peace that she had lived a long life and he could be there to give her a good death.

     But the feelings he had seen tonight, the pain and the anguish and the heartbreaking, crippling grief, he suspected were what waited for him at the end of the trail of sleepless nights and scotch he was currently traveling.  And deep inside, he knew it was of his own making.  No fickle finger of fate for him, just his own fear and self-loathing.  He closed his eyes, steepling his fingers to worry the spot on his forehead.  He could see her, the sun catching the streaks of pure gold in her hair.  He could smell the sweet, light floral of her shampoo.  He could feel the lithe weight of her in his arms, the last time he hugged her.

     “Rube.”  At the sound of Angie’s voice, he glanced up and opened his eyes.  She had turned on her side and she was staring at him.  “Rube, don’t be me.  You both deserve a little happiness.”

     He started to open his mouth, but she had finally drifted off to sleep.  He sighed, softly, and let himself out the bedroom door.

***************************

Part Seven- Goodbye, my almost lover

     George woke up late in the morning, but it didn’t really matter.  There was no new reap on her Trio.  Penny must had heard her stirring from the kitchen, because she came out and set a bowl of cinnamon raising oatmeal and a cup of coffee on the table.  “Morning,” the older woman said, settling into the wing chair cattycorner from the couch.

    “Uggghhhh,” George mumbled.  She had slept, but not rested.  Last night’s dreams…she was standing in Rube’s empty apartment, looking into his eyes.  ‘What’d you expect?  I never gave you cause to think I’d want a skinny little thing like you, Peanut.’  And then he’d turn and leave her paralyzed in the middle of the room.  “What time is it?”

     “Almost one in the afternoon,” Penny replied, sipping her own coffee.  “Saturday, though.”

     “I don’t have a job any more now anyways.”  George stretched hard, trying to get the crick out of her neck.  “Every day is Saturday now.”  A sudden memory, of a Saturday when it happened to be her birthday, and Rube had made her a cake that involved so much chocolate it should be criminal.  She blinked quickly to clear the tears that were trying to come. 

     Penny reached out and squeezed her arm.  “Have you talked to Angie lately?  She sounded worried about you the other day?”

     George sighed.  “Not since her email.  I’ve been…busy.”  Penny nodded at her and handed her the cordless handset from its cradle.  Then she picked up her own coffee and headed out towards the balcony of the apartment.

     The phone rang twice on the other end of the line before anyone picked up.  “Hello?” Angie said.  For the first time, George heard how exhausted and flat she sounded.

     “Angie?  It’s me,” she said.  “Is this a bad time?”

     “George?  No, its fine.  I have one of the group here with a birthday tonight, so I have the phone on speaker while I am baking.”  She could hear the clatter of what sounded like a spoon in a metal bowl  and the forced cheer Angie injected into her tone.  “How are you?  Did your reap ever come together?”

     “Did it ever,” George mumbled.  She spent the next couple of minutes pouring out to Angie all the anguish of things with Reggie and her connection to Hudson, how it had cost her the last connections to her family, had cost her Happy Time.  “And Cameron seems to be ignoring me now, so, you know, I find myself with a lot of leisure time.”  What had meant to sound ironic ended up sounding bitter.

     “Oh, George,” Angie said, her own sadness palpable.  “George, the other night, you told me something, about Rube, and what he meant to you.”

      George stiffened.  “Angela, please.  I can’t…”

     “Sweetie, I had a little breakdown last night,” Angie said.  In Los Angeles, Rube was starring at Angie like she was growing a second head.  “There’ve been things…and well, that isn’t important.  But I was sitting out at Andy’s grave, and I thought of everything I’d wished I’d said, or said more.  And it made me feel better.  I think you might feel the same.”

      George sighed on her end, hard, and leaned her head into her hands, the phone cradled against her shoulder.  “What do I tell him, Angie?  That he was the best thing in my world?  That he meant so much more to me than just a friend, just a teacher?  That I’ve been dreaming of him kissing me senseless, of his hands running over my body, and I wake up wanting him so bad it fucking hurts?  That I loved him more than I can say?  Sorry, Angie, but this isn’t making me feel better in the least.”

     In southern California, Angie heard the softest whisper of “Oh, Georgia…” from where Rube sat at the bar.  He was far enough away that the phone didn’t pick it up.

     “It was worth a shot, Georgia,” she said.  “You hanging in there?”

     “Yeah,” she mumbled.  “You okay?”

     “No.  I’m not.  But the show must go on,” Angie said.  “You call me, you need me, ok?”

     “Sure,” George said.  “I need to go, I’m at Penny’s and I don’t want to run up a phone bill.  Thanks, Angie.”

     “It’ll all come out in the end,” Angie said.  “Have a good day, hon.”

     George clicked the handset off, and then forced herself to drink some coffee and eat some oatmeal.  It was time to focus on what comes next.

     In Los Angeles, Rube had gone so very, very pale, Angie was afraid he would faint.  “Why?” he murmured.  “Why would she love…it makes no sense!”

     “Love never does,” Angie sighed, and handed Rube a glass of scotch.  “You’re a good man, with a good heart.   And you aren’t bad looking. So it’s not a complete surprise.”

     “Why did you…what good does it do?  I asked for a transfer, I got the transfer,” Rube said.  “They won’t send me back because I might get asked to the prom.”

     “Then again, for a crew chief as good as you, they might,” Angie said.  “All you can do is ask.” 

     George was surprised when her phone rang on her drive home.  Not the Trio, but the old cell phone in the bottom of her bag.

     “Hello?”

     “M..m…mille?” came the voice on the other end of the line.  George felt herself sigh.  She knew what this call was, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure she could do it.  Her losses were so palpable, so fresh she didn’t think she could bear anyone else’s.  But this woman had been her friend for going on seven years now, and she couldn’t just abandon her.

     Twenty minutes later, she was standing there with Delores in the back room of the vet’s office, her own eyes a little wet with tears.  Murray was a really good cat, and she knew he had been suffering, but…well…she was just so tired of death and loss.  Squeezing Delores’s arm, she watched Murray’s soul separate from his body and hop off the table.  The little ghost cat walked up and rubbed his head against Delores’s leg before passing through the door behind them, heading out to meet his reaper in the waiting room.

     After she made sure Delores would get home okay, George got back into her car, ready to go home and end the worst week she had had since she became undead, when her Trio vibrated.  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she muttered and dug the damn thing out.  A text from Mason popped up on the screen.  ‘Meet us at Cameorn’s.  Bring chocolate and graham crackers.  Mason.’

     “Not fucking likely,” she growled, and kept driving.  A few minutes later, the damn thing buzzed again.  ‘Georgie.  Turn around and get the stuff.  You won’t regret it.  Mason.’

     “I am going to fucking kill all of you,” she said to the little piece of plastic.  Sighing, she pulled a u-turn at the light and headed back to the grocery story she had passed.

     Angie had left Rube sitting in the kitchen and gone to the store.  It really was Julio’s birthday, and everyone was supposed to gather tonight for dinner and cake and such, and she needed the supplies for punch.

     He sat watching the ice melt in his scotch, ruminating, when the door behind him opened.  He turned, expecting Helen or Angela, and was surprised to see Marco standing there.  The younger man, who had had since learned had been killed in a case of mistaken identity in the late 1950s by the mob, gave him an appraising look.  “You look like shit, Sofer.”

     Rube tried to muster disapproval, but he couldn’t get there.  “What did you need, Marco?”

     “I ran into Angie earlier this morning after her reap.  She needed to get some chairs down from the attic for Julio’s party, so I said I would come do it,” he replied, helping himself to a can of Fresca from the fridge.  He looked at Rube.  “You want to talk about it?”

     Rube looked up at him, thinking of how they had had nothing but an antagonistic relationship from the start.  Oh well, why the hell not?  “I put in to transfer because of what I thought was unrequited love, and it turns out, it wasn’t.”

    “Wasn’t love?” Marco asked, pulling over one of the chairs from the breakfast table.

    “Wasn’t unrequited.” 

     D’Gorgio winced hard.  “That’s rough, man.”  They sipped their drinks in silence for a few minutes.  Rube wasn’t expecting it when Marco spoke again.  “I’m sorry.  Loving someone you think doesn’t love you sucks.”

     Rube gave him a raised eyebrow.  “Anyone I know?”  Marco blushed, a deep crimson red.  Rube made the connection suddenly.  “Oh.”

     It was the younger man’s turn to sigh.  “Yeah, well, it is what it is.  I know that it’s an impossible dream.  Every time I asked myself whether I was better off leaving, I realized I’d rather have Angie in my life some way rather than no way at all.  So, what are you going to do, now that you know?” 

     “I don’t know,” Rube replied.  “I don’t know if I can get the transfer rescinded.  I’ve already got a replacement in Seattle.  And I…I had them tell my team I had gotten my lights.  I’m afraid she’ll hate me for that.”

     “So, that’s it?  You aren’t even going to ask?” Marco shook his head.  “I have to say, Sofer, you didn’t strike me as a coward.”

     Rube laughed a little sadly.  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to ask.  I just don’t have a lot of hope, at this point.”

     Marco set his drink down and picked up a kitchen towel Angie had left on the counter, worrying it with his hands.  “When you write that request, can you do me a favor?”

     “If I can,” Rube answered, watching him.

     “Ask them to give Angie some time off,” Marco said.  “I don’t know if it was you coming with your troubles, or Arnie leaving so soon after Joe, who also loved her in silence, by the way.   But…I’ve known her all my afterlife, Rube, and she’s never been …hurting, like this, before.”

     “She’d be the first in line to be my replacement, if they let me go back,” Rube said.  “I’m not sure they’d let her go.”

     Marco shook his head.  “Before, when Arnie had to do something, and Angie would be seconded somewhere, I’ve covered it.  I could again, if it means seeing her really smile again.”

     Rube considered that, and then nodded.  “I’ll do what I can.”  Marco nodded back, and stood up.  Rube joined him, surprising the younger man.  “I’ll help you get those chairs down.  And thanks for being Angie’s friend, Marco.  I know it probably hasn’t seemed like it, but I do care about her happiness a lot.”

     “You and me both, brother,” Marco said.  Together, they headed for the stairs that gave access to the attic.

     Rube wrote to letter to upper management that night before the party, leaving it taped to his door for the messenger.  He watched Angie and Marco that night at the party.  Angie had a smile on her face, and she laughed, and joked, and sang Julio a happy birthday.  But looking at her eyes, Rube saw the emptiness of grief.  And across the room, Marco tracked her with his own eyes, like something between a stalker and a guardian angel, watching her face and her mannerisms, and seeming to be hurting for her in sympathy.  He sighed.  Sometimes, he wondered what kind of cosmic joke this universe was.

     **************************

     She walked in to find her…were they still her friends?  She really didn’t know anymore.  But there they all were, Mason, Daisy, and Roxy, in front of a roaring fire.  “Why did you guys ask me to bring graham crackers and chocolate to Cameron’s?” she asked, carrying the bag.

     “Because Cameron already had marshmallows,” Roxy shot back.  In that instant, George felt her anger level spike, and her hand shifted to heft the bag and throw it in a parting shot before storming out.  “What did I miss?”

     “Cameron’s going away party,” Roxy practically purred.  George raised an eyebrow.

     Daisy laid her hand on Mason’s arm.  “Mason, be a dear and put another leg on the fire.”

     Leg?  Surely she had heard that wrong.  Then Mason actually picked up a leg, clad in some kind of designer suit.  George nearly dropped the bag.

*********************

     Everyone had wandered away shortly before midnight, leaving Helen and Marco and Rube with Angie to clean up.  Marco had wisely taken Helen into the kitchen and put her to work drying the wine glasses and punch cups he was washing, leaving Angie and Rube to pick up the wrapping paper from the presents and the paper plates from the cake.

     Rube watched Angie reach up to push a curl out of her face, forgetting she had just picked up a plate covered on the edges with frosting.  A smear of cream cheese frosting crossed her cheek.  “Oh, for crying out loud,” she mumbled.  Rube handed her a paper towel and watched her scrub at the spot.

     “You okay?” he asked, holding open the trash bag for her.  She reached over and dropped the scrap in.

     Angie shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t know anymore,” she said, quietly.  “I don’t feel like spun glass like last night, but I don’t feel like…I don’t feel like me either.”

     Rube nodded, sadly.  “I wish I could fix it,” he said, his voice soft.  She looked up at him, and smiled a ghost of her normal happy smile. 

     “There may be no fixing it.”  Reaching back, she grabbed a piece of wrapping paper that had gotten caught in the cushions of her sofa.  “No one promised me a rose garden, Rube.  I’ll get by.”

     Just then, the phone rang.  Handing the piece to Rube, she picked up the extension.  “Hello?”  After a minute, she exclaimed, “They did what??!”

     Rube looked at her, as she began to giggle, and then chuckle, and then laugh, deep and well.  “Oh, Georgia, that may be the best news I’ve had all week.  Thank you for letting me know.  You too, honey.  Good night.”

     “What?” Rube asked.  Angie collapsed into another hysterical fit of laughter on the couch.  Marco had stuck his head quickly around the corner, but seeing it was mirth and not tears that shook her, he pulled Helen back into kitchen with him.  “Angie, what is it?”

     “Has anyone told you your people are seriously twisted?” she asked, wiping the tears that laughing so hard had caused to run down her face.  “Cameron Kane appears to no longer be a problem.”

     “What do you mean, no longer a problem?” Rube said.  “Where did he go?”

     “As I understand it, into the fireplace in pieces.”  Angie watched the look of shock, confusion, and a little bit of horror pass over his face.  “I always tell new kids, just because reapers regenerate in normal circumstances, doesn’t mean we can’t be destroyed with very concentrated effort.”

     “Upper management is not going to like this,” Rube muttered, rubbing the space between his eyes.  “Killing a fellow reaper…”

     “I suspect they like it just fine.”  He looked up at her.  “I think they wanted Kane dealt with, couldn’t do it themselves for some reason, and they needed reapers with the stones to do it.  Roxy and Mason and Daisy are nothing, if not ballsy.  Idiots, occasionally, but ballsy.  So there we are.  Oh, and George is going to have his ashes shot into space with someone named…Mickey? Murphy?”

     “Murray,” Rube amended.  “Her friend’s cat.”

     “So,” Angie said, looking at him.  “It comes to my mind that there is a slot open in Seattle again.”

     “It appears there is,” Rube said.  Angie starred at him as he sat there, deadpan, slowly tossing more plates into the hefty bag.

     Finally, Angie exploded.  “I swear to God, Rube, if you don’t go write that request…”

     “I wrote one this afternoon,” Rube said, smiling at her.  “It was gone earlier when I went over to check the list and get the good scotch.  I’m not a complete moron.  Now, we wait.”

***********************************************************************************

     Two days after the Cameron cookout, they had shot him and Murray into the stratosphere.  She had been a little surprised the others had shown up to watch.  Even with their…odd solution to the problem, she still felt like there was this distance, from the way things used to be.  It made her acutely aware again of how much Rube had been the glue to hold their team together.

     Now, as she watched her mother and sister round the corner and pass out of her afterlife, she noticed the first flutter of yellow.  In moments, the shower of post-it notes had covered her and her car.  Looking up towards the sky, all she could do was mutter, “I’m so fucked.”

     Rube showed up at Angie’s patio door late that night, not surprised to find her sitting up in her pajamas and robe with a glass of wine.  He had seen the den light on at all hours for almost two weeks now, and the dark circles under her normally bright eyes seemed to grow a little darker every day.  He knocked quietly, and when she waved at him, pushed the door open and came in.  Instead of taking one of the end chairs near the sofa, he sat down on the coffee table across from her.

     She looked up at him, a shade better than she had been, but still pale and empty compared to how she normally was.  He reached out and squeezed her hand carefully, then handed her the plain white piece of paper that had come with the list that night.

     Angie’s hands shook slightly as she took it, a similar circumstance too fresh in her memory not to pierce her with pain.  She unfolded the paper carefully, and read the black, times new roman typeface.  Who would have thought that Upper Management would use Microsoft Word.  “So, you’re going home?”

     “With a…well, it’s a probable demotion, unless the new head reaper wants to share the job,” he said.

     “You don’t know who it is, do you?” she asked, setting the wine down.  He shook his head.  “It’s George.  She was…notified this morning.”

     Rube laughed at that.  Laughed, and kept laughing.  “Well, I suppose that all depends on whether or not she decides to kill me and shoot me into space for being a moron.”  He nodded at the paper.  “Keep reading.”

     Angie turned her attention back to the paper for the time being.  “Seattle?  But if you’re leaving…?”

     “You will be the permanent head reaper, but Upper Management needs help fixing everything Cameron screwed up, without exhausting everyone up there,” Rube said.  “Marco will run things here in the meantime.  I suggested he stay at your place, with Helen, so she could have a little company and the messenger didn’t have to make too many quick changes.”

     Angie nodded.  “When?”

     “Tomorrow,” Rube said.  “I was going to book the tickets as soon as we spoke.  We’d leave right after handing out assignments in the morning.”

     Angie nodded, and moved to her desk, booting her laptop.  “What’s your persona these day?”

     “Rube John Sofer,” he answered.  “I’m beyond the age where people who knew me are still alive.”

     She nodded, and pulled a credit card out of her drawer.  He watched as she typed quickly and efficiently, and within a couple of minutes, her printer was making a whirring noise.  “Two tickets on the noon flight from LAX to Sea-Tac.”

    “And where do we fly through this time?” Rube asked, groaning.  Thoughts of screaming babies and changing planes made his head hurt.

    “We don’t,” Angie said.  She handed him the e-ticket.  His eyes went up when he saw the price.  “First class, straight flight.  Happy early birthday.”

    “Angie,” he started to say.  She shook her head, giving him a look.  “Thank you.”

    “Don’t screw this up,” she said.  “Now go, I have to pack.”

    The L.A. crew had bought him breakfast, to see him off, and seemed a little sad to see him go, but also relieved that the status quo of generations had been restored.  Angie had quietly pulled Marco aside, hugged him, and said thank you.  Rube was just close enough to hear him whisper, “Anything for you, gorgeous.”  Then she had pulled away and tossed him the keys, so he could drive them to the airport and then head to her place after his reap.

    Three hours later, they landed at Sea-Tac, where Angie headed over to the counter of one of the major rental agencies and took a car for the week in the name of Margaret Turner.  Rube thoughtfully carried their bags to the car, and soon they were headed through traffic.  They knew George would have gotten a note in the list for the day stating they would arrive in the afternoon.  Angie drove them to her family home and dropped off their things, then pulled out her cell phone and made the call.

     “Hey Angie,” George said.  Ah, the wonders of caller id.  “Did you get in okay?”

     “Yeah, smooth flight,” Angie replied.  “I have your replacement reaper with me, where do you want to meet up?”

     George was quiet for a minute.  “Der Waffle Haus is…well, we think that might be where…anyways, I had everyone meet at Beth’s Cafe, on Aurora this morning.  Why don’t we meet there in an hour?”

     Angie scribbled the address.  “Great, we will see you then.”

     “Will I like the new person, Angie?” George asked, in a sad voice.  “I…well, I don’t have a lot of energy right now for…”

     “I suspect you will like them just fine, kid,” Angie replied, looking sideways at Rube.  “Hang in there, George.  I promise, it’s all going to be much better.”

     Angie found the small diner, tucked into a row of brick buildings in the Green Lake district.  She parked the fairly non-descript black Toyota coupe, and got out.  She turned to talked to Rube and found him sitting in his seat, belt still fastened, starring through the tinted windshield.  Seated at a booth in the window of the building, George sat with her head bent over something, chewing on the end of her pencil.  Angie thought she could make out Roxy’s uniform hat across the booth, but the view was blocked by a parked van.

     “You coming?” she asked him, softly.  Rube sat, just starring, his fingers worrying the zipper of his jacket.  “Rube.  Rube, you can’t just sit here all day.”

     “She’s gonna hate me,” he whispered.  “I abandoned her.”

     “She’ll be pissed at you,” Angie said, sitting back down into the seat.  “Maybe for a while.  But she also loves you, and in the end, that will win out.”

     “I hope so.” He sighed, and rubbed the space between his eyes with his fingers. 

     Angie suddenly gave a manic little chuckle.  “Worst case scenario, I lock the two of you in a small room together until you figure it out.”  Rube looked up at her and raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t think I won’t.”

     He harrumphed at her and shook his head, then got out of the car.  Together they headed for the door.

     When the bell rang as they entered, George and Roxy didn’t even look up.  They weren’t expected for another fifteen minutes after all.  Thus far, Mason and Daisy were nowhere to be seen.  Angie nodded at the hostess and then towards their friends, and led, walking softly on the crepe soles of her heels.  She was almost to the table, with Rube just behind her, when Roxy looked up from the police paperwork she had been filling out. 

     Her eyes had lit on Angie’s face and a smile started to form when she had caught sight of the man behind her.  “Jesus fucking Christ.” George looked up at that, her attention drawn from the crossword she had been doing.  She looked at Roxy’s line of sight and then turned, slowly.  Her eyes flickered past Angie immediately and took in Rube.  The pencil slipped from her lips and clattered to the table as she starred hard.

     Behind her, Angie could hear Rube take a slow, shuddering breath.  She set her own smile, and nodded at the table.  “Roxy, George, it’s nice to see you.”

     Emotions played over her young friend’s face, shock, disbelief, joy, and anger.  Anger finally won.  “What the hell, Angie!?”  She stood as though she was thinking about storming out, and Angie felt herself snap, just a bit.

     “Georgia L. Lass, sit your fucking ass down on the goddamn bench, right this instant,” she said, her voice quiet and deadly calm, but conveying a level of menace that made Roxy sit up straighter and take notice.  Behind her, near the door, she could hear Mason and Daisy arrive arguing.  “Give me the reaps I need to start working on.  Roxy, Mason, and Daisy are coming with me.  You two will stay here and hash this out between you, or so help me God, I will terminally end both of you.  Do I make myself completely fucking clear?”

     George had gone white and returned to her seat.  Roxy quickly tossed money on the table for her half-eaten sandwich and got her stuff together.  Angie turned to Rube, whose eyebrow was raised at the stream of profanity.  “Go. Sit. Fix. Now.”  With that, she took the pile of post-its that George was now holding out, turned and stalked out, grabbing Daisy and Mason by the arms like recalcitrant children as she passed.

     Rube and George starred after her wake as she left, and then faced each other.  “Can I sit?” he asked, nodding to the bench Roxy had vacated.  George shrugged at him and turned back to her paper, picking it up and hiding behind it.  Rube slid into the booth and let some time pass, waiting.  Finally, he reached his hand out and touched the back of hers gently.  “Georgia?  George, I…”

     “Why?” she asked in a whisper.   “What did I do wrong?”

     “Oh, Peanut,” Rube breathed.  “You did nothing wrong.  I…my feelings for you…I thought they were inappropriate, and I couldn’t….I couldn’t feel what I was feeling and be around you all the time and not…I was trying to save you pain.”

     “By fucking leaving?”  George asked, agony raw in her voice.  “By letting us all think you were gone for good?  Do you know what that feels like?  Like someone ripped my heart right the hell out of my chest, that’s what it fucking feels like.”

     “I’m sorry.”  He sat for a minute, unaware of his thumb gently rubbing the back of her hand.  “I just didn’t imagine…couldn’t imagine…why me, George?  I’m…hell, I’m old enough to be your great, great, great grandfather.”

     “I think death nullifies the whole cradle-robbing argument,” she mumbled.  Using the sleeve of her jacket, she snuffled and then wiped at the tears that had trailed down her face.  “You always gave a shit whether I was doing the right thing.  You pushed me to be better.  You treated me like an adult, but you still tried to protect me from the stupid stuff.  You called me on my bullshit.  You’re a good man, a good looking man, and somewhere, you became the man…the one I thought of.  One of those things worth sticking around for.”

     Rube rubbed the space between his eyes.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

     “Why didn’t you tell me?” she shot back.  “I figured you would ‘Oh, Peanut,’ me and run the other way.  So it was better to have you in my life someway…”

     “Then no way at all,” he finished.  He could almost hear the light Italian accent in the back of his mind.  He sat there for a moment, then looked up into her eyes.  “I love you, Georgia.”

     “Yeah, well, I…you know…you too.”  Suddenly she reached over the table, and punched him hard in the shoulder.  “I’m also totally pissed at you.  Don’t ever do that to me again.”

     Rube chuckled, slowly, and it built into a laugh.  Suddenly, George started laughing too.  “We are two crazy fucked up individuals, Peanut.”

     “You remember when I said not to call me that anymore?” she said.  Rube stopped laughing.  “I’m sorry.  I missed that when…when I thought I’d never hear it again.  I missed it a lot.  I just always thought you saw me as…well, as a replacement for Rosie.”

     Rube was quiet for a while, his thumb still rubbing against the back of her hand in a sort of a hypnotic way.  “You’ll never know this, George, and I am sorry for that, but…there’s no replacing your child.  You see aspects of them in other people.  Rose was fearless, even when she was little, just like you are, and that reminded me of her.”  He stopped again, seeming to consider his phrasing.  “But it also reminds me of her mother, because that’s where she got it from.  I have always loved women who were fearless, and you may be the most fearless woman I ever knew.”

     She smiled her self-satisfied, smirk-y George smile at him, and turned her hand, squeezing his.  “So….”

     Rube looked back at her.  “So?”

     “Well, you know, I am a little behind you in the experience category on this,” she said, fiddling with her pencil with the other hand.  “So, I guess…well…what happens now?”

     Rube paused to think on that.  He had scrupulously stayed the hell out of her private life, after finding out about the rich asshole that she had let…well, part of him still wanted to track the kid down and skin him alive.  “Well, if you have a reap for me, I should go do that.  Or a reap for you, we could go do that,” he said.  “My stuff is at Angie’s house here, since my furniture is all down in Los Angeles.  But, what I’d really like to do is have dinner, just you and I.  And since the others may want to talk to me, if not tonight, maybe tomorrow?  I could even cook for you, at your place, if you want.”

     George nodded.  “Like a first…date, I guess then?”

     “Something like that.”  He watched as she seemed to be thinking about it.  “Or, you know, we could do something that you want to do.  You are the boss now.”

     That earned him the stink eye from her.  “I am still finding post-its in my car.”  She paused and looked at him.  “You don’t mind, not being the list guy?”

     “It’s a lot of work, George,” he said.  “I’m here to help with it, but it’s actually kind of a relief to let someone else do it for a while.”

     They sat for a minute.  Finally, George looked at him.  “I don’t have a reap for you yet.  You officially start back tomorrow.  I have one at the Space Needle, in about an hour, if you want to come.”

     Rube smiled softly.  “I’d really like that.”  She reached for her purse and tossed some money on the table. 

     They made it out to her car, where he stood aside so she could unlock his door.  Suddenly, George turned and grabbed the lapels of his coat.  Pulling with a force that belied her small stature, she leaned back into the car, brought one hand up to his head and pulled his lips down to meet hers.

     This was no soft and gentle, flower petals and kittens first kiss.  It was hard and brutal, full of all the pain and loss and grief and need that had warred in her in the last few weeks.  Rube groaned against her lips as she opened them to him and he claimed her mouth, his own need to taste her overwhelming any thoughts he might have had about how this was a very public parking area, and how other people probably thought he was making out with his own daughter.  His arms went around her and drew her close.

     George could taste the peanuts he had eaten on the plane as his tongue ran over hers and then traced her teeth.  Her nails raked into his hair as she moaned softly.  After a few minutes, when the need for air overcame everything else, they pulled apart.  “Explain to me why breathing should be so important?” she gasped.  “We’re dead.”

     “Gotta blend in with the living, Peanut,” Rube replied.  He brought one hand up and ran his thumb over her lip, which looked a little swollen.  He cringed at the idea he might have hurt her physically.  “I’m sorry.”

     “I’m not,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.  There was a surety there that made her seem older than her years.  Looking at her watch, she sighed.  “We should go, death waits for no reaper.” 

     Rube stepped back to let her pass, then got in the car.  He waited for her to get in, then reached over and took her hand for a moment, kissing the back of it gently.  “We’ll have time.”

     George looked at him and nodded, then cranked the mustang’s engine and headed for the city’s biggest tourist attraction. 

     Mason had pinged her Trio, asking her to bring Rube by Angie’s when they got done with her reap.  George briefly lamented the possibility of alone time, but she wanted to see Angie.  In all their emails and phone conversations, she couldn’t remember her ever using a curse word stronger than shit.  Her friend had always looked so put together, back when she had come to see them all through that heat wave.  Today, her clothes were impeccable, but beneath her make-up, she looked wan with dark circles beneath her eyes.  It was scaring the shit out of George that the sweetest, nicest, most together person she knew seemed on the verge of her own meltdown.

     She had asked Rube about it as they had driven back across town, but he had simply sighed deeply and shook his head, his right hand coming up to worry the space between his eyes.  George reached over and squeezed his free hand softly.  They were quiet after that, until George pulled up in front of the lovely old craftsman home in an older part of the city.  Her family’s old house wasn’t far from here.  Rube reached over and squeezed her knee, then got out.

     He pulled a key out of his pocket and let them in.  Mason, Daisy, and Roxy were all sitting around the table, eating pizza off paper plates.  They looked up at the door opening.  Rube raised an eyebrow, and Roxy nodded to a set of French doors off the other side of the living room.  He started to turn that way, but George put her hand on his arm.  “I got it,” she said.  Stepping away, she walked over and knocked lightly, then pushed the stained glass door open.

     Angie was curled up in an oversized wing chair, a glass of wine on the table near her, and a silver frame George had never seen before in her hand.  She hadn’t looked up when George walked in to the room, just sat starring.  That’s when George noticed the yellowed envelope sitting next to the glass.  “Angie?” she said softly.  Grabbing the old wooden desk chair on casters, she scooted it over and sat down near her.  “Angie, what can I do?”

     Her friend looked up, and the old, sweet sadness in her eyes was gone, replaced by a deep, dark pain that seemed to be draining the life out of her.  A rasping sigh escaped, and she handed George the frame.  “Our friends Eddie and Gwen took that, right before Andy shipped out for the last time and I was sent to L.A.  At a USO dance at the O-club.”  She paused.  “I broke the rules, big time.  I took on the name Katherine Lord, an homage to our favorite movie, and I faked a will that left me parts of the estate I knew he wouldn’t care about.  I got a job as a veteran’s social worker, to be close to him.  I even invented a back story that I knew his wife in Seattle when we were kids, that we had been best friends.  We’d get together two, three times a year to reminisce about his Ella.”

     George handed the picture back.  “Charlie didn’t give a shit?”

     “No, but Joey used to ride me about it,” she said.  “I never let Andy know though.  It was enough to be near him, like a heroin addict on methadone.  And then, he got shipped out to Korea, and next thing I know, Rube and I are traveling around doing USO shows for the troops…spreading cheer and death from Seoul on up.  And then I got his name.  And I was so angry, because I knew he wasn’t my last reap, I knew he would be going on without me.   But I did the job, because that’s who I am. I’m the girl who does her duty.”

     She set the picture down and took up her glass, drinking deep.  When she set it back down, she picked up the envelope.  “In a war, everyone writes one of these.  You stick it in your Bible, you stick it in your footlocker, in your knapsack.  I had one, and I was in Hawaii or L.A. the whole time.  Because you never know when you might not come back.”  She reached out and handed it to George.

     She looked at it, then back up at her friend.  “It’s unopened,” George said softly. 

     “When Andy…when he was ready to cross, the last thing he said to me was, ‘My letter, darling, it’s in my footlocker, in that old Dashiell Hammett we used to read at the beach.  Read it.  I love you.”  Angie’s voice broke softly.  “He had made Katherine his next of kin at some point, which I didn’t know then.  So a month after Rube and I got rotated out for another team, this huge delivery shows up at my office.  It was his footlocker, and his effects, and this was in there, right where he said it would be.  And I couldn’t…I couldn’t read it, because then he was really gone.  So I put it in my desk.  And in the desk after that.  I’ve been putting it in my desk for over fifty years, because I thought opening it would be like saying my quota wouldn’t come up one day soon.”

     “Angie, I’m sorry,” George said.  “If Rube…if our blindness caused this, I’m sorry.”

     “Wasn’t that.  I just had one too many losses, and no one left to lean on who really got that about me.”  Angie took another large sip.  “I need you to do something for me, George.”

     “Anything,” she whispered back. 

     “I need you to open it.  To read it to me,” she said.  “I need to know what it says, but I…I can’t do it myself.  And could you ask Rube if he could…I’d like you both to be in here.”

     George got up and opened the door.  “Rube,” she said softly.  He looked up at her and rose.  When the others started to, she said quietly.  “Just Rube.”  Mason looked hurt, but Roxy nodded, and nudged the other two.  They got their things together and quietly slipped out towards the front door.

     Rube crossed to the door, and entered after George stepped aside.  He looked at Angie, and sighed, softly, before going to her and giving her a hug.  George returned to her seat and looked at the aged envelope in her hands, with the faded brown letters reading “Angela”.  Taking the silver handled letter opener from the desktop, she slit the crinkly old paper carefully, and reached inside, pulling out two sheets, written front and back.  Angie had closed her eyes, and she flinched visibly at the sound.

     “D…dearest …Ella,” she started to try to read, but felt the tears catching in her throat.  Her hands shook for a second, then Rube’s hands were at hers, taking the pages carefully.  She felt the heat of her own tears start to slide down her face.

     “Dearest Ella,” Rube said, his voice rough.  “If you are reading this, I’ve gone on to whatever comes next after this world.  I’ve never been afraid of death, even as a boy, and now, I face it with the conviction that my time on this world is over…”

     In Angie’s mind, the voice shifted, moving from Rube’s clipped, northeastern Jewish inflections and settling into the soft-spoken Iowa farm boy she had loved.

     “My faith has always told me that death is never really an end, so much as a door to what is beyond our mortal life, and that has sustained me through the long years of this war.  But Ella, my beloved, I never imagined I’d ever have something as precious to me in this life as you.  I had been alone so long that I couldn’t imagine that something greater than just me could exist.  You are my confirmation of grace in this world, that you would choose me, that you would love me.  My greatest joy has been the time I spent in your arms.

     “To leave you alone feels like the worst betrayal.  I regret that we will never have more time, that we won’t know the joy of who our children might have been, that we won’t grow old and grey together.  Please know that I did not simply abide death, but fought like a man possessed to come back to you.  I wanted nothing so much as to take you in my arms one more time and smell the jasmine in your hair.  I needed nothing so much as to hear your sweet, silvery laugh and to see the soft light in your eyes.  You are and always have been the woman to me, darling, and I curse that this war is taking me from you.

     “I wish you a long and wonderful life, Ella.  You are so young, and so very beautiful, and I want you to promise me that you won’t spend the rest of your life locked away in grief for me…”  Rube’s voice petered off at that as a quiet sob covered the sound.  George quickly took the wineglass from her, and then gathered her into her arms, holding her tight.  She looked at Rube and nodded.

     “I know that someday, we’ll be together again, and I find peace in that.  I want you to find that peace too, and then go take on the world.  Go to Brazil like we always said we would.  Dance in New York at midnight on New Years.  Fall in love, have children, live the life we dreamed.  I’ll be waiting in wherever’s next when you get done. 

     “I love you, Angela Sullivan, more than my life.  Thank you for loving me.  Our life was the best work I ever did.  I remain, eternally yours, Andy.”

     Deep, heaving sobs filled the room, and Rube realized that George was crying hard, along with Angela.  He moved to them and squatted down, putting his arms around them both and holding them tight.  He stayed there until they had cried themselves out. 

     Angie broke the silence.  “Hypocritical bastard,” she said, hiccupping.  “How dare he tell me to move on when he lived like a monk for years after I died.”

     “He wanted your happiness,” Rube said.  “That is a truly selfless thing to wish someone, when you know it can’t be with you anymore.”

     George leaned back and grabbed the tissue from the shelf in the wall and handed Angie one before taking one herself.  “I wish I could have met him,” she said, softly. 

     Angie looked at the letter, where it had fallen to the floor.  She reached for it, then stopped, leaving it laying there.  “Thank you, both of you.  But I don’t want to keep you two from…well.”

     “We could stay,” Rube said.  “We sort of expected some kind of group night anyways.”  George nodded, but Angie was shaking her head. 

     “I appreciate it, and you’re both dear friends.  I just need to be alone, tonight.”  She picked her wine glass up again.  Rube leaned over and pressed a brotherly kiss into her hair, and George squeezed her free hand, then the two of them turned and moved quietly back out into the main part of the house.  Rube shook his head at the mess of pizza boxes and plates and walked over to the table.  George stood and watched as he cleaned up after the team, as he had so many times, and then she moved quickly.  Taking the boxes and plates from him, she stacked them and took them into the kitchen, tossing the paper plates in the garbage, wrapping the leftovers into the fridge, and then taking the trash out. 

     She returned to find Rube looking at Angie’s wedding picture, a look of sadness and pain on his face.  Taking his hand in hers, she brought it up and gently kissed his palm.  Rube drew her close, burying his face in her hair, and breathed deep.  Silently, she tugged his hand and they headed for the door.  Rube grabbed the bag he had left near it that afternoon, then they let themselves out into the last cool twilight of fall before night claimed Seattle.

     George had driven without saying a word, pulling up in front of the condo building where she had a place of her own.  She parked and got out, moving to join Rube on the sidewalk.  He had been here once or twice, but never just the two of them.  He reached for the hand not holding her keys and let her lead him in the door, and up the stairs.  She reached out and unlocked the strong oak door, pushing it open to let them both in. 

     She turned inside and locked the door behind them.  Rube took in the room, having never really noticed how very, very George it was.  For all that she was strong and fearless, she had a soft side.  He could see it in the soft, fluffy throw over the back of the leather sofa, in the candles on the book shelves around the living room.  She had moved into the room, crossing to the kitchen area.  “I can call for take-out?” she said, handing him a folder.  He opened it to find menus for everything from Chinese and Thai to Indian and a place that delivered steak.  “I don’t know about you, but I am way too tired to cook.”

     Rube thumbed through them, pulling out one for a nearby Thai place.  “Pad Thai?”  She smiled, and took the menu, picking up the cordless.  He listened as she placed the order and gave the person on the other end of the phone her address, then hung up.  “I do want to cook for you at some point.”

     Catching sight of herself in the mirror on one wall, she grimaced.  “How about some night when I don’t have dried snot under my nose,” she said.  “I look like crap.”

     “You don’t,” Rube said, then grimaced himself at how trite that sounded.  “Really, you’re beautiful, George.  Always have been.”

     She blushed furiously.  “I’m going to go shower, get cleaned up.  There’s cash in my purse and drinks in the fridge.”  She headed for the hall, then stopped and turned.  “You’ll be here, right?  When I come out?”

     “I’m not going anywhere, Georgia,” he said.  She smiled and headed down the darkened hallway.  A few moments later, the sound of water running filtered through the quiet.  Rube smiled ruefully and helped himself to a beer from her fridge, something with a funky label indicating it might contain chilies.  He walked over to the wall that held her stereo and picked up the CD that was on top.  He had been expecting something modern, maybe punk or girl rock.  What he found was a compilation of Al Jolson recordings from the 1920s.  He opened the case and found it empty, then reached out and turned the stereo on.  ‘I’m Sitting on Top of the World’ began to play.  He closed his eyes and remembered dancing around the room with Rosie in their little apartment, Lucy laughing as she cooked. 

     “It…made me think of you,” she said.  He turned, opening his eyes to find George standing at the edge of the room, her long beautiful hair damp against the silky fabric of her pajamas.  “When…well, it made me think of you.”

     Rube set his beer down and crossed the room with a purpose.  He stopped right in front of her and brought a hand up, tracing the line of her face before stepping into the gap and bringing his lips down on her unbelievably soft ones.  It was gentle, tentative, as his hand drew her face closer against his and his fingers played into her hair.  She murmured against his lips and opened her mouth to him.  Just was her hands came up to wrap around his waist, her doorbell sounded and the two of them broke apart.

     “Fuck,” they both mumbled, simultaneously, which prompted a round of giggles from George.  She moved to grab her purse off the end table and answer the door.  A few minutes later, she was unpacking the aluminum and plastic to go boxes from the bag, laying them out on her small, round dining room table.  He watched her, surprised by her domestic side as she fussed with utensils and sauce packets.  It made a part of him hurt a little, thinking how she’d never have the opportunity to be that fussy in a conventional husband and children kind of way.

     She turned and found him watching, and for some reason, she looked a little self-conscious.  He smiled at her reassuringly and went to grab his beer from the shelf near the stereo, switching it off.  They moved together, sitting down and eating.  Neither of them talked much for a while, since Rube realized it was almost nine and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and if memory served, he had interrupted George’s late lunch, most of which was still on the plate when they had left the diner.  After a while, he looked over to see that George had pushed her curry aside half eaten and was just staring at him. 

     “George?” he asked softly.  “What is it?”

     “I just…twelve hours ago, I was still grieving you,” she said.  Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes.  “You were…gone, forever I thought.  I just…I keep thinking this is a dream, and I’m going to wake up, and I’ll be alone, again…”

     Rube was on his feet and moving around the table before she had finished.  He took her hand in his and pressed it to his chest.  “I’m right here, sweetheart,” he said.  “I’m so sorry, I’m right here.”

     George pulled him to her and buried her head in his shoulder, quietly crying.  He stroked her hair softly, murmuring nonsense words into her ear.  After a while, her breathing evened out, but she remained where she was, holding him tight.  “I love you,” she said, so softly he might not have heard it if they weren’t pressed so close together. 

     “I love you, too, Peanut,” he said.  She pulled back and looked at him, sniffing again.  “Why don’t you go wipe your face with a nice cool cloth, and let me clean this up?”

     “Do I have snot on my face again?” she asked, looking chagrined. 

     “A little bit,” Rube said.  He leaned over and kissed her cheek.  “Still beautiful, though.”

     She rolled her eyes in a very George like way that took his breath away for just a moment, when he thought about how close he came to never having this.  She wandered back to the bathroom, and Rube turned, closing the to go containers back up and storing them in George’s fridge, then taking the silverware over and giving it a quick rinse before loading it into the empty dishwasher.  She rejoined him right after he finished drying his hands on a towel.

     “So, I set up the bed in the guest room,” she said, quietly.  Rube stopped what he was doing and looked at her. 

     “Oh.  Okay,” he said.  He wondered what had shifted to bring about this change.  He wasn’t about to push her for too much too fast. 

     “Okay,” she said, her voice sounding kind of sad.  “I thought…well, I wasn’t sure if you would want to be in with me, and I wanted to give you the choice.”

     “Georgia, honey,” Rube said, taking her hand and stepping to close the gap between them.  “I want to be where you want me to be.  If you want to sleep in the same bed with me, then…I’m honored.  But if you need us to go slow, I comp…”

     His words were cut off when she grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him down to kiss him.  This time, she was in control, her lips setting the pace, her tongue probing his mouth, her hands pulling him in tight against her.  He groaned against her assault and moved his hands so one cupped her ass, pulling her lower body against him, his other tangling in her still damp hair. 

     George felt her back arch into him as they battled for control for the kiss, teeth nipping, hands moving.  Finally, she needed desperately to breathe again, so she pulled back slightly.  Both of them were panting a little, and her hand against his chest could feel his heart, beating like the rhythm to a techno song.  She moved a little closer and rested her head next to it, feeling the beat, hearing the rhythm, drawn to it by some visceral need. 

     Rube leaned his own head down on top of hers, running his fingers up and down her back.  Finally, he began to trace his thumb up and down the back of her neck.  She shuddered, ever so slightly against him, and made a soft whimpering sound.  “Sweetheart?” he asked, afraid they might be in for more tears.

     In response, George took his hand and led him down the hall, past a small guest room where a daybed was made up and past the black and white bathroom with the red rugs.  At the end of the hall, she pushed open a door and led him into her bedroom, flicking off lights as they walked.  This light was already off, and abruptly, George stopped walking.  Rube nearly fell over her as she cursed, “Fucking hell, ow…”

     Rube reached for the wall near the door and switched the light on.  George was hopping a little, and the boot she had plowed into with her toe was now partly under the queen bed.  Rube was oddly amused at the chintz pattern on the comforter set.  “You okay?” he asked.

     “Yeah, that just hurt.”  She did a quick scan for any other hidden dangers, then moved over and switched on the bedside lamp.  Rube smiled and reached back, flipping the overhead lights back off.  He walked over to where she stood, looking…nervous.

     “We don’t have to…I don’t expect anything, here, George,” he said, reaching for her hand.  “We can just hold each other, and sleep, if you want.”

     She took a shaky breath.  “It’s just…it’s been a while since I was with anyone…” Her voice trailed off and she laughed softly.  “I couldn’t imagine beginning with anyone but you, and I didn’t think I could be with you, so I just…wasn’t, with anyone.  It’s just a scenario I’ve never wrapped my head around.  But I’d really like to.”

     Rube smiled down at her, then brought his lips to hers, gently again, his hands moving to lightly rub her shoulders.  She sighed softly and deepened the kiss, bring her hands up to the back of his head, her fingers softly raking through his hair.  After a few minutes, he moved his lips, kissing down her jaw line to the place right behind her ear.  She made that soft mewling noise she had made earlier and her back had arched inside his arms as he drew her closer.

     George felt her knees going weak as she leaned in to his caresses.  Before this, all her experiences had been fumbling, teenage, all surging hormones and impatience.  This was different.  Rube was taking his time, ghosting down her neck to the hollow of her shoulder, alternating butterfly kisses with soft nips of her skin.  It was both gentle and intense at the same time, and she wondered why she had ever done this any other way.

     Rube smiled as he felt George’s hands move down his back and work at tugging the tail of his t-shirt out of his jeans.  He stepped back slightly and helped her, pulling it up and over his head and tossing it aside.  She smiled back at him, shyly, and looked at him, taking in his naked upper body.  Then she reached up and popped the first button on her pajamas.

     His hand reached over and covered hers for a second, then moved down to the second button.  Slowly, like they were in some place where everything was moving at half speed, his clever fingers moved down freeing one button from one catch at a time, then slowly taking the folds of the shirt and pushing it off her shoulders.  The satiny fabric pooled into a heap on the floor, and Rube forgot to breathe entirely as he took in the sight of her small, pert, perfect breasts.  “Oh, god, Georgia…”

     She reached down and took one of his hands.  Bringing it up, she gently placed it against her chest.  Her eyes drifted shut and she sighed a breathy, ragged little sigh.  Rube caressed her softly, then moved again to capture her lips.  His hands continued their busy exploration, touching, brushing, rubbing, and he loved the little sounds she was making in her throat when he found some place she particularly liked.  He pressed closer to her as she gently raked her fingers up and down his spine.

     She moaned, suddenly, as his lips left hers, and blazed a trail down her neck and then between her breasts.  She must have swayed a little wildly, because Rube suddenly stopped and moved, sweeping her slight weight into his arms and laying her gently on the bed.  Toeing off his own shoes, he climbed on next to her and lay on his side, smiling at her.  “Are you doing okay, sweetheart?”

     She smiled at him and reached out, running her hand down his cheek and then resting his against the soft hair of his chest.  “I’m good.  You?”  In answer, Rube took her hand in his and moved it lower.  George’s eyes grew wide.  “Oh.  Yeah, I suspect that’s good.”

     “It’s kind of unbelievable,” Rube said, and then groaned as she stroked him through his jeans.  “Peanut...”

     George looked up at him, all innocent doe eyes, and he growled and moved in suddenly, capturing one taut little peak in his mouth while his free hand gently kneaded the other.  George jerked slightly as the sensation coursed through her, a soft cry escaping her lips.  Rube smiled against her warm flesh and continued what he was doing, alternating which side got attention from his mouth and which from his hand.

     George’s own hand came up and worried Rube’s chest, ghosting across it.  She loved the way he was making her feel, the slow burn, and part of her wanted to make it last all night.  But the deeper, more terrified part of her still thought this was all one more horrible dreams where she would wake up soaked in sweat and longing and find herself alone.  “Rube,” she whispered, bringing her hand up against his cheek.  He looked up into her eyes.  “Please?”

     Rube moved and kissed her softly, then climbed off the bed and took down his pants and boxers, letting them fall to the floor.  George started to reach for her own capri pants, but Rube reached out a hand and stopped her.  Moving back to the bed, he slipped his hands under the waist band, feeling the satin cool against them, and gently pulled them down.

     George lifted her hips to help, then settled back into the comforter wearing nothing but pink cotton and lace panties and a shy smile.  Rube kissed her gently and then began to pepper soft kisses over her breasts and the valley between them, then down her stomach, his fingers slipping inside the wisp of fabric and ghosting over her very core.  She made a noise like a soft keening as his fingers fluttered there, his kisses moving down. 

     This loss of his touch there was almost crippling, until she realized that he was gently pulling her panties away, kissing as he went.  A slight stubble from a day spent travelling grazed against her thighs as he kissed his way down her legs, until the last thing between them cleared her toes and was tossed aside, falling into the piles of clothes near the bed. 

     He gently kissed his way back up until he was laying beside her.  He looked into her eyes, and seeing acceptance and love looking back, he moved to be on top of her, nudging her knees apart with his own.  George reached up and gently stroked his neck as he settled against her.  Her body squirmed slightly underneath his weight, trying to get the friction she desperately needed.  Reaching down, Rube moved her hips ever so slightly to bring them into alignment, then, leaning in to kiss her deeply, he slid into her.

     George gasped against his lips and shudder as he filled her.  It stretched her tight walls to the limit, but she would swear she could feel every inch of contact, every heartbeat.  It felt like coming home in a way nothing ever had, and she nearly cried for the thought that this might never have happened.  Her arms tightened reflexively around him, and she deepened the kiss as her hips moved ever so slightly. 

     They found their rhythm in seconds, coming together, falling apart, over and over.  Rube’s hand drifted over her body, caressing, teasing as she brought her legs up and around his lower back, giving him an even deeper angle.  “Jesus, Georgia”

     “Not the last time I checked,” she groaned back, arching into the sensations he was creating.  “There, Rube, right…fuck, that’s…mmm.”

     The pace quickened as they both felt themselves spiraling down the rabbit hole.  Rube’s fingers managed to slip between them and find the little spot just above their joining.  She cried out in surprise and joy as he matched the rhythm to the greater one between them.  Just when he thought the sounds she made might be enough to push him over the edge, her body went rigid and then shuddered around him.  He slowed a little to let her ride it out, but the feeling of her pleasure was enough, and he spiraled right down after her.

     Rube was careful to not just collapse onto her.  Letting himself down gently, he rolled them onto their sides to keep the connection between them as long as possible.  George was tucked tight against him, her breathing slowly evening from the ragged throws of passion.  He moved his head down and took in the scent of her, fresh from making love to him.  It was better than any perfume he could remember.

     “Rube?”

     “Yeah, Peanut?” he said, his voice full of wonder.

     “You were so much better than my dreams,” she said, her voice sleepy.  He felt his heart swell, and thanked fate for giving him the second chance and Angie for forcing him to see and take it.  He just hoped she was finding some peace tonight.  Finally pulling away from George, he cut her sleepy protests off by untucking the covers and pulling them up around her, then climbing in to bed.  He moved so he was spooned up against her tight, her back against his chest.  Reaching over, he flipped off the light, and soon their breathing settled into the even rhythm of sleep.

******************************************

     Penny had just gotten home from the hospital when her phone rang.  Dropping her purse, she reached for the handset.  “Hello?”

     The person on the other end took a deep shuddering breath.  Penny nearly hung up, thinking it was a prank caller, but then, a small voice spoke.  “Penny?”

     “Angie?”  Penny asked, instantly afraid something far worse then everything that had gone on in the last few weeks had occurred.

     “Rube’s back.  He got the transfer,” Angie said.  Penny silently thanked the powers that be for that.  “He and George have talked, and I refuse to mentally picture the rest of their evening.”

     “Thank you, honey,” Penny said.  There was no response for a long time.  Finally, to see if the call had somehow dropped, she said, “Angela?”

     “I’m ready to talk, Penny,” the voice on the other end whispered.  “I’m up here to help clean up the mess Kane left.  Can you…I know you worked a full day, but can you come?”

     There was no hesitation.  “I’m on my way.”

     Thirty minutes later, as a light rain began to fall on Seattle when Penny got to Angie’s place.  Her friend opened the door, her eyes red, her face deathly pale.  Penny walked up to her, put her arms around her, and just held her for a long minute.

     “Thank you for coming,” Angie whispered, hugging Penny back.

     “You are a precious commodity, Ang,” Penny said.  “I’m so sorry this all came down on your shoulders.”

     Together, the two of them moved in to the living room, Angie shutting the door behind them.  Angie sunk down into the couch, so Penny took the wingback chair closest to her.  Silently, Angie picked up the sheath of yellowed paper from the end table between them and handed it to her.

     Penny began reading as Angie rose and walked unsteadily into the kitchen.  A few minutes later, she came back and set down two mugs of hot chocolate, then retreated back into the corner of the overstuffed sofa.  Penny had read through the letter twice over, to make sure she understood, then set it down.  “You read it today?”

     “Yes,” Angie replied.  “No, actually.  Rube and George read it to me.  I…I couldn’t do it on my own.”

     Penny nodded and let the quiet settle again for a little while.  Finally, she said, “What are you thinking?”

     “I’m angry, because he dared to tell me to move on when he didn’t.  It hurts, because I know that I must still have years left if I am the new head reaper for my division, and I won’t be with him soon,” Angie said.  “It…I always thought next week, next month, next year, there would be this lightshow and he would be there, waiting on some cosmic beach, and now…I love him so much, still, but god, Penny, I am so damn lonely.”

     “I know.”  Penny held a cocoa out to her friend and watched her drink slowly from it.  “Let me ask you, if you hadn’t been a reaper, if you had moved on from the beginning, would you have expected him to be alone?”

     “Of course not,” Angie answered immediately.  “And believe or not, when I would see him as Kate, I actually encouraged him to find a nice woman and move on.  He never did.”

     “He didn’t have sixty years of undeath to get through,” Penny said.  Angie sighed hard and picked up a pillow, worrying the seams.

     After another round of silence, she looked at Penny.  “Did you…have you…well, you were a widow.”

     “Have I been with anyone in the past ninety years?”  Angie blushed when Penny put it like that, and Penny laughed softly.  “Yes, I have.  But my husband and I had an agreement that if anything ever happened to one of us, the other would get on with life.  Or, well, whatever.”

     Angie closed her eyes again, and a slightly pained expression crossed her face.  “I never was with anyone else, before we married.  Hell, Andy was only the second man I ever kissed.  I don’t know that I would even know how to be with someone who wasn’t him.”

     “In my experience, Angie, you find a guy who you think isn’t too bad, and who thinks you aren’t too bad either, and you let things happen as they do,” Penny said.  “Isn’t that basically how things happened for you the last time?”

     “We survived a bombing, spent three days up to our elbows in guts and gore, and then fell together purely to feel alive,” Angie said, chuckling softly for the first time in a while.  “Everything else just sort of happened by osmosis.”

     Penny reached out and squeezed her hand.  “He wanted you to read this, right?  When you helped him cross?”  Angie nodded.  “Angie, I think he’d want you to be happy, and until that can be with him, I think he’d want you happy with whoever you could find to make you happy.”

     Angie sighed.  “I know you’re right.  And Andy was right.  I just don’t know…I don’t know if I can.”

     “That’s something only you can know, sweetie,” Penny said.  “In the mean time, it’s okay to be not together all the time.  Surely you have someone down there you can lean on.”

     Angie’s face had shifted, in that moment, to one of quiet realization and surprised.  “Yes.  I do.”

     Penny smiled a quiet, knowing smile.  “Good.  You should utilize whoever that is.  And you can always call me, or Rube, or George, if you need to talk.”

     Angie nodded again, absently.  Then she turned and squeezed Penny’s hand back.  “Thank you, Penny.”

    “Hell, Angie, we owe you more than one,” Penny said.  “You’re going to be okay tonight?  I can stay if you need me to.”

     “No, I’ll be fine.  Thank you again,” Angie said.  She and Penny stood, and walked to the door.  Penny hugged Angie hard, and then turned to go.  “I’ll call you sometime before I go.  We should do dinner.”

     “You bet.  Night, Angie!”  Angie stood on the porch, looking up at the hazy moon through the light mist.

********************************

     Mason, Daisy, and Roxy were all at the new diner, bright and early the next morning.  Angie arrived not long after and sat down, looking across the table at them.  All three looked sheepish.  After she had made them assist with the make-up reaps, she had fed them pizza without a word.  Now, she looked from one to the other to the last.  “You all know you messed up big time, right?”

     “Yes,” came the chorus of mumbled replies. 

     “Are you going to ever do that again?”

     “No.”

     “Good,” Angie said.  “I suspect George might let you off this time, but I expect you all to straighten up and fly right.”

     “That’s it?” Daisy asked.  Angie looked at her.

     “I suspect you all probably got additions to your quota.”  All three of them looked stricken.  “Mind you, taking care of Kane may have balanced that.  I don’t know.  Just because team leaders get lists doesn’t mean we know everything.”

     Just then, she glanced over their head to see George and Rube come in, together, and she smiled a little.  They both looked…happy.  George had said something, that knowing her, probably had a fine flavor of snark to it, and Rube was rolling his eyes and trying not to smile too much.

     She scootched around the back of the bigger round booth to make room.  Rube sat down first and moved over to give George room.  The others looked at his empty hands for a minute, then Roxy looked at him.  “Rube, where’s your book?”

     Rube gave them all a look.  “I’m not crew chief anymore.  That would be Georgia.”  He turned to her as she reached into her bag and pulled out a new leather day planner, opened it to today, and began handing out post-its.  The others still looked confused.  “You three will do what she tells you, or so help me…”

     “Oh, sure, of course Rube,” Mason said, taking his post-it.  “I mean, of course Georgie…er…boss.”

     Roxy rolled her eyes.  “Shut up, Mason.”  She turned back to Rube.  “I didn’t get a chance to say yesterday, but it’s good to have you back.”

     “It’s good to be back,” Rube said, taking his own post-it.  The six of them quietly ate breakfast, then Roxy, Mason, and Daisy left.  Angie took the small stack of post-its for the deaths that had been rescheduled around Cameron’s behavior.  Rube looked at her and noticed that her eyes seemed clearer and a little brighter today, and that her color was better.  “How are you, Angie?”

     She smiled at him, and George, who also turned to look.  “I’m doing better.  Thanks.”  She reached for her orange juice and drank the rest of it.  “You two look like things worked out.”

     Both of them blushed ever so slightly.  “Yeah, well,” George said.  She shifted uncomfortably, and looked over at Rube.

     “No need to elaborate,” Angie laughed.  “Just, be good to each other, okay?”  She reached into her purse and threw money on the table. 

     “The note from…well, whoever, said you can plan on going home in three days,” George said.  “Though if you wanted to stay longer…”

     “I’ll need to get back,” Angie said.  “I have a job to do there, and I can’t expect Marco to cover forever.  But thank you.”  Angie slid her large glasses down and headed out to her rental car.  Rube and Georgia were quiet for a moment, watching her go.

     “She’s still one of the most together people I know,” George said.  “I don’t know that I could have been there for us, with what she was going through.”

     “She is one of a kind,” Rube said.  Leaning over, he kissed her cheek.  “I should get going, and get this reap done, Peanut.  I’ll see you later?”

     “Yeah,” George said.  She squeezed his hand.  “Count on it.”

*************************************************************************************

     Angie had dinner that night with just Penny, and then the next night with all of them.  After she got home, she booked her return flight, and then called her house in Los Angeles.  “Sullivan home, Marco speaking,” crooned the smooth, tenor voice.

     “Hey Marco,” she said softly.  “It’s me.”

     “Hey, Angie, how are things?”  She could hear Marco sit down at what sounded like the kitchen table. 

     “Good,” she replied.  “Things are all wrapped up here, so I will be heading back tomorrow.  Have you got the list yet?”

     “Yeah,” he said.  “I was just working on it.  What time’s your flight getting in?”

     “2:00.”  Angie reached and took a sip of her wine.  “I can take a cab, if I need to.”

     “No, I’ll be there to pick you up,” Marco asserted.  There was a long pause.  “I missed you, gorgeous.  The City of Angels isn’t the same without you.” 

     “I missed you to, Marco,” she said, softly.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.  Have a good night.”

     She let Rube and George buy her breakfast at Beth’s Café that morning, and laughingly contributed a sketch of their team in Crayon to be hung on the wall.  Afterwards, they walked her out to her car, and she took turns shaking hands and giving hugs, until only Rube and George were left.

     “This time, it probably is forever, huh?” George asked.  A few tears appeared in her eyes, and Angie had to bat down the ridiculous maternal urge to wipe them away. 

     “You really never know,” she said, pulling the younger woman in for a tight hug.  “But this is why the universe gives us phones and email and webcams, and everything.”

     “Yeah, well, it’s not good enough.”  George hugged her back.  “You take care, Angie.  I’m going to miss you.”

     George stepped back and let Rube replace her, and this time, he initiated the hug.  “I don’t know what to say, Ang.”

     “Say you’re going to love her with everything you have for all the time you have left,” Angie replied, tearing up herself.  “Otherwise, I’m going to come back up here and punch you in the face.”

     That got all three of them laughing.  She hugged them both one more time, then got into her car and pulled away.

     Five hours later, Angie stepped out of the busy arrivals terminal at LAX, into warm sunshine and the barest scent of saltwater on the breeze.  Looking around, she spotted Marco leaning against a concrete pillar, engrossed in a paperback.  She took the moment to look at him, really look.  She had always recognized that Marco was an extremely attractive young man, barely twenty four when he had died.  His dark hair and bright green eyes worked together with his face to create an image she imagined made most women melt back in the day.  Though he probably looked like some variation on that theme to the women around them, given the number of them who had checked him out.

     He was also kind, and giving.  She might have suspected Joe had a crush on her all those years, but with Marco, she knew it, could feel it when he looked at her.  But he had never once pushed the issue, had always been respectful and loyal and ready to throw himself on swords for her.  She never understood why he hadn’t transferred out or found someone else to be the object of his affection.  And while he could be hot-headed and rash, she’d trust him with almost anything.  With everything.  Something shifted in her mind, and she quietly asked Andy to understand, wherever he was.  As if in response, she could hear the crinkle of old paper inside her handbag.

     “Marco,” she called out, and smiled when he looked up and his eyes lit up.

     “Hey, gorgeous,” he said.  He moved to her, giving her a quick, chaste hug, and then taking her bags.  “Your flight go okay?”

     She nodded, and smiled and followed as he led them to where he had left the Buick in short-term parking.  Marco had stowed her baggage in the trunk and then held up the keys.  She had shook her head, and so he had opened the door for her, then got in on the driver’s side.

     They chatted as he drove them through the city, freeways switching to surface streets as Marco told her what she had missed in the time she had been gone.  “I hate group reaps, Ang,” he said.  “They’re always in really weird places.”

     “Well, and riptides are never really fun,” she responded, as he pulled in to her driveway.  He parked and got out, hurrying around to open her door, then got her bags.  “You don’t have to act like my chauffer, Marco, but I appreciate it.”

     “Well, it just seems like you had a rough couple a weeks,” he said, setting her bags down inside the back door.  “Anything I can do, I will do.  You know that.”

     “I do,” she said.  “Where’s Helen today?”

    “She and Hannah had morning stuff, then said something about Helen sleeping over and John somebody movies.”  He shrugged.  “So I wouldn’t expect her back.  They seemed to be planning to stay all night.  She’s in the guest house, anyways.  Rube had me schedule a mover to come get stuff the day you two left, and I had them put everything else back in there from storage.  So, the house is all yours again.”

     Angie consider this fact for a long minute.  “Do you have an afternoon reap?”

     “Yeah, down near Grauman’s,” he said.  “I need to head out soon.”

     “Do you want to come back by for dinner later,” Angie asked.  Marco looked at her.  “We can order take out, enjoy a last evening out by the pool before I close it for the season.”

     He shrugged.  “If you’re sure you want the company, I’d like that.  7:30 okay?”  She nodded, and he smiled.  “It really is good to have you home.”

     She watched him leave, and then went to unpack.

     Marco got back to find the twinkle lights in the trees around the pool turned on and the speakers piping music in from the sound system.  The pool lights tripped on as he entered the patio area.  “Angie?” he called.  “You here?”

     “In here,” came a voice through the door into the house.  He followed it and found her in the kitchen, sticking a bottle of wine in an ice bucket.  “I got food from Angelo’s, I hope that’s okay.”

     Marco looked at her and raised an eyebrow.  “It’s my favorite.  What’s the occasion, Ang?”

     “Just felt like the night for it,” Angie replied.  She picked up the tray with the wine in one hand and a salad bowl in the other.  “Can you get those plates?” 

     Marco followed her out to the patio, and set the covered plates down on the round, wrought iron table.  Angie hummed along with Sinatra as she tossed the salad, and dished it out on to the side plates already on the table.  Marco reached for the wine, a respectable Pinot Grigio from Napa Valley, and used the wine key on the tray to open it.  He poured two glasses and set them out, taking time to toss the foil into the trash bin against the wall.

     They sat down and ate, Angie telling him about the personalities of the Seattle reapers he hadn’t met, about Penny’s no nonsense approach to life and how Mason was so very…well, Mason.  And she told him about what she had seen of George and Rube’s reunion, and how it made her feel so much better to have been able to help.  Marco nodded, and leaned back, looking wistfully up at the stars.  “That Sofer, he’s a lucky guy.”

     Angie glanced at him sideways.  They had polished most of the bottle off, and their plates were picked pretty close to clean.  Just then, the music shifted, and she laughed softly as Ol’Blue Eyes started crooning about not dancing.  “I love this song,” she said, pushing back from the table.  Her soft gray silk dress swished.  “Dance with me?”

      Marco looked at her long and hard, and then took her hand.  She danced over along the stone patio, letting him take the lead.  He moved with ease, even though his face seemed clouded.  Spinning her in, then out, then back in for a dip as the song ended, he pulled her back to upright and she stopped a few inches from his face.  “What are you doing, Angie?” he breathed.

     “I’m thinking about kissing you.”  It was said quietly, and calmly, and it scarred the crap out of him.  He let go of her and took a step back, bumping into a deck chair.  She looked at him confused.  “I didn’t think you’d find that an awful idea.”

    “Angela,” he said, taking a shuddering breath.  “It’s not awful, but….Jesus.  I would love to, but I…  Angie, I’d do just about anything for you, you know that.  But I can’t be…I can’t be something you do to take a little pressure off.  I feel you too much for that.”

     Angie realized she hadn’t been going about this the right way.  “Marco, I’m sorry.  I’m making a mess of this.  Sit down, I have something I want to show you.”  She turned and slipped into the house.

     Marco sank down onto the deck lounge, breathing hard.  If you had told him he’d ever say no to kissing Angie, after dreaming of it for…hell, over forty years.  Her heels clicked back across the flagstones, and she sat down on the lounge next to his.  In her hands was a sheaf of paper, crinkly in the breeze.  “I…I finally read this, like Andy asked me to when I helped him cross.  I’d like you to read it too.”

     Marco took them from her.  Angie fidgeted for a minute, then stood, and moved to the table, clearing their dishes.  He turned his attention, and began to read.  He felt gut shot for a moment, reading how much Andy had loved her.  He had been there himself for so long, he sometimes forgot that someone else had been loving her when he was still a teenager.  He read through to the last paragraph, and then he forgot to breathe.  Andy was giving her his okay to go on.  To find someone else.  It was the damnedest, bravest, most self-less thing he could imagine doing, letting someone you loved this much go.

     He turned to find Angie had taken everything in to the kitchen, and had kicked off her shoes, so her return to the patio had been silent.  She stood there, her bare feet at the edge of the pool, starring into the reflection of the lights in the water and in the trees above it.  Her arms were crossed around her waist, like she was hugging herself warm. 

     Standing, he set the pages under the edge of the vase of flowers on the small table next his chair, then moved to be beside her.  “Angie.”  She turned a little and he reached his hand out, resting it on her arm.  “I want to be sure I understand.  Because…I don’t want to do something you aren’t really ready for, something that will destroy our friendship.  I love you too much not to have you in my life.”

     The words were out of his mouth before he had time to think.  He had never actually voiced the words before, not out loud.  Angie looked at him.  “Marco, I value your friendship before almost anything, and I would never do anything to jeopardize it.”  She paused, reaching out and placing her own hand against his chest.  “I realized that you’ve been here, with me, for longer than Andy and I had times ten, and you gave me love and friendship unselfishly all that time.  And I can’t think of anyone Andy would approve of me looking for happiness with more than you.”

     “Angie,” he breathed.  “Angie, I need you to be really sure that this is what you want.  Because once I start kissing you, I may not be able to stop.”

     “Marco,” she said softly.  He looked down into her eyes.  “Stop talking.”

     The words had barely left her mouth when his hands came up to cup her face and his lips pressed into hers.  She was surprised how quickly her own came up to cup his back, how her body molded against his as she deepened the kiss, how softly she moaned as he explored her mouth.  It had been sixty years since she had been kissed, and she found it a little startling that it appeared to be a lot like riding a bike. 

     When the need to breathe became preeminent, he moved away from her lips, but kept ghosting kisses over her jaw line, up to the little hollow behind her ear.  She made this soft little squeaking noise.  “Jesus, Angie,” he murmured.  “You’re killing me here.”

     “It’ll be a little death,” she whispered, taking his hand.  Marco’s eyes went wide with understanding, and followed her.  Through the back door, which he pushed shut with his foot, and then down the hall to her bedroom.  He couldn’t remember if he had ever looked in this room before.  It was pure Angie, with unfussy mission furniture and simple pale green linens.  Angie switched on the bedside light and turned, smiling at him.  Then she reached her hands under the lapels of his jacket and pushed.  The linen slid back and off his shoulders, landing on the floor.

     Angie stepped forward and brought her hands up to the buttons on Marco’s shirt, undoing the top one slowly.  Marco drew his breath sharply and moved his own hands around her back, finding the zipper at the top of her dress.  “Last chance to stop,” he whispered, bringing his lips down to her ear.  “Are you really sure, Angie?”

     “If you keep asking me that, you’re never going to get to see me naked,” she said, bringing her fingers to the second button.  This hole was tighter, and after a minute resulting in a frustrated growl, she gripped both sides of the shirt and pulled.  Shell buttons fell to the floor, some of them making tinkling noises as they hit the hardwood at the edge of the carpet.  “Sorry.  I always wondered what that would feel like.  I’ll buy you a new one.”

     Marco immediately gripped the zipper and pulled it gently down.  Almost immediately, the smooth gray silk slithered down her body, pooling at her bare feet.  He stopped breathing again for a moment as he took in the soft, baby blue lace bra and matching panties covering her soft curves.  “Thank you, God,” he breathed. 

     Angie laughed softly.  “I’m going to take that as a compliment,” she said, sounding a little shy.  Marco suddenly realized that she hadn’t been this…intimate…with someone in a long time. 

     “You’re gorgeous, baby,” he murmured, bringing her close and leaning in to pepper kisses against her neck.  “I’m the luckiest dead man alive.”

     Angie sighed and her body shuddered just a little.  The feelings that had been building since Penny had asked her if she had someone to lean on had become intense.  Just the barest hint of stubble on Marco’s face brushed against the top of her breasts along her bra line, and she found herself arching hard into him.  Her own hands worked their way down his back and pulled the undershirt tail out of his slacks, bringing her hands up against the bare skin of his ribs.  She raked her nails there gently and was rewarded with a groan. 

     Marco stepped back for a minute, and pulled the undershirt over his head and tossed it aside.  While his hands were busy, Angie reached out and unbuckled his belt, then began worrying the button on his slacks, with some more care than she had treated his shirt.  He brought his bigger hands down and helped her, easing the linen off his hips and down.  Finally, he kicked off his shoes and then toed his socks off, pushing everything into a pile with his foot.  Angie smiled back at him.  “You aren’t bad looking yourself.”

     She moved to the bed and sat down on it, then scooted up to the pile of pillows.  Marco watched for a moment, before he moved to join her.  Stretching out next to her, he ran his hand through her dark curls and down her shoulder, ghosting back and forth up her arm.  She leaned in and kissed his jaw line, nipping his skin ever so slightly.  He moaned and drew her against him, his hand coming up to worry the lace covered peeks of her breasts. 

     They took their time, touching and tasting, his deft fingers undoing the hooks on her bra and tossing it aside, her touch seemingly oblivious to the reaction when she fluttered over the length of him to caress his leg.  Finally, the last vestiges of silk and lace, cotton and elastic had been tugged away, and they lay there, looking into each other’s eyes, just breathing for a moment.  Then Marco moved to bring her on top of him.  She looked down at him, quizzically.  “It’s your lead, Ang,” he said.  “I’m man enough to follow.”

     Feeling the length of him underneath her, she gave him a quick wink.  “I’d say.”  She wiggled a little and he groaned deep.  Finally, she settled up in line with him and gently pressed down, slowly bringing him inside of her.  She made a soft moan, and a single tear slid down her face, but Marco reached up and brushed it away, and she drew his hand to her lips and kissed it.  After a minute or two, she began to move and his hips rose to meet her, their rhythm unhurried and gentle.  Time seemed to slow as they concentrated on each other, movements slight, but the sensations enormous.  Finally, their rhythm began to speed up, become a little more erratic.  Marco began to think he just might embarrass himself when he reached between them and touched her, carefully.

     Angie cried out wordlessly as she went rigid for a moment, and he could feel pleasure ripple through her.  Soon, she collapsed against him, and he rolled them over, carefully, and gave her a little time to recover.  Only when he felt her hips rise to meet his did he move again, and soon, it was his turn to cry out with joy and release.  Coming apart, he rolled to laying on his side next to her, and he smiled softly at the dazed expression on her face.  “You okay, gorgeous?” he asked, stroking her hair gently.

     “I think so,” she said.  “The world didn’t end, so I guess I didn’t commit some great cardinal sin against God or nature or whatever.”

     Marco was quiet for a while.  “Do you want me to go?” he asked, softly.  “I’ll understand if you do.  I know this is…well, this is a huge move for you.”

     “I’d like to think it was pretty huge for both of us,” she said, pushing him gently on to his back and curling up on her side next to him, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder.  “And I want to wake up with you tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

     “I meant it Angie,” he said, kissing her forehead.  “Anything you want, anything I can give you it’s yours.  Now, close your eyes, and go to sleep.  I know you haven’t been sleeping lately.  I’m right here.”

     He reached down and pulled the sheets up over them, and then reached over and switched off the light.  By the golden glow of an autumn moon, he watched her as her breathing evened out and her body relaxed into sleep against him as his hand gently rubbed her back.  Glancing over at the wall, he saw the small votive holder he had found years ago in an old flea market, the Virgin Mary in the style of Guadalupe, shellacked onto a tin back ground painted purple.  She had been thrilled with it, when he gave it to her.  “Thank you, Mother Mary,” he said, touching the small silver crucifix he wore, and snuggling into the warmth at his side, he closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.

*************************************************************************************

     The next morning was Saturday, and for once there were no reaps before eleven on the list.  George had called Roxy, Mason, and Daisy and pushed back breakfast for ten.  Together, she and Rube had been looking forward to the decadent luxury of sleeping in until eight, rather than five or six.  So imagine her displeasure when Rube’s cell went off on her side of the bed, a few minutes before seven.

     Finally finding it, she clicked it on.  “Die,” she grumbled. 

     “Oh, sorry, I thought I was calling Rube Sofer,” said the voice on the other end. 

     “Minute.”  She reached over and poked Rube in the ribs with the phone until he pulled his head out from under the pillow and snatched it.  She grabbed his pillow and pulled it over her own head.

     “MMpphhh,” Rube muttered, rubbing his eyes.

     “Sofer?”  Rube opened them, suddenly wide awake.  “You there?”

     “Marco?” he asked.  The person on the other end was talking softly.  “Its…Christ, its 6:45.”

     “Sorry, I got up to get the list and figured if we had reaps, everyone had reaps,” he said, softly.

     Rube processed that for a minute before an obvious thought struck him.  “Where’s Angie?  She flew back yesterday.” he asked.  If Angie was there, it should be her list.

     “She’s still in bed.  Listen, she doesn’t know I am calling, but I want to say, thank you, for helping her with the letter, and whatever you said to her, or whoever.”  Marco paused.  “She’s back, and she’s not hurting anymore, and we…well, thank you.”

     Rube’s eyes got huge and he thought for a moment he might drop the phone.  Beside him, George was squinting at him, concern on her face.  She had heard Angie’s name.  “Well, I’ll be damned.  Is she happy, Marco?”

     “I think so,” he said.  “She seemed happy last night, and she slept straight through.  I’m about to start coffee for me and make her some cocoa before we have to go to the meet.”

     “You take care of her,” Rube said.  “I ever hear you hurt her…”

     “You’ll hear I cut out my own heart, right after,” Marco said.  “Have a good day, Sofer.  It was good to meet you.”

     “You too Marco,” he said.  “Tell Angie to call us later.  Bye.”

     He hung up and tossed the phone back on his pile of clothes.  Rolling on his side, he smiled at George and pulled her close.  “Angie’s good, Peanut.  No worries.”

     “Yeah, but shit, it’s not even seven,” George said, looking petulant.  “I’ll never get back to sleep now.”

     “I can think of a way to make it up to you,” Rube said, pulling her face up towards his.