Call Me Mara
It is not good for man to be alone. (Genesis 2.18)
I woke up on the couch with a nasty headache. All my furniture, such as it was, floated across the room: little Japanese coffee table, decent HDTV hooked up to the Xbox, a laptop sitting on this wobbly desk that falls apart every two months, and bookshelves, like five of them, all shapes and sizes. And everything looked yellow for some reason.
Then I remembered: Mara. She’d dimmed her aura just enough to let me know she was still here.
“Did you really have to choke me out?”
I heard her banging around in the kitchenette. “Don’t you have anything to drink around here?”
“Bourbon and tap water.”
I heard Mara sighing as she came around the corner.
Now, let me tell you: Mara’s beautiful, but not like a beautiful woman’s beautiful. She’s beautiful like the idea of beautiful, like a sunset from the sun is beautiful. She’s terrifying too—sublime is the word. When you look at Mara, you don’t want to take her out on the town or propose; you want to run away screaming, fall on your face, claw your eyes out, or write poetry in the dark. And, even though I learned there’s no such thing as guardian angels, Mara seems to enjoy acting the part for me.
She eyed the fifth I had on the coffee table.
“You know I hate this stuff.”
“That’s why I get it,” I said and poured her the few drops that the old boy still had left in him.
Mara sniffed it, and I pulled the best smile I could at the way it made her face turn sideways. “My man Moses Wilson’s still working his magic.”
Mara went to the kitchen again. When she came back, the drink was diluted a thousand to one.
“You’ve been working hard on that thing.” She nodded toward the bottle.
I shrugged. “So you going to tell me why you’re still here?”
“You know.”
“We’ve talked about this before.”
“You would have killed the guy, Noah.”
“Maybe. He deserved it.”
Mara nodded. “But that’s not your job. The sons of Adam have to sort out their own business. We’ve got other things to deal with. While I was babysitting you up here, some kid in Bessemer got her throat torn out by a werewolf.”
I shook my head.
“What?”
“Werewolves. You’re honestly talking to me about werewolves.”
“They’re a serious problem! I’ve had—”
“Serious problem?” I said. “That’s the first civvie werewolf fatality in, what? Two months? And, just two minutes ago, that man killed a dog, some no name drug dealer, pointed guns at some woman and her kids—and this stuff goes on every day. And you’re talking to me about some werewolves.”
She snorted. “Well, if you don’t want werewolves, I’ve got intel about some weird stuff around Red Mountain, and—”
“Listen, why don’t you leave me alone? I’m going to do what I can, but I’m not taking orders from you. God anointed me to do this job. I didn’t ask for it, but—it helps me keep my mind off things.”
“You still haven’t signed them?” Mara nodded to the divorce papers Moses was sitting on.
I ignored her. “I’m going back to bed. If you want to be creepy and stay here watching, fine.”
I went to brush my teeth. When I came back, she was gone.
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