Trying it on, it's called. You step just a little over the line, to see what you can get away with.
'It'd be a public service. We could get the serial killers in. Lovely little things they could do to our Angels, and in the end, no harm done. It would save real lives, that would, Michael. The Dennis Nilsens of this world could cut young men in half and leave the drains unblocked.' Nick chuckled.
You try it on and if nothing stops you, you go on until you destroy the world. Or rather sell it until nothing worth having exists.
'No? Naw?' Nick's cuddle became a little shake. 'Naw. You got everything you want don't you, Michael? You've got no ambition, you know that? No ambition except… you just want to be left alone. Hmmm? OK, then here's something else we could do that would leave you alone.'
The King James Version of the Bible calls them the little foxes. It's a mistranslation. It really should read the little fruitbats. The little fruitbats land so lightly, and nibble at the edges, leaving toothmark scrapes on the skin of the pears. You can't believe anything so small could become such a threat so quickly.
Love starts small too, a pleasant smile over drinks that grows into a lifetime of care. This was the opposite of love and it starts out with a quick fuck.
Nick kissed Michael on the cheeks.
'You'd never see me again, I promise.' He smiled. 'All you have to do is… give me the power to make Angels.'
Michael was quick. 'I can't do that.'
'Hmm? You can give me different clothes. Have you tried to give someone else the power? You haven't, have you? So you don't know.'
Michael understood something and went cold. 'You've already tried to call them up by yourself.'
Nick chuckled. 'Of course I have. You don't think I'd just sit around all day by myself, surely? Go on, give it a go. See if you can.'
'I'm sure that I can't.'
'You mean you're sure you won't. You don't think you're being just the slightest bit territorial here, Michael? It's like: "I-have the power, nobody else is going to get it."'
'It's not mine to give.'
'Bullshit. Whose is it then? God's? I wasn't aware that you scientists had proof that God exists. You don't know what this is for, Michael, or where it comes from.' He imitated Michael, sounding nerdish and American. 'It's not mine to give.'
'Well. It's plainly not yours to take. Is it?' At last Michael had said something undeniable.
Nick sighed. 'No. It's not. Look, we're both tired, let's just sleep on it. Maybe we can find a way for you to help me make my film. That's all I want, Michael. Just find a way to make a bit of dosh. All right? Good night.'
After all, making dosh was what was really valued. Making dosh was good. Nick kissed him on the cheek, turned around, and was soon asleep.
He left Michael turning and twisting, staring into the darkness. I'm a prisoner, he realized. He's got me. This little horrible turd has got me stitched up. He thinks.
Michael sat up, and looked at Nick in the dark. He listened to Nick breathe.
He is alive, Michael thought, but it's a different kind of life. It's a life I can control, and because it comes from me, perhaps I can see what is always there more clearly. Like the extraordinary circumstance of breathing, just of breathing by itself.
Oxygen invades the blood, carried by blood cells which feed the mitochondria the element they need to spark fuel into energy, to maintain the slow-burning fire that is life.
The brain doesn't even need to think about it. It is delegated. The brain puts together sound and images. It harvests the world, and gives it shape, sounds, smells.
And then it can think about it all, creating ever-growing forests of abstraction. Invisible codes: names, equations, rules for handling the world. And desire. Desire, perhaps the biggest miracle of all. Desire the imperative, without source or logic or cause. Desire, simply there in the bones, the brains. Desire that sets the priorities for the self and all its processes. I need this; what do I do to get it? Now I need that, and move to get that too.
Nick looked so harmless, asleep. His face in the light from the window looked young and without blemish. His breath smelt of innocence.
Is this what a parent feels? To see in someone else so clearly just how extraordinary the puzzle is? Breath, blood, food, sweat, bones, teeth, eyes – how they all fit together, a million miracles, more miracles than you can count. All boiled down to one particular miracle, the one that you fed at your breast, the one whose face looks like its father's, the one you named.
Parents love like God. They say my son is a murderer, but I don't stop loving him. My daughter is on drugs and calls me bitch and whore, but I don't leave her. Desire makes life and life makes responsibility, which sounds so dull and wearying. But it's the goal of lust; it is what lust strives to produce: responsibility.
OK, my little vicious Angel. All you can see is greed, and you are far too old for me to change that; and you're driven by all the men who fucked you when you didn't want it, because… because you didn't know you were a miracle.
I could get inside your head and try to cure it forcefully. Who would I turn you into, Nick? I could make you into oh, someone who wants to do good in the world. You could go and work for an Aids charity. And all I would have to do is completely reconstruct your personality. And do I know how to do that? Can I give you a happy childhood in say, Slough, with weekends in the country? And if I could, would that be enough to make you kind and good? I would need to invent parents who believed there was more than money and conflict and status. So whose parents would I give you? I'd need to give you their loving genes as well, since I don't know enough about the mix of inheritance and upbringing. And that would mean you would have a different face.
In other words, I could replace you with an entirely different person. And how would that be one jot different from killing you?
I don't know enough, my Angel, to stir that little head of yours around as if it were soup.
I have to remember, however clever you are, that you are a poor, powerless creature. You want to make hell, but you can't do it without me. So you won't do it. You will, however, do whatever else it is in your nature to do.
Michael knew then what he was to do. He felt calm. He even liked himself. He gave the sleeping Nick a kiss on the cheek, and covered Nick's bare cold arm with his own.
In the morning, Michael was up first. It was he who cooked breakfast. Nick stumbled out, scowling with sleepiness, surprise and turned tables.
'My turn to cook, this time,' said Michael.
'What are you so bloody cheerful about?' Nick slumped into the chair.
'Life,' said Michael. He presented a plate of bacon and eggs to him. 'And, I've decided what I'm going to do about you.'
'Oh yeah,' sniffed Nick, smelling of sleep and trying to sound unconcerned. 'And what would that be?'
'Absolutely nothing.' Michael smiled.
'Oh yeah.'
'Yeah. There's nobody responsible for you mate, but you. So go ahead. You want to stay in this world? Be my guest. Like everything else, human or Angel, you'll have to decide what to do next. How you're going to live, where, how. Go ahead. Decide. That's life.'
Nick's jaws worked. 'You'll never get rid of me that way.'
'Who says I need to?'
Nick coughed. 'Suppose I smash the place up.'
Michael chuckled. 'Does it look like I care about this place?'
Nick was waking up. 'Suppose I go to the real Nick Dodder?'
'Go ahead. I don't suppose the real Nick Dodder gives a flying fuck about anybody, does he? What's he going to do, give you half his income? Say move in with my wife? Listen mate, Nick Dodder is a shit. He gets a certain perverse satisfaction pandering porn. He wants to hurt as many people, human or Angel, as he can. He's a real nasty piece of work, who cheats on his wife, and who, if the world let him, would poison it. But you. You are no longer Nick Dodder. You have an opportunity, mate. You can become different. You could become a nice person if you put your mind to it. But in the end, it's all up to you. Even if I were your Dad, or Lord God Almighty, it would still be up to you and not me.'
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