Guardian Angel – Chapter Two

Posted on | June 16, 2006 | No Comments

Chapter Two: First Day on the Job

Michael gave Jessica the run down on the rest of her duties as Guardian Angel, and the rules to follow. Basically they had all been common sense and easy to understand. Jessica watched as Michael wished her God speed and disappeared before her eyes. Until Jessica knew her way around Gabriel’s life and the places he visited, she wouldn’t be able to just disappear with a wink and reappear as if by magic.

As she continued to listen to the strains of the conversation still going on in the office at the rear of the house, Jessica took another look around the living room and continued to get a feel for the man she would be guarding over. Beyond the pictures, there were statuettes and miscellaneous awards that Gabriel had won in various areas of his life. On one shelf, there were baseball trophies dated back at least thirteen years, some from a college, others from high school championships. Positioned on the walls, in the spaces not filled with books, bookshelves, and personal photos, there were posters of the movies that Gabriel had starred in. Jessica took a long look at the varied and checkered career of the man she was watching over. He had gotten his start in campy horrors and had slowly worked his way through off-the-wall comedies to more eloquent and appealing works. The last she had come to was the poster for the movie on Julius Caesar, called “Ides of March.”

While she felt that she was invading Gabriel’s privacy by being in his home without his knowledge, she knew that there was no other way, for he would never know that she was residing with him; therefore, he could never give his permission tacitly or otherwise. So Jessica continued her perusal of her new surroundings. It was a simple, but comfortable home, which was similar to the thought she’d had when she had first seen it from standing outside with Michael; it certainly wasn’t the ostentatious home of a movie star, an assumption that she would have had in her mind before her death. And finally, the thought of her passing caught up with her.

She wanted to see what she looked like now, if she was in anyway changed beyond the new wings and what she felt was an additional weight at her back. Not knowing what the additional weight could be, she took one more quick glance around the living room in search of a mirror and finding none, she wandered over to a partially opened door that was just off from the living room and walked into what she assumed was a small half bathroom for guests to use.

She was just about to reach for the light switch, when she realized that doing so might alert others in the house that someone was in the bathroom and come to investigate, only to find the room empty. Jessica didn’t want to make Gabriel or his friends think the place was haunted. So she focused on the mirror, thankful that there was just enough light filtering in from the doorway that she could see herself with. What she saw surprised her, for she wasn’t wearing the outfit of an angel that she fancied she’d be — the pristine, white robes with a golden sash at her waist; instead, she was wearing the clothes she would have normally found comfortable, jeans and a light, loose blue t-shirt. She looked at her face and saw the light tan it always had, the short brown tousled curls framing her face and the glasses she forever wore. Jessica grinned at her reflection. There was no difference to her look, well except for the white wings peaking out over her shoulders and as she leaned in closer to the mirror, she saw from over her left shoulder what looked like the handle of … a sword. Jessica squinted and blinked, but the vision before her did not change. Yes, it did indeed look like the handle of a sword.

Jessica turned around so that her back was to the mirror and she finally got a full glance of her angel’s wings, along with the sheath of some sword nestled in behind them.

“Well, I guess that’s for my guardian duties; must have some way of fighting off those pesky demons Michael mentioned.”

She thought of trying to see how large a span her own wings went, but the bathroom was small, so she didn’t chance extending them inside, even though part of her knew that they wouldn’t actually hit the walls, as she wasn’t flesh and blood any longer. A lifetime of training and earthbound thinking would take some time to overcome.

The newly minted angel exited from the bathroom and ascended the stairs and continued to look around her temporary, new home. The conversation she had been straining to listen to faded the further she wandered away from it. With a shrug, she figured Gabriel was safe for the moment with his assistant. At the top of the landing, she noticed all the doors were closed and she sighed. She approached one of the doors and tried to reach for the handle. If she could walk on floors and not sink through them, surely she could master opening a door. Her hand tried to grasp a hold of the knob, but her hand passed right through it.

‘Well, that should have been expected,’ she said silently to herself. With another shrug of her shoulders, she closed her eyes and took several steps through the door that stood in front of her. She stopped just inside the room and noticed that it was a bedroom converted into a workout room. Free weights and an elliptical machine took up one side of the room, and on the other side was a stationary running machine with a television positioned right in front of it. She tried not to envy Gabriel his access to his own gym, for she had never had the time or money to join one and work at keeping her own body in shape. She just silently thanked God that she had decent genetics and her body wasn’t in too terrible of a shape.

With a long look down at her body, she shook her head and muttered out loud to herself, “Well, you’re definitely stuck with this body for all eternity now.” As she looked down at her bare feet in earnest, she came to realize that she couldn’t sense the carpet beneath them. Then she looked closer and understood why, she wasn’t actually standing on the floor, but hovering just slightly above it. She pushed her foot down and watched as her foot dipped right through the carpeting.

“Huh, strange, that I can’t feel anything external to myself. This is definitely going to take some getting used to, not being able to reach out and touch.” Jessica though, wanted to reconfirm that touch just was not possible, and thought really hard about her goal and envisioned it in her mind, then ran her hand over the handle of the elliptical machine and watched it pass right through. Sighing in exasperation, she then reached down and touched her shirt and felt the solidness of it and the body beneath it. “Yep, that confirms that. Gotta love empirical testing.”

Jessica took one more look around the room, and then walked through the door back out into the hallway, this time with her eyes open. She continued investigating all the rooms on the second floor and the last one she came to, she saw signs of occupation and more pictures of Gabriel with friends or family. The master bedroom was large and spacious and nicely appointed. The furniture was fairly modern, but certainly not the newest and latest styles. Jessica looked around the room with a feminine eye and noticed that not a single part of the room indicated that a womanly touch had been involved in the decorating.

“That’s what will happen though, and soon. It’s what Gabriel’s going to be looking for; to find love and a woman to be a part of his life. And Michael told me that it’s gonna be my job to make sure nothing interferes with that goal.”

Jessica canvassed the entire room and the adjacent bathroom, getting a mental map of everything and as she exited the bathroom once she was done, the bedroom door opened quickly and in walked the man she was there to watch and protect. Jessica gasped and took a step back to hide, when she came to herself and remembered that no living soul could see her. She stood in fascination as she watched this man throw himself down onto his bed, roll over onto his back and stare up at the ceiling. She wondered what had happened down in his office that could result in such a display, of what she could only assume was frustration.

With a sigh, Jessica came closer to the bed and sank down on the edge farthest away from her charge. She noticed that she left no indentation on the bed covers. She figured that once again she was hovering just slightly over top and was not actually touching anything. Jessica shook her in consternation. How could she walk and sit, and yet have her hands go through everything she tried to touch. Was it all a matter of subconscious thought, she asked herself. Jessica wished that Michael were still there so she could ask him questions she hadn’t thought to ask before. Maybe later, when it was night and Gabriel was asleep, she could pop away for a few minutes and ask the questions she had piling up on her growing list.

Giving up that line of thought for the moment, she instead watched Gabriel intently, wishing she could decipher his thoughts and emotions since she couldn’t ask him directly. She saw the troubled gaze and emotions brewing in the eyes. The eyes were indeed the windows to the soul, if one cared to look, but the reasons behind the upheaval she sensed in Gabriel were unknown to her. It was so frustrating.

She took a deep breath and hummed to herself as she centered her thoughts, so that she could gather her patience around her like a warm, comforting cloak. It hit home then, that it was going to be a long and trying time. Jessica wondered how other angels did it, waiting and watching and never interacting. The loneliness was something she would have to learn to cope with she was sure.

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