My father was an asshole and my mother died when I was eight, but angels don’t care about any of that. All they care about is demons, and I didn’t meet a demon until the day I turned twenty-five. Angels don’t really care about why you did shit, but if you really want to understand the mistakes I made that day, I have to tell you about a girl, the girl who was supposed to be the love of my life.
Judy and I had been together since high school, one way or the other. We met in drama class. The new corporate administrators weren’t willing to spend extra money on theater at Watertown Co-Op; they gave the class to a football coach.
Judy was discovering her love of theater, and I was suffering through my humanities requirement. I wanted to take a drafting class, but dad had other ideas. He thought drama might breathe some life into his shy, reclusive son. He never knew how right he was.
I enjoyed watching people, but my own performances were shallow. I didn’t forget lines, but my delivery was flat. I had a nice voice and a good memory, but I couldn’t just lose myself the way others did. I was not a good actor. I knew it, and the other students knew it. I saw them cringe every time I took the stage. The giggles hurt my pride, but I kept trying. Coach thought I was brave, but there were other forces at work. I had my eye on a girl.
I noticed Judy after my first monologue. My performance was dreadful - bad, to the point of comedy. The snickers turned into groans, but I kept going for three minutes, until Coach stopped me and sent me back to my seat. No one else would look at me, but a brown-haired girl in the front row turned around and said, “Don’t worry - everybody sounds like that the first time.”
It was nothing, really - just a simple act of kindness, but when the girl turned around, the tip of her ponytail brushed my hand. Judy smiled at me and blinked her big brown eyes, and I fell like a rock. Judy had confidence - the effortless joy of someone who had never been hurt.
I was ready to drop the class, but the moment I saw Judy, I attacked the arts with supernatural vigor. Our first play was Macbeth. Judy played Lady Macbeth. I took three steps on stage and handed a scroll to the King. Our second play was Scotland Road. Judy played the female lead. I was an intern at the hospital. Our third play was Brighton Beach Memoirs. Judy was Mrs. Murphy. I helped them take down the set.
Every student had to do a scene for their final project. Judy was assigned to me by the coach. Coach thought his best student might extract some hidden passion from his worst. It worked a little too well.
We practiced every day after class. We spent hours on stage, rehearsing some obscure duet about a married couple in a diner. In the afternoon, we would work, and every night, we would talk. Well, Judy would talk. Mostly I just listened.
I still remember Judy that way, sitting cross-legged on that dusty old stage. We talked about everything: parents and school, teachers and classmates. And later, as the sky turned gray, we talked about the future. Judy wanted to perform on Broadway, or maybe open an art gallery downtown.
I talked about becoming an architect, or maybe going to law school. Three weeks before our final performance, Judy and I had our first kiss. Her dad trusted her, and my dad was always at the bar, so we had been on stage for hours, talking and laughing way past the time we should have been home. The school was dark. Even the custodians had gone home.
Judy was talking about how much she loved performing. I moved a little closer and asked her why. She wasn’t really a thoughtful person, but this question hit something deep. Like for the first time, she showed me who she really was.
I couldn’t see anything but the outline of her face. She kept her eyes on the door, too embarrassed to look at me. “I’m the best actor in class, but I’m not very pretty. The pretty girls can’t act, but they get good parts anyway. I have to work harder for mine. Everywhere else, people ignore me. I just kind of... fade into the background. But when I’m on stage, people look at me. They watch me and they smile, and they laugh at my dialog, just like they would if I was pretty.”
I was stunned. How could someone be beautiful and not even know it? I didn’t know what to say, but I had to say something. The words came out worse than nonsense. I said, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!”
I had never raised my voice to her before. Judy was so surprised; she didn’t even have time to feel hurt. She just cocked her head and said, “What?” like I was speaking a foreign language.
I was on automatic pilot. The cliche tumbled out of my mouth. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen!”
The flattery made her nervous, so she tried to blow it off. She patted my hand. “You don’t have to say that. I know I’m not ugly; I just wish I was prettier sometimes. I’m cool with it, most of the time.”
But I wasn’t about to let this go. I lurched to my feet and pounded the dust off my jeans. I was too frustrated to speak. I just paced in a circle, running fingers through my hair.
After three circles, I picked up my script and waved it at her. “You think I like doing this shit?” I crumpled the pages into a ball and pitched them into the seats. “I didn’t even want to take this stupid class! I wanted to take drafting, but my father said I should go out and meet people! I don’t give a shit about people!
“Everybody in this school is so stupid! All they talk about is their stupid clothes and their stupid parties and their stupid mind games about sex that never happened! You’re the only interesting girl in this whole damn place! You think all the boys want a girl with holo implants and colored hair? Fuck that! My friend Tommy did Julie Mitchell’s homework for three years. Now she won’t even say hello to him in the hall!
“Is that the kind of person you want to be? You’re not pretty because of clothes or implants or mods. You’re pretty because you’re real! Your hair is gorgeous, and your skin is perfect and when you look at me over your glasses, I can’t even remember my name! I’ve spent three months working up the courage to ask you out, and you sit here whining because you think you’re ugly? That’s the stupidest thing I–”
That’s when she kissed me. Judy hit me so hard, I lost my balance and fell backwards onto the stage. I landed on my ass and slid three feet toward the edge; Judy had to grab my sleeve to keep me from falling off the end. Our first kiss was clumsy, so we decided to try again.
* * *
For the rest of high school, it was perfect - the happiest time in my childhood. Judy took me to art galleries; I took her to old movies. And we both pretended to enjoy it.
As juniors, we both joined the speech team. Judy did contest plays. I joined the debate squad. What I lacked in passion, I made up for with research. I didn’t believe in myself, I believed in my work.
Sometimes smarter students would match my evidence and surprise me with obscure lines of attack. Those were my favorites. I lost a lot, but those matches brought out the best in me.
Between rounds, I would meet Judy at the snack bar. Our love bloomed in a string of cafeterias, consecrated with flat soda and Styrofoam cups full of candy. She would always be frantic after a show. I would just sit there and watch, mesmerized by her energy.
Most schools blocked devices during tournaments, so when we couldn’t talk, we would scribble love notes on legal pads and exchange them as we passed in the hall. I kept every note Judy ever wrote to me, long after I should have thrown them away.
We lost our virginity together during state finals, huddled in a bargain room at the Holiday Inn. Boys weren’t allowed on the same floor with the girls, so I had to sneak out of her room at 5 a.m. I can still remember watching the sun rise through those dirty windows, alone in my room the next day.
We had stayed up all night. I lost all three rounds and Judy blew her monologue, but neither one of us gave a damn. We didn’t have much time for sex when we got back to school, but when the moments came, we made the most of them. Judy was always the first to leave.
At that point, my mother had been dead for nine years. I was used to being alone while dad worked weird hours, but during my senior year, it got worse. I would come home to an empty house, with an empty fridge and no money for dinner, waiting for dad to stagger home from the bar at 2 a.m., smelling like whiskey and whatever woman he had just been with.
But when dad was out on “dates,” Judy and I could use the house. I almost had a heart attack the night he caught us. He came home early one night and found Judy in the kitchen, wearing nothing but one of my shirts.
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I was expecting a confrontation, but Dad just said, “Sorry,” and walked right back out. Father and son carried on for a week like nothing happened. The next Friday, Dad said, “I’ll be gone until midnight.” Then he paused, appraising me somehow. “I made some big sacrifices to get you in this school, but if you get that girl pregnant, you’re on your own.”
We never really talked about it, but every Friday he went out, and he never came home early again.
My father was a simple man - strong, even macho in his way, still marked by his childhood in West Texas. Andy Peterson liked guns, beer, and cowboy boots. I couldn’t drive, refused to drink, and jumped at loud noises. After ten years of suspicion and disgust, he left the house that night thanking God that his boy wasn’t gay.
Judy never understood my dad, and I didn’t really understand her until I met her parents. They were incredible - a matching pair of college professors, specialized in English and history. I remember the first night I had dinner at their house, picking through bean sprouts and tofu turkey. They ate like a family, with real plates and cloth napkins.
I was terrified that I would spill something or break something, or say something stupid, but no one even noticed me. Judy fought with her mother the whole night, trying to wheedle money for a new purse.
Her mother said “No,” and I thought that would be the end of it, but Judy kept going, whining about how much she needed it until her mother gave in. I was stunned. In my house, “no” meant “no.” Even when I got the money I wanted, dad made me feel like a brat for asking. Judy was scoring money for new purses while my life was a daily struggle for lunch money.
Judy complained constantly, but her parents looked like old TV characters to me. They made me feel so dumb with their books and their art and their television, permanently locked on some arts and history channel. They were usually very nice to me. They offered me lemonade in soft, slow voices, leaning in close like I was deaf or disabled.
One day, Judy kicked the back of her father’s chair and woke him up, just so she could ask for money. I was horrified. If I had tried that with my dad, I would have walked away carrying my own teeth.
I jumped to my feet as soon as she started kicking, poised to protect her from whatever her father was about to do, but he just gave her the money and went back to sleep. Judy never knew why I stood up.
Judy loved her parents, but she wasn’t scared of them. Most people can’t understand what it’s like to conflate love with fear, but at sixteen years old, I didn’t know the difference. Judy’s mother criticized everything she did, but sometimes she would come up behind her daughter and hug her, for no reason at all. I used to lay awake at night and pretend they were my parents. I would stare at the ceiling and wonder how it felt to be loved like that.
A week later, I caught Judy’s mother reading an old book. The pages were so brittle, she had to turn them with tweezers. I was feeling brave, so I asked her what it was. She answered in her schoolmarm voice. “This is a book by Jane Austen. Do you know who that is?”
She thought she was being nice, but her tone hit me the wrong way. I said, “I’m poor, not stupid.”
Judy’s mom didn’t like that, but her father laughed so hard he had to sit down. Things changed after that. Judy’s mom stopped bringing me lemonade, and her father started taking me out on the porch. He would sit in an old vinyl chair and smoke cigars while I watched. I thought he wanted to talk, but he shushed me every time I opened my mouth.
Our longest conversation was two minutes, conducted a week after graduation. He led me out on the porch and locked the door like he always did - a pudgy male figure, obscured by smoke and tweed.
“Judy’s been talking around it, but it’s pretty obvious you guys are gonna get your own place.”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
He took a long drag from his cigar, blowing a big smoke ring. “I’m not gonna stop you but let me give you some advice. When you get a house, you’re gonna need a room - a room with a TV and a fridge and a door that locks. You have to get it right away, right at the beginning, or you’ll spend the next twenty years wishing you had one.”
* * *
Judy graduated with me in the spring of ‘51. We started college together, and a couple years later, I dropped out. I’d been paying for living expenses with contract work for a company called Innovex, after a great internship my senior year.
They were growing fast, desperate for talent. They offered me more money than I had ever seen, even more than my dad made, so when they offered me a job, I dropped school and took it. I used my signing bonus to get us a little apartment by the river.
I thought I had life all figured out, but we fought about everything: food, bills, furniture - even pictures on the wall. In high school, I was actually starting to enjoy museum trips, but now, they just seemed stupid. I was working terrible hours. Judy would make plans and I would break them. Sometimes I needed the overtime, and sometimes I just didn’t give a damn.
We toughed it out for a couple years, but our pseudo-engagement lasted less than a year. I never cheated on Judy, but I had an affair with my job. I was making money hand over fist, but I had no life, no hobbies, and no time to enjoy it.
I was still working for Innovex, living in an apartment with Judy, trying to save money for a house, when my father died. He had a heart attack on our old front lawn. He locked his hands on the mower when the first pain hit and died leaning on it. They had to break his fingers to get him off.
I was at the office, working late on some project that I can’t remember. I went to work the next few days like nothing happened, left for the funeral one afternoon, and never came back.
I felt like I was too old to go back to college, but I still had an unrestricted scholarship from my dad’s employment contract, and the terms were incredibly generous. The counselor said I had an open ticket to study whatever I wanted, so I picked something that would give me credit for work experience and dropped back in.
My father had an equivalency but had never graduated high school. He talked constantly about the “incredible sacrifice” he made to get this corporate job that included an education for me and was devastated when I dropped out.
Dad and I were never close. Before he died, we had gone years without speaking. No holidays, no phone calls, no birthday cards. Nothing. I just moved out one day and never looked back.
Judy used to bug me about calling him, and I could never make her understand. Her concept of love, her idea of parents, her entire model of the world was different from mine, and when she asked me to explain it, I didn’t even know where to start. I tried to explain that even if I called him, we had nothing to talk about, even if he did pick up the phone.
We didn’t exactly hate each other, but he never forgave me for dropping out of school. Judy said I didn’t owe him anything, but the thought of him dying like that, dying knowing his son had failed him, it was more than I could stand.
I felt like a fool, surrounded by kids who had never lived on their own or held a real job, but I planned to stick it out and earn a degree. I didn’t really give a shit about college; I just wanted to make this pain go away - the terrible pain of failing him.
The programming classes were easy, but science and math gave me fits. I could solve anything with a line of code, but old-fashioned ciphering drove me nuts. It was all so slow. I balked at the literature requirement, but it wasn’t so bad, this time around. Most of the stories were tedious, but sometimes I would find a passage that touched me.
Then, one spring day, I saw Judy again. She was at the museum, staring up at some outrageous sculpture that had just arrived. The breakup had been bitter and cruel, but something inside me dissolved when I saw her again. I tried to remember my anger, but there was nothing left, nothing but sadness and a kind of shameful joy at seeing her again.
I walked up behind her and looked at the sculpture. I knew I should say something, but everything sounded wrong in my head. It took Judy a few minutes to notice. She looked at me sideways, and I kept my eyes on the statue.
Judy said, “How are you?”
“This backpack hurts my shoulder, and these kids make me feel old,” I said. “The ceiling in my apartment leaks and my professors are all pompous drunks. Everything else is fine.”
Judy choked on a laugh. “Yeah. Mine leaks, too.”
* * *
The friendship was a delicate thing, like a tiny sculpture made of glass. We built it carefully, afraid that one wrong word would shatter the whole thing. Even when we finished it, we didn’t quite know what we had. Our sculpture was bigger than friendship, but it would never be love.
We sat in the square between classes, talking about everything and nothing. I filled the air with chatter while my eyes scanned her face, waiting for a little touch or a sidelong glance, waiting for a sign that she still loved me.
But there was nothing, nothing but laughs and smiles and friendly little pats on my back. That was the worst part - the touching. I kept my face flat when she did it, but every time Judy touched me, I remembered why she shouldn’t do that anymore.
We were friends now, friends like we had never been before. Everything was so easy now, all the things we couldn’t do when we were in love. We went to movies and museums, classes and conferences. Sometimes we would argue, but there was no anger now - just gentle, effortless compromise. The grace of it pissed me off. Why couldn’t we have this before? Why couldn’t I act this way the first time, when I still had her heart?
My grand academic comeback was cut short after the fall term in 2057, when I realized I was about to run out of money. I was too old for campus housing, and my scholarship didn’t cover the apartment. I had made good money at Innovex, but my savings were almost gone.
Judy was working in the museum, gaining authority day by day. The directors were grooming her for administrative work, but Judy resisted. She was great with people, but the paperwork drove her nuts. When the backlog got to be too much, she would panic and ask me for help.
Soon, I was spending hours in the office with her. I made a database and taught her some accounting software. Her superiors didn’t know about me; they thought she was a genius. The praise made her uncomfortable, but eventually, she learned to handle things on her own.
* * *
A couple months before my twenty-fifth birthday, Judy found a way to pay me back. The director wanted to update their exhibit records. He started taking bids, but Judy stepped in and undercut them. She said she knew a brilliant programmer who could do it for half price. Her superiors didn’t want to hire a student, but Judy won them over.
Their budget wasn’t much by commercial standards, but it would be big money for me. She wrapped the job up like a gift and gave it to me one night. The scope of the project scared me, but the money was just too good to turn down.
So, I took the job and spent my nights in Judy’s office off the exhibit floor, lost in productive bliss. The museum records were a mess. Sorting them filled some deep need in my soul.
I was in the museum on the evening of my birthday, trying to lose myself in work, so I could forget what day it was.
I started work at seven-fifteen. Judy came to visit at eight-thirty. At nine o’clock, I was on my knees in the office with my hand clamped over her mouth. At nine-fifteen, I was impaled on a demon’s claw. And by midnight, I was lost in the eyes of a fallen angel, bargaining for my mortal soul.