Christine

The bank of windows overlooked the parking lot. Once, it had been a favorite place to check the weather before going home, or traffic conditions on the freeway on the other side of the blacktop. Sometimes I had enjoyed just standing and unwinding after a difficult call. The view of the outskirts of L.A. was nothing to write home about, but up close it offered a postage stamp sized patch of green grass, a row of palm trees, and sunshine.

Or it had once.

At the moment, the normally bustling freeway outside was dead. A line of cars stood unmoving; the road was probably impassable at some point and closed down. The horns had stopped blaring an hour earlier, just before many of the occupants had set out on foot. A few people had shown up at the dispatch office, but most appeared to be trekking west along the off ramp.

Angry plumes of black and gray smoke clawed the sky to the north, an appalling beacon marking the place where lives had been lost… where one life was struggling in a futile attempt to hang on in the face of impossible odds.

As if my thoughts had summoned him, the light above my workstation popped on, indicating radio activity. I raced back to my seat. “I’m here, Mick.”

“Got some time to keep me company?” he wheezed.

I looked around the office, noting every station was occupied, every operator talking and writing. “I’ve got some time. It’s slowing down a bit here,” I lied.

“Do you know how long we’ve been down here?”

I checked my notes, though I knew the answer without looking. “A couple of hours,” I said. “You should turn off your radio, try to save as much of the battery as possible.”

“It’ll be all right for a little while.” Obviously reluctant to let go of the only human contact he had, he kept talking. “It’s black as pitch down here, Angel. Disorienting. Knowing you’re out there helps a little with that.”

“You just stay strong and hold onto me. We’ll get through this together.”

“Will you talk a bit?” He asked

“What do you want to talk about?” I rolled my pen between her fingers, concentrating on the way the clear plastic picked up the outside light.

“What do you do for fun?”

“Mmm, lots of different things. I read… just about anything. Go for walks, watch old movies on cable. I do Community Theater.”

“An actress, huh? You’re in the right city for it.”

“Oh, no. I’m not looking to be discovered,” I assure him. “I can’t imagine a worse life than acting for a living. It’s just a fun little storefront group.”

“What plays have you been in?”

“I did some Shakespeare in college,” I say. “Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew.”

“Kiss me Kate, we will be married o’ Sunday.’”

“Quoting Shakespeare?” I giggle in unexpected delight. “You’ve managed to completely surprise me.”

“Good. I like my women off balance,” he says. “Tell me more.”

“Okay, I played Marian the Librarian in The Music Man last year.”

“A musical. So you sing?”

“Just something I dabble at.” Heat flames across my cheeks.

“Sing something for me,” he pleads.

“Sure. When you get out you can come see me in Oliver!”

“I don’t want to wait. ‘If music be the food of love, play on,’” he quotes softly.

I chuckle. “I can see I shouldn’t have told you about singing. Or about Shakespeare.” Though I silently admit my heart would always melt for someone who could quote the Bard of Avon so easily.

“Too late. You did. Now you have to sing.”

“You make my head spin,” I say, only half joking. “I’ll bet you’re a real tornado on a date.”

He laughs. “You’ll find out. Stop stalling.”

“Okay, let me think. Um, do you like Bette Midler?”

“Sure.”

I look around the office. The other operators were engaged; no one was paying attention to me. A little self-conscious, I quietly sing a song about the nature of love, and how hope grew from nurturing love’s seeds. When I finish, the line was quiet and I thought maybe I’d lost him.

But then a soft sigh whispers in my ear. “I love your voice,” he says after a minute. “I’m gonna want to hear a lot more of it. Maybe you’ll do a private concert.” He chuckles. “Makes me really want to kiss you, though.”

If only our meeting could really go somewhere. I’d never felt so easy with a man before. “Maybe your voice makes me want to kiss you back.”

“Tell me more about you,” he begs. “I’d sure like to get to know you, Angel. Get a head start on those kisses I’m giving you as soon as I get out.”

In between bursts of static we talked, sharing the inane bits of information two people getting to know one another often exchanged, as if we were meeting for the first time over coffee.

He liked the color of the sky on a clear day in the mountains. I liked ice cream in the winter. He liked to go for runs on the beach at sunrise. I liked puppies and kittens. He didn’t have any pets but he’d saved a mother dog and her pups from a fire once and it had gone crazy kissing his face.

“My hero!” I sigh in my best Southern belle voice.

After a long pause, he finally whispered, “Naw, I’m not a hero. I’m just a man stuck under a building, talking to an angel he’d really, really like to kiss now.”