If Angels Fight Read Online Free PDF Page A

through.
    “Then I saw the Daily News photo and headline, SHE-MALE IN PAIN PALACE DEATH PLUNGE. That’s when I found out about the raid and how she fell six floors head first off the roof. I got out of town. But I wondered . . .”
    “If you pushed her?” he asks and I nod.
    “You came out the door royally fucked up just before I left. I stuck you in a cab. You don’t remember?”
    I shake my head.
    “Whipwell jumped after the raid started. Maybe that was her release. Like this is yours.”
    I look into those eyes, realize nothing holds me. He watches me float up over the roofs of Manhattan.

    Tears of Laughter, Tears of Grief
    There’s a little shop way west on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. TEARS OF LAUGHTER, TEARS OF GRIEF has been there for years. It advertizes discreetly. “ Trouble expressing yourself emotionally?” “Unable to summon the right response in a timely manner?”
    Which of us has not had those problems? And TOLTOG has the answers. Unable to produce a lingering tear? TOLTOG has handy eye drops! I stop in whenever I pass the shop. It’s a boutique, really, small but enticing. And the stock!
    Stuff one almost wants to find a use for. Sweat of your brow? Sprays on! Drool with envy? With an oral sponge! Sweating Blood is a simple application.
    The whole Blood Sweat and Tears treatment requires a little extra time and effort to apply cream, spray and eye drops. But what a pleasure to take that trouble!
    The staff is part of the charm, with their words of comfort (achieved with a gargle solution in several delightful flavors) and, sympathetic smiles (a small oral brace which doesn’t interfere with diction in any serious way).
    I was reminded of TOLTOG one day not long ago. I’d just started writing a story, a dystopian tale about an orphan boy in a desolate American landscape. His parents have been killed and eaten by Republicans and he is both starving and hungry for revenge.
    This, I was afraid, was turning out to be an example of what I call bright flash stories, ones that begin with an image, an idea, an opening sentence, sometimes with all three of those and then linger seductive, unformed and unfinished in back files.
    As I fretted about that I got an email informing me that Livonia Failbeck, described as she always was as, “A prominent American fantasy writer,” had died suddenly from a stroke.
    A surprise and a coincidence, I’d been thinking how Livonia would have taken my story of unutterable wrong, added some little curlicues to flavor the plot, and subtly turned the story into an affirmation rather than an angry cry.
    Normally, to write in the short forms is to dance a dance with obscurity. But Livionia’s formula had won her attention and awards. Twice in recent years I’d been at conventions because I was on an awards short list. Both times Livy herself hadn’t bothered to make an appearance—once because she was elsewhere receiving a more important award. Both times she won. Later she was pleasant about it, shrugging her shoulders at the whims of the fans, the mysteries of the judges’ decisions. But being a pleasant winner is easy, losing not so much.
    The announcement of the memorial service followed shortly on the death notice. It would be held here in New York City and I’d have to go, wouldn’t, in fact, have considered missing it. My problem would be decorum. Could I show the proper regret untinged by sardonic glee?
    Very shortly afterwards I felt all had gone well because I was at a spec fiction convention and I was receiving an award—THE GOLDEN GOOSE—given for excellence in short fiction. I remembered that Livonia Failbeck had won this prize seven times.
    My story of the orphan boy whose parents had been eaten was the one with which I’d won. Had Ms. Failbeck still been alive this would never have happened. And I stepped up to take the prize, aware that I’d Livonia’d the story with wry verbal doodles and a big, reconciliation for an ending. But I