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“What have you got on the docket for tonight, angel? Rearranging the bookshelves? Strolling around, admiring creation? Some light miracle-ing?”
Aziraphale could hear the scorn in Crowley’s voice on the word “miracle”, but he didn’t feel like arguing. He hadn’t had a single customer today, and while he was relieved not to have had to sell anything, he had to admit it was a bit boring to be shut up in the shop alone all day. So whatever Crowley’s game was, he was perfectly happy to play it this time. Not that that much distinguished it from every other time.
“Oh, nothing doing, really. I thought I might watch an old movie on TV.”
“You haven’t got a TV, Aziraphale.” Crowley had him there.
“I could do! Why are you calling anyway?”
Aziraphale hated being caught in a lie, which was unfortunate because it seemed to happen every time he tried, lying not being a smiled-upon skill for angels to have. He wasn’t sure why he had done it in the first place, as he had no particular reason to lie to Crowley on this occasion other than fear of sounding as though he had been waiting by the phone.
“I know the owner of a little theatre and he’s offered me two tickets to the show they’ve got running right now. I expect it’s going to be quite spectacularly awful and I was hoping you might want to come make fun of it with me.”
“Gosh, well when you sell it like that. Why would it be awful?”
“Well, rather unpromisingly it’s a one-man show with original songs. That’s, of course, one of mine. One-person shows, that is. I particularly like watching the faces of the performer’s friends as they try to come up with nice things to say about them afterwards. In any case, I remembered you liking the theater, and so I thought of you. Does that sound like more fun than pretending to watch telly?”
That stung a bit.
“Fine, but you’re buying the programmes.”
“It’s not a Playbill kind of show, angel. I’ll be round in twenty minutes.”
And he was, screeching to a halt in front of the shop at 6:45 on the dot. The pigeons overhead were flapping around unsettled by the noise, but Crowley gave them a glare as if to say “not on this car you don’t” and they all immediately froze like statues. Wish the ficus was that obedient , he thought, and stepped into the bookshop. Crowley found Aziraphale looking at himself in the shop window as though in a mirror, fussing with a buttonhole that was finally starting to lose its stiffness after its century-plus of service. As he heard the door click, he turned around and tried in vain to pretend that he hadn’t been preening.
“Isn’t pride a sin, angel?”
“Pride, Crowley?”
“Don’t think I didn’t see you checking yourself out in the window.”
“Oh, it wasn’t like that! I just hate to see my jacket starting to show its age. I need to present the best possible face on Heaven’s behalf, that’s all.” On the back foot yet again, apparently.
“Vanitas vanitatum, my dear boy,” Crowley scolded with a small smile. “Let’s not be late for this trainwreck.”
Aziraphale settled into the passenger seat of the car as though he were a hen settling into the coop for the evening, with a lot of shifting about in his seat to get comfortable.
“Don’t get too comfortable, angel, it’s only a ten-minute drive.”
“With your driving, I need to find comfort wherever I can.”
As if in response, Crowley stomped on the gas and they bolted forward towards Clapham. Nearly every car in the road honked as they sped down the street, but Crowley of course relished this. Getting other motorists to lean on their horns and shout curses was, after all, part of his job. The theatre had one of those scalloped awnings that was fraying a little on the ends, an unassuming brick red. It wasn’t the sort of place that had ropes to show you which way the queue formed, because there was no queue and barely a crowd in the lobby. Crowley approached the will-call booth smoothing the top of his hair, hoping he came across as well-connected and at ease.
“There should be two under Crowley?”
“Yep,” said the bored-looking goth in the booth, handing him two tickets. Crowley looked back at Aziraphale, waving the tickets and pulling his best “here goes nothing” face. Aziraphale suddenly felt overdressed and out of his depth. Crowley strode over and handed Aziraphale his ticket. As though he had read the angel’s mind, he leaned slightly towards his ear and said, “Don’t worry, you’ve been overdressed to everything since 1912, old friend, but it just makes everyone else look shabby.”
“It couldn’t have been Hamlet? It had to be this?” Aziraphale said as they took their seats, looking with skepticism at the title on the ticket: My Ass And Other Wastelands. “I mean, this seems a bit rude.”
“How closely were you watching Hamlet, angel? It had its moments too, if I remember correctly.”
They settled into their seats and soon the lights started to flutter to warn people that the show was about to start. In larger theaters this sometimes felt like magic, but this was a black box and you could see the black-t-shirt-clad crew member flipping the light switch on and off at the back of the theatre.
When the house lights finally went all the way down and the lights onstage went up, there was just a man with an acoustic guitar standing in front of a microphone. He started into what was supposed to be an amusing self-deprecating song about, well, his ass and myriad sites of natural and man-made disaster. Aziraphale found the comparison with Chernobyl in particularly poor taste. Eventually, the song ended, but the droning soliloquy that followed, punctuated by nervous little laughs like scare quotes, was possibly even worse.
“Take me away from here,” Aziraphale muttered in Crowley’s ear.
“Gosh, that’s a little forward of you,” the demon responded, so close that Aziraphale could have sworn he felt his lips against his ear. “Getting bad ideas?”
“No!” Aziraphale said, a little too loudly, and then looked around sheepishly as the people in front of him shifted in their seats. “Just mentally, I mean. I would like to be somewhere else. Watching another, better show perhaps. The least you could do for subjecting me to this tasteless self-indulgence.”
Crowley considered snapping his fingers and transporting them back to his flat, where they could watch an old movie on television after all, but he had to stick around and act friendly with the friend who saved him the seats. Foiled again by his own manners! Surely a demon ought to be able to get away with certain things. But then he had another idea. Crowley leaned all the way over until he was looking up at Aziraphale from just under his chin.
“ Shall I lie in your lap? ”
Aziraphale struggled to maintain his composure. He wasn’t sure if it was Crowley’s proximity to his mouth, the slightly shocking thing he had just said, or the way that it was delivered in the middle of a darkened theatre surrounded by other people.
“Excuse me?” he hissed, trying to convey as much exasperation as he could muster while not bothering the rest of the audience. Crowley’s voice came through as a comforting murmur, although Aziraphale could hear a slight chuckle forming as well.
“ I mean, my head in your lap .”
Now he understood: Crowley was merely trying to honor his request, although he, unsurprisingly perhaps, had figured he may as well have a little fun with him while he was at it.
“ Ay, my lord ,” he responded, his tone as soft as he dared. Was it a sin in and of itself for him to call a demon “my lord”, even if it was merely quoting something? If so, he had probably done far worse in his time. Crowley continued to lean back into Aziraphale’s seat so that his head practically was in his lap, a position that Aziraphale imagined must be impossible for basically anyone else, considering that everything of Crowley’s waist-down was exactly where it would be if he were sitting normally. His legs were still crossed! The hand closer to Aziraphale slid over the armrest that now jutted into Crowley’s back and up the angel’s right leg.
“ Do you think I meant country matters? ” the demon whispered. Aziraphale was at this point nervously giggling nearly too hard to respond. Crowley winked, and miraculously the man onstage had actually said something funny, so the rest of the audience was laughing too. He shushed, a jittery little sibilance that acknowledged more than it denied his culpability in what was happening.
“ I think nothing, my lord .” There it was again, as dangerous as it was meant to be polite in the original script. It was very odd, he thought, to be playing Ophelia. She was such a tragic figure, as, he supposed, they all were, driven to distraction by a partner so incomprehensible that madness felt like an appropriate response. Aziraphale rather knew the feeling. Crowley grinned.
“ That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs. ” As if to demonstrate his point, Crowley dropped his head back and wriggled it slightly against Aziraphale’s legs, still facing up and looking into his eyes like a direct challenge. The angel wasn’t exactly sure what he was being challenged to do, but he had a feeling he was about to fold.
And then the people around them were clapping, some of them begrudgingly standing up to applaud their friend, and Crowley slithered back into his own seat and then stood up with them. Aziraphale couldn’t quite summon the presence of mind to follow suit, but he did manage to do some tepid clapping. After a while the house lights came up and Aziraphale was forced to actually stand. Crowley started to walk toward the front rows to greet his friend.
“Uh, I think I’d better wait for you outside. Say I went to the toilet. Better yet, don’t say anything at all!” And with that, Aziraphale bolted for the exit. Crowley shook his head and shuffled forward to say his thanks and make his excuses as quickly as he could. Perhaps I took the joke too far , he thought. He wasn’t sure the angel would even be there when he walked outside.
“How did you like the show? Engaging, huh?”
“Oh, definitely.” He couldn’t see the sparkle in Crowley’s eyes from behind his sunglasses.
“Did your, uh, your mate like it?”
“Seemed like it. He would have said hello, but he said he had to run for the loo. We’re not as young as we used to be, eh?” Crowley loved a good understatement. “Well, thanks for the tickets. Good luck with the season!” He walked out of the theatre as quickly as he could while maintaining his veneer of cool.
Aziraphale was already sitting in the passenger seat of the car when Crowley got outside. He knew he locked it, but he wasn’t going to press the issue. Either he broke into the car, in which case he was highly impressed, or he miracled his way in to have a wobble in private, in which case Crowley was just glad he still wanted to get in the car with him. He took care to open the door slowly so that he didn’t startle his friend.
“Well?”
“I wasn’t expecting, um, immersive theatre.”
“Too much?” Aziraphale shrugged. Too much, but in the way that he had come to look forward to over their millennia spent in tandem.
“How did you have that whole scene memorized? You don’t even like Hamlet!”
“You do.” It came out so soft that Aziraphale might not have heard it so much as read the demon’s lips.
“How much of the play do you know?”
“All of it.”
“Crowley –”
“ Here, sweet lord, at your service .” Crowley started the car but didn’t take his foot off the brake yet. Aziraphale took the opportunity to take a deep breath and absorb what Crowley had just said. He looked over at him, smiling like he had been given an incredible gift.
“And I at yours, my dear, of course. But, um, if you’re going to squirm all over my lap, Crowley, let’s do that in private next time.” Crowley raised his eyebrows and turned to look at Aziraphale in mock scandal. “And that’s the only one-man show I ever want to see again.” Crowley put the car in drive with a guffaw and they shot off into the night.