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It was that brutally hot summer of 2004, in New Orleans, just a year before God brought down the hammer of Katrina-which shattered the city in ways that it would never recover from. It was a strange time and a stranger place, a few brief months before another stolen presidential election and nearly three years after a couple of hijacked planes jump-started the new American Imperialism.
New Orleans was, as it had always been, a land of glorious entropy. An unchanging heat mirage of a place, where the same man could own property for a couple of hundred years and nobody batted an eye. Where vampires were probably real, and voodouns were just part of the local color-and pillars of the community.
Gabriel 13 and Aziraphale DiAngelo's family (of the Lower Garden District) had decided that a summer job might instill some responsibility in the brothers, and both had acquiesced. In spite of their family owning a number of businesses, they both ended up with summer jobs at the Chez Mall.
Their father (Gabriel 12) and grandfather (Gabriel 11) wanted them to learn responsibility, but not somewhere that would have consequences for them if the boys should cock things up. Besides, their business was DiAngelo Autos, and there was no way they were going to trust two teenagers with Porsches and Lamborghinis that were worth way more than the boys were.
Aziraphale had only just gotten his learner's permit, for chrissake.
The rest of the family businesses were fully staffed, but the mall was always looking for help.
Michael the Girl, Gabriel and Aziraphale's first cousin, had been working at the GAP since she was Gabriel's age. Now, she was the store manager. She agreed to hire Gabriel (but not Aziraphale) for summer work. Frankly, there was a look that was expected for a GAP employee. Gabriel had it. Aziraphale did not.
One of the first things you learn about working at the GAP is that you can only get a job at the GAP if you look like the models.
No problem on that front. Gabriel DiAngelo possessed the benign good looks of the suburban Catholic schoolboy that he was. Brown hair, kept in a tidy flashy, hung to his cheekbones when he didn't have it slicked back. His face had the fine-boned aristocratic look of his Neapolitan and French ancestry. His build was square and sturdy, but not a bit of extra fat hung on him. He looked every inch the All-American star quarterback at Holy Angels.
Which he was.
Gabriel's most noticeable feature had to be his eyes. They were violet, inherited all the way from Italy, to hear his family talk about it. Those eyes only showed up every few generations, and Gabriel got lucky.
Michael the Girl (one of four Michaels in the family, including both of her parents) had assured him that working the GAP was an easy job. Any monkey could do it. And she would know, because she was doing the job while she was taking a full-time load at UNO Business School. Scoring straight A's every semester, and playing softball, too.
She promised Gabriel that he'd have no problem, at all.
Poor Aziraphale did not look like a GAP model. Aziraphale DiAngelo was a chubby kid. He played football for the Angels, too (whether he liked it or not). Aziraphale was a nearly unstoppable center, who could, if he managed to get his hands on the ball, trudge it all the way to the end zone.
They called him the Juggernaut.
Aziraphale would just say, "Oh, bother," when one of his teammates handed him the ball. Then, he'd placidly walk that ball to the end zone, where he'd hand it over (very politely) to whomever happened to be waiting. Aziraphale did not spike the ball. That would be gauche. And he could do that no matter how many boys tried to tackle him. In fact, Aziraphale had never been tackled to the ground.
He was strong as an ox.
Football had its perks, which Gabriel knew that Aziraphale was loathe to concede. Namely among them was that he could do weightlifting instead of P.E. That gave him an extra elective, and he wanted to continue Latin past the two years that the state required.
Being built like a strongman (and his fondness for pastry), meant that Aziraphale was still a bit paunchy. Anybody that said anything rude about it got to deal with the entire DiAngelo family.
Most people only made that mistake once.
So, Aziraphale was supposed to be starting with mall security, courtesy of Mr. Shadwell. Mr. Shadwell had been hired by the mall as a part of a local initiative to hire veterans. Apparently he'd been RAF once, before he'd immigrated. Maybe he'd just been Salvation Army, and that was close enough for the mall. Gabriel and Aziraphale weren't sure.
Mr. Shadwell had lived over Madame Tracey's Psychic Readings and Olde Tyme Thrifte and Curiosity Shoppe for nearly ever. The Shoppe was down Magazine Street, not far from the house that they grew up in. Nona had known Madame Tracey for years, mildly tolerant of her slightly Satanic practices. Knowing Madame Tracey was the same as knowing Mr. Shadwell.
So, on the first Monday after school let out for the summer, Gabriel and his brother got into the blue 1992 Toyota Camry that they shared, popped in the tape marked "Get Along - Vol. 1", and sang along with some Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Aziraphale might have grown to hate The Sound of Music, but the brothers agreed on Cats. And Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And some oldies. And, oddly, "There's a Light", from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Aziraphale was quite fond of that musical, and went out to see it every Halloween. Tuxedo, tails, top hat and garish sapphire cummerbund. Gabriel had never been interested. It seemed boisterous, but some of the themes were...distressing.
He worried about his little brother, and often.
The boys were early, by mall standards. They were both meeting their respective employers for eight in the morning. This would be the first and last time that Gabriel would be bringing Aziraphale to work. Mr. Shadwell was going to expect that Aziraphale ride along with himself and his other employee, Newt Pulsifer, after the first day, because Gabriel wasn't going to need to be this early again.
Gabriel dropped his brother off with Mr. Shadwell at the side entrance of the mall before he parked. Mr. Shadwell was smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes while Newt Pulsifer tried to avoid the fumes. Newt waved Aziraphale over when he saw him.
"Good luck on your first day," Aziraphale said brightly, gabbing his lunch cooler out of the backseat as he opened the door.
"You, too," Gabriel returned, waving at Mr. Shadwell and Newt as the morning heat blasted him from Aziraphale's open door.
He was supposed to be meeting Michael the Girl in front of the GAP to open the store. That meant using the front entrance. He parked away from the mall, as the employees were supposed to. That meant a long walk over blacktop that was already cooking.
Newt Pulsifer had just unlocked the doors by the time Gabriel made it from the edge of the parking lot to the doors.
The mall was quiet, half dark in the morning hours. The old brown cobblestones were already lit by the fake gaslights, but the overhead lights weren't on yet. A group of older women in pastel jogging suits and very clean sneakers had taken over the two rows of benches that stretched along the middle of the aisle between shops. They were following the instruction of a slightly younger woman, who had a foot on the seat of one of the benches and was stretching. One of the women pulled a leaf off of the ivy in the rectangular wooden planter between the rows of benches, and slipped it into her pocket. Gabriel knew she planned to see if she could make it grow with some root stimulator and patience. (He had thought that the plants were fake. Maybe not, or maybe the woman was senile or drunk.) This group was the Silver Sneakers, an exercise group for seniors that Nona belonged to (and would be returning to when her new hip was healed).
Some of the ladies were in his church or related, so he got a cheerful chorus of "good mornings" from them, which he returned, just as jovially.
It was nearly eight, and that's when he was supposed to be meeting Michael the Girl. The GAP was very near the front of the mall.
The first problem with his new work arrangement, Gabriel decided, was going to be the shop across the hall from it. It was one of those garish Goth stores. A Hot Topic. Ugly, tacky, and guaranteed to attract the kind of kids that smoked, did drugs, and went to public school.
For now, the store was closed, and looked a bit like a sleeping gargoyle. Michael the Girl, easy to spot with her very red head buried in a statistics textbook, waited in front of the GAP, keys in hand.
"Hey," she said. "Any problems?"
"Nope," said Gabriel. "Dropped Zira off. Parked pretty much on the moon."
"Great, let's go through the opening procedures."
Opening the store turned out to be an easy thing. Michael the Girl walked him through the gate procedures, the basics of getting a register ready, what to check before opening.
The store was large and airy, bright and clean and lovely. Everything smelled faintly of cleanser and all of the shirts were pressed and hanging. Some of the shirts had been rolled up and stuffed into bushel baskets for the displays. It looked almost like a garden, everything absolutely perfect.
Michael the Girl started the fluffy Top 40 pop soundtrack, and Gabriel opened and locked the gate in place.
A wave of sound hit him. A crunching, grinding, rhythmic wall of heavy metal accompanied by German lyrics that seemed to be screamed out by a cat in the middle of a particularly wet hairball puke.
"Is that...normal?" Gabriel asked his cousin.
"Every day," Michael the Girl said with a sigh.
"All day?"
"All day. And I think it's the same ten songs on loop. I can't tell. All that crap sounds the same."
"Jesus," Gabriel said. "Someone ought to tell them to turn it down."
"Do you think I haven't?"
Gabriel frowned. His cousin was athletic and tall for a girl, but he wouldn't call her intimidating. Not in her pink polo and her perfect upswept curls. "Look, maybe I could get them to do...something. I mean, they're punks, right?"
"Ligur's not bad, actually," Michael the Girl said. "He told me that it's a company policy. They can't change the music."
"That's bullshit," Gabriel spat. "Oh, shit. I'm probably not supposed to swear."
"Put a dollar in Nona's swear jar when you go home," Michael the Girl said, opening her statistics textbook. "We've put in complaints. Look, you do whatever you're going to do, champ. Don't get killed."
"Is that a possibility?"
"What? In the mall?"
"I don't know, Michael," Gabriel huffed. "They're Satanists, aren't they?"
Michael the Girl rolled her eyes. "They're mall employees, not axe murderers."
Gabriel figured he could handle a couple of wannabe Marilyn Manson Death-cult punks.
He crossed the hall between the two stores confidently, passing between the wooden planters of ivy, under the gold-framed skylights. He could smell cookies baking at the Great American Cookie Company. Popcorn was popping at the cart nearby.
The sound inside the store was not as bad as the noise outside. The colors were, however, somehow both more garish and also drabber. A row of identical plaid pants with buckles and straps waited front and center, alongside some paper-thin t-shirts of 80's nostalgia and Harry Potter houses.
A clerk draped themselves, head down, on the glass counter that had the cash register on top, and the ugly vampire-hunter looking trinkets and Olivia pin-up postcards inside. They wore a button down shirt that looked like it came directly from a high school marching band, but with extra embellishments, mostly insect-themed. The clerk looked like the (slumbering) general of their own imaginary army.
Gabriel gave his most winning smile, and sidled up to the counter. "Hello," he said.
The clerk sat up, and looked up at Gabriel with the most beautiful crystal blue eyes he'd ever seen. Their hair was a careless black shag that they brushed back from a round face. Their eyes, accented with kohl, were slightly slanted, and their nose small and upturned. Their mouth turned down a bit at the corners naturally. It gave the impression of a deep apathy for the world, a disaffected boredom with everyone and everything. The clerk did not smile.
A button with dangerously red lips was pinned to the clerk's chest. It was the insignia for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well, there was some common ground.
The facial piercings and the silver claws on pointer and middle fingers seemed to suggest that there would not be a lot of common ground.
"Did you need something?" The clerk, once upright, held themselves with a nearly military bearing. They spoke very precisely, with an unexpectedly posh Upper Garden District theatre accent.
"Yeah-" A nametag introduced them as Beelzebub. "Beelzebub...is that...is that your real name?"
"Yeah, my parents were into some weird shit when I was born," the clerk said, eyeing Gabriel's own nametag. "And you're Gabriel. How can I help you, Archangel?"
The unexpected use of a title, and the fact that the (potentially Satanic) clerk watched him like a predator sizing up a potential meal, unnerved Gabriel more than a bit. "I...uh...come from the GAP."
"That's lovely. I saw that your polos are all in bloom. Looks like a bumper crop."
"Heh, yeah, that's funny," Gabriel said, and he meant it. "I was wondering if you might turn your music down a bit?"
"Ah. About that," Beelzebub said, meeting Gabriel's gaze easily. "It's a company policy. We can't turn it down, change the song, change the station, or turn it off."
"Okay, look, now we both know that's bullshit," Gabriel said, leaning into Beelzebub's personal space. Beelzebub did not move, even as Gabriel's arm pressed against their own on the glass counter. "I know you lied to my cousin about all that."
Beelzebub sighed and smirked at him. They reached behind the counter with the arm that was not firmly pressed against his own. They laid a piece of paper in front of Gabriel, along with a somewhat grubby glittery pink pen with a feathery floof at one end. The pen was attached to a string that ran behind the counter.
"This is a complaint form. If you fill it out, I'll see to it that it gets to home office."
"Alright, that's just not going to work," Gabriel said, exasperatedly. "I'm going to need to talk to your manager."
"Are. You. Really?" the clerk asked. Their expression was obscenely eager.
"Yes, I'm afraid I must insist," Gabriel said in his most take-charge, managerial voice. He refused to be intimidated by this person.
"Alright, then."
Beelzebub lifted their arm from the glass, and Gabriel did not realize how hard he'd been pressing up against them. He slipped forward, but caught himself, attempting to recover his balance and his dignity. Beelzebub did not comment on his near-slip. They simply bent down, behind the counter and rustled with something that Gabriel couldn't see.
Beelzebub stood up, a garish red tri-corn hat with a massive black plume now resting on their head. A button surrounded by tiny blinking lights said, "MANAGER".
"I was told that you needed to speak to the manager," Beelzebub said, in their exceptionally precise way. "How may I help you?"
Gabriel turned on his heel and left, brushing past a tall auburn-haired girl (with a frankly terrifying amount of metal on her teeth) who was carrying coffee and a clear clamshell of croissants from the Center Court Coffeehouse.
Beelzebub's melodic, strangely beautiful laughter followed him all the way back to the GAP, where his cousin waited with a bored look.
"You asked to see the manager, didn't you?" she asked.
"Yep."
"Yeah, Beelzebub. They're weird," Michael the Girl said with a dismissive wave. "Did you at least fill out the complaint card?"
"No."
"What are you doing back here then?"
Gabriel sighed and turned back towards the wretched store, where he knew Beelzebub waited in their kingdom of black cotton and leather. When he stepped back into the store, they watched him with dark mirth from their chrome and glass dais. He walked back to the counter, took up the pink pen, and filled out the card.
"I'll be following up on this," he said.
"He's going to follow up on this," said the auburn haired lackey with the braces. Her nametag called her Dagon.
"So he says," said Beelzebub.
"I will," Gabriel said. "This is not over."
"Of course not," Beelzebub chuckled into their coffee. "Welcome to retail Hell, Archangel."
Gabriel left the Hot Topic feeling distinctly as if he'd lost this round. It was not a feeling he was accustomed to. The horrid music crashed behind him, and he swore that he'd find a way to fix this.
There was no way that some punk named after a Prince of Hell was going to defeat the Archangel Fucking Gabriel.