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“Aziraphale!”
It was Mrs. Guidry who had seen him. The woman was half-blind, but (of course) she’d seen him following Newt Pulsifer and Mr. Shadwell walking from the front door to the mall security office.
“We saw your brother,” she said, conspiratorially. “He practically RAN to the GAP. What are you two doing out here this early?”
All of the other members of Silver Sneakers turned to watch the exchange. It was like a room full of kittens staring at a feather on a string. Bright eyes and ready ears.
“Well, erm, our father wanted us to obtain summer employment,” Aziraphale explained, somewhat apologetically. His brother had insisted that they do as they were told, and Aziraphale did. But Aziraphale suspected that he was taking a job away from someone who actually needed the money. “So, Gabriel is working with Michael and I got a place with Mr. Shadwell.”
“Sergeant Shadwell,” said Mrs. Guidry. “He’s a veteran, don’t you know?”
“Sergeant Shadwell,” agreed Aziraphale, though he wasn’t certain if Sergeant Shadwell had served in the armed forces or if he just said that he did. “I’m to be working security,” he said, brightly.
“Well, isn’t that something?” Mrs. Guidry said, and the other women clucked their approval.
“How’s Lucia doing?” asked Marie Gianni, who was one of his grandmother’s sisters and had seen her less than a week ago.
“Better every day,” Aziraphale said. “Her physical therapist says that she’s making excellent progress, and they’re going to be trying to get her on her feet with a walker soon.”
There was some conversation at that. Some of the women thought they were moving too fast, and others were just happy to hear that Nona was doing well.
“A’rright, young DiAngelo?” Sergeant Shadwell called from his open office door. “I’m not paying ye to flap yer gums with them old birds.”
“Yes, sir,” Aziraphale said, well aware that Sergeant Shadwell wasn’t paying him at all. The mall was. “Have a good walk, ladies.”
“Have a good first day!” Mrs. Guidry called out.
There was a chorus of other well-wishers as Aziraphale waved and ducked into Shadwell’s office. He heard one woman remark on how tall he was getting, and how healthy he looked. How she’d love to adopt a young man like him.
When an old woman says that she wants to adopt you, she doesn’t mean adopt.
Inside the office, Newt Pulsifer poked the START button on the coffee machine with his stick.
Poor Newt was cursed.
Nobody knew who had cursed him, but after consulting with the local community of witches, including Madame Tracey, Anathema Device, and a white voudoun named Denise Ligur, there was a consensus. Newt Pulsifer was cursed at his birth to not be able to handle any electronic without breaking it, and yet, to be drawn to them.
Anathema, Newt’s fiancée, had come up with the stick as a solution. It was a dowel, about a foot in length, that she had carved with a number of protective sigils and signs. It was stained and sealed. A leather thong kept it attached to his wrist. So he couldn't drop it and lose it.
As for other precautions, Newt drove a robin’s-egg-blue Volkswagen Rabbit. Volkswagens were hard to break, and the car itself was more mechanical than electrical. Beyond that, Anathema’s cash register for her crystal shop was one of the old-timey push button types. Newt had an abacus for tricky math. And he had his stick.
Anathema sent Newt into Reverend Voodoo’s from time to time. The last time, he’d shorted their electrical system so badly that the entire shop had to be rewired.
“This, young DiAngelo, be yer steed,” said Shadwell, laying a proud hand on the Segway that was quietly charging in the corner. “There’s nobody in this mall but some employees, and those old broads. So the chances that yer gonna crash into some kid is...reduced.”
Newt Pulsifer used his stick to change a few of the camera angles from the bank of monitors. “Looks clear. The Silver Sneakers just passed out of the food court.”
“A’rright, then. Let’s mount up.”
It’s impossible to look dignified on a Segway. One can look arrogant, however. And that’s how Sergeant Shadwell looked. A bit like George Washington at the prow of a rowboat.
Instead of crossing the Potomac, Sergeant Shadwell guided his steed through the main aisle of the mall, towards the food court. The normal sounds of a mall in the morning greeted them. Employees hanging inventory, the scrape of metal as the gates were shoved open. Someone laughed, somewhere further in the mall.
Aziraphale was worried. His Segway was making a high-pitched whine, and trailing significantly behind Sergeant Shadwell’s.
“Hurry up, young DiAngelo. Time waits fer no man, and that’s the ruddy truth.”
“Was this Newt’s Segway before it was mine?” Aziraphale asked, tremulously.
“I think it were, come to think of it,” Sergeant Shadwell replied.
“It’s...slow.”
“Might be overloaded,” Sergeant Shadwell said. “Nothing ye can do for that, aside from losing some of yer paunch.”
Sergeant Shadwell was one to talk. He wasn’t a slender man. But, Aziraphale was quite a bit taller than Sergeant Shadwell. He probably outweighed the old man by fifty pounds or so.
“Here we are, here we are!” Sergeant Shadwell announced brightly as he reigned in his Segway next to the big, blocky desk in the front of the center court. “The help desk! Hello, young Crowley! This is Aziraphale DiAngelo, my new charge.”
Crowley. Aziraphale’s heart stopped.
But his Segway did not. He knocked hard into the information counter. “Oh, bother. Sorry,” Aziraphale said, flushing to the tips of his ears.
“Easy, boy. Don’t scuff that counter. It’s worth more than ye are.”
“It’s alright,” Crowley said, with a winning smile that showed off his prominent canines. “It’s just a counter, Sergeant. Stand down, okay?” Then, to Aziraphale, “First day, angel?”
Crowley pulled a red lollipop out of his mouth and teased it with his split tongue. Aziraphale flushed, and stammered, “Y-yes.”
His face felt as red as the sucker. The scent of the boy behind the counter settled around him. Clove cigarettes and musky cologne. He was beautiful. Long, scarlet hair in a careless wave over his shoulders, beautiful cheekbones, and golden eyes regarding him over the shades that he wore inside.
A need, a terrible need, made Aziraphale’s mouth dry and his legs stiffen.
Crowley smiled at Aziraphale’s blush, the smile of a snake assessing a particularly fat mouse. And for a moment, Aziraphale worried that Crowley might have recognized him.
Last Halloween, after he’d made The Arrangement with his brother, he’d snuck off with some of his “degenerate” theatre friends to a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show.
There had been a group of kids there that were his age, but...
But made Aziraphale feel like a crayon drawing stuck up in a hall of Renoirs.
In the center if that group, there was a magnetic boy who said so many smart things. Aziraphale couldn’t remember the specifics--he had been quite drunk. He recognized Anathema and Madame Tracey in the group that surrounded the brilliant boy. So he’d kept his distance. He didn’t want anybody telling Nona where he was nor what he was doing. The suit with the bright blue cummerbund helped him blend in with the rest of the unconventional conventioneers. The giant Elton John sunglasses kept his identity safe. He stayed with the rest of the theatre kids that Gabriel called “degenerate”. But he stayed at the fringe, as close as he could to this boy who burned as bright as Orion above them.
He’d drunk a lot. Quite a lot. And couldn’t remember much. Crowley was sprawled over the hood of a black and red Beetle, and his friends clustered around him. He was dressed as Frankenfurter, costume point-perfect, fishnet stockings showing off his amazing legs. Forked tongue flashing as he laughed and joked and blew raspberries at his friends and some unlucky passerby. He and his friends made jokes about books and television shows and British comedy classics. The references flew like bullets from a Gatling gun, eviscerating the patriarchy, the president, religion, and God Himself.
Then, the smaller person that he was with, an unconventional conventioneer who looked like they were wearing the dress uniform of an army from Hell, reached into the Bug and cranked the radio.
A boy on the radio sang, and that song felt like it was for Aziraphale alone. The boy on the radio sang about another boy, or maybe himself, packing everything he owned in a little, black case. About running away, seeking a love that couldn’t be found at home.
They sang along. The smaller general of Hell took the high parts, and Crowley took the low parts.
Aziraphale never heard that song, before or since. But he still hears it in his head in the quiet moments, sung by these magnetic, beautiful children of darkness.
He’d had two realizations in that dark parking lot. The first, perhaps unsurprising to everyone but Aziraphale, is that he was very, very gay. The second is that he was unhappy.
Not about being gay. Gay didn’t really matter. He was going into the priesthood, as you do when you’re Catholic and gay. He wanted to study library science, and after that? Probably stationed in Vatican City, in their libraries.
He was unhappy with his life. With his nosy grandmother, with his family, with his well-meaning and frankly devoted brother. Because they were forcing him, all of them, into a life that he maybe didn’t want.
Gay didn’t matter until this beautiful boy on the hood of a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle sang a song about loneliness and despair and hope and life. Until this beautiful boy was staring at him in the center court of Chez Mall, waiting for him to say...something. Flicking his forked tongue around the red sugar globe in a way that made Aziraphale wonder how that tongue might feel...on his skin...
“Cat got your tongue?” Crowley asked.
“No, I’m terribly sorry,” Aziraphale said, trying to find his place in the conversation. “Yes, this is my first day.”
“You said.”
“His brother’s working at the GAP,” Sergeant Shadwell explained. “They only hire boys what look like the models, an’ Aziraphale here didn’t make the cut.”
“Huh...wonder why they hired me, then?”
This boy looked like a model, but not one for the GAP. His beauty was too strange. It startled Aziraphale to learn that he’d worked in the sterile, pastel kingdom of Michael the Girl.
“You...worked for the GAP?”
Crowley nodded and stuck the lollipop back in his mouth. Then popped it out. Aziraphale felt the blood creep into his cheeks again.
“Just for a day, got fired, sued ‘em.”
“What did you get fired for?”
“Asking Neveah why she was screaming at Beez.”
Neveah was the district manager, but after a string of lawsuits, she was promoted to a position in the company where she had no contact with other employees. Neveah was a family friend, who had originally hired Michael the Girl. The new district manager was a very kind young man named Josh. Aziraphale had heard about this from Michael the Girl.
So Crowley had been one of the plaintiffs.
“Beelzebub is our Lord of the Flies,” Sergeant Shadwell said. “They work at the Hot Topic, but they used to work at the GAP, too.”
“Yeah, pretty much all the Hot Topic crew worked for the GAP, but I got a job out here. My dad knows the owner of the mall. Works pretty well for me. I handle their website and media promotions online. And this,” Crowley said, holding up a wreath. It was in black and orange, obviously a work in process. “I did Christmas last year. I’m pretty proud of it. Did you see?”
“No, sorry.”
“Yeah,” Sergeant Shadwell said, reminding Aziraphale that he existed. “The DiAngelos are pretty closed in, ya know. They’re good kids though. I’ve known Aziraphale since he was a toddler, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“An’ he’s a good ‘un. So’s his brother. I’ve known him about as long as I’ve known you and Beelzebub. Different circles, I guess, so you never met,” Sergeant Shadwell explained. “Well, now you have met, and I got to show Aziraphale around the rest of the mall.”
“Yeah, Sergeant. Morning, Dagon!” Crowley called cheerfully to an auburn-haired, corporate Goth girl in headgear and braces as she breezed past the information desk to Center Court Coffee.
She had been at Rocky, too. She’d decorated her headgear with a bunch of beads and dangling charms. He remembered her.
“Morning, Crowley,” she called back. “Wotcher, Shadwell. Hey, Crowley, catch you on my way back?”
Crowley waved a hand at her, “Yeah. Sure.”
“Alright,” she said, climbing the steps up to the coffee shop that was in the middle of the fountain at center court.
“We’ll be going, then. Steady on, Crowley,” Sergeant Shadwell said, “And let’s be on our way, Young Aziraphale.”
“Bye,” Aziraphale said. “It was lovely to meet you.”
“Same,” said Crowley,
Aziraphale gave a short bow, figured out how to back the Segway up, and swung it around to follow Sergeant Shadwell. They rolled off, just as the clerk for Pacific Sun lifted the gate.
“They see me rollin’, they hatin’...” blared out of PacSun.
The clerk watched the two of them roll past, and started to laugh.
Behind him, Aziraphale heard Crowley and Dagon bray. He turned, red-faced, back to the information desk. Crowley raised his coffee tumbler to toast Aziraphale, and drank deeply from it.
Crowley’s golden eyes sparkled mischief as he aimed a smile as dark as the spaces between stars at Aziraphale, and Aziraphale startled, nearly clobbering a plant in a giant clay pot.
“C’mon, DiAngelo,” called Sergeant Shadwell. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
“Yes, sir,” Aziraphale replied, steering his Segway around the planter and trying to ignore the terrible whine that it made as it rumbled over the ancient cobblestones towards the Maison Blanche.