My beloved Eya, my dear, dead Eya— she with the big breasts, the harlequin glasses, and the terrible taste, rivaling even my mom’s. And there I am, a snotty little briefcase toting clothes-horse, filled with self-regard and pseudo-intellectual snobbery, and worse, now I’m cool, making movies, that hot young teacher at the hottest school in town.

She took me down so fast. She went through my façade like a chainsaw through cheese. Then she took the whole building of my self, not a brick or a board at a time, one blow, one well-placed blow and the entire house collapsed.

I cried for two weeks.

I do this myself now, all the time. Not once a day, certainly, or even once a week. It’s easier than it sounds. All it takes is the right question, sometimes one word, even a one-syllable word can do it. Homeopathic. I first learned the game from her. Two old hookers. Two dancehall girls kicking up their heels, showing their ruffled, not-so-perfectly fresh, panties to the crowd.

That’s what happened when Eya died. I went over with her, not too far, one can only get so far— to the bridge, that’s a common crossing place, or the river, not as popular as it once was, big for the Greeks, or the check-in counter at the heaven hotel, I’ve been there, and the World War II Victory Bar where old soldiers, my dad, yes, I saw him there, “Hey, it’s Alvan, hey Buddy, we’ve been waiting for you, pull up a chair, have a drink, here’s a cigar,” and that lovely place, one of my personal favorites, the luxury sanatorium in the Swiss alps, those beds with the exquisite linens and the view of the mountains, and finally you can relax and get some rest, and once, oh, how could I have forgotten, swimming down into deep blue water with darling Scott Bartlett, down and down, deeper and deeper, until I can’t go any further and he waves and dives, down, down, and lastly, that grayish, not so pleasant waiting room at that kibbutz sort of place, a sorting place, not my favorite, but popular since the Holocaust I assume, because of all those Jews who went into the showers and found themselves, at last, at home in the holy land.

So when Eya died I went over with her as far as I could. It was such a hoot, kicking up our heels in those brassy skirts, show your panties, show your panties, as far as I could go.

I sat down at a little table across from her. She lit a cigarette, gave me a look, a flicker of surprise. “You are so open,” she said. Then my face was wet. I didn’t seem to be crying. She was so nonchalant. Then blah, blah, blah and I’m crumbling, melting, the room is going too, and her face is all faces, but hey, I’ve done drugs, nothing white, nothing involving the nose or sharp objects, but hallucinogens, yes, all the psychedelics, LSD, psyilocyben, mescalin, DMT, not good, too white, what else is there, no ketamin, and a good thing it wasn’t around then, because I have held a vial of it, and it is the best— so I’m cool with this. I’ve seen my lover’s flesh melt from his face, leaving only the beautiful bare bones, and I know this territory, I can find my way in and back out of these realms, I think.

Wrong.

She is taking me somewhere else, and I haven’t been here before. When we come back and the ground settles, she blows some more smoke in my face. “You know you’ve always thought you were so smart.” Fucking A, I’m thinking. “Well, you’re not very smart, but you’re very, very psychic.”

Isn’t that silly. Such a simple statement, but it does it for me. Everything is over now. All my plans shattered. I’m done for. Destroyed. My mother isn’t going to like this, I think. I have to put up a little dam inside now. Not a wall, nothing like that, but I’ve got to hold this off for a while. She is watching me. The phrase, “like a hawk,” takes on new meaning. I can’t even summon up the phrase. She will hold me in that gaze until I really get it. And I do.

Then we come back. “Do you have any questions?” Is that what she said? “Are you kidding?” might have been a sensible reply, but I can’t even get there.

Do I want to be a psychic? To be honest, I am attracted by certain aspects of the job. Eya just sits there, puffing away on a cigarette while the room gets hazy, not from the smoke, but from something that was happening between us, and then she says things. Looks easy, doesn’t it? And I am basically a lazy person.

Being a psychic looks pretty good. You just sit there, don’t you? No preparation. You just sit there and say anything you feel like saying. I think I can do that.

I do have a slip of paper I must have taken out of my purse a million years ago. There it is still, amazingly, lying in front of me. Here’s a question. “Eya, there’s a man, I love him, will we stay together?’

Such a throaty laugh she gives. I am relieved. Forget all that stuff before. Getting back to some kind of normal now, and she’s laughing, smiling.

“Oh, no problem, he’s great, just great—“ she pauses for effect, “as long as you don’t mind having to tit and diaper him.”

Crash, tinkle, tinkle. She walks serenely across the wreckage of my heart, it’s lying there in the rubble along with everything else.

I’ve got colleagues— therapists, psychiatrists, counselors, who call me in sometimes as a consultant. A patient of theirs has presented a condition, a state, some weird aberration not illuminated by tests, or covered by the MMPI, not even the new subscales for the MMPI-2. I get paid my hourly fee, but it’s quasi discreet, as it is when I sit in on jury selection for an attorney client. I bill them for a professional consultation; there’s nothing on paper about a psychic, not a word.

“The patient is in the hospital with second degree burns,” Dr. Kent tells me.

“What’s the diagnosis.”

“Schizophrenia.”

I’m being professional now, makes no difference at all to me what the diagnosis is.

“You’ll tell the nurses I’m coming in?”

“Of course.”

I often wear my stethoscope when I go to see someone in the hospital. The stethoscope gets instant respect and I’ve never been challenged. Even in the elevator— you’ve got a stethoscope slung casually over one shoulder, even a pink one, people make room for you.

“Why do you want me to see her?”

“I thought I said. She’s in the hospital with second degree burns.”

“Domestic abuse?”

“No, no. Lives alone. No boyfriend.”

“So?”

“She recovers abnormally fast—“

“How abnormally?”

“A couple of days, and. . . “

“And?”

“There are no scars.”

“Wow.” Now I am very interested. I’d had some experience with phenom myself, things crashing around me with no cause, minor spontaneous destruction when my energy is unexpectedly amped up, but never spontaneous combustion, never miraculous healing. I am very interested.

Dolores looks a bit-rawboned, a haole (Hawaiian for Caucasian), ordinary, except for light-blue or grey eyes, the color barely visible. Her pupils are huge.

“I haven’t seen you before, have I? You work at the clinic?”

“No, I consult for Dr. Kent sometimes.”

“You have a nice face. Want some water?”

“I have some, thanks.” I wave my plastic bottle.

“You think you can convince me to take my meds?”

“I didn’t know you were on meds.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. Then she looked at me.

“Do you know why I was taking them?”

“I don’t.”

She exhaled forcefully.

“Okay, I’ll tell you about it.”

This is great. I’m dying to hear and I like her. She is weird in some way, weird like I am weird. It’s as if we’re in the same orchestra, but we play different instruments. I nod enthusiastically.

“Last year, about this same time, the angel Gabriel came to visit me. I was having a bad time. Bad marriage. I was getting out, anyway, and a nowhere job, you know?”

“Ummmm.” Sympathetically. I’m encouraging the client to spill.

“I was asleep and when I woke up he was standing there at the foot of the bed, all glorious and beautiful. It was so wonderful. I can’t tell you what it was like for me.”

She’s shining now, her eyes dilate even further, just a sliver of blue or maybe grey.

“You liked seeing him?” Yes, it’s a dumb thing to say, but I need to encourage her again.

“Nothing so wonderful has ever happened to me before.”

“How did you know who he was.”

“Are you kidding? I knew.”

“What happened?”

“About six months later I told my minister about the visits. . . “

“He kept coming to see you?”

“They kept coming—“

“They?”

“Michael came too.”

“Michael and Gabriel?”

“Yes. So my minister told the Bishop and the Bishop told him I had to go to the clinic. I started taking the antipsychotic and the angels stopped coming.”

“Oh, shit.” Who would give up the angels?

“Why did they think you needed antipsychotics? I mean, there are substantial precedents for angelic visitation.”

“Well, there’s more to it. I was having sex with them. . . “

“What was that like?” No more professional distance from me. I am with this woman and her story. “I’ve had amazing sex with the god Krishna a couple of times, but I was out-of body. You’re in your physical body when the angels come, right?”

“Oh yes. Gabriel was first. Then with Michael— and sometimes, well, with both of them.”

“Together?”

She nodded. “I took the antipsychotic because my minister told me to— but I was so lonely. I missed them so much. It was terrible. Can you understand?”

I understand. “Are you Mormon?”

“Jehovah Witness.”

“Oh bloody hell.”

“Can I tell you about it?”

“I’d be honored.”

We’re both in a kind of swoon now. I will have to give you my version of what she said. I didn’t have the presence of mind to write it down at the time, but I made notes later, so it may be flavored by my voice, but I’ll keep as close to the story as I can.

“At first he comforted me. I had never known anything so loving and tender,” she said. “ He lay with me in his arms with his great white wings folded around us. I felt safe. I felt warm. I could see the light through his wings. It was like light through a window with snow on it. Beautiful light. I thought all angels were like Gabriel. Skin white, almost transparent and quite cold to the touch, although his wings were always warm.

There is a large blue vein at the base of the neck that flows into the wings. He loved for me to stroke it— like rubbing a dog’s ears; he would arch and move against my hand. The wings are so sensitive, so delicate. I didn’t dare touch them at first. Mostly they’re like swansdown.”

Her eyes and mine are locked. We’re in it together now.

“All of his hair is pale, almost white. You see, I thought all angels were like him. He held me. I was safe and warm, although his body was cool to the touch. Then one night when I was stroking his wings, soothing the great vein that feeds the wings, I saw that he was aroused. I could see the pointed end of his penis lifting up out of the soft nest of snowy feathers between his legs. It didn’t seem like a sexual thing at first. It was so dear. Small, pointed, with a little pearl of moisture on the tip. I leaned down to look closer and it seemed to extend itself towards me. It grew longer. It wasn’t like others I’d seen, big hairy things with red knobs on the end, but slim, cool. It was so sweet. I wanted to hold it, to put it in my mouth and suck gently on it.

So I did.

When he put it inside me it didn’t seem like anything at all. There was no heaving, no pounding or banging. But then his penis became very cold, or very, very hot, I couldn’t tell which. Some kind of vibration started moving— or it was a humming? I’ve tried to think what it was like, maybe like reverse Novocain. Instead of getting numb, I was becoming more and more sensitive. I could feel individual cells, hear each separate rain drop hitting the windowpane. The vibrating moved into my limbs all the way down to the ends of my fingers. I thought for a moment I was being electrocuted.” She paused. Looked away, then continued.

“I forgot to say that Gabriel looks like a Greek statue. Marble. His hair like little soft feathers, also there are tiny, very tiny white curls of feathers on his thighs. I opened my eyes then. When I thought I was being electrocuted. I half expected to see that his feathers were singed. They weren’t. He had a smile on his face.

‘Heavenly, wasn’t it?’ He said.