For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low.
—ISAIAH 2:12
“I don’t understand,” said Jennifer.
“Whatever you don’t understand is one of God’s mysteries,” said Sabbath. He groaned, and turned on his side, away from Jennifer.
“So Joachim was real, but nothing else was.” Jennifer had finally exchanged names with the sneaker-wearing temp while they patched up Sabbath as best they could with the small first aid kit they found in the maisonette. Joachim stabilized Sabbath while Jennifer collected the heads, including scooping up the remains of Gluttony’s. Joachim then stumbled over and freaked out about the blank canvas, now torn and spattered with blood, until Jennifer explained that it was worthless; then he had laughed and inexplicably offered her a high five. In the building lobby, Joachim met the bicycle messenger that was to deliver the cashier’s check to Jennifer, and finagled it out of him with some fast-talking. He called a cousin with a car and rode with them back downtown, and even helped Sabbath climb the steps. When the cashier’s check faded to nothingness in Jennifer’s hands while they all watched, Joachim finally begged off and promised not to tell anyone what he had seen or heard, or even to leave his favorite barstool till Monday.
“Yes,” said Sabbath. “The others were demons.”
“But why?”
“Does it matter?” asked Sabbath.
“Well, why didn’t Envy just create three helpers, instead of two?” she said.
“I think it is the nature of Envy to always fall short of what she wants, so perhaps she needed three but could only conjure two,” Sabbath said. “Good thing that the envious never get exactly what they want.”
“Do you think he was … sent?” Jennifer asked.
“By whom?”
“God,” Jennifer said. “I mean, it was lucky he was here. Three of those phantom clones or whatever, and we never would have made it out of the elevator.”
“That’s us, Sir Lucky and Lady Fortuna, the lucky couple…,” Sabbath grumbled.
“Tell me about Abathar,” Jennifer said.
“Abathar told me he would not intervene in my behalf again,” Sabbath said. “When we last spoke directly, I saw him fold a person up as one might a napkin and consume him utterly. Angels are God’s messengers; their presence terrifies and humbles not just the men they appear before, but the world itself. They shake the firmament, control the elements, ride wheels of flame across the sky, can murder with a glance if God wills it. Joachim was not sent by God. He was just a factotum in the employ of a cruel—” He almost said goddess, but that would be blasphemy. Woman wasn’t quite correct either, despite the skin Envy had worn for him. “—thing.”
Jennifer opened her mouth, then closed it again. Sabbath broke the momentary silence: “Many of us are in the employ of cruel things. You were not meant for war, Jennifer. I am sorry about your friend.”
Jennifer didn’t have anything to say to that either. She sobbed quietly, her limbs at her sides, keeping herself from touching Sabbath. She wanted to hold him, but an embrace would just aggravate his wounds.
The phone would have to be Jennifer’s comfort, despite the old texts from Miriam, the endless voice mails. She never did get around to texting Miriam’s parents. For a moment, she entertained feeding Sabbath enough sleeping pills to make him miss the deadline. The world would blow up, but at least she wouldn’t have to face telling strangers that their daughter was killed. That too was a kind of freedom, she supposed.
There were texts from a 202 number that she didn’t know, but that somehow rang a bell. The Secret Service agent, Mario, making arrangements for the exhibit, and the Aldridge appearance at it. He wanted to move the opening up to late Saturday night.
“Hexen, I think Pride is coming here,” Jennifer said. “Sooner than I thought. I don’t know how it works, but he’s different from the others. He’s like a real person, not someone who just appeared with a restaurant or a massage parlor a couple of weeks ago.”
“Pride is the foremost of sins, I’ve heard…,” Sabbath murmured.
“But … how could it—?”
“One of God’s mysteries,” Sabbath said.
“Why would the sin of Pride be God’s mystery, Hexen?”
“Also God’s mystery,” Sabbath said.
“But why—?”
“I need to sleep, Jennifer,” Sabbath said. “I need to rest.”
“What are we going to do?” Jennifer asked, her voice hollow. She could just tell Mario to cancel the event or at least stick to the Sunday plan, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t work. Pride wasn’t the sort of person who ever took no for an answer. She could leave now, with Hexen or not, but that wouldn’t help either. She was powerless; shooting Envy to no effect had taught her that much.
Trying to supercharge Hexen Sabbath with street drugs had been a pretty severe miscalculation. Maybe had she and Miriam both been sober, they would have escaped, or at least been smart enough to stay the fuck home while he went uptown to deal with Gluttony. An art history degree, a fiery temper, and Boxercise twice a week weren’t enough to save the world.
The only thing she could think to do now was pray. As she closed her eyes and tried to remember the Russian words she’d learned as a girl, Sabbath started snoring, loudly. Jennifer’s eyes popped back open, and she decided to search for meaning in the water stains marking her ceiling instead.
It was like a dream, but Hexen Sabbath was sure it was not one. It was more of a memory, though not of any moment he had lived on Earth. The place was much like a desert, but the sky was low somehow, as if Sabbath were walking in a cave made of air. The sun was huge in the sky, and it burned.
Someone was with him. Abathar. Sabbath’s fingers twitched, eager for the hilt of a sword, but he had no sword, no scabbard, nor any clothes at all. He was naked, and he was ashamed. Abathar was dressed in something impossible to describe. It changed as they walked, like a fast-moving cloud with a shape at first reminiscent of a robe, then a gown, then a modern suit.
“Abathar,” Sabbath said. “What has happened? You said you would not intervene again.”
Abathar smiled, tight lipped. He was much taller than Sabbath, taller than Sabbath recalled him being, and looked down at Sabbath as an amused father might scrutinize a slow child.
“It’s funny, what happens when we pluck a man out of time. You get a sense of eternity, albeit a primitive one,” Abathar said. “That’s not happened yet, in linear time. This is our first meeting. This is your foretaste of the afterlife.”
“I’ve died … in New York?”
“Not yet, Sir Hexen. You died on the field of Assandun.”
“That was a Friday. I can only die on a Sunday.”
“So you say, Sir Hexen,” Abathar said.
“The afterlife … is uncomfortable, but not so bad. What is this place?”
“The blinding sun above is God’s love. Here it will burn you. For now, this moment, you’re under the shade of an angel’s wing,” Abathar said. “My wing. A moment within a moment that hints at your eternity.”
Sabbath glanced up at the sky. “Is this encounter meant to inspire me? Is it a dream?”
“More a memory than a dream, though like many memories, it emerges from the fog of a fevered mind only at an inconvenient moment,” Abathar said.
“What brings … or rather brought you here?” Sabbath asked.
“I wanted to thank you in advance,” Abathar said. “And posthumously. No matter what happens or has happened, you do, will, and have earned these seconds of relief. Savor them.”
“Will I even remember this?”
Abathar shrugged, his broad shoulders somehow pushing up the whole low sky. “You already have.”
Sabbath awoke with a start, and groaned as he pulled at several of his wounds, which Joachim had fixed with medical glue.
Jennifer turned over to face him, her eyes wet and bleary. “I tried to pray and I don’t think it worked,” she said. “We’re still here. I’m still in pain. You still look like death chewed you up and spit you out.”
“I dreamt of Abathar,” Sabbath said. It clearly had been more than a dream, but was confusing enough to experience that he didn’t think he could explain it to Jennifer.
“Abathar!” Jennifer whispered. “Hexen, are you a Christian?”
“Of course I am,” Sabbath said. For a moment, he contemplated the details of Christianity as he knew it. He was no scholar, nor even one to pay attention during Mass or to the prayers on feast days, but he had the sense that being a Christian was either an extremely difficult thing or a very easy one indeed. “Look, an archbishop gave me the cross you sold, anyway. It was a valuable item, as you know. They wouldn’t have given it to me were I some heathen, no?”
Jennifer waved her hands. “I don’t know. But, listen—Abathar. He’s not a Christian angel.”
“How do you know?”
“Miriam told me,” she said. “She looked it up on her phone.”
“Ah, those wondrous devices,” Sabbath said, imagining crushing one in his hands.
Jennifer turned on her side and struggled to reach her own smartphone. “Look, I’ll show you … ow. I can’t believe it; twenty-eight years without a broken bone, and now I’ve got a cast after a fucking prison brawl. Chained Heat!
“Ugh, look,” Jennifer said, brandishing her phone. “Just type in ‘Abathar’ and you get … you get one line on Wikipedia, but click here and see? The Mandaean ethno-religious group. Ever hear of them?”
“I have not.”
“Isn’t it weird that Abathar is their angel, and not once mentioned in the Bible or something?”
“Jennifer, are you suggesting that Christianity is a false religion, or that Abathar is an agent of Satan, or something else?” Sabbath asked, his voice tired. “At any rate, it hardly matters. Six sins are dead, and they all made it clear that they are eager to destroy the world.”
“Maybe it’s a trap,” Jennifer said.
“You have never been to war,” Sabbath said. He turned from her, rolling onto his own back, and sighed deeply. “There are tricks and stratagems; ways of luring the enemy out to fight, subterfuges to disguise your forces, but one uses them when one is at a disadvantage. Only the weak scheme, Jennifer. Abathar, if he be a foreign angel or an unknown devil, could just have kept me dead and awaiting judgment, or destroyed me in my sleep. There’s no need for such complexity.”
“If that’s the case, why are so many things just God’s mysteries? God would have all the advantages—why does he need ‘tricks and stratagems’?” Jennifer asked.
“I am not a theologian,” Sabbath said. “But perhaps caretaking the universe is rather more like a government or family than war, and the sins are wayward children, sticking out their tongues and throwing horseshit at passing nobles.”
Jennifer screwed up her face. “Did people really just pick up horseshit with their bare hands and throw it at each other back in the one-thousands?”
“Yes,” said Sabbath. “Now, let me sleep, or I’ll tell you more about daily life in my time.” Jennifer had something to say, but Sabbath fell back to sleep almost immediately. She wondered if he were dreaming of Abathar again or even somehow reporting to him.
It was difficult to prepare the gallery for the official opening of the Ylem exhibit single-handedly, and Jennifer was single-handed in more ways than one. Normally, her intern or a friend would help her. Miriam had been good at parties. Jennifer dared not endanger anyone else, though, even if she was hungry for some company. Plus, she needed assistance because her left arm was in a cast. It could have been worse.… No, it couldn’t be worse, Jennifer decided. She had to unfold the folding tables by herself, and set up the tablecloths to hide how cheap the folding tables were. The closet wine supply was looking skimpy enough that she went back upstairs to raid her own fridge—and down a couple of glasses herself. She could have had more delivered, but whenever anyone passed by the windows and peered into the gallery, her heart would thump in her chest. Everyone was a potential spy, a possible assassin. Sabbath thought the final conflict with Pride would be straightforward, but Jennifer couldn’t believe it. There had to be more to saving the world than lopping off seven heads, and more to destroying it than nuclear war.
Only the weak scheme. But Jennifer was weak. It was time to scheme.
Sabbath’s body awoke before he did. The impulse to rise, take a fighting stance, brandish a weapon, was engraved on the surface of every nerve in his body. He was half out of bed and reaching for the floor lamp before he was even conscious. His eyes opened to see Jennifer struggling to carry a pile of suit jackets and trousers through the door without them spilling out of her arms.
“Get naked, Hexen,” Jennifer said. “And you’re going to be the first man to get one of my patented haircuts since my college boyfriend. All the girls called him Friar Tuck after I was done with him, but I’m sure I’ve improved in the interim.”
A cascade of images and associations led to Sabbath’s understanding that Jennifer had just threatened him with a tonsure.
“Beard’s going too,” she said, dumping the clothing on the futon Sabbath had just vacated. “I’m a pretty good judge of size, I think. You’re stocky, like a couple of my uncles, but I couldn’t be sure, so I bought half a dozen suits. Try them all on. I have some neckties already; we’ll match them up.”
“Why do you own neckties?”
“Sexual purposes,” Jennifer said briskly. “Bondage and such. Maybe if we ever have a real date, I’ll tie you to the futon for fun. Maybe … Look, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just get through this. I raided a Goodwill. I literally sold three bottles of wine to a wino to get the cash for this.”
Jennifer explained the plan as she started to cut Sabbath’s hair—she didn’t do too badly, really—and shave off his beard. Pride would be attending with the Secret Service in tow, and the agents were sworn to protect the candidate’s life with their own. They’d have guns and could kill Sabbath easily. “Not so easily,” Sabbath said, and Jennifer responded by snipping at his earlobe.
“You’re going to have one shot at this, and showing up like a ragged hobo isn’t going to help. You have to blend in with everyone else,” Jennifer said. “A lot of people are going to attend the opening.”
“Why?” Sabbath said. “To look at blank paintings?”
“If I’m being honest, for the free booze and the chance to have their picture on some art gossip’s blog,” Jennifer said. “Plus, art makes a good hedge. If Aldridge becomes president, the economy is going to go crazy. Up, then straight down. Cornering the market on contemporary blank canvases is safer than gold. Art prices are largely divorced from other financial markets.”
“Why don’t you keep the paintings, then?”
“A hedge only works if you have money to start with, Hexen. Hold still. These hipster straight razors can be blunt.”
“Like you.”
Jennifer smiled at that.
“What if someone tries to speak with me? What should I say? Should I pretend to be a mute?”
“Nah,” said Jennifer, a trace of the South suddenly in her voice. “All ya need do is say one of two things. Look at the paintin’ and say”—her voice returned to the tone Sabbath had grown used to—“‘It’s an attempt at a gesture’ or ‘It is creating a space.’” She wiped stray hairs from his cheeks. “Babeh-face,” she said in that peculiar voice again, before reverting to the practiced New York norm. “But if you really just want to nap standing up for a bit, shrug and ask, ‘Well, what do you think?’ That’s the only reason anyone would want to speak with you—to hear themselves talk.”
“In my time, public gatherings of society with free alcohol were the premier opportunity for meeting new lovers,” Sabbath said.
“Same now. Did you spend a lot of time listening to your lovers, or did you pick girls who were happy to squeeze your biceps and hear all about your knightly adventures?” Jennifer asked.
“Uhm, well,” Sabbath said. “How am I supposed to secure my sword in this outfit?”
“I’ll hide it, along with the heads, on a low wheeled cart, and bring it out. You act as surprised and appalled as everyone else, then grab the sword and get to cutting. I’m sure the Secret Service will see six rotting heads as some kind of threat and go for me, and that might be enough to give you a chance.”
“Dramatic,” said Sabbath, “but they’ll surely see the sword as the threat and rush to seize it. We should hide the sword somewhere else, and use the heads as the startling distraction.”
“You’re scheming, Hexen,” said Jennifer. “Does that mean you’re feeling weak?”
Sabbath didn’t answer, but he did take up the hand mirror and consider his half-shaved face.
“You can say that you’re feeling weak, if you are. I am.”
“I’m not,” said Sabbath. “But I am enjoying the vision of the heads of my vanquished enemies being set out on display before the ultimate prize.”
“It’s a performance piece, and an installation, all at once,” Jennifer said. Abathar’s wisdom told Sabbath about such categories of art, but he was still unsure.
“You do not need to be present tonight, Jennifer. I could open the door and greet the guests. Keys have gotten smaller in a thousand years, but I’m sure I could handle it.”
“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Jennifer said.
“It’s making a gesture, and creating a space,” Sabbath said.
She snipped around his lips, removing the last wayward hairs of his former beard.
“People expect me to be there. I invited them. Aldridge owns the building now. He bought it, just like that,” Jennifer said. “He expects me too.”
“I see,” said Sabbath slowly. Jennifer presented him with the hand mirror again, and with it he peered up at her. This woman, she is truly remarkable. Could she have been sent? Pfah, what are you thinking, Sabbath. You need to vanquish the greatest of all sins by yourself.
“You look good,” Jennifer said. “I’m going to look up how much ibuprofen someone can take before their kidneys shut down. We’ll split the bottle.” Sabbath opened his mouth to say something, but Jennifer quickly added, “It’s real medication. Not a street drug.”
Sabbath demurred politely when she offered him a handful of rust-brick pills, and raised an eyebrow when she shrugged and slapped them into her mouth as if they were a batch of seeds.
For a moment, Sabbath felt better. But then he remembered what day it was. This may be it, Sabbath thought. Pride may tear me apart, or perhaps he’ll keep me alive to see his final victory—and I’ll be incinerated along with Jennifer and every other man and woman on Earth. A performance piece and an installation all at once.
Sabbath decided not to share much with Jennifer. She boiled some pasta and poured sauce from a jar onto it. They folded the futon into a couch and ate off a low table Jennifer usually stored under the futon. Sabbath found the skill of twirling the noodles up with a fork to be beyond him, so ate with a spoon and knife—the latter pinning the contents of the former down while bringing the stuff to his mouth. He was glad not to have a beard anymore; it would have taken hours to comb the food out of it.
“You’re dexterous,” said Sabbath.
“I wasn’t the first time I ate it,” said Jennifer. “Nobody’s good with spaghetti at first. Like most little kids, I picked up the bowl and dumped it on my head.” She laughed at that, and Sabbath smiled, showing off the teeth he had left.
“I’ve often prepared for a battle with a meal, Jennifer, and have even eaten with women—”
Jennifer gulped her mouthful quickly. “Look, I don’t want to—”
“I was going to say that I’ve never had a dinner so intimate before unsheathing my sword,” Sabbath said. He had the sudden urge to adjust his necktie, loosen his collar. “This is a unique experience in my varied life and extraordinary week. There is a sense of an ending to it all.”
“Oh…” Confidence leaked out of the crack in Jennifer’s voice. “Ending of the world?”
Sabbath shrugged. “Of me. It was prophesied that I would die on a Sunday. As you might imagine, I’ve behaved with a certain recklessness the other six days of the week, every week. For many years. But I’m not being reckless now. I imagine that this humble dinner is what other men of war might wish for in the hours before battle.”
He looked at the clock. “I suppose I could choke on my food now or slip and break my head open anytime between now and tomorrow evening. If that happens, Jennifer, do your best to kill Pride, and save the world.”
“Uh … oh God.” Jennifer inhaled, then exhaled deeply. Her voice got small. “I tried. I shot Envy, I—”
“You’ll need to remove the head.”
“C-can I do that?” Jennifer said. “I mean, not physically, no, yes, physically. But will it work if I do it?”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Sabbath said with a shrug. “It’s a head. People need them.”
“Maybe you’re the chosen one…?”
“‘Chosen one’?”
“Like, the only person who can kill a sin,” Jennifer said.
“Abathar mentioned nothing of this. He said I was immune from the corrupting influence of the sins, having been fairly well corrupt myself in life.”
“Fairly well?”
“I believe he said something along the lines of: ‘an absolutely loathsome and degenerate sinner. You can sink no further,’” Sabbath said. “But I’ve noticed over the course of this adventure that I have succumbed, here and there—”
“Here and there,” Jennifer said, her normal sassy tone reasserting itself. “Feeling a bit lustful or envious, you mean?”
“Yes,” Sabbath ventured. “But, you see, do you understand what it might mean?”
“That you’re becoming a good person now, so the sins can influence you to be a bad person?” Jennifer said. “Give me a break, dude.”
“Dude!”
“Dude!” Jennifer said. “Look, Hexen, I … I like you a lot. I care about you. It’s been an intense few days. I’ve … seen things, done things, I’d never imagine doing. I can’t even watch scary movies! My parents wouldn’t let me as a kid, and when I grew up, I’d watch with my boyfriends and they’d literally tell me when to turn away from the screen. Some things they didn’t even let me watch. God, I’m babbling now. Just tell me what you’re getting at.”
“I like this, Jennifer,” Sabbath said. “That is all. Even for all the blood and grue, I like this. It’s not a sinful feeling—I don’t want to ruin this by seducing you; I don’t want to drink till my stomach feels sour, I’m not so fearful of tomorrow that I wish to hide under the covers. I am in a good place. Thank you.” He was tearing up.
Jennifer opened her mouth. She did drink some wine, a huge gulp of it. The tears came anyway. “This whole week has been a nightmare. I’ve tried everything—avoiding you, helping you, fighting, just trying to be existentialist about it, cowering in fear—nothing’s worked. The week isn’t over yet. It’s like the subway under the East River. I can’t get off; I just have to deal with it until the end. But … this is nice. This is a nice moment.” She put an arm over his shoulders and kissed his eye, his cheek, his neck, wherever there was salt water.
The cheap suit came off easily.
When Mario Harris was a young child, his parents were excited that PBS was going to air a special television miniseries, I, Claudius. They not only let young Mario stay up and watch it but insisted that he do so, to “get some culture.” The show was a nightmare of corpses and curses, incest and blood, and even the occasional raw, naked tit, all on the same channel that showed Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Mario’s father was silently livid for the entire hour, every week. His mother would coo at the things she found pleasant—“Ooh, they lay on couches while eating. That must be nice.” “Exercise is important!”—and occasionally make a sort of low growl sound at the sex and violence. Mario spent the evening sweating through his clothes, afraid to smile or gasp, or even roll his eyes at the bombastic British stage acting. He had his opinions, but his parents would find them all wrong. One awkward comment, and his folks might swallow their pride, admit their mistake, and not let him watch anymore.
The episodes detailing Caligula’s rise and reign were nerve-racking. His madness was compelling, the weird dance confusing, and actor John Hurt’s bloody mouth after he tore the fetus from his sister-lover’s womb and ate it was just unforgettable.
Mario thought of it now, as he often did. Lou had just returned from a food run. Protectee Aldridge, code-named PENNYBAGS, ate the same thing every night: two Whoppers from Burger King, Mello Yello, three orders of onion rings, and extra ketchup for everything. A dozen ketchup packets, every night. The Secret Service wasn’t allowed to secure a bottle of ketchup. “Ketchup from packets tastes better than ketchup from the bottle, and I know exactly how many to use on each burger and every onion ring. Do it my way!” he’d said the one time Lou had forgotten the packets and grabbed a squeeze bottle from a 7-Eleven. “Packets!”
Tonight, like every night since then, Lou had remembered.
Aldridge’s ketchup-packet consumption was so obsessively organized that he ended every dinner with the same exact amount on his chin, like a crimson beard.
Like the face of Caligula whispering, “Don’t go in there,” to young Mario from the television.
It had been a huge relief, like a sweet breeze coming in through a previously blocked window, when after nine long weeks, the Praetorian Guard murdered Caligula. Hurt was such a good actor that for a second Mario teared up. His father sighed and said, “Oh, wow. That’s a real twist ending!” to which Mario’s mother responded, “It’s ancient history, dear,” and chuckled to herself.
The Praetorian Guard. It would be too easy to say that Mario was a Secret Service agent now thanks to his youthful exposure to wooden swords and toga, but I, Claudius did spark Mario’s interest in history, political science, and the very idea of a government treasury. Even now, Mario imagined wooden crates bursting with gold coins and jeweled necklaces when he thought of the word. From there, a career in public service seemed inevitable. The Secret Service had long since transitioned to the Department of Homeland Security, which suited Mario fine. He wanted to keep his homeland secure, from all threats, foreign or domestic.
Aldridge looked up from his meal and smiled at Mario, his mouth looking bloody. “Satisfying!”
“I’m glad, sir,” Mario said. They were both New Yorkers, Mario and Aldridge. Mario had grown up watching Aldridge transform himself from young playboy and gossip column regular to influential billionaire and Meet the Press, and now he was … this. Mario never would have guessed that Aldridge ate nothing but fast food, barely spoke to his stunning wife, and was always on the hunt for “lady friends.” There were times the old man seemed almost senile, and then there were moments where he was a proud lion, strutting and posing, and in those moments, even Mario believed that Aldridge could win the White House, despite all the pollsters and prognosticators. He could rule, the way an emperor might, by turns cunning and capricious.
He could pluck a wayward onion ring off the floor and shove it into his mouth like a toddler experimenting with eating worms.
“Put on the television, Lou,” Aldridge said to Mario. “I want to see if the late-night hosts are talking about me.” They were, of course, and they had nothing good to say. Aldridge smiled and laughed, flashing those big teeth and licking them till they were white again. “You know, when I lost the mayor’s race years ago, I thought I’d never be mentioned on The Tonight Show again. Now nobody can stop talking about me. It’s like everyone will die with my name on their lips.”
“I can’t lift it,” Jennifer said. “This is a two-handed sword, isn’t it?”
“If you’re a girl, it is, I suppose.” Sabbath smiled at his own joke. Jennifer did not.
“It hurts my wrist, and I can’t even get my thumb around the hilt.”
Sabbath was naked, and feeling strangely serene. There was a small Buddha figurine, sitting in the lotus position, atop the toilet tank in Jennifer’s bathroom. The whisper of Abathar had warned him away from idolatry, but Sabbath didn’t think such a tiny figurine could do his soul any harm. Sabbath was tickled by it, and adopted the pose now while he sat on the futon. It was evening. Sabbath had slept well, with minimal pain, and now the artificial lights of the streetlamps and passing traffic came streaming through the sole window in Jennifer’s apartment. She looked good, just as naked as Sabbath except for her cast, holding the sword. Jennifer was better at it than she probably realized.
“Get your hips and pelvis under it when you raise the sword point, Jennifer,” he said. “Don’t wield a heavy blade with your arm, but with your body and bones.”
Jennifer adjusted her stance, tucked in her tailbone, and hefted the sword again. “Huh, okay. Still awkward…”
“Don’t start depending on arm strength now,” Sabbath said. “You’re very used to using your arms to lift weights, but experience is a liar. Imagine your spine is a screw, twisting into the ground. Now, move it, swing the sword that way—a small movement of the spine will move the blade in a much larger arc.”
“Ugh!” Jennifer swung the sword, grunting, then smiled.
“And now a slash is a bit more difficult. Use the large muscles in your back; draw an X in the air with the point of the sword. Bring the sword up diagonally, but don’t put the point behind your shoulder. Let its weight do most of the work; your body the rest.”
Jennifer swung the sword; it flew out of her hand and bounced off the floor with a clang. She yelped, covered her face with her hands, and the moment before the spinning blade found her, was yanked by Sabbath onto his lap. The sword was still again.
“All right,” he said. “Happens to everyone. Back to it.”
“Don’t die, Hexen,” Jennifer said.
“Well, I guess I can try to slice away at Pride’s limbs first, and if I fall to him, you’d have a better chance of lopping off his head.”
“We’ve been at this for an hour. I’ve pulled like fourteen muscles,” Jennifer said.
“Imagine if you had to do it every day, for three hours, and then spar with rivals who’d be pleased to add your teeth to their collection?”
“Life in the Middle Ages, eh?” Jennifer extricated herself from Sabbath’s lap and rubbed at her right arm with the cast on her left.
“Beats shoveling shit and poking at the ground with a stick, like ninety percent of the population had to do,” Sabbath said. “I even learned to read, Latin and English.” Jennifer nodded. “English has changed a lot,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just don’t die. You can write a book about your experiences if you don’t die.”
Sabbath smiled, like the toilet Buddha. But he knew that one way or another, he was going to die.
“You might even have the chance to live your life like a good person,” Jennifer said. With that, Sabbath frowned. No, I won’t.
Somehow, setting up for the opening took hours, despite the hours already spent on preparing the venue. Jennifer had Sabbath move the tables, and the wine, and then move them all again. He had to clear out the closet and install the heads and his sword there, on the two-shelf steel wheelie cart normally used for hors d’oeuvres.
She left him to wait in the empty gallery while she went to get ice—“for those fucking heads!”—at the corner store, after he had become momentarily confused by the difference between a debit card and a credit card. “I can’t expect you to go on mere errands, eh?” she said. Abathar’s wisdom had filled him in just as Jennifer stomped out the door.
Then there were the phone calls. Jennifer, seated behind her desk, all smiles to begin with, was like the four seasons—cheerful and sunny, like the spring. “I’m just calling to tell you how much I’m looking forward to you coming.…” Then blazing hot like the summer: “Yes,” she said, practically purring, licking her lips audibly. “Absolutely. Everyone will be here. You won’t believe what we have planned.” Then the chill of autumn set in. “Well, swing by and swan through, maybe? You know Above Below; it’s a small space. Yes, blank canvases.” Then winter. “What do you mean you can look at a blank canvas in your studio? Fine. Minimalism is dead? Fine! Oh, is that the dead thing now? Fine.” That last fine was like a glacial fog settling in over a long night.
“Perhaps,” Sabbath ventured, “it is best that we don’t have a large audience for tonight’s showing.”
“I still need to make money, Hex—”
“We are going to kill a very famous man, a presidential candidate, here, tonight,” Sabbath said. “What usually happens to assassins and their accomplices in this land?”
“Jesus,” Jennifer said. “Prison. Mental hospitals. Sometimes they’re shot down by the Secret Service. Well, I think so.” She clutched at her smartphone nervously, as though she was desperate to look something up. Abathar should just have given me one of those things, Sabbath thought. “But that won’t happen tonight, right?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because you’re from the eleventh century, and you’re deceased. You came here to change history or something, so it’ll all, you know, reset afterwards,” Jennifer said.
“Reset, to a week ago?” Sabbath asked.
“Or to two weeks ago, or however long it’s been since the sins have manifested,” Jennifer said. “Maybe even the man that Pride is, I don’t know, inhabiting, will go back to being almost normal, the way he was before.”
“How can you be so sure that is what will happen, and if the world does experience a ‘reset,’ then why does it matter if people come tonight and buy these paintings?”
“I’m just saying, it’s how it works: if you kill the head vampire or the alien queen, all the other ones die and everything goes back to normal. In movies. Haven’t you—?” Jennifer stopped. “Fuck,” she said. “Honestly, I guess I just wasn’t thinking about anything past this evening. Fuck…” Her eyes, already red from the tears of days past, welled up again. “I can’t go back to prison! I can’t die! Oh God, Miriam…”
“Look, you were there for no more than a few hours—” Sabbath started to say.
“And this is what happened,” Jennifer said, raising her left arm in its cast. “They’ll kill me in there. I’m not a hardened criminal. You look, you have to go, Sabbath. This was a dumb idea. Go wait for his motorcade on the corner and kill him there. Jesus, what if people have seen you hanging out in here all afternoon? Oh God, what if they saw me buying that suit yesterday? I could be on tape! I’m going to die! I’m going to be arrested!” Jennifer had more to say, but no air to say it with. She raised her hand to her throat and wheezed, gulped, stared up at Sabbath.
“Just try to relax,” Sabbath said. She made a gesture he didn’t understand, then through Abathar’s wisdom he did. There was a paper bag one of the old wine bottles had come in for some prior party, and he dug it out of the trash. She snatched it away from him, put it to her mouth, and tried to breathe, contracting it, then expanding it as she exhaled. It took nearly two minutes, but finally Jennifer stopped hyperventilating.
“You’re a changeable woman,” Sabbath said darkly.
“Jesus,” she muttered. “I’m not prepared for any of this. Nobody could possibly be.…” She looked down at her desk. “It’s easy for you,” she said. “You don’t have a life to live after this. That makes sense, right? There are plenty of sinful badasses on Earth right now, but which of them would throw their lives away? None, because they have lives. I have a life too, Hexen. I did, until this week, anyway.”
“Jennifer, I…,” Sabbath said. “Maybe you’re right. I had a dream about Abathar, but it wasn’t a dream, more of a memory. But in that memory, I had awareness of that which had yet to occur. Maybe Abathar can alter time, separate you from events—”
“Abathar, who I’ve never seen, and who won’t intervene again?” said Jennifer, her voice hardening.
“He won’t intervene in my behalf,” Sabbath said. “He still might in yours. You’re an innocent, after all.”
“Innocent.” Jennifer blew a wayward red curl off her forehead. “I’ve had sex outside of marriage, with you! You’ve been dead for a thousand years, that has to be a double sin! I beat someone up, used the Lord’s name in vain a million times, had sex with women and married men, and I don’t regret any of it. Why should I?”
“Well, it’s complex,” Sabbath said. “If I’m honest, I must say it never made much sense to me either.”
“I’m not repentant. I see no reason why God would care about any of this stuff. So how worthy of heaven, or whatever comes next, could I be?”
“Abathar would weigh your soul and decide,” Sabbath said.
“Why is it up to me to save the world with you? You should have just let the mugger or rapist or whatever he was beat my head in. Hell, maybe I’m in Bellevue, with a serious contusion, and dreaming all this.”
“Ah, that’s a possibility as well!” Sabbath said, suddenly unsure of what that would mean for his own existence. The thought seemed to mollify Jennifer for the moment, though, so he went with it. “Dreaming? Abathar? Perhaps history will reset itself, or perhaps we’ll simply score a clean win and be allowed to go free.”
Jennifer had something else to say, but she didn’t have time. The door to the Above Below gallery swung open. The Secret Service had arrived.