Angel

Angel

         "This angel isn't you."
         She glanced up to see his cracked nails curling around the glass figurine on the window sill.
         "Leave it alone," she growled.
         "You religious?"
         "Does it look like it?"
         He grinned at the white lines expectedly straightened by her quaking fingers.  She snorted one line up through the straw.  He reached out for it but she pulled it away.
         "This is extra."
          He threw a Ben Franklin to join the small pile already on the table.  She held out the straw.  As the powder flew up his nose, he exhaled and sat back on his heels, palms offered up to God.
         She plucked the straw out of his fingers and took another hit.
         "God, that's good shit," he moaned.
         The bass pumped louder in his veins.  He opened his eyes to her swinging hips and t-shirt curling up on the floor.
         "What would you like, baby?"
         "I'd like you to get of that damn angel.  I don't want the Virgin Mary staring at me."
         "Have you sinned?"
         "Hell yes." He wet his lips as her black underwear met her feet. "Punish me."
         She pushed him backwards on the floor.  "Then close your eyes and think of me as your Mary Magdalene." 

         He woke to the sunlight refracting through the glass angel.  He groaned and reached out for his drawers.  She'd dressed last night and lay flung across the sofa.  He kicked her dangling foot.
         "Where can I get some of that devils smoke?"
         She cracked open an eye.  "I know a server."
         "Hook a guy up."
         "I'll cost you."
         With a sign, he flung out another twenty.  She swung off the sofa, picked it up, and staggered towards the table in the kitchen.  She opened a flour jar and pulled out a roll of twenties.  Half went into an envelope and half in her bra.
         "I just got one stop of make.  Then I'll take you to J.J."
         Outside the sun beat his brain and he followed without question.  She kept scratching absent-mindedly at the gouges on her arms and neck.
         "They got you bad?" He grunted.
         She scratched some more.
         Church bells rang out from the corner.  She hesitated and he noticed.
         "Want to go in?  Ask forgiveness for you sins?"  She shook her head and picked up her step. "That's right, you ain't no angel."
         The house they went to wore duct tape on the door and tin foil in the windows.  She motioned him to stay on the walk while she navigated around the weeds stretching up the cracks.  She shoved the envelope through a hole in the screen and quickly turned back his way.
         "Bookie?" He asked.
         "Nobody," She answered.
         The tin foil peeled back just a little to reveal a piercing blue eye.  He could barely hear the cry of "Mommy!" as they turned the corner.
         "If you want more, it'll cost you," She said.