The Angel Babies

The Angel Babies

Jackie Clements and Greg Astrachan met and fell in love. This happened in New York City during the Earth’s childhood.

The young couple happily cohabited for about a couple of centuries.  Then one day Jackie woke up, smelled the coffee, and realized she was bored, bored, bored. So she did what she always did when that happened . . .  kicked Greg smartly in the solar plexus. This woke her partner up out of a deep sleep and, since Greg had lately complained of chills, Jackie quickly dressed him up in warm clothes, strung his mitten strings through the arms of his jacket, slipped a twenty dollar bill into his pocket and sent him out into the world to find them a new baby. This, she figured, would cure her boredom.

Greg protested at first, coming up with a million reasons why he shouldn’t go out into what he felt was a cold July morning. And on top of the freezing temperature, he told her as she pushed him to the door, “I’ve been without food for almost an hour at this point and I fear I will surely starve if we don’t do something about it.”

Now Jackie at her best is not very sympathetic to Greg’s problems. When bored she is not at her best. She looked directly into Greg’s right eye and said, “Ah, put a sock in it. You’re always hungry and I think your recent weight gain is directly connected to constantly stuffing yourself with every form of carbohydrate known to man. It will do you good to get a little exercise and go without a ton of grub and its almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit out there. Quit your whining. Go find me a nice little baby girl this instant. Try the Angel store on East fifth. I do not want a troublesome child. Do not under any circumstances go to the Brat store. My friend Joanne went there by mistake last year and she has not had a moment’s rest since.  Her eyes look like two pee holes in the snow from lack of sleep and you know I like to look good so do not bring me back a brat.”

Greg stumbled down the steps to the lobby of the building in which the happy couple lived, shivering profusely as he stepped out into the frigidity of a July morning in New York. He thought, as he waited for a cab to show up, that he could hear the subway train speeding beneath his feet.  Feeling a sharp pain in his left, lower abdomen though, he realized the rumbling and roaring he and almost everyone else in Manhattan now heard, was his poor empty stomach.

It is at this juncture that fate raised its ugly head. Right on the corner where Greg and his rumbling stomach were waiting for a cab was a hot dog stand. Business had not picked up this early in the morning and the hot dog vendor had pre-cooked about seventeen frankfurters in anticipation of the mid-morning rush. To lure customers he had arranged wieners and pre-heated buns in a very enticing way and he fanned the air rising from his grill sending the most mouth watering of aromas wafting into Greg’s flaring nostrils.

Greg looked up the street to his left. No cab was in sight. How much, he wondered, could an angel girl cost? Surely not more than three or four dollars. Of course not, he reasoned as he ordered four dogs with all the trimmings. The first dog was gone as a taxi finally pulled up. The second lasted almost a block while the third and fourth had long disappeared as the cab pulled up to the Angel store. The ride was four dollars. The dogs were two dollars each. Greg entered the Angel store with eight dollars in his possession.

The angel babies in the store ranged from $14 to $18 a piece. They were lined up on shelves, all smiling and gurgling happily as they awaited their new parents. Greg knew Jackie would want one of these good little girls. He tried to dicker with the clerk. “Don’t you have a small one I could have for six dollars? (He needed funds for the cab ride home.) “What about a factory second, maybe one with one ear larger than the other or only one foot?”

“Faggetaboutit,” said the clerk, “dese kids are all perfect, they even come completely potty trained. Da price is da price. You can get a brat baby for that much though and the Brat Store is right next door. Now gettoutahere, I’m busy.”

Greg stumbled out of the Angel Store. He was terrified. His mind raced. “ATM, that’s the answer.” Then he realized he had left his wallet happily cradling his bank card on the night stand beside his bed. Panic set in. He could have gone home and confessed. He could have got on the road and hitch-hiked to Maine where Jackie would never find him. He could have sat on the curb with his hat out and begged enough to do the deal. He could have did these things but they all had a terrifying finality to them.

He went into the Brat store. The babies in there were crawling everywhere. They had dirty diapers. They cuffed one another and spit up and screamed at every opportunity. He found one with long blond hair and lovely blue eyes. Surely this beautiful girl could not be bratty. He bought her for five dollars and took her home to Jackie.

A bell in a nearby church tower chimed as Jackie and Greg crossed the threshold to their home with their new baby girl in tow. “What was that? “ asked Jackie.

“It’s a bell,” said Greg.

“Wow, that has to be fate. Let’s call her Isabel,” said Jackie. And they did.

Life with Isabel was not a picnic, not even a snack really. Their new baby cried for fourteen straight days and nights then fell asleep, woke up, and cried for thirty-seven more. She went through a lot of diapers . . . about eighty-seven every five days. She spit up when people tried to kiss her and kicked both of her parents in the stomach all night when they put her into their bed hoping for a little rest and a respite from her screaming.

Jackie and Joanne drank a lot of coffee together while their girls squaw wrestled one another on Jackie’s living room floor. All four of their eyes looked like pee holes in the snow.

Isabel, after a year and a half, finally settled down. Bored with things she had potty trained herself and hardly ever spit up any more. She did call her grandfather bad names like “Old Man” and “Old Fool” but her mom was all right with that.

Happy with the advances Isabel had made, her eyes no longer looking like pee holes in the snow, Jackie once again got bored, woke Greg up with a heel to the left temple and sent him back to the Angel store to get a sister for Isabel.

Now you might think that a smart New York lawyer like Greg would never make the same mistake twice. That, of course, is B.S., he just made the mistake in a different way. He got in the cab . . .  with a lot of money in his pockets this time. He was right outside the Angel store before he realized that the hot dog guy had moved his stand to this location. He had tons of cash. He bought twelve hot dogs and ate six before he reached the Angel store’s front door. He backed through the door, bumped hard into the clerk who was trying to help him gain entry and splattered two rows of Angel babies with about six pounds of ketchup and mustard not to mention a ton of sauerkraut.

The clerk was upset. “Gettahelloutahere, you joik,” she said.

Greg quickly recovered the remains of his hot dogs. The clerk was steaming and the Angel babies were swimming in condiments. There was no chance he could buy a baby in that store.

He went back to the Brat store. One of the brat babies there looked a lot like Isabel. He had her wrapped up and forked over three dollars while idly wondering why the price was so low for such a big and solid baby.

In the taxi on the way home he found out. The new baby attacked him and ate the remains of his six hot dogs then cried until he had the cabbie stop while he bought seven more which the baby finished horking up just as they approached her new home.

The baby had sixty-seven small pieces of frankfurter in her hair. One ear was full of mustard and her nose was covered with ketchup. Greg made the driver drop him off in the alley so she wouldn’t be so visible. He carried her up the back stairway and entered the apartment through the back door. Jackie saw  them and said, “What were you doing in the alley?”

Greg’s eyebrows shot up. “Alley,” that’s a perfect name.”

“O.K. by me,” said Jackie. “But let’s spell it Ali.”

So they did and they call her that to this day.

It would be nice if we could say that the two girls turned into Angel babies together. They did not. Isabel continued to kick her parents into submission every night and Ali continued to put away enough groceries to stock Zaybar’s for eternity.

Jackie and Gregg, it turned out, loved them anyway and gained a well deserved reputation for patience and tolerance in the partental circles of New York City. Jackie even believes that the two girls actually came from the Angel Store. Greg has no comment.