Doesn't it carry weight with the heavens that I love
her?"
"Love," said the Angel, and from his chest came that
low, long whistling sound.
"Please," said the woman, "I don't need you to talk. I
want to be done with it."
"Does anyone love you, Angel?" asked the man. The
Angel paused.
"Maybe God," he answered.
"Maybe not," said the man.
"In my opinion," said the Angel, "He does."
"Why should He?" said the man. "You destroy His
work."
"That's your point of view," said the Angel.
"If He loved you," said the man, "He'd have given
you a mate so you would know what it meant to have
and to lose."
"Ah," said the Angel, "that." He tried to look as if he
didn't care.
"Please," said the woman, "I'm tired."
"Have some tea," said the man to the Angel.
"In the end she's mine," said the Angel.
"Mine," said the man. There were tears in his eyes.
"If you hadn't eaten of the apple," said the Angel,
looking right through the woman's skin at her bones,
"none of this would have happened."
"Chauvinism is eter-
nal," the woman whis-
pered, turning her
head to the wall.
"Fight me," said the
man. "Fight me fair."
"Fair," said the An-
gel, "is your idea. It
has nothing to do with
the way it is."
"Then where did I
get the idea?" said the
man.
The Angel shrugged
and moved closer to
the bed. "Here," said
the man. "I have a
book; it's a novel," he
said, "about an Angel
who floated about the
universe without a
partner till one day, on
a bend in the road, up
the hill from the cemetery, he saw the most beautiful
angel with wings like marigolds, and her arms were
filled with lilacs and she said to him, 'Come and lie
with me.' "
"What happened?" asked the Melech Homovet who
was curious despite himself.
"Here, read," said the man, and he took a big book
from the shelf and opened it up. The Angel looked in