'The Stupidest Angel Chapter 1\r'

'This book is dedicated to microph wizard SPRADLIN who utter: â€Å"You k right off, you oughtta write a Christmas book.”\r\nTo which I replied: â€Å"What kind of Christmas book?”\r\nTo which he replied: â€Å"I dont lie with. Maybe Christmas in Pine Cove or something.”\r\nTo which I replied: ” ‘Kay.”\r\nAcknowledgments\r\nThe author wishes to acknowledge those who helped: as always, Nicholas Ellison, my intrepid agent; Jennifer Brehl, my brilliant editor in chief; Lisa G in allagher and Michael Morrison for continued confidence in my qualification to pronounce stories; Jack Womack and Leslie Cohen for induceting me in drive of my readers and the conjure; the Huff whiles, for preparing a landing pad and a warm delightful; Charlee Rodgers, for the careful reads, thoughtful comments, and vertical place up with the process; and finally, Taco dockage, from whom I joyfully (and with permission, which almost ruins it) swiped the idea for chapter 16.\r\nAuthors sample\r\nIf youre buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as easy as tasteful depictions of erectnibalism and population in their forties having sex. Dont blame me. I told you.\r\nChapter 1\r\nCHRISTMAS CREEPS\r\nChristmas crept into Pine Cove interchangeable a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sledge bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom standardized a chilly sore under the mist permitoe.\r\nPine Cove, her pseudo-Tudor glint whipecture all tarted up in holiday quaintage †twinkle lights in all the trees on Cypress Street, fake snow undulateed into the corner of every shops windows, miniature Santas and colossus candles h everyplaceing illuminated beneath every street lamp †opened to the droves of tourists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Central Valley cl spike- rebuff for a truly baseborningful aftermath of Christmas commerce. Pine Cove, sleepy California coastal village †a toy township, really, with to a greater extent art galleries than gas stations, much wine-tasting rooms than hardware stores †lay in that location, as inviting as a rumen prom queen, as Christmas loomed, only when five days away. Christmas was coming, and with Christmas this year, would enumerate the Child. Both were vast and irresistible, and miraculous. Pine Cove was expecting only iodin of the two.\r\nWhich is not to say that the locals didnt lead into the Christmas spirit. The two weeks onward and after Christmas provided a welcome wave of cash into the towns c bump offers, tourist-starved since summer. every waitress dusted off her Santa hat and attachable reindeer antlers and checked to cave in confident(predicate) as shooting that t here were four good pens in her apron. Hotel clerks steeled themselves for the rage of last-minute oerbookings, while housekeepers switched from their radiation pattern composerid baby-powder air fresheners to a more than festive putrid pine and cinnamon. constitute at the Pine Cove B give awayique they put a â€Å"Holiday Special” trace on the hideous reindeer jumper and marked it up for the tenth attendant year. The Elks, Moose, Masons, and VFWs, who were basically the same bunch of drunk old guys, planned furiously for their yearbook Christmas parade down Cypress Street, the composing of which this year would be Patriotism in the Bed of a Pickup (mainly because that had been the guinea pig of their Fourth of July parade and everyone still had the decorations). galore(postnominal) Pine Covers point voluntee rubor to man the salvation Army boilers down in attend of the post off scratch and the Thrifty-Mart in two-hour shifts, hexadteen hours a day. Dressed in their red suits and fake beards, they rang their bells worry they were sacking for dog-spit aureate at the Pavlov Olympics.\r\nâ€Å"Give up th e cash, you garish son of a snatch,” express Lena Marquez, who was on the job(p) the kettle that Monday, five days before Christmas. Lena was following Dale Pearson, Pine Coves wicked developer, done and through the lay slew, ringing the bejeezus kayoed of him as he headed for his motorhand truck. On his way into the Thrifty-Mart, hed nodded to her and said, â€Å" piece of cake you on the way kayoed,” merely when he emerged eight minutes later, carrying a thrusting of groceries and a handgrip of ice, he blew by her kettle exchangeable she was using it to demo tallow from building inspectors stillts and he filled to run away the stench.\r\nâ€Å"Its not like you cant afford a couple of bucks for the less fortunate.”\r\nShe rang her bell especially hard correctly by his ear and he spun nearly, swinging the foundation of ice at her to the highest degree hip level.\r\nLena jumped clog. She was thirty-eight, lean, dark-skinned, with the hand some neck and finely set jawline of a flamenco dancer; her long scorch hair was coiled into two Princess Leia cinnabuns on either side of her Santa hat. â€Å"You cant take a swing at Santa! Thats ill- judgment of convictiond in so some ways that I dont feature time to enumerate them.”\r\nâ€Å"You mean to count them,” Dale said, the soft winter fair weather glinting off a bare-ass set of veneers hed vindicatory had installed on his front teeth. He was fifty-two, almost complete(a)ly bald, and had powerful carpenters shoulders that were still wide and square, despite the beer intestine hanging below.\r\nâ€Å"I mean its injure †youre wrong †and youre cheap,” and with that Lena put the bell future(a) to his ear again and shake it like a red-suited terrier shaking the life step up of a screaming brass rat.\r\nDale cringed at the sound and swung the ten-pound beauty of ice in a great underhanded arc that caught Lena in the solar plexus a nd send her backpedaling across the parking fix, gasping for breath. Thats when the ladies at BULGES called the cops †well, cop.\r\nBULGES was a womens fitness center located just above the parking solidifying of the Thrifty-Mart, and from their treadmills and stair-climbing machines, the BULGES members could catch out the ins and outs of the local market without feeling as if they were actively spying. So what had started as a moment of sheer glee and a mild adrenaline surge for the six-spot of them who were watching as Lena chased Dale through the parking lot, turned quickly to spite as the evil developer thwacked the Latin Santa-ette in the breadbasket with a satchel of minicubes. Five of the six merely missed a rate or gasped, that Georgia Bauman †who had her treadmill cranked up to eight miles per hour at that very moment, because she was trying to lose cardinal pounds by Christmas and fit into a red-sequined typesetters case cocktail dress her husband h ad bought for her in a fit of sexual idealism †bowled reverse off her treadmill and landed in a colorful spandex tangle of yoga students who had been practicing on the mats behind her.\r\nâ€Å"Ow, my ass chakra!”\r\nâ€Å"Thats youre root chakra.”\r\nâ€Å"Feels like my ass.”\r\nâ€Å"Did you see that? He nearly knocked her off her feet. Poor thing.”\r\nâ€Å"Should we see if shes all right?”\r\nâ€Å"Someone should call Theo.”\r\nThe exercisers opened their cellular phone phones in unison, like the Jets flicking switchblades as they gaily danced into a West Side stage gang-fight to the death.\r\nâ€Å"Why did she ever marry that guy, anyways?”\r\nâ€Å"Hes such an asshole.”\r\nâ€Å"She used to drink.”\r\nâ€Å"Georgia, are you all right, honey?”\r\nâ€Å"Can you get Theo by calling 911?”\r\nâ€Å"That bastard is just going to drive off and leave her there»\r\nâ€Å"We should go help.â €\r\nâ€Å"Ive got twelve more minutes on this thing.”\r\nâ€Å"The cell reception in this town is horrible.”\r\nâ€Å"I have Theos do on speed dial, for the kids. Let me call.”\r\nâ€Å" demeanor at Georgia and the girls. It looks like they were play Twister and fell.”\r\nâ€Å"Hello, Theo. This is Jane down at BULGES. Yes, well, I just glanced out the window here and I noticed that there susceptibility be a problem over at the Thrifty-Mart. Well, I dont want to meddle, notwithstanding lets just say that a plastered director just hit one of the Salvation Army Santas with a bag of ice. Well, Ill look for your car, becausece.” She flipped the phone shut. â€Å"Hes on his way.”\r\nTheophilus Crowes roving phone played eight parallel bars of â€Å"Tangled Up in luscious” in an irritating electronic vocalize that sounded like a choir of scathe houseflies, or Jiminy Cricket huffing helium, or, well, you know, Bob Dylan â₠¬ anyway, by the time he got the wrench open, five people in the nominate section of the Thrifty-Mart were giving him the hairy look hard enough to wilt the rocket right there in his baby-walker. He grinned as if to say, Sorry, I hate these things, too, but what aw you gonna do? and so he answered, â€Å" police cons board Crowe,” just to remind everyone that he wasnt dickmg around here, he was THE LAW.\r\nâ€Å"In the parking lot of the Thrifty-Mart? Okay, Ill be right there»\r\nWow, this was convenient. matchless thing astir(predicate) being the occupier lawman in a town of only five thousand people †you were never far from the trouble. Theo parked his cart on the end of the aisle and loped by the registers and out the automatic doors to the parking lot (He was a denim- and flannel-clad praying mantis of a man, six-six, one-eighty, and he only had three speeds, amble, lope, and still). Outside he found Lena Marquez doubled over and gasping for breath. Her ex-husband, Dale Pearson, was pure toneping into his four-wheel-drive magazine.\r\nâ€Å" right field there, Dale. Wait,” Theo said\r\nTheo ascertained that Lena had only had the wind knocked out of her and was going to be okay, then addressed the stocky contractor, who had paused with one lift on the running board, as if hed be on his way as short as the hot air clear-cut out of the truck.\r\nâ€Å"What happened here?”\r\n â€Å"The crazy hollo hit me with that bell of hers.”\r\nâ€Å"Did not,” gasped Lena\r\nâ€Å"I got a report you hit her with a bag of ice, Dale. Thats assault.”\r\nDale Pearson looked around quickly and spotted the gang of women gathered by the window over at the gym. They all looked away, heading for the assorted machines they had been on when the debacle unfolded. â€Å"Ask them. Theyll split you she had that bell right upside my head. I just reacted out of self-defense.”\r\nâ€Å"He said hed donate when he came out of the store, then he didnt,” Lena said, her breath coming back. â€Å"Theres an implied contract there. He violated it. And I didnt hit him.”\r\nâ€Å"Shes a fucking nutcase.” Dale said it like he was declaring water wet †like it was just understood.\r\nTheo looked from one of them to the other. Hed dealt with these two before, but thought it had all come to take a breath when theyd divorced five years ago. (Hed been constable of Pine Cove for fourteen years †hed seen the wrong side of a lot of couples.) first off rule in a national situation was separate the parties, but that appeared to have already been accomplished. You werent supposed to take sides, but since Theo had a soft spot for nutcases †hed hook up with one himself †he obstinate to make a judgment call and focus on his attention on Dale. Besides, the guy was an asshole.\r\nTheo patted Lenas back and loped over to Dales truck.\r\nâ€Å"Dont waste your tim e, hippie,” Dale said. â€Å"Im done.” He climbed into his truck and closed the door.\r\nHippie? Theo thought. Hippie? Hed cut his ponytail years ago. Hed returnped wearing Birkenstocks. Hed even stopped smoking pot. Where did this guy get off calling him a hippie?\r\nHippie? he said to himself, then: â€Å"Hey!”\r\nDale started his truck and put it into gear.\r\nTheo stepped up on the running board, leaned over the windshield, and started tapping on it with a quarter hed fished from his jeans pocket. â€Å"Dont leave, Dale.” Tap, tap, tap. â€Å"You leave now, Ill put a warrant out for your arrest.” Tap, tap, tap. Theo was pissed now †he was accredited of it. Yes, this was definitely provoke now.\r\nDale threw the truck into park and hit the electric window button. â€Å"What? What do you want?”\r\nâ€Å"Lena wants to press charges for assault †maybe assault with a deadly weapon. I think youd repair rethink leaving right now.”\r\nâ€Å" deucedly weapon? It was a bag of ice.”\r\nTheo shook his head, affected a whimsical storytellers musical note: â€Å"A ten-pound bag of ice. Listen, Dale, as I drop a ten-pound block of ice on the courtroom floor in front of the jury. Can you hear it? Cant you just see the jury cringe as I smash a winter melon vine melon on the defense attorneys table with a ten-pound block of ice? not a deadly weapon? ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this man, this reprobate, this redneck, this †if I may †clump-filled-cat-box-of-a-man, struck a defencelessly woman †a woman who out of the kindness of her heart was collecting for the poor, a woman who was only †;\r\nâ€Å"But its not a block of ice, its †»\r\nTheo raised a finger in the air. â€Å"Not some other word, Dale, not until I read you your rights.” Theo could tell he was getting to Dale †veins were starting to pulse rate in the contractors temp les and his bald head was bout bright pink. Hippie, huh? â€Å"Lena is definitely pressing charges, arent you, Lena?”\r\nLena had make her way to the side of the truck.\r\nâ€Å"No,” Lena said.\r\nâ€Å"Bitch!” Theo said †it slipped out before he could stop himself. Hed been on such a roll.\r\nâ€Å" bump into how she is,” said Dale. â€Å"Wish you had a bag of ice now, dont you, hippie?”\r\nâ€Å"Im an officer of the law,” Theo said, privation he had a gun or something. He pulled his badge wallet out of his back pocket but decided that was a little late for ID, since hed know Dale for nearly twenty years.\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, and Im a Caribou,” Dale said, with more pride than he really should have had nearly that.\r\nâ€Å"Ill forget all about it if he puts a hundred bucks in the kettle,” Lena said.\r\nâ€Å"Youre nuts, woman.”\r\nâ€Å"Its Christmas, Dale.”\r\nâ€Å"Fuck Christmas and fuck you.”\r\nâ €Å"Hey, theres no need for that kind of talk, Dale,” Theo said, going for the peace in peace officer. â€Å"You can just step out of the truck.”\r\nâ€Å"Fifty bucks in the kettle and he can go,” Lena said. â€Å"Its for the needy.”\r\nTheo whipped around and looked at her. â€Å"You cant plea-bargain in the parking lot of the Thrifty-Mart. I had him on the ropes.”\r\nâ€Å"Shut up, hippie,” Dale said. thus to Lena, â€Å"Youll take twenty and the needy can get bent. They can get a job like the rest of us.”\r\nTheo was sure he had handcuffs in the Volvo †or were they still on the bedpost at substructure? â€Å"That is not the way we †»\r\nâ€Å"Forty!” Lena shouted.\r\nâ€Å"through!” Dale said. He pulled two twenties from his wallet, wadded them up, and threw them out the window so they bounced off of Theo Crowes chest. He threw the truck in gear and endorse out.\r\nâ€Å"Stop right there!† Theo commanded.\r\nDale righted the truck and took off. As the big red pickup passed Theos Volvo station wagon, parked twenty yards up the lot, a bag of ice came flight of stairs out the window and exploded against the Volvos tailgate, showering the parking lot with cubes but otherwise doing no damage whatsoever. â€Å"Merry Christmas, you psycho bitch!” Dale shouted out the window as he turned onto the street. â€Å"And to all a good night! Hippie!”\r\nLena had tuck the wadded bills into her Santa suit and was squeezing Theos shoulder as the red truck roared out of sight. â€Å"thank for coming to my rescue, Theo.”\r\nâ€Å"Not much of a rescue. You should press charges.”\r\nâ€Å"Im okay. Hed have gotten out of it anyway, he has great lawyers. Trust me, I know. Besides, xl bucks”\r\nâ€Å"Thats the Christmas spirit,” Theo said, not able to keep from smiling. â€Å"You sure youre okay?”\r\nâ€Å"Im fine. Its not the first time hes lost it with me.” She patted the pocket of her Santa suit. â€Å"At least(prenominal) something came of this.” She started back to her kettle and Theo followed.\r\nâ€Å"You have a week to file charges if you change your mind,” Theo said.\r\nâ€Å"You know what, Theo? I really dont want to make pass another Christmas obsessing on what a complete waste of humanity Dale Pearson is. Id rather let it go. Maybe if were lucky hell be one of those holiday fatalities were always hearing about”\r\nâ€Å"That would be nice,” said Theo.\r\nâ€Å"Now whos in the Christmas spirit?”\r\nIn another Christmas story, Dale Pearson, evil developer, self-absorbed woman hater, and seemingly unredeemable curmudgeon, might be visited in the night by a series of ghosts who, by showing him bleak visions of Christmas future, past, and present, would bring about in him a change to generosity, kindness, and a general warmth toward his fellow man But this is not th at kind of Christmas story, so here, in not too many pages, someone is going to dispatch the scummy son of a bitch with a shovel. Thats the spirit of Christmas yet to come in these parts. Ho, ho, ho.\r\n'