From the Teeth of Angels

Jonathan Carroll

From the Teeth of Angels

For Bu

hands on our faces forever

and for

Richard & Judy Carroll

Rita Wainer

Herb Kornfeld

Hurry, Godfather death,

Mister tyra

each message you give

has a dance to it,

a fish twitch,

a little crotch dance.

The Gods only know how to compete or echo.

Part One

WYATT

Sophie,

Just returned from Sardinia, where we’d pla

No, I am past forty and consequently have every right to “just say no” to things like these trips from now on. When we were driving back, I said to Caitlin, “Let’s just go to the mountains on our next vacation.” Then, lo and behold, we came to an i

While we were in Sardinia, we spent a lot of time in a café-bar that was the only nice thing about the place. It was called the Spin Out Bar, and when the owners found out we were American they treated us like heroes. One of them had been to New York years ago and kept pi

At night the joint filled up and could be pretty rowdy, but besides the Nordic windsurfers and an overdose of fat people in floral prints, we met a number of interesting characters. Our favorites were a Dutchwoman named Miep who worked in a sunglasses factory in Maastricht. Her companion was an Englishman named McGa

We couldn’t figure out why Miep was in Sardinia in the first place, because she said she didn’t like a lot of sun and never went in the water. She was happy to leave it at that, but McGa

God knows, the English are good conversationalists and when they’re fu

One day we went to the beach and stayed too long—both of us came home with wicked sunburns and bad moods. We complained and snapped at each other until Caitlin had the good idea of going to the bar for di

“Hello! There you two are. Miep thought you’d be coming, so we saved you places. The food is really quite good. Try the chicken. Lord, look at your sunburns! Were you out all day? I remember the worst sunburn I ever had…” was only part of McGa

As both the evening and McGa

Anyway, I could feel myself winding up for one hell of a temper tantrum. When I was three seconds away from throwing it all onto McGa

After we answered, there was a big silence. Even McGa

“Dreams are how Ian and I met. I was in Heathrow waiting to fly back to Holland. He was sitting next to me and saw that I was reading an article on this ‘lucid dreaming.’ Do you know about it? You teach yourself to be conscious in your night dreams so you can manipulate and use them. We started talking about this idea and he made me very bored. Ian can be very boring. It is something you must get used to if you are going to be with him. I still have trouble, but it is a week now and I am better.”

“A week? What do you mean? You’ve only been together that long?”

“Miep was coming back from a beekeepers’ convention in Devon. After our conversation in the airport, she said she would come with me.”