“Okay, watch this,” one of them said to his less enthusiastic companion. He pointed down across the street, where a well-dressed but harried and tired looking woman was fumbling with a set of keys beside a dark-colored sedan. She set a laptop case down on the roof of the car. “She’s just come out of the coffeeshop where she waited over an hour for an interview with a man who never showed up. She’s been out of work since her bank shut down eight months ago. She needs a job, needs it badly, but even more than that she wanted this one. It was the perfect fit for her. It was her dream job. It was actually in her field, and the location would have been perfect.”

“How long have you been watching her?” the other one asked.

“The whole time,” he said. “Now take a look directly across the street from her. What do you see?”

“Another coffee shop.”

“Yes.”

“The same as the one she walked out of.”

“Yes!”

“They built two shops at the same street?”

“I know… crazy, isn’t it?” the first one said. “Now watch, because she’s going to look up and see it in about five seconds… three, two, and one.”

As they watched, the woman’s head tipped up in response to the flash of movement from a passing car and the expression on her face became one of surprise, then dawning realization and horror. Her car keys fell from her suddenly limp fingers, straight through the grating at her feet.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the first watcher said.

“If you saw that coming, you might have done something,” the other said. “Or you might have let her know that the man she was waiting for was across the street.”

“He actually wasn’t, though. He never showed up. He forgot about it. That’s what’s so beautiful about it. She’s going to be kicking herself forever, thinking that she fucked up, when actually it didn’t matter which of the cafes she went into. When he realizes that he blew off a prospective employee, he’s going to rationalize it away so it’s not his fault. He’ll decide he wouldn’t have hired her so he doesn’t have to call her to admit his mistake and reschedule. Nothing she could have done would have made this turn out differently.”

“Are you planning on letting her know that?”

“Are you? Of course not. We’re watchers. We watch.”

“We could let someone know.”

“That’s not my department. Anyway, it’s about to get better,” the first one said. “She’s blaming herself right now, but as long as she’s only blaming herself, there’s still the possibility in her heart that the universe is a kind and loving place. That just makes her kick herself all the harder, of course, because God was good enough to give her the chance to land her dream job and she blew it. What we’re about to see is the moment that she loses all faith.”

“That’s kind of morbid, isn’t it?”

“Morbid how?”

“We’re creatures of faith,” the other one said.

“Yeah, but we’re not like storybook pixies or anything. I don’t think we’re going to die just because someone doesn’t believe in us. We’d probably be long gone if that were the case.”

“Lots of people believe in angels,” his companion said.

“Yeah, but most of them don’t have a clue what Grigori are.” He pointed. “Okay, okay… watch this.”

The woman was looking around for something to fish her keys out. A young man who had just walked past the woman’s car suddenly doubled back and snatched the laptop, then took off running. The woman reacted as if in slow motion, turning, rising, and calling hoarsely for him to stop as he vanished around a corner.

“See, that’s it!” the watcher cried, slapping his knee. “Poof! All gone! Her heart’s breaking in two. She’s never going to believe in a higher power again… and the stupid thing is it’s more her fault than the missed interview is. It’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Not getting even a disgusted reply from his companion, he turned around and found that he was alone on the roof. The other angel had vanished.

“Probably just left,” he muttered to himself, unconvincingly.

He felt very cold, very small, and not at all sure of himself.

I’d gone for the annual flower show, though it wasn’t the flowers that interested me so much as the arrangements they formed with the stone and colored glass and light around them. Really, the flowers were the smallest part of it… an accent, like a boutonnière on the lapel of the old church.

It was raining that day, though, and the light that streamed in through the stained glass was meager and cold and gray. I didn’t stay long. I’ve never been one to handle disappointment well.

When I stepped outside, she was standing there on the stone steps, her face tilted up to the sky. Her skin was dark and beaded with water. Her hair was thick and lively. She had the most beatific smile I’d seen in a long time, and considering where I’d just come from that was saying something.

There are almost certainly far more than two kinds of persons in the world, but if one of those kinds were “people who go to church flower shows by themselves to quietly admire the intersection of architecture and art”, that group would almost certainly be nearly mutually exclusive with “people who say hello to pretty strangers”.

I said hello to her. She tilted her face forward and opened her eyes, blinking like she was waking up from a sleep, and said hello back.

“Here for the flowers?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “I’m here for the rain.”

“Would you like to get coffee or something?”

“I hate coffee,” she told me. “But I’d love something.”

So we went to a little open air cafe, where we had crème brulée and she drank old-fashioned root beer from an old-fashioned glass bottle while I, feeling too much an adult for such a thing, pretended to enjoy my coffee. There were no other patrons on the patio, as a fine mist was still falling. We talked. I said more to her than I say in a week’s worth of conversations to my coworkers, even the ones I consider my friends. It was amazing. Even more amazing, she seemed to enjoy it.

The sky was still low and gray when we finished, but it was only intermittently spitting. I asked her if she might like to visit a museum, or go see the botanical gardens, or even go to a movie. She declined each suggestion, a little sadly.

“Would you like to do anything?” I asked her, trying not to sound desperate.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I told you. I’m only here for the rain.”

One last drop landed on her forehead as she said that. She held out her hands, palm up, as if checking for more. She smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. “Goodbye.”

And then, just like that, she was gone.

I started taking walks in the rain more often after that. At first I was hoping to see her again. Eventually I realized that I wouldn’t. I didn’t stop, though. I’d come to love the rain for itself. I also started taking more chances, saying hello to strangers.

I still can’t quite bring myself to go to a cafe on a Sunday morning, order root beer and then drink it straight from the bottle.

I’m working on that.