The angel appeared around 3:30 AM that Sunday morning. Aaron wasn't a religious man, but he knew it was an angel. He knew it as sure as God made little green apples.
And while he was on the topic of God, after Aaron's angel appeared, Aaron recalled a story from his days in Sunday School about a man who wrestled all night with an angel. The story was a sordidly juicy affair about deceit and cheating, disguises and theft, flight and pursuit, ultimately, reconciliation and redemption. It was a strange little story, and it hadn't moved in him any particular way, and he didn't really understand every part of it. Aaron simply remembered that he had enjoyed the story and thought it the story would make a great movie.
He recalled that the main character of the story was the second son of a patriarch of some kind. As the second son of the patriarch, the man's destiny was to forever be in second place behind his older brother, who would inherit the patriarch's wealth and status. Apparently, the man wasn't content to always be in second place, so he and his mother schemed up a plan to change his destiny.
When the patriarch was blind and near death, it came time for the patriarch to bestow his estate on the older brother with something called a "blessing". That's when the man enacted his scheme, which had two parts. First, the man cheated his older brother out of something called a "birthright" by withholding food from his starving older brother. Then the man went to the patriarch disguised as his older brother, which had something to do with a strip of sheep's wool on his neck, and somehow stole the "blessing". However it went, the scheme worked, and it deceived the patriarch into giving his "blessing" to the man instead of the older brother.
This part confused Aaron. He didn't know much about the law, but he did know something to the effect that a contract obtained by coercion, fraud and deceit was void. However, that didn't seem to apply to the case in the story. Maybe the law was different back then, or perhaps it was because this particular contract was something extra special called a "blessing" and, in that time at least, a "blessing" was not as easy to undo as contracts. In fact, when the scheme was uncovered the old patriarch said as much to the older brother, and, in the ultimate "a-nice-case-of-Turtle-Wax-and-a-hearty-thanks-for-playing-along-you-loser-handshake" door prize moment, the old patriarch gave the elder brother the second-place blessing that should have gone to the man. Regardless, everyone's hands were tied somehow, and the man got what his older brother deserved, and the older brother got what the man deserved. A holy mess promptly ensued.
Predictably, the situation served to royally piss off the older brother, so much so that the older brother decided that the best response was to kill the man. Faced with the prospect of a murderously irate older brother, the man absconded with the "blessing", only to find that his murderously irate older brother was not so easily dissuaded. The older brother gathered a posse and set off in pursuit of the man, who, despite all the previous, scheming and lying and cheating and stealing, was still legally "blessed". Maybe the older brother thought if the man was killed that would undo the "blessing", or maybe it was simply that, like any older brother that has been wronged, cheated or insulted by a younger sibling, his thought process was he would beat his younger brother's ass.
Whatever the older brother's motivations were, they weren't spelled out because he was the antagonist of the story, and his job was to provide a conflict for the legally "blessed" but morally suspect man to overcome. In the final analysis, what was important was the older brother and his posse were out to do violence to the man and, which caused the man ran for his life.
This aspect of the story also confused Aaron. Could a life on the run pursued by a murderous irate older brother really be considered a "blessing"? In Aaron's experience the word "blessing" had a positive connotation and certainly did not require one to go on the lam with a posse in hot pursuit. Surely a "blessing" as Aaron understood it couldn't result in all this trouble. Could it? Perhaps people in those times had an ass backward understanding of the word "blessing", or perhaps Aaron didn't really know what a "blessing" was. Again, regardless of the answer to those questions, the man had to haul ass and his brother chased him.
The story was vague about how long the chase went on, but it eventually the chase culminated in a night when the man found himself camped across the river from his older brother. Come the morning, the older brother would cross the river with his posse and apply his angry foot to the man's morally bankrupt posterior. The older brother would get whatever it was he came for, and the man would get his whatever it was he deserved for his theft of the "blessing". It didn't answer all the questions, but that potential resolution presented a simple kind of moral ratio that Aaron could understand, which was, lying, cheating, and stealing will lead to an inevitable ass whipping.
However, that night things took a supernatural turn towards the bizarre and this part left Aaron baffled. While everyone got a good night's sleep before the older brother opened an early morning can of righteous whup ass on the man, an angel appeared to the man. That in and of itself was sufficiently strange, but the situation got even stranger. For some reason the man and the angel wrestled all night and just before dawn, after the angel dislocated the man's leg with some kind of angelic finishing move, the man and the angel finally got around to some conversation.
The angel asked the man to end the wrestling match and let go because dawn was coming, but the man said he wouldn't let the angel go until the angel gave the man a "blessing". It seemed an exceedingly odd request since this whole mess started because of a "blessing" and up until that time, the results of a "blessing" seemed to be rather on the harsh side of fraught. Again, the story was a little vague about the whys-and-wherefores and some of the details were sketchy, but the upshot was that the angel gave the man a "blessing" that included a new name, which when translated meant, "He who struggles with God". Aaron was never sure why the new name was necessary, but it was part of the story, and the story was good, so it didn't bother him too much.
After the "blessing", the angel went his way, the man bowed seven times to his older brother in apology, the older brother told the man that they were cool hugged the man, and the man gave back the "blessing" he had stolen from the older brother because now the man another "blessing" from the angel. All's well that ends well it seemed, even if, truthfully, the details didn't make too much sense. The ending presented Aaron with a moral symmetry he could appreciate after all was said and done: Own up to and atone for your sins, let by-gones be by-gones, and move on.
Now an angel appeared to Aaron in the night and the story came back to him in a rush. Aaron's angel had long blonde hair with a hint of strawberry scent that tumbled down over her naked shoulders to frame her oval face, and a kissably cute nose. Her soft and supple skin tasted of vanilla body wash, and her powder purple toenails aligned perfectly. Her deft feminine curves fit easily and naturally into the masculine angles of his body and her full red lips whispered sultry rounded "ahs" and "ohs" into his ears.
Aaron and his angel didn't wrestle exactly. Instead, they rolled and clung and moved together in unspoken harmony in the shared warmth of the blankets that covered his full-sized bed. He had thought there wasn't enough room for two in his bed, but their bodies worked in sympathetic unison to share the space. He caressed her reverently and gently, like a fragile sculpture of femininity come to life, and in return her ethereal touches and strokes sent little spidery ripples of pleasure skittering across his skin.
Aaron dared not speak for fear that he would somehow undo this magic concurrence.
After a sweet eternity of discovery, the angel sat astride Aaron and possessed him inside her with a wide and innocently sensual gaze of her hazel eyes. Their mutual pace was relaxed and intuitive as if they were empathically tuned to each other's desires and needs. In that union of infinite moments, they melded into one being, body, mind. Scant seconds later the angel's body trembled to a crescendo, and she sighed his name in his ear as her juices ran on him like a benediction. While she moaned out the final spasms of joy, Aaron clutched her to him, so that his heart felt the surge of her heart and the synchronized rhythm throbbed in his chest. In response, Aaron's body shuddered over the precipice, and he gifted himself, his entire self, to the angel through the conduit of togetherness that linked their bodies. With their union complete, Aaron finally allowed himself to speak the angel's name in a quiet and adoring whisper.
"Celeste."
A gentle embrace, a contented sigh and an exhausted kiss later Aaron slipped into a naked and victorious sleep, safe in the arms of his angel.
Early Sunday morning, pink sunlight around the shades combined with the scent of strawberry and the tickle of blonde hair to wake Aaron. While he could feel a naked body next to his, it was not until he opened his eyes that he was sure that he had not been dreaming.
Celeste's body molded itself to him, encircled by his numb arms. They were a little crowded on his full-sized mattress, and they shared a pillow. Her long blonde hair spilled like a halo around her head and a few strands of it teased at his nose as he inhaled her soft scent. Her hands pressed together like a silent prayer against his chest and her powder purple toenails rested against his shins. Aaron had never experienced such a pleasant warmth of togetherness in his life, and he couldn't resist placing a soft kiss on her forehead. Still asleep, Celeste murmured and snuggled closer. He stroked her hair to still her and drank in the sight of her. Nothing in Aaron's life up until that moment had ever felt so right and comfortable.
He glanced at the clock and noted it was 8:00 AM. It was well past his usual wake up time, but then again it was Sunday, and he didn't really have anywhere to go. After a few more minutes of blissful silence, Aaron began the arduous task of extracting himself from the tangle of their bodies. It took him ten minutes of clumsy floundering with numb arms, but he finally managed to extricate himself and stand. Celeste slept on, small and warm, with a look of placid contentment on her face that made Aaron smile so broadly that it hurt his cheeks. He quietly retrieved some clothes and slipped out of the room to have a shower.
While he showered, he thought on the story of the man who wrestled the angel. Something about last night had spawned a new idea in his head about the message of that story, but he couldn't yet call it into focus. Vaguely Aaron thought that he might have a new understanding of what a "blessing" was, but he couldn't yet be sure. However, one thing was for sure. It was time to have a serious conversation with Celeste. The obvious change in their relationship could no longer be winked and, under the light of a new day, the evil little fear fled before the sweet sensation in Aaron's heart. It was time to tell her what was in his heart, whatever the outcome.
As he headed to the kitchen to make coffee, Aaron's half-forgotten cell phone buzzed in his hand. When he looked down, the name on the phone stopped Aaron in his tracks. It was a number that he hadn't expected to see ever again and while he stared in disbelief, the phone buzzed insistently in his hand. Before he could stop himself, an old and reflexive habit answered the call and put the phone to his ear.
