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butt just sticking out of his coat pocket ... lord, that did him in. Network hustled him out of there so fast, his desk was smoking behind him. That wasn't me, by the way, all those guns. That was just the state he was in by then. Poor Esau. All those years jumping off things, he still never did learn how to land.
    Or maybe I should have chosen my words better as he walked away that night. Probably would have, if I'd had more time. All I knew then was I had to speak up before he did. Jam my foot in the door.
    "My brother thinks he's an angel," I'd said. "He thinks he can change anything in the world just by saying so. But that's crazy.
He can't do that.
"
    Didn't know what else to say. Might have had a little too much what we used to call
english
on it, but I done what I could.
    Lord, don't I wish I had a movie of you for the last half-hour or so, the way you've been looking at me. You'd get to keep
that
, anyway, even though there won't be nothing on your tape tomorrow, nor nothing in your memory. Couple of hours, you couldn't even find this house again, same as your editor won't ever remember giving out this assignment. Because nobody talks about my brother anymore. Nobody's talked about him in years. And it's a sad thing, some ways, because being Esau Robbins every night, everywhere, six o'clock ... that
mattered
to him. Being the Angel of Death, that
mattered
to him. They were the only things that ever filled him, you understand me? That's all he ever could do in his life, my poor damn brother -- get even with us, with people, for being alive. And I took all that away. Stole his birthright and shut down the life he built with it. That don't balance the scales, nor make up for all he did, but it's going to have to do.
    Esau Robbins no longer exists. He's not dead. He's just ... gone. Maybe someday I'll go and look for him, like an older brother should, but right now gone is how it stays. Price of the pottage.
    Thanks for the Blanton's, young man. Puts a smile on my face, and even though it isn't her drink Susie will certainly applaud your thoughtfulness.
    You'll likely be finding a bonus in your next paycheck. Nobody in accounting will be able to explain why -- and you sure as hell won't, either -- but just you roll with it.



 
Beauty's Folly
     
    by Eugie Foster
     
    Artwork by Liz Clarke
----
    When we lived uptown in the big house with the whirlpool spa in the backyard, Father told me never to talk to strangers, that only criminals and rapists loitered in alleys. He still believed that, even after our fortunes changed and we had to move downtown.
    I believed him too until we arrived in the tiny apartment. Our landlady, a woman with purple hair, and her son, a youth wearing a sky-blue skirt that swirled when he walked, welcomed us with a bonsai rosebush dotted with sunny, yellow blossoms. Its pot was painted purple and blue, like her hair and his skirt. I adored the flowers, but I was more cheered by the gesture of goodwill.
    Father had been as wrong about the poor as he had been about everything else: Mother, the stock market, and the leniency of the IRS. After that, I became an ambassador, the go-between for the world outside and my family. Someone had to. My sister, Luella, shook with terror whenever she went out, afraid to look up, much less speak to anyone. And Father, when he wasn't pulling double shifts at the factory offices, shut himself in his room.
    So it was natural for me, when I heard the music, to chase after it.
    I found the musician hunkered in an alley. As alleys went, it was nice. Between a donut store and an all-night laundromat, the air was perfumed by fresh pastries and eau de dryer sheet. Even the graffiti was fanciful. In the middle of a gang logo, someone had painted a window overlooking a forest. And within that, the nearest tree trunk was splashed with street graffiti suggestive of another window, perhaps one overlooking an alley.
    I approached with a friendly smile and my hands