Read Angels for Free Online Page B

time. Are you filled in on the whole story?”
    â€œWhat whole story? Hey. You’re bothering me.”
    â€œI’m not bothering you. I’m saving your life. Your life is the truth. Listen: The world was made in 1914. Before 1914 there was nothing. Eleven people are in charge of the world. They make up the news and the history books, they control everything you think you know. They wrote the Bible and all the other books. Most people are wooden people, controlled by remote control. There’s only a few of us who are real, and we’re getting fooled. ”
    â€œI can’t use this,” Jamie said. “I mean, I’m just here trying to get some lunch money.”
    â€œThe world is flat. It’s two hundred and fifty-six square miles in area, sixteen by sixteen. When you go someplace on a plane, what they do is, they just use their powers inside your mind to make you think like the time is passing To make you think you’re getting somewhere.”
    The nurse came back wheeling a cart piled high with plastic sacks of blood. She read the label on Jamie’s and said, “Name please?”
    â€œThey do things inside your mind, ” the man whispered to Jamie.
    â€œMy name is Jamie Mays,” she told the nurse.
    The nurse showed her the name on the label— Jamie Mays— and Jamie nodded, and the old man whispered, “They’re putting new memories into us right now.”
    The nurse hung the blood up next to the saline solution and adjusted the tubes and stoppers, and one tube turned bright crimson as it fed Jamie’s own blood, minus plasma, back into her. “New memories is what’s inside that bag,” the man announced calmly.
    â€œGreat,” Jamie said. “I was sick of the old ones.”
    â€œIn Malaya, I killed a little Chink. Supposedly Malaya. I broke his head apart,” the man said.
    â€œJesus Christ,” Jamie told the ceiling.
    â€œThere were machines inside his head,” the man said quietly.
    â€œEverybody in this town—they’re all the same,” Jamie told the ceiling.
    â€œThat’s what I mean!”
    â€œNo—I mean—oh, forget it.”
    â€œThere was machine stuff inside his head. He wasn’t a real person.”
    â€œWhy don’t you quit? I can’t use that baloney right now.”
    â€œEverywhere you go, it’s the same people. Don’t you see what’s happening to your life, woman?”
    â€œNot exactly,” Jamie said.
    â€œYou’re going to see, all right. Something is happening to your life, and you’re going to see what it is.”
    â€œI was afraid of that,” Jamie said.
    â€œIf you think you’re afraid now,” the man said.

2
    B ill Houston’s elbows on the bar were numb. He couldn’t feel his mouth in his face. Respectfully he held his injured hand aloft, as if ready for some arm-wrestling. It was bandaged and sewn up like a teddy bear’s, but its throbbing was distant and nothing like pain. From the high place that was his head he looked down at the drink in front of him and saw that its ice was melted, a sign he was slowing down, because when he was drinking seriously he wasted no time and there was always plenty of ice banging around inside the glass when he was finished. “Hey—what is this place, anyways?” he asked the bartender. “What’s the name of this place?”
    The bartender was very rapidly washing beer glasses two at a time, sticking them down into the suds and then into the rinse water, and then setting them in neat rows on a towel laid out by the sink. The bartender said, “Say what?”
    â€œI says what is the name of this place?”
    The bartender puffed a sigh upward, as if trying to blow his hair away from his eyes. But he was bald. “This bar has the electrifying name of Joe’s Bar,” he said.
    â€œNo—but what town is it, I mean to say. What