It was a big risk. Crowley had taken every precaution he could reasonably think of, given the particulars – ignoring the treasured stash of envelopes studiously hoarded in the drawer under the sheet music shelf in favour of overpaying for a brand new one that was still white: the type with stiff cardboard on one side, bubble wrap all the way around on the inside, and “DO NOT BEND” printed top and bottom. He looked up and triple checked he had the right return address for Bricks ‘n’ ‘ricks, whose actual name as recorded on the Company House database changed at least twice a year (they were currently trading as OneNydeParkLLC and listed as a supplier of wallpaper accessories) but who were definitely the same maintenance company Aziraphale had retained since the early 80s (Crowley couldn’t remember which century) as a convenient strawman through which the angel attributed all repairs to the properties he’d collected (and occasionally blamed for things even Crowley could never actually prove) which resulted in a portfolio that had remained in suspiciously good condition for an improbably long time now. Much of this was achieved through delicate angelic automation: a network of runes and sigils which ran along the water pipes, foundations, and some of the electrics depending on when the lease had become available. It was a bit like the M25 but an M25 that had been allowed to grow normally at its own pace, and had managed some healthy emotional development somehow by living in the same place all its life with a consistent and steady purpose. There was a steady trickle of divine energy which emanated from somewhere in the bookshop, and this worked like a type of preventative care for the masonry and subsistence issues. The miracle to prop a collapsed pub back up once it had fallen down wasn’t difficult, but making sure no one remembered it falling down or subconsciously avoided it until it went out of business was another thing entirely.
Luckily there were still some things – mostly the more modern bits and pieces – that fought that kind of paternalistic divinity a bit harder than bricks did. Central heating, for one, didn’t like being told everything was OK and it was going to be just fine today, and tomorrow, and probably every day thereafter. It resented it. And if you told things like insulation and cables to simply buck up and regenerate whenever rats ate through them then two things tended to happen: one, the rats quickly shared the news that a new never-ending buffet had opened up in the walls, as their ancestors had known, and they’d simply continue to eat and eat as the cable replenished and make more and more rats as it did and then the question as to which is faster, magic or mating rats, became a very real and terrible uncertainty that tended to spark off a plague which, to be quite honest, still haunted Crowley whenever a park bin rustled unexpectedly in the dark. And two, the internet would still cut in and out, only worse, because miracles also interfere with the wifi signal and switching to 5GHz didn’t help.
Crowley knew, on an intellectual level, that the filing cabinet would be an immaculate trove of any and all information he could possibly need, but it was one thing to know about it, and another to rifle through the folders with a constant wandering chill skiing up and down the back of his neck because the level of purity was unnatural. The bookshop was clean and tidy but there was a kind of scruffy chaos that made it comfortable. That reassured the universe that nothing sinister was about to happen. The filing cabinet, on the other hand, was like the absence of bird song in a forest. It could have told a surgical suite a thing or two about how it could be cleaner.
Crowley got the unnerving suspicion it knew he’d been behind the creation of VAT, and the tax returns in the second drawer had not forgotten and had certainly not forgiven.
According to the receipts, the last time someone actually came out to repair anything had been back in 2006, but Aziraphale still paid them by direct debit every quarter so it wasn’t hard to find the right bank account, put a stop to all that, and then take a wander through the neighbourhood to suggest casually to two or three of the boilers that had they considered, if they kept on like this, doing their job quietly and competently for so long, then it really was only a matter of time before all their hard work would be taken for granted and next thing you know, they’ll be talking about upgrading to a new heat pump with all the money they saved on you?
The boiler in the bookshop ignored him completely, uninterested in any shenanigans when they both knew that the frigid temperature it kept relentlessly was exactly what Aziraphale wanted from it. Pro polar ice-caps, good for book preservation, aggressively unhealthy for the invasive human pest known as customers.
On a quick visit with a different face, it turned out that the record shop didn’t know where the boiler was, or if there even was one (Crowley made a note to mention that later, because even if the place had gone unchanged since the Blitz, surely someone should have said something by now if it didn’t?) but the third try was the ticket.
The barbershop boiler was technically on Poland Street, and more cheerful than Crowley thought it had any right to be, but that was a lot of hot water to pump out every single day since 1976. A small stack of leaflets dropped at the pub with a dubiously worded 15% off coupon had the place stuffed to capacity within days, something it hadn’t ever experienced or wanted for that matter; a week of heating every single tap at the same time from 8am to 8pm and it had had enough. The water went stone-cold at 11:12 on Tuesday morning and with a diary full of irate customers with shortly-to-expire discounts, both the proprietor and Muriel (who chose that day to brave picking up the ringing box for some reason) ended up in tears before Crowley’s post-it note with CALL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY on the top in caps took mercy and dialled the maintenance company on its own.
As Mr Fell was now out of contract, and the pipes were very old and unlikely to be compliant with anything unless it was still written in Latin, the repair estimate would need to come by post. It would take much longer to arrive that way than most clients could afford to wait, which they knew, so there was a good chance they’d get the go ahead long before anyone had any idea how much it was ultimately going to cost. Crowley had used the same trick himself, more than once, and knew just how powerful a Royal Mail postmark could be in the wrong hands. (He’d only stopped because the souls kept getting lost at Heathrow, and when they didn’t, he always seemed to get slapped with customs charges despite there being no monetary value at all.) If Hell wouldn’t accept Shax’s signature on a one-bedroom, even with that lovely square footage, Crowley was certain there was no way Heaven would pay an invoice signed for by a 37th degree scrivener who hadn’t read it. Not at London prices.
All in, the first half of the plan was like buying a ticket, and required only a few choice words, £18.70 in credit for the Westminster library colour printer, and the presumption of greed in a company that had kept a contract running for decades without doing anything except change a lightbulb while continuing to drive diesel vans into W1 so they could add a 25% “processing fee” to the CC, ULEZ, and the inevitable parking ticket to each bill. Including one marked “telephone consult.”
It was cheaper than a one-way on the Gatwick Express. Especially since OneNydeParkLLC would never get the chance to collect, given that if it all failed they wouldn’t exist, and if he made it back, they were going to wish they didn’t.
The second part of the plan was a different beast, and it wasn’t one that trusted him or who he had any desire to trust in return. It was mostly theory holding hands with guesswork while trying to figure out what the future really thought about how the relationship was going, at the same time luck was dropping hints like “warmer, warmer, colder, cliff edge…” in the background.
Up until the morning the invoice arrived (Crowley fixed the boiler when he felt the van cross the M25 at junction 9, and where it went after that, he didn’t know and didn’t really care so long as it stayed there) -- even right up to his turn at the post office counter, where the demon handed over the red slip which would allow the employee’s corporeal body to cross the threshold into the back and beyond where the post lived, and without which nothing could be found as it had ceased to exist (though having the slip didn’t ensure that it would ever exist again) and right up until the moment someone finally reappeared with the envelope (he couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think it was the same person) which, if he took it, would be his ticket into enemy territory, Crowley still didn’t know what he intended to do. He stared down at the letter which, since he hadn’t taken it quickly enough, they’d dumped on the counter in a powerful hint that he had better get out of the way or the queue couldn’t be held responsible for what it did to him next. He waited awkwardly for a few more seconds, ostensibly for a receipt that obviously wasn’t happening, but the queue was starting to vibrate with mob-like malice and he wasn’t in the mood. Crowley scooped up the letter and forced himself not to ball the thing into a fist, with its three flimsy pieces of stupid paper, just in case the wrinkles wouldn’t come out later.
As the doors swung open and the sun and noise of Marylebone hit him all at once, the demon felt an overwhelming and familiar urge wash over him. It was the only clear and certain instinct he’d had since Gabriel ditched Heaven for a fly.
It urged him to stuff this envelope into the nearest bin (or failing that a half-blocked storm drain) and then run straight in the opposite direction. As far as it was possible to go.That was the sensible thing to do. This envelope, too big for a normal letterbox despite containing three pieces of paper that could have been folded in half, was postage-paid insanity. It was a good idea, but it was also an elaborate, tarted-up way of achieving the same result he’d get by closing his eyes and strolling into the path of the nearest lorry. It was mid-morning on a weekday. There were plenty to choose from. And that way, at least he’d die knowing the lorry didn’t actually mean anything by it.
It was tempting. Very tempting.
Instead, he walked slowly back to where he’d been forced to park the Bentley, who didn’t like being too close to the tour buses that idled in a row along the top of Regents Street like a long caterpillar, to begin the careful process of transferring the handwriting on the envelope onto the new envelope he’d purchased, human essence and all.
Crowley had got the hang of recreating the security holograms they started putting on documents about ten years ago, back when he thought it might be useful, but the new barcodes on stamps hadn’t seemed lucrative enough to bother before and as they materialised, technically perfect and yet somehow not, he leaned back and flicked the wheel unhappily. What if they scanned them again? What if they could tell the postage had already been used once?
The car felt vaguely doubtful, even though the engine was still off.
“Good point,” Crowley muttered. When had you everseen an angel navigate a self-service checkout successfully? Or at all?
They probably thought QR codes were a new wave of geometric portrait art. Or something. Aziraphale didn’t count, because Aziraphale didn’t use the self-service check-out so much as he had slowly endeared himself to it over time, like a guard dog you gave a biscuit to every day until it finally decided it liked you better and ate its first owner.
Sod. What if they didn’t recognise decimal postage?
As the writing on the outside of the original envelope steadily became the writing on the new envelope, Crowley began to breathe a little more consistently because it was something to focus on. When he was out and about amongst the rash of humanity which was lunchtime on Oxford Street, it was easy to slip back into the old swagger like nothing had changed. Like he was the same demon doing the same job he’d done five years ago, and for thousands of years before that. Just be charming, remember to blink occasionally, and if a tourist isn’t looking where they’re going, walk straight at them with a smile. Points if a bus was coming.
But alone in the Bentley, plants lining the bottom rim of the rear-view mirror, the world looked more like what it really was: on its last legs and getting increasingly desperate, whether or not it knew it -- backed into a corner, hiding in the sleek trappings of better times while trying to hang on just long enough for something better to come along. All the while knowing it probably wasn’t going to.
In fact, he was certain it wasn’t going to, because like everyone else who’d been there at the beginning, he’d seen the manufacturer’s manual for the universe and knew what the default settings were if they were left alone. Did that count as the first algorithm, he wondered? For all their free will, since humans couldn’t really change the parameters, did that make them a very fancy AI trapped inside it, with their lot asking inane questions like “What would you do if you had toes that mattered?”
Crowley’s mind was wandering, or pretending to, hoping to distract him as it slunk towards the door marked deal with all this tomorrow, yeah?
Somewhere out of sight, one of a dozen construction sites tipped a load of rubble down a 3-story shoot and a crashing boom shot through the traffic. The identical white shrouds that were wrapped around every construction project in Central London to keep out planning inspectors, squatters and pigeons rippled in unison, a complicit wall of silence the ‘Ndrangheta would be proud of.
Not helping, he thought bitterly. Humanity was asking a lot from him -- potentially it was asking for everything, in return for the opportunity to keep on getting on his nerves the way it was. It wasn’t even the first time it was asking, and the least it could do was pretend to be considerate for a bit, just to reassure him it was worth it in the long run.
A delivery van that had been idling behind theBentley since the driver spotted Crowley climbing into his car and assumed he’d be leaving imminently reached the end of his patience. He’d circled this block eleven times. There was no other parking space. He had to make a stand somewhere before his frustration drove him into a cyclist and it might as well be here, so he was resolved to wait as long as it took for Crowley’s space. His van was a hybrid. It could out-idle any vintage car, and he didn’t need to pee because he didn’t drink or eat until his shift was over. He put his elbow over the horn and felt it hover there, uncertain. Maybe the driver hadn’t seen him or heard him waiting. Hybrids were quiet. Maybe something terrible would happen if he honked now.
Once upon a time, Crowley would have turned the engine into something slimy and cursed the driver with jelly for kneecaps. The demon watched the conflict play out in his wing-mirror, and reached down without looking to turn the key in the ignition. Another half hour tacked onto the driver’s commute home tonight, and his kidneys would never be quite the same again.
Poor bastard.
