Angels Dance on the Head of a Pin
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“What will you tell the police?” “I told you, I won’t call the police.” “But they’ll want to ask you questions,” she said, not looking at me, but off toward the lake. “Why would they ask me anything?” “The car was parked in front of your hotel and you were the only person staying here.” “But I didn’t do anything.” “But my mother knows that you were with me last night. And they won’t be able to ask me because I'll be gone.” “Me, too–I’ll be in Oak Park. But... but... I don’t get it. You really killed him?” She slowly nodded. “DEAD dead?” She nodded again. “How?” I asked, mostly because I still couldn’t believe what she said and was looking for some way that she might be mistaken. “I hit him, between the eyes... with a champagne bottle... a lot.” “I thought you liked him. H-he was teaching you to drive; helping you with your homework; and he was going to send you to college–in Italy Why?. Who wouldn’t want a father like that? Heck... he was home every night for you.” “He... he... ah... .” Her voice got really soft and almost inaudible. He was going to-rape me... again.” “Oh,” I said, realizing what her reluctance to go home last night was all about. “I did... like him,” she said. “Just... just... not that way. It started very nice, and and and sweet like, every Tuesday and Thursday... when mom was teaching. It was Our thing: doing cool stuff, trying new wines, talking about what it would be like living in Milano. Then, mom was gone all the time, night classes and fieldwork and he started drinking more... Before long, it was... just him... at home... alone... with me... get the picture?” I did–I got it... but I was having trouble wrapping my mind around it. A college professor? Her stepfather? I sat silently recalling what I’d read in Kinsey about RAPE and INCEST, followed by the image of his hairy hand on the shift knob of the ’Vette, sliding up her legs when he shifted into second, skipping third, again into fourth, accompanied by the roar of the engine and the squeal of the tires. “Oh... I see,” I said. Now, now I wanted to kill the guy myself. Picturing him as the slimy grease ball he was, I saw him with the snarl of Eli Wallach, Valera, in The Magnificent Seven. “Are you sure... ? I mean... do you know for sure... that he’s... you know?” “Oh, he’s dead, all right,” she said, her emotions swinging from sobbing disbelief to vitriolic vengeance. “What does a future priest say to that?” Trying to come up with something comforting to say, I ventured, “Well... I think maybe he got what he deserved.” “No... . He... he... didn’t... . He... didn’t,” she sobbed, her mood swinging back to the other extreme. “Then... why didn’t you... ?” “I thought he just liked me... a lot. He was fun. Made me feel…Grown up, you know, like a somebody. At first, like he was taking care of me. I didn’t think he would... would... Too much wine...maybe…I think. I’d wake up and he’d laid down next to me, asleep and he was so gentle. Afterward, I thought maybe he’d…ah …I felt like…he…you know. But then I thought I must’ve dreamed it… k- kind of. But, I ah… I knew better.” I was dumbfounded. Nothing had prepared me for what I was hearing. All I could do was listen. Rape had never been one of my vocabulary words, neither for school nor in my nonacademic research. One heard it on the news from time to time but it was no more significant than larceny or forgery. I found myself getting angrier and angrier. She continued, at a whisper, “That was months ago, you see. And... well... it... it... it happened again, then it seemed like it was never going to end–he had it all planned, at least till I finished college. Then this morning, when I said... I didn’t want to be his... you know... he said, (imitating his voice) ‘Ha! You can’t put the cork back in THAT bottle! Speaking of bottles, he said, “mix us a couple more mimosas.’” “M-mimosas?” I asked–another example of my language deficit. “It’s a breakfast drink–champagne and orange juice. We often had them for breakfast. When I came back, he was... naked... going in to the shower. I handed him his mimosa through the door and he grabbed... my... wrist... pulling me in with him. I still had the champagne bottle in my other hand and I raised it over my head to threaten him...” She demonstrated with the Coke bottle. “The rest of the champagne poured out, all over my head... and he laughed at me again. He said, (again trying to imitate his voice) ‘Ooh, Baby–you’ve got more fire than your mother ever had! Come in here–let’s get dirty.’ He pulled me toward him... and I ... .” She looked up at the empty Coke bottle. “I...ah… right between the eyes. He fell onto the floor on his mimosa glass and I hit him again, and again, and again. I killed... him.” She ended her dimostrazione and lowered the Coke bottle with a sigh that took her shoulders lower than I had ever seen anyone’s slump before. My mind was clouded with my own vengeful thoughts. I wondered what Clarence Darrow would say if he were here. In this case, “Resist not Evil” didn’t seem to fit. Neither did offering the other cheek. Anyone, except maybe Jesus or Clarence Darrow, could see she was justified. “Maybe you SHOULD call the police,” I said. “It sounds to me like he had it coming; it was self-defense, or... an accident. They’d be on your side. You’re the victim!” “No,” she said, “It won’t work. I... I’ve hit guys before. I have to go away. I can’t go back to that school.
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About the Book
The empty Sky Room was an oval Victorian greenhouse restaurant atop Chicago’s about-to-be-destroyed 17-story Majestic Hotel. It was a penthouse covering three-fourths of the roof, which was surrounded by a safety parapet about three feet high, capped with glazed tile the green color of oxidized bronze. I expected that Willie would be waiting to leap out at me from behind one of the abandoned fake plants. All I heard over the storm was the murmuring of pigeons hiding in the chimney from the rain. I stood in the center of the room, figuring Willie must have secreted herself in her trench coat and hat against one of the ebony oak pilasters along the edge of the room. I waited for lightning to give away her position. It did. I saw her outside the glass walls through rivulets of rain, as sheet lightning illuminated the clouds over the lake, silhouetting Willie perched atop the parapet wall on the far corner of the building like some sort of gargoyle. The tails of her trench coat were flapping in the gale rising from Quincy Street. Her rain hat was gone and her drenched black curls were writhing on each side of her face. I ran to the door she’d left open and stepped toward her. She crouched like a swimmer on a starting block, staring at the bottom of the pool stories below... a very dark pool. A flashing traffic light jaundiced her face like some wild Hitchcock effect. She didn’t look at me, but down toward the blinking amber light. I stopped dead in my tracks, not sure what to do. She was perched only a few feet from where I stood. If I startled her, she could fall. I looked for a gentle way to get her attention. The low thunder from the sheet lightning over Lake Michigan growled in our faces. Suddenly a shock wave of light and heat, like a nuclear blast, erupted as lightning struck the boom of the demolition derrick. A gust of hot firey dragon breath belched from the crane. Willie bolted straight up, but she lost her footing on the parapet’s wet glazed cap. As she did, I leapt from the doorway and was able to catch hold of the tail of her trench coat just as her butt hit the edge and slipped over the side. I had the trench coat and the trench coat had Willie, but only by her arms. I was in a tug-of-war where both sides would win, or both sides would lose. Without thought, I collected all the material from her coat that I could and twisted it by ducking and pirouetting behind the parapet. This wrapped the makeshift hawser around my left forearm for a more-secure grip. I peered over the parapet where I could see the top of Willie’s head with her arms raised up above her like count Dracula about to turn into a bat and take flight. “Cross your arms!” I shouted, but there was no response.
About the Author
GlenScott Thomas Copper grew up along the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He holds degrees in Speech, English, and Theater from the University of Wisconsin system, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. He attended about 20 schools through college, including two Catholic grade schools. He is the author of “Angels Dance on the Head of a Pin.” He taught English, Creative Writing, Journalism, Drama, and Philosophy at the Milwaukee High School of the Arts (MHSA), where he advised the student poetry club, yearbook, and newspaper. He co-founded the MPS Charter School: Downtown Institute of Arts and Letters (DIAL). He has worked with special needs students and incarcerated youth. Glen was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in Fifield, Galesville, Coon Valley, and Racine, Wisconsin. He has experience in writing for the stage, as well as directing, acting, singing, dancing, costuming, light design, and set construction. For more than 15 years, he was an award-winning movie theater manager in southeast Wisconsin. He received the top writing prize in an early state-wide 48-Hour Movie Competition. His radio drama was produced on Wisconsin Public Radio. He was named Volunteer of the at the Milwaukee Film Festival. He works as a Match Support Specialist for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee and has been a Big Brother to three young men. He harvested maple sap from trees on the Quaker land preserve and taught himself how to make maple syrup. He makes monthly pastoral visits to prisoners in two state prisons with a Quaker group. He has worked as a professional chef and wedding portrait and commercial photographer. People love his chocolate chip cookies, and his apple/custard pie topped with streusel is often requested. For years, he volunteered as a scuba diver, cleaning Discovery World’s giant fish tanks. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to Japan and was one of three supervisors on the tall ship Denis Sullivan, overseeing 16 high school students sailing on a voyage to the Bahamas and back to Milwaukee. He headed 4 trips with about 20 students each to NYC and the prestigious Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. He has traveled to more than 23 countries and at least 45 US states. He and his wife, Karen, have hosted about 22 international students and teachers and three American teen boys. He is president of the Milwaukee Bike Collective. Glen and Karen live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a smart little dog and a blind black cat. In the Spring, they enjoy hundreds of aconites, snowdrops, tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths in their front yard.