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Time dragged on in the psychiatric department of St. Perpetua’s.  Ethan began to get bored, started missing his wife and son.  He stood staring at the double doors with the laminated sign reading, “Extreme Flight Risk.”  He should get in touch with hospital management, whoever deals with the signs posted around here.  He would cut them a deal if they would take a few days off his sentence.  Don’t think like that.  Even joking about corruption is wrong.

“Ethan’s planning his escape,” said someone sitting in the common area.

“Am not,” he replied.  “This place had made him revert back to his childlike self in some ways.  He got excited for ice cream at snack time.  “I’m starting to count the days, though.”

“Come play cards with us.”

“No, I gave up gambling.”

“Right, you went to—never mind.”

“Do you guys know where the symbols on playing cards come from?” he asked them.

“No, but I’ll bet you’re going to tell us.”

“France.  The different segments of French society.  The spade symbolizes the military, those who fought.  The club symbolizes agriculture, those who worked.  The diamond symbolizes aristocracy, those who had wealth.  And the heart symbolizes the clergy, those who prayed.”

“You must be a school teacher.”

“No, I sell signs.  Isn’t that neat?  Everything has a deeper meaning.”

 “It would be neater if I stopped getting seven-deuce,” said one of the patients.

Raymond McRae sat on a bench outside the store where his wife was shopping for groceries.  He levitated for a moment, rising to about one inch off the bench.  He’d been working on his accuracy.  He wanted to be exact in his spatial positioning before he started flying for real.  Ray figured God was going to come back soon if He’d given him this gift.  He stretched out his arms and started floating again ever so slightly.

“Practicing flying again?” asked Clara, pushing her cart out through the door.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked, standing up.

“Not really.”

“I’ve been thinking.  How would you feel about giving some of our money to charity?”

“We don’t have that much.”

“No, but we don’t have many expenses either.  We don’t really like expensive things.”

“You don’t buy me expensive things.  There’s a difference,” said Clara.  “I’m just kidding.  That sounds good.  How much did you have in mind?”

“About a quarter of what we have, about six hundred thousand.”

“So a lot.”

“I can fly, Clara.  The Lord will be back soon.”

“My husband wants to give our money away because he can fly.  Well, if you say so, Ray.”

The Harris family’s flight to Los Angeles was delayed due to storm clouds on the horizon.  They sat in the terminal flipping through magazines, everyone besides Leonard.  He was not accepting any more money from the rich, he had decided.  We’re going to keep the gold as savings and work for what we get.  The desire for wealth is the root of all kinds of evil.  All kinds.

Leonard wondered how super wealthy people who cared about making money above all else had escaped God’s wrath for so long.  There were people who spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year just to live extravagantly—”

“Baby what are you thinking about?” his wife asked.

“Nothing much.”

“You’re thinking about white folks, aren’t you?  You get the same look on your face whenever you think about white folks.”

“What look is that?”

Nia scrunched up her face and glared at him.

“I do not,” he laughed.

“Let me guess, we’re done taking money but you want more.  If they have millions of dollars than why can’t we, right?”

“You know me too well, woman.”

“If it makes any difference to you, I’m happy, Leonard.  I don’t need a big mansion and a vacation every two months.  I’m good.  We’re doing alright with what we got even without all them gold bars you bought.”

“Okay, Nia, okay.”

It wasn’t so much what they did or didn’t have that bothered Leonard, it was more about the state of society.  Money got people what they wanted, every dollar bill a green ticket to freedom and a better life.  Money was necessary to even get in the door of most places.  He had worked his whole life and if it weren’t for the charity he’d received, he wouldn’t be able to get in anywhere.  The white folks at the top, they didn’t have to worry about getting their foot in the door, they owned the door and the rest of the place too.  They decided who got the tickets and who didn’t.

“Chicken, ham, Gruyére cheese…”

“Gruyére,” Stephen corrected her.

Olivia had decided to make him dinner tonight to reward him for all the hard work he was doing planning the festival.  She remembered he like Chicken Cordon Bleu, a dish she’d never made before.

“Great idea attending the concert,” she said.

“Ya think?  Now I’m going to want to fly at every party we go to.  I guess God is preparing us for heaven.”

“Preparing or testing us.  I believe in God but I don’t have much faith in human beings.  People couldn’t do right before we had divine powers and abilities.  How are we supposed to stay good when we can do literally anything we want?”

“I think the idea is that once we get to heaven, the light of life will be so powerful nobody will be able to choose to do anything bad.  There will be no more right and wrong, only right.”

“I hope so, I hope the—wait, do you smell that?”

Olivia walked around the kitchen sniffing the air, and then opened the oven.  “Okay,” she said, removing a glass tray with four perfectly cooked Chicken Cordon Bleu’s.

“You didn’t cook those, did you?”  Stephen looked back and forth from the counter strewn with ingredients to the tray that just came out of the oven.

After the enormous success of the school party Elliot was excited to get back to practicing improvisation and guitar solos.  He was steadily getting better every day.  His parents could breathe a sigh of relief now that all the droppers were going back to school and Elliot was off the hook for causing a nearly disastrous international incident.  All it had taken was one big miracle to get things running somewhat smoothly again.

The band agreed to stay together and play more gigs in the near future.  They weren’t quite old enough to play bars and restaurants but they could play parks and festivals if they were good enough.

Elliot’s fingers started dancing up and down the fretboard, bending and hammering notes with increasing skill.  Soon he was playing better than he ever had before, shredding with lightning speed, the notes forming a blazing progression that he could feel without having to think at all.  The guitar and him were one at last.