“They don’t LOOK like they’re in love,” said Meadow Saffron, flinging flower petals after the trio.
“They’re just pretending,” Sweet Pea assured her. “You can tell.”
Rick turned. “Who said ‘Remember me’?”
“I gave you a card,” Paula reminded him.
“It didn’t sound like you.” He shrugged. “Must have been Dickie. Eh, Dickie?” The baby chortled.
“Nice move pulling out their earplugs,” said Bluebell.
“That’ll be their song forever after,” said Meadow Saffron, folding her arms and nodding.
“What about right after?” Primrose flew up to Unfirom’s eye level. “When are they going to do it?”
The angel winced a bit but his reply was steady enough. “The same day and time as before, only not at the party. And they know about reach other now, and Dickie.”
“Yippee!” Sweet Pea kicked up into the air and hovered on her back. “So he won’t say the wrong thing?”
“He will,” Unfirom said. “But it will be a different wrong thing.”
“And?” demanded Bluebell. “And and And and And?”
“And you will see them in the park many times–over the next seven years always with a stroller. And one day we will be needed for Dickie and his intended.”
“Oh, I do like stories that are continued,” sighed Meadow Saffron, waving at them as the three as they crossed the street.
“They had me worried.” Sweet Pea plummeted to a level where she could pluck blades of grass with her toes without having to sit up. “I thought if Dickie kept laughing, they’d be happy, too.”
“It was that silly magazine,” sighed Bluebell. “I tried to keep them from paying attention to it.”
Primrose swung a violet like a spear. “Ooh, it would be so lots easier if I had a magic wand!”
“What would you do with it?” demanded Meadow Saffron. “Aside from making the guys’ shorts all fall down?”
“Well, once you get the shorts down, there’s all kinds of options.” The phron swung her violet spear horizontally.
“It’s going to rain,” said Sweet Pea, folding her arms behind her head. “Their bottoms would get all wet.”
“You betcha,” said Primrose, through the flower stem between her teeth.
“And it’s going to get dark.” Meadow Saffron tipped not only her head but her whole body back to study the sky. “You wouldn’t be able to see.”
“I can still see now,” said Bluebell. “Look!”
She shot up into the sky, reached and peak, and then dove straight down into a trash cn. Each of the other phronik held up a number of fingers to grade the plummet, but oohed as she rose above the rim, a square orange candy wrapper dropping across her head like a floppy hat.
“Is this high fashion or not?” she demanded.
“Yes,” said the angel.
Bluebell shot out of the can and stopped one inch from his nose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Unfirom nodded at her headwear. “That is high fashion. Or not.”
The phron tipped her hat forward with one thumb. “Did you ever fly?”:
“Of course,” said the angels, his eyebrows up.
Bluebell flashed dazzling teeth. “How? When you’re so heavy?”
“Whoops!” Sweet Pea, still in midair, flipped over onto her stomach. “I smell fries!”
“But it’s too early@!” Primrose exclaimed, as everyone rushed toward the fence in the direction Sweet Pea was looking. “How much time did we spend on those two?”
“Which two?” demanded Meadow Saffron, her head swinging left and right, her nose sniffing for fried food.
“There!” squawked Bluebell. “There they are!”
A woman with red overalls over a white tube top was walking along the sidewalk beyond the fence, munching the last of an order of fries. The phronik leapt and pirouetted along the top of the fence, calling “Drop it! Drop it! Drop it drop it drop it!”
One fragment of fry dropped from her fingers, took a lucky bounce, and landed on the lowest horizontal rail of the fence. The phronik pounced.
“I’ll go watch for other couples,” said Unfirom. He liked, when possible, to avoid watching them eat.
Meadow Saffron, elbowing Sweet Pea away from the potato piece, replied, “Don’t hurry! We’ve got business!”
Sweet Pea was responding with a knee, but spotted an entire fry bouncing through the fence. “Ooooh, I just love a sloppy eater!”
“As usual,” the angel informed them, “I will summon the four of you when you are needed.”
Blubell, clutching an armful of cold potato, fluttered up to him again. “How come you always need to call us all?” She pushed the fried fragment into her mouth and somehow continued, “Why can’t we do it in shifts?”
“I wore a skirt,” said Primrose.
Blubell shook her head, nearly dislodging her orange hat. “No, listen. Two of us could eat, to keep up our strength, while the other two do the job.”
The Angel’s face was impassive, but there was the teeniest hint of strained eternal patience in his voice. “I’ve told you. It takes all four auras.”
Meadow Saffron, keeping her eyes on the woman with the generous bag of fries, still heard this, and replied, “Well, you’re the auricle.”
“I say it’s just auratory,” said Primrose, waggling a finger at the woman, in hopes this would do for a wand.
Sweet Pea jumped over her lying crosswise on the fence, and sang “If there’s something nice to say, say it Aura Lee!”
Unfirom had already found their most recent couple rather trying along these lines. “Each of you has an aura which calls to the romantic in a mortal’s being. Primrose‘s aura is of young love, Meadow Saffron that of love in old age. Sweet Pea is shallow, impulsive love, and yours is of deep devotion.”
Bluebell put a thumb in her mouth. “I knew that.”
“Did you?” inquired the angel.
“I’ve got a feeling you’ve said it before,” the phron informed him. “Your nose twitches when you say things over. But why couldn’t we mix it up? Young Love there could go out with shallow, and do the high school kids, so Old Age and I could do everybody who’s ovwe twenty-three!”
“Hey!” shouted Primrose. “I’d be doing most of the work!”
“No, no dear,” boomed Meadow Saffron. “You don’t want to cross the street! Not really! Come eat in the park! It’s so pretty!”
The woman could not hear her, but did pause. “Yay!” shouted Sweet Pea, when she turned left instead of right.
“See what power we’ve got?” demanded Bluebell, her eyes shifting back and forth between the woman with food and the angel with attitude. “We could probably do it ONE at a time!”
“Frankly, you can’t be trusted to do it four at a time,” the angel informed her. “That’s what I’m doing here.”
“Is that it?” demanded Bluebell, kicking at his nose with both feet and just missing. “I thought you were just being a creepy old toad!”
“Hunger has an effect on your disposition,” Unfirom replied, “I shall leave you to your snack and resume my patrol.”
‘Think you’re so smart.” She glared as he strode away but was able to spot a falling fry and catch it before it hit the grass. Sweet Pea, meanwhile, took a stance at one corner of the container of fries, the better to watch as potato went into the woman’s mouth.
Not long after that, the last of the potatoes were gone, and she had nothing left to do but slide down the greasy sides of the container. “Bye!” she called, waving to her departing hostess. “Thanks for everything!”
Bluebell, meanwhile, had finished eating and had taken Meadow Saffron by one elbow. “Why don’t you and me go out and show something to that sniffy angel?”
Meadow Saffron frowned. “I don’t know. When I showed him my sore toe I stubbed yesterday, he didn’t look very interested.”
“No no.” Bluebell crouched a little and, glancing behind her to make sure no one else was listening and then up, to make sure Meadow Saffron still was, whispered, “I mean show him that the two of us can do one whole couple all by ourselves.”
“Youi mean by auraselves,” said Meadow Saffron. “Do you think we could?”
“It’ll be easy.” Bluebell tried clapping her hands and snapping her fingers at the same time, without much success. “He just doesn’t want us to find out how much we can do without his old bother. Huh! Think we need an angel?”
“Yes.” Meadow Saffron sat down in the grass and began to twiddle her thumbs. “He knows which ones are the items, and will get their whole business wrong.”
“Oh, that.” Bluebell twiddled two thumbs and one big toe. “We can just pick two people and…. There! Them!”
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