My friend stood in the rain yesterday and was soaked through. His pores opened up and they drank the water, the impure, polluted water dripping from clouds high, high above him. I stood next to him and imagined how he could possibly feel. As for me, the water did not hit me. It did not pass through me. It, quite simply, did not exist, as I do not exist in the human world.

Humans call me angel. I call me Teddy.

I call my friend Ira. When he sloshed around in his boots yesterday and watched as his fingers started to resemble prunes, he said another name, over and over. I did not understand at the time, but now I felt foolish for not seeing the emotion in his eyes. Emotion. In Ira. No wonder I did not think to comprehend.

“Maya. Maya.” It fell into a rhythm as he spun euphorically in the rain. I wondered if he could taste the water, because I watched a line of liquid dribble into the corner of his open mouth. I know he felt the rain, because he put his hands to his cheeks and pulled the taut skin down, his salty, warm tears mixing with the cool, crystalline droplets.

Yes, I would like to feel the rain.

What most fascinated me were his new, human fingernails. Angels don’t have fingernails—why would we need them if we’re unable to feel pain? Unable to afflict it? I had an odd urge to ask Ira to scratch me, but then I remembered I couldn’t make my presence known. I remembered that my friend was lost to me until he died a mortal death. And then, not only would we not speak, but I would no longer be able to watch someone relish such new things, in the way I would relish them, if I decided to—

I do not choose to be human. Ira chose to be human, and now he will die, and leave me alone.

I will have to watch him die.

This realization hit me hard as I watched him and the sunrise awaken. Ira looked afraid as he cast frantic glances about the slowly lightening room. His clothes had long dried, but they were wrinkled. My clothes were impeccable. I could not wrinkle them if I stayed out in the rain for days and days. I wondered if Ira would turn into a human raisin if I left him in the sun.

No. Then he might die. If Ira dies, I will be alone.

Ira’s teeth chattered as he began to realize where he was, and why he was. A grin contorted his face—I had never seen his face this shape, and it startled me. Ira was human. His grins were no longer the reassuring kind we angels perform, but unrestrained, wild circuses, where happiness was ringleader. I wondered if Ira was humanly happy, or happy like an angel turned human.

I hoped, for Ira’s sake, it was the former. For Maya’s sake.

Purpose returned to his mindless enjoyment after three minutes of basking in new sunlight—he’d only ever felt the dying sun, and that was just the night before, in the rain.

“Maya,” Ira repeated, and the word began to feel like an omen to me. Not boding ill, but boding change—I wondered if he’d say my name. I wondered if he remembered me.

“Teddy,” I said aloud, and smiled my reassuring smile. I wished I had a mirror.

He set off to find Maya. I knew where she was. I saw her lying in a bed, with pointed flowers on the table beside it. The lights gave the scene a weird glow, and there was something flickering—a television screen? A show was on, but she wasn’t paying attention—she was sleeping fitfully, her hands unwittingly twitching towards her nostrils. I wanted to ask why she had tubes in her nose, because they could hardly be easy to breathe with, but then I realized I had no one to ask. Not unless I left Ira.

And somehow I had convinced myself that he needed me. I didn’t want to be wrong.

Angels can sometimes lend humans helping hands, can reach out and turn a head towards a sign they might have missed, or rid their minds of a sinful thought that obscures their sight of right. For Ira, I wished for a wind, and it blew open the phone book to Maya Rochester, 555-3246.

“M-Maya?” Ira stuttered in a whisper.

“No,” said a tinny voice on the other end. “Maya’s in the hospital. Who’s—“

Ira slammed the phone down. I tried to pat his shoulder but undershot an inch, and he passed me by.

By the time I wrote, Say: I’m a friend of Maya Rochester. Is she seeing visitors? I knew I was in trouble. So much help was interfering with the human world, and I did not exist in the human world. My help existed, though. My help got Ira a phone call to Maya’s room.

“Yes?” said a small, female voice.

“Maya!” exclaimed Ira excitedly. I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “May I come see you?”

“Who is this?” Her voice was less than a whisper. The omen prickled again in my head, feeling suspiciously like foreboding.

“A friend. My name is Ira. Let me come see you.”

“Ira? Yes… You can come see me.”

Rapture consumed his face as the elevator vibrated up one, two, three floors. I put another calming hand on his shoulder. I knew I was damning myself, that some punishment would come for my meddling, but he was my friend.

I was beginning to suspect I loved Ira when he knocked softly, almost sensually, on Maya’s door.

“Come in,” someone breathed inside. I heard her fine, though I doubted Ira did, so I gave him a little push forward. He stumbled in.

Maya was small, much too small for her hair. It grew helter-skelter out of her scalp, and surrounded her head, completely obscuring her pillow. I remembered Ira mumbling about Maya’s hair before.

“You look like you should be pale,” was the first thing Ira said to little Maya. “But you’re not. You’re…toasted.” His smile was angelic.

“I’m Haitian,” she said with a crooked smile. She didn’t mean to sneer; her face was imperfect, and only one side of her mouth pulled up. I thought I’d never seen anything more lovely. “I’ve dreamed about you.” Her thickly-lashed eyes were wide.

“I’m Ira.”

“I…I know.”

“Why do you look ill?” Ira asked innocently, sitting down gracefully in the lonely metal chair. Maya followed his fluid movements with her eyes.

“I have a disease. I have AIDs.” Maya swallowed. I watched her throat move.

“How did you get AIDs?”

“Needles. I don’t know which one.”

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment, they just looked at each other. Beautiful Ira, still in his wrinkled clothes. Beautiful Maya, with her wide eyes and big hair. They both smiled. Maya blushed.

“I’ve dreamed about you,” she whispered for the second time.

“I’m living for you,” Ira confessed confidently, no blood darkening his cheeks. He did not know humility, shame, or embarrassment.

I mouthed, “I would live for you,” but he did not—could not—see.

“What was the point?” Maya asked, propping her tiny, weak body up on shaking elbows. The tubes strained with the movement, sounding like plastic until they quieted.

Ira asked, “The point?” as he touched a finger to her cheek. She gasped and pulled away, but almost immediately reached up a hand and pressed his entire palm to her face. She breathed in deeply, and sighed.

“Mmm,” she murmured.

“The point of what, Maya?” he asked again softly, now tracing her hairline with his human fingernails.

“Of coming to me. I’m just going to die—and soon. You understand that, don’t you, Ira? Dying?”

Ira laughed. “Of course I understand dying. I am—was—the white light.”

“Ah,” Maya chuckled. “I always wondered what those flashes were.”

“Those were me. Being with you.”

She turned to her side, lip curving. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“You have an angel’s smile.”

Maya fell asleep, and Ira followed soon after. I got greedy after a few hours of just watching and waiting. I whispered things in their ears, and they repeated them back.

“I love you, Teddy,” said Ira without any emotion.

“Go away, Ira. Go to Teddy. He deserves you,” pleaded Maya, face peaceful and unaffected.

I had to leave. I had to. I had to leave.

Before long, however, I heard a voice. It wasn’t a human voice in my head, certainly not an angel’s. I knew I was in trouble for all of my “helping” earlier that day.

“Teddy,” it called. “Teddy, go to Maya.”

“Maya?” I growled, surprising myself with a twisted frown and contracting eyebrows. “Why does Maya need me?”

“Maya needs your white light, Teddy, and your reassuring smile.”

Oh, Ira. Poor Ira. I love you, Ira. Hold on, Ira.

“Maya,” I said softly, hands held out to her. I had wished myself at her bedside, and there I stood. Ira slept on, undisturbed, as he should be. “It’s time to go.”

Maya looked panicked, which was unusual. Normally all the human worries were wiped away by my light, and if not, then by my smile. Neither could placate the disturbed look in her eyes.

“But we hardly had a chance. We had no time. He lived for nothing.”

My smile hardened, and I had to fight to keep it fixed in place. No angel ever frowned, I reminded myself sternly. Ease her passing. Ease her passing. “Ira lived for you. And now he’ll live for the feel of rain, and the use of fingernails, and the sound of the world waking up every day—and being part of that world.” And now he’ll be able to remember me, I thought, but did not say out loud.

For the first time, I handed an unhappy human over to the voice. And, for the first time, the voice stopped.

“You’re sad,” said the voice.

“It’s…painful,” I replied, thinking of Ira’s fast-approaching death, and the lonely wasteland of after.

“You’re more human than you think.” Strangely, I could imagine the voice was smiling.

“What are you?” The voice did not answer my question. I knew better than to ask again. Instead, I asked, “May I bring Ira to you? When he dies? To say…to say goodbye?”

The voice was considering when it said, “I think you might cry.”

“I would love that,” I said happily.

“I know you would.”

It was not long before Ira found himself in the mental ward of Maya’s hospital, muttering under his breath about angels, love, hair, and how he enjoyed riding in elevators. Soon after, he contracted a fast-killing disease. I would be lying if I said I did not wish for a wind to blow the pathogens his way, but I had already damned myself. Anyway, I had discovered that a life confined in small places without color and without Maya was no life at all for Ira, even with the rain.

“Teddy!” Ira called out to me first, and I felt the delicious stirrings of emotion in my chest. Yes, I thought, yes. I had waited so long to hear my name again.

“Ira.” I coupled his name with the requisite reassuring smile.

“Now, don’t give me that,” Ira scolded. “Give me a real grin.”

I showed my teeth, and found that smiling was not difficult at all. I knew the difference was Ira, was always Ira.

“So,” said Ira. “So. Death. This is it.” He stood on his toes, craning his neck to peer over my shoulder. “I’m going to see Maya again.”

I nodded, trying not to hang my head.

“I love Maya.”

“I love you,” I mouthed at him, and though I stood right in front of Ira, he did not see.

“Come, Ira,” said the voice. I grasped Ira’s hand for a moment, squeezed, then let go.

“I almost felt that,” I laughed, then choked on the sound.

“I did feel that,” Ira chuckled in return, gave me a final wink, and turned. The tear that dropped from his eye fell slowly, and though Ira was gone, I was able to pluck it from the air.

I put the tear in my mouth.

Ira had cried. Over me.

My tear mixed with his as it leaked from the corner of my own eye. I didn’t notice. Instead, I was wondering at the taste—salt, and…and something else. Something I knew no human or angel had a name for.

I would spend eternity discovering what it was.