Salzman walked out with Nelson trailing after him. Coop filled in as much of the form as he could, but was stumped by a question on the bottom. When he turned to ask Giselle a question, her chair was empty. She was gone. Bayliss shrugged when he looked at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Come and find me when you’re done and I’ll make sure the form gets processed.”

She left and he filled in a few more lines. Then he wadded up the paper and tossed it in a trash can. He got up and left.

To anyone who didn’t recognize him as a hardworking angel with a malfunctioning Heavenly map of the world, Qaphsiel would have looked more than a little unstable. He wandered up and down North Gower Street staring at what to any mortal going by looked like a small tablecloth. He shook it. Folded and refolded it. Held it over his head. Turned it upside down. And occasionally whacked it against the trunk of one of the palm trees that dotted the street. Nothing seemed to make him or the map happy.

Qaphsiel spotted some shade ahead and stopped to sit on the front steps of an out-of-business deli. He was so close. The map had led him step by step to Gower Street, even flashing the face of the sandy-haired man, before turning to static again. He closed his eyes and pictured a man’s face. Qaphsiel knew he wasn’t far. Somewhere in walking distance, in fact. But Gower stretched dozens of blocks from the hills north of Hollywood down past Beverly. Thousands of people lived along the road. Was this a test from Heaven? Was he supposed to wander up and down Gower, knocking on every door, asking if they knew a blond man who held the fate of the planet in his hands? Qaphsiel shook the map again and rubbed his eyes. Evening was coming on, but the sun reflecting off the map all day had given him a headache. He heard a horn honk the moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them, an LAPD patrol car was idling at the curb. The cop on the passenger side waved Qaphsiel along. The angel got up, raised a hand in a weary greeting, and returned to his walk. The patrol car drove on. Everything felt like a test today.

He was studying a certain spot on the map as he stepped off the curb at Santa Monica Boulevard, right into the path of a car in the process of running a stop sign. It hit Qaphsiel broadside and he flew end over end a good fifty feet down the street. When he crawled to his feet, a little sore but basically intact, he limped back to the corner. The car that had hit him was demolished, the front end a pancake with a deep U shape in the front where it had made contact with the angel.