FRANK AND THE FINAL NOTICE

“For God’s sake, let me be somebody else for a change!”

He fell to his knees, sobbing.

Suddenly from the sky a woman dressed in white swung down on a golden rope and landed in front of him. ZIP! went the rope back up into the sky.

Frank gaped.

She had flowing brown hair and her gown and wings gleamed, making it difficult to see her face. The angel folded her arms and looked solemn and disapproving. She tipped her head back to speak but at the last moment she sneezed. Frank threw his arms over his face and cried with fright.

He looked at her through spread fingers.

“’Scuse me,” she said. She sniffed. She shook the arms of her robe and composed herself.

Frank looked around. He looked back at her. “Um…” he said softly. “God bl- – I mean, um, Gesundheit.”

“Thanks,” she said brightly. “Could you stand up for a just second?”

Frank’s face colored. He stood up and brushed himself down. She moved toward him. He stepped back. Impatiently she reached forward and snatched his tie. He flinched.

The angel gently pulled the tie out of Frank’s shirt pocket, where the tail had gotten stuck. She stepped back.

Frank looked up sheepishly and relaxed. “Heh,” he said. “Um...”

“You’re welcome,” she said. She reached inside her gown, pulled out a notebook, and started flipping through it.

If this was a Heavenly angel, Frank decided, she was a Heavenly angel who was originally from either Massachusetts or Rhode Island. An accent was apparent even though she had barely spoken. She turned the pages of the notebook impatiently, her hand on her chin in thought. She looked Frank up and down. “Aye yi yi,” she said, shaking her head.

Frank readjusted his tie. He rubbed his pant leg, and as he looked down he saw the Final Notice still in his hand. “Oh,” he said. “Look, I didn’t – ” She looked up at him. She saw the paper in his hand, and immediately snatched it away.

She glanced at it with mild interest, then dropped it on the pavement.

“Somebody else, huh?” she said derisively, closing her notebook. “Okay. You want it, you got it.” She snapped her fingers.

“I – well – that is – AK-GAAAHH!” Frank screamed. There was a bright flash and he crumpled to the ground.

His soul began to twist, its base turning slowly one way, the peak of in spinning like a top in the other – and as he wound tighter and tighter, all was confusion and a grinding of great gears.

Frank’s body sat in a lotus position on the lawn, a silly smile on its face. His mind was gone. It had gone to the body of another. Likewise the mind of another was now in Frank. The first problem was, as the angel soon discovered, she had no idea who this new mind was. That in itself was not an uncommon problem – it was a big notebook, and many angels lost their place – only this really wasn’t her lucky day because this new mind was apparently that of an insane person. She flipped through her notebook, pacing.

Jones… Josephson… Jurgen…

“What’s… your… name?” she said, spacing her words. Frank smiled, then began to tell her about no-load mutual funds, gave a short history of lay investiture in the Holy Roman Empire, and finally listed the names of every album by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

The angel growled. “What is your NAME?” she shouted.

“Listen to this,” he chirped, and with his hands he directed an invisible big band. “Tommy Dorsey taught me that.”

“Aw, nuts!” she said, and threw down her notebook.

“Yep, time for Carnation Instant Breakfast Drink,” he agreed.

She stamped her foot. Cars were slowing as they passed. There were some kids on the sidewalk now, staring at her. They laughed and pointed.

She stared back out of the corner of her eye, and then suddenly jumped and ran after them. “Shoo! Shoo!” she cried.

A grey minivan drove up and parked in front of Frank’s house. A group of Frank’s relatives got out and gathered on the lawn, watching the angel as she sprinted after the giggling children, pulling her gown up as she ran. She lurched in front of Frank’s relatives and stopped. She swallowed hard.

She adjusted her halo and cleared her throat. Normally angels were not required to explain the irony inherent in mind-transplantation, because

(A) The confused mind-transplantee would realize they were surrounded by strangers and would amusingly pretend that everything was all right, saying “Oh hello everyone, nice to see you… uh… Michael, wasn’t it?” and so on.

And (B), pop culture, specifically an early Jodie Foster movie, had presumably prepared everyone for this eventuality.

And (C), normally at this point the angel would be watching from a safe distance.

Her subject was a vegetable, her audience apparently hadn’t seen that movie and her distance was less than safe.

She thought fast.

“Um,” she began, gesturing confidently.

The family members looked over her shoulder. Then they started to run. The angel turned to look. Frank was in the neighbor’s yard, disappearing head-first into a trash barrel.

“Frank? Are you all right?” his family members cried as they tried to extricate him from the garbage. The angel saw her opportunity and grabbed it, backing slowly away from them and then hiding behind a tree.

She dove behind a hedgerow and crawled along the ground until she was in the neighbor’s yard. Then she slipped away unnoticed. For the next eight years the angel tried to find Frank’s missing mind, to no avail.