When the writer opened it, he saw the Doubleday Muse. She looked as sweet and innocent as she had on the night they had spent together. She smiled broadly and held out a copy of It’s a Miracle. “I found this on the remainder table at Barnes and Noble. I know it is not everybody’s thing, but I loved it. In fact, I saw a piece of me in it,” she gushed. “May I have your autograph?”

“Of course,” the writer said. “I appreciate your asking.” But when he opened his book to the first blank page, the old sense of lethargy seized him. He felt the impulse to doodle, to fill it with circles and squares and shadows. Then, he remembered he had become a writer. He removed a number two pencil from behind his ear and scrawled “thanks for the memories.” Then he signed his name with a professional flourish, putting so much body English into it that he nearly threw his back out.

“Thank you,” she purred and kissed him on the lips chastely. She gestured toward his apartment. “May I?”

“Of course,” the writer said and stood aside to let her in.

As soon as she had slipped past him, she removed her raincoat, then her skirt and blouse. As he watched, he thought about his second novel. He was not sure he could rise to the occasion. He felt exhausted. So, he was relieved when she shook out the white silky robe beneath and unfurled her wings.

She handed him her designer clothing. “Here you go. Consider this old outfit a keepsake. I’ve got to get back to my day job.” Then, tucking It’s a Miracle into the flap pocket of her left wing, she crossed to the window, opened it, and stepped onto the fire escape.

As the writer turned to close the door, he saw the Shady-Grove-Press Muse leaning against the casement. She wore a cocky smile and a colorful new outfit. It made him realize this was Good Friday. Easter was just around the corner. He saw her hair was covered by a silk turban white as the wing of an Angel of the Lord. Her voluptuous figure was wreathed in a lycra body suit blue as a dyed egg. It left nothing even to his newly fertile imagination. The nylon book bag slumped at her feet sported a bumper sticker plastered above the flap—black script on a white field. It read “slippery when wet.”

“Hey, Man,” she cooed, “we ain’t forget about the rest of that deal. ‘Cause ten percent a nothin’ for the Kingdom of Heaven is still nothin’. Y’all better be ready to make some reeeeal money this time. God knows you got obligations. And I ain’t talkin’ IRS. Not yet anyways.”

The writer looked her over more carefully this time. She was a complete package all right, not just fancy wrapping as he first imagined. And, after all, hadn’t God sent her first? Maybe he needed to have a little more faith in The Almighty. God knows, he thought, I could use the stimulation now. At his back he heard the flutter of wings as the Angel of the Lord took her perilous flight, straining toward the higher altitudes. But he’d been there, done that. “What the hell,” he thought. Then the author of It’s a Miracle stepped aside to usher in the real answer to his prayers.