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Crowley had discovered with great wonder the first car phone when the invention came to Great Britain in the 1950’s. The Bentley subsequently found itself outfitted with a cutting-edge corded radio phone; it didn’t work as smoothly as landlines, but the occasional static was part of the charm.
Crowley was currently speeding through Picadilly, car phone in hand. He had nowhere urgent to go, but his careful study of the 1960s businessman had revealed that constant hurry and tense phone calls were of the essence. Crowley had therefore started to incorporate these elements into his aesthetic, and had even gone so far as to try and convince his superiors that they should use telecommunication lines instead of sealed parchments. Downstairs hadn’t graced his suggestion with an answer yet, but Crowley was an optimist. He was sure they would come around.
As methods of human conversation go, a phone call is quite versatile. You can say a lot with a phone call. However, line quality and ambient noise on either the caller or the receiver side tend to muddy the clear rivers of communication. For example when Crowley said, over the Picadilly traffic noise and occasional pedestrian scream, “By the way angel, could you do a temptation for me before you leave America? It’s an investment banker named Rupert Everson, he needs a little push to marry his girlfriend - Miss Gelust. Hell thinks she’ll drive him away from all the philanthropy his family has been doing,” what Aziraphale heard some thousand kilometers away was “brway anglm, culdrdo one temptation form bfre leave nwrk vtrmbrrs rupert everson hnds alpshtomry lust…”, which he interpreted as “Dear Aziraphale, could you please perform a Lust Temptation on a Mr. Rupert Everson, to turn him away from family values and philanthropy.” To which Aziraphale answered that, of course, it was no bother at all.
Aziraphale’s assent went through without much interference, a fact that Crowley would later acknowledge as one more example of humanity’s inventions putting Hell to shame.
Aziraphale put the telephone handset down on the receiver. What had just happened was momentous. In the many centuries since the birth of the Arrangement, Crowley had never once asked him to take over one of his Lust temptations. Aziraphale had sometimes wondered if Crowley assumed him to be incompetent in that area, but he had never dared examine why exactly the notion annoyed him so much. Aziraphale had performed his fair share of divine ecstasies in medieval times; they had dropped out of fashion, but surely human nature didn’t change enough for it to matter. Museums were full of artworks evidencing how thin the line between Lust and Divine Revelation was.
Aziraphale was determined to get this mission perfectly right, and he prepared much more thoroughly than he usually did when carrying out Crowley’s work (or even his own). He even went so far as to read some magazines to get au courant of what men of Rupert Everson’s persuasion thought was attractive in matters of the flesh. Last time Aziraphale had checked, it was ankles, but he had a feeling the situation had changed.
Once he had a plan, he made a few changes to his corporation and his wardrobe and went to town.
“When are you coming back to London?” Crowley was trying to sound offhand, but Aziraphale’s trip to the United States was starting to get on his nerves. Crowley had spent more time getting drunk in the bookshop and chatting with the angel in the last two decades than he had in the whole of the previous century, and he was keen to get back to it.
“Soon, dear boy. Did you know that the humans have passenger airplanes now? I’ve decided I’m going to fly back! But not myself, you see, I bought a ticket…”
Crowley rubbed his temples while Aziraphale happily described the concept of commercial flying to him. Crowley was aware of the concept; he still had a folder somewhere with all his ideas for what the experience could be.
“Oh, and I’m so glad you finally let me handle a Lust temptation! You know, I am quite capable, I don’t know why you’ve never…”
The combination of tone and sentence made Crowley dart up in his seat and cut Aziraphale off.
“What do you mean?” he asked, fighting a mounting sense of dread.
“I mean Mr. Everson is not going to be a family man anytime soon. Not to toot my own horn or anything.”
“What? He was supposed to marry the Gelust girl!”
“Who? No, you said to tempt him into Lust! And something against family values I think; the line quality was quite awful.”
Crowley wailed. That was bad. Hastur had been making noises about Crowley needing to do more of the tedious one-on-one damnation work that management favored. The Duke of Hell was going to ask after it for sure; he was the one who’d signed the assignment order.
Crowley stared at the phone receiver. He had to fix this, and quickly. He’d started experimenting with telephone cable travel in 1914 shortly after the first intercontinental line had been laid at the bottom of the Atlantic; if he never saw the inside of a boat again he would consider himself very lucky. Electricity was scratchy but at least it was fast. Well, he thought, here goes nothing.
Crowley stumbled out of Aziraphale’s phone receiver a few seconds later in a tense mood and with a ruined hairdo, knocking Aziraphale over in the process. They both ended up on the ground in a tangle of limbs. Aziraphale was even softer than usual; this realisation came to Crowley as an immediate consequence of his face being caught between a generous pair of knockers and his left hand being enmeshed in a strand of long blond hair. He quickly scampered out of Aziraphale’s space, getting upright and turning away under the guise of smoothing his clothes back to sophisticated perfection. Thankfully, Aziraphale didn’t seem bothered.
“So, you changed your corporation?” Stating the obvious was as good a redirection strategy as any.
“Well yes, it would have been hard to reside in a nun-operated hostel otherwise.”
Crowley looked around at Aziraphale’s room. It was small and sparse, with arched windows that had probably been designed by a fan of the 14th century. Crowley hated them instantly.
”My recent work here has been mostly in female spa—”
“Yeah cool,” Crowley cut Aziraphale off, “but we have to fix the Everson situation. This whole marriage thing was a direct order from Hastur, and he’ll be asking about it soon enough.”
“Oh no, I am so sorry I got you in trouble.” Aziraphale looked so sad. It was worse with the long hair somehow.
“No, that’s on me, I shouldn’t have brought the subject up on a bad phone line. Let’s just. Try to find the guy and figure out a reversal.”
Crowley moved to the door, but Aziraphale cleared his throat deliberately.
“Dear boy, would you mind changing your corporation first? I can’t have a man-shaped being come out of my room.” Did Crowley imagine the quick once over? Maybe the turtleneck was working after all. ”The Sisters will have an aneurysm, and some of them are so frail. I may need to come back to this place in good standing in the future.”
“Sure, whatever.” Crowley snapped his fingers then left the room with Aziraphale in tow.
Two pairs of heels clicked on the stone slabs leading to the street. Crowley’s skirt was scandalously short, but if she had to walk in a blessed convent the least she could do was give the nuns something to think about during service.
“Haven’t you heard? Mr Everson left a week ago! I heard it’s all because of a girl, can you imagine? It’s the talk of the office.”
The receptionist at Rupert Everson’s workplace seemed overjoyed to have new people to tell the story to. Crowley hadn’t even had time to tempt her into spilling the details regarding Everson’s whereabouts.
“He moved to one of those hippie communes upstate! At least that’s what his secretary told me. He didn’t even set up mail redirection. It’s a right mess on the executive floor, let me tell you. Well, it sure is a change from banking.” The receptionist sighed, as if she were contemplating a change in her own life. “Those people don’t even eat meat! The hippies I mean, not the executives. Oh, that girl must have been something.”
Crowley managed not to look at Aziraphale. She was just sitting there, patiently listening to a rambling exposé of various speculations concerning Everson’s life choices. Crowley had never officially asked Aziraphale to do temptations of the flesh; she might be a demon but she wasn’t evil to the point where she would send an angel to do something they were clearly unsuited for. She needn’t have worried, apparently.
Crowley dragged Aziraphale outside as soon as she finally extracted the name of the commune village from the receptionist. “Peace Valley Farms” was only a couple hours drive away; with some luck they would be able to fix this before sundown. There was the matter of transportation; the Bentley didn’t fit through telephone lines, but Crowley spotted a shiny thing down the street that seemed like an adequate replacement.
“Look at that, angel.” Crowley gestured at the flashiest Cadillac on the continent, a spotless convertible in a deep shade of red.
"You don’t intend to steal this, do you?”
“Just borrowing,” Crowley said as she slipped into the driver’s side, tapping pointedly at the plush leather seat next to her after she settled behind the wheel. Aziraphale huffed, but she still climbed in seconds before the engine roared to life, and Crowley flawlessly extracted the massive car out of its tiny New York parking spot.
The road was quiet now that they’d left the metropolis. They were winding around lush woodland hills; the village shouldn’t be too far away. Crowley had unsuccessfully tried to find a radio station playing something other than syrupy love ballads. All these lyrics about good men driven to madness by young ladies were a bit awkward considering the context. She’d fought the impulse to ask Aziraphale what she’d done, exactly. It didn’t matter really. Everyone had their methods. Crowley had done plenty of sinful things for work; she knew it was possible to be professional about it. Maybe she was just a little bit curious about how an angel would manage it, that’s all. She was not going to ask.
“So… What did you do to him?” Crowley asked offhandedly as they rounded into the small dirt road that led to the commune. “Professional interest, ’s all,” she felt compelled to add at Aziraphale’s surprised look.
“Well, the usual I suppose? Can’t be very different from what you’re doing,” Aziraphale mused. This didn’t help Crowley at all, since she had a very vivid mental library of the things she usually did in similar circumstances.
“Oh, and the dress of course.” Aziraphale snapped her fingers and changed her outfit and haircut.
They’d arrived on the property, and a good thing it was too. It allowed Crowley to blame the brutal slam on the brakes on the impending brick wall of the main building.
Aziraphale was wearing the swirly little thing that had been everywhere in magazines, movie screens, and tabloids a few years prior, after Marilyn Monroe had made it famous.
“It’s showing a bit more skin than I prefer, but needs must, right? At least the weather is not too chilly.” Crowley thought no weather on this god-forsaken planet was chilly enough to cool a girl down when faced with Aziraphale’s curves barely contained in light, white, and borderline transparent fabric.
“I read about it in a ladies’ magazine. Some thinkpiece titled ‘10 things to drive him crazy’, and this dress was at the top of the list. Research is key, isn’t it?”
Aziraphale exited the car, leaving Crowley with her head on the wheel, counting backwards from twenty to get over the embarrassment of not being immune to the wiles of a fucking angel.
“Peace Valley Farms” consisted of a sprawling farmyard building flanked by various animal pens and vegetable gardens baking in the afternoon sun. It was full of people of all ages and pets of all species. One of the old women spinning yarn in the main hall brought Crowley and Aziraphale to a particularly lush tomato patch after they enquired where one might find Mr. Rupert Everson. She pointed at a man kneeling in the dirt, tinkering with the watering system. When Aziraphale called his name, he turned and lit up like a Christmas tree. Crowley’s hackles went up, and the fact that the man had the audacity to walk up to Aziraphale and hug her did nothing to change her opinion.
“Good afternoon, dear,” Aziraphale said while awkwardly hugging Everson back.
Everson stayed there for a few seconds more, his head buried in Aziraphale’s curls.
“It’s so good to see you. And who is this?” Everson said, finally letting go and looking at Crowley.
“Oh, that’s my, ah, friend Miss Crowley. We were hoping to have a private chat with you, about this place and your new life.”
“Oh? It’s been so wonderful. No alarm clock, no board meetings, no compound interest, just meaningful work that’s just me, my community, and Mother Earth. It’s so much more rewarding than those charity galas. And free love, of course, is so liberating.”
Crowley did not care one bit for the hopeful look on Everson’s face. He picked two ripe tomatoes and offered one each to Aziraphale and Crowley.
“I don’t suppose I could tempt you to move here with us?”
Oh fuck right off. Crowley fumed silently, crushing the tomato slowly in her hand. She was going to murder the sainted prick; he could go grow vegetables in Gabriel’s arse if he liked. Everson continued yammering about his new life, taking them on a tour of the gardens. Aziraphale unsuccessfully tried to redirect the conversation to his former life several times, subtly dropping hints that he may want to go back to it? But Everson seemed entirely smitten with the place. When one of the other inhabitants crossed their path, Crowley drew Aziraphale behind while Everson and his comrade walked on, discussing the effect of the phases of the moon on fertilization.
“Oh dear, I don’t think we can restore this,” Aziraphale whispered dejectedly. “I suppose I could try a second time?”
“No! No, no, hopeless. Temptations only work when humans want it to happen deep down. This guy is very much going to heaven.” Serves him right, Crowley thought.
“He does sound like money has no hold on him anymore.”
Crowley looked at Everson, all smiles and dirty hands, still rambling about his vegetables. He was definitely not going back to Manhattan and the covetous Miss Gelust. According to Hastur, she was the real deal; ambitious, greedy, and ruthless.
“Wait a minute…”
Crowley was speeding through Picadilly, music blaring through the Bentley’s speakers. The car music player was a fantastic invention, he decided. He’d seen a fancy-looking car with one of those devices in the morning, and of course he’d just had to try it. The contraption he’d manifested was whatever was most recent and most expensive; the cassette was whatever was currently popular with the humans – a band named Queen, it seemed. Crowley was sure Aziraphale would hate it. He couldn’t wait to get the angel to share a car ride with him.
Crowley had even managed to get Hastur to start using the radio for communication, a notable improvement over the old method of summoning him back to Hell every time. Crowley’s work with Miss Gelust, who had found herself in possession of a large fortune after suing her ex-fiance for breach of promise, had placated the Duke of Hell enough to give new technologies a try. No one in Hell understood or appreciated Crowley’s efforts in that realm. The telephone, the radio, cars, airplanes and televisions…no occult being could even begin to fathom the chaos potential of the fun tools that humans kept inventing to make their lives better.
Well. There was one occult being who understood, and Crowley was presently racing to his bookshop with a box of chocolates.