Of course no-one else heard the angel laugh. Angels have a way of disguising themselves amongst the sound of the air conditioner and the inane mumblings of the people especially those I called the ‘gang’, for lack of another word. They hovered somewhere between drinking buddies and people you can’t shake off even though you know they are crap.
Just thinking the word crap twisted my bowels in knots again. The angel placed a hand on my shoulder. Who would guess that poop had a patron saint, well not quite a saint, they wouldn’t waste a martyr who had been flayed alive or disemboweled on poop but a third class angel they could spare, or so it would seem.
The angel had appeared in 3rd Grade when I had struggled with bouts of diarrhea and constipation that the child psychiatrist put down to stress. By my untimely exit from Grad School, when I embarrassed myself and the entire History Faculty because of someone’s ill conceived practical joke that involved clingfilm on the Dean’s toilet, we were truly bonded.