Re: [The piano bar: Misha & Lucifer.]
The boy, he'd trusted real entire once, but that had started fading back when Nilus had come. True, he'd wanted to leave Heaven something awful, and hence his escape into Hell, then here, but that hadn't been from not trusting. That had been on account of just not liking it up there. It hadn't been for him, and he'd reckoned he'd outsmarted everyone when he'd been allowed to stay earthbound. It was good, they'd said, to learn things 'bout charges 'fore he was full-grown, and then he could take his place with the malakhim.
But, just now, Misha wasn't really paying attention none to the pianist. He even resisted from telling this man sitting 'cross from him, his daddy, all the ways how he was better than the man at the piano. 'Stead, he just quit fussing with his soda glass, and he looked up full at the man sat there, with him. Misha, he hadn't never expected to actually meet his daddy, and he sure hadn't expected this man to turn out to be what had sired him. This man, this angel, whatever it was they were calling each other just then.
"I think 'bout 10 years, but I ain't never verified, and time ain't the same as here." Truth, it had been less than 10 years in time lived, but Misha hadn't never been able to quite put his finger on how many years he'd spent up there. "I was born in a psychiatric hospital in Kentucky. She was there my whole life, and I was with a foster family 'til momma died. She hung herself from the railings while I was visiting," he explained, and he didn't see no point in fibbing 'bout it. He sounded angry some. Young, angry, and he was much too young to keep that from his voice any. "My foster daddy, he got himself arrested and killed in prison come the week after that."