“Are you saying that Moses was a dimwit?” I wasn’t being ironic when I asked this, I was aware that I was asking the eternal dimwit of them all. Still…

“No, he just wasn’t concerned with results,” said the angel. “The Lord had hardened Pharaoh’s heart against letting the Jews go. We could have dropped oxen from the sky and he wouldn’t have changed his mind.”

“That would have been something to see,” I said.

“I suggested that it rain fire,” the angel said.

“How’d that go?”

“It was pretty. We only had it rain on the stone palaces and monuments. Burning up all of the Jews would sort of defeated the purpose.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“Well, I’m good with weather,” said the angel.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Then I thought about it a second, about how Raziel nearly wore out our poor room service waiter Jesus delivering orders of ribs the day they were the special.

“You didn’t suggest fire, initially, did you? You just suggested that it rain barbecued pork, didn’t you?”

“That guy doesn’t look anything like Moses,” the angel said.

That day, thrashing in the sea, trying to swim to catch the merchant ship that plowed through the water under full sail, I first saw that Raziel was, as he claimed, “good with weather.” Joshua was leaning over the aftrail of the ship, shouting alternately to me, then to Titus. It was pretty obvious that even under the light wind that day, I would never catch the ship, and when I looked in the direction of shore I could see nothing but water. Strange, the things you think of at times like that. What I thought first was “What an incredibly stupid way to die.” Next I thought, “Joshua will never make it without me.” And with that, I began to pray, not for my own salvation but for Joshua. I prayed for the Lord to keep him safe, then I prayed for Maggie’s safety and happiness. Then, as I shrugged off my shirt and fell into a slow crawl in the direction of the shoreline, which I knew I would never see, the wind stopped. Just stopped. The sea flattened and the only sound I could hear was the frightened cries of the crew of Titus’s ship, which had stopped in the water as if it had dropped anchor.

“Biff, this way!” Joshua called.

I turned in the water to see my friend waving to me from the stern of the becalmed ship. Beside him, Titus cowered like a frightened child. On the mast above them sat a winged figure, who after I swam to the ship and was hoisted out by a very frightened bunch of sailors, I recognized as the angel Raziel. Unlike the times when we had seen him before, he wore robes as black as pitch, and the feathers in his wings shone the blue-black of the sea under moonlight. As I joined Joshua on the raised poop deck at the stern of the ship, the angel took wing and gently landed on the deck beside us. Titus was shielding his head with his arms, as if to ward off an attacker, and he looked as if he were trying to dissolve between the deck boards.

“You,” Raziel said to the Phoenician, and Titus looked up between his arms. “No harm is to come to these two.”

Titus nodded, tried to say something, then gave up when his voice broke under the weight of his fear. I was a little frightened myself. Decked out in black, the angel was a fearsome sight, even if he was on our side. Joshua, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease.

“Thank you,” Josh said to the angel. “He’s a cur, but he’s my best friend.”

“I’m good with weather,” the angel said. And as if that explained everything, he flapped his massive black wings and lifted off the deck. The sea was dead calm until the angel was out of sight over the horizon, then the breeze picked up, the sails filled, and waves began to lap at the bow. Titus ventured a peek from his cowed position, then stood up slowly and took one of the steering oars under his arm.

“I’m going to need a new shirt,” I said.

“You can have mine,” Titus said.

“We should sail closer along the coast, don’t you think?” I said.

“On the way, good master,” Titus said. “On the way.”

“Your mother eats the fungus from the feet of lepers,” I said.

“I’ve been meaning to speak to her about that,” Titus said.

“So we understand each other,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Titus said.

“Crap,” Joshua said. “I forgot to ask the angel about knowing women again.”

For the rest of the journey Titus was much more agreeable, and strangely enough, we didn’t have to man any of the huge oars when we pulled into port, nor did we have to help unload or load any cargo. The crew avoided us altogether, and tended the pigs for us without our even asking. My fear of sailing subsided after a day, and as the steady breeze carried us north, Joshua and I would watch the dolphins that came to ride the ship’s bow wave, or lie on the deck at night, breathing in the smell of cedar coming off the ship’s timbers, listening to the creaking of rope and rigging, and trying to imagine aloud what it would be like when we found Balthasar. If it hadn’t been for Joshua’s constant badgering about what sex was like, it would have been a pleasant journey indeed.

“Fornication isn’t the only sin, Josh,” I tried to explain. “I’m happy to help out, but are you going to have me steal so I can explain it to you? Will you have me kill someone next so you can understand it?”

“No, the difference is that I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you again. You got your loins, and she’s got her loins. And even though you call them both loins, they’re different—”

“I understand the mechanics of it. What I don’t understand is the feeling of it.”

“Well, it feels good, I told you that.”

“But that doesn’t seem right. Why would the Lord make sin feel good, then condemn man for it?”

“Look, why don’t you try it?” I said. “It would be cheaper that way. Or better yet, get married, then it wouldn’t even be sin.”

“Then it wouldn’t be the same, would it?” Josh asked.

“How would I know, I’ve never been married.”

“Is it always the same for you?”

“Well, in some ways, yes.”

“In what ways?”

“Well, so far, it seems to be moist.”

“Moist?”

“Yeah, but I can’t say it’s always that way, just in my experience. Maybe we should ask a harlot?”

“Better yet,” Joshua said, looking around, “I’ll ask Titus. He’s older, and he looks as if he’s sinned a lot.”

“Yeah, well, if you count throwing Jews in the sea, I’d say he’s an expert, but that doesn’t mean—”

Joshua had run to the stern of the ship, up a ladder to the raised poop deck, and to a small, open-sided tent that acted as the captain’s quarters. Under the tent Titus reclined on a pile of rugs, drinking from a wineskin, which I saw him hand to Joshua.

By the time I caught up with him Titus was saying, “So you want to know about fucking? Well, son, you have come to the right place. I’ve fucked a thousand women, half again as many boys, some sheep, pigs, a few chickens, and the odd turtle. What is it you want to know?”

“Stand away from him, Josh,” I said, taking the wineskin and handing it back to Titus as I pushed Joshua back. “The wrath of God could hit him at any moment. Jeez, a turtle, that’s got to be an abomination.” Titus flinched when I mentioned the wrath of God, as if the angel might return to perch on his mast any second.

Joshua stood his ground. “Right now let’s just stick with the women part of it, if that’s all right.” Joshua patted Titus’s arm to reassure him. I knew how that touch felt: Titus would feel the fear run out of him like water.

“I’ve fucked every kind of woman there is. I’ve fucked Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Ethiopians, and women from places that haven’t even been named yet. I’ve fucked fat ones, skinny ones, women with no legs, women with—”

“Are you married?” Joshua interrupted before the sailor started into how he had fucked them in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse…