Putti Call

By Emily Munro

Hopefully you’ve never tried to stuff a struggling toddler into a dog crate, but let me tell you, it’s even worse when they have wings.

Three cherubic faces peered out over the stone tracery that framed the partial rose window. Fat baby fingers gripping the stone, their movement sent a snowfall of dust motes through the multicolored shafts of afternoon sunlight.

“You’ve got putti alright,” I said, looking up at the grimy, soot-streaked bodies and mangy oil-sheen wings of the creatures as they hissed and spat at us from the heights.

“Not Cherubs?” the building superintendent asked.

“Same difference. Cherub is religious. Putti is the historical term, so we use that. I think they’re attracted to the architecture.”

What I didn’t say is that’s what you got when you converted a former Gothic revival church into apartments. You got two studios with glorious 20-foot-high arched ceilings and a quarter of the original rose window each. Not to mention the pointed arches of the clerestory windows lining the exterior wall and the reclaimed wood stairs leading to the loft. The place probably rented for twice my monthly income. Or would, when I could get rid of the winged squatters.

The super sighed, “Can you get them out today? We’re supposed to be showing this apartment tomorrow.”

I remembered the rental agent crying of a broken heart in the hallway when I walked in and didn’t say that might be a stretch.

“We’ll certainly try,” I said. One of the baby faces, the one with dark hair to the other’s more typical gold, lit with an angelic smile. And then it shat a gray-green smear down the fresh white wall and polished stone. We both winced. That was going to be hell to get out of the mortar.

“You’re not going to hurt them, are you?” The super asked with genuine concern in his voice. He blushed then shrugged sheepishly. “They’re kind of cute.”

That’s how they got you. Played on your instincts to protect things with big eyes and small bodies. Then they shot you with their arrows and you fell hard in love for whoever was closest to you for a few minutes, and then your heart broke into a thousand glass shards when you realized it wasn’t real. Falling in love wasn’t dangerous, but falling out of love hurt like hell.

Kind-of-cute was currently showing their bare-cheeked bottoms at us and slapping their hands against them.

I handed him a card that showed a smiling, angelic putti on the front; clean, golden and nestled in a blooming pink rose bush. “We re-home them to a farm upstate. Not a euphemism. They’re invasive so we can’t release them back outside. The sanctuary has an aviary attached to the French rococo villa of some laundry soap magnate from the 20’s. I recommend a visit in the spring. Or there’s a webcam if you scan that code on the back. We’re raising money for a new tempietto.”

The man smiled, and took the card. That was the problem with putti. They looked like babies, and almost everyone is emotionally vulnerable to babies.

I heard a thumping from the hallway and moved the man towards the front doorway. I’d left my two colleagues, Dominic and Madeliene, to gather supplies and gear-up while I talked to the building’s problem solver.

All three cherubic faces gleamed with mischievous interest as Dominic banged into the room with a large dog crate in either hand, Madeline was close behind with the grocery bags and a third crate.

“Why’s he dressed like that? What are they going to do?” The super looked between Dominic, who was wearing at least two inches of padding and a lacrosse helmet, to Madeline and I in our T-shirts and shorts. Time to get him gone, he was entirely too invested.

Three small golden bows materialized in chubby hands.

“Step outside now, sir.” I manhandled him towards the door. “Madeline and I are both aromantic asexuals and almost completely immune to putti’s darts. But Dominic is pansexual.”

Dominic paused in assembling a big net to smile at the super. “I’m better than catnip to them, and twice as cute.” He waggled his eyebrows mock-suggestively at the super, then sighed dramatically. “Putti just can’t resist trying to make me fall in love.”

The older man laughed, charmed, and then yelped as — ssssswick-thud — a golden tipped arrow was sprouting from the chest of Dominic’s padded suit.

“And that’s your cue to wait in the hall.” I pushed the super out the door and slammed it closed. Just in time as two more darts quivered in the polished wood a split second later. I tried not to think about how much work it would be to buff that out.

Up in the corbels, the carved bits that supported the arches, the putti frowned adorably. At least my art history degree was getting a workout today.

“You brought the goods?” I asked Madeline. She produced a battered golden box with an orange clearance sticker on the front from the grocery bags. “Just the one in the back.”

“It’ll have to do.” I removed the shrink-wrapped plastic and popped the lid. The scent of cheap chocolate filled the room. Three pairs of blue eyes watched me from above.

“Mmmm,” I projected. I walked to the center of the room and selected one with mock deliberate care before popping it into my mouth. I chewed exaggeratedly, and then gagged as it popped into tooth-aching sweet cherry filling.

“Did you have to get the cherry ones?” I muttered, my smile going rigid.

“That’s what they had, boss, you could’ve let me eat them,” Madeline said.

Dominic strolled to the right, getting into position.

“Come over here and we both can suffer,” I held out a chocolate to her in an exaggerated pantomime. She sauntered over and ate it out of my fingers, smiling lasciviously at me. For someone who hated romance, she could sure fake it. Courtesy of trying too hard for too long she’d told me once, after a rescue.

The sound of wings fluttered closer. I kept my eyes fixed on Madeline as she pulled another chocolate from the package. I leaned close, her eyes sparkled with color from the reflections of the stained glass. The net flashed in my peripheral vision. And we all flashed into motion.

Dominic slammed the net to the ground. Madeline bent for the dog crate she’d dropped near her feet. I kneeled on the edge of the net as we worked to keep the wailing, toddler-shaped hellion from lifting back towards the vaulting. My hands grabbed the fore-edges of the wings under the net, holding them together and preventing them from flapping, and keeping my hands away from its teeth.

Teeth that were now pointed and snapping.

As I said before, hopefully you’ve never tried to stuff a struggling toddler into a dog crate. But the wings and the teeth are the real trouble.

“Top. Top.” “Watch the leg.” Feathers flew. Snap.

All three of us were panting and drenched in sweat. We were treated to a dark glare, a veritable Cabanel’s Lucifer from inside the crate. I tossed a chocolate through the bars and the glower went from dark to light like a switch had been pulled. The putti made a happy humming sound as she gobbled the treat.

“Good work team. Two more to go,” I panted.

Madeline groaned. Our remaining quarry had retreated back to flutter around the rondels of the vaulted ceiling. They were Boucher-like in the afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows, all light kissed skin and shimmering hair.

“What should we try next?” Dominic went through the grocery bags. “We’ve got roses or poetry.”

“Poetry,” Madeline said. “That way we can sit for a bit.” I grunted agreement.

The second putto we drew in with some of the Romantics most saccharine verses. Dominic had an excellent voice. Both putti settled into his lap as he let his voice echo off the stone walls, but I flubbed the net on the dark haired one when I made the grab. “Keep reading,” I said as Madaline and I wrestled the second into another carrier.

The dark-haired putto let out a long laugh far above our heads. Something warm and wet sloshed against my back. Our last customer had let out a warm stream of golden piss from the top of a pillar.

“Why you little shit.” Dominic laughed.

“Don’t give him ideas.” Madeline said, suppressing a grin.

“He’s got good aim.” I wiped putto piss from my dripping clothes with a paper towel from the bags. We had come prepared. He laughed and flew higher, shaking his auburn curls at us. “Dang it.” I reached back to the bag and pulled out a bouquet of yellow roses. I tore off the plastic and began roughly twisting the roses into a wreath, thorns and all.

Nobody knew why putti liked to crown people with flowers, but it seemed to be instinctual. Baby blue eyes watched my hands.

“Yeah, got your attention now, don’t I?” His little golden bow came out again and trained on me. “Go ahead. Try it. I’m immune.” He frowned.

I finished twisting the crown in record time. The light was fading, a sunbeam slanted through the gradient of the rose window, setting the white room on fire with reds and oranges and yellows. Damn, this light would almost make the place worth the expense. Whoever snagged the lease would be a lucky, lucky bastard.

The putto tensed. I threw the circlet of roses high in the air. The sunbeam turned him into a picture from a painting, hovering dramatically arm outstretched for a moment. My heart caught in my chest. This was why I did it. Despite all their tricks and troubles, putti in the right environment went from ridiculous to romantic. And despite not wanting to have sex with people, or go on dates, or spend my life with anyone, I am secretly a romantic at heart.

The putto flipped in the air, wings flapped once, twice, and the circlet was placed gently, reverently onto my head. My hands snapped up and I caught him around that little baby belly, right under the arms to hug him to my chest and tickled him, eliciting a startled and delighted laugh that lasted all the way into the crate Dominic held open for me. A perfect catch.

Madeline also had a beatific smile on her face, the hint of a tear at the corner of her eye, but that may have been the last ray coming through the window. The light went below the trees and the room snapped back to reality, and we three stood panting, dirty, and ordinary again.

“Anybody in love?” Dominic asked.

“Not in the slightest.” Madeline groaned, stretched out her back, and bent to pick up the disaster of rose leaves I’d made of the floor.

“Me neither, more’s the pity.” Dominic sighed. It was the roller coaster for him, the highs and lows equally as thrilling.

That final spill of golden light kept dancing before me. Maybe I could take a few more shifts, or perhaps the agent had room for negotiation. Maybe if I brought her some chocolate ice cream, she’d cut me a deal. What on earth? I looked up at the loft, already envisioning my writing desk between the columns. What it would look like with my bed against the wall.

My compatriots stopped talking and looked at me.

“Boss?” Madeline pointed at my arm.

I already knew what I’d find. A golden dart.

“Little fucker got me after all. I’m in love with this apartment.”

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Putti Call” by Emily Munro, and if you enjoyed that then here are some specific instructions to find more:

(1)  Go to her blog, writingaboutwritingaboutwriting.com

(2)  Click on About at the top of the page

(3)  Find the link to “all her published works” at the end of the third paragraph, Who writes this anyway?

(4)  Er… read the stories? Profit? Up to you at this point.

About “Putti Call”, Emily says: I have a degree in History of Art and Visual Culture and worked in museums for my first ten years in NYC. I often write short stories based on random bits that collide in my reading or everyday life. This story was inspired by a visit to the Frick Collection in Manhattan, which recently reinstalled their paintings by François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Frangonard, both featuring lush images of perfectly plump putti, in their original second floor locations where the afternoon light is just breathtaking. That meshed with the unthanked and often dirty work of the city’s many feral cat and pigeon caretakers in my mind and an article about the difficulties of turning abandoned churches into apartments.

Thank you, Emily, for those thoughts and the story. It is, I must say, a joyous relief to be sat at my keyboard after a story and not incandescently furious, or tragically melancholic, about a topic too vast and weighty and beyond my limited scope to influence. Don’t get me wrong—I love a good rant, deeply and sincerely. But there is so much in the world to be angry about, that sometimes it is a blessing to instead just find… happiness and love.

It is, after all, the finest and most potent anti-venom against such an unjust, spiteful, narrow-minded world: to take joy in everything. To love the world freely and with abandon, to give yourself over wholly to delight in the smallest of things: the smell after rain in the middle of a hot summer; the riotous clash of texture and design you often see just one storey up, above a row of shops; a pocketful of cool rocks you’ve found on the beach; the colour of sunlight in the last hour of the day as it pours through the high windows of an old church building, that crepuscalar nectar that pours over everything; even, perhaps, in the most absurdly purple of prose, like “crepuscular nectar”.

Because joy not only comes free, but is a habit that creates itself. The more joy you find, the more joy you find. Funny thing, it works the opposite way too, with hate. And the world really tries to drag us in one of those two directions—by “the world”, I mean “the media-owning billionaire class seeking to divide and distract”, but you knew that—but really, ultimately, it is our choice to make.

Sometimes it’s hard to make it when the world is grinding you down, and spitting in your face, and climbing into the dumpster with a full box of matches and a bottle of spirits, but those are the times I have to remind myself that the choice is most important: those are the times when joy means the most.

Sometimes the best revenge is a life well lived. So for every person out there who wants to drag you down, who thinks they can only be happy through some sort of nonsensical relative ranking where they have to make you miserable first, who chooses hate over joy: fuck ’em. Be happy today. Smile at the daftest things, look up to see what you might see, and delight in a world that is an impossible miracle against the long odds of the universe. Know that in choosing to be happy, in a very real way, you’re winning life in the only way that matters.