Angels Unaware

by Lisa Deangelis

  “Wait a minute. If you think— Why should —I won’t!”

  When the voice of reason came, it was strange to hear it come from Jewel. “Now there’s no need to get yourself in a lather. This would purely be a business agreement, and with your mind being so finely attuned to profit and loss, you should certainly be able to digest that.” She crossed the room and pushed me into a chair. “Now just sit and hear me out. Luca needs an American wife so he can stay here.”

  “And the very last thing that I need,” I came right back at her, “is a husband to keep me here, and an illegal one at that! Besides, why can’t Caroline or Jolene do it? They like him at least.”

  “Well, isn’t that obvious?” Jewel said. “How could we hope to marry them off to rich college boys if they’ve already got a husband at home?”

  “Then marry him yourself.” I started to get up, but she pushed me back.

  “I shall never marry,” she proclaimed, drawing herself up to her full five-foot height. “It’s a matter of principle.”

  I didn’t bother to question the reasoning behind that statement. “Well, what about that little tart, Cathleen? She likes anything that shaves.”

  “She might lift her skirt for anything that shaves,” Jolene spoke up knowledgeably. “But she doesn’t marry it.”

  “Cathleen won’t have me,” Luca said dismally, and from the way he said it, I knew he’d already asked.

  “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it,” Jewel said. “All you got to do is marry him and then wait a while and get a divorce and go on with your lives. You’re both young. A year or two wasted on a marriage of convenience isn’t so bad.”

  “Convenient for whom, I’d like to know.”

  Jewel puckered her lips to consider the situation further. “I suppose, in all fairness, there should be some kind of fee paid.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t accept pay from Darcy,” Luca said.

  “Not her, Luca dear. I meant that you should pay Darcy something for her trouble.”

  Cautiously, I turned to him. “How much would you be willing to pay?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know. Fifty dollars.”

  “Piss on that amount. I wouldn’t even kiss him for fifty dollars.”

  Before he could come back at me, Jewel stepped in. “It is a bit on the low side, Luca, honey.” She turned back to me. “Of course, before we dicker any further, I think we should decide if the marriage is to be consummated.”

  Luca’s cheeks went red. I made a face at her. “If that means will I sleep with him, the answer is no, no, a thousand times no, not for a million dollars.”

  My emphasis did not impress Jewel. “Then how about three hundred dollars? Three hundred dollars for one unconsummated marriage. Do you think you could raise that to pay Darcy if we gave you enough time?”

  Luca nodded miserably.

  “And how about you?” Jewel gestured in my direction. “Since the warm glow of having helped another human being isn’t enough to satisfy your miserly nature, would three hundred dollars do it?”

  “No!” I had just been on the point of considering it, but I knew what miserly meant and I resented being called names. It wasn’t miserly to want to own your own life—not other people’s lives, mind you, but just your own. Everybody owes themselves that much. Marrying Luca would mean I’d have to put off travel and adventure indefinitely, and even though it might also provide me with the money I’d need to get to Kathmandu, it still seemed one hell of a sacrifice.

  “I bet I know what would sweeten the pot,” Jewel said, looking at me shrewdly. “What if I was to pay for your honeymoon and send you both away to the seashore for a whole week?”

  She had my interest now, if not my cooperation.

  “You’ve never seen the ocean,” she reminded me, as if I needed to be reminded. “Luca and you could go up to Wildwood, New Jersey. I’ve heard about it. They got the ocean and a promenade. And you could stay in a hotel and everything. Wouldn’t that be something, Darcy? Staying in a hotel and getting waited on instead of doing the waiting on?”

  “Where are you going to get the money to pay for it?” I wanted to know.

  She looked down her nose at me. “I don’t gotta tell you everything about my personal financial affairs. Never you mind where I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Is it a deal?”

  But there was one thing left for me to find out. “Who’s going to pay for the divorce?”

  “Luca will,” answered his negotiator.

  “All right,” I conceded. “But only on the condition that he starts saving for the divorce just as soon as we’re married.”

  And that was how I came to marry Luca D’Angeli, partly for the money, and partly for the chance to travel and to finally use my cardboard suitcase that I’d gotten for my birthday.

  We stood in front of the justice of the peace. Neither one of us had bothered to wear our good clothes, and Luca promised to love me, and honor me, and all that other manure, and I promised the same. And as we stood there, trying for the justice’s benefit, not to act as if the situation were wholly repugnant, I looked into Luca’s eyes for the first time in months, and I saw something that made me happy even as it terrified me. But the moment passed too quickly for the truth of what we were doing to penetrate, and he was as much a stranger to me on that day as he had been on the first day, peering out from behind his father. You see, I did not recognize him. Still I did not recognize him.

  4.

  Kindle to Love or Wrath

  When the ceremony was over, we got on a train that would take us to Philadelphia and from there to Wildwood. My entire wardrobe, consisting of two pairs of pants without holes in them, and one dress that did not fit me (its rightful owner being Caroline, whose body was different from mine, to say the least) was packed into my suitcase, which I kept on my lap for the whole long ride to New Jersey. I was afraid that someone might steal it, and even at the end of the ride when the conductor offered to take it down the steps for me, I wouldn’t let him because I was afraid he’d scratch it. Luca said I should let it get scratched because that was the mark of an experienced traveler and only someone who had never been anywhere would have unscratched luggage, but I wanted it whole and unmarred just the same.

  We checked into the Flamingo Hotel, and I thought that if Jewel and I had to be in the hospitality profession, I wished we could have had a hotel like the Flamingo. It was all spanking new with three flamingos in front of the wide veranda. And it was within walking distance of the Boardwalk, being only two miles away. The clerk behind the desk had a nice uniform, which got me thinking that maybe Jewel and I should have been wearing uniforms all these years. He asked if we wanted one room or two.

  “One,” said Luca.

  “Two,” said I.

  “Adjoining?” the clerk asked.

  “On different floors,” I answered.

  And so we settled into our respective honeymoon suites, me on the first floor, Luca on the second. It was, after all, the only decent thing for two people who were already planning their divorce to do.

  My first view of the ocean took my breath away. I’d never been to the sea before, and the only bodies of water I had ever seen were the creek that ran not far from the Hospitality Inn, and the black waters of the old quarry. So I just stood leaning against the railing of the wooden promenade and stared and stared out to sea. All that water stretching God knew how far around the world. I sighed real deep, thinking how vast it was, when Luca said something to spoil the mood entirely, which was his way. “You should see the Bay of Naples,” he said, and if we hadn’t been on our honeymoon, I’d have cuffed him then and there. As it was, I just turned away from the view he’d spoiled and started down the boardwalk. He hurried after me and we didn’t talk for some time. But I was too happy at being on a trip to stay mad, and soon we were talking again.

&nbs
p; There are so many games of chance on the promenade in Wildwood that if you spent the whole day counting them, you’d never count them all. And the prizes. Wonderful prizes. Stuffed animals of every shape and size. Cigarettes if you liked to smoke. Goldfish. Beer glasses. And I wanted to win one of everything.

  We played the wheel one time, the one where you put your money on a number and if the arrow stops on it, you win. But I didn’t like that game so much. What control had you over where that wheel stopped? None at all. Now if I’d been able to stop that spinning arrow or at least slow it down to better my chances, it would have been a different story. But I didn’t trust fate that had never been kind to me and so we moved on.

  They had a game that was like basketball, only the rim of the basket was narrower than a real basket and they put it up higher and the basket had more bounce than a real one, all of which made it harder to get the ball in the basket. We watched for a while, but we didn’t see anybody walk away with a prize. Luca tried, but he missed by a mile. He said it wasn’t his game. And so my second chance to win a prize was lost.

  Finally we entered an arcade that had all kinds of games to challenge the mind and the body. There was a game where you rolled a hard ball down a narrow alley to four circular holes. If the ball dropped into the largest circle, it was worth ten points, the next largest twenty points, the next largest, thirty, and the smallest, fifty. At this game, you didn’t win a prize right off. Instead, you called the boy over and he gave you tickets that were worth one point. We accumulated a lot of points that night. From that game, we went to play another where you rolled small rubber balls into holes that made a section of board light up. It was like playing poker except with balls. But this, too, was a game of luck and not skill, and I had no more faith in luck than I did in fate. Then we found a game Luca was good at: shooting at paper ducks and we won a lot of points.

  By the time they were ready to close, we had twenty-three points in all. We surveyed the prizes: a small dismembered foot that Luca took a shine to; punks to keep the mosquitoes away; eyeglasses without lenses in a variety of colors; rubber spiders; oversized cigars; and a soapy solution to blow bubbles.

  We settled upon the eyeglasses without lenses in red for me, and the blow bubble solution for Luca, which I let him get only after he insisted that it was his honeymoon too. We took our prizes out of the arcade, me wearing my eyeglasses and him blowing bubbles down the promenade, just like any other newly married couple out for a summer’s night walk in Wildwood.

  We walked a long way that night, passed kids out own age, but I didn’t see much else we might have had in common with them, passed drunken convention men, prostitutes looking for work, old people resting on pavilion benches, and babies being pushed in buggies. We ate candy and ice cream and didn’t throw up. Maybe it was my eyeglasses, or the ice cream, or the salty air, but whatever it was, I was in high spirits that night, and happier than I’d been in a long time. That is, until a conversation I overheard brought the truth shockingly home and ruined my sham of a honeymoon.

  We had stopped to sit on a bench under the pavilion, in front of two young girls. They had stared unabashedly at Luca as we walked the aisle, seeking an empty seat, with an admiration they troubled not at all to hide. Maybe they thought plain looks and bad hearing went together, but as they sat behind us, giggling and whispering, a few remarks came through clearly.

  “Isn’t he handsome?” one said.

  “Did you see his blue eyes?”

  “And the dimples when he smiled?”

  Hearing them, I smiled too. Obviously, they were talking about Luca, my husband—in name only, but still.

  “—I wonder how he got stuck with her.,”

  “No wonder she wears glasses.”

  “But you can still see her face—”

  Halfway down the promenade, Luca caught up with me.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, breathlessly.

  “Nothing,” I answered, wondering if he’d heard the girls’ snide comments and felt sorry for me. “I just want to go back.”

  On the way back to the hotel, the fog that had been hovering all night thickened so that it was hard to see, and we walked very close together without touching. Glancing toward him, Luca’s profile unnerved me in its perfection, and I wanted to hurt him as badly as I had been hurt. Then it occurred to me that I could simply stop walking. In the fog, he did not notice that I was no longer beside him.

  Soon, he did notice, and his voice was casual at first. “Darcy, are you there?” I stood listening. He called again, more fearful this time. “Darcy, where are you?” Then with bravado, “Come out right now! I don’t want to play games.” And finally, almost appealingly, “Darcy, please come out if you’re there.”

  But I wasn’t there, not really. Not then. Not yet. Here was the true test. Here he was, a stranger in a strange place. At night and in a fog, an elemental test, a test of my own design. Did he need me? Would he be able to find his way back without me? It was a silly way to be thinking, silly and feminine, and I was ashamed of myself. But I did it anyway.

  I waited. Soon he gave up looking for me, and I heard him walk away down the boards. Then I, too, started back. Walking alone, I was a little scared myself, but not of getting lost. I trusted my instincts to guide me and when the time came, I would know whether to turn right or left. I was afraid of something much stranger, a thing as murky as the night around me. A kind of struggle between us that had been there from the first day we’d met. Who was stronger? Who was smarter? Who needed who most? And nonsensically, I decided the outcome would be determined by who would be able to find their way back to the hotel first. If it was me, I would be magnanimous in victory. But if he got there first, it would be clear that he did not need me or want me at all, and I would shut him out of my heart as punishment.

  I went down the hall to my room with a feeling of terrible suspense. The atmosphere of the hotel that I had earlier admired now seemed only dank and sinister, like the gathering of ill omens. I turned the corner in the hallway and there he sat, leaning against my door.

  “What happened to you?” He stood and came to me. “I was afraid you’d gotten lost.”

  “I don’t know,” I said crossly. “I guess I lost you in the fog.” I took out my key and set it in the lock.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  “No. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.” I could have left it at that, but some lingering nastiness was yet unsatisfied. “Why would I even think of letting you stay in my room tonight? It’s not like we were really married.” A bitter taste filled my mouth, as if I’d been chewing tobacco.

  “But we are married, or at least we could be if… A husband has a right to—”

  “Right, piss! You have no rights. You only married me so as not to get deported.”

  I watched his face, waiting for him to argue with me. He seemed to be struggling with what to say next. In the end, neither of us was willing to be at a disadvantage.

  He looked around, disoriented. “Well…why did you marry me?”

  I looked into his face again for something I did not find, and with great perverse pleasure, I answered, “You know very well why. I did it for three hundred dollars, and you had just better start saving up for that divorce like you promised or I’ll get a lawyer myself to notify Italy that I’m returning you.” Then I turned around and walked into my room. But it was Luca who would have the last word. I felt heavy hands on my shoulders turning me around roughly to face him, his face close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek. His eyes filled my vision, a field of blue as big as the sea. But not their usual shade. Hot blue, warmed with something akin to hate.

  “I don’t think I’m getting my money’s worth,” he said and left, slamming the door as he went.

  

  I didn’t see him again until it was time to get the train back and what Luca di
d with the time left to him on our honeymoon is unknown to this day.

  A lot can happen in a couple of years, or almost nothing at all. And during the two years after we had come back from Wildwood, nothing happened that stands out in my mind. We ate, drank, slept, and grew older, with nothing much to make one day different from the next.

  One thing though. I remember being driven half crazy by a key I found one day in the pocket of an old dress I hadn’t worn for years. It was a key like any other, and I tried that key in the front door, the back door, my bedroom door, and even the door of the truck that seldom ran and sat collecting rust out front of the house. It got me to thinking of Leon, the truck’s original owner, and I wondered if he were still alive and what he was doing if he were alive, or really what he was doing if he wasn’t alive for that matter. “There was a door to which I found no key. There was a veil past which I could not see. Some little talk awhile of me and thee there seemed—and then no more of thee and me.” It was in the natural order of things to have a lock and lose the key and quite out of the order of things to find the key and lose the lock. That was just like with Luca and me. By the time I found I loved him, I had nearly lost him for all time.

  Maybe I had known it all along and maybe that was the reason I’d despised him right off. Maybe he had known it, too, and dreading it, had reconciled himself, nevertheless. That would be like him, always facing up to things no matter how terrible. And how terrible the prospect of marrying me must have been. How he must have shuddered to think of it, for surely, I was not what he’d hoped for in his schoolboy dreams.

  Pretty people should marry other pretty people. It’s better for everybody that way, and Luca should have married Caroline, or someone else as pretty as himself. Still, I was shortchanging him. For all his beauty, his aristocratic nose, clear blue eyes, and perfectly aligned teeth, Luca was not a Caroline. There was more to him than that.