Angels All Over Town

by Luanne Rice

  “So what?” I said. “It’s none of their business.”

  Heather shook her frosted hair. “Una, honey, if only you knew what I know. Nothing in the real estate business is fair.”

  I thought of my father and his favorite saying: “If you give them a chance, people will usually do the right thing.” (All except his daughters’ suitors.) My, these real estate people were a confusing lot.

  “I want this place,” I told Heather. “I’m prepared to make an offer.”

  Lily, who hadn’t found a job and had loads of free time, came to see the apartment one afternoon after my offer had been accepted but before I had met the co-op board.

  “It’s a fantastic place,” she said. She pulled a bottle of champagne from her Hermès bag, an incidental present from Henk. We drank out of the bottle because she had forgotten glasses, and the bubbles kept going up our noses.

  “I want it, but they might not let me in. Actors are undesirable, it seems. We attract the wrong crowds—we’re a pretty noisy bunch.”

  “That’s crazy,” Lily said. She paced off each room and told me what size rugs I should buy.

  “How’s your job search?” I asked.

  She giggled. “At a total standstill. I’m not looking at all anymore. Henk and I are so happy, having dinner together every night. I’m cooking the most wonderful meals—Una, you don’t know how great it is to call the butcher and say, ‘Send me your boned duck breast.’ Or lemon sole from the fish market. Blueberries all year round. If I started working, I wouldn’t have time to cook.”

  I stared at her and tried not to scream. Lily’s voice was coming out of Lily’s body, but the words belonged to someone else, an airhead out of the soaps. I had played Delilah to characters like that before.

  “Henk has a housekeeper,” Lily went on. “She’s been with him since before his divorce, and we’re not going to fire her. But Henk was so tired of sauerbraten and roast chicken—apparently that’s about all she ever made. He loves the things I do.”

  “What about you? Do you love it?”

  Lily glowed. “I adore it. Una, in case you haven’t noticed, Henk is very rich. I am having the time of my life. Instead of working in a museum, I have time to wander through them. A different one every day, if I want. I just stare at the paintings. Yesterday I spent hours in the Frick. When I leave here, I’m going straight to the Metropolitan.

  “And I love Henk. We’re so much in love.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Lily seemed genuinely happy, but why did I mistrust her? She sat on the wood floor and wept, smiling all the while. I held her hand and thought, This is not real. This is not Lily. I hardly recognized her. She was an actress playing Wife.

  “You have to see our place soon,” she said, drying her big eyes. “I know it’s terrible—we’ve been home for a month, and you haven’t even been invited.”

  “That’s okay.” I felt the frown on my face and tried to get rid of it.

  “It’s just that, we didn’t have a real honeymoon, and we’ve needed time together. You understand, don’t you?” She looked worried.

  “Sure I do.”

  “Henk really likes you. He’s so glad you live close by. We’re going to have you over very soon.”

  “I honestly cannot wait.”

  Chapter 5

  The co-op board sent me a letter saying that they held their meetings at seven-thirty P.M. on the third Tuesday of every month, and that they would see me at their next meeting. Heather suggested that I wear “something conservative.” I chose a pair of black pants and a white angora sweater. Pearls at the throat. Gold shrimp earrings, a Christmas present from my parents my last year at Juilliard.

  The board convened in the apartment of Monica and Chip Krane, a spacious two-bedroom filled with brand-new Early American furniture. Monica greeted me and offered coffee. We sat beside each other in identical rockers.

  We smiled at each other. Board members straggled in. A husky man with a tangled mop of red hair seemed to be in charge. He wore a spongy maroon jogging suit over expensive blue running shoes. Carrying his coffee to a wingback chair, he sat down and started scratching his head with the round end of his spoon.

  “The electric heat at my office makes my goddamn head itch,” he said when he saw me staring at him.

  I nodded sympathetically. Monica made introductions. The redhead was Joe Finnegan. He was president of the co-op’s board as well as vice president of a company that manufactured and distributed sports equipment.

  “Una—what kind of a name is Una?” He pronounced it “Youna.”

  “Irish, Mr. Finnegan. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

  I tried a little coy flirtation. Joe Finnegan looked like a man who would warm to an Irish flirt.

  “With a name like Cavan, I’d say you’re a mick, but offhand I’d say even Dublin’s not overflowing with girls called You-na. And call me Joe. We don’t bite, even if we do hold your future in our hands.”

  Everyone laughed, and Joe checked me out in a studied maneuver I was not supposed to miss.

  “Questions from the floor?” Joe asked.

  “Yes, I have one,” Monica said. “We have one concern, Una. We all lead pretty quiet lives here. We—”

  “Speak for yourself, Monica honey,” Joe said.

  Everyone laughed. Monica blushed and continued. “We are not your typical Greenwich Village artsy types, if you know what I mean. We are all businesspeople. We’ve been careful to keep that sort of profile.”

  “I assure you I lead a very normal life,” I said.

  “One man’s ‘normal’…” Joe Finnegan said.

  “I don’t work crazy hours. The show is filmed during the day. I have to be at the studio early, so I go to bed early. I have friends who are actors, but I also have friends who are in business. My sister—” As Lily and her respectable credentials came into mind, I felt I’d been given a solid-gold gift. “—lives on East End Avenue. She’s married to a heart surgeon.”

  One of the board members who had not previously spoken leaned forward. He was of the pin-striped suit contingent. “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Monica said, nodding. “You had surgery, didn’t you, Pete? What’d you have, a bypass?”

  The man nodded.

  “Dr. Voorhees. Dr. Henk Voorhees,” I said.

  The man nodded and settled back in his chair. “Sure, I’ve heard of him. He didn’t do mine, but I believe he consulted. He’s got a great reputation.” He looked all around the room, making eye contact with all the other board members. One by one, I ticked them off by the expressions that crossed their faces.

  The official tally remained to be taken, but I knew already: I would be accepted into the co-op by the silent intervention of my brother-in-law. They sent me into the tidy bedroom where healthy plants in macramé holders hung from hooks in the pressed-tin ceiling and bits of Americana (cast-iron trivets, a brass eagle, a crewel sampler, two color photographs of two different lighthouses at sunset) hung on the walls. The apartment had such a grownup, sedate air to it. I hadn’t known that people of my generation still decorated like that. My friends’ places were comfortably, handsomely furnished, but they were hodgepodge, unfinished. The pairing of an art deco étagère with an empty wire spool from the phone company, of industrial black metal shelving with an antique curly maple dining table, seemed arbitrary and aimless. This was a home. Here I felt safe. I could imagine raising children here. It made me want to take the first taxi to Sloane’s and purchase matching living room, dining room, and bedroom sets.

  “Les jeux sont fait,” Monica called when the vote was over, and I rejoined them.

  “You’re in, Una,” Joe Finnegan said. “Welcome to our madhouse.”

  “Oh, thank you,” I said, beaming. I walked around the room, shaking hands.

  “We’re anything but a madhouse,” Monica said. “That Joe—he’s crazy.”

  Joe crossed the room and put his big arm around my
shoulders. “We’ve got our own little TV star now,” he said. He had sad, liquid brown eyes, just like the eyes of every uncle and parish priest I had ever known. “I’m divorced, you know,” he said.

  “How very sad.” I smiled at him. I knew that he was trying to pick me up, and I didn’t care. I had grown up surrounded by Joe Finnegan types, men who alternated insults with flattery and probably had them confused in their own minds, men who had been told too often by their own mothers, “You have that Irish charm.” The trouble was that they believed it.

  Before I moved in, Chance and Billy Schutz asked if they could come over to see my new place. I finished filming my scenes for the day. The Schutzes picked me up at the studio in their black stretch limousine. I sat between them in the back seat, an alpaca lap robe across our legs.

  “I think this is very exciting,” Billy said in her deep, smoky voice. Her voice reminded me of Jane Valera’s, but Billy is wonderful. She is a talented, devoted potter who spends most of her days on Duane Street, in a dark studio where every surface is caked with clay. She sells her pieces at galleries and shops in New York and around New England. She has upswept auburn hair streaked with gray, the color I hope mine will be when I’m fifteen years older. She wears no makeup on her freckly skin, and she cares nothing about the latest styles.

  Chance is the fashion plate, not Billy. He is a true fop. Whenever he enters a room, heads turn; his expensive citrus scent precedes him, but his appearance is worth the wait. Every article of clothing is custom-made. Billy once told me his underwear is silk, hand-stitched by schoolchildren in Mongolia. He loves gold, good leather, cashmere, and silk. It is a challenge to find the tiny monogram you know exists on each shirt, each jacket, each scarf: like the “Ninas” in a Hirschfeld drawing. His gray wolf eyes look as though they could devour you, but he is capable of true tenderness.

  We stopped in front of my new apartment building. People coming home from work glanced at the car with fake indolence. Chance loved the attention, but Billy was indifferent. Riding to the fifth floor in the small self-service elevator, she practically shimmied with anticipation.

  “I cannot wait to see it!” she said.

  I caught Chance nervously watching the floor numbers click upwards. I could read his mind: PRODUCER AND WIFE PLUNGE TO DEATH IN CREAKY ELEVATOR.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling the keys from my pocket and unlocking the three locks on my apartment door. We stepped inside.

  “Now, this is super, don’t you think, Chance?”

  “Very nice,” Chance said. He walked through the rooms looking skeptical. He and Billy live in a penthouse on Park Avenue; Billy once told me that he rarely ventured south of Fifty-sixth Street, that he cannot bear the squalor of her studio, that he feels unsafe without a doorman, elevator man, and marble lobby.

  “I wish I had some furniture, so I could invite you to sit down,” I said, babbling. “Let’s see, this is the kitchen, of course…” I let loose a crazy giggle. “Here’s the living room—I thought I’d put my couch here, my stereo here…”

  “Wonderful. And it will get the morning light,” Billy said, grinning.

  “What’s this, the fifth floor?” Chance asked, pressing his face to the sooty window, doubtlessly looking for the fire escape. He pulled back, and there was a smudge of black dust on his forehead. It was so incongruous on his pink skin, I nearly laughed. Billy licked her fingers and wiped it off. My doorbell rang.

  “Oh, that must be Rudy,” Billy said. Rudy was their chauffeur. “I asked him to bring something up.”

  I buzzed Rudy in, but before he came up in the elevator there was a knock at the door.

  Joe Finnegan stood in the hallway. “Who’s the brass?” he asked.

  “My producer,” I said coolly.

  “Nice car.”

  “Look, why don’t you come back later, Joe?” I felt as unwilling to introduce Joe to the Schutzes as I would to introduce an unsuitable boyfriend to my father. Just then Rudy stepped out of the elevator carrying one of Billy’s bulky pots.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Joe said. “It’s a fucking birdbath.”

  “Shut up, Joe,” I said, standing aside to let Rudy in, then closing the door in Joe’s face. He stopped it with his foot.

  “Okay, okay, I’m going. I just wanted to invite you up later, to welcome you into the house. For a nightcap.”

  I let him peek around the door. “As you can see, I’m not moved in yet. I’m still living at my other place.”

  “When’re you moving in? Listen, I can get a crew together and get you in here in one morning. I’ll even supply the truck.”

  Closing on the apartment and a heavier-than-usual shooting schedule had kept me too busy to think about movers. “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Guys from the warehouse and my brothers. The kids are in college—slip them a couple of bucks if you feel like it.”

  At the mention of brothers I warmed to him. I couldn’t help it. The idea of a close family appeals to me more than anything.

  “Okay, Joe. I’ll think about it.”

  Joe smiled at me and walked away. I noticed he was wearing a heathery tweed jacket, rare apparel for a New York businessman. Even my father, who had lived in Connecticut, had worn only dark suits.

  Inside, Chance and Billy flanked Billy’s pot like dignitaries at an awards ceremony. Rudy, in his black uniform with gold braid and tasseled epaulets, stood solemnly in the corner.

  “To our dear friend, Una,” Billy said, her blue eyes sparkling with tears. “May you be as happy in your home and your life as we have been in ours.”

  “Oh, thank you,” I said, starting to cry. The idea of Joe’s brothers, so close to him that they would help move in a stranger, and the sight of Chance and Billy, still deeply in love, made me feel sorry for myself. My father was dead, my mother was insulated in a haze of watercolors, one sister lived in another state, the other lived across town and never invited me there. I sat down beside Billy’s pot and wept.

  Chance handed me down a crisp, snowy linen handkerchief. It was starched and folded, solid as a book, perfect and unusable. I took it, then looked up at him. “I can’t use this,” I said.

  “Of course you can’t.” Billy, understanding, handed me a wrinkled blue tissue from her pocket. She crouched beside me, stroking my back with her chapped hands, her fingernails black with clay. “What is it, Una? Do you have the moving-in blues?”

  “That must be it,” I said, snuffling. “I’ve never bought a house before.” That made me think of Monica and Chip’s homey place two floors below, and I started crying again. I hate Early American furniture and could never live with it, but it symbolized things that would last.

  Billy patted my back until I was calm. She hummed a sad tune—“Once Upon a Time.” “Chance, remember when we moved into our first place?”

  “In Darien.” I could see his sharply creased pant leg out of the corner of my blurry eye.

  “Yes, it was a tiny place,” Billy went on. “We closed on it in early April. Upstairs there was one little room where I was planning to set up my studio. It faced north, and like all artists, I wanted a studio that faced north. The day we moved in was beautiful. It was sunny, and new leaves were on the trees. While the men carried in our furniture, all I cared about was setting up my studio. I ran upstairs, and I almost died. Outside the window was a maple tree—I hadn’t even noticed it when we first looked because it had no leaves. Suddenly there was the maple, covered with baby leaves, blocking every bit of light. I cried and cried.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We pruned the tree,” Chance said. His manicured hand stroked his wife’s hair.

  I loved that story. I felt sodden with tears, and I felt as though I could fall asleep with my head on Billy’s lap. Through my closed window the traffic steering downtown on Hudson Street sounded distant, and a jet of steam whistled out of my coiled radiator.

  “Sounds like a good heating system,” Billy said.

  “It do
es,” Chance said, nodding vigorously. “This is quite a place. I think we’d better celebrate. How does dinner at Café des Artistes sound to you two?”

  “Oh, Lord,” Billy said, frowning, looking down at her hands. “I hadn’t planned on cleaning my fingernails tonight.”

  February, because of Valentine’s Day and the Washington’s Birthday sales, is a big time for soap opera actors to make appearances at department stores, malls, and anywhere else the general female population might be inclined to spend money. I tried to reason with Art Panella: if Delilah is supposedly at large in the wilds of Lake Huron, won’t the viewer think it peculiar to find her signing autographs at the Rose Garden Mall in Stamford? Art admonished me, saying I should give him credit for some brains. They know that Una Cavan is not really Delilah Grant. I understood that, but I had something more important on my mind: that night I was invited to Lily and Henk’s apartment for the first time.

  Two long black limousines bearing me, Stuart MacDuff, and my soap opera lover, Jason Mordant (a.k.a. Beck Vandeweghe), along with a camera crew, stopped at the entrance to AmbiMart. A group of mall employees unrolled a red carpet that stretched from the car to the store. Wet snow was falling. We stepped out of the car, and a woman four inches shorter than me held a flowered umbrella over my head; she had to struggle to make sure it covered both of us. It took great willpower for me not to grab the umbrella away from her and hustle both of us inside. The crowd, mainly women of all ages, called “Delilah!” For weeks there had been posters in the stores and thirty-second spots broadcast on radio and local TV stations, promising all patrons of the Rose Garden Mall that Paul, Delilah, and Beck would soon be in their midst.

  A man wearing a green sports jacket and holding an oversized microphone greeted us at the electric doors.

  “Well, hello you folks from Beyond the Bridge!” he said, and the words boomed from loudspeakers the length of the cavernous mall. “On behalf of all of us here at the Rose Garden, as well as all our shoppers, let me, Larry Hicks, welcome you to the largest, the wildest, let me say the best mall in southwestern Connecticut!” The crowd cheered. Larry Hicks took my arm and led me to a wide stage draped in white plastic and decorated with red cardboard cutouts of hearts, cherries, hatchets, and profiles of Cupid and George Washington. He covered his microphone with one hand.