Angels All Over Town

by Luanne Rice

  “The rooms are on air shafts,” Jason told me.

  “I don’t care,” I said. I adored natural light, had never stayed in a room facing an air shaft in my life. The one time a desk clerk had put me in a room facing an air shaft, I had found another hotel.

  There was one bellman assigned to carry both my and Jason’s bags. He opened the door to my room first. The space was a cubbyhole with dim, brassy light fixtures and greenish reproductions of Frans Hals portraits. Not even Rembrandt. The air shaft was hidden by a heavy brown-and-orange floral curtain. I sat in the room’s single chair (straight-backed), forgot to tip the bellman, and was treated to a guttural Flemish insult. He slammed the door and I could hear him burping at Jason in the hall. From a room across the air shaft I could hear a telephone ringing. I knew Chance Schutz, and I knew that he would never knowingly book us into such a terrible place. If I had felt one bit less miserable, I would have raised a stink and gotten us out of there. Instead I stumbled to the bed, lay on top of the mustard-colored spread, and fell asleep.

  I have never believed that one needs to be worthy of love. But during those first days in Europe, I felt that way about Sam. Sam Chamberlain, a straightforward oceanographer, son of upstanding geologists, involved with a scheming harpie like me. Sam wasn’t offering any resistance. I was unused to simplicity, to love without guile. With Sam I knew the simple joys. The sea, the shore, the sand, the waves, sandpipers, tidal pools, clean salt air, lovemaking in the turret room. With Sam I had not even considered bargaining power.

  But what did I know of him, after all? Could you judge a man by the way he acted on vacation? When he was over a hundred miles from his permanent residence? Perhaps he lived in squalor, over a seedy nightclub that he would visit whenever he was free for the evening. Perhaps he was a compulsive liar; perhaps he was not an oceanographer at all but a pornographer. The words even had the same ring. Perhaps he enticed women like me to fall in love with him, then threw them over for their sisters. In my narcoleptic state I entertained these ideas and worse ones. I lay awake on the mustard-colored spread as long as I could, until the voices rising up the air shaft became as spellbinding as a chanting coven of witches. Their message was “Sleep, sleep.” I resisted, playing out scenarios in which Sam would hurt me, I would hurt Sam, Sam would hurt me, I would hurt Sam. Then Emile Balfour would drift into my mind, his lean face and handsome tuxedo, and I would think of the things I would do to become his new star. Pretend to be his new lover. Become his new lover. Do whatever he told me to do. But for now I would sleep.

  My telephone jangled sometime later. I struggled up from the quicksand depths of sleep to answer it. First I heard the voice of the hotel operator, and then I heard the voice of Margo. Even though she must have realized it was the middle of my night, she gave me no chance to waken.

  “I can’t believe you did it, Una. It reminds me of a whore.”

  “What does?”

  “You with Emile Balfour.”

  It had hit the American papers? I suppose I should have anticipated that and called Sam. “That’s completely false. The whole thing was a publicity setup. How did you get this number, anyway?”

  “I called Chance Schutz. Una, you should try to imagine how Sam feels. He’s sitting downstairs now, talking to Matt about it. We read it in the ‘Celebrity File.’”

  The “Celebrity File”—a highly reliable column in the Westerly Gazette. “Don’t believe it. Sam doesn’t, does he?” I asked, beginning to feel alert and alarmed.

  “There was a picture of you sitting at a cozy little table with his arm around you.”

  “Oh, Margo, we were talking business,” I said, glad they hadn’t used the one where he was kissing me. “Let me talk to Sam.”

  “Good. But I’m going to tell him you called here, okay? I think it would help.”

  I thought about it. It would help get me off the hook, but it would remind me of my father and one of his buddies getting together to cook up an alibi. “No, don’t lie about it. I wouldn’t be calling now, anyway. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Margo said, her voice softer. “But it was quite a shock. Do you swear it isn’t true?”

  “I swear. Now please get Sam.”

  Silence on the line. I sat straighter on the bed and touched my cheek, which was imprinted with the bedspread’s honeycomb design. Voices still sang down the air shaft, and the elevator rumbled through the hotel like approaching thunder. I remembered the lightning storm with Sam and felt a sharpness in my chest.

  “Hi there,” he said.

  “Hi. I hear you saw the paper.”

  “Yeah. Your sister’s pretty upset. She says you’re not the type to fall in love on a different continent every other day.”

  “She’s right. The whole thing was a publicity stunt. I didn’t even know about it until it was halfway over. I should have called you.”

  “You probably should have. Are you having fun over there?”

  I glanced around my ugly room and my eyes filled with tears. Hearing Sam’s voice at the end of a transatlantic cable made me feel sick and lonely. “Oh, sure.”

  “Did you have your audition?”

  “Not yet. We’re going back to Paris when we finish the tour.” Until that moment I hadn’t known that I would want to go through with the audition. I did not like Emile Balfour, but I wanted the part. I still wanted the part.

  “Well, good luck, then. Now that I know he’s not my chief rival.” Sam’s voice sounded stiff and a little tentative. He was having doubts about me. I could hear it through the wire.

  “He’s not. I promise. I miss you—you can’t believe how much.”

  “I miss you too. I sent a letter to your hotel in Nuremberg.”

  “I sent one to Watch Hill. Two, actually. I’ll send the next one to New York.”

  “It must be really late for you. You’d better go to sleep. Sweet dreams.”

  “Sweet dreams.” I hung up the phone and found myself cured of narcolepsy. I began to unpack my bag, thinking about the sound of Sam’s voice, trying to determine what I had heard in it. Distrust? Disappointment? Jealousy? Regret? Or nothing? How could I know what Sam felt about me when I didn’t know what I felt about myself? The call had cured me of narcolepsy, but now I had insomnia.

  Belgium is full of American personnel, both civilian and military, all potential Beyond the Bridge fans. Army, NATO, private industry. Chance had arranged for Jason and me to host a luncheon at the SHAPEHOW Club. (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Homesick Officers’ Wives Club.) We would host others at SHAPE and others at NATO. We were driven southwest from Brussels on the Chaussée de Mons. Jason scribbled in his journal while I stared out the window at the warrens of houses and a ruined castle in the distance. Jason and I had reached a silent accord: we would not intrude on each other’s misery. I heard his pen scratching paper. It symbolized one of the great differences between us: Jason would immortalize his blackest thoughts, while I wanted no record of mine. I kept trying to recall the nuances of my conversation with Sam while at the same time trying to dispel them. Had I heard distrust in his voice, or was it simply a reflection of my own? Am I worthy of such a man, and do I want to be with a man whom I need to feel worthy of? By the time we had driven onto the massive base and stopped in front of the SHAPEHOW Club, a pretty brick building, I felt so confused I was tempted to tell the driver to take another spin around the block.

  “Remember, we’re doing this for our country,” Jason said, touching the back of my hand.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Una, you look smashing in that black, but take a look at your eyes.” He handed me a mirror from his satchel. Peering into it, I saw the violet crescents beneath my eyes. I rubbed them out with a dab of the white stuff Jason carried at all times. Like whiting out a mistake on a college term paper. Poof! I suddenly looked happy and rested, just like Delilah Grant.

  The hall contained long tables covered with pink tablec
loths and centerpieces of hothouse tulips. Someone had strung a huge banner over the stage: WELCOME BECK AND DELILAH!!! Everyone cheered when we entered. A tall woman with short dark hair shook our hands as we ascended to the stage.

  “Well, hiya! I’m Shirley Morris,” she said to us in a deep Texas drawl. Her short hair had been razor-cut—punk style. Lines of gold studs rimmed both her earlobes. I glanced around the room for the buxom, floral-garbed, tightly permed officers’ wives I had expected to see, but the crowd was young and attractive.

  “Charmed,” Jason said. “Now, Una and I thought we’d make a little speech, act out a couple scenes, and show a videotape.”

  We ran through two scenes together: the fight between Beck and Delilah just after Delilah learned that Beck had kissed her patient, and the love scene immediately after Beck helped Delilah escape from prison. The women loved them. They cheered us. They called for an encore, but Jason plugged in the videotape instead.

  That night I read the script, entitled Together Forever. I took a bath, wrapped my wet hair in a threadbare towel, and, wearing John Luddington’s old dress shirt, settled back against the rock-hard foam pillows. The secrets of a hundred hotel guests whined down the air shaft. Arguments, lovemaking, dance music, bathroom sounds. They distracted me for about four minutes, but suddenly the script took over.

  It was about Anya, a widow from New York. She travels to Ponci, a wild island in the Tyrrhenian Sea where people live as though it were the last century. Ponci is the ancestral home of Paul, her late husband; upon arriving, Anya instantly feels that his spirit is somehow present. Fierce wild goats and a horse named Gangster terrorize the inhabitants, most of whom are fishermen and pirates. Anya falls in love with Domingo. He is the pirate chief. At first she waits for him on the hillside, shredding olive leaves and reading Proust, watching for his ship. She adores the black pearls and jeroboams of champagne he brings to her. After a while she sets sail with him, at first observing and then joining in the plundering of yachts. Then, one night, on their way up the hill, Domingo is trampled by Gangster; you get the feeling the horse contains the spirit of Anya’s dead husband. With Domingo dead, Anya takes over his pirate vessel. After Paul, there can be no other man for her.

  When I finished reading the script, I felt like laughing. Together Forever had a bizarre sense of humor: black humor. I was left with the sense that Anya’s dead husband was haunting her, would never let her be free. And yet, in killing Domingo, he had unleashed a bold primitivism in Anya. It was a fabulous, strange, eccentric story. I sat on the mustard-colored spread and imagined becoming Anya. I wanted that part! The events in Paris, at Palace, rushed through my mind, but now they had a different color. Instead of seeming evil and contrived, they began to serve my purpose. Emile wanted to capture the American female, and I was the person to help him do it.

  Next stop: Stuttgart, Germany. Where we would meet the wives of men stationed at the Seventh Corps headquarters. On the plane from Belgium I reread Chance’s briefing notes and felt high on Together Forever. Just to be considered for Anya was a triumph. She was funny, mysterious, and romantic. Delilah’s fans would love her. But how could I expect to win such a part? I felt sure that Emile had promised me the audition only because he owed Chance a favor. The papers had already published that picture of us together; perhaps that was all the publicity he wanted from me. My fans would see it, rush to see the next Balfour film, with me in it or not, and that would be that. I ached to bounce my ideas off Jason, but soap opera etiquette prevented me from flaunting movie possibilities to someone stuck in the cast.

  I tried to write Sam a letter, but nothing came out right. Why couldn’t we go to Nuremberg first, where his letter would be waiting? I wanted to see how he felt before I betrayed myself.

  I turned the pages over and stared out the window.

  “Well, so far it hasn’t been too painful, has it?” Jason asked when he saw that I was unoccupied. “I mean, the lunches haven’t been bad at all, and Shirley Morris was darling. I love it—a punk army wife.”

  “It’s been okay,” I said.

  “This will be the high point of my trip,” he said, leaning across me to look out the plane’s window. “I plan to forget Terry here. Did you know that Stuttgart means ‘stud farm’? Stud garden, literally.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” I glanced at him, amused.

  “Well, be forewarned. I intend to raise hell. Fortunately I’ve visited here before, so I know where to start.”

  “Jason, what would our ladies’ luncheons think if they knew about you?”

  “It would disappoint them beyond all measure.” He kissed the tip of my nose. Sometimes Jason surprised me; just when he seemed to hit the depths, he would pop up in a great mood. Sitting beside me on the plane, he was humming. “I have to be careful with the army guys, though. They are hostile. I used to live in Washington, D.C., and about five hundred marines stormed into our bar and tore us to shreds.”

  “Well, marines. They’re different.”

  Jason shook his head vehemently. “No, it’s the uniform. It gives people a sense of power. They start thinking they can control everyone’s life. I had fifteen stitches.” He patted his hip. “Stab wound. I am lucky to be alive. Army, marines…they’re all the same. It’s better to lay low. Of course half of them have prurient interests themselves, which explains why they go so overboard. I mean, you’ve heard of protesting too much? Well, they doth.”

  I laughed. “Be careful, then. At least we don’t meet this group on the base.”

  “No, in the hotel banquet room. Most likely we shall be spending the rest of this little jaunt in banquet rooms. So I advise you to get loose in your spare time.”

  Jason cheered me up. By the time we arrived, in yet another limo, at our hotel in Bad Cannstatt, a spa just northwest of Stuttgart, I felt less crazy. I watched the scenery with interest: tall black smokestacks ringing the city; billboards advertising Bosch, Daimler-Benz, and Kodak; finally the woods, gardens, vineyards, and orchards to the north. If Stuttgart was an ugly city, Bad Cannstatt, with its mineral springs and neoclassical Kursaal in the Kurpark, was a lovely suburb. We arrived during the midst of the Cannstatt Folk Festival.

  A gala, carnival atmosphere pervaded. Our rooms at the Alfie Haus were neither charming nor disgusting: two double beds, a color TV, and a private bath in a half-timber building designed to look like an American’s idea of a Bavarian ducal hunting schloss. We entered, and Jason immediately started talking to our handsome blond bellhop. They were engaged in a rapt conversation (Jason speaking no German, the bellhop speaking very little English, making do with a smattering of French and much body language). One of the carnival’s brass bands marched below the hotel’s windows. I sat on the edge of one double bed, listening to the raucous music and the receding voices of Jason and the bellhop.

  Leafing through the hotel’s brochure, I learned that masseuses were available at the hotel’s mineral baths. A massage! My neck felt tense and sore from travel and worry. I gathered my bag and a thin white towel and went off to explore the Alfie Haus.

  The Alfie Haus: one standard-issue link in a chain of hotels. Probably American-owned. On my travels promoting Beyond the Bridge, I had stayed in Holland Houses (hotels built to look like windmills); Western Hospitality Inns (motels with an Old West theme: cactus and roadrunner wallpaper, a huge plastic cactus outside the office, tacoburgers in the coffee shop); Galleons (housekeeping cottages whose facades looked like the stern of a brigantine. If you saw these buildings side by side, you would think you were sneaking up on the Spanish Armada). So I did not need directions to find my way through the Alfie Haus. I knew how the patterned red-and-blue carpet would blur to purple in certain badly lighted areas; I knew that the pine-veneer-paneled banquet rooms would flank the hotel dining room (in this case called the Goldene Traube); I knew that the desk clerk would nod at me, then go on watching the festival through the window; I knew that just past the front desk I would find a long corridor th
at would lead me to the indoor pool, the mineral baths, and the masseuse.

  Chapter 14

  Naked and choking on steam, I sit with two other fräuleins in a vat of seltzer water. Nudity has never bothered me; I stare at their breasts with interest. Each has furrowed pink nipples like mine. Years back Lily started something called “Giving the Tit.” Driving down Route 15, she would flash one breast at the oncoming traffic. We never knew whether anyone actually saw it or not, but it exemplified our fascination with breasts. Whenever Margo burped, she would say the word “Brrrrrreast.” Lily never burped.

  The two German women know each other. Each is holding her brown hair up with one hand, and interrupting the other in a frantic conversation about someone named Sigi. They ignore me totally. I close my eyes, letting the hot water effervesce against my clitoris, and think of Sam. Alone with Sam in a bubbling mineral bath, visiting Bad Cannstatt for the cure…my mouth opens as I await his lips, and here they come, kissing mine; together we sink down into the warm water, pressing together, bubbles everywhere. He is Domingo and I am Anya. The thought is so erotic, I nearly come. If the two women were not here, I would touch myself. Instead I climb out and pat my pink body dry with my thin hotel towel.

  The masseuse, a large strawberry blonde named Wanda, greets me. She spreads some plush towels on a silver table that reminds me of the collapsible metal one my family used to use for picnics, and I climb on. Face down, I close my eyes, and let those muscular arms knead me as if I were dough. I am pale enough. I would rise into a loaf of white bread, but my crust would never brown. It would look as if someone had scraped my top layer off. The hands push my muscles. Ouch! I say. That hurts! But it has to hurt a little, Wanda says in good English. You have knots.