“Not bad for the first one, Patricia chortled to herself.
“The next person was an older man whose walk suggested that all the joy had gone out of his life. He looked like he would hardly be able to make it home each evening, so weary, so discouraged, so beaten, did he seem. He imitated the woman’s approach, even to looking in both directions so that no one would think him stupid.
“He laughed and laughed and laughed when he took the penny out of the tree. He kept the penny and put a quarter in its place.
“Patricia wasn’t sure that she approved of that. The whole point was the penny. So she found her second–most shiny penny and replaced the quarter. She dropped the quarter in a special place on her dresser. She’d put this extra treasure in the collection in church on Sunday.
“Well, so it went. More and more people found the treasure. It made them all much happier. By the end of the week, Patricia had three dollars and fifty cents to put in the collection on Sunday. She thought about deducting money to pay for the pennies she had lost, but that would have been like totally yucky, wouldn’t it, when you had almost a thousand pennies?
“Patricia the Penny Planter decided that this summer was not so boring after all.
“Then late one day, a prim and proper young man, the most prim and proper young man Patricia had ever seen in her long experience of life, saw the sign at the bus stop and begin to follow the other signs. Patricia, who naturally watched all this from the window in her air-conditioned bedroom, could hardly believe it. There must be hope for all the prim and proper young men in the world. He got all the way to the edge of the sidewalk opposite the tree, looked again in both directions, and then turned away and walked briskly down the street.
“‘Oh, drat!’ Patricia the Penny Planter said, using her strongest language.
“That night, just before she was going to bed and when the lights in her room were off, Patricia the Penny Planter looked out her bedroom window. There in the gloomy darkness, illumined only by a dim streetlamp, was the prim and proper young man, now in a T-shirt and cutoffs. He left the sidewalk and very cautiously approached the tree.
“Patricia could not contain herself. She threw open the window and shouted at the top of her voice—which was pretty loud, to tell the truth—‘Go for it!’
“The young man looked up, startled and frightened. Where was this voice in the dark coming from? He turned and ran away as fast as his expensive running shoes could carry him.
“Patricia closed the window. She was laughing.
“‘I’ll get him yet,’ she told herself. ‘He’s hooked. I’ll get him yet.’
“Now, my friends, the question you will want to ask yourself is how the kingdom of heaven is like Patricia the Penny Planter’s treasure hunt.”
Neenan looked around. Everyone in church seemed to be smiling. As a matter of fact, he was smiling too.
Someone behind him coughed slightly; Neenan glanced behind him. It was Michael, now in a white summer suit and a white linen shirt. The seraph rolled his eyes and nodded, as if to say, God is exactly like Patricia the Penny Planter.
Neenan wasn’t sure that God was really like the little girl who started her own treasure hunt. But it would be nice if He … or She … were that way.
“That might make a great TV film,” he whispered to his wife, who was wearing a thin summer dress, lime in color, that being the current fashion.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, frowning in pretended disapproval at his interrupting the flow of divine worship with such a distraction.
He wondered how many other men in church were entertaining lascivious images of her. Well, according to her theology, it was all right if he did. So he indulged in them.
“Excellent metaphor, Father,” he said with his best smile and a firm shake of the hand after Mass. “Life is a treasure hunt. Could be. But do you think God created us because he was bored?”
The priest grinned back. “More likely because he wanted someone to love.”
Anna Maria beamed approvingly.
I had better watch out, Neenan told himself, or I will end up as devout as she is.
Then he remembered that he had only a few months left in his life. His funeral Mass would probably be said at this church. He hoped the priest, whose name he did not remember, would say the Mass. He should tell Anna Maria.
No, that would be stupid and cruel. There would be plenty of time for that toward the end.
Then he wondered, for the first time, what would be the cause of his death. He’d ask Michael, but he was certain that the seraph wouldn’t tell him. He might claim that he didn’t know. More likely he would simply evade the question. My doctor told me I was in fine shape in August when I had my yearly physical, he reflected. No reason to seek another. Not when it’s in the books that my life is going to be short.
“Why so thoughtful?” Anna Maria asked as he opened the door for her to his rarely used Ferrari.
“I’m thinking about my humiliation on the golf course.”
“Oh, it won’t be too bad.” She laughed. “I might just have mercy on you.”
“I doubt it.”
They both laughed together.
Well, she wouldn’t be able to humiliate him next summer because he wouldn’t be here to play golf next summer.
He shivered at that thought. Fortunately, Anna Maria did not notice.
Back in their house, he pondered again the lesson of Patricia the Penny Planter.
“Go for it!”
He walked across the hallway to her room. The door was open. Inside she was changing from clothes appropriate for church to clothes appropriate for driving to the golf course and eating dinner afterward. She was not quite naked.
She turned in surprise and covered her chest with her arms.
Some idiot angel pounded a drum.
“Sorry if I frightened you,” he said cautiously. “I suppose I should have knocked.”
“The door was open,” she said tentatively.
“It was indeed … . I hope I didn’t hurt you yesterday.”
“Don’t be silly!”
“Come here, Anna Maria.”
She lowered her arms and put her hands behind her back. Then she walked to him, a faint smile on her face, her eyes questioning, her breath coming rapidly.
God in heaven, these early moments of love were so wonderfully exciting!
God in heaven? Well, maybe.
“We have an hour and a half before tee time,” she said shyly.
“I’m doing what the priest said at Mass,” he said, touching her face.
“Going for it, Raymond?”
“An hour and a half ought to do, shouldn’t it?”
“I would think so.” She was trembling now with anticipation.
“Three times in twenty-four hours is not too much, Anna Maria?”
“It’s a record, but I’m not resisting, am I?”
“The open door was an invitation?”
“What do you think?” she replied defiantly.
The caroling angels, who had been silent for a couple of hours, began to sing again. Well they might.
It was just twenty-four hours ago that he had encountered the seraph who claimed his name was Michael.
He wondered as he teased and caressed and fondled his luscious wife whether he was the same man whom Michael had warned about his imminent death.
Later on the golf course, he felt her hands on his hips just as they had been during their lovemaking.
“Are you trying to distract me as I’m about to drive?” he demanded.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I’m trying to correct that deplorable slice of yours. Now stay in that position while you swing.”
“The pro told me to do it the way I’m doing it now.”
“The pro is wrong.”
“I feel terribly awkward in this posture.” He shifted back to his familiar stance.
“You’ll slice every time,” she said firmly, once again moving his hi
ps back into the place where she wanted them.
“OK.” He swung, sure that he would dub the ball and maybe fall on his face.
Instead the small, white object sped down the fairway, straight as an arrow, for two hundred yards.
“That’s better,” she said approvingly, and patted his rear end.
She was wearing a blue-and-white-striped halter and white shorts, both tight and both leaving rather little to the imagination.
“Stop thinking dirty thoughts about me,” she had said with a deep blush as she emerged from the women’s locker room, accompanied by a fanfare of angelic trumpets.
“You’re my wife,” he had insisted.
“But this is on the golf course, not in the bedroom.”
“I can’t help that. You look absolutely delectable.”
“That’s probably a male chauvinist word, but I’ll accept it on the condition you don’t intend it to be.”
“It’s only a chauvinist word if it’s wrong for a man to admire a beautiful woman and tell her so if she’s his wife.”
She had blushed again. “Come on! Let’s play golf.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Besides,” she had said, her back turned to him as she led him out of the clubhouse, “what’s the point of all the workouts I do if I can’t dress like this occasionally?”
“As often as you want, as far as I’m concerned.”
She had sniffed disdainfully.
The angelic fanfare continued as they approached the first tee. Then they had the good taste to stop, perhaps out of respect for the golfer’s need to concentrate.
“Why do I keep thinking I hear music?” she asked him as she teed up her ball for the first shot.
“Someone has the stereo on somewhere.”
On the golf course she had taken him apart with merciless precision.
Her drives were not long, a hundred and fifty yards at the most. But they were dead straight. Her iron shots went to the green as if a magnet were attracting them, and her putts were miraculous. She was a much better golfer than when he had last played her on their honeymoon.
“You are really good,” he had said in unfeigned admiration.
“You mean at golf?” she said with a giggle.
“At the moment that was what I meant, yes.”
Then on the eleventh tee she had corrected his shot.
“I might catch up with you,” he warned her.
“Not a chance.”
He won the hole by a single stroke.
On the twelfth tee he had addressed the ball in his familiar stance.
“Stop that!” she exclaimed, and once more moved his hips into what she deemed was the proper position. Her hands lingered a little longer than necessary.
“Not a bad-looking rear end to tell the truth,” she said, and patted him vigorously. “Now swing the club.”
He hit another monumental drive. He won that hole, a par five, with a birdie as opposed to her bogey.
“I’ll catch you,” he warned again.
“Absolutely not … . What are you waiting for? You go first! Tee up the ball!”
“I need help getting in the right stance.”
She came up from behind him. Instead of arranging his stance, however, she hugged him fiercely and buried her head in his back.
“I love you, Raymond,” she whispered. “Hopelessly. Always have, always will.”
“You’re definitely trying to distract me this time,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“No, I’m not,” she said, releasing him. “I’m just trying to encourage you … . Now you’ve got it right. Swing!”
He did. Once more the ball sailed like a guided missile, right down the center of the fairway.
“Not bad,” she conceded. “Now, every time you tee up for the rest of your life, remember the way I hugged you and you’ll know what to do.”
“I’m not likely to forget.”
It wouldn’t be a long life and he probably wouldn’t play golf again. But if there was an eternity and if he made it into it, he would never forget that hug.
Despite his improved drives, she beat him by nine strokes.
“Next time you’ll have to work on my irons and my putting.”
“We’ll see about that!”
He kissed her in salute of her victory, not intensely enough to embarrass her in sight of the clubhouse, but enough to let her and the busybodies who were watching know that he loved her and that she was his. As well as vice versa.
“Swim?” she said. “Or do you have to get back to your Toshiba.”
“I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”
“I packed one in the car for you.”
“You’ll be wearing a bikini?”
“What else?”
“Then by all means, let’s swim.”
After she had produced his swimsuit, the long-silent choristers, now accompanied by a loud wind ensemble, accompanied her to the entrance of the women’s locker room.
Later, sitting on a chair at poolside, he found that a large black person in swim trunks, without the diamond earring this time, was sitting next to him in a chair that had not been there a few minutes before.
“You swim in your world?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“With your companion?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Does she turn you on like the woman turns me on?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
He thought about telling Michael that Anna Maria heard the music of the choir and orchestra, though from a great distance. Then he decided that it was the seraph’s problem and not his.
“Not too bad for a beginning,” Michael said. “You have a lot more to do.”
“Three times in twenty-four hours … I thought that was pretty good.”
“I don’t have to tell you that even good sex isn’t enough to hold a relationship together.”
“Am I not being kind and sensitive and tender and sweet?”
The seraph grunted.
“And appropriately demanding and challenging?”
“So far,” the angel admitted grudgingly. “We’ll see how you sustain it as the days and weeks go on.”
“I don’t want to lose her.”
“I don’t blame you. But like I say, you don’t have to lose her ever.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Trying to reconcile with Donna and your parents and your other children won’t have any fun in it at all.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You should also think about giving some of your money away.”
“Why?”
“You can’t take it with you.”
“True … . How much?”
The seraph thought about it. “Oh, say five million.”
“No problem … I’m not greedy.”
“Not for money. For power and domination is another matter.”
“Do I dominate her?”
“Anna Maria? No, you never have and probably never will and wouldn’t be able to even if you wanted to … . Didn’t I tell you she was the most interesting woman you’d ever meet?”
“You were right.”
“We’re usually right … and you don’t really know her yet.”
“I’ll await eagerly further progress. I hope I’m not too demanding sexually with her.”
Michael guffawed. “She did leave her bedroom door open after Mass, didn’t she?”
“That’s true.”
“If you ever get too adolescent, she’ll tell you.”
“Who do I give the five million to?”
“Figure that out for yourself … . Now, if I am to judge by the excitement of my singing colleagues, she’s emerging from the locker room. Have fun.”
The angelic consort went over the top in celebration of Anna Maria’s appearance, in a short white robe, open over a blue swimsuit.
Well they might.
“Can I whistle?” he asked her.
She blushed furiously, an attractive color of deep, deep pink, which flowed from her face to her throat to her chest.
“If it makes you feel good.”
So he whistled, softly so only she could hear.
“One-track mind,” she sniffed, shedding the robe and sitting next to him on the chair that Michael had vacated.
The angel trumpets blasted a long fanfare as she put aside her robe. The music echoed the beat of Neenan’s heart.
“When a woman in my house leaves the door to her room open while she undresses, that pushes my mind down that single track.”
“Twelve-year-old,” she sniffed without much conviction.
“You’d be overdressed in that if you were on a Brazilian beach.”
“Remind me then to stay away from Brazil.”
“We’ll have to go there sometime.”
“That might be fun,” she agreed. “Thong bikini.”
“Can I ask you a personal question on this subject?” he said cautiously.
“Depends on the question,” she replied with equal caution.
“It has to do with sex.”
“I assumed that it would.”
“I don’t quite know how to put it … you seem to enjoy lovemaking.”
“I do. Very much.”
“I have the impression that many women do not, at least not with the abandon you do.”
She swallowed and nodded her head. “You’re right. I’m always astonished in those ‘girl talk’ situations—at which we tend to act like twelve-year-olds too—how many women don’t like sex at all. Those of us who do usually keep our mouths shut, lest the others accuse us of betraying the womanly cause.”
“Why don’t they like sex?”
She produced a tube of suntan cream and began to coat him with it, in a brisk, businesslike fashion.
“The way they were raised. Bitter mothers. Insensitive fathers. Brutish husbands. Painful experiences.”
Contract with an Angel Page 8
