“That’s very kind of you,” Harvey responded in a tone of voice that suggested that Joan and he would be doing Neenan a great favor if they deigned to come to the Graham Room.
“Good. Joan and the children are well?”
“Oh, yes, Joan is publishing a book on Marlowe in which she argues that Shakespeare wrote most of Marlowe’s plays. It is very interesting and will no doubt attract much critical acclaim.”
Neenan wanted to say that his wife had written a script for the Starbridge saga, but that was still a deep, dark secret.
“Good for her.”
“I thought I might mention to you,” Harvey said with a mild yawn, “that I have received a very interesting offer from WorldCorp.”
“Congratulations.”,
So they were going after his executives, were they? They were welcome to the weak links like Bennett Harvey.
“Match it,” Michael said.
“Almost twice my present salary,” Harvey went on in a tone that hinted that the matter was of only minor interest to him.
“You owe him after what you did to him.”
“He’s an incompetent jerk.”
“Even incompetent jerks have rights.”
“Might I ask what you will be doing for them?”
“They intend to launch a vast new cable system in this country. I gather they want me to head it up.”
Neenan knew that unless he sold out to WorldCorp, they wouldn’t have a prayer of launching a cable system.
“It sounds like a great opportunity, Ben. I’m sure you know the risks of working for WorldCorp better than I do. Actually I was planning to offer you the presidency of our DTV effort. It has enormous possibilities as people try to break away from the stranglehold the cable companies have on the market. It seemed to me that it might be the kind of venture you would find exciting.”
“Really?”
“He’s interested all right.”
“I know the man better than you do.”
“Maybe.”
“I should think we could come pretty close to matching their salary offer.”
“That’s very interesting indeed. I shall certainly have to think it over and talk to Joan about it of course. I quite agree the DTV has enormous possibilities, especially if it can escape the charges that the cable companies levy on the regular satellite receivers.”
Neenan had not been about to discuss the interesting conversation in Washington with the FCC on this subject. Instead he cast out a hint.
“That may not be as impossible as it looks.”
“Very, very interesting,” Harvey mused. “You had planned this before I told you of WorldCorp’s offer?”
“Certainly, though their offer will naturally provide a salary target.”
“You are a smooth one all right.”
“I’d just as soon he’d go over to WorldCorp. He’ll not be an asset to them.”
“They assume that he knows more about your operation than he does. Anyway, be sure you give him a fair chance not to mess up his life more than he has. He could be an asset if you treat him wisely.”
“All right! All right!”
Harvey muttered that it was quite exciting and that he would have to think through all his options. They promised to meet at the first intermission of Faust on Wednesday night.
“You owed him a chance to avoid messing up his life.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Besides, you did take his wife from him.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“Irrelevant.”
Later as his car sped west on I-88, Neenan asked Michael, “How many incompetent goofs will I have to salvage?”
“We will not ask you to endanger your enterprise. Your offer to him was a legitimate offer. He would do very well at it, at least in the short term.”
That wasn’t really an answer to Neenan’s question. The seraph was certainly clever at avoiding answers.
“Why should I rehire the drones?”
“Come on, Ray, you know the answer to that. Pure pragmatism. Get out of that foolish suit you got yourself into.”
The car phone rang.
“Ms. Jardine,” Peter said.
“Neenan,” he said, picking up the phone.
“Ms. Vincent Neenan called about the possibility of dinner a week from tonight. They are leaving for California this afternoon. I checked with Ms. Neenan and she said that it fit with her schedule.”
Neenan had never been able to read the implications and the nuances of his administrative assistant’s voice. However, he suspected that she disapproved of both Mss. Neenans and of the flight to California and probably of the plan to fly to Florida on Friday. Not that either of these trips was any of her business.
“Fine,” he replied, “put it in the book.”
Was Amy Jardine another woman he had wronged? Michael said nothing at all so he figured that she wasn’t a prime target for his repentance.
As they drove west, across seemingly endless fields, brown and barren after the harvest, and groves of trees that had lost most of their leaves, the sky, a bright blue when they had left Chicago, turned gray and then black. Rain showers appeared on the horizon, misty gray sheets, and raced to meet their Lincoln.
Neenan picked up the phone and punched in Anna Maria’s number.
“See what I mean about my weather forecaster?”
“He was way ahead of the United States Weather folks,” she said breathlessly. “Excuse me, I was just finishing my workout.”
“Sorry to interrupt.”
“Not at all … . Good day?”
“Unbearably rotten. I’m on my way to DeKalb to try to be nice to Donna.”
“That airplane ride really scared you, didn’t it?”
“You object?”
“Of course not. Have a nice time.”
“Not a chance.”
“Bad attitude,” Michael said.
“Justified … . Don’t worry. I’ll try. I did treat her shabbily.”
“That’s progress.”
“Did you say earlier that your crowd was responsible for Anna Maria?”
“We were involved.”
“That showed excellent taste.”
“You bet it did.”
Seraphs were apparently not tempted to false humility.
The rain became thicker, the clouds seemed only a few feet above the car. The wipers swished rapidly. Neenan turned gloomy; the dark underside of his personality emerged.
Did he want to spend the rest of his life fighting off WorldCorp or Michael Eisner, worrying about the FCC, trying to settle litigation, and taking care of snobs like Ben Harvey? No way. Yet it was these kinds of problems that bedeviled his daily life. What was the point of it all?
He could not just surrender to WorldCorp, could he? He would earn an immense amount of money and could spend the rest of his days relaxing. But he had forgotten that the rest of his days were not many. Besides, he owed it to his employees to protect them from the devastation WorldCorp would work as soon as they took over.
Maybe he had indeed wasted his life. Well, too late to worry about it now.
“No, you can’t quit. NE is your creature and you must protect its life.”
“I thought you were not a mind reader.”
“We read faces pretty well. You must remember that the kingdom for which Patricia the Penny Planter is a metaphor manifests itself in daily life and its problems and decisions. So the Teacher taught and rightly so.”
“The Teacher?”
“The Other’s son, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
The skyscraper buildings of Northern Illinois University broke through the mists. Neenan never felt nostalgic when he returned to De Kalb. It was better than his family and better than the army, but it was not a happy place for him.
There hadn’t been any happy places in his life, had there?
“What am I supposed to say to her?”
“You do
n’t need me to answer that question.”
“Nothing I can say will work.”
“She is a free agent with a free will. Her reaction is her problem. Your problem is to make the offer.”
“I’m not sorry that I’m free of her.”
“You are sorry for your own mistakes, omissions, and insensitivity in the marriage.”
“She won’t be sorry for anything.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, that’s her problem.”
“I suppose so.”
“It was clever of you to send her flowers this morning.”
“I didn’t send her flowers.”
“Yes, you did.”
“You think you have the right to do things like that in my name?”
“Yeah … and on your account too.”
“And I suppose you didn’t bother to send some to Anna Maria.”
“Of course we sent them to her. Better ones. Couple of dozen long-stem yellow roses. She hadn’t received them yet when you called.”
Neenan took out a thin leather notepad from his inside jacket pocket and wrote a couple of words.
“I’ll take care of my wife tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”
Michael merely chuckled.
He offered a final warning when Neenan left the car in front of the artsy little restaurant where Donna had finally agreed to meet him.
“Keep your shanty Irish temper under control.”
“Yes, boss.”
Neenan arrived promptly at twelve. The hostess conducted him to a booth in the corner and gave him a menu. To his horror he discovered that it was a vegetarian restaurant and that, by way of drinks, it served various kinds of herbal ice tea.
Uncharacteristically, Donna was almost on time, only five minutes late.
Michael drifted in with her and joined them at the table.
“Thanks for agreeing to have lunch, Donna.”
“Thank you for the flowers, Ray. They were very nice.”
Michael rolled his eyes.
“You’re looking great, Donna.”
Indeed she looked better than she had for many of the years of their marriage She was trim and svelte, her makeup was skillful, and her face had undergone some reconstruction. Moreover she looked content, happy. She was presentable, even appealing.
“Thank you,” she said again. “I guess it’s because I’m happy.”
“I’m glad you are,” he said sincerely enough.
They chatted about minor things. He asked her about Susan Howatch’s novels. She said they were wonderful and would make a wonderful miniseries.
She ordered a vegetable salad and a bottle of natural water. He ordered pasta with tomato sauce and peppermint ice tea.
Neenan tried to begin his apology.
“I wanted to have lunch with you today,” he said somewhat stiffly, “to apologize to you for all the things I did wrong in the marriage. I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good husband.”
She stiffened. Apparently he had touched the wrong key. Damn, what else was I supposed to say?
“You could spend all your time from now to your deathbed apologizing, and you wouldn’t get beyond the first year,” she said calmly. “You were a terrible husband.”
“I guess I was,” he said humbly.
Michael nodded enthusiastic approval.
Then her lips tightened and her brown eyes turned hard.
“Well, if you think I’m going to forgive you and say that we’re friends again, you’re wrong. I hate you. If I never see you again, it will be too soon.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“You’re responsible for poor Lenny being a faggot. You’re responsible for Jenny wasting her life as an actress when she has no talent. You’re responsible for that idiot Vincent thinking that he can be a businessman just like you. But you always favored him, though he was the dumbest of the children.”
Neenan recoiled from her wrath.
“I suppose we both made mistakes,” he said trying again. “I merely want to say I’m sorry for mine.”
“I didn’t make any mistakes, except when I married you. That was my only mistake. My friends told me that you were bad news and I didn’t believe them. If I had, I wouldn’t have wasted twenty years of my life.”
He glanced helplessly at Michael. The seraph merely shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m glad that you’re happy now,” he said, pursuing another tack.
“Certainly I’m happy now. I became happy the day I decided to get rid of you. You get no sympathy from me over your unhappiness. You deserve to be unhappy.”
Neenan tried to recall whether he had ever encountered such fierce hatred during their years together. Liberation from him had released her anger, but not healed it.
“I’m not really unhappy,” he began.
Michael frowned.
“Well, I won’t believe it if you tell me you’re happy because of that trashy little Sicilian whore you’re living with.”
He gritted his teeth and then took a bite of the pasta, which was terrible.
“She’s my wife, Donna. We were married in church because of the annulment you were able to get.”
“I don’t care where you were married. All I have to do is look at her to see that she’s a cheap dago whore.”
Michael lowered his head.
“We disagree about that,” Neenan said mildly, clenching one of his fists.
“I know a whore when I see one,” Donna insisted. “I suppose she lets you fuck her whenever you want. That’s what whores do. And that’s all you were ever interested in from me. My talents, my abilities, my work, nothing I ever did made any difference to you. You barely noticed that I existed. You were not interested in my kiddies either. You let me down and you let them down.”
“I’m sorry if I acted that way,” he said, biting his tongue. “We’re both Catholics. Can we not leave the past behind and begin to forgive?”
Michael smiled his approval.
“You have nothing to forgive. And I won’t forgive. You don’t deserve forgiveness. You’re a vile, rotten, nasty man. All you merit from me is contempt. I have the right to hate you.”
“I didn’t realize that I was neglecting you and the children and that I was insensitive to you. I was too preoccupied with other things, for which I am very sorry and hope you will forgive me.”
Michael nodded his head in approval, almost amazed approval.
“I told you that I would not forgive you. There is no excuse for the way you ruined my life. Then, when I finally wanted freedom to be my own person, you cheated me out of the money to which I was entitled for putting up with you all those years. If I hadn’t kept the house together and the kiddies in line, you would never have become the wealthy man that you were. I had every right to half your wealth.”
“That would have destroyed the firm.”
“Wouldn’t that be too bad! You destroyed my life and I destroyed your firm! That’s what I wanted to do, you damn fool. And I would have done it if you had not sent your spies snooping into my life. You cheated me out of my revenge.”
Neenan had promised himself that he would not mention her infidelity. He was hardly in a position to throw the first stone on that subject.
“I had to protect the jobs of the people who worked for National Entertainment,” he said weakly.
“And their jobs were more important than my life and the life of the kiddies? I can’t believe how vicious you were and are.”
Michael lifted his shoulders in frustration.
“I think my efforts to seek your forgiveness for the wrongs that I did are only making matters worse.”
Michael again lifted his shoulders.
“Well, your apologies are too late. I don’t care about you. I don’t think about you. I wouldn’t even waste my time hating you. I don’t know why I agreed to have lunch with you. I said to myself that I wouldn’t let you upset me. But I knew you would.”
She pushed aside her half-finishe
d salad, rose from her chair, and stormed out of the restaurant.
“See?” he said to the seraph.
“I saw.”
“Let’s suppose that I was an extremely sensitive and perceptive young man, the kind of person I’m trying finally to be with Anna Maria. Would it have ended any differently?”
“You want to clean your conscience?”
“No … well, not exactly. I merely want to know whether if I had been that kind of man, she would be different today from what she is.”
“What do you think?”
“I think she would be pretty much the same.”
“I can’t disagree with you.”
“That’s the end of it, then?”
“For the moment.”
“What do you mean ‘for the moment’?”
“You have to keep trying.”
“How often?”
The seraph shrugged his board shoulders. “Depends on how much longer you have.”
“Did I make her that way?”
“You helped, but, no, you didn’t cause it. Likely she’d be the same now, no matter who she married. Still, you have to accept your share for the failure of the marriage.”
“I thought I did that.”
“You made a good beginning,” Michael grudgingly admitted. “I thought for sure that you would lose your temper.”
“Let’s get out of here. I need some real food … . I feel sorry for her wimpy husband.”
“After years of therapy she has her fits of rage only when the subject is you. Otherwise she is, how should I say it, tranquil.”
“Then why did we come out here and provoke her again?”
“We had to see whether she was willing to forgive you. It would be most helpful to her if she did.”
Peter had some real food for Neenan in the car—a Big Mac and a Thirty-One Flavors malted milk.
“I don’t know where they came from, Mr. Neenan,” the big Irishman said. “I just looked around and there were two orders next to me in the car.”
“Wonderful!”
Michael looked like the cat who ate the canary.
Show-off.
On the way back to Chicago, he began to read Anna Maria’s script.
“You like it?”
“It seems pretty good to me. I’ll have to get the reactions of others. I’m going to stop now. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
Contract with an Angel Page 10
