Contract with an Angel

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I thought I heard angels whispering to me that it was time to change.” Neenan assumed that the seraph field marshal was listening.

  “Angels are merely God’s messengers.”

  “So I understand, Father.”

  Neenan was assigned a penance of “one devout Our Father.” He decided that he would always come to confession to Father Sixtus.

  Assuming that he had another chance.

  He did feel a vast sense of elation and relief when he stepped out of the confessional. Michael was busy lighting votive candles.

  “For me?”

  “It can’t hurt … . Now, if you’re going to get in your swim, you’d better hurry. Can’t keep the officers of the company waiting, can we?”

  The choir reappeared and reprised the end of Faust.

  “I’ve got to say my penance first.”

  12

  “As you doubtless know,” Neenan began after the roomful of NE officers had settled into respectful silence, “WorldCorp is trying to buy National Entertainment. I have said privately and publicly that we are not for sale, no matter how high the price. I stand by those statements. Nevertheless WorldCorp, is now trying to raid our executives and interfere with some of our acquisitions. I suspect they may have spoken to some of you. If their offer is good enough and you’re not afraid to work there, it would be wise to make the change this afternoon because our lawyers are going into federal court tomorrow to obtain a temporary restraining order against WorldCorp.

  “We intend to undertake a number of strategies to discourage WorldCorp from this reckless venture. As some of you know, we have considered for some time the possibility of combining our owned and operated stations into a new network, which we will call American Network or Amnet for short. We will now pursue that plan. We have also considered the wisdom of launching our own news network, which we would call American News or Amnews. We now propose to combine the local news capabilities of our stations to provide a comprehensive coverage of news all over the United States. Naturally we will offer this news on all our cable holdings. Eventually we may well make an offer to buy WorldCorp or some of its more substantial holdings. I assume that these remarks will be leaked almost as soon as this meeting is over. We will issue tomorrow morning a statement detailing our plans, the financial incentives and costs, and a time schedule for developing our new ventures.”

  The choristers were singing martial music. Michael waved a high five and beamed happily.

  “Can you please ask those guys to quiet down for a few minutes? They distract me and I need a clear head.”

  Michael raised a finger. The choir stopped abruptly, perhaps resentfully.

  “Are there any questions?” Neenan asked the meeting.

  “Might we not be overextending ourselves, R. A.?” someone asked.

  “We won’t overextend ourselves. You can count on that. We have the capital resources to underwrite expansion. Moreover we will not diminish them substantially in either of these ventures. The beauty of them is that most of the pieces are already in place.”

  The executives stirred restlessly. Clearly they didn’t like the situation.

  “Please feel free to ask questions,” Neenan said.

  Silence.

  Neenan frowned. He had expected enthusiasm about the new ventures and about the fight to fend off WorldCorp.

  “They’re worried about their jobs,” Michael informed him. “They think you’re putting their careers at risk.”

  “Really?”

  “Really! You got security and almost none of them have.”

  “Perhaps I might add what I should have said initially. I do not intend to put anyone’s position in the firm at risk. I guarantee you that no one is going to lose his … or her … job. If WorldCorp should prevail, many of you would eventually find yourself living off unemployment insurance. I regret the necessity of a fight, but in the jungle in which we work, fights are sometimes necessary.”

  That seemed to cheer them up a little.

  “R. A., that is a firm and solemn promise?”

  He grinned. “A vow from which only the Pope can dispense me. I am well aware of my own faults, but among them is not the inability to keep my word.”

  Michael, who for some reason had doffed his windbreaker, smiled happily.

  “You won’t sell to WorldCorp.”

  “Never, not as long as I live.”

  The words had slipped out. A knife jabbed at his chest. As long as he lived would not be very long. He would have to rely on Vincent’s willingness to honor his word.

  “What if they back off? Will we still pursue these new ventures?”

  “Certainly we will, perhaps more slowly and cautiously. I do not see at the present a need for large administrative staff for either venture. Our major costs will be technical, and even those will not be great. A network, after all, is nothing more than a telephone line or, in our age, many telephone lines.”

  “That work sometimes,” Norm Stein said with a laugh.

  The rest of the group joined in the laugh. They had begun to lighten up.

  “I can see myself here at midnight managing the switchboard,” Neenan said. “It would serve me right, wouldn’t it?”

  More laughter.

  “Better you let Amy do it!”

  “That’s an excellent idea.”

  Amy flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Do you think WorldCorp will back off, R. A.?”

  “It would be sensible of them to do so. However, the threat of a hostile takeover here is not at all sensible. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Then technical questions flew thick and fast. The group seemed convinced that he knew what he was talking about. The meeting ended with a standing ovation. Michael appeared next to him with angelic speed for another high five. The choir, their feelings apparently unhurt, broke into happy song. Many of the senior officers rushed up to shake Neenan’s hand and congratulate him.

  He felt no elation. Rather, a dark pall of weariness and loneliness crept over him. He hardly noticed the sunlight bursting through the window of his southeast corner suite when he returned to his office and slumped into the chair behind his desk.

  Stein and McMahon drifted into his office. So did Michael, his windbreaker over his arm.

  “Nice going, R. A.,” Joe said.

  “You wowed them,” Norm agreed.

  “Totally,” Michael said, adding his vote.

  “Are you part of my staff now?”

  “I kind of thought it was the other way round … . And smile, you won a big one.”

  “If there’s a fight, I won’t be around for it.”

  “I told you we never give up an account.”

  “The firm is part of your account?”

  “Obviously.”

  “You two tell me the truth most of the time, so I’ll believe you.”

  “Do you want us to start the planning for both ventures?” Norm asked. “Any priorities?”

  “If WorldCorp—and I’m sure they’re around—finds out that we are not doing that, they’ll suspect we’re bluffing.”

  “Are we bluffing, R. A.?” McMahon asked.

  “No way. I want to be prepared for them to try to call our bluff … . As to priorities, let’s do the news network first; that should be easier and quicker to bring on-line. There are a lot of local anchors out there in small towns hungering for fame and possible fortune who are just as good if not better than the talking heads on Fox or CNN or the three networks. They’ll love the chance.”

  “I think WorldCorp will back down,” Joe observed. “They’d be crazy if they didn’t.”

  “They’ll at least think about it … . By the way, Joe, have our PR people work on a statement for tomorrow. I saw Neil Higgins this morning. You might call him to get the details of our petition for a restraining order. We’ll want it all on the noon news. As to the news leaks which will be in morning papers, our response will be that we have been planning such ventures for some time an
d there is nothing new about them.”

  After Stein and McMahon left his office, Neenan buried his head on his desk. He felt like he wanted to cry, but knew that he would not, could not. All he wanted was to be with Anna Maria.

  Michael touched his shoulder. “That was a pretty neat bit of obfuscation.”

  “Would I lie on the day I reclaimed the state of grace?”

  “I didn’t say you lied. Rather you told the literal truth: there is nothing new about your plans. You didn’t add that you moved them to the front burner because of WorldCorp, but you didn’t have to say that, did you?”

  “You sound like a Jesuit.”

  “That charge has been leveled before … . Do you actually believe in the state of grace?”

  “Hell, you should excuse the expression, how should I know what I believe? Like you said, once a Catholic always a Catholic. When I pray, like I did back there at St. Peter’s, I pray ‘to whom it may concern.’”

  “Or ‘occupant?’”

  “I take your word for it that someone is listening.”

  “You can bank on it, you should excuse the expression … . Do you pray that you do not die?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “So what do you say to God?”

  “I tell whoever might be listening that it’s all up to him.”

  “Or her?”

  “As the case may be.”

  Amy Jardine buzzed on the phone.

  “Ms. Raymond Neenan on the phone, Mr. Neenan.”

  The choir started in on spring pastoral melodies.

  “Thank you, Amy … . Hi, Anna Maria.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “Hard day … . I went to confession, by the way.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did too. Over at St. Peter’s. Nice priest.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Raymond?” she asked him nervously.

  “Just tired. I didn’t sleep so well last night.”

  “You need a nap.”

  “Do I ever!”

  “Why don’t you come over to the apartment and have a nap with me? I don’t want you to sleep through the angels’ hymn at the end.”

  The choir immediately returned to the conclusion of Faust.

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  “Then we won’t have to make love after the opera,” she said with a giggle.

  “No promises about that. I’ll be right over.”

  “I told you picking her as your wife was a major coup on our part,” Michael said.

  “I must have had something to do with it.”

  “I never said you didn’t,” Michael said, obviously very pleased with himself.

  Neenan left in such a rush that he forgot his white-tie suit.

  He found his wife lolling in the vast tub that had often seemed the center of the apartment.

  “Why don’t you take off your clothes and join me?” she said, extending a hand. “I bet you forgot your suit.”

  “I did,” he said, stripping as quickly as he could. “I can go over and get it after our nap and meet you at the opera house.”

  “You really are an attractive hunk, Mr. Neenan. I think I might just fall in love with you someday.”

  They played in the tub, he told her the story of his response to WorldCorp, and she nodded her approval as she busily teased him to the point where he shouted with agony and delight.

  Then they napped and made love and napped again.

  “Let’s skip the opera,” he said.

  The angel songsters cried out in protest.

  “Don’t be silly, Raymond! We can come back afterward and take up where we left off.”

  Reluctantly he agreed.

  Before he forced himself out of bed, he lay on top of her and devoured her with a fearsome kiss.

  “I like it when you lie on top of me that way,” she sighed.

  “Oh?”

  “I feel like I am a powerless captive and you can do to me whatever you want. That’s a wonderful feeling.”

  “You’re not a captive. You’re my wife.”

  “I know that, silly. But it’s nice sometimes to be captive to your husband. And vice versa.”

  “You can always say no, if you want.”

  “Why would I ever want to do that?”

  He consumed her again with an equally powerful kiss.

  “That was nice,” she said dreamily. “Now you’d better hurry. I’ve got to get dressed too.”

  As he hailed a cab on Lake Shore Drive, he wondered what had happened to the seraph.

  He dressed hurriedly in the small bedroom next to his office and then walked down Wacker Drive briskly to the Opera House.

  In the Graham Room, where Lyric supporters ate their precurtain dinners, he discovered what had happened to the seraph.

  “You’re at that empty table over in the corner,” Jim the maître d’ said, pointing to a table at which two people were already sitting: Michael, also in white tie and tails, and a breathtaking woman with gray hair and a young face, clad in a shimmering—and tight-fitting—strapless, blue gown.

  13

  “Gaby, this is Raymond Neenan. You’ve seen him before, of course, but this is the first opportunity to formally introduce him to you. Ray, this is Gaby, my companion.”

  He pronounced the name of the woman seraph as though it were French-gah-bee.

  She extended her hand and smiled. Neenan melted completely. He bent over the hand and kissed it.

  “He has surprisingly good manners for Chicago Irish, doesn’t he, Michael?” she said with an impish grin.

  “He’s learning,” Michael replied.

  They were at a table in the corner of the long and narrow Graham Room, which overlooked Wacker Drive. Its green walls and lush furnishing were an exercise in understated elegance, a touch of eighteenth-century France tucked away on the fringes of the Chicago Loop.

  “Short for Gabriel?” Neenan asked as he sat down at what supposedly his table.

  “Those of course are not our real names,” she replied. “They are the Hebrew names which describe events in which we participated. We use them when we’re in your world.”

  “So you were the one …”

  “You don’t think the Other would have sent a male angel on such a delicate mission, do you? Your own Catholic tradition often presents the so-called Gabriel in a womanly guise.”

  The choir was practicing its final scene again. At first he thought it might be the Lyric chorus, singing loudly. But then he realized that they would be saving their voices for later in the evening. It was the angel crowd. He thought it best to ignore them.

  “Our names are actually very long,” Michael said, “as is proper, I suppose. I’ll ask our little friends to chant the first part of my companion’s name. It will take about a minute or so.”

  He held up his finger. They broke off the chorus and chanted an undulating and romantic word, like a stanza of a Hawaiian love song. Gaby smiled and nodded her head in approval.

  “Does it translate into our language?” Neenan asked.

  “Not really. It is a very intimate name.”

  Neenan tried to remember the melody, but it had been wiped from his brain. Very clever.

  “So you have come to enjoy our Faust?”

  “And to enjoy our little friends,” she replied, “having the time of their young lives singing the final chorus.”

  “They’re young angels!”

  “Naturally. Couldn’t you tell? Don’t they sound like offspring … ah, children?”

  “Children with perfect pitch.”

  “Naturally, they are angels, are they not?”

  “We can assure you,” Michael took up the conversation, “that, despite the snobbery of your friend from New York, this production is much better than anything the Met has ever done with Faust.”

  “We listened in on the rehearsal,” Gaby agreed. “They are excellent. You are to be congratulated on supporting it
.”

  The seraphs were very friendly. Had Ms. Michael warned her companion to be on his good behavior?

  “You must explain the difference between Mephisto and Satan to me.”

  The woman seraph across the table glared at Neenan, her lips tight with anger—or was it pain?

  “I’m sure,” she said, “that my good companion has explained to you that there is no one in creation anywhere that we know of who corresponds with the creature Sam Ramey portrays so well. And as for Satan or the Light Bearer, he was a good angel, a member of the heavenly court, despite all your Christian folktales, borrowed from the worshipers of Mazda.”

  “You must understand, Ray,” Michael said soothingly, “that the Light Bearer was my companion’s first companion. We all grew up together and were very close friends. He died young in a massive charge of electromagnetism in another cosmos. She still mourns him, as do I.”

  “I’m sorry,” Neenan stammered, “I didn’t know …”

  “Of course you didn’t know.” Gaby touched Neenan’s face soothingly. “No reason why you should. I’m sorry my grief caused me to be rude. We shall all be together again someday, we shall all be young again, we shall all laugh and sing again.”

  “So the Other assures us,” Michael said with a solemn nod. “It goes without saying that we believe him.”

  “Her,” his companion corrected him, her good humor returning. “But now, Raymond, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to you about your wife.”

  “Anna Maria?”

  “Certainly, your only wife. You’re doing much better in recent days, but we feel you need a few hints and that it would be more acceptable coming from me instead of from him.”

  “I’m sure it would, certainly more charming.”

  “Flattery will not distract me,” she said severely.

  “Not for more than a couple of hours,” her companion observed.

  They all laughed.

  “The first thing you must do tonight,” she began, ticking off her instructions on her long, ring-covered fingers, “is give her that lovely necklace you have in your inside jacket pocket.”

  “I don’t have any necklace,” Neenan protested.

  “Yes, you do,” Michael insisted. “Just feel your pocket.”