“That among other things … . And I look just like his own father, whom I suppose he hated too.”
So perhaps there was some grace even for Dad, some explanation of why he had become what he was.
“You lose your temper?”
“Nope.”
The plane soared above St. Petersburg and then out over the Gulf.
“Bravo!” she said softly.
One advantage of an early death, he told himself, was that he would never have to return to this place.
“Maybe.”
Linda refilled his wineglass.
“You want to take a nap, Raymond?”
“Not now. Maybe when we get to the island.”
“We can nap and swim and lie in the sun and forget about the golf lessons today.”
“And maybe engage in other healing experiences?”
“We’ll have to see about that,” she said, raising her glass in an admiring salute. “Linda dear, I think we need our lunch. My husband has been drinking a lot of wine.”
“Certainly, Ms. Neenan.”
“Tomorrow we start the lessons bright and early, do you hear, my love?”
Neenan felt his personhood slowly come back together again.
What an idiot he had been not to have figured all of this out long ago.
19
“Why do Italians always make too much pasta?”
“Sicilians,” Anna Maria replied primly. “We’re not really Italians at all.”
Neenan drank her in with his eyes, every wondrous, lovable inch of her. Even if he had just possessed her, he still wanted her. Never enough, never enough. And so little time. Thank God … or Occupant … or Whomever … that he had straightened out his relationship with her and with Vincent. If he lost either of them, his life would lose all meaning. That would not happen. He would not lose them till he died, which could be almost any day, could it not?
Fear sank its cold, mummy’s fingers into his heart. What if he did lose one or the other of them? What if he did something incredibly stupid and drove them both away. He shivered.
“Cold?” Anna Maria asked.
“A draft somewhere.”
“It’s still seventy; how could there be a draft?”
“So, all right, why do you Sicilians always make too much pasta?”
“Because,” she said as she poured her special sauce on the noodles she had already prepared, “we’re afraid to take a risk that anyone will leave the table hungry. Besides, we can always warm up what’s left over for lunch the next day.”
Dressed in T-shirts and shorts, they were in the kitchen of their town house on the Gulf of Mexico. The sliding doors were open all around them, and a soft breeze off the water was caressing them. They had relaxed in the sun, swum till they were exhausted, and then made slow, leisurely, exquisite love. Knowing what he needed, Anna Maria had been a shy, sweet, and deeply sensuous partner.
She is much more perceptive with me than I am with her.
“Stop leering at me that way,” she insisted, blushing.
“Can’t help it.”
“It embarrasses me,” she said as she stirred the fettuccine and the sauce.
“Good.”
She was a fine one to talk. Her vast brown eyes often caressed him with admiration, even adoration. He didn’t deserve it. No other woman had ever looked at him that way.
“I am not,” she said firmly, “going to take off my T-shirt while we’re eating supper. So stop looking at me like you want me to.”
She then scooped the pasta out of the large bowl in which she had stirred it with the sauce and filled both their plates with it.
“I might just take it off anyway.”
“Don’t even think of that.”
He poured the Chianti into their tumblers. Seraphic Vineyards, it turned out, also produced Chianti. Moreover, a couple of dozen bottles of it were stashed in the kitchen. Still showing off. Anna Maria, probably blinded by angel dust, did not seem to notice it or reflect on how unusual it was.
He caught her in flight, kissed her, and explored the wonders beneath her shirt. She did not try to fight him off.
“Dirty man,” she sighed.
“Besotted man.”
“Same thing.”
“Tell you what, you can keep the T-shirt on till dessert.”
“You’ll have a fight on your hands.”
“You can ogle me in the nude and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“It’s entirely different,” she said, sitting in her chair. “Now, if you can dismiss your dirty thoughts for a minute, let’s say grace.”
“All right.”
So they held hands and prayed to the Other to bless them and their food. Neenan added an extra and silent prayer of gratitude for his incredible lover.
“It was bad, wasn’t it, Raymond?” she asked as her fingers lingered briefly on his.
“In a way it wasn’t as bad as when I was younger. Mom is out of it, so she’s not snapping at me and at Dad. It’s a two-cornered fight and not a three-cornered one. Still it seemed worse today, maybe because we are all so much older, or maybe because I understand it better now or maybe because I am more aware of how their never-ending war shaped what I am.”
“Tell me about it.”
So he reported in detail his encounter with his parents, leaving out only the seraphic interventions.
“I don’t know how you survived the horror, Raymond,” she said when he was finished, her eyes filling with tears.
“I’m not sure that I did.”
“That’s silly! Of course you did! Or we wouldn’t be here and wouldn’t love each other so much.”
“It took so long …”
“It’s worth waiting for,” she said as she wolfed down a large forkload of fettucine.
“So much of what I am and what I have done is the result of my fighting with my parents and their fighting with one another. Donna, the kids, the people I work with—”
“You’re not to blame for all that,” she cut in.
“That’s too easy, Anna Maria,” Neenan said, misery in his voice. “I knew what I was doing, not completely, sure, but enough to be responsible.”
“You knew all along that you were fighting with your father?”
He winced. Naturally she had perceived that long before he did.
“Not exactly … . You knew it all along?”
“Certainly, from day one. It seemed like a silly fight. Now I understand that it wasn’t.”
“I always thought Mom was the problem. Now I know I wanted to take her away from Dad.”
She nodded vigorously. “Eat your pasta, it’s good for you. You’ve had a hard day. Lots of exercise.”
In the background the angel brats began to hum softly. Their song sounded like variations on “Red Sails in the Sunset.”
“That’s true.”
“Is there anything you can do about your parents now, Raymond?”
“Not much. Continue to take care of them. Visit them occasionally. See that they’re taken care of. Try to forgive them. Understand how much they have made me what I am … . Incidentally, I am his son, despite his pretense that I am not.”
“Of course. You look just like his father in the pictures. I bet that was not a good relationship either. Great big handsome father, pint-sized, ugly son … . Do you think you can really forgive them?”
“That’s not a problem. They’re so sad. I can’t be mad at them anymore. I didn’t lose my temper today. Almost, but I didn’t.”
If the seraphic bunch hadn’t been there, it might have been a different story.
“You’re a very generous man, husband mine. Your story makes me love you even more … . Am I imagining it or do I hear music in the background?”
He pretended to listen. Sure, Wife, you hear the angel brats, who are singing too loud. If they were around, the older seraphs were doubtless present. Protect us from all evil, he begged them, don’t let me mess up with her.
Aloud he said, “What kind of music?”
“Vocal. Maybe.”
“It’s probably coming from the house next door. Despite the high walls and the trees, we do have neighbors.”
“They can’t see us, can they?” she asked in a burst of nervous modesty.
“No way.”
“Well, I hope not.”
She refilled his wine tumbler.
“Good Chianti,” he said.
“Astonishing! A lot better than the dago red with which I grew up.”
“I’d never use that word.”
“We used it.”
“That’s different. Anyway, you’re not a dago, you’re a Sicilian.”
“True!” she said with a laugh. “Now eat your fettuccine! It’s good for you.”
He obeyed. What other choice? “It astonishes me how well you have me figured out, especially when I compare it to my dumb perceptions about you.”
“Well,” she said, shifting in her chair as she prepared to deliver a lecture, “it’s not all that difficult. Women are better, nicer, more perceptive, and more sensitive than men, but we have to be because you’re stronger and because you have what we want.”
“Easy to figure out twelve-year-old boys?”
“Sure. Sometimes twelve-year-old boys can be amusing, so we’re careful to understand them. It makes it easier for them to amuse us.”
“I don’t understand you at all.”
“Naturally not, Raymond dear. I’ll always be a mystery to you. But that’s all right. It makes for fun for both of us. Anyway, you certainly understand me sexually.”
“Do I?”
“Do you ever!”
“I did not realize that women could be so … so candidly abandoned.”
“A lot of us can’t. And the rest of us can only when we are with a man we totally trust. A man like you. So keep that in mind the next time you feel worthless.”
“I’m a worthless but amusing twelve-year-old who is useful sometimes as a lover.”
She threw back her head and laughed, loud and long. “Fair description. Correct ‘sometimes’ to ‘always.’”
“I’m glad.”
“And add ‘remarkably sensitive—for a man.’”
They had both become giddy, laughing and drinking wine and eating fettuccine and enjoying their own silliness.
She went off to the fridge to dish the ice cream for dessert.
Behind her in the sliding door, Michael appeared in white swim trunks. He nodded in something like approval.
“You’ve learned a lot today,” the seraph said. “Not enough, but not bad for a human.”
“Promise you’ll take care of her after I’m gone.”
“I’ve already promised that. Take care of her while you still are with her. Don’t blow it.”
“I won’t.”
“Better not.”
“Did I hear voices?” Anna Maria said as she returned to the table with two huge dishes of ice cream.
“Neighbors,” he suggested.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in either house now.”
“Passing cars, maybe. We’re near the road.”
He rose from the table and approached her.
“No!” she squealed, and ran away from him.
She ran into the front room of the house, where he cornered her—only because she wanted to be cornered. She pretended to fight him off, but not even half-seriously.
“Beast! Monster! Brute! Savage!” she bellowed.
But she did not resist the removal of her T-shirt.
“Satisfied?” she said with a sigh.
“Momentarily. It’s easier to leer at you this way.”
“Hmf! … Let’s go eat our ice cream before it gets cold.”
“Before it gets cold?”
“See what you’ve done to me? I can’t even think straight—Before it melts, you hungry idiot!”
Nonetheless, she snuggled close to him.
Back at the table, she drew her chair to his side of the table and curled up as she dug into her ice cream.
“You have your choice,” she said. “You can ogle me or eat your ice cream.”
“I can do both,” he said, kissing her lips firmly.
“I see that you can.”
“Do you still think I’m not enough of a man to keep up with you?”
“Well, the jury is still out on that. Just because you can make me topless at the supper table doesn’t prove all that much.”
“You are so beautiful that you take my breath away,” he said, realizing it was a cliché and meaning it just the same.
“Thank you, lover.” She sighed contentedly. “You’ll do until a better one comes along.”
She rested her head against his chest so he could fondle her as she ate her ice cream.
“Nice,” she cooed. “Totally decadent but nice … . No, don’t stop doing that!”
He turned to his own ice cream. “I like being decadent.”
Then fear of losing her hit him like a tidal wave.
“I hope I didn’t offend your modesty,” he said cautiously.
“Don’t be silly. You might have offended it slightly if you wanted me for the pasta course, but certainly not for dessert.”
They finished the ice cream and nestled in one another’s arms as the sun sank into the Gulf and the dark clouds of night ran quickly across the sky. Then the clouds followed the setting sun—the three-quarter moon having long since disappeared over the horizon—and a circus canopy of stars illumined the warm darkness.
Having placed their empty ice cream dishes on the floor, they continued to cuddle in each other’s arms—happy, content, and deeply in love.
Neenan felt again the tsunami of terror charge through his body. He shivered, this time far too obviously to escape a satisfactory explanation.
“What is the matter with you?” his wife demanded. “You’ve been shivering all evening. It’s warm and there’s no breeze!”
“Occasionally I am afraid of losing you.”
“Why would you lose me?” she said with an annoyed frown. “You’re older than I am; you’re likely to die before I do. I’m the one who should be afraid of being a widow.”
“I don’t mean through death.”
“Well, then, what do you mean?” she asked impatiently, removing her head from his chest.
“That I’ll mess up some way, make a mistake, act like an incorrigible twelve-year-old, and do irreparable harm.”
“That’s impossible,” she snapped. “I may have a terrible Sicilian temper, but I don’t hold grudges. Besides, I’ve never blown up at you. Why should I do it now?”
He hesitated and then spoke cautiously. “Because there is so much more of each of us involved in our intimacy. It is easier to hurt one another.”
Michael and Gaby appeared at the sliding door behind her, the latter in a flattering two-piece swimsuit, and both of them frowning.
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!” she said, now obviously angry at him. “I’ve forgiven you for your idiocies a thousand times; now when I’m crazy in love with you, I won’t forgive you?”
The two seraphs shook their heads more vigorously.
“Now you’re the one who is hearing what I say instead of what I mean.”
She bit her lip to contain her rage and nodded.
“All right, lover,” she said with forced calm. “What do you mean?”
He folded her in his arms. She accepted the embrace, at first reluctantly and then eagerly.
“I mean that I don’t trust myself in this intricate, delightful, miraculous relationship. I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about me fouling up.”
The angels nodded in approval.
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” she said with a sigh, and nuzzled closer to him.
Desire surged again in Neenan’s body. He forced it back under control.
“I was trying to.”
“I understand what you’re
saying, lover. I even understand why. Now that we’re so much closer together, we are both likely to be clumsy on occasion—you more than me because you are a man and men tend to be clumsy. I must say, though, that, since whatever really happened to you on that plane, you haven’t been clumsy at all in any aspect of our relationship.”
She pulled off his T-shirt and pressed her chest against his. “You really are developing into something of a model husband. I have nothing to complain about.”
He pressed her even closer to him. “I’m glad of that.”
The two seraphs dematerialized. Does a night like this do the same thing to them that it does to us?
“I promise you that nothing, nothing at all, will alienate me from you, or at least, given my temper, not for long.”
“Wonderful.”
But it really wasn’t wonderful, not at all. Desire for her deadened his fears, but he was sure they would return. If he should lose her and Vincent, there would be nothing left in his life.
“Why don’t you make love to me,” she said, mounting him, “then we can go swimming in the gulf under the stars. Without any swimsuits. I’ve never done it and I think it would be neat.”
“If I swim, I have no choice about a swimsuit. You refused to pack one for me.”
“That’s true … . You could always pack yourself, you know … . Hold still, you’re not being very cooperative.”
“I think someone is trying to rape me!”
“You got it, buster,” she said with a groan.
“I’ll get even after our skinny-dip.”
“You won’t be able to,” she replied triumphantly. “Now hold still, amusing twelve-year-old slave; I propose to divert myself with you for the next half hour or so.”
“Hey, stop tickling! You’re driving me berserk!”
“I’m the berserker this time! And I will not stop tickling.”
Neenan enjoyed the romp. Yet the fear that clutched at his heart would not go away. She was pretending to be the attacker to reassure him that he would never lose her.
But, even during the height of his agony of pleasure, he was certain that he would and it would be his fault.
“Wake up,” she said later, “time for your starlight swim.”
“I was just getting comfortable in my bed.”
“You’re on the carpet, silly! Come on! Don’t be a tired old man!”
Contract with an Angel Page 21
