“Sorry, Raymond. I’m tired.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
She stumbled into the house. “Can I take a long nap?”
“Certainly. We’re going out to dinner tonight.”
“I think I remember that … . Oh, I have to go into town to buy more suntan cream.”
“I can buy it for you.”
“You would buy the wrong kind.” She yawned.
“Same as this on the table?”
“No wonder you’re such a success in life.”
He helped her into bed and drove back to the town. He found a drugstore in a tiny mall. Michael was browsing the shelves in his distinctive purple costume. What was up? Why was the seraph waiting for him?
Neenan found the approved brand and carried two large tubes to the checkout line.
Then he discovered why the purple crusader was lurking.
“Ray boy,” said a sultry voice. “Returned to the scene of the crime, huh?”
It could only be Estelle Sloane, whom he had captured in the Captiva house in the days between Donna and Anna Maria. Or, in his new perspective, they had culminated their mutual seduction in the town house on the Gulf.
“Was it a crime?” he asked.
She kissed him with something much more than mere affection. Instantly he wanted her just one more time.
“You tell me. Buy me a drink, a quick one.”
She had been one of his more spectacular prizes, or so he thought. A model turned public relations woman, she was tall, slender, with short brown hair and a model’s perfect body. She had been funny, reckless, blunt, and delightful in bed.
Standing behind him in the line, she was if anything more attractive in the same uniform of strapless top and short jeans that Anna Maria had worn on the golf course. A certain wisdom that comes with experiences that are assimilated into one’s character appeared to have modified the coltish enthusiasms of a decade ago. She was more “interesting” than before.
Should he try to ask her forgiveness? What good would it do? On the other hand, the seraph gang had undoubtedly set up this encounter to test him, perhaps with one of the most likable of his “prizes.”
He glanced at Michael. The seraph shrugged his shoulders indifferently. That meant he’d better give it a try.
“It will have to be quick,” he said in reply to her request for a drink. “My wife and I have an early dinner reservation.”
“Your wife is here, huh?” she said as they went out of the pharmacy and into the piercing sunlight. “Worse luck for my plans to take you to bed tonight. I heard you had married again.”
She was dressed like Anna Maria had been on the golf course with a single exception: Anna Maria, modest woman that she was, usually, had in public worn a bra. Estelle had disdained such modesty. Her breasts, he remembered, were the prettiest he had ever touched. Desperately he wanted to play with them just once more.
“I have indeed. It’s worked out very well.” He did not add, “For the last week.”
“She any good in bed?”
“Very,” he said firmly.
“Too bad for my scheme to seduce you. Still I’ll give it a try … . Wait a second till I get a shirt out of my car. There’s a lounge down at the end of the street. It’ll be cool inside.”
Cool and dark and intimate as it turned out. Michael ambled in after them and sat at a table across from the booth that Estelle had chosen.
They ordered a dry martini for her and a diet Coke for him. She had put on her shirt but had not bothered to button it, which heightened her appeal.
“What do you think of me after all these years?” she asked.
Neenan chose his words carefully. “I think you’re more beautiful than you were then. You have acquired a sheen of wisdom and experience that cancels out the effects of time and makes you more fascinating. To be totally candid, I worry about the edge of cynicism I see around your eyes and sometimes around your smile.”
When Neenan said that he was about to be totally candid, it was a sure sign that he was about to offer a highly stylized version of the truth. In fact, Estelle was only one step away from falling into a pit of bitterness from which it would be hard to escape.
She shut her eyes, gritted her teeth, and caught her breath. “Damn you.”
“Sorry if I am wrong.”
“No, you’re perfectly right. You didn’t used to be able to see through me. I don’t like to have my emotional clothes taken away … . But I don’t want to talk about me. Tell me about this woman you’ve married.”
“She’s a script reader for NE. Makes decisions about possible films and miniseries for us. Best in the business. That’s why I hired her. Then fell in love with her. Sicilian American from Chicago. Wonderful woman.”
“You’re in love with her still?”
“More than ever.”
“Really settled down, huh?”
“Getting old.”
She examined him critically. “Sexier than ever, if you ask me.”
Estelle Sloane’s moves were far more subtle than those of Honoria Smythe. Someone at a nearby table would not notice she was trying to seduce him—unless that someone happened to be the boss of all the seraphs.
“And your husband?”
She shrugged indifferently. “Banker. Nice guy. Irish Catholic like you. Crazy about me, which shows he has good taste. Cute. Adequate lover. I kind of love him, you know what I mean. He’ll never walk out on me, heaven knows. I’m faithful to him, more or less. I won’t walk out on him either.”
“I see.”
“He’s in Paris now. Gets back on Monday. So I have time on my hands.”
“Too bad.”
“Maybe not,” she said with an inviting sigh. “That depends on you.”
Her soft, cool hand found his thigh.
He swallowed and clenched one of his fists. “Thanks, Estelle, but no thanks. It would be very nice. But I love my wife.”
“And I love my husband, but what harm would it do if we spent an hour or so together?” She squeezed his thigh.
“I’d hate myself afterward. So would you.”
She removed her hand and began to work on her drink. “You’re right, Ray. I would too … . What do you remember most about me from the old days?”
“Most wonderful breasts in the world.”
She smiled, then laughed. “But you don’t want to play with them one final time?”
“Sure I do. But I won’t.”
“OK, Ray, I’ll turn off the steam. No hard feelings?”
“Not at all. I’m flattered that you would still want me.”
“Who wouldn’t? Your wife is a lucky woman. Does she know that?”
“She claims that she does.”
They both laughed, uneasily lurching out of the seduction mode.
“Are you going to tell her you ran into me?”
Michael rolled his eyes. “I think so.”
“I would if I were you. She’d know how important she is to you.”
Michael nodded in agreement.
“Maybe … . Estelle, there’s something I want to say to you.”
“Say away. By the way, could I have another drink? I promise it’s my last of the day.”
He ordered the second martini.
“I am sorry that I hurt you during our time together.”
“What do you mean hurt?” she said with a puzzled frown. “You’re the most gentle lover I’ve ever known. It took you long enough to get around to taking me to bed after I’d been sending signals for months. But I never had any complaints about you when we were together.”
“I kind of felt that I used you.”
She thought about that. “No more than I used you, Ray. Both of us were consenting adults. We knew what we were doing.”
“Yet,” he persisted, “I thought you were angry at me when we broke up.”
She lowered her head into her hands. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she said curtly. “Too much pain. Years o
f pain. I won’t talk about it.”
“I’m sorry, Stelle, terribly, terribly sorry.”
She looked up at him and reached out and touched his hand gently. “It wasn’t your fault, Ray … . Well, it was your fault, but it was mostly my fault.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Hell no. But I have to talk about it. OK?”
“OK.”
Michael leaned forward with obvious interest. This part was apparently not in his script.
“Will you hold my hand please? I’m not trying to seduce you now, honest.”
Michael nodded approval, so Neenan took her hand.
“You remember what I was like in those days? Bossy, bitchy, domineering woman. Tough, hard, brittle. Dumb. I could have anything and anyone I wanted. And then throw them away. Mean. Stupid.”
“Those aren’t the words I would use.”
“Come on, Ray, you know better. You once told me I was imperious. Have you forgotten that?”
“I remember it now.”
“I did act like I was an empress. So you came along, a great big, handsome Irish Catholic hunk. He’ll be fun. I’ll enjoy him for a while and send him on his way.”
“We told each other that it was only a temporary affair, Stelle.”
“You believed it, Ray. I found out quickly that I didn’t believe it.”
“Oh.”
“You were this luscious, macho male. Perfect target. If that’s all you were, I would have tired of you in a couple of weeks. Do you know the effect you have on people, Ray? No, I’m sure you don’t. You’re strong and powerful and demanding and charming. People fall in love with you easily. You’re irresistible.”
The angel brats began to hum softly, reassuringly.
“Oh,” he said again—and held her hand more tightly.
“I’m sure you’ve been that way all your life. Women just automatically get a crush on you. I figured the charm would wear thin pretty quickly. Well”—she began to weep—“it didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that! … Are they playing Muzak in here? Or am I imagining I hear it?”
“Something kind of soft, maybe.”
“It’s beautiful. It helps what I’m trying to say … . Do I imagine a purple color somewhere in this room? I must be losing my mind.”
Michael grinned.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I found out that when we were intimate, not just in bed, but certainly there, that you were as kind and sweet as a mother with her newborn baby. I know the feeling because I have a couple of kids.”
“Oh,” he said, falling back on his standard reply.
“Then I went head over heels for you. I was in love like I’d never been before. I belonged to you completely. Then you lost interest and broke my heart … . And don’t say again that you’re sorry. It was all my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t, Stelle. It was my fault as much as yours. We deceived ourselves because we wanted pleasure. Then we got caught up in something else.”
She reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I ached for you for years, loved you, hated you, and then finally realized that it was all an illusion. Neither of us were ready for marriage. You were still getting over your wife and I was a flake. So I stopped hating you. Then I realized what I had learned about myself and I was grateful to you.”
“I said to my wife recently that every woman is at heart a mother and every man is at heart a bachelor. She replied that, no, every man is at heart a twelve-year-old.”
Estelle laughed sadly. “Wise woman, your wife.”
“I think so.”
“I’d like to meet her sometime. Not today, not after what I tried. I’m sorry about that too.” She began to cry again. “You’re right about my getting brittle around the edges. After I figured out what happened with us, I really did try to change. I married, I settled down, I had kids. I told myself that I was happy. Maybe I was, but in the last year, after my son was born, I don’t know what happened to me. I do know that whatever it is turned me into a bitch again and I made a fool out of myself a few minutes ago when I tried to seduce you.”
She rested her head on the table and sobbed. Neenan, not knowing what else to do, continued to hold her hand. Michael watched, sympathy for the weeping woman in his deep brown eyes.
“You’re doing all right,” the seraph whispered. “Now don’t blow it.”
“What should I say?”
“Figure that out for yourself.”
“Great!”
Her head still on the table, Estelle reached in her purse and pulled out a wallet. She flipped it open to a picture of two children, a girl about four and a boy perhaps a little older than one.
“Neat kids.”
“I love them both. I love their dad too. Maybe he doesn’t demand enough of me, but I love him a whole lot. I’m not the wife I should be. I don’t do nearly enough for him. It would be so easy to be a better wife, but the last couple of years all the fun went out of it.”
She began to sob again.
What the hell am I doing? Neenan demanded of himself. I’m supposed to be a counselor to a woman who was once my lover?
He stroked her hair lightly. “The challenge is not to avoid growing old,” he said far more confidently than he felt. “Rather it is to grow old gracefully, that is, showering grace on those we love. We must bathe them in grace not as those would who are afraid the supply will run out but like those who believe that grace is limitless.”
Now how did I come up with that? Must have read it in a screenplay somewhere. Maybe one of the clerical characters in Anna Maria’s screenplays.
Estelle stopped sobbing and sat up straight, her face with its tears and its flowing makeup almost unbearably beautiful.
“You sound like a priest.”
“I don’t mean to preach, Stelle.”
“You mean I should shower my husband and kids and anyone else I meet with more affection than they would expect, more than they have any right to, more than I have ever given anyone ever in my life?”
Michael nodded his head briskly.
“Something like that.”
“Do you live that way?”
“I’ve tried recently. I don’t do a very good job at it. I kind of think that trying is what counts.”
“How does your wife react?”
“With surprise and delight.”
“Doesn’t it seem unfair that you have do all the work?”
Now what am I supposed to say?
Michael shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s fun,” was the best Neenan could manage.
She nodded slowly. “I can see that it might be. Will Terry ever be surprised when he comes back from Paris!”
Then Gaby, in a purple beach outfit that matched the color of her husband’s array, materialized behind Estelle and caressed her neck and face.
Estelle put her wallet back into her purse, dried her tears, redid her makeup, and pushed aside her halfempty drink.
Gaby smiled down at her with maternal love.
Neenan decided to push his luck. “You should realize that Terry is a gift you have been given for a time and that you should treat that gift with abundant gratitude while you still have time.”
Gaby stopped her massage and stared at Neenan in astonishment. Behind her, Michael seemed equally surprised.
“I’ll drown him with grace, you just watch!” Estelle smiled happily, the brittle edge of cynicism at least temporarily banished.
“It won’t be easy all the time.”
Gaby continued to stare.
“Finish your work, woman,” Neenan said to her.
The woman seraph, presumably the angel of Nazareth, snorted but returned to her healing ministration.
“May I call you when I need a kick in the ass?”
“You sure can.”
You’ll have to find the phone number of heaven.
She seemed an empty shell as he helped her
out to her car, a woman who had been drained however transiently of her lifeblood.
Ray felt powerful love for her, a love from which desire was absent.
“I’m wiped out, Ray,” she said, leaning against his arm.
“You’ll be all right.”
“I think you just saved my soul.”
“God and her angels do that.”
She hugged him as he took the keys and opened the car door for her.
“Someday I want to meet your wife. The next time Terry and I come to Chicago.”
“Grand!”
He was not altogether sure he wanted Anna Maria to meet this former lover of his.
“One of you guys go with her,” he commanded the two seraphs. “She’s in no shape to drive.”
“I’ll do it,” Gaby said, and leaped into the car, without the formality of opening the door. “See you two later.”
“Ordering around seraphs?” Michael asked. “Just because you’ve been an instrument of amazing grace?”
“Put her on my account.”
“What do you mean?” Michael asked, unable to hide his smile.
“You told me that you never give up an account. I want Stelle on my account. She’s part of the contract from now on.”
“Even if I didn’t find her charming—which I do—my companion would give me no choice.”
In Neenan’s Lexus, Michael returned to his “head coach” style. “That success gives you no reason for overconfidence, Raymond Anthony.”
“Who’s overconfident? I feel like I’ve been run over by a semi.”
“You must also,” the seraph boss continued implacably, “learn about yourself from what she said to you.”
“You mean that I get seduced by women who are like my mother? I know that already.”
“No, that’s less important than the other truth.”
“Which is?”
“You know it. You tell me.”
Neenan sighed. You can’t escape from the head coach, especially when he is a seraph.
“That I have a personality which both men and women find attractive, especially women. Somehow I combine strength and tenderness, which is a kind of magic. I don’t believe any of it.”
“You’d better believe it. It’s the reason why the Other told us to bother with you.”
Neenan felt as if he were a piece of fruit, a pear perhaps, that had been left to rot in the sun. There was nothing left to him except the deteriorating skin of what he had been. Or of what he thought he was. No illusions left.
Contract with an Angel Page 23
