Fine. Another one leaving the ship.
“Hi, Ray.”
“Hi, Jerry.”
“What the hell happened to Vinny?”
“He wants to be his own man. I understand the feeling, God knows.”
“Yeah, but it’s crazy. They’ll exploit him over there and then cut off his balls, you should excuse the expression. Doesn’t he know that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No, Jerry, I didn’t. Think about it. If you had a son who wanted to break away, would you tell him that?”
Jerry hesitated. “Probably I would, but only because I’m not as smart and as generous a man as you are.”
“Thanks, Jerry.” Neenan grinned in spite of himself.
“I like the guy a lot,” the director went on. “I’m in love with his sister, whom I’ll marry if she’ll have me, but I don’t think the ship is sinking, and anyway I’m not a rat. Count on me, Ray.”
“Thank you, Jerry … . Incidentally, did Vinny try to win you over to WorldCorp?”
“Yeah. I told him that just because he was a bastard, it didn’t make me one.”
“Jenny?”
“She agrees completely.”
Still uncertain whose side she was on.
“Thank you again.”
“See you at the premier of Rebirth.”
Neenan picked up the phone to call Anna Maria and tell her about all the developments. Then he remembered that she had walked out on him, perhaps permanently. He hesitated. Maybe if he made an overture now, pretending that the quarrel had never happened, he might effect a quick reconciliation.
He put the phone down. It was too soon.
24
Neenan bumbled and stumbled through the rest of the week. Vincent’s defection was headline news on every business page in the country. So was Jerry Carter’s refusal to defect. Vincent’s public image was at rock bottom. He looked like a traitor, which in a way he was, though no worse a traitor perhaps than Neenan had been to his father. WorldCorp took a terrible beating because it looked like a slippery, crooked operation. Their stock plummeted and NE’s held steady. The Seventh Circuit rebuked the judge who had vacated the state court’s injunction and reinstated the injunction. No one else left NE in the brief window of opportunity the courts had created.
He heard not a word from his estranged wife. He thought about calling her to ask about their trip to Paris and decided that it would be too risky. Michael pushed him to do something about a reconciliation.
“Next week,” he argued, “when she’s calmed down. You know what Sicilian tempers are like.”
“Maybe she’s already calmed down and is too ashamed to call you.”
“Maybe.”
Nonetheless he did not call her. Rather he canceled the reservations for the Paris trip, after he had thought briefly of going himself, an idea he did not share with the seraph.
Joe McMahon was able to buy the film rights to the whole Starbridge cycle for a hundred thousand pounds.
“Bargain,” Neenan murmured.
“I could have got it for fifty. I told the agent it was worth more than that.”
“Thank heaven we’re not a ruthless outfit.”
He and Joe laughed mirthlessly at that line.
Michael did not intervene to advise against the purchase of film rights, to which, presumably, he did not object.
A woman reporter from the Journal called to ask if he was angry at his son. Michael appeared for that conversation.
“I can hardly be angry at him,” Neenan said urbanely. “I did the same thing myself when I was a young man. Every male in the species has to satisfy himself that he can make it on his own. I wish Vinny all the luck in the world in his new job, except when he’s competing with National Entertainment.”
“Would you take him back?”
Neenan searched for the right words. “We hired him here because the directors and the staff thought he was the man for the job and despite reservations I had about the appearance of nepotism. If they would make the same decision again, I could hardly object, could I?”
“That doesn’t sound like the public image of R. A. Neenan,” the woman said crisply.
Neenan laughed genially. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“On the contrary, I am impressed.”
He almost invited her to lunch. Michael would have had a fit.
Thank goodness the media had not learned that his wife had also left him.
Neenan had worried every morning as the week went on that during the day he would hear from a divorce lawyer.
“Mr. Len Neenan on the phone, Mr. Neenan.”
“Len, it’s good to hear from you.”
“We’re not in the same business, Dad,” his gay son began, “not even in the same world. If we were, I hope I wouldn’t do to you what Vinny did.”
“I appreciate that, Len. He’s got to prove himself to me, just like I did to my father.”
“No, he doesn’t, Dad. It’s completely different. Your father wouldn’t let you do anything. You let him do almost everything he wanted in the firm.”
“I suppose that is a difference, but I figure I should let my children be who they are.”
“Unlike Mom.”
“I suppose so.”
“You ever get to San Francisco, Dad?”
“Sure.”
“Can we have lunch next time?”
“You bet.”
“Would you mind meeting Johnny, my, uh, partner?”
“Not at all.”
Michael was present again, wearing a gray ensemble that was in all respects but color like the one he had worn on the flight to Chicago, a century or two ago.
“Aren’t we getting tolerant,” he said.
“You said the situation wasn’t mature.”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Raymond Anthony, that I do not know the future. You consistently underestimate the appeal you exercise on those who are close to you. Clearly, Leonard was looking for an opportunity to effect a reconciliation.”
“So the situation is mature now?”
“Patently,” the angel said without blinking an eye. “However, it is not as critical as that with your wife.”
“I agree. First thing next week.”
“Time is precious, Raymond Anthony.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that.”
He slipped out of his habit of attending Mass every morning and of exercising every day. On Thursday, however, he realized that he had to swim if only to exorcise all the tensions from his body. He walked up Wacker Drive to the East Bank Club.
As he fought the water with a determined Australian crawl, he noticed a shapely woman in a gray maillot who was swimming much faster than he was.
No, he told himself, I don’t need another problem.
When the woman pulled up alongside him, he realized that she was not likely to be a problem.
“You’re the good cop,” he said to Gaby, “and your companion is the bad cop.”
“We have our ways,” she said with a devastating smile.
“I need to give her time.”
“And Vinny too.”
“How is she?”
“Annie? How would you think she is? Heartbroken of course.”
“What should I do?”
“No more questions about her. I won’t violate her privacy.”
“Fair enough.”
“You have not read that Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize?”
“No. Is there a film possibility in her work?”
They continued to swim side by side.
“You should read and find out. I want to cite one of her best poems, ‘Nothing Twice.’ She says that we arrive here impoverished and leave without a chance to practice.”
“So we make mistakes.”
“And she adds that you can’t repeat the class in the summer because the course is only offered once.”
“What do you think?”
Then the beautiful woman disappeared in a burst of multicolored light that no one else in the pool noticed.
“No naked dance on the water today?” he asked.
No reply.
He pondered the quote as he dressed and decided that it was probably meant to encourage him. He bought a copy of the book of poems on the way back to his office.
“Today is always gone tomorrow” was, he thought, the key line in the poem. You could build a film around that.
Did the lovely seraph intend to tell him that he should lighten up?
Well, maybe he should, except he didn’t know how.
The next day something happened to him that seemed to occur in another world, one that looked like Chicago and yet was subtly different, a mirror world perhaps, but not one that reflected this world so much as altered it, a world in which strange things seemed to happen as a matter of course, a world where boundaries between levels of existence were perilously—or perhaps wondrously—thin.
25
Neenan was walking back to the Sears Tower on Adams Street from the noon Mass at Old St. Patrick’s—so called not because the saint is old, but because the church is old. Later he would distinctly remember that he was still in the ordinary world when he crossed the South Branch of the Chicago River. It was when he passed the Starbucks coffee shop on the east bank of the river that he seemed to spin off into another layer of reality—or so he thought after the fact.
A young woman, sitting at the window of the coffee shop, smiled at him, waved, and then motioned him to come in. At first her short black hair, olive skin, and dark, dancing brown eyes made him think she was a Palestinian, and a very young Palestinian at that, still in her teens. She was short and pretty and was wearing a blue suit and a light blue blouse. Her smile was contagious and her laugher, when she waved him to her table, made Neenan smile, something he had not done all week.
He sat down across the table from her and noticed that her eyes, for all their suggestion of mischievous fun, were wise far beyond their years.
Then he knew who she was. Palestinian indeed.
“They’ve sent in the first team,” he said, wondering whether charm would work with such a woman.
She clapped her hands in delight. “I don’t think of myself that way, but if you want to, it’s all right.”
Her complexion was flawless. She wore no makeup and only a gold wedding band and a pendant with a fish on it.
“You don’t look like your pictures.”
“All those Italian women are quite lovely, aren’t they?” she whispered, as if sharing a great secret with him. “But they’re not me, if you know what I mean? A little too bland, you know?”
“Not enough vitality and mischief?”
“What other kind of woman would get the job?”
That was an interesting point, perhaps an indisputable one. Why had nobody ever thought of it?
She poured him some tea, Earl Grey. Starbucks didn’t do tea, but in this world nothing was quite the same. He began to work on a plate of chocolate chip cookies, the most delicious chocolate chip cookies he had ever tasted. Even the Seraphic Bakeries, should such exist, would never produce such cookies.
“My little playmates are giving you a hard time, aren’t they?”
Neenan didn’t believe what was happening. It was an illusion, a dream, a hallucination. Yet it all seemed genuine enough. The vivacious teen across from him seemed like a very real woman, though hardly what one would have expected.
“You should know, you’re supposed to be their queen.”
She waved that title aside with a brisk and playful gesture. “Oh, that’s only a metaphor. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that bunch, not at all.”
Her gestures and facial expressions were Semitic, which is what they ought to be. She also spoke with a touch of New York Jewish accent, which was doubtless added for effect.
“I see.”
“The angels,” she continued as though she were explaining the rationale for an important bargain that was available for today only, “are darling creatures, brilliant, intense, passionate, brave …”
“A little vain.”
She clapped her hands again. “As they’d be the first to tell you, they have a lot to be vain about. I love them all very much, but, you know, Ray, there’s one thing wrong with them.” She grinned happily as though she were about to deliver a wonderful punch line.
Considering the nature of the company, Neenan was willing to play along. “They’re too pushy?”
“Close,” she giggled, “but not quite on target.”
“I give up.”
“They’re not human!” She clapped her hands again and laughed happily.
“Not like you and I.”
“No way, Ray, no way.”
“What do I call you?”
She shrugged as though it were a matter of complete indifference. “Well, my real name is Miriam. Is that OK?”
“That’s fine, Miriam. You’ve been called a lot of other things.”
She waved her dismissive hand again. “A lot of metaphors.”
“Like what all generations will call you?”
“I totally did not write that Magnificat hymn. Some of the early folks made it up for their Christmas plays and that’s how it got into the Bible. It really is very lovely, but I would never dare say anything like that. Then or now. And while we’re at it, do I look like the kind of woman who would be involved in those creepy apparitions?”
“Now that you mention it, Miriam, no.”
“Not that they do any great harm, but they’re not me, you know?”
“Do you do this sort of thing often?”
“What sort of thing?” she said, hunching her shoulders in gleeful anticipation of another riposte.
“Meet troubled people for a cup of tea in a café that doesn’t do tea?”
For just a moment she was serious. “More often than most people realize. Those with whom I have these little chats know that it’s not wise to talk about them, which is fine with me. Otherwise folks would start making up more silly stories.”
“Unbelievable stories, Miriam?”
She waved that away too. “I don’t mind unbelievable. I do mind just plain silly.”
She refilled his cup of tea and shoved a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies in his direction.
A few moments ago they had been chocolate chip cookies.
“I see.”
“You like my cookies?”
“Scrumptious. You make them yourself?”
“Of course I did. You don’t think I’d buy them in a store, do you?”
“Best I’ve ever eaten.”
“What else would you expect?” she said proudly. “I’ll see that you get some occasionally, just to remind you that I am not an illusion.”
“Maybe you are, Miriam, but right now you don’t seem like an illusion. But aren’t oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies after your time?”
“You gotta keep up,” she said with an artificial sigh. “Now I suppose you wonder why I dragged you in here as you were walking down Adams Street?”
“To feed me the best cookies ever made.”
She flushed with pleasure. “Well, that too. But we’ve been a little worried about you.”
Neenan was not inclined to ask who “we” were. He did not have a map to explain what the world was like beyond the thin boundaries of ordinary life.
“I’m glad someone is worried, to tell you the truth.”
“Michael and Gaby are worried too, terribly worried, but you see they don’t know the future.”
“You do?”
“Naturally.”
“When will I—”
“No questions.” She held up a hand that was gentle and maternal but that could become imperious if necessary. “I give the answers only to the questions I intend to answer.”
She giggled again. “I do, don’t I? I usually do. Anyway, my answer is simple. It will be all right.”
“What will be all right?”
“Everything. What else?”
“Oh.”
“You know, everyone really loves you, Ray. You’re a very special human. God loves you, my boy loves you, I love you, your family and friends love you. Even your enemies love you, kind of anyway.”
My boy. But what else would she call him?
“The seraph crowd are pushing me to take what I think are desperate measures.”
“Don’t,” she said firmly. “Don’t do a thing. Everything will be all right. It always is in God’s time anyway. Right now I’m talking about human time.”
“I should follow my instincts?”
“Absolutely. And don’t tell the seraphs about our little chat, promise? It will hurt their feelings, the poor dears.”
“Heaven forbid.”
She giggled again. “Aren’t they attractive?”
“Very, but those are only surrogates I see.”
“Well, they give pretty good hints, Ray.”
“The other day Gaby turned into a burst of light in the East Bank pool.”
“Yesterday,” Miriam reminded him. “She was just showing off. No harm in that. But I really don’t want to hurt their feelings. You should be gentle with them too, even if they do push you too hard. They are very sensitive.”
“I would never have guessed it.”
“Believe me, they are.”
“I’ll get my wife back?”
“Isn’t she the dearest, sweetest woman?”
She didn’t answer his question, which meant she wouldn’t. He’d have to make do with the promise that everything would be all right.
“Sicilian temper.”
“That makes her even more attractive.”
“You sound like you’re on her side.”
“Well, you haven’t been the world’s most sensitive man, you know that. But I do think she overreacted a tad this time. However, don’t worry about it. Just wait. Like Advent, a time of waiting.”
“You were involved in that too, weren’t you?”
She smiled, this time a smile of a woman of immense wisdom. “Just a little.”
“Thank you for the cookies and the tea,” he said, sensing that this most remarkable tête-à-tête was coming to an end. “And the message of hope.”
Contract with an Angel Page 28
