Contract with an Angel
Page 30
It also emerged that they were active members of the Paulist parish where he had attended Mass—or “participated in the Eucharist,” as Len reminded him were the proper words “these days.”
The meal passed quickly. Neenan enjoyed himself. He liked his rediscovered son and his austere partner. Thank God he had made peace with them before the end came.
“So what’s with Jenny?” Len asked as they walked to the limo that would bring Neenan back to SFO.
“Apparently making it as an actress and dating Jerry Carter, the director.”
“A very gifted guy,” Johnny said firmly. “Genius.”
“We’re signing him up for a miniseries,” Neenan said. “Starbridge, we’re calling it.”
“Susan Howatch?” they both said together.
“Neat,” Johnny added.
“Johnny is studying theology over at Berkeley,” Len explained. “He’s sky-high on her.”
“We have the rights and hopefully the screenplay. I’m going to read it on the way home.”
“It’ll take a great writer to pull that all together,” Johnny said reverently.
“I think we have one.”
“I don’t know that Jenny will ever break away from Mom. A lot of womanly loyalty there.”
“My guess,” Neenan said, relying on the Jewish teenager he had met in Starbucks, “is that in time she will.”
They shook hands and Neenan entered the limo. Both young men waved at him as the car pulled away.
“You really are the smooth one,” Michael commented. He was wearing, for Sunday morning in San Francisco, the appropriate garb—jeans, a blue turtleneck sweater, and a vest that matched the jeans.
Did they go to church on Sunday?
“It was easy, maybe too easy. Why didn’t I do it long ago?”
“You tell me.”
Neenan sighed. “I was too busy using my charm on power and women.”
“Well, you’re honest enough.”
“I’m glad I had a chance to work things out with Len while I still have time.”
“That’s the whole idea, Raymond Anthony.”
“Where’s herself this morning?”
“Busy elsewhere,” the seraph said in a tone that indicated the issue was not appropriate for discussion. “You also did well last night with the woman in the bar.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s what you did well. She needs someone to help her, but not you. Not now.”
“I take your point.”
“Maybe some other time,” the angel said enigmatically. “As it is, we’ll arrange some other help for her.”
“If there’s going to be another time, it will have to happen soon. It’s not likely I’ll be back here, is it?”
“Probably not enough time,” Michael agreed somewhat enigmatically. “But then you can’t tell about time as the Other sees it. Sometimes He takes a much longer view of time than you do. Or than we do for that matter.”
The Jewish teenager had promised him that everything would be all right. He had to ride with that hope.
“Do you guys go to church on Sunday?” Michael didn’t bat an eye. “In all rational species there is a need for rest and for worship.
On the way back, Neenan opened Annie’s manuscript and began to read it carefully. Since he had not read any of the six books, he did not know what to expect. The story moved with dramatic speed through a half century. The characters were clearly drawn, the conflicts sharp, the theology remarkably interesting, and the conclusion triumphant.
The 3,600 pages of novel were reduced to twelve hours of brilliant programming. It would be the television event of the year, indeed of the decade.
“Not bad, huh?” Michael reappeared as the Gulfstream vectored over Lake Michigan for its final approach to O’Hare. The city stretched out in front of them, a checkerboard of twinkling orange lights on a cloudless, moonless night, caught between the deep dark of the lake and the straggling paths of light on the prairies beyond.
“Dazzling. Someone has to talk her into letting us use the script, even if I’m not the one.”
“Tomorrow is Monday,” the seraph reminded him. “I start invoking the contract.”
“We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
Caught between the seraph’s insistence and the advice of the young woman in the blue suit, he had no doubt which way he would go.
He simply must not worry.
It was Peter’s day off, so a hired limo awaited him at the airport. As it sped north on the toll road toward the Lake Forest exit, Neenan felt lonely and alone. We come into the world sobbing, he thought, and that’s the way we depart.
Well, no one ever promised anyone that everything would work out. At least it had worked out with Len. No fuss and bother. Moreover, that relationship was now, astonishingly, solid. Not many guilt feelings there when he died.
His tentative conviction that everything would be all right seemed shaky. He shifted uneasily in his seat, dreading the empty house that awaited him. His knee encountered a small box. He picked it up, held it to the light. No label.
A bomb?
Maybe.
He shook it.
Cookies!
Carefully he opened the wrapping. Oatmeal raisin this time.
The first team was active. Everything would be all right.
He ate every one of the cookies. Long swim tomorrow.
But his morale faded as they pulled up to his house. Eleven o’clock. Two long, tiring days. He’d have to cut back on these kinds of trips.
He thanked the driver, who opened the door for him, signed the bill and added his usual 25 percent tip, and carried his bags up to the house.
It was completely dark inside.
He opened the door and trudged up the stairs to his room. He turned the light on in his bedroom and dropped his bags on the floor. Home is the hunter, home from the hill.
Then he noticed that someone was in his bed. He quickly dimmed the light he had turned on and tiptoed over to the bed. Sure enough, she had come home.
She looked like a peacefully sleeping child, her body flat on her back, her limbs neatly arranged, her face serene, her .hair done up behind her head, one strap on her pink nightgown hanging off her shoulder. He leaned over her and gently caressed her face with the back of his fingers.
She sighed contentedly.
“Don’t you dare hurt her!” a voice hissed nearby.
Gaby, in an elaborate off-white gown and negligee.
“Why in the world would I hurt her?” he asked. “She’s my wife and I love her and I’m happy to have her back.”
“You’re furious at her.”
“Nope. That’s the first mistake I’ve ever caught you guys in. I’ll be as gentle as a mother with a little child.”
“Don’t you dare wake her up,” Gaby replied, somewhat mollified.
“I wasn’t planning on waking her up.”
He touched her shoulder tenderly, moving the strap farther down her arm, so he could see the top of a lovely breast.
“She’s terribly fragile,” Gaby insisted. “She knows she’s made a fool out of herself and is terribly sorry. All she needs is you lording it over her and she’ll break down completely.”
“Do I look like I’m about to punish her?”
“No.”
“Or lord it over her?”
“No.”
“Or even tell her ‘I told you so’?”
“Nor.”
“Then why are you hassling me?”
“Just to make sure,” she said with a giggle. “All right, I guess you won’t hurt her. It’s going to take time for her to get over what she did to you.”
“Not because I am going to be angry at her.”
“I guess not. But she’ll be angry at herself.”
“Gabriella, ma’am, I love her. I intend to love her for however many days or weeks I might have. I won’t hurt her.”
“All right. I believe you.”
“Don’t wait too long in the morning,” she warned him, and dematerialized.
“Bossy,” he sighed.
Anna Maria sighed softly when he stretched out next to her. Almost immediately he went to sleep, perhaps aided by some angel dust. Or by the ancient lullaby that was playing in his head again.
“Thank you for the cookies,” he murmured.
He woke up once in the night to discover his wife’s head on his chest where it belonged. He eased the other strap of her gown off her shoulder and went back to sleep.
27
Neenan awoke to the smell of coffee, fresh cinnamon-raisin rolls, and the soap of a wife fresh from the shower. He opened his eyes. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, pale and grim in a lime-colored terry-cloth robe. She offered him a tray with a mug of coffee and three buttered rolls. He took the tray, put it on the table next to the bed, and took her hand. She lowered her eyes and murmured, “Sorry.”
She was a step away from hysterical sobs.
He caressed her arm with one hand and raised a finger to her lips. “That’s all you need to say. It’s over.”
With his fingers he forced her lips into a smile. Then he withdrew his fingers. The smile remained.
“I was worried about you when I came home last night …,” she said. “You’re taking off my robe.” She looked away in embarrassment.
“I want you in bed with me while I eat my breakfast.”
“All right,” she said as she discarded the robe and snuggled in next to him, her eyes still downcast, her body stiff.
“I flew to Paris.”
“You did not,” she giggled. “I canceled the reservations.”
“I had an assignation with another woman.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said laughing. “Megan said she thought maybe you went to California to see Jenny.”
“No, Len.”
“How did it work out?”
“Fine. He and his partner, who is a very nice boy, are active in the Paulist parish in San Francisco.”
“I didn’t go to church this weekend.”
“Shame.”
“You should be angry at me and I should be sobbing my regrets.”
“Not in this house.”
“Love means you don’t have to say you’re sorry?”
“You did say you were sorry.”
“Not very forcefully … . What are you doing to me?”
“What do you think I’m doing to you?”
The stiffness went out of her body and she clung to him. “Are you going to make love with me?”
“Eventually; when I’ve finished with my breakfast. I may just kiss every inch of you to show how happy I am to have you back.”
“I missed having you inside of me,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve become a wanton woman.”
“I missed you too.”
“I knew by Monday morning that I had been a stupid fool. Especially after all I had said with my loud Sicilian mouth about your not having to clear things with me. I was afraid to call you. I thought you’d be furious at me.”
She rested her hand on his chest.
“Like I’ve been furious with you before.”
“I never did anything that dumb before … . Promise me something?”
“Sure.”
“If I ever do anything that dumb again, give me twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the most, and then come and drag me back. I promise I’ll come without protest.”
“Fair enough,” he sighed. “I thought about that, but wasn’t sure.” He put aside the coffee mug.
“Don’t think about it again,” she said as she rested her lips against his. “I feel I shouldn’t be forgiven this easily.”
“I was never angry at you, Anna Maria.” His fingers captured one of her graceful little breasts and teased it.
“Really?”
“I was angry at myself for being clumsy. A person doesn’t have to earn forgiveness from a lover. It’s a given. It’s always there.”
How the hell did I ever come up with that line? Is Gaby around here whispering in my ear?
“How beautiful … . I’m sorry I burned the script … please don’t stop that.”
“You know and I know that it’s still on your hard disk and I made copies of it at the office.”
She sat up straight, dislodging the sheet and blanket that had protected her.
“Really!”
“Of course, really.” He kissed her smooth, cool belly.
“You really are going to make love to me?”
“After I have caressed and kissed you at great length.”
“How do you know I need a lot of caressing and kissing? … I suppose that’s a silly question … . You’ll be late for work.”
“I own the company.” He threw the covers off the bed and thus exposed her pliant body.
“That’s true … . Are you really going to make the miniseries? I don’t own the rights to the novels.”
“I do.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “My husband never misses a trick … . Stop tickling me!”
“You’d better get a lawyer.”
She stopped giggling and restrained his marauding hands. “A divorce lawyer!”
“Of course not! A lawyer who can negotiate with our people about the script. They don’t have to know who Marianne Swift is. For all concerned it might be better that you be anonymous till the critics go wild.”
“We tell them that Marianne is your wife only when the series is a success? If it fails, none of us know who the author is, right? See, I can be reasonable on occasion.”
“It won’t fail.”
“You can go back to tickling me now … . How much is it worth?”
“Whatever you can get from us. I’ll stay out of the bargaining.”
“I’m such a stupid idiot,” she sighed. “I don’t deserve all this loving.”
And I don’t believe I’m as patient and forgiving as I am.
“You’re going to get it anyway.”
“I was terrified when I came home last night that you wouldn’t let me in the house.”
“Or maybe that I would beat you unmercifully.”
“No,” she said with another giggle, “I knew you wouldn’t do that … . I thought you were going to cover me with kisses.”
“In due course.”
The phone rang. Neenan directed one of his wandering hands to pick it up.
“Neenan.”
“Mr. Neenan, we’re wondering if you will be in today.”
“Before noon, Amy. I’m heavily engaged in difficult work just now.”
“I see.”
Did she have any idea what he meant?
“Mr. Vincent Neenan is most eager to talk to you.”
Another victim of the Palestinian woman named Miriam. It will be all right, she had said. It would be, at least until he died. Then others would have to take over.
“Tell him I’ll be in around twelve or so.”
“Yes, Mr. Neenan.”
“What are you going to do for the next three hours?” Anna Maria asked.
“Fool around with my wife. I have to make up for lost opportunities.”
“You punish her by driving her crazy with desire?”
“Seems the most useful way of doing it.”
“Vinny wants to see you?” she said, squirming now as her hormones drove to the far edge of desire.
“So she says.”
“He is such an asshole. Not that I’m anyone to talk … . Oh, Ray, please … I can’t stand it anymore.”
“I’m only working up steam … . You’ve talked to Meg?”
“She thinks that he’s an asshole and I am too. She just about ordered me to come back …” Her voice trailed off in a g
roan.
“How did she predict I would react?”
Anna Maria struggled to find her voice, “Just about the way you are … . Please …”
His lips began their promised assault. She screamed with pleasure and joy for the rest of their romp. The choir hummed softly and the colors of the room modulated, not that his wife was in any condition to notice these sideshows.
In the shower afterward she murmured, “I think I’ll lose my temper and run off every week if this is what happens as a result.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“By the way, I changed the reservations for our Paris trip to this coming weekend.”
“When did you do that?”
“Last Monday when I knew what an asshole I was.”
“Did Megan predict all of the details of how I punished you?”
“Megan is too young to know that such things are possible between people desperately in love with one another. She’ll learn.”
“With your subtle advice?”
“Maybe not too subtle.”
The angelic trumpets struck up an intricate fanfare.
“I keep imagining I hear music,” Anna Maria said.
“Maybe Maeve has the radio on too loud.”
Later when Anna Maria was sleeping and he was dressing for work, Gaby appeared, still in the gown and negligee.
“You really did astonishingly well,” she said. “For a human male.”
“Thanks a lot,” he replied as he tied his tie.
“It’s still going to be awkward for her for a time. She continues to be quite vulnerable … but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”
“I never ignore useful advice.”
She laughed. “That’s not altogether true, but we’ll let it pass … . You understand that the problem with your son will be the opposite? You had to restore Annie’s faith in her womanliness. You must rebuild his confidence in his manliness.”
“Good point … . It’s useful to have guardian angels around, especially when they are as pretty as you are in that bedtime outfit.”
“You are as bad as my companion,” she snorted as she faded into whatever sixth or seventh dimension of space-time her kind lived in.