Guardian Angel

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Oh, my God. What happened?”

  “Hemorrhaged. I wasn’t with her at the time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. We knew we were going to have a girl. That’s how I know so much about names.”

  “Oh.”

  “I always wanted a family. Bit old-fashioned, I suppose, but I go for all the corny stuff.”

  “Not corny to me,” she said.

  I know, he thought. I knew it the moment I saw you.

  He smiled at her and drove on.

  Scott looked out the window of his hotel room. What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself. His father wanted him to come home, but he clung to the belief that Megan would come to her senses. Moving back into the family house was truly accepting the breakup of this marriage. He knew it wasn’t something his father would pine over. In fact, there would be that constant “I told you so” look on his face, and Scott couldn’t imagine himself waking up and seeing that first thing in the morning, much less at dinner every night.

  What frightened him about it all was Megan’s heartfelt outrage. Was he really that bad of a husband and father? Was he really that oblivious to what was happening at home? Megan had once told him he didn’t see his home life as half as exciting as his work life.

  “For you, Scott,” she’d said, “your work is an end in itself. It doesn’t matter what you say you do with your financial success. It’s the pursuit-the game, as you call it—that you live for and not the cars and the house and all the expensive things we have. You’d think more about Jennifer and me if we were a commodity.”

  At the time, he thought her words, her accusations, were so off-the-wall, he didn’t pay any attention to them, but try as he might, he couldn’t shake them off now. Maybe that was because deep down inside he knew she wasn’t completely wrong. But rather than getting him to see things from her point of view, it only frustrated him more.

  How do men of great power and responsibility balance their family needs with their work? How do they compartmentalize so well, and what did it say about him that he couldn’t do it? His father couldn’t do it either, only it never seemed tobother him anywhere near as much as it was now bothering Scott. He should have been more rebellious. He should have defied his father more and become more of his own man.

  Shoulda, coulda, woulda—the slogan of a failed person.

  Am I a failure?

  He looked at the portfolio of work he had taken from the office. He didn’t want to open it and begin, but it was like an addiction. His father needed some numbers crunched, and whether he was doing it to make himself feel better or just to keep him from caring about Megan, he didn’t know, but he had told his father this investment was going to be totally his decision. And it was a considerable amount of money, too.

  He went to the desk and opened the portfolio, but before he reached the end of the first page, there was a terrific tremor, one that shook the very foundation of the hotel. A glass he had too close to the edge of the night table fell and smashed, and the bed itself seemed to rise and fall. It lasted a good forty to fifty seconds. All the windows rattled. He anticipated glass breaking. He actually clung to the sides of the chair. His heart was pounding when the tremor stopped.

  Outside, car alarms were screaming. Doors slammed in the hallway. People were comforting each other. One woman was close to hysterical. Scott rose and opened the door to see the other hotel guests milling about.

  “Did you see that?” a man asked him.

  “See?”

  “The earthquake, forcrissakes.”

  “Yes,” Scott said, and closed the door.

  What does he think? I slept through it?

  The first thing that came to his mind was Jennifer and Megan. He went to the phone and dialed, but the line was busy. He imagined Megan was calling around or friends and neighbors were calling her. He waited and dialed again and again, it was busy.

  Maybe something’s wrong, he thought. He tried one more time and then went for his jacket and shot out of the room.

  Most of the hotel residents had gone down to the lobby and were still there. Many were out-of-towners who had never experienced an earthquake. The hotel management had the waiters from the restaurant serving drinks to help calm people. He made his way to the front and ordered the valet to bring up his car.

  He had been through many tremors, being a native Californian, but it still amazed him how quickly things returned to normal. The damage was relatively light in this area. He’d listen later to see where the epicenter was and where, if anywhere, there was serious damage. Right now, the traffic looked light and there was no sign of any panic.

  He got into his car quickly when it arrived and took off toward his house. He still thought of it as his house, of course. Maybe he’d push to have them sell it and split the proceeds. It wouldn’t break Megan’s heart. She was never ecstatic over it. In fact, he always felt she was embarrassed by its size and opulence. That embarrassment did annoy him. He hated the way she had of making him feel guilty for being so well-off.

  “What are you, a socialist?” he asked, half kidding.

  “No, but sometimes I do feel like I’m living in some kind of bubble.”

  “Viva la bubble,” was his response. “We do our charitable contributions, don’t we? We do more than a lot of others who are just as well-off, if not more. I won’t be ashamed of my success.”

  “I’m not asking you to be ashamed,” she said.

  “So what are you asking me to be?”

  She thought a moment. He was confident that she would cave and just apologize for her attitude. But no, not Megan.

  “More modest, less loud, but most of all, more concerned with what we like and want and not what your father expects us to like and want.”

  He was speechless for a moment, and that made him angry. He walked away and pouted, making himself feel better by berating her for not appreciating what she had. He ranted in his thoughts so long and hard, he had to take a sleeping pill that night.

  Because neither of them brought up the topic for a long while afterward, he’d put it aside, but it was always there, festering beneath the surface of their marriage, part of the unspoken, unheard and unseen tension that he now had to admit he had felt as much as she must have felt. There was no pressure release. He saw that now, but now, it was probably too late.

  All the lights were on in their house when he pulled into the driveway. He got out quickly and ran up to the front door. This was no time to follow any protocol. He dug out his house keys instead of ringing the buzzer, and entered.

  “Megan!” he called.

  Margaret Sanders came out of the living room quickly.

  “Oh, Mr. Lester.”

  “Where’s my wife? Where’s Jennifer?” he asked, rushing toward her.

  Margaret stepped back and he looked into the living room and saw Jennifer curled up on the sofa.

  “She fell asleep there right after the earthquake, and Mrs. Lester said to just let her sleep until she returned. She’s on her way.”

  “Where is she?”

  Margaret hesitated. He could see the abject fear in her face.

  “She went out with someone?”

  She shook her head anticipating his next question. “I don’t know who he is,” she said.

  He stepped back as if he had gotten too close to a hot stove.

  “He?” He looked at Jennifer. She seemed quite at peace. Waking her up wasn’t an option. “Anything break, fall off?”

  “I don’t think so, but I didn’t go through the whole house. I had to stay with Jen.”

  “Right,” he said, and started through the house. Fear had turned to rage. He? What were they, weeks into this at the most? She must have been seeing this guy before the petition for divorce.

  He checked the kitchen. Nothing was broken, but a cabinet had opened and some packages had fallen to the counter. He left it and went to the den. A small trophy he and Megan had won in a dance contest on a cruise ship
a year after they were married had fallen off the shelf. Ironically, nothing else had fallen. He picked it up and read the inscription. Memories of that cruise returned. It had been a Mediterranean cruise with romantic and interesting ports like Santorini, Sorrento, Nice and Monte Carlo. They had made love almost every night and sat on the deck chairs holding hands until one or both of them began to doze off. It had seemed like the whole world was opening up to them back then. How could it go so badly and end up like this?

  He put the trophy back and went upstairs to check the bedrooms. When he went into the master bedroom, he saw how Megan had rifled through various outfits to wear. He could see her agonizing over the choices just the way she usually did whenever they had a place to go. Rejected garments still lay over chairs or on the bed. She wouldn’t put it all away until they came home, usually, and he’d always complained about it. Right now, it almost brought a smile to his face, but then the thought of her being out there with some other man came sweeping back into his mind and he turned and charged out of the room and down the stairs.

  Jennifer was still asleep. Margaret sat across from her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “My parents called. Nothing happened at our house.”

  “Good. Okay. You can tell Mrs. Lester I was here, checking. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  Margaret nodded. He could see how terribly uncomfortable she was in the middle of all this. He almost felt sorrier for her than he did for himself.

  “I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” he muttered, and left.

  For a few moments, he sat in his car, tempted to remain there and confront her when she came back, but he also didn’t want that sort of confrontation at this point. Instead, he backed out and then went up the block, turned around and parked across the street, far enough away not to be noticed, but close enough to observe.

  There he waited, feeling as if he had just been punched hard in the stomach.

  The restaurant was just as Steve Wallace had described, a mom-and-pop operation with no more than ten tables, decorated with Italian memorabilia that ranged from movie posters to pictures of little Italian villages and seaside resorts to hanging garlic. The tables were red with red-cushioned chairs. There was no bar as such, just a small area mainly for the waiters to get the wine and drinks customers ordered. When they arrived, the place was full, but their table was reserved. It was, she thought, the best-placed one because it was in a little alcove near the front window. She heard the Three Tenors singing just loudly enough to clear the cacophony of a half-dozen conversations all going at once.

  The waiters seemed to know Steve well. Unlike the maître d’s of the high-end restaurants she and Scott would frequent, the wife of the owner, a woman in her sixties with straight gray hair and silver and black earrings that captured the sparkle of her ebony eyes, seemed far more natural and relaxed. It was truly like being invited to someone’s home for dinner.

  “I love this place,” she told him when they were seated. “I feel like I’m really in Italy. Have you ever been?”

  “No. I haven’t done anywhere near as much traveling as I would like,” he said. “Different reasons.”

  The waiter brought them a basket of homemade garlic rolls and handed them menus and him the wine list.

  “I usually go for their house Chianti, but if you have something else you like…,” he said, offering the wine menu to her.

  “No, just order what you usually do. I’m sure it’s perfect.”

  He did and the waiter left.

  “Everything sounds so good on this menu. I’m really hungry now.”

  “It all is.”

  “What do you usually have?”

  “The eggplant pasta dish, but the meatballs are to die for.”

  “I’ll go with what you order,” she said, and put the menu down.

  While he ordered for them, she looked around and kept that soft smile on her face, a smile he thought would literally melt his heart.

  “I feel like I’m coming back to earth,” she said.

  He laughed. “I’m glad I could be of some help.”

  “Thank you. So, how do you know so much about names? You knew what Jennifer meant.”

  “Oh, I was doing a lot of thinking about baby names when my wife became pregnant,” he said, looking down and toying with the fork.

  “I’m sorry. I guess sadness has hooked itself onto me right now.”

  “No, no, that’s fine.” He smiled. “So what does this soon-to-be ex-husband of yours do?”

  “He and his father run Lester Enterprises—commercial real estate, investments. I don’t understand half of it or care to.”

  “Lester Enterprises. I’ve heard of them. Might have even worked on one of their projects.”

  “What do you do? I guess it was rude of me not to have asked earlier.”

  “No, you can’t be rude,” he said.

  She laughed. “There are two men who will vehemently disagree with that.”

  He nodded. “I’m in construction, self-contracting. I guess I’m pretty good at it. Never lack for work.”

  “Is that what you’ve always done?”

  “I went to a trade school after high school, did a stint in the navy, which is why I fell in love with boats. I have a twin-diesel eighty-six-foot Cantiere di Lavagna Admiral 26 I keep in San Diego. I got it on a great deal and have fixed it up considerably. You like boats?”

  “Scott—that’s my husband, to be ex-invested in a yacht with two other investors, but we have yet to use it. It was more of a business deal than a pleasure activity for him, which is true for most everything he does.”

  The waiter brought their wine and poured it. She tasted it and smiled.

  “Smooth. I like it.”

  “It’s not expensive,” he said as if to apologize.

  “I like it more then,” she said, and he laughed.

  “I never understood these suits,” he said. The waiter brought their salads.

  “Suits?”

  “Guys with these nine-to-five office jobs.”

  “I wish Scott’s were just a nine-to-five. We might have had a chance then.”

  “To me, going to the same place to do the same work every day would drive me bonkers. I like going to new sites, having new challenges. Besides, you meet different people all the time.”

  “You do make your work sound romantic.”

  “I can tell you this,” he said, leaning toward her. “My customers are usually overjoyed to see me and the others show up.”

  She laughed. “I bet.”

  After their main dish came, he talked more about hisboat, his trips to Mexico, the joy of being free on the open sea, fishing. She sat mesmerized, and the more he saw he was capturing her attention, the happier and more talkative hebecame.

  When the waiter cleared the dishes, he ordered cappuccinos and some homemade biscotti for them.

  “I hope this is sorta making up for the night I ruined for you.”

  “First, you didn’t ruin it. You might very well have saved it. And second, this is the first night in weeks that I’ve relaxed and enjoyed myself. Thank you.”

  “Divorce is hard, huh?”

  “Yes, and especially for me. My husband and his father can get up an army of lawyers, not that I care about all his assets. They’ll just find ways to make it extra difficult, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t understand how a man can be so in love with a woman one day and the next see her as the enemy.”

  “Well, it might not be that exactly, but the effect is—”

  The tremor struck and the tables actually began sliding around the tiled floor. Megan screamed. Steve leaped to his feet and went to her, embracing her as bottles fell off shelves and one picture hanging loosely came crashing down, the glass in its frame shattering. Other customers cried out. Alarms went off outside. The lights flickered and then finally it stopped.

  Megan had her face buried in Steve’s shoulder. He held her tightly, h
olding her protectively. She raised her head slowly.

  “Nice-size one,” he said calmly. Everyone was rushing around to straighten and clean up. One of the customers had a plate of food in his lap.

  “Jennifer!” Megan cried. “I’ve got to call the babysitter.”

  Steve flicked out his cell phone before she could dig for hers in her purse and she made the call. She could hear the hysteria in Margaret’s voice. Jennifer was crying, but got on the phone.

  “I’m coming right home, sweetheart. Just stay in the living room with Margaret, okay?”

  “Okay, Mommy,” she said, suddenly becoming half her age.

  Steve went to pay the bill and they rushed out to the SUV. When he started it up, it stalled. He started it again and it stalled again. After that, the engine wouldn’t turn over.

  “What the hell?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This thing’s acting like it has a dead battery. Has to be the alternator.”

  “I’ve go to get home to Jennifer.”

  “Right. I’ll need to boost the battery, but I’ll go in and have them call a taxi for you.”

  “Hurry,” she said.

  He leaped out, cursing under his breath. He was probably driving on the battery the whole time he had the damn thing. Why didn’t they go over the vehicles more thoroughly? He had the restaurant call for a taxi, but with the street just coming back to normalcy, it took the taxi a while to arrive. He actually had found someone with jumper cables just as the taxi did arrive, but Megan didn’t want to wait.

  “Let me pay for it,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Thank you. I’m sorry,” she said, getting into the taxi.

  He stood there watching it go off. The owner of the cables was getting impatient.

  “Maybe you oughta just call Triple A,” he said, turned and got into his own car.

  As he started away, Steve kicked the side of his car and cursed him. He hit the brakes and opened his door, but when he got out and saw Steve hovering, his hands balled into fists, he got back into his car and drove away.

  He didn’t look back, but if he had, he would have seen Steve still standing there, glaring after him as if he would follow him to the ends of the earth. It would have frightened him more than the earthquake had, and given him far worse nightmares.