The Third Angel

by Alice Hoffman

  Frieda carried her father's doctor's bag. She liked to do that for him. Her father knew everything about nature. He was a bird-watcher and he was on a committee to eradicate foxhunting, which he thought barbaric. He had once brought home a rabbit, which they had kept as a pet through the cold winter months, but when spring arrived Frieda's father convinced her it would be best to set the rabbit free. They'd watched it hop away into the hedges, and Frieda had agreed that it seemed right for the rabbit to be out in the field, running so far it was soon enough a dot on the horizon. She never even thought to ask her father where he'd gotten that rabbit. He'd come home from a conference in London and there it was in the backseat of his car, curled up on his black winter coat.

  It's a hotel rabbit, he told Frieda. You don't find those too often.

  That animal is not living in my house, Frieda's mother had said. Rabbits are dirty. And they turn on you.

  Frieda had never paid much attention to her mother, whose name was Violet, an old-fashioned name belonging to an old-fashioned woman who stayed in the background. Her word hadn't counted for much. Of course, the hotel rabbit had stayed. The doctor built a hutch in the kitchen and there the rabbit remained all through the winter, eating carrots, lettuce, and peas.

  Don't marry a man who always has to have his own way, Frieda's mother had told her. Marry someone who gives a damn about what you have to say. But Frieda had believed her father's way to be the right way, so she paid no attention to her mother's complaints.

  At the house with the white horses, a woman opened the door. She was a pretty, dark woman, but she looked worn out. She'd been crying. “He's already gone,” she said. “He's left me.”

  Frieda noticed everything that night. The way the clock sounded, the green woolen carpet, the wooden mantel over the fireplace. They left her in the living room while they went into the bedroom. She could hear the clock and the woman crying and the low sound of her father's voice. She felt nothing bad could happen if her father was around, not then and not ever. She realized that she still had his bag so Frieda went down the hall. She saw her father with his arms around the woman he called Jenny, leaning against him, sobbing. She saw the dead man in the bed. The room smelled foul, a mix of shit and blood. The bedsheets were stained brown. The man looked like a person and yet he didn't, a wax figure without his soul or spirit or whatever it was. No life force. No wonder this woman was sobbing. Frieda's father spied her then.

  “Why don't you sit with Mrs. Foley while I call for an ambulance to come round,” he said to her. “We can't have Jim staying here like this.”

  Frieda looked at her father. He usually referred to the deceased as the body. He never used a person's name once they were gone, not until now. Somehow this night seemed different. Frieda was not the least afraid to be in a room with the dead. It was only a body. If anything, it was the dead man's wife she was afraid of, all those tears, all that emotion.

  “Thank you, Frieda,” the woman said to her. She'd known her name. “I couldn't be alone.”

  In the car, driving home, Frieda's father sang “Fly Me to the Moon” again, but now it sounded sadder. There was no moon, in fact, well maybe a little one, hidden by the trees.

  “I'm proud of the way you acted,” the doctor said as they drove back across the bridge. “You have something special. You're willing to examine things and see what they really are instead of just reacting, screaming like you've seen a mouse the way most people would do when confronted with death.”

  “I like mice,” Frieda had said.

  “Exactly!” her father had said proudly. “You like mice. That is not typical for a teenaged girl. The things that distress and frighten other people don't scare you. I'm not sure you realize how rare that is.”

  Now, sitting in the park in her black dress, Frieda thought her father would disapprove of her. She hadn't turned out the way he had expected; nothing had. Well, everything changed in this world, Frieda and her father included. There wasn't much to be proud of anymore. A maid, not a university student. A girl wearing black eyeliner. Although Frieda still liked mice. At the hotel they were supposed to set out poison, under the beds and the bureaus, but Frieda never did. Secretly, she left out a bit of cheese every now and then in the corner of her room near the heater. It was always gone by morning.

  At the far bench in the park, there was a young man asleep. He had long hair and he was out cold, breathing with slow raspy breaths. Drugs or alcohol, Frieda surmised. Possibly an overdose; possibly mild pneumonia. Frieda restrained herself from butting in; she would not allow herself to go over and check to see if the fellow was conscious. The world didn't always have to be her responsibility. Maybe the man on the bench was the Third Angel and maybe he was a homeless drunk. It was not up to Frieda to speculate. She was young and she wanted to live like she was young. She didn't want to think about dead bodies and meningitis and concussions and liver damage and the Angel of Death. She wanted to think about true love that would never die, she wanted to hear music, she wanted to balance along a window ledge on the seventh floor, arms out, and not be afraid of falling or have her mind be taken up with the many ways in which bones could shatter.

  Frieda walked back to the hotel the long way around, through little side streets. She loved to look in windows and imagine what it might be like to live another life. She stopped at the coffee shop and sat at a table by the window and ordered a pot of tea and a cheese sandwich. She kept a few scraps in a napkin to take home for the mice. She was thinking about her song; it was as though it was a part of her. The fellow at the next table tried to flirt with her, offering her the pitcher of milk, then the sugar bowl, for her tea, but Frieda wasn't interested. He tried conversation then.

  “I hear John Lennon's staying right down the street,” he said, trying to impress her.

  “You heard wrong,” Frieda said. “John Lennon would never stay around here.”

  She went back to the hotel, elbowing her way through the crowd of girls outside. Jack Henry let her through the door.

  “A total madhouse,” he said, happy as could be, certain he'd score with one of the girls whom he promised to get up to the room where Lennon was allegedly secreted away.

  Frieda thought about Jack Henry going through a drunken man's wallet; she didn't like the way he was staring at her black dress. If he'd been Mick Jagger that would have been one thing, but he wasn't.

  Frieda went up to her room and took out her verse and rewrote it again, changing words as she went along. When she was done, it looked perfect. She'd used a pen she'd borrowed from the front desk and real India ink. Lennie came in from working all day, exhausted. She'd had a fight with her sister, and now Meg was making her pay for her sharp words, giving Lennie all the worst assignments. That day she'd been put on kitchen duty and she'd had to scrub the ovens. Then she'd been sent to a suite where a bachelor party had taken place the night before. She took off her white maid's apron and threw herself down on the bed beside Frieda.

  “Human beings are pigs.” Lennie lay on her back, one arm over her face. “Why can't they clean up after themselves? People leave their condoms on the floor. Used ones, mind you!And they know some poor maid will have to clean up after them. How do they live with their disgusting selves?”

  “Listen to this.” Frieda propped herself up on one elbow. “Forget about condoms. Just close your eyes.”

  In another world she and Lennie would have never met. Frieda would have had university friends, but none of them would have understood her the way Lennie did. The room was hot but there was a breeze coming in through the window. They could hear the girls gathered in the street chanting.

  “Shut up, you idiots,” Lennie grumbled with her eyes closed. “He's not bloody registered here. I asked my sister and she said it's some guy named Lemming.”

  “Block them out and listen to me.”

  Frieda pulled down the shade so the room darkened and the noise was a little less annoying. She settled in to read “The Ghost of Michael
Macklin” aloud. She read it slowly, as though her life depended on it. When she was done she threw herself down on her back beside Lennie.

  “You wrote that?” Lennie said. Her eyes were open now.

  “I did.”

  “It's fucking amazing. Jesus, Frieda. What are you, a poet in disguise?”

  “They're song lyrics,” Frieda said.

  “Well who would have guessed? You're very surprising. You're a freak of nature if you really want to know. What can't you do? I will never understand why you're working as a maid when you're fucking brilliant.”

  “You really think it's good?”

  “It's better than ‘We all live in a yellow submarine,' I'll tell you that. It's wonderful. It reminds me of something, not in the words so much, but in the feeling.”

  It was “Greensleeves”; Frieda knew that's what it was. And that was just what she'd wanted, the kind of song that could come up behind you and grab you with its sheer emotion.

  “If John Lennon ever did stay here,” Lennie mused, “maybe I'd say I have a friend with a brilliant song for you, Mr. Lennon.” She was falling asleep. “She pretends to be a maid but she's a fucking poet. You need to rescue her from the Lion Park Hotel, Johnny boy.”

  Lennie was asleep in no time. Frieda never bothered to tell her that she didn't want to be rescued. If anything, it was the other way around. She was her father's daughter still when it came to matters of life and death. You never knew who you might save in this world.

  Frieda was on the late shift, so she left Lennie sleeping and had her dinner with some of the other girls in the kitchen. The staff at the hotel was given dinner five days a week, meals consisting of whatever the restaurant hadn't sold out of the day before. Frieda wore her black dress under her maid's smock. She'd washed and straightened her hair and had painted on her Cleopatra eyes. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror set into the highboy across from the long table where the staff ate. She looked surprisingly attractive. She didn't look like a girl who didn't mind mice and dead bodies and illness.

  “Don't you look dressy?” a gossipy girl named Vicky said to her. “Hoping to run into some famous musician?”

  “Lennon isn't staying here, you twit,” Frieda gleefully informed Vicky. “It's someone named Lemming.”

  It was Jamie whom Frieda had been thinking of when she dressed up. She'd gone past his room in the afternoon and knocked at the door, but there'd been no answer. She actually went down to the front desk to ask Lennie's sister if he was still registered.

  “You know I can't tell you,” Meg said. “Privacy issues. I'd lose my job. We're known for our discretion, aren't we?”

  “Mr. Lemming is probably hoping so. Imagine if all those groupies descended upon him and he's probably just here to have an affair or dress up in women's clothes.”

  Meg raised one eyebrow; she might have laughed if she wasn't in charge. “Why do you want to know about 708?”

  “It's personal,” Frieda said.

  “Personal is always a mistake. Trust me on that.”

  All the same, Meg left the book open when she went to the file room for a customer's bill. Frieda thumbed through till she came to his name. He was still registered. Room 708. He hadn't gone.

  Frieda worked fast that night; she didn't clean the rooms as well as she might have, but she frankly didn't think the clientele at the Lion Park would notice. They were more concerned with privacy and locked doors. She turned down the beds and emptied the trash and left it at that. If she vacuumed, most of the guests wouldn't even notice. All they wanted were a few clean towels and to be left alone.

  She went up to his room as soon as she was done. She felt silly and embarrassed and her pulse was wild. She stood in the hall thinking. Was it a mistake to make this personal? To think she was anything more than a maid? The hallway was especially cold and Frieda had little bumps up and down her arms. Before she could decide what to do, Jamie opened the door. He was going out to meet Stella. He was already late. He'd been shooting more heroin every day. He never thought he'd be one to get hooked, and if he was—so what? He was dreamy and loose. He felt like anything could happen. He wore his purple jacket and jeans and a white shirt and cowboy boots he'd bought on West Fourth Street the last time he was in New York. He was feeling washed-up and his career hadn't even begun.

  “Hey,” he said when he saw the maid in the hall. Heroin was like the bed in Stella's house, all feather down, white and waiting.

  “Hello,” Frieda said. She was still wearing her stupid smock that she'd forgotten to remove. “It's me again.”

  “I'm just on my way,” Jamie said. “I'm late.”

  “Sure. I understand.”

  Frieda blinked her Cleopatra eyes. She looked right at him in a way most girls didn't. Square on in some strange way. Not at all self-conscious. She acted as though she thought she was somebody. It was a little confusing.

  “But I could have a drink first.” Jamie had a little time, after all. He wasn't that late. Truth was, he'd like to stay in bed dreaming, half in reality and half somewhere a million miles away. It was so hard to get anything done in this world; there were so many interruptions. But this girl was a welcome distraction. She was like a doorway to another place. Jamie had known such people in the past—some of the nurses who'd cared for him when he was in the hospital. They had opened up time and space and let him step out of his pain. They were magicians, really, and when they left and he was there all alone under the white sheets and cotton blankets, his leg throbbing, in agony, he wondered how they'd managed to make him forget it all, even for a minute. Jamie had been avoiding the here and now for so long he looked for any portal out. He thought this girl might help him and he never said no to an offer.

  They went into his room. Jamie didn't even think to be embarrassed by the mess. She'd seen it before, and what was the difference really? He'd be out of here soon.

  The room was so rank Frieda laughed, then went to throw open the window. “Good lord. It smells like there was a fire.”

  Creative men were disorderly and untidy and filled with ideas. Frieda wasn't surprised to see that the ashtray was overflowing with burned paper. There were ashes on the carpeting and some black singe marks as well. Frieda thought she'd move the desk a few inches and cover it up and no one would ever be the wiser.

  “My song,” Jamie said when he noticed Frieda looking at the ashy mess. Some water had been sloshed over it, which had only made more of a mess. “Or it was.”

  “Didn't work out?”

  He looked so broken, and Frieda had always been drawn to broken things. She noticed needles in the ashtray. Her father had always told her to be careful with sharp objects, to wrap them in tissue so no one would get hurt. She looked more closely at Jamie as he poured their drinks. His hand was shaking. He was an addict. Frieda's father would have intuited that in a flash, as soon as he'd seen him. All the signs were there: dilated pupils, scabs on his arms, the pallor of his skin. Frieda hadn't seen it before and that puzzled her. She was usually so clear about things. She picked up on small details, and she'd missed this entirely.

  “I never really finished the song,” Jamie admitted. “I got fed up.”

  “My good fortune.” Frieda had no idea how she came to be so brazen. What was wrong with her? She had the urge to open the top bureau drawer and see what was inside. She wanted to know him completely. “Now I suppose you owe me,” Frieda said.

  Jamie looked at her, not understanding.

  “We bet the purple jacket, not that you have to give it to me, but we did make a bet and I do believe you lost.”

  Jamie nodded. “You're right.” Though it pained him to lose it, he took off the jacket and gave it to Frieda. It was laid across her lap. He'd bought the purple jacket after his first paying gig in New York. Other than his guitar, it was his favorite possession. And his cowboy boots. He couldn't live without them. He certainly wasn't about to let those go. “Consequences and all that, right?”

  �
�You don't really have to give it to me,” Frieda said, though she wanted the jacket desperately. She ran her hand over the fringe. The other girls would die of jealousy.

  Jamie bowed. “It's all yours. A real man pays his debts.”

  Frieda took off her white maid's apron and put on the suede jacket. She stood on a chair so she could get a look at herself in the mirror. Was that really her? The girl from Reading all done up like a dolly? If she saw herself walking out on the street, she would have thought she belonged in a magazine standing alongside Jean Shrimpton. Frieda laughed out loud and her laugh was so pure Jamie felt something go through him. Before he could stop himself he invited her out with his friends.

  “We're just going to a club. You probably wouldn't be interested.”

  It was a private nightclub that Stella and Marianne belonged to, right behind a hotel in Mayfair. You wouldn't guess it was there if you didn't know about it; no number outside, no name. It was called the Egyptian Club and every drink cost double what it would in a decent pub.

  “I'm interested,” Frieda said.

  Maybe it was the purple jacket, maybe it was something else, but she just didn't want to let him go. They went out to get a taxi. Just that one drink had done something to Frieda. She was like another person. Jack Henry and Meg at the desk didn't even recognize her as she left. Not with that purple jacket and the black dress with Jamie guiding her past the crowd of girls still stationed outside. When the fans saw Jamie they started screaming. It was his long hair and the girl with the Cleopatra eyes who accompanied him that jump-started the screaming—they looked like they were somebodies. They sprinted for the taxi and jumped inside, laughing. Frieda felt like an impostor, but she didn't care.

  “I didn't think anyone would know who I was,” Jamie said. He'd only played a few gigs in London, the ones that hadn't gone so well. People had been chattering the whole time and the applause had been sparse. They wanted something louder than what he'd given them; something to shake their souls. “I don't even have a record yet. They couldn't possibly know me.That was weird.”