“OK,” the alleged boss seraph agreed.
Gaby stood up, touched Anna Maria’s face with her fingers, and then kissed her on the forehead. Anna Maria smiled contentedly.
Then Gaby kissed Neenan’s forehead and filled him with warmth and peace.
Both seraphs then dematerialized. Where they had been, there was nothing. Neenan was not at all sure, however, that they were not still on the plane.
Anna Maria opened her eyes, glanced around as she tried to figure out where she was. Then her eyes found him.
“Who are you, strange man?” she said.
“One of your worshipers.”
“That’s what they all say,” she said as she stretched. “I think I’ll change my clothes so I’ll be ready for Florida.”
These two angels, if that was what they really were, had become substitute parents for him. They were the kind of parents that he had always wished he had. Undoubtedly they knew that. But, he thought, grinning to himself, they didn’t know that he knew. He was one up on them again, just as he had been when he had figured out that Anna Maria could see them, before they did.
They were pretty good parents. This seraphic mother could kiss his forehead anytime she wanted.
Anna Maria emerged from the other room. “Florida clothes. We Sicilians like warm weather.”
She was wearing terry-cloth shorts, held together by a drawstring, and a cropped tank top and an unbuttoned white shirt.
“I don’t think you’d dare wear that outfit in Sicily,” he said approvingly.
“I’m not in Sicily.”
“True … What if it’s not warm?”
“High today in Fort Myers,” she said, reclining in her chair, “will be in the mid-eighties—and through the weekend. This was a good idea of mine. How far are we from Tampa?”
“Half hour out of St. Petersburg; we’ll land at the airfield by the bay.”
She hesitated. “If you want me to come with you, I’ll change into something more appropriate.”
“I would like to have you along as a reinforcement; yet I’d better try to do it by myself. It’s my problem, not yours.”
“I’d probably make things worse anyway.”
“If you did, it wouldn’t be your fault. My parents are acutely unhappy people. Always have been. They look for people to blame instead of assuming personal responsibility. Most of us do the same thing, but not with such intensity.”
“How did you ever survive, love?” She leaned across the aisle and kissed his forehead just as Gaby had done. Once more Neenan was filled with peace and reassurance and warmth.
“Thank you … I’m not sure that I have.”
“You have to straighten everything out, don’t you? Like you think you’re going to die?”
“I’m afraid they’re not going to last much longer. It’s probably now or never with them.”
She didn’t contest his evasion, but it did not follow that he had convinced her. Whenever the end came, she would look back and understand.
That thought saddened him, more this time for her loss than his.
“They’ve been unhappy all their lives?”
“As long as I’ve known them. They had to get married, you know. I’m sure they did not want to and blamed each other for what happened. It was probably hate from day one.”
“She was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“With you?”
“Who else?”
Anna Maria sighed. “No wonder they are angry at you, even if you were the innocent.”
“I think Mom wanted me to be a priest so I would atone for their sin.”
“Do you think it was sinful?”
“Young people in wartime when the man is home for his final leave and both their bodies are stewing with hormones? I won’t throw the first stone.”
Anna Maria nodded, but with a puzzled frown.
I would never have said that before, Neenan thought. I’m changing too fast to keep up with myself. I’m breaking up, just like this jet would break up if it crashed into the bay.
“Fasten your seat belts please,” the captain announced. “We’ll be landing at St. Petersburg shortly. The temperature is seventy-eight degrees. The high is expected to be in the middle eighties this afternoon.”
They flew in off the Gulf, over St. Petersburg, which glittered in the clear sunlight, circled above the azure bay, and then descended toward the bayside airport. Anna Maria clutched his hand.
“I love you,” she said.
“Even after a safe landing?”
“More then.”
The plane landed smoothly and taxied to the small terminal. A stretch Cadillac limo waited for them in front of the terminal. Anna Maria released his hand.
“Can I walk along the bayside?” she asked as she buttoned her shirt.
“Sure. Turn left and you’ll walk down to the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. There’s a nice marina there too.”
“How long will you be?”
“I don’t know. Probably less than an hour. Their apartment is only ten minutes from here.”
She kissed him briefly on his lips. “Good luck.”
“I’ll need every bit of it … . Don’t forget to put on some suntan lotion. The sunlight is intense.”
“Sicilians don’t sunburn … . Don’t look so serious. Of course, I’ll put on suntan cream. It’s too bad you won’t be here to do it for me.”
The limo driver had turned on the air-conditioning. The car was cool and relaxing. Neenan, however, became more tense with each succeeding moment.
His parents’ condo was in a tall building facing the bay, with a spectacular view of the bay, the bridges, downtown St. Petersburg, and Tampa in the distance. It was probably the most expensive dwelling place in the city. They hated everything about it.
The doorman rang them for almost a minute before anyone answered.
“Mr. Neenan, your son, to see you, Mrs. Neenan.”
The doorman turned to Neenan and said, “Your mother is very forgetful, Mr. Neenan. She says she doesn’t have a son. I believe your father has pushed the buzzer, however, so you can go right up.”
“Great beginning,” he whispered to himself in the elevator.
He knocked repeatedly at the door. Finally, his father, a small man, gray and grizzled and wearing wrinkled tan slacks and a tattered, plain white T-shirt, opened the door.
“What do you want?” he snarled.
“I was in the area and thought I’d stop in to say hello.”
“You did, eh? What made you think we’d want to see you?”
Despite the hostility, his father stepped aside to permit him to enter. The apartment was permeated by a foul smell and a mess—newspapers, potato-chip and popcorn bags. An elderly Cuban woman came in every day to clean and cook for them, but apparently she could not stay ahead of the mess. The forty-five-inch television he had bought for them was blaring, but the picture was blurred.
“Look who’s here,” his father said to the woman who was crouched low in a chair by the window, staring, malignly Neenan thought, at the bay.
Where the hell are my seraphs? I thought they’d be in the car with me.
“Who’s that?” the bent old woman said with total disinterest.
“Says he’s our son, pays the bills here in this dump, so maybe he’s your son anyway.”
“The only son I had was a priest and he’s dead now.”
She began to wail softly, a tuneless cry of grief and despair.
“Shut up, old woman,” his father ordered. “You’re as crazy as a loon … . Well, what do you want?”
Uninvited, Neenan sat down.
Michael and Gaby materialized, apparently through the window overlooking the bay. Gaby put her arm around his mother. Gradually the wailing ceased.
“’Bout time that old fool shut up,” his father snarled, sinking into a dirty easy chair. “Someday I’m going to strangle her and throw her out that window … . Now,
what do you want?”
Michael touched the TV and the picture—of a daytime soap—went into instant focus. He touched it again and the volume diminished to a whisper. Neither his father nor his mother noticed the change.
Michael—now in white shorts and a black T-shirt that announced in golden letters “Seraphic Vineyards”—sat on the windowsill. The smell that had permeated the apartment yielded to a flower-garden - aroma.
Show-offs.
“I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“How the hell do you think we’re doing? Aren’t we locked up in this ugly dump? Doesn’t that bossy nigger you hired to keep an eye on us try to run our lives? Isn’t the food terrible? Aren’t the neighbors bums? With all the money you have you could have done better by us, especially since you euchred us out of all our money.”
Euchre was his father’s favorite word. Gaby bounced out to the kitchen.
“This is the best condo in St. Petersburg, Dad,” Neenan tried to respond.
“It’s pure shit and you know it.”
Gaby returned with a bottle of white wine, Seraphic Vineyards chenin blanc, according to the label, and three glasses. She poured a generous portion of the wine into each glass and gave one to him and one to her companion. Then she resumed her place at his mother’s feet, put her arm around her, and began to sip from her own glass.
“I can move you somewhere else, Dad.”
“Into worse shit … . I know you came here to lord it over us again. You want to rub it in that you euchred me out of my business. If I wasn’t saddled with a crooked son, who really wasn’t my son at all, I’d be richer than you are.”
In fact, his father lacked all the abilities that would have been required to move beyond his small station and his little machine shop. But his conviction that he had been cheated by his son was unshakable.
“I’ve been wondering whether we could forget the past and try to be friends again,” Neenan said, trying to get down to business.
“Again?” his father sneered. “When were we ever friends? I tried to be a good father to you, even though one look at you was enough to see that you were no son of mine. You hated me before you could talk.”
Neenan sipped the wine. It was pure delight. If he could import enough Seraphic Vineyards, he would double his holdings. Shouldn’t be thinking about such things.
“I don’t think that’s true, Dad. But that’s all behind us. I’d like to forget the past and try to be friends in the present.”
Michael was watching Neenan intently, doubtless waiting to see if he’d lose his temper.
“I ought to throw you and that whore who deceived me out that window right now.”
“Would that make you happy, Dad?”
“It would make me the happiest man in the world. I’d get even with you for euchring me out of my fortune.”
His father struggled to rise from his chair, then sank back into it.
“You goddamn son of a bitch,” the old man snarled.
“Would you like a glass of wine, Dad?”
“If you got any, that shit-faced nigger won’t let us have any.”
Gaby cocked an eye in Neenan’s direction and smiled.
“She’s Cuban, Dad.”
“A nigger is a nigger. This one sticks pins in little dolls.”
From somewhere, the womanly seraph produced a fourth wineglass and filled it with the remains of the chenin blanc.
“She’s a registered nurse.”
“Registered witch doctor, if you ask me.”
The wineglass appeared in his father’s hand. Gingerly he sipped. Then he spat it out in disgust.
“You trying to poison me with this goddamn cow piss?”
“I’m sorry, Dad. It’s the best chenin blanc in the world.”
“I said that it’s cow piss, and cow piss it is. I wouldn’t put it past you to try to kill us. Someday someone’s going to investigate you and give us all our money back. You’ll go to jail where you belong. I’ll have the last laugh.”
The wineglass disappeared from his father’s hand. Michael watched implacably.
“How much money do you want, Dad?”
“Every fucking penny, every cent you got, all the property and the stations and whatever else, every bit of it. Then maybe I won’t tell the truth to the reporters when they come around.”
“Is there nothing I can do to persuade you to forgive me?”
“Forgive you? Why the hell should I forgive you, asshole? I won’t be happy till I see you rotting in jail where you belong. I wouldn’t forgive you to save my immortal soul!”
Neenan winced. Michael looked somber. Gaby shifted from her position next to Mom and reached her arm around Neenan’s father.
“Those are pretty strong words, Dad.”
“I thought that after the war was over, I’d come home and have a great life. Build my machine shop into a chain, turn my station into a big network, make a lot of money, marry a good woman who liked sex, and have a bunch of nice, respectful kids. Instead, look what happened. That crazy old coot seduced me and then tricked me into thinking you were my son. I never had a happy day since then … I hope both of you rot in hell!”
Gaby’s embrace had no effect on his father. She returned to his mother, who had begun to wail again, and soothed her.
Neenan glanced at the boss seraph. Michael shrugged his broad shoulders.
“Enough?”
“One more try,” Michael replied, “then we’re out of here.”
“I’m sorry, Dad, truly sorry. I wish you would find it in your heart to reconcile with me.”
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
Anger swelled inside Neenan. It was after all his house. This man was old and bitter, but he was not crazy. He knew what he was saying. He had deliberately said and done everything he could to hurt and offend his son. Words surged to Neenan’s lips to give it back to him in kind, to tell him that he was a miserable failure who would have lost his radio station anyway and for a lot less money than Neenan had insisted he be given.
With an enormous effort, he stifled his anger.
“Don’t ever come back here again,” his father said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “And I hope that cheap little dago slut you go around with sticks a knife in your gut some one of these nights after you’ve fucked her.”
Neenan stood stone still, his face hot with anger, his heart pumping, his fists clenched. The seraphs watched, anxiously it seemed.
“Good-bye, Dad.”
Neenan went over to the window and kissed his mother on the forehead.
“Good-bye, Mom.”
He left the apartment abruptly, this time the angels trailing him.
In the elevator, he said to Michael, “Do you happen to know whether I’m really his son?”
“Of course we know and of course you are. You’re the spitting image of his father.”
“I see,” Neenan said, and slumped against the elevator wall.
“You did pretty good,” Michael admitted grudgingly. “Almost lost it a couple of times, but didn’t.”
“Can’t you two do anything for either of them?”
“You saw how he turned me off,” Gaby replied. “Most humans don’t do that. I’m a pretty soothing being when I want to be.”
“We can help her, calm her down,” Michael admitted. One or the other of us will stop by occasionally and do that.”
“She’ll be at peace for a while, Ray,” Gaby added.
“If she weren’t out of it, she’d be as bad as he is.”
“Nowhere near as bad,” Michael replied. “Nowhere near. She didn’t ruin his life. He ruined hers. There’s not much we can do for him, I’m afraid. He’s the Other’s problem now. The Other dislikes losing even more than we do.”
Neenan felt as if the elevator were plunging out of control toward the ground. He was being spun off into tiny pieces by a centrifugal force that was tearing apart what little was left of his selfhood.
He fe
lt Gaby’s arm around him.
“You all right?” Michael said with apparent sincere concern.
The elevator landed safely and Neenan staggered out into the lobby, supported by the woman seraph’s strong arm. He had enough presence of mind to give the doorman two twenty-dollar bills and thank him for taking care of his parents.
The angels helped him into his limo and arranged themselves one on either side of him.
“What happened to you?” Michael demanded.
“I saw it all. Everything!”
“What did you see?”
“That I went after all those women who were like my mother to take them away from my father.”
The seraphs exchanged high fives.
“You’re not so bad after all,” Michael observed.
“We’ve saved you a lot of money and a lot of time on therapy,” Gaby informed him.
“The time I don’t have,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I wish I had figured it out a long time ago.”
“Better late than never,” Michael said philosophically.
Neenan leaned into Gaby’s peaceful embrace and wept bitter tears of frustration and rage.
“We’d better get you back into Anna Maria’s arms,” she said.
Then, quite suddenly, they were at St. Petersburg Municipal Airport, his tears had stopped, and his wife embraced him tenderly and led him into the plane.
“I need a drink,” he murmured to Linda.
“We have some totally excellent white wine on board today, Mr. Neenan. Would you like some?”
“I sure would.”
He assumed that it would be the Seraphic chenin blanc. It totally was.
“It must have been terrible, Raymond,” Anna Maria said as they finished the wine just before the plane had taxied into a takeoff position. “You look like you’ve been kicked in the stomach.”
He sighed and tried to pull himself together. In a world with so many good things, such as a woman’s love and delicious white wine and even concerned seraphs to take care of you, how could there be so much hatred?
Anyway, he had tried.
And not lost his temper.
“He said you were a bastard?” Anna Maria asked. “I mean an illegitimate child?”
Contract with an Angel Page 20