She threw a blue terry-cloth robe at him and slipped a similar robe on herself.
“Last one to the beach is ancient!” she shouted, and dashed toward the beach.
Neenan, who was still exhausted, didn’t contest the prize.
As she hit the beach, she tossed off her robe and dashed into the Gulf without a pause. Shrieking with delight, she dove into smooth water and swam her swift, competent crawl as though water were as much her natural habitat as it was for a small, neatly packed dolphin.
She is truly too young for me, Neenan told himself. She’s a better lover and a better athlete. She was right when she said I couldn’t cope with her.
He touched the water with his toes, discovered that it was a good deal warmer than Lake Michigan was even in the summer, and gingerly eased into it. Before he could dive into the star-drenched Gulf, his submerged wife tackled him and pulled his head underwater.
“Isn’t it great!” she exulted when she let him breathe again. “I’ve never done this before! I knew I’d love it! … Did you think I was going to drown you?”
Before he could answer, she pulled him under again.
Sputtering as he surfaced, Neenan said, “Yes, I was sure—”
She cut him off with a wild, passionate embrace.
“I’m a sea nymph or maybe a mermaid and I’ve found a human male with whom I am insanely in love.”
“Funny thing,” Neenan replied as he crushed her in a return embrace, “I seem to have fallen in love with this wild sea creature.”
She pulled him underwater again, kissed him underwater, then permitted him to bob back to the surface.
“Do you like me naked under the stars?” she asked, leaning against him, her long, wet hair sticking to his chest.
“I can’t believe my good fortune to have been found by a sea nymph innocent of inhibitions.”
She giggled and then nibbled at his chest. “You were absolutely wonderful inside, my twelve-year-old friend … do you mind my being so abandoned?”
“This last week has been the best honeymoon of my life … so far!”
“Let’s do some serious swimming,” she commanded, and pushed off him and dove into the calm Gulf, a deft sea creature triumphant in her skills.
Docilely he swam after her. Despite possessing and being possessed by a bride who deliberately played to his hungriest male fantasies, he continued to feel morose because of the time he had wasted and the little time he had left. She was not merely the best lover he had ever known, she was light-years better than any of the others. He had missed what she was and what she could be because he had been trapped in the blindness and stupidity of his parents.
He told himself that he should enjoy what he had if only for a few weeks because that was more than most men ever had.
“We’re on a sandbar,” she informed him. “Go on, if I can stand on it without going under, so can you.”
Sure enough he could.
“Do you think heaven is like this?” she asked him.
“Like what?”
“Warm water, a ceiling of stars, and a good man to love?”
“Anna Maria! That’s a pagan fantasy!”
“More like Islamic … . Well, we Sicilians are only one step away from pagans. I wouldn’t want to go to a heaven where I couldn’t screw you every day!”
“Anna Maria!” he exclaimed again, this time really shocked. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“You’ve ruined my morals,” she giggled.
“People don’t screw in heaven.”
“Yes, they do! I know they do! Differently from here on earth, but better. You just wait and see … . We better swim back now. We have a busy day at golf tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
I’ll have to ask God that, he told himself. If I get a chance to say a word.
Then something strange happened. It was an ecstatic experience but not one at all like the invasion of light and fire and love on the flight from Washington to Chicago and after some of his romps with his sexcrazed wife. Rather it was like a ride through a mind-bending computer game or an LSD trip, with which he had once experimented back in the sixties at the university.
Anna Maria and he were skipping over the water, almost skating on it. The angel choristers were singing psychedelic songs. Gaby and Michael were dancing with them, both also unclad. Gaby was even more devastating than he had imagined her, but Neenan felt no desire for her or for his wife. There was longing, however, enormous longing. For what? Good question. Then they slipped under the water and into the world of the sea, near a reef somewhere and a dark blue lagoon in which weirdly shaped, multicolored fish swam peacefully, untroubled, it seemed, by their human visitors. Human and seraphic to be more precise.
Then a mammoth shark rubbed his snout against Neenan’s face in a gesture of friendship it seemed. It seemed to grin at him, and then, with a flip of its huge tail, it swam away. Two dolphins made themselves steeds under him and Anna Maria and carried them to the surface and far beyond in a mighty leap. Anna Maria screamed in hysterical delight as the dolphins arched over the water and began a manic roller-coaster dive back into the water. They entered it with a huge splash and sent their two passengers on a plunge deep into the darkness far beneath the surface.
They breathed under the water without difficulty. Their plunge into the darkness had been a pleasant ride, not the battering and dangerous collision it ought to have been. This had to be some sort of dream, induced by seraphic dust or maybe a delayed effect of the Seraphic Vineyards Chianti.
Then they were in a glowing underwater cave, lolling it seemed on a comfortable ledge. Gaby drew both Neenan and Anna Maria into her arms. She sang to them wondrous lullabies, accompanied by the soft humming of the angel brats.
Neenan knew peace, not the peace of his other ecstasy but the peace of happiness without worry. Maybe the seraphs were doing all this to reassure him. That thought did not, however, take peace away from him.
Michael appeared with a purple-colored, subterranean fruit, shaped like a long, thin pear. Its taste was heavenly or perhaps more properly seraphic. Then Gaby provided a cup of auburn-colored liquid that tasted like highly spiced fire. Anna Maria seemed relaxed and happy, smiling often and enjoying the whole experience.
Neenan realized that no one was talking. People didn’t talk in dreams, did they?
Their journey continued through dark canyons deep in the sea, across vast sapphire lagoons, into deep red forests, down to the very bottoms of the oceans where inky darkness turned into light, then under unbearably bright icebergs that rumbled noisily above them. The choir continued to sing, now softly, now at the top of their powerful lungs. Gaby produced from behind an ocean rock an instrument that looked like a cross between a trumpet and a French horn and played melodies on it that were so sweet they almost broke your heart. She was the one who was supposed to sound the horn on judgment day, was she not? Was this the music that all would hear on that day of wrath? How come it was so gentle and loving? Another one of God’s tricks?
Then they surfed on the waves of an Atlantic storm, riding up and down on monumental waves, glorying in the foam and the swirling, dark green waters and screaming with joy as they rose and fell on the best ride in the whole amusement park. How did he know they were screaming, since he heard no sounds? How did he know there was music? And why did he seem to hear the rumble of the icebergs?
Stupid questions. Enjoy the fun while it lasts.
Their cruise through all the oceans of the world continued. They met giant and friendly whales, skittery sea lions, curious pelicans, playful seals, unfriendly octopuses who would have nothing to do with them, and sleek sea otters. Many other animals, most of them friendly and none threatening, Neenan was unable to name.
They swam up the Mississippi as far as New Orleans and the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal and then returned to a warm and rapid ocean current that had to be the Gulf Stream. In the distance Neenan thought he saw the green shores of Irel
and. In the Mediterranean they explored sunken Greek triremes, Spanish galleys, French frigates, and Italian battle cruisers. Their dance went on and on, seemingly for years, a time of almost but not quite unalloyed joy. The seraphs had deceived him, he had much more time than three months to live.
Then the dance through the oceans slowed down gently and stopped. The fun was over. He and his wife, both still naked, were on the beach in front of their town house on Captiva Island, he standing over her and she, leaning on an elbow, her face toward the sand, both of them breathing heavily as though they had come through great physical exertion.
He devoured her perfection—white skin, long, black hair flattened against her shapely back, and flanks, hips, and legs arranged in flawless symmetry. Her skin was still wet, a protective sheen in the starlight. He was filled with a thirst for her that demanded to be quenched. His heart beat more rapidly, his brain seemed to spin with insane desire, his fists tightened in determination, his lips pressed together.
I will have her now like I’ve never had her before. I will teach her what a totally aroused male animal wants.
She rolled over, half sat up, both her elbows supporting her. She was vulnerable, defenseless, frightened by his grim visage, and marvelously alluring.
“What do you want?” she demanded nervously.
“You.”
“It’s much too late,” she said, but she made no move to escape.
“I’ve have been dared, challenged, ridiculed,” he said grimly. “It has been said that I cannot cope with a much younger woman.”
“I never said ‘much younger,’” she pleaded. “Don’t look at me that way.”
“I’ll look at you any way I want.”
He stood over her.
She lowered her eyes. “Don’t hurt me,” she begged.
“Have I ever hurt you?” he demanded as he fell upon her and pinned her against the beach.
Her “no” was drowned out by an all-consuming kiss.
“You win,” she said weakly when he was finished. “You can cope with me.”
“You better believe I win.”
He picked her up, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her up to the town house, where he tenderly laid her on their bed and slipped in next to her. He felt her take his hand as he sank into a deep and peaceful sleep.
“Golf,” she said the next morning. “Then more golf. We gotta be serious today.”
“Right,” he agreed, refusing to open his eyes.
“Come on. Three more strokes off your score this morning.”
“Right,” he said, sipping the coffee with his eyes still closed.
She pulled him out of bed.
Later, as they drove to the Captiva Island country club, she spoke for the first time since she had wakened him.
“I was drunk last night.”
“We had only one bottle of wine.”
“You drank only one glass.”
“Two.”
“Only one!”
“There are two options, Anna Maria, my darling. One is that you weren’t drunk. The second is that you’re the shortest short hitter in the whole Sicilian tribe. I prefer the first.”
“Was I terrible?”
“That’s not the word I’d use.”
“It’s all a blur, like a dream … . Did I act like a savage?”
“Like a good wife.”
She sighed softly. “There were wonderful dreams. I can’t remember some of them and I don’t how much with you was a dream too.”
“Very little.”
His left hand on the wheel of the car, he stroked her long hair with his right hand.
“Did I really say that if I couldn’t screw with you in heaven, I didn’t want to go there?”
“You did.”
“Is God mad at me?” she asked, worry in her voice.
He stopped the car for a red light. Gaby was on the corner, glistening white in tennis clothes. She shook her head in a vigorous negative.
Neenan scowled at her, as if to say, I don’t need your help to deal with her. Not now anyway. Even when we can’t see them, they still know what we’re doing. But angels would, wouldn’t they?
“Do I love you, Anna Maria?”
“You’d better.”
“My love for you ends where God’s begins. God is even more crazy for you than I am. I don’t think you have any reason to be afraid of God. He understands what you mean.”
That was pretty good, he told himself. I’m even beginning to sound like a seraph.
Gaby smiled, waved her racket, and dematerialized. What did the tennis racket mean? Were they showing off, as they often did—doing something because they could do it? Or did they really have a game that was something like tennis—balls of plasma light bounding across several cosmoses?
The light changed and he slipped the gear into drive.
“Do you mean we will make love in heaven?”
“Something like it, only better … . You said ‘screw’ last night.” He continued to stroke her hair.
“I was drunk.”
His next words slipped out before he reflected on them. “I hope I didn’t hurt you on the beach.”
“Will you please stop that!” she shouted. “How many times do I have to tell you that you never hurt me. If you ever do, I’ll tell you, but I know you won’t.”
“OK.”
“And I didn’t mean that you should stop playing with my hair … .That’s better … . I was terrified on the beach. Great big male ravisher hulking over me. But it was nice terror, if you know what I mean. He wants to get even with me for what I did earlier. How sweet.”
She kissed him lightly. “I’m dizzy in love with you, Raymond,” she whispered in his ear. “I didn’t know lovers like you existed. You can do anything you want with me.”
“I probably will,” he said, his eyes glued to the road.
“I think I’ve figured out something that puzzled me about you.”
“Oh?”
“I told you not to stop stroking my hair, didn’t I?” She rested her hand on his knee.
“What have you figured out?”
“Why you’re so gentle and tender. You never had any example when you were growing up. But you did learn to be sensitive to others in intimate situations because you suffered so much in them at home, poor dear.”
“I messed up with Donna and the kids and in that crazy pension mess.”
“The pension foolishness was not intimate. You had problems with your first wife and your children, not because you were insensitive to how they felt but because you could not do anything about their feelings and backed off from them.”
He thought about that as they turned into the pineshaded drive that led to the King’s Crown Country Club. “I think you’re being too kind to me. I’m not sure the women who were my mistresses would agree.”
It was the first time he had admitted to her that such women existed.
She seemed unconcerned, as if she took them for granted. “They might be disappointed that you didn’t remain with them. I could understand that. I’d feel the same way. But none of them would say that you deliberately hurt them, much less that you weren’t sweet and gentle in bed. Absolutely not.”
She squeezed his thigh to emphasize “absolutely.”
“Maybe,” was all he could manage. He’d have to think about it.
These days he had to think about a lot of things.
There were no flirtations on the course. Anna Maria was dead serious about cutting three strokes off his game. Although he felt clumsy every time he swung the club the way she ordered, in fact he cut his score by four strokes.
“You’re improving,” she said with an air of clinical detachment as they headed for the clubhouse. “You’re still not concentrating enough. You’re letting yourself be distracted.”
“My instructor is too pretty,” he pleaded.
“I wish that was all that was distracting you. I wish I knew what you were worrying about.”
He did not reply because his answer would be one word.
Death.
20
“What was that all about last night?” he asked Michael when the massive black angel, wearing purple undershorts, materialized next to him in the locker room. “Were you guys just showing off? Seraphic vanity again?”
“More like seraphic playfulness,” the boss angel replied. “We are also very playful beings, as you no doubt have noticed.”
“It was quite a show … mostly illusion, none of it real?”
“It was real in a certain sense. We wanted to show you that we were quite capable of taking care of your companion when you take your temporary leave of her.”
“You will find her, uh, someone else?”
“Jealousy is not one of your faults, is it, Raymond Anthony? I will not comment on that question, though I would imagine that she will be able to find one for herself when she wants to without our help.”
“That’s true. Speaking of such matters, I hope you’re not offended when I say that your companion is devastating when she takes off her clothes.”
“You mean of course,” the angel said, drawing on purple socks, “her surrogate. Believe me, Raymond Anthony, she would be offended if you did not say her surrogate was devastating. We are vain creatures, and that is not wrong because we have much to be vain about, as I have told you so often. Our life-bearers are far more vain than we life-givers. My companion, since she is the most beautiful of all, is the most vain of all. Or so I tell her.”
“Do you wear clothes in your, what should I call it, ordinary forms?”
“Naturally.” Michael pulled a purple knit shirt over his massive shoulders. “Raymond Anthony,” he continued solemnly, “you have reduced your own companion to a condition of nearly total vulnerability. We will be seriously displeased if you hurt her while she is in that condition.”
“She says I can’t hurt her.”
“We hope that she is correct. However, that remains to be seen.”
With those ominous words, Michael dematerialized.
On the way back to their town house, Anna Maria yawned, nodded, and then fell asleep. He woke her when they arrived at the house.
Contract with an Angel Page 22