Angel Fire

by Andrew M. Greeley

“Huh?”

  “You run from the women, like our little friend this afternoon, who are ready to collapse in response to your charm, and you pursue those who reject your ability to reduce them to willing emotional nakedness. You fear any woman who will permit you to become close to her.”

  “I do?” he asked dubiously.

  Her analysis was reducing him to emotional nakedness— which was probably what it was intended to do.

  “We can discuss that later.” She put down her wineglass. “Right now I am too busy watching your friends over there who are preparing to leave and are extremely curious about us.”

  “Do you lady, uh, woman angels suckle your young?”

  “Do you mean to ask whether I possess an analog system comparable to these boobs at which you stare so fixedly?”

  “I don’t mean to be too personal.”

  ‘Tes, you do.” She smiled affectionately at him, nice doggy. “But it’s all right. At least you don’t hide your curiosity. But what do you think the answer is? After all, you’re the biological theorist and I am only a temporary messenger.”

  “Well, when evolution selects for sexual differentiation, the one who produces the egg is usually the nurturing one, if only, as in the case of birds or fish or insects, through proteins included in the egg. Once we get to mammals, as the very name suggests, we have suckling, so ...”

  “What makes you think we are mammals?” “Well.” Sean poured himself some more wine, wondering if she carried hangover medicine in her bag of tricks. “I suppose you don’t have to be mammals. Maybe I’m a mammalian chauvinist. But I bet that you are, analogously, of course.”

  “Okay.” She toasted him with her wineglass. “You win that one. And speaking of breast feeding ...” She turned to the pink-jacketed waiter. “Professor Desmond will have chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce, and I’ll have raspberries with the sauce.... Where was I? Oh, yes, you were wondering whether I have breasts in my reality as well as in my analog. And I had been baiting you.”

  “Teasing the chimp.”

  “And now you are baiting me. The answer is that in our species as in yours the ones who bear the offspring also nurse them, by energy arrangements that our opposite numbers find attractive as we do ourselves, if the truth be admitted. Indeed, if I may say so, our male partners seem to be even more attracted to these, uh, systems than you are to their counterparts in your species. Satisfied?”

  “There are degrees of physical attractiveness in these and similar matters?”

  “You’re getting as good at circumlocution, Jackie Jim, as I am. But yes, of course, why would there not be?”

  “And I’m sure”—he wound up for a fast pitch—“that you are rated as one of the most attractive women seraphs around.”

  She blushed deeply. “Woman seraph is an irrelevant title, and yes, some of my associates make that judgment.” “I thought they might.” Impulsively she touched his cheek with two fingers of her

  right hand. “You’re sweet, Seano.” Her eyes glowed. “A nuisance sometimes, but still a good and kind man. I’m glad I was assigned to be your guardian.”

  For a brief and delirious instant, Sean Seamus Desmond felt that he was filled with all the peace and goodness and beauty of the universe. Sexual pleasure? No, something that transcended sex in the same degree that sex transcended chocolate ice cream.

  Fireball of love, the little Monsignor had said.

  “I am too,” he managed to say eternities later when he returned to earth and the Trianon Room of the Helmsley Palace Hotel.

  “Any more questions?”

  “I suppose you have two girl kids?”

  “Now you’re reading my mind.”

  “Only your face when you talked to my brats. You’ve been there before.”

  “I have born two bearers of life.” She nodded solemnly. “Yes, they are perhaps a bit older in our framework than the delightful Fee and Dee.”

  “And that ring I see on your left hand sometimes. And sometimes not, like you’re not sure whether it ought to appear?”

  “You are an observant little man, aren’t you?” She considered him with steady eye and pursed lips.

  “Clever little chimp.”

  “Clever enough to win a Nobel.” She smiled her sweetest of smiles, and the thunderclouds on her brow disappeared. ‘Tes, I have ... I had a ... spouse, to use your word. He is no longer ... We are mortal too, like all energy patterns. We live much longer than you do, relatively speaking. Yet it does not seem long enough___”

  Her voice trailed off. Her ring finger was now definitely free of a ring.

  “And you do not go gentle into that good night either?”

  “We are no more certain than you that there is Anyone waiting in that good night. There are excellent reasons___When we

  play our messenger role, we seem to be working for someone and yet ... we cannot be sure.”

  “Angels are vulnerable, then?” To his astonishment he had touched her fingers as they rested on the stem of her wineglass.

  “Surely.” She sighed. “The more one is mind and love, the more that— They are coming over here.”

  Gaby stiffened, presumably preparing again for her Wonder Woman routine.

  But the tourists from Topeka seemed eminently friendly. “Doctor Desmond, isn’t it?” said the man, overweight, balding, and genial. “We don’t often see red-haired, freckle-faced leprechauns on the cover of Time. Congratulations on your prize, we’re all proud of you.”

  Their name, appropriately, was Jones, and they were from Toledo, not from Topeka.

  “My assistant...” He began to introduce Gaby and realized he didn’t know what name she was using.

  “Doctor Gabriella light,” she said, smiling easily. “We hope you have a wonderful time in Stockholm,” said Mrs. Jones, a dumpy, pleasant woman.

  “They seem like nice, ordinary people,” Sean said after they left.

  “Don’t they?” She watched them intently as they walked out of the dining room. “Nevertheless, they are on the other side. Yet I do not understand ...”

  “Maybe they’re more interested in you than in me.” Her head turned quickly. “A possibility, surely. Though it would not make much sense.... Still ...”

  He wanted to finish tonight’s lesson on the anthropology (probably the wrong word) of angels.

  “Do ... uh, I mean, widows ... remarry in your culture?” “I suppose you are going to insist that I find myself another complement and settle down,” she said hotly. “I will not accept such importune suggestions from my own species and certainly not from another.”

  “I’m importuned the same way,” he said, trying to sound wry and whimsical.

  “But I chose well. I did not combine with a bitch merely to

  anger my family___” She drew a deep breath. “I am sorry, Seano,

  you have touched a sensitive ...” She smiled winningly. “You do have a record of making members of the opposite sex angry, don’t you?”

  “Only in two evolutionary processes, though,” he replied,

  feeling now like an adorable golden retriever who had made a mess on the parlor floor.

  “And I don’t consider you to be either a chimp or an Irish setter,” she insisted, touching his hand. “Rather, a fellow pilgrim, a companion on the journey.”

  He decided that he would do his part to ease the tension. “Well, I guess I may have paid too much attention to Sister Intemerata when she said that the only sin the angels could commit was pride.”

  She relaxed, accepting his offer of truce. “We are victims of all seven of your cardinal sins and a few others besides.”

  “So you don’t do only the sin of Lucifer, refusing to serve even God?”

  Gaby exploded from her chair, like a rocket racing for orbit.

  “You shanty-Irish bastard ... I don’t care whether they kill you or not.”

  She stormed out of the dining room, a Fury in retreat.

  Sean emptied the Cote de Rhone in
to his wineglass and drank it thoughtfully.

  He then withdrew to the oak-paneled bar, the former dining room of the Villard house, ordered two glasses of Napoleon Special Reserve, and strolled to the Gold Room, a gilt mausoleum with LaFarge paintings at either end and a live harpist playing on the balcony beneath one of the LaFarges.

  The couple from Toledo was in the next room, the Madison Room, just visible through the door. They were sipping a dark, misty liquor.

  Gaby had said that the place was a poor imitation of the real Renaissance palaces in their prime. Implying that she had been in them in their prime.

  He then dispatched with equal thoughtfulness the two glasses of cognac.

  What did I say?

  He was not particularly worried that anyone would attempt to kill him. Gaby was not the sort of ... of guardian angel that would leave him unguarded.

  Could she bilocate? Was that one of the other easy things at their stage in the evolutionary process?

  Irish setter indeed. I thought “golden retriever.”

  I should be an Irish wolfhound: lordly, charming, gentle. The tourist couple drifted through the Gold Room, nodded in his direction, and then returned to the lobby.

  They do look a mite suspicious, he thought. I suppose the damn angel woman knows what she’s talking about.

  Angel woman, indeed. Absurd. It had all been a dream. All his life Sean had been “cute,” not impressive, an adorable if neurotic Irish setter. That’s probably what they would think at the Royal Swedish Academy.

  He sighed as his grandmother would, a long, low, County Kerry sigh, indistinguishable from the first phase of a serious asthma attack, and signaled for the check.

  “Madame has taken care of l’addition” said the maitre d’, “in cash.”

  Probably counterfeit.

  A tall, blond linebacker type in tuxedo followed him out of the dining room and past the pink Saint-Gaudens fireplace. Gestapo, Sean thought. He ducked around a corner and ran down the chandelier-lighted steps that joined the old brownstone mansion to the ornate Helmsley lobby. Through the arched glass doors, he saw the grim gray mansion of the Cardinal, huddled like a puppy with its mother to the vast bulk of St. Paddy’s. Maybe I should take sanctuary there.

  He made it to his elevator just as the blond muscle man appeared in the lobby, from the other direction. How the hell did he do that? Or is that one of Gabby’s?

  I should ask him if his name is Michael. Except, before this is over, I might find that Mike’s real name is Michelle.

  He leaned against the wall, waiting for an elevator. The lobby was empty. No blond giant Luftwaffe pilot, no dowdy tourists from Ohio, no one at all.

  He leaned around the corner to look in either direction. Totally empty ... that’s strange for this time of night, isn’t it?

  At that moment the heavy, life-sized Saint-Gaudens nude on the wall of the lobby began to tilt in his direction. There was a quick movement behind it, a tuxedo vanishing into the next rank of elevators. Brained by a naked woman, Sean thought as the statue fell straight toward his head. I ought to run, but it’s too late. Where the hell is that damn angel woman when I really need her? The statue paused in midflight, as though it had changed its

  mind, and with the same slow motion with which its bust had approached Sean’s head, it returned to its place, shuddered once like a woman in an aftershock of orgasm, and settled down for its long night-watch of the Helmsley lobby.

  I’m not frightened. I sweat like this every night after supper and a couple of drinks.

  The lobby was filled with people again, none of them in tuxedos. An elevator door opened and Sean jumped in. By the time the door opened at his floor, even though he was still trembling, he had decided that the whole experience had been an illusion, a fancy trick that the damn angel woman used to impress me with her power.

  Like the phony money she carries around.

  Well, I won’t say a word about it unless she does.

  Even if the cash is phony, the treasurer of the United States wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  “Gaby ...” He knocked tentatively on the connecting door, which he was absolutely certain hadn’t been there when he checked in.

  “Come in, Seano,” she said, contrition in her voice.

  She was sitting on the edge of her bed, huddled in a satiny beige robe. Expensive. No sign of the black dress. I bet she makes them up and throws them away as she needs them. The net stockings were still on her glorious legs, part of which peered from under the robe. Definitely pantyhose. Probably all that’s underneath the robe, not that it makes any difference to my extinguished lust.

  “I am very sorry,” she began immediately, “my behavior was disgraceful. There was no excuse. You meant no harm.” She grinned shyly. “At least you know that angels are capable of many different sins.”

  “Not pure spirits,” he said lightly.

  “Neither pure nor spirits, I’m afraid.”

  “But not without virtues, like picking up the check.”

  “I will take care of the bills on the trip.” She dismissed her generosity. “It will be easier that way.”

  “Do you have a crowd around here? There was a big blond guy in the lobby.”

  “Oh no, we are relatively few in number and have ... far-reaching, let us say, responsibilities. I am the only one in charge of you.”

  “Was the big blond guy Michael?”

  She laughed, some of her joy returning. “Michael would find that suggestion most amusing.”

  “He is not a Michelle?”

  “Most definitely not.”

  “The blond was on our side?”

  “I think that’s a fair assumption. It was silly of you to run from him. You really can’t get away from an angel, Seano.”

  But you didn’t deny that you were the big blond guy in the lobby. Might you be so big that you can be the blond in the lobby and yourself up here at the same time.

  A creature forty-seven stories high? A fireball of light and love that big?

  Enormous tits, he thought irreverently.

  “What did I say wrong?” He sat next to her on the bed, though as far away as he could.

  “Nothing, really, except your species’ mixture of Christianity and Iranian mythology has always infuriated me by its inaccuracy and its arrogance. There is no need for devils to persuade you to do evil. You are quite capable of it on your own. And, Professor Desmond, as far as we can ascertain, there are no demons in this cosmos. There are certainly some evil forces and energies and they are not without power, Most High knows, but they are not personalized like your Satan.” Her voice rose again. “And if you would read the Book of Job, which you haven’t, like most of the rest of the Bible, and if you ignored that vile”—she searched for a word—“that vile puritan John Milton, you would know that even Satan at that time was considered to be one of Yahweh’s court and not a rival prince of darkness.”

  “No Satan?” he said, kind of disappointed.

  “Didn’t Monsignor Ryan tell you that Satan was Yahweh’s jester? Not a bad angel. And Lucifer was not a demon, he was a good spirit, he never defied the Most High, he was brilliant and kind.” She clutched both fists tightly. “And deeply devout.”

  Gabriella Light ... Oh my God ...

  “And your, uh ... complement?”

  She bowed her head and nodded.

  Angels, he told himself resolutely, are not supposed to cry.

  Now about the press conference ...” Gaby Light was all business this morning, the grief of the previous night firmly suppressed. “The trick is to impose your own agenda on them instead of permitting them to set the agenda.”

  “Why do you care about my press conferences?” he demanded crossly.

  So she was in a good mood. Well, he was in a bad mood.

  “We angels”—she grinned at him most attractively, he might even say seductively—“offer a full and comprehensive range of services.”

  “Seraphic Kelly Girl
s?”

  “With certain extra skills ... After all, since 1951 I’m the patron saint of those engaged in electronic communication.”

  “Who decided that?”

  “The Pope. Who else decides about patron saints?”

  “On his own?”

  “I might have whispered in his ear!”

  No way he could resist that impish grin. He always fled impish

  women because they overwhelmed him instantly. Talk about psychological nakedness.

  “Can I finish my pancakes and bacon first?” “Surely a Nobel Prize winner can do two things at once.” “Well, I can chew gum and walk.”

  “So you can eat breakfast and talk about the press conference.”

  Sean had been awakened from a tranquil sleep—his most tranquil night in years—with an abundant breakfast served in bed.

  The sleep had been no less tranquil because it had been inhabited by a woman, in various stages of undress (never quite total), who looked like Gabriella. The inhibitor mechanism that prevented him from sustaining erotic thoughts about her did not work on his unconscious. Did she know about his delicious dreams? Did she care?

  “Guardian angels,” he had said sleepily, “are protectors and messengers, not servants.”

  Gaby had stared daggers at him. “One part of protecting you, Professor Desmond, is to make sure that you sleep off your hangovers. And, just to be clear about it, I am no one’s servant.”

  “Except the Most High’s.” He swallowed his grapefruit juice. Naturally she knew that he liked grapefruit juice. What else? “Of course.”

  “Will I receive this kind of protection every morning even if I don’t have a hangover?”

  “If you’re a good little boy.” Her prim visage was devastated by a resurgent comic smile.

  There’s a strain of the outrageous comic in you too, my dear. Very close to the surface, despite all your attempts to be austere. A thousand expressions chasing each other across that mobile, hauntingly lovely face. They chose well, I guess. Whoever they are. She was wearing a tan wool gabardine dress, no collar, long sleeves, big buttons in front, little buttons on the sleeves. Reding-ote style. Pockets in the skirt. All cool and competent and understated. Seven hundred dollars at least. What the rich research assistant wears on a trip to pick up the Nobel Prize.