Angel Fire

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Who?”

  “Mind you”—she munched enthusiastically on yet another sandwich—“sexual attraction is not enough to cement complements together. But it’s a good beginning, especially when both partners sense that there is more in the chemistry than merely mutual desire. Oh yes, she liked being on your slave block, though her fantasy was, as I’m sure you’d admit, somewhat different.”

  “Who?”

  “You had disarmed her, and if I may say so, also disrobed her emotionally with your mixture of sensitivity, gentleness, and charm. Then you fled to the ineffable Stacey Reid.”

  “Damnit, Gaby, who are you talking about?”

  “Whom?” she simpered.

  “WHOM?” he bellowed.

  “Shush, everyone’s looking.... Laura Taylor, the receptionist in your office building last year. The one with the lovely laugh and the sweet smile. Don’t tell me you don’t remember her? You certainly had enough lustful thoughts about her.”

  “I don’t think I ever caught her name,” he said sheepishly. “Anyway, she wasn’t interested in me.”

  “She was too.” Gaby poured both of them more tea. “Very interested. You’re not unattractive, as I’ve said before, and since Blanche, you radiate a certain sexual competence as well as gentleness, which you always exude. She was yours to overwhelm and

  carry off as you yourself describe it, in terms more appropriate for your species’ immediate predecessors.”

  “Laura Taylor?”

  “Too late now. She’s already happily married. She’s good in

  bed too. See what you missed.” “Oh.”

  “It’s not your fault, Jackie Jim.” Her hand touched his quickly. His spirits soared immediately. “Strong women scare you, weak women make you unhappy. You knew only the second kind when you were growing up, mother and sisters; the point is that now you have to change.”

  “Overwhelm them with my charm and carry them off?”

  “Charm and sensitivity and tenderness.” She nodded briskly. “I guess I don’t have to add the last. You’re always tender with women, even women of superior species!”

  “Nobility buying a dog for their kennels!”

  They both laughed.

  Sean Desmond’s heart was pounding. Life might not be empty

  after all.

  “And don’t grieve too much for Laura Taylor.” Gaby signaled

  for the check. “There will be others. And if you’d married her, I

  wouldn’t be here because you wouldn’t have thought up your

  crazy idea of hinting at our existence in your acceptance speech.”

  “That’s what started it all, then?”

  “Certainly.” She placed a fifty-dollar bill, new and crisp, on top of the check. “Haven’t I said that already?”

  “I guess.... Are you guys upset because I blew your cover?” “Blew our cover?” She rose from her chair. “Sean Seamus Desmond, most human beings take our existence for granted. You’re merely reminding the academic community of what most of them learned as kids. We’re delighted, but that’s not the reason we’re

  protecting you.”

  He followed her out of the tea room. The lobby was crowded with Japanese tourists hauling luggage that looked bigger than

  they.

  “Must travel light,” Gaby murmured.

  “They’re good at making things, but not as good as you are.”

  She giggled.

  They stepped into one of the lacquer-box elevators. Two men were already there, stout blond men with heavy mustaches dressed in expensive dinner jackets.

  Foreigners, Sean thought, exercising the Irishman’s right to resent everyone who came to the country after his family.

  One of the foreigners stuffed a snub-nosed gun into his belly.

  “Ve vill not make a sound, vill we?”

  “Und ve will push the button for thirty-seven, von’t ve?” said the other, his gun buried in Gabriella Light’s belly.

  Her face was an impassive mask. Okay, they couldn’t kill her. But could she get a quick enough first step to intercept a bullet aimed at his small intestines?

  Probably not.

  He pushed the button for thirty-seven.

  “What are you guys planning?” Sean asked figuring that he might disconcert their captors by making light and pleasant conversation. “You’re not going to get away with this, you know. The NYPD is protecting us. They’re on the next elevator, disguised as Japanese tourists.”

  Neither man moved a muscle. Their hard, empty eyes stared

  at him coldly.

  “You don’t have to jab me with that thing,” he continued, “I’m

  not about to run, not as long as you can hurt herself.”

  Gaby seemed to smile faintly. Ah, good, the woman likes my

  sense of humor.

  After several long eternities, the elevator stopped at the

  thirty-seventh floor.

  “I think we can get out here, Seano,” Gaby said easily. Our friends probably won’t want to come with us.”

  She slipped away from the man with the gun in her belly and held the door for Sean.

  The gunman continued to point his snub-nosed pistol at the

  wall of the elevator.

  “Come, Seano, we don’t have all day. Your friend is in no condition to do anything to you just now.”

  Gingerly Sean Desmond eased away from the muzzle of the gun. Sure enough, his hard-eyed “friend” did not bat an eye. Sean backed farther away, still prepared to see flame leap out of the gun and tear a hole in his gut.

  “Hurry up,” Gaby growled impatiently. “We’ll have a hard time explaining this if someone else shows up.”

  Still expecting the gun to explode, Sean backed toward the door of the elevator.

  “I said hurry up.” Gaby pulled him through the door.

  The gunman continued to point his weapon toward the empty space where Sean had been standing.

  Gaby turned him so that he was pointing at his companion; the two mute weapons were almost muzzle to muzzle. Then she pushed a floor button and jumped out of the elevator.

  “That’s that,” she said with a sigh of relief.

  “Random violence?”

  “No, patterned craziness.”

  There were two sharp snaps of sound, like loud firecrackers, a few floors up.

  “What was that?” Sean demanded.

  “In, Seano.” She shoved him through an elevator door that had opened on the opposite side of the hallway. “We will want to be peacefully in our rooms when the NYPD does finally catch up.”

  “What was it?”

  She pushed forty-seven and relaxed against the red lacquered wall.

  “I think our two would-be assassins may have eliminated one another.”

  “You killed them, Gaby!”

  “Quite the contrary.” She smiled placidly. “They killed themselves with the same squeeze of the trigger with which they had intended to kill us. Poetic justice if you will.”

  “But—“

  “Save your liberal guilt for some other time. I told you no life was wasted, didn’t I?” She pushed him out of the elevator and shoved him toward their suite-which-was-not-supposed-to-be-a-suite. “You’re not really tough enough to survive, are you? No wonder you were not strong enough to stand up to that witch you

  married. And by the way, when she tries to come back to you— and count on it, she will try—you had better be tough enough to say ‘No way.’ Most High does not like people who waste Her second chances.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said docilely when she shoved him through the door. “Anything you say, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, Jackie Jim,” she apologized after the door had slammed itself firmly shut. “I didn’t blow that one, but I’m still nervous after yesterday.”

  “You spotted those two in the lobby?” “Right. Same gang as day before yesterday. And I still can’t figure— Anyway, no one’s death should be taken lightly, not
even professional killers. I hope I didn’t seem callous. My first concern, of course”—she wrapped him in her maternal smile—“was

  you.”

  “Why?” Sean slumped into a chair. “I don’t get it. Why do they

  want to kill me?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  “It sure isn’t.” He began to quiver, as if he were coming down with the flu. “What did I do?”

  “You’ve been talking for the last six months about superflies and evolutionary leaps and angels. There are men in the world who are interested in supermen. Despite what you said at the press conference yesterday, they’re confident that they can intervene in the process of transposition, rearrange the coding of the human genetic lines, and produce superman.” “Good God!”

  “Indeed.” She sat on the arm of his chair and touched his forehead with her fingers. “You know about Stacey’s work, you have theories about evolutionary leaps; these men see you as a threat to their own plans to take control of the next leap for humans. They think they can push the species, or some of its members to be precise, on a leap in the direction of angels. You apparently are seen as an obstacle.” “They’re mad!” “Oh yes. You know that and we know that, but they don’t

  know that.”

  “Nazis? Those two sounded like—“

  “Like the villains on old TV films? Every guttural accent is not necessarily German, Seano.”

  “Who’s involved in this stuff?” The gentleness of her fingers brought peace to his body and soul. A lot better than Valium.

  “Just about every major government in the world and, in this reign of Margaret Thatcher, a private company in England—the so-called Project Archangel.”

  “And they think I’m an obstacle? Why?”

  She hesitated. “We’re not sure. Maybe just on general principles that you know too much.”

  “Nice people.... Anyway,” he said with a sigh as quiet oozed through his bones, “thanks. Sorry I fell apart. It’s just that I’m kind of new at all this.”

  “And I’m sorry”—a bottle of Black Bush had materialized in one hand and a tumbler filled with ice in the other—“that I was nasty about Mona. Here, drink this, it will help your nap.”

  “Thank you.” He didn’t know that a nap was scheduled. “You’re right about Mona, by the way; she’ll be back and I’ll have to force myself to say no.”

  “The kids might help.” She was looking out the window. “Ah, the inestimable Captain Michael Patrick McNamee. Poor dear man, he’ll need a vacation before we get out of town.”

  Only as he began to sip the potent whiskey did Sean Seamus Desmond realize how badly he was trembling and how weak his muscles had become. Great hero. Stick a gun in his stomach and he folds up.

  “Is this advice to the lovelorn part of remaking my body or my soul?”

  “Both.” She turned around and sighed. “And truly, Professor Sean Seamus Desmond, you’d try the patience of an angel, to coin a phrase.” She grinned and then caught herself. “How many times do I have to tell you that I do not and cannot deprive you of your freedom.”

  “Even by being right all the time?”

  They both laughed together, good companions again.

  “The trick is to force yourself to see the opportunities. Once that happens, you’ll do the rest on the strength of your instincts and your hormones.”

  “Like Laura Taylor.” He now remembered the lovely woman very clearly.

  “There’ll be others. Now take your nap and maybe, just maybe, when you wake up, I’ll sing a little for you.”

  She’s going to try to back down on her promise, Sean told himself, as he drifted off into the peaceful sleep that had become a habit since Gabriella Light had intruded into his life. She doesn’t want to sing for me. An exhibitionist but a shy exhibitionist.

  So he was determined to make her sing. Win at least one encounter from your nosy, pushy, tender guardian angel.

  As sleep completed the calming of his nerves that the drink had begun, he heard Gaby—a long way off, it seemed—talking on

  the phone.

  “Captain McNamee, how nice to hear from you again.... Oh, we went shopping, as I’m sure your subordinates told you, and then had some tea. Professor Desmond is resting just now, in the other room I might add.... What? A double murder in the hotel? This is a dangerous city, isn’t it? Two foreign agents ... from what country? ... I understand that it must be a secret, of course. U.N. missions, I suppose.... Yes, that place must make it harder for you and your aides.... Killed each other, my heavens how strange! ... Single bullets to the hearts fired at the same instant? Remarkable. ... No, I don’t see either how it could have anything to do with the attempt on Professor Desmond’s life yesterday. That man

  was a religious fanatic, wasn’t he, not a foreign agent___No, I

  won’t alarm him unduly. We leave on the night plane for London

  tomorrow___He’s too poor to fly the Concorde___Yes, thank you

  very much for calling, Captain.”

  Right.

  He was awakened later from pleasantly but obscurely erotic dreams by the smell of a swissburger drenched in mustard and onions.

  He was tucked in bed, dressed only in his shorts. Damn

  woman thinks she’s a nurse.

  “Damn sensate paradise,” he murmured, “food, drink, and a beautiful woman. It’ll spoil me for the real world.”

  “Be quiet and eat your swissburger.”

  Her white suit had been replaced by the familiar beige robe.

  “What kind of wine do you have this time?”

  “Neirsteiner Glock Eiswein, 1976?”

  “Fine.” He had no idea what the name meant.

  “Try some.” She offered him a wineglass he had not seen before.

  “Oh boy!”

  “like it?”

  “Something this good has to be sinful.”

  “Only venial.”

  They both laughed together again. Good friends.

  “How long does this cruise last?”

  “Eager to get rid of me?” She tilted her head to one side.

  “No, just eager to get rid of folks like our two friends this afternoon. ... Anything on TV about them?”

  “Not a word. If people don’t exist, they can’t be killed, can they?”

  “We’re covering up?”

  “Your government is covering up. I don’t identify with them.”

  She leaned over him to fill his wineglass, revealing a snowfall of white lace under her robe. A couple of hundred dollars of lingerie for one quick glance.

  No, she makes them or steals them or buys them with her phony money that isn’t phony and then probably sends them back. And like women of our species she dresses more for herself than for me.

  “Nice lace.”

  “Thought you’d like it. Better than the wine?”

  “Greatest wine in all the world. Really!”

  “Totally?”

  “Out of sight bitchin’!”

  More laughter.

  “Are you still going to sing for me tonight?”

  She sat on the chair opposite his bed and drew her robe tightly around her.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Sure. I need some entertainment after a hard day—new clothes, long walk, difficult museums, painful lecture, gun in my belly... .”

  “My songs are not entertainment.”

  “Is Mozart?”

  “All right, maybe a little bit entertaining, in an intellectual sort of a way___I’m not sure you’ll like them.”

  Truly a shy angel.

  “I liked the music on Stacey’s tapes.”

  “Poor imitation.” She snapped her fingers.

  “Is she a threat?”

  “Stacey? To whom?” “To you? To me?”

  “She’s irrelevant.” Gaby waved her hand and bounced out of the chair. “Her sponsors are another problem.” “Will they break your code?”

  She looked at him
startled. “Figure out what our communications mean? You must be joking, Sean. What is her computer support? Fifth generation? When you get to the two hundredth generation, maybe you’ll understand a few of our verbs.” “Stacey won’t get anything out of her work?” “Full professor.... Concert in a half hour. In the parlor. Dress up. Suit, tie, fresh shave, everything.” “Heavy duty!”

  “When was the last time an angel sang for you?” “Gabriella!” he called as she bounded out the door, eager to prepare for a concert he was sure she was dying to give.

  “What?” She was back in the bedroom, frowning impatiently.

  “Sit down.”

  “An order?”

  “And from an inferior species too. I’m practicing for dealing

  with strong women.”

  Her frown deepened. “Wolfhound ordering the nobility

  around?”

  “Gentry. Now sit down like I said.”

  “All right”—she smiled—“I’ll let you win this one. What do

  you want?”

  “Is your species happy?”

  She sighed and her shoulders sagged. “What makes you ask

  thatr

  “All this energetic running around. I mean for me, sure, but

  for all these patterns you want to protect.”

  “That’s a fair question.” She bowed her head and lowered her eyes. “You’re no one’s fool, Seano Jaymo, no one’s fool at all at all. Do I seem unhappy?”

  “Driven, sometimes.”

  “I may not be typical.”

  “I’m sure you’re not.”

  She breathed deeply. “We’re fellow pilgrims of the absolute, as I’ve said before. What can I tell you? I sound like a New Yorker, don’t I? After a species achieves reflectivity, is there really any difference in the average level of happiness?”

  “You tell me.”

  “We have a lot more fun.” She would not look up at him. “Running around the universe all the time. And a lot more interests and a lot longer life___”

  “And higher expectations and responsibilities, or these patterns of goodness and beauty that seem to obsess your kind?”

  “So it cancels out, I suppose.” She stood up, tightening the belt on her robe. “Your Augustine, a terrible man in a lot of ways, said our hearts are restless till they rest in Most High. All reflective species, I suspect. Fellow voyagers through the mysteries and surprises of the universe.” Uh-huh.”