The Side of the Angels (41 page)

I didn't pity my friends who were single women in their forties and fifties. Of all my friends, they seemed most content. It was my married friends who phoned me in tears, who exhausted themselves with the burdens of work and home, who wondered what the hell they were doing with their lives. I felt a rush of fear when I thought of myself as a woman paired. But the fear subsided when I considered that I'd lose much more in doing without Tony than I would in taking this chance with him. And I knew we hadn't seen all that was good between us, all that was possible. We'd barely scratched the surface.

*      *      *

Being in the office with Ron was a relief. In my business persona, I was far less vulnerable to nervousness and second-guessing.

“You people sure pulled that one out” was Ron's only comment on the strike, but I hadn't expected anything along the lines either of thoughtful regret at his lack of faith or delighted congratulations.

Ron appeared elegant and beautifully packaged as always. I sat down in one of his office chairs, an enormous squishy cube upholstered in a flat, fuzzy gray wool that felt as if it should have been carpeting material. Ron's desk was littered with holiday gifts from vendors and invitations in gold-foil-lined envelopes. On his windowsill was a large poinsettia like the one Kate had carried into the hospital that night, with a card attached that said, “Merry Christmas From Duke's Printing.” Hovering over this greeting in upraised gold acrylic was what I assumed the owner thought of as a ducal crest.

Either Duke's was aware of Ron's Presbyterian roots, or unconcerned about offending its Jewish, Muslim, and atheist customers with a wholesale Christmas message and gift drop. It must be lonely to be an atheist during the holidays, I thought. Like being the only one at a wild party who didn't drink. I tried to imagine what kind of God Ron believed in. Was he an austere and critical parent like Ron's late father, keeping in touch only when it was necessary to register disapproval? Was he one of the boys, a Big Guy who'd go round a few holes and laugh at Ron's jokes when he'd had a couple of drinks back at the clubhouse? Did Ron pray? I couldn't imagine it.

“You want one of these raspberry caramels before Myrlene puts them out in the kitchen?” said Ron, holding out a silvery tin decorated with a Currier and Ives scene.

I grabbed a handful and stuffed them in my purse. You never know when you'll be stuck in traffic and want something to nibble. Ron didn't blink at my tackiness. That was one of the traits I liked most in him: deep down, he knew he wasn't any classier than me, that he was just some Midwestern guy who now owned a few nice suits.

It had been so many weeks since I thought of him without anger that I was startled. Sure, he hadn't come through for me on the strike,
but he'd never billed himself as someone who could be counted on for that kind of support. He'd delivered, as usual, exactly what he'd promised. I relaxed into the depths of the chair, feeling I'd been gone for months and months.

“You're coming this Friday, aren't you?” said Ron.

Friday was our office Christmas party. Unlike other, more budget-minded bosses, Ron didn't believe in playing Chipmunk records and getting toasted on inferior punch in the comfort of our own premises. Instead, he invited each of us and a significant other to an overpriced steak house on Fifteenth Street, where you could get a prime rib for thirty bucks and be condescended to by waiters who didn't thaw for anyone lower than a cabinet member. No one enjoyed these gatherings except Ron, who drank too much and made sentimental toasts until Dana carted him home.

“I guess. Yeah, I'm coming. I'm bringing someone, too.”

“I know who you're bringing.”

“Stop smirking, then. How'd the Campsters event go?”

“Mixed results,” said Ron, his face growing far sadder than it had appeared when he contemplated pulling the plug on the St. Francis strike. “There was a scuffle among the kids about who got to hold the American flag during the singing, and one of them got a black eye. And then the silent auction was a real bust.”

“Why? Those usually go over.”

“Wendy may have taken the woodsy theme a little too far. They were auctioning off stuff like a weekend in an unheated cabin in New Hampshire, and snowshoeing lessons in Labrador. Really rich people don't ante up to be as uncomfortable as that, at least not East Coast rich people. I think we should have gone for a little more conspicuous consumption, maybe left out some of that rustic shit.”

Poor Wendy. I'd thought all along that this could only end in tears.

“How did Jantsy take it?”

“She's frozen Wendy out, basically. It won't last. No one else would put up with her the way Wendy does. But Wendy can't see that, and she's been moping around a little. She'd even made Jantsy a Christmas present, some sort of knitted throw rug.”

“An afghan?”

“Yeah, that was it.”

“I should have kept on top of that Campsters benefit, Ron, but I thought Jantsy was thrilled with Wendy, and neither of them wanted my interference.”

“It's not your fault,” said Ron in a burst of rare generosity. “No one can handle Janet Stratton-Pole-Up-Her-Snooty-Butt-Smith close up, let alone long-distance.”

It wasn't like Ron to be understanding if blame was handy to throw around. Something was up. Here it came.

“Nicky, I have a proposition for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Weingould is very hepped up on you, as you know. He wants you on this strawberry fields campaign.”

“Strawberry pickers. He sure does. He gave me a call a few days ago, even though he knows he's supposed to talk to you first. I think he may even come out there himself for a week or so.”

“He's very excited. He didn't think the Toilers would have a chance to do this campaign. Goreman has been against it for years now.”

We both knew why. Low-wage workers didn't amount to much in dues money, and thus their plight was uninteresting to Jerry Goreman, man of the people. Weingould's getting the green light on the Samp-sonville campaign was a coup appropriate to this season of miracles.

“Well, as you know, Wendy has been wanting to get more experience in the field for some time now, and I think I can talk Weingould into taking her instead of you. I thought it would get her out of Jantsy's way for a while and cheer her up.”

I couldn't believe my ears, a phrase you often hear but which I'd never fully known the meaning of until now.

“Cheer her up? You've got people risking their necks out there in California just to join the union, and you want Wendy assigned for therapeutic reasons? What's she going to do, make pretty name tags? This is serious stuff, Ron. She's not ready for it.”

“Boltanski can bring her along. She learns fast. And I need you here. We might have a whole new sideline going with historic preservation groups after the Mallard Pond effort turned out so well. They're always trying to build shopping centers over battlefields out in northern
Virginia. I can really see a market. I know you have something going with Boltanski, but I hope you'll agree that shouldn't affect our business strategy.”

“Ron, I don't care if you're convinced I'm going to California so I can be Tony's on-site cupcake. As it happens, I would love to work with him on this one if we don't kill each other first. But that's beside the point. The point is, I can do this campaign and Wendy can't. She is not up to this one. Not in a million years.”

His expression, bland and confident, didn't change.

“Wendy needs the experience, Nicky. She can't play social secretary forever.”

Why did I think that he was quoting Wendy herself here?

“Fine. Then send her out there with me, and I'll make sure she gets her feet wet. Or wait for something less challenging than Samp-sonville, and give her that.”

“She wants this one,” he said, almost as if he'd forgotten I was there. “This is the one she wants.”

A nasty idea that had been knocking around in my unwilling subconscious suddenly, with huge reluctance, took form.

“You're sleeping with her.”

He ruffled through the invitations on his desk. I saw one decorated with dancing penguins in tuxedos. Original.

“God, Ron. Wendy? It's bad enough that you're running around on Dana. Did it have to be Wendy?”

He swallowed, and for the first time in our acquaintance I noticed his Adam's apple.

“There's an attraction there, Nicky. It's like nothing I've ever felt before.”

“It's called turning forty-five, Ron.”

“Do you think that for one second you could talk to me like a human being?”

I stood up.

“You weren't straight with me, Ron. She's sitting in there with a fancier desk than I have and a nosy little finger in all my campaigns, and now we
both
know why. And it stinks. You're screwing over the two women who've been with you longest—your wife and me—all for
some twenty-five-year-old nookie at lunchtime. You're such a little shit.”

I was about to leave when he began to cry.

He didn't cry like a child, which would have been preferable. He cried silently, trying to stop the contortions of his face, putting his palms up to his eyes—the way men cry who never cry, which breaks your heart.

“Oh, for God's sake,” I said, and pulled out a dozen tissues from the guest box on the coffee table. I shoved them into his hand but he ignored them. I went over and put my arm around his shoulder. It felt warm and damp, and less muscular than I'd thought it would be, and I had a chilling intimation of Ron's later years, as he lost his good looks and had to rely more and more on his facile charm.

“Okay,” I said. “Don't worry. We'll figure something out. Okay.”

“I am so fricking messed up, Nicky. I've wrecked my life. I've wrecked it. I'm in love with this girl, or obsessed with her or something. I can't stop it even for my business. Even for my wife. My wife who's been so good to me, do you think I don't know that?”

Maybe it was hard to have a spouse who was good to you. Who you'd come to rely on as stronger than you were. It must make you yearn to look wise and sophisticated to someone fresh and lovely who thought you had things to teach her.

Wendy would eat him alive. In that moment I felt very, very sorry for Ron. I even stroked his hair, a gesture I later squirmed to remember.

“It will work itself out,” I said. “Everything does.”

“You don't believe that.”

“Maybe not, but in any case I'll be around. As long as—”

“As long as I don't let this thing with Wendy screw you up, too. I get that. I'm sorry. She pushed and pushed on this California assignment. She wants to play in the big leagues.”

The big leagues. Definitely Wendy's words again. I wanted to ask Ron where she got these expressions, but it wouldn't be kind to him in his current distraught state.

“I'll tell you what, Ron.
Do
send her out there, but with me. She can't get into too much trouble while I'm keeping an eye on her, and it'll give you a break to sort out your … to sort things out.”

He looked up, finally saw that he was holding tissues, and blew his nose.

“That would be one answer. You'd really be willing to do that? I know you two aren't the best of friends.”

“But I'm
your
friend. It's too late now to change my mind about that. So pack her off to California with me, and take it from there. What the hell.”

At one-thirty that afternoon, I left the Advocacy, Inc. office to meet Tony, who was coming into Dulles on a four o'clock plane. From K Street I caught the Washington Flyer, a big coach-bus that usually whisks you out there in forty minutes or so. But the snow that had seemed so beautifying and benign when I'd been striding down Connecticut had turned into a major storm. Flights from the north were reported by the airline as late, then canceled. No takeoff time was yet listed for Tony's at my last check before boarding the Flyer.

We sat on that bus for three hours, ten of us. There was a French Canadian couple speaking a specific regional dialect with now and then a word I recognized, pronounced in a way I didn't expect. There were two American University students going home for Christmas, each weighted down with a duffel bag full of presents, talking about final exams and pre-Christmas breakups on their dorm hall. There was a guy in dreadlocks who was reading Kant, and there were two businessmen who tried to look blasé but kept checking their watches and calling their wives. Last to board was an old lady with teased white hair, carting a John Grisham thriller, a bucket of fried chicken, and a cat in a carrier. The cat yowled miserably and finally, looking around a little nervously, she took it out of the carrier and held it in her lap, feeding it bits of white meat. It was a Persian, with fur as white as its owner's hair, and it looked out indifferently at the white world we were traveling through and suffered itself to be petted.

Running from the office, I hadn't brought as much as a magazine, though I did have the raspberry caramels to chew on. I had never met Tony at the airport before. He'd never let me, years ago. He'd used to say that the time between airport and home was his decompression
time. Now when I offered, he said, “That would be great. It's a drag to get off the plane with no one waiting for you.”

Louise had offered to go with me, but she had enough to handle right now, making up for lost time both at her business and with Johnny. Louise and Johnny were dating. Actually dating. Louise felt they had to go back to the beginning and do it right, or, as she put it, “our relationship will have a psychic blight on it.”

My mother, who had called from Jerusalem the night before “just to check in,” had predicted that they'd be married by summer. She'd set all the wheels in motion, and now she was looking forward to bossing Louise into a June bridal.