The Third Angel (3 page)

“Right. You make money.” Paul was actually sneering. He seemed angry, ready to argue about anything.

“Is that a crime?” Maddy felt her back go up. So she invested money for rich people; was she supposed to apologize for being good at what she did?

“Who am I to judge?” Paul said.

“Exactly.” Maddy poured herself another glass of wine. She would need it. She saw now why Allie was drinking. This was a difficult man. “You're nobody.”

Paul stared at her, taking her in, then he grinned. Maddy had the distinct impression that for some odd reason he thought he knew exactly who she was; that he might even know something she didn't.

“He's not exactly a nobody. He's a film editor,” Allie said.

“He's the one who told the film company about
The Heron's Wife.
I told you that, too, Maddy. You both don't listen. You have that in common.”

Allie cleared the plates and refused any help. They could hear her washing up in the kitchen.

“She always does it all on her own, doesn't she?” Paul said. “Never needs the least bit of help.”

“Of course. She has to control everything. No one else can do it as well as she does, can they?”

Paul finished his wine and poured them both some more. “I don't know why your sister is marrying me. I'm not sure what she's told you, but she's making a terrible mistake. Has she talked about me much?”

“I'm sure you'll make her delirious with joy. And you can relax. She doesn't talk about you at all, so you're safe from my prying.” Maddy was dismissive. She'd known his type before, and was surprised that her sister, usually so practical and smart, had fallen for him. One of those too-handsome men who always thought he was the most important person in the room. Someone who had to be coddled, the center of attention; most likely he had very few friends.

“She hasn't told you anything?”

“Is there something to tell?”

“There's always something to tell, my girl. Everyone has a story.”

Maddy looked him over more carefully. He wasn't quite what she expected. Once he dropped the arrogant attitude he was surprisingly nice.

“Most probably I'll ruin everything,” he said humbly, which further surprised Maddy. “I haven't been very successful at this.”

“I didn't know you'd been married before.”

“Not marriage. Love. I was raised to be self-centered, not that I fault my mum. She's the best, really. I'm just a selfish bastard. It must be in my DNA. What's in yours other than beauty?”

Madeline felt something go through her. Just like that, sitting there at the table. Attraction was a very strange thing; it had a life of its own. Paul was looking at her very oddly, considering who they were and what was happening.

“I'm selfish, too. I'm the opposite of Allie.” Maddy could feel herself flush. This wasn't supposed to be about her. “I'm sure you'll do just fine by my sister.”

“Right,” Paul said. “We'll live happily after ever. What are the odds of that?”

For some reason they both laughed. Maybe they could tell they had an equal disability in the love department, losers both. Maddy hadn't managed to keep a boyfriend for more than a year. She grew bored easily and she was demanding. She told people she'd been ruined by her placement in the family. She'd always been babied, always followed Allie's lead.

“I'm glad you're getting along,” Allie said when she came in with dessert. There were berries and ice cream and a bowl of Cream Chantilly, along with a bottle of cherry brandy.

They could have answered in many different ways. Instead they looked at each other across the table. That was when Madeline knew there'd be trouble. The moment of doubt, the thud of the pulse, the quick image of the disaster to come. It was all right there, laid down like a road map across the tabletop. Spoon, fork, knife, heartbreak.

“Did you make this whipped cream yourself?” Maddy asked her sister. “It's delicious.”

But she wasn't thinking any of that. She couldn't care less about the sundae. She didn't even like desserts anymore. She was thinking of a time when she was seven years old and was terrified of a storm; she'd run down to the cellar to hide. She remembered what it was like to hear the rest of her family looking for her, calling her name, frantic in their search, and how it felt not to answer. For once she had power over them. She who was no one, Miss Second-Best. She felt that way now. As though she was the only one in the room who truly knew what was going on. She looked at Paul again, just to make sure she wasn't imagining this. He was staring right at her.

She wasn't imagining anything.

That night Maddy brushed her teeth in her sister's small, cluttered bathroom. She wanted to go straight to bed and stop thinking. Her heart was pounding like mad. Too much wine. Too much caffeine. She was only in London for a few days and wouldn't be back until the wedding at the end of August, so how much damage could she actually do? It was just a game, nothing more. A little flirting behind Allie's back, minor misbehavior she equated with stealing the hair ribbons and trinkets that Allie had never even noticed were missing. Once, on impulse, Maddy had poured a glass of milk over Allie's bed. It was so mean she couldn't believe she'd actually done it. She never confessed. She acted surprised when the room started to smell.

Maddy didn't understand her own envy, it was so deep inside her. Their mother said it must have been mold that caused the odor; the house was damp, after all, surrounded by the saltwater marsh. Lucy spent an entire day washing their clothes, along with the sheets and blankets. She hung everything out on the line. Maddy saw her mother in the yard at the end of the day, sitting beneath the sycamore tree, exhausted from her work. There were still piles of more laundry to do, most of it clean. Maddy could have stepped in then; she could have said there'd been an accident and saved her mother all that trouble. But she didn't. She stood by the reeds without saying a word.

M
ADDY WAS A
fool for checking into the Lion Park at the height of summer. The rooms were stifling, there was no room service, and the plumbing was ancient. Her mother had had a white ceramic ashtray decorated with a green lion from this hotel that she kept on her night table for years. “It was once my favorite place in the world,” Lucy told the girls. “I was twelve and I thought it was so elegant.”

Maddy had always imagined a real live lion in a hotel room, and maybe that was why she'd made the reservation. Her mother had seemed so fond of the place. But the hotel was second-rate. As for the lion, it was made of stone; it sat out in the courtyard, covered with moss.

“Oh, that,” the desk clerk said of the lion when Maddy had checked in. “It was taken from a monastery in France and it's been in the garden for several hundred years. It was there before the hotel was built. There's a crack running down his back and we don't know what we'll do if he ever splits apart. We'll have to find a new name!”

There was only one person who knew Maddy had arrived early, and she was actually counting the minutes until he appeared. She'd sent him a registered letter and he'd signed for it, so he clearly was well aware that she expected him to show up. There were pigeons on the window ledge and Maddy could hear the traffic from Brompton Road. The rest of the family, Maddy and Allie's parents, Lucy and Bob, the aunts and uncles and first cousins, along with several of Allie's friends from the States, would all be staying a few blocks away at the Mandarin Oriental. Maddy had told her parents her firm had an arrangement with the smaller hotel around the corner; she would practically be staying for nothing. She said she was writing a brief for a client who might have to do jail time because of his potentially shady investments and she needed peace and quiet. Her hotel had no cable or movies to rent; it had no fancy spa, only a small lounge where guests could have dinner and drinks.

The Lion Park was seven floors tall, but squat; it took up most of a block. It was not the sort of place from which Maddy would have expected her mother to keep a memento. The hallways were long, with door after door painted blue, each with a room number embossed in gold and a fluted glass knob. Every floor looked the same; it was possible to get thoroughly lost because the hallways followed the angle of the street outside and bent back upon themselves. Very confusing for most guests.

The lift fit only four people and the staircase curved upward with smaller and smaller stairs, until at the very top one had to take baby steps or risk a fall. Maddy's room was at the far end of the hotel, on the street side. Inside there was a bed with a white bedspread, a dresser, a television that received four grainy channels, and an air conditioner on a stand, vented through the window via a plastic hose, a contraption that actually seemed to make the room hotter. All through the hotel the carpet was wool, a dark murky green. The bathroom was small, with a dreadful tub that only had a handheld showerhead; the sink was in the room itself. There was an overhead light and one lamp on an old-fashioned desk. Maddy didn't really mind; all she had cared about since her visit in the spring was coming back. She wished that her stay was for fifteen days, or thirty, or more. Ten thousand days would not be long enough. When he didn't arrive that afternoon, she called him and left a message on his answering machine.

You'd better show up. You owe me that at least. You owe me more, as a matter of fact.

That night, Maddy fell into a fitful sleep. She dreamed she was in the backyard in Connecticut. There was the sycamore tree with a thousand bones tied to its branches. Red flowers grew instead of leaves. Maddy went to pick a flower, but she sliced open her hand. The flowers were made of glass. She remembered what it felt like to cut herself. She remembered that she thought it was the only way to feel anything. Inside her dream Maddy heard a man shouting. She opened her eyes and he was still shouting. The clock on her bedside table read ten-thirty p.m. All of a sudden she was completely awake. She had never heard such impassioned shouting. An Englishman, and for an instant she thought Paul, but it wasn't Paul's voice. The ruckus was in the hall, in the doorway of the room directly across from hers: 707. Maddy got up and went to peek out, but there was no keyhole, no way of seeing what was happening outside. She thought for a moment of opening her door, but the unseen man was shouting so terribly that Maddy felt she might stumble into a confrontation that was none of her business. Instead, she put her ear against the door. She couldn't make out very much, only stray words. “Every time,” she heard him say. “Unbelievable.”

Maddy slipped back under the covers and put her hands over her ears. She stayed there, shivering, until she stopped thinking, until all she could remember was the sycamore tree. She remembered sharing a bed with her sister and how afraid she'd been of the dark.

H
E HAD RETURNED
to the flat the morning following the curry dinner, after Allie had gone off to a meeting with the director of the film adaptation of
The Heron's Wife.
They were tweaking the final edits of the screenplay. Georgia was to be the set designer and she came by and picked up Allie. They'd be at it all day. Maddy was supposed to amuse herself, then join Allie at the dress shop. It was the final fitting for the wedding suit and the maid of honor's dress, which was being taken in at the waist. When tailored, it would fit Maddy perfectly. “You'll look like a flower,” Allie had said. “An iris. Don't forget to meet me at five.”

Allie left breakfast on the table, the way she had when they were girls. There were croissants and cereal and jam, but all Maddy wanted was black coffee. Instead of bothering with breakfast, she fixed herself some strong coffee and had a cigarette even though she knew Allie didn't like anyone to smoke in her flat. One more rule to be broken. She sat by the window and waved the plume of smoke out into the air. Allie would never know. She'd never been the suspicious type. Really, for someone so smart and so sure of herself, she'd always been quite easy to fool.

Allie had been at her meeting for nearly an hour when the buzzer sounded. Right away, Maddy had the strangest feeling that it was Paul. She had been thinking about him all night. She was despicable for being attracted to her sister's fiancé, but it was all in her mind, after all, and she wasn't responsible for what went on inside her head. It wasn't as though she planned to act on any of it. Yes, she had always stolen things from Allie, but a man wasn't a velvet skirt or a pair of boots. Even Maddy knew that. Love wasn't something you could borrow and then return.

Maddy went to the intercom. “Heller Residence.” She was wearing a T-shirt and underpants and one of Allie's robes. Her hair smelled like smoke and she knew she'd have to shampoo it before she met up with Allie.

“I know where I am,” Paul said through the intercom.

So that was it. The moment before the disaster. Maddy could push the button and let him up, or she could step away and go back to bed. She could pretend she hadn't heard him; perhaps a deliveryman had rung up and she'd decided to ignore his arrival.

“Why should I let you in?” was what she said. She thought she knew the answer, but she wasn't sure.

“Because you want to,” Paul told her.

When Maddy pressed the buzzer to unlock the door to the downstairs vestibule, she could feel the vibration through the bones of her hand, up along her arm, into her shoulder. She had a breathless, giddy feeling, as though she were about to dive off the high board into a pool. She thought about the way he'd looked at her at the dinner table. Imagining him, she felt flushed again, overwhelmed with desire. She didn't think of herself as a liar or a cheat, but sometimes the truth was mutable, wasn't it?

Maddy could have changed her mind while Paul took the lift up, but she didn't. He knocked on the door and she told herself nothing bad was about to happen. He is coming for a scarf he forgot, or to leave a gift for Allie, or to grab a bottle of wine in the fridge. I am opening the door to him for that reason, because he needs something he accidentally left behind.