Angel Fire Read online

  “With the Creature numbing my brain cells, would I have the mind to think about theoretical physics and work out the complex formulae by which I earn my living, or the will to resist sexual overtures, not that there’s too many of those?”

  “You would not, at all, at all.”

  “And would I want to be doing irreparable harm to the remnants of my figure with too much of the drink taken every day?”

  “I wouldn’t be saying remnants,” he countered, breaking the response to her litany.

  “What’s that would you be saying now?” she demanded, her mobile face taking on the mask of a potentially angry mother superior.

  “Classical charms?”

  “Ah, that’s nice now; we won’t talk anymore about the subject, but those are grand words.”

  “Kind of like a Rubens nude, if you take my meaning. Without

  the flab.”

  “Rubens, is it now?” She was flustered, wondering whether

  she should be angry.

  “Garden of Love.”

  “I know what picture you mean.” She considered him, still not certain whether to lose her temper. “I’m not a complete eejit.”

  “I can’t make a scholarly evaluation while you have your

  clothes on, but on the basis of the evidence presently available to me, I’d say that such a paradigm at least merits further testing.”

  “You’re a desperate man, Sean Seamus Desmond.” She blushed, anger dismissed as utterly inappropriate, and looked like she was about to cry. “Desperate altogether.”

  “Desperate?” Maybe the Rubens comparison was a mistake. It drenched his brain with tasty and dangerous pictures of a naked Nora Anne. He was a little fluthered too, come to think of it.

  “Too much altogether, but still nice.” She touched his hand. “You’re trying to melt me poor heart with your blarney, but I like it just the same. I must be fluthered already.”

  “You’re not,” he said, as he held her fingers.

  “Candidly”—she was her sober, academic self again—“I hardly drink anything at all. Nothing in Advent and Lent.”

  “Isn’t this Advent?”

  “I gave myself a dispensation.” She giggled. “Am I not having dinner with one of your fine, grand Nobel Prize winners?”

  “You’re not fluthered,” he continued to hold her hand, “but if you keep up at this rate, ought you to be driving home?”

  “Won’t I take the train now? Isn’t it only a half-hour ride on the DART? Can’t I collect the car tomorrow when I take you to your grand lecture? Sure wouldn’t it be a terrible sin not to enjoy this wine, and it being so dear, especially since the university is buying it for us?”

  Gently she withdrew her hand.

  “I’m the one that’s fluthered, woman, and not on wine either.”

  “You shouldn’t say that, Sean.” She tried to be serious, afraid that the conversation was getting out of hand. “I’m just a dowdy, overweight Dublin widow with a dry academic mind. But it’s very nice to hear it just the same.”

  Glory be to God, it ought not to be this easy.

  He reached across the table with his right hand and captured her stubborn Irish chin. He caressed the flesh beneath her lips very slowly.

  She lowered her eyes, frightened, but not repelled.

  “No passes, Nora Anne, not tonight anyway. Just a bit of adoration.”

  “I don’t know why.” She looked up, troubled, uncertain.

  “I thought we banned self-hatred.”

  She laughed and permitted him to hold her eyes with his own. “I suppose a woman can’t stop a man from adoring, not if he has made up his mind to adore.” “He has made up his mind.”

  She eased her face out of his possession. “I don’t want to lose my heart to you, Sean Seamus Desmond. Not at all, at all.”

  She was, he reasoned, a woman capable of nearly total surrender in trust. She had done it once and it had not worked out so well. She was afraid of doing it again. But she would. To someone, eventually. So why not Sean Seamus Desmond?

  “Faith, woman, there’s a lot more than your heart at stake. Starting with your dress, for example.”

  Head bowed again, she hesitated and then murmured, “God knows, I understand that. I knew that as soon as you came off the plane at the airport. That’s why 1 was such an onchuck—female amadan”—a tiny, tiny laugh—“and worried half to death that something had happened to you. Sure, I wanted to cry for joy when I saw your wonderful Irish face.”

  Her eyes were closed, her face taut and anxious. Dear God, what openness. Had poor Dennis been frightened by such an awesome, passionate offering and run away from it? Was she now afraid of another such oblation, perhaps comprehending how she could terrify a man and yet not knowing how else to make a gift of

  herself?

  God knows, woman, I would have run from you before I fell

  in with herself.

  Now tread carefully, you amadan.

  He recaptured her face, both hands now on her cheeks. “I’ll make no bones about it, Nora Anne: I intend to do everything I can to lure you into my bed, and on a long-term basis. But I promise I won’t hurt you. Now or ever.”

  She opened her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you hurting me, Sean Seamus. I trust you.”

  “Do you now?” He felt mildly offended that he had so quickly been rated trustworthy. “And meself talking so much blarney?” “Och, now.” She touched his cheek quickly and then pulled her hand away, looking around to see if anyone in the room had noticed her gesture; she did not try to escape his hands, however. “Isn’t your blarney transparent? Even if I’ll probably have a wee look at my book of Rubens when I go home. You wouldn’t hurt

  “Funny thing. That’s what herself, the Queen of Sweden, said to me just the other day.”

  She grinned at him, somehow utterly delighted. “And were you trying to seduce her too?”

  “I was not. Now that you mention the thought, it might not have been a bad idea, and her husband there all the time.”

  They laughed together again.

  “It’s meself I don’t trust.” She sighed, suddenly unhappy. “I don’t want to hurt either meself or you.”

  “I won’t let you do that.”

  She frowned and tried to pull away from him. He tightened his grip and forced her head back so she had to look at him.

  “Are the terms clear, Nora Flanagan? I want you and I intend to have you.”

  Her face twisted in a rapid flux of emotions: fear, joy, pain, longing. She tried again to twist her head away from him. He tightened the control in his tender vise. Finally she bit her lip and then smiled. “Well, now, if a man wants to try to seduce a woman, sure, I don’t suppose there’s anything she can do to make him stop trying, can she?”

  She ceased resistance to his possession of her face. Capitulation.

  A sudden, powerful wave of desire swept through him.

  I could take her back to my damp suite at the Shelbourne and make her mine before the hour is over.

  Don’t be a fool, that’s not the way to do it. She’ll feel cheap afterward and then where will you be?

  Maybe she won’t.

  Well, don’t push it tonight anyway. Sure, the day after the lecture or maybe even the next day, will she not be inviting you down to that wee cottage in south county Dublin and the girls off at their school? That’ll be the right time, won’t it now?

  He released her face and returned to his sherry trifle.

  “I know in theory”—she frowned thoughtfully—“that my body is good, but so much of my religious education suggests otherwise.”

  “I’ll vote for the theory, if you upgrade the word from ‘good’ to ‘superb’ or even ‘mind-boggling’!”

  “Thank you.” A blush and a soft smile and averted eyes. “You’d make a good pope.”

  “Not very good but better than some of them.”

  They laughed together. Would the rest of his life be a partial replay of discuss
ions with that damn seraph?

  “May I ask a question?” She peeked up at him, her eyes awash.

  “Indeed you may.”

  “You’re a desperate man altogether. You look at me like you know everything about me already and want me anyway. It’s flattering”—she grinned self-consciously—“to be admired and wanted”—she gulped—“so intensely ... disconcerting but not totally unpleasing. Still, why me? I acted like the blooming queen of all witches at the airport and was a terrible eejit in the car coming in. I can’t see why a man would want, on such short notice, so awful a woman. And it’s not self-hatred this time. I’m puzzled, honestly.”

  Not without reason. But how can I explain that it’s all been designed by a pack of seraphs. Oh sure, we’re still free, but they’ve pushed us into a corner from which we’d have a hard time escaping even if we wanted to.

  A couple of cold and lonely middle-aged humans looking for a bit of warmth and affection.

  Well, there was nothing wrong with that, God knows.

  It might well be—and he didn’t especially like the thought— that all along she’s been the important one and that the seraph bunch has been grooming me for her.

  “Well,” he said, considering very carefully, “let me say that for all my life up to now I’ve been searching for you and that for all my life from now I’ll be after explaining why I was searching for you. All right?”

  It was indeed all right. She cried and laughed and dried her tears and finished her sherry trifle. His hint that he was planning more than a one-night stand did not seem to add to her confidence. She took that for granted.

  I’m such a good man, it disgusts me!

  “Still,” she said as she finished the dessert with the cool efficiency that characterized everything she did—her plate was as clean as if it had been licked by a famished puppy—“I don’t completely understand. It’s not as if... as if you don’t have any other options.”

  “None that I’ve ever found in a more attractive package. Can you live with that answer?”

  “Certainly.” She closed her eyes and sighed, her breasts moving sharply against the fabric of her dress. “What woman couldn’t?”

  He gritted his teeth to restrain the thunderbolt of passion that ignited him. She’s ready to succumb, he thought. More than ready. Eager even. Why not now?

  On the short walk back to the

  Shelbourne, both of them shy and reserved again, she told him that she was not at all sure about the University of Cook County. The money was certainly good, better than she could have hoped for. But the expense of crossing the Atlantic, putting the girls in school, and food and housing in America.

  Losing her nerve, she was.

  Then he saw with the clear and vivid eyes of imagination a little boy: Dermot Desmond, a possible fruit of his love for Nora Anne Flanagan. His head turned light with affection for still improbable Dermot—and with a wrenching lustful tenderness for the wee one’s mother that was so strong he was momentarily fearful that he might begin clawing at her clothes right there on the rain-drenched street.

  Dermot! Was he the one in whom the seraph crowd were most interested? Were his parents minor actors in one of Gaby’s patterns of beauty?

  “Is there something wrong, Seano?” Nora’s hand rested on his arm. “You’re weaving a bit.”

  “Too much of the drink taken,” he replied.

  “Not true.” Her eyes searched his face, looking for something that might or might not be there.

  “Maybe just a little tired. Sure it’s been a long, hard day.”

  “The truth, Sean Desmond.” She stopped walking and her grip on his arm tightened and it was his turn to feel naked.

  “Well,” he hesitated, “I was thinking of my son Dermot and his mother and how much I loved them both.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a son?”

  “I don’t, to tell the truth. But maybe someday I might have one.”

  They resumed walking toward the Shelbourne, but his arm remained in her possession.

  “That’s beautiful, Sean.” She drew in her breath quickly and her lovely chest expanded and contracted. “Very beautiful. Dermot, is it now? Ah, sure that’s a fine name.”

  For a moment she was utterly submissive, ready, even eager to be impregnated.

  The most seductive words of the evening had been spoken without seductive intent. He made a mental note of the fact. Dermot, is it?

  “Where was I now?” He fought to restrain his passionate longing for her. “Ah yes, about Chicago. Won’t you be after moving in with us? There’s plenty of room, even if you’ll not be sharing my bed. And the four wee lasses can go to St. Ignatius together.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” she protested anxiously. “What would people say?”

  “They’d say you were sleeping with that crazy man Desmond, and even if it wasn’t true, it would protect you from the predators.”

  “The other predators.”

  They laughed again. She thought the suggestion was outrageous. But too interesting to reject out of hand.

  “Will the wee lasses be at me lecture tomorrow?”

  “Ah, would they ever forgive me if I wouldn’t let them come? Sure don’t they have your picture hanging on the wall in their room? Wasn’t I telling you, Professor Desmond, you’re a hero in this country?”

  Allies.

  In front of the hotel, she pointed out the plaque honoring that wee gombeen man, Oliver St. John Gogarty. Now I’ll have to kiss her. Well, what are you waiting for, eejit? He put one arm around her shoulders, brushed his lips against her forehead, and then very quickly against her lips.

  She leaned against him. He felt her body yielding completely, her superb breasts touching his chest. For the third time a body-wrenching surge of physical need raced through his body. Mine for the taking. Why wait a few more days?

  Because she had been hurt and was still fragile. Because with a vulnerable woman a man should be very soft at the beginning. Her eventual gratitude for his restraint would pay rich dividends. She would keep. And he could wait. For a while. “Good night, Nora Flanagan. Thanks for everything.” “Good night, Sean Desmond. Thank you for everything.” The promise in that exchange was enough for both of them. There might be some hesitations. There’d be no turning back. Impulsively he knocked on the rain-soaked window of her old

  Renault.

  An indulgent smile on her lips, she rolled down the window. “I suppose you’d be after playing a musical instrument,

  wouldn’t you now?”

  She was startled. “How would you know that I play a cornet in

  a Dublin brass group?”

  “That’s one of your pint-size trumpets, isn’t it now?”

  “And you’re the kind of man”—her forehead knotted in a frown—“who would object to a woman blowing on a horn in his apartment, are you not?”

  “Ah, sure.” He chuckled, despite the hollow feeling at the base of his stomach. “Have I not a great devotion to the trumpet?”

  They laughed together, sharing a great joke. Nora Anne Flanagan, however, did not understand how funny it was.

  On the slow ride up the problematic old cage elevator to his floor, he pondered various images of what Nora Anne Flanagan would look like with her clothes off and some of the more interesting activities in which he might engage with her, the various endearments, for example, his lips might work on her nipples and her breasts. And her belly and her loins for that matter.

  So, despite hints of “Fanfare for the Common Man” in the deep recesses of the hotel, he forgot to punch the button for his floor and had to ride down from the top of the building.

  Well, such images were all well and good, he advised himself. Still, his seduction of this vision of beauty should proceed very slowly. At the end, he’d let her make the first move.

  Would it require self-control?

  Well, now, hadn’t he been told recently that he understood women perfectly?

  In his sui
te, under a cold shower, the only kind they seemed to have at night in the hotel and not much good for all its chill at reducing his passions either, he cursed his caution in front of the hotel and then praised his wisdom and virtue.

  Finally, tucked contentedly in a vast if floppy bed, he admitted sheepishly to himself that there was another reason for his care and restraint.

  Maybe those were not colored lights dancing intermittently at the door of the restaurant all evening. And on the street while they walked back to the Shelbourne. All the hues of red and some green and blue with an occasional hint of gold and silver.

  Maybe there were no lights at all. Maybe he was merely a little fluthered.

  Right?

  Wrong!

  The lights were there.

  Fersure.

  ANGEL FIRE?

  SERAPH FIRE!

  As Sister Intemerata used to say, if you keep in mind that your guardian angel is always watching you, it’s easy to be good.

  Then, just before he fell asleep, he remembered with a mixture of dismay and elation another one of her dicta:

  ‘Tour guardian angel watches over you and protects you all your life. Whether you like it or not.”

  More About Angels

  They give to God’s relationship to man the contour and concreteness in which it can be perceived as the new Creation FOR man.

  Lisabeth Cohn

  The angels mark ... (the) reaching of the incommensurable into the commensurable, of mystery into the sphere of human possibilities ... they are at the place where the speech and action of God commence in the created world.

  Karl Barth

  Then a man came and wrestled with him until just before daybreak. When the man saw that he was not winning the struggle, he hit Jacob on the hip and it was thrown out of joint. The man said, “Let me go, daylight is coming.”

  “I won’t, unless you bless me,” Jacob answered.

  “What is your name?” the man asked.

  “Jacob,” he answered.

  The man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob. You have struggled with God and with men, and you have won; so your name will be Israel.”

  Jacob said, “Now tell me your name.”

  But he answered, “Why do you want to know my name?” Then he blessed Jacob.