The Third Angel Read online

  He pinched her and Stella grinned at him. Of course he would hurt her. That was the point.

  “Our mother lost her twin sister,” Marianne explained. “She was in love, and she killed herself because the fellow didn't love her back, and the fellow was actually Dad if you can believe it.”

  “Wasn't Mum lucky?” Stella said. “She won the prize. Hamlin Ridge.”

  Stella's father had business in New York, and that's where Jamie and Stella had first met, at a party. It was ridiculous that they knew the same person, but then again that person dealt drugs, so maybe it all made sense. Everyone was equal in the eyes of his or her drug dealer; a dollar sign and nothing more.

  Stella had been back to New York twice after their first meeting, staying at Jamie's tiny apartment in Chelsea. She loved New York. She was a city girl. She could score drugs wherever she went. When it turned out the guy they both knew who'd had the party got busted, Stella assured Jamie there was nothing to worry about. They took a taxi to East Tenth Street and Jamie waited in the cab while she scored. That was their official first date, and his first time shooting heroin. He'd only snorted or smoked it before. It was like Demerol, but faster, better, clearer somehow. Using made them fall in love with each other. Blood mixed with blood, they became one person. They started to talk about what life would be like when they were married. Then they started to talk about wedding dates, even though Stella's parents would have a fit. Maybe because of it. Jamie was a musician, a Catholic, and a Jew. Add heroin addict to that and Stella had found the man who would cause her parents the most distress. He was the perfect nightmare, a drug-addicted musician who did not eat meat on Friday and had the genetics of the ghetto. What could be better, more delicious, more powerfully painful? They would tell her she was throwing her life away, which is precisely what they did, but it was her life and she could destroy it any way she wanted to. Besides, Stella loved showing Jamie off; he was so beautiful and so on the edge of ruin. Everything she wasn't supposed to have, all in one dish.

  On the evening when the Ridges were away and the town house was fair game, Jamie sat down on the rug after saying hello to Marianne and her boyfriend. He leaned his head down and snorted the line of heroin Nick had set out for him. He felt so much better here than he did at the crappy Lion Park Hotel, where he couldn't write even a single verse. What the hell was he thinking? He could write a song in half an hour if he wanted to; sometime the next week would surely be soon enough. Even his hip felt good now that he was here and getting high, or it felt nothing, which was the same as good. Better.

  Stella lay down on the floor with her head in his lap. She had very blond hair. She was almost invisible she was so blond. She was like a hot piece of snow. Gorgeous and hard to hold on to. She felt unloved and angry and sometimes she cried in her sleep. Jamie felt as though they had been brought together by fate, even though they would probably drive each other crazy in the end. He thought about the maid in the hotel telling him he could write a song if he worked all night. Stella would never tell him anything like that. She'd never had to work at anything and she didn't think he should either. In so many ways, it was a relief to be with her.

  “Let's have a bath,” Stella said. “You stink.”

  “Yeah, sure. You run it,” Jamie said. “Put in bubbles.”

  “You do it,” Stella said. “I'm not your geisha, you bastard.”

  “Spoiled brat.” Jamie grinned.

  Since it was true, and since calling her on such matters was the reason she was with him in the first place, Stella stood up and pulled Jamie to his feet. All her other boyfriends had done exactly what she told them to do. They were boring. Sometimes she thought she could drive Jamie to hit her if he found out about some of the things she did when he wasn't around. She wasn't about to drop all of the men in her life until she was actually married. She wasn't about to end up like her mother, stuck with somebody who didn't even look up from the paper when she spoke to him. A battle was better than that; someone willing to fight.

  Stella and Jamie went upstairs, up the curvy staircase with the chestnut newel posts and banisters. Even the ceiling was wood. They went to the bedroom and pushed open the engraved gold-and-white door. There was more woodwork in the house than Jamie had ever seen.

  Jamie lay on the big bed while Stella ran a bath. There was a feather quilt and so many pillows that the whole bed seemed made of feathers. Jamie could smell citrus and jasmine; Stella smelled like that. It was a perfume she ordered from France. There was a green-tinted light coming in through the arched windows that faced a small park across the street. Lying there in the pillow bed, surrounded by feathers and jasmine, Jamie had a moment of total well-being. No pain whatsoever. He wondered if this was what it was like to be dead and gone. He almost rose out of his body; he could feel his spirit pulling away, but he willed himself back before he nodded out. He watched the shadows of the ivy outside that were cast across the ceiling. He was so happy not to be in the life he used to have.

  Jamie was asleep when Stella came out to get him, so she took her bath alone. She stayed in the hot, oily water until it was cold, so cold she was shivering, and the ends of her blond hair had turned green from the bath salts. She was the difficult sister and Marianne was the easygoing one; it had always been that way, their mother had said, as if she knew the first thing about Stella. Jamie was still asleep when Stella got into bed, which meant she didn't have to have sex with him. It meant she could pretend he was everything that she wanted and she was everything that he needed, that in the long run it was going to all turn out perfectly.

  AT MIDNIGHT FRIEDA woke in her room on the second floor. She shared a room with two other girls who also worked at the hotel—Lennie Watt and Katy Horace—but they were still asleep. A fight was going on out on the street and the raised voices of drunken men had awoken her. Frieda went to the window. There was Jack Henry tossing out one of the regulars. Frieda noticed that Jack was going through the other man's wallet, taking out the cash before replacing the wallet in the gentleman's coat. Jack Henry was a rat, just as Frieda suspected. She was a good judge of character. Well, usually, at any rate. One of her roommates, that sharp girl named Lennie, had woken, too. Lennie's mum had worked in the hotel when she was a girl, and Lennie's older sister, Meg, managed the front desk. It was wise to be on Meg Watt's good side, as she made up the maids' schedules and assigned hours. She favored her sister and now she favored Frieda as well.

  “That's Teddy Healy,” Lennie said of the man passed out on the pavement. “You don't want to have anything to do with him. I heard he killed somebody once.”

  Frieda sniffed. “I don't believe that.”

  “Well, he was responsible for something awful. Meg told me.”

  “Even so, we can't just leave him out there, can we?”

  Perhaps because she'd often gone with her father on his visits to patients, Frieda had inherited some of his concern for those in need. She and Lennie decided to sneak downstairs to see if the poor fellow on the pavement was conscious. That was the least a person could do. They pulled raincoats on over their nightgowns and crept down the stairs. They felt like schoolgirls out on a lark and they couldn't stop giggling. If they got caught they'd be in trouble—the management fined girls who broke the rules and the manager, a Greek fellow named Ajax, had no sense of humor—but luckily that dreadful Jack Henry was having a cigarette as the barman closed up the lounge. They wouldn't have to bribe him in return for his silence.

  “You keep watch,” Frieda said.

  She went outside while Lennie remained in the doorway. Teddy Healy was in a heap beside the building. The night was surprisingly cold. Frieda hunkered down.

  “Hello?” she said softly. There was no answer. “I'm going to take your pulse,” she said.

  Frieda reached for Mr. Healy's wrist, somewhat surprised that she knew what she was doing. She had, after all, seen her father do this countless times. Frieda counted for a minute. Seventy. That was acceptable. There was so
me blood on Healy's head, but no real wounds. When Frieda had gone on house calls with her father she'd been his helper; she'd looked forward to it. She had loved him dearly until he'd left her mother. She'd been a daddy's girl, she'd had no time for her mother, but he'd left them both for some other woman. When she thought about the ways in which she had disappointed her father she got a little teary, but he'd disappointed her first. That was the start of it all, the way her life had changed around. One day she'd decided she was going to London. She was not going to consider his feelings anymore.

  What do we have here? That's what her father would say whenever he walked into a patient's home, no matter the circumstances, be it a terminal illness or a broken arm or a case of the stomach flu. Dr. Lewis wore two wristwatches, so he would never be late. People who are ill don't have time to wait around, he'd told Frieda. If his patient was a child, he often let them play with one of the watches during the examination. Now you've got a handle on time, he would say.

  “Sir, can you hear me?” Frieda asked the man on the sidewalk. “I'm going to call an ambulance for you if you don't answer.” Always make sure the individual is conscious. Ask them their name and the date. “Sir, do you know what today is?”

  Teddy Healy muttered something. At least he was alive.

  “Do you hear me?” Frieda repeated. “You need to answer me, sir.”

  “Go away,” Teddy Healy said. “Leave me the hell alone.”

  “The date?”

  “Friday, damn it.”

  “Good enough. Stand up,” Frieda said. “I'll help.”

  He was a man in his forties, Frieda's father's age, and Frieda felt a little foolish helping him to his feet. What do we have here? her father would have said. A drunk on a bender? A man who's lost? A case of liver damage?

  “Hurry up,” Lennie hissed from the doorway. “We're going to get caught.”

  Frieda signaled to a passing taxi, then helped Teddy over when the cab pulled up.

  “Do you know where you live?” she asked.

  “Very funny,” Teddy Healy said. “Who said I'm alive?”

  “You seem alive. Your pulse is fine, but you'll give yourself serious liver damage if you keep up the drinking.”

  “I wish I could change places with that ghost.”

  Frieda felt a chill. Lennie said he was murderer. Maybe she'd been right. “What ghost?” she asked.

  Teddy Healy opened his eyes. When he looked at her, Frieda saw something a young girl shouldn't see. Pure panic. Maybe he was a murderer or maybe he wasn't; either way he was a desperate man. All of a sudden Frieda felt frightened of what was inside this person. She wondered how her father managed to deal with his patients' fears and their secrets. Perhaps he tried his best to avoid such things and treat only the matter at hand—the broken bone, the aching back—leaving the darker areas for someone else, a teacher or a therapist or a priest.

  The taxi driver helped Frieda get Teddy into the cab. Frieda looked through his wallet and found his address. She also found a photograph of a woman with blond hair who stared straight into the camera. She looked washed out, faded; she was disappearing even though she was beautiful.

  There was no cash. Frieda took what little she had in her coat pocket and handed it over.

  “I'll get him home,” the driver promised. “No worries.”

  Frieda ran back into the hotel. Then she and Lennie raced back upstairs, laughing, holding hands.

  “You're crazy,” Lennie said. “How could you touch him?”

  “My father's a doctor,” Frieda said. “I've seen lots worse.”

  “Well, that explains how you dealt with him. It just doesn't explain what you're doing at the Lion Park.”

  The third girl in their room, Katy, had never woken up. She'd been the one who had borrowed Frieda's dress, who'd supposedly snagged Mick Jagger. They called her Mrs. Jagger behind her back, or Mick's girl; nobody really believed her.

  “I saw what you did and you shouldn't have paid for his taxi,” Lennie said. “You're a soft touch.”

  “You would have done the same,” Frieda said.

  “Like hell I would.” Lennie pulled back her blanket and got into bed. “I take care of number one. That's me and no one else.”

  Frieda got into bed as well, but she didn't go to sleep. She took a pen and a notepad from her night-table drawer. Frieda jotted down some random words. Then she looked at them, crossed out a few, and began writing some more. She could hear Lennie's breathing grow slow as she fell asleep; she could hear Katy turning to the wall. As she listened to them, Frieda wrote about a man in a black coat walking down a long, endless hallway, and a beautiful woman with long, pale hair. She wrote about a hotel where guests never left and about the kind of love that lasted long after death. She wrote for hours without knowing time had passed. She was perspiring so much her nightgown had turned damp. Her scalp and her hair were soaked. Her heart was racing. She needed more paper so she could go on writing; she went to the bureau for a piece of the cream-colored stationery she used for writing letters. At the top of the page she printed the ghost of michael macklin, then she rewrote the messy crossed-out thing she'd begun on the notepad.

  At last, exhausted, Frieda stored what she had written in her night-table drawer. She lay down in bed, but she couldn't close her eyes. She was far too excited. She felt as though the words had come through her; poetry at last. Something, a force of some sort, had made her write them down and had strung them together and she had merely been a conduit. While her roommates slept, Frieda had been somewhere else entirely. She had left and come back, and no one had noticed that she'd been gone.

  IN THE MORNING there was a hum in the hotel, the kind that occurred when someone famous was around. Supposedly John Lennon had checked in. People said he wanted a place to escape to; therefore, if anyone saw him they were supposed to act like he wasn't there. Ajax, the hotel manager, gave the girls a stern lecture; they were employees, serious people, not screaming fans like the hordes of girls posted outside. Maids were not to speak unless spoken to, at the risk of being fired. That was what the Lion Park was all about, after all. Privacy. Double fines were in place.

  Frieda wasn't working till the evening, so she went out for a walk. It was good to get away from the groupies who were making such a racket. Frieda hadn't had much sleep; she kept thinking about the drunk man on the concrete and about her poem. She supposed she had written a song. It was probably no good at all, and yet it made her feel the way “Greensleeves” did. That must mean something. She was wearing her black dress and black boots and she'd made up her eyes with Lennie's eyeliner. She felt like crying for Michael Macklin, the character in her song, yet she didn't know the first thing about him. She'd sort of made him up, after all.

  Frieda sat down on a wooden bench in a small garden. She loved the way London smelled; the air trembled and seemed alive. Although the leaves were yellow, the weather was still fine. It was an enclosed garden she'd stumbled upon, the sort that made a person imagine she was truly in the countryside. Country girls were sometimes drawn to country spaces, despite their desire for a taste of city life. Frieda could barely hear the traffic through the hedges even though she was so close to Brompton Road that the bench she sat upon rattled with the vibrations from the passing traffic. She should be sitting in lectures at the university in Reading right now. The truth was, her father had always thought she would make a good doctor. She had what it took, Dr. Lewis said. Blood and illness didn't frighten her. And she asked questions whenever she went on house calls with him. That was a good sign. A questioning mind. She didn't even seem to be afraid of death. She accepted it as a natural part of our lives. That was the only way to manage a life in medicine. No hysterics, no regrets, just acceptance that all things end, if not now, then at some point in time.

  One night when Frieda was fifteen her father had been called to a home in a nearby village. They'd gone over a little toll bridge where they'd had to pay the toll man two shillings. There were
willow trees all along the river, their branches grazing the water. Darkness was falling, and the hedges were so tall it was difficult to see any of the houses. Frieda loved riding in the car with her father. She had absolutely no fear of the dark.

  When we ride we ride with the Angel of Death or the Angel of Life, Dr. Lewis said. Sometimes one gets out of the car. Sometimes one follows you inside.

  The doctor believed there were three angels. The Angel of Life, who rode along with them most nights. The Angel of Death, who appeared wearing his funeral clothes on those visits when there was no hope. And then there was the Third Angel. The one who walked among us, who sometimes lay sick in bed, begging for human compassion.

  “It's not up to us to help the angels,” Frieda had said.

  “Isn't it?” the doctor said.

  Frieda thought this over. She wondered if he was telling her that it was her duty to help the ill and the downtrodden; perhaps she would never know if she was coming to the aid of an angel in disguise. The doctor discussed subjects other people might think she was too young to hear; she was included in all of the important aspects of his life. Frieda was the only one who knew that the doctor secretly smoked cigars. She thought he was the smartest, kindest man in the world. He rolled down the car window and sang and puffed away. He was a huge Frank Sinatra fan, and he sang “Fly Me to the Moon” that night. After they went over the bridge, they drove along the river, past willow trees. They came to a little house with horses in a meadow.

  “You can stay in the car on this one, miss,” Frieda's father said. “This is one where a doctor isn't really necessary. They need an angel and not the fellow in the dark coat, if you know what I mean.”

  “I'll go,” Frieda had said. “I want to go.”

  She could see the sheen of two white horses, standing in the soft darkness. She didn't want to be afraid of anything, but she was afraid of them. It was a funny fear to have. Frieda didn't actually think they would hurt her, or that they were dangerous. It was more that she had the urge to run with them; to run far away, right through the grass. She loved her home and her family, but once she started running with the horses, she might never come back.