No Place for an Angel Read Free

like a cardboard box with picture windows.”
    â€œI had a feeling of something like that on that picnic a week or so back. There was something damn peculiar going on.”
    â€œWell,” said Irene, “the peculiar thing was that he suddenly told me, while you were gone with the Giffords, that all this time he’s been going under an assumed name. His name isn’t Barry Day at all.”
    Charles gave a snort. “A likely tale. If it isn’t Barry Day what is it?”
    â€œBernard Desportes.”
    Charles snorted again.
    â€œWell, it might be,” Irene said.
    â€œSo what difference does it make if it is or isn’t?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Irene. And indeed, asked it that way, she was uncertain. “But why,” she pursued, “don’t you believe it? I mean if it doesn’t make any difference, why should he make it up?”
    â€œIt makes him molto più interessante, especially to you.”
    â€œOh, for heaven’s sake, Charles. We’ve known Barry for years.”
    â€œBut have we known this mysterious stranger, this Bernard Deschamps?”
    â€œDesportes,” Irene corrected. “Anyway,” she continued, “as long as you’re being like this, you needn’t look my way for the woman in question . . . he’s got somebody now. She looks existentialist and wears black stockings, low heels and a black wool top with powder specks and bits of hair stuck on it. He says she’s extremely talented.”
    â€œWhat a character.”
    Irene always felt as if Charles was going to drop Barry, whom she knew to be touchy. If we really succeed in doing the wrong thing to him, he’ll never come back once he’s gone, she thought. She needed Barry’s particular kind of sensitivity. It was fulfilling to her to have somebody like him to talk to. If they could raise the money anonymously, or use influence, perhaps do both. . . .
    â€œBut that would put him off worse than anything, if he found out.”
    â€œWhat would?”
    â€œTo help him get a show.”
    â€œThat’s true,” said Charles. “It would.” It was his admission, not at all begrudged, of Barry’s true worth.
    â€œI’ll try to pick something out of his stuff that we can stand to live with. I know you don’t like it.”
    â€œI’ll not take this role of husband-who-knows-nothing-about-art, Irene. I just won’t do it. I do know a hawk from a handsaw. Barry is not going to wring from my lips that a handsaw is aesthetically satisfying even if he sculpts one out of golden coathangers.”
    â€œHe’s started an angel now,” Irene recalled, by way of reassurance.
    â€œThat’s the best news I’ve heard about him.” He passed the candle toward her, lighting her cigarette, and changed the subject.

    Bernard Desportes, alias Barry Day, was scared, but then he thought that perhaps everybody was. He could not be sure, that was all.
    He sat in bars in the late evening listening to people talk. Sometimes they gave themselves away. They were scared, too, and admitted it. He felt relieved. It was the time of one of the worst bomb scares. The papers said it daily: the world hung on the brink of World War III. Every day he must at some point have crossed the very crux and center of the target, the biggest one in the free world. Daily, he felt a Russian pointer reach out and touch his spine.
    â€œIt will either happen or it won’t happen,” he said out loud at parties. Everyone agreed. “That’s what I think,” they all said. He grinned jauntily. His stomach turned upside-down. Am I really a coward? Was I, all this time? he wondered.
    He sat in his favorite bar down near West 12th Street and watched television. “This will be a show about people,” a voice said. “It will not tell any one story, for there is no story to tell. You will see what you see, hear what you