No Place for an Angel Read Free Page B

kept himself from calling Irene too much. He had a compulsion to call her from a not uncommon reason. She knew the woman he loved and wanted to marry; she had been in on it all. It wouldn’t work and was never going to. It made him hurt to think about it, but around Irene he felt more at home with it. When alone, he could not think about it, nor could he think too much about what he saw around him since the bomb was about to land on it all. How not to love too much, not to suffer for, what is threatened and may be about to crumble utterly? When he really got going, trees on a corner caused him a stab of pain, just by standing there, as did cats sleeping precise in their habits on sunny windowsills, children playing in a poor street, a girl with a pony-tail flying out for milk or bread. The list was infinite, and he had to stop for it. He stopped it by thinking about the angel.
    The angel was all his contemplation could bear. What we meditate on is the most important thing in our lives: he knew that much. It is the source of strength or the root of ruin. What sort of angel? He sat over his beer stein and watched it form, blotting out the TV screen, towering up in crumpled, wind-beaten clothes just above floor level, a great bird creature whose intelligence and innocence went far beyond the human potential, jet-powered, superb, and yet searching. Bright-eyed, self-careless, without fear, yet always looking for something. He had finally broken down and mentioned it to Irene and she had obliged him by banishing them all. You had to be careful whom you spoke to. It was a rule.
    The next day he met a girl. Her name was Joanna—she was a mixture of English and Slav, and would wait for him on spring afternoons near the corner of Sheridan Square. She didn’t mind meeting him on corners, something he would never have asked Irene to do, nor the woman from the South he was in love with. They would have felt there was something not quite good enough in this, and so did he. But Joanna had a real gift: she didn’t think anything about it one way or the other. Thus he could look her over before getting to her and notice her broad feet in run-over shoes and how she never looked completely clean. However, he decided not to quarrel with blessing.
    The warm spring afternoon brought them instantly into their best mood; they clasped hands and there was a lot to laugh about. They took the subway to the park and walked around. Some days they went to a movie or an art gallery, then took the bus back to his place and stayed there till after dark.
    When he woke one afternoon he saw a long line of heads, torsos, arms, along with some small abstract structures, lying in a row across the floor. He remembered that he was moving in a day or so. Joanna was up eating peanut butter and bread. She was near the window, where late light stood between the slats of the blinds, but did not enter. She was assuming he was asleep. Should he mention marrying her?
    It seemed a pleasant enough thought. He immediately began to recall the endless queue of Joannas there had already been in his life. He could not remember their names now, or just where he had met them, but once he had either dreamed or fancied that they were all of them on a train and the train was pulling out of some station, like Rome, perhaps, or Milan, for certainly it was a European train in a warm country. As far down the track as he could see, they were leaning out like a chorus line, out of all the windows, waving handkerchiefs and calling, “Goodbye, Barry, goodbye, Barry!” He looked and there went the last one, on the observation car, waving: it was Joanna.
    â€œThat bread is stale, isn’t it?” he asked.
    â€œDelicious!” she assured him, smiling through a density of peanut butter.
    Because of Joanna, he put the angel aside, though it returned from time to time to nag him, like a sciatic nerve. Again, easing, it drew a misty elegiac horizon around the green