Angel Landing

  THE NEW YEAR

  ONE

  THE ONLY MENTION OF our affair was a small article in the Herald entitled “Beyond the Call of Duty.” Photographs of Reno LeKnight were published in Newsweek, and a long article about EMOTE was printed in Psychology Today. But in our town only the Herald was read, and it was about me and Michael Finn that everyone was talking.

  Even those who didn’t care at all whether Angel Landing stood or fell understood the seductiveness of stolen kisses. Waitresses at Ruby’s Café wondered if Finn and I had made love right across the street in the Outreach office; taxi drivers waiting at the railroad station for the next train wondered about the secrets Finn and I had traded with our tongues. Because Fishers Cove was so small, it wasn’t long before everyone knew that Michael Finn and I had once been lovers, and that certainly included the staff at Outreach.

  I stayed home from work and persuaded Minnie to tell Claude Wilder I was out each time he called. Yet, sooner or later I would have to face Outreach’s board of directors, and so a few days after my appearance in court, during the trial recess that Reno LeKnight had requested in order to secure a surprise witness, I went to the Outreach office. I opened the door slowly, afraid that Claude Wilder was lurking behind the wood, but only Emily sat in the waiting room.

  “Hello,” I called softly.

  Emily dropped the pencils she was sharpening and ran to embrace me. “I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “I knew it all along. I knew it the first time I saw you and Michael Finn walk out of that office together. I just knew it.” She lowered her voice. “They’re waiting for you,” she nodded toward Claude’s office. “They’ve been waiting all morning.”

  There was no putting it off; I walked into the office to face the eyes of the tribunal.

  “Ah ha,” Johnson said when I entered and closed the door behind me.

  “Good morning,” I said, choosing the chair nearest the door.

  “Let’s not play games,” Gerkin the fund raiser said. “Someone tell her she’s fired.”

  “How could you?” Sally Wallace said to me. “How could you have betrayed our trust?”

  “I don’t think I actually did,” I said.

  “You don’t?” Claude said. He held a copy of the Fishers Cove Herald in the air. “Have you seen this?” He opened the paper to “Beyond the Call of Duty.”

  “I’ve seen it. I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen it.”

  “Christ,” Johnson shook his head. “How could you?”

  “Just one question,” Claude said, “because we don’t want any rash accusations made.” He waved the newspaper in front of me. “Is this article factual?”

  “Does it say that Finn and I were lovers?” I asked. Claude nodded solemnly. “Well, then, I suppose it’s factual.”

  “Ah,” Johnson said.

  “That’s it then,” Sally Wallace agreed.

  “It’s all in your contract,” Claude told me. “It’s in the Outreach guidelines. No personal contact with clients outside of working hours. Those were the rules that you were legally bound to.”

  “I understand,” I said. I was prepared to give up my job; I would sign any documents they asked me to.

  “It’s nothing personal,” Claude went on. “But let’s face it—you broke the rules. And when you do that, you have to expect to pay the price.”

  The door of the office swung open and Lark appeared in the doorway dressed in cashmere and pearls. “I heard you,” she said, shaking a finger at Claude. “But who here hasn’t broken the rules?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Claude Wilder said.

  “You’ve never taken fees for private consultations?” Lark asked Claude.

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Claude said to the board of directors.

  Lark threw a copy of the Outreach guidelines onto Claude’s desk. “We’re not allowed to accept payment for private consultations, and yet I know of at least eight times when you did exactly that.”

  “Ridiculous,” Claude Wilder said.

  “You deny accepting money from private clients?” Lark said.

  “These young women are overly sensitive,” Claude said to the board of directors.

  “Have you accepted fees?” Sally Wallace asked.

  “That’s not the point,” Claude said. “The point is the publicity that surrounded Michael Finn’s trial. Rules were broken in the public eye.”

  “All right,” Lark said to Claude, “you may be unwilling to admit that you’ve broken the rules, but I’m not, and I’m afraid I’ll have to hand in my resignation.”

  “Just a minute,” I said to Lark, “this isn’t necessary.”

  “I’ve broken the rules continually,” Lark went on, ignoring me. “I’ve had contact with my clients outside of the office. I’ve had clients to my home, to dinner, I’ve given most of them my home phone number, I’ve even let one or two of them sleep on my couch.”

  “This has nothing to do with you,” Gerkin said. Without Lark, Outreach would lose a great deal of funding: the parents of some EMOTE members donated generously to both agencies.

  “But I’ve broken the rules,” Lark said. “Quite a number of them.”

  “Lark,” I said. “Don’t.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Johnson. “There’s no parallel between your situations.”

  “There’s no comparison,” I added.

  “Of course there is,” Lark said. “If they fire you, they’ll have to fire us both.” Lark smiled as she twisted the gold and ruby ring on her finger.

  “This is impossible,” Claude said to Lark. “You can’t leave.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to,” she said.

  “This means a lot to me,” I said to Lark. “I never thought we could be friends.”

  “Quiet,” Lark said, for the directors seemed to have compromise in their eyes.

  “I never thought you would run this sort of risk for me,” I went on.

  “Ssh,” Lark hissed. She turned to Claude. “You’ve got to make a decision. Do we both stay on, or do we leave?”

  “But I’ve applied for another job. In Florida,” I told Lark.

  “You don’t need another job,” Lark insisted. “You could stay. They’re about to give in.”

  “There’s no therapy involved in this new job, and I think I really have a chance for it; the salary is so low that no one else may even apply.”

  “In Florida?” Lark said. Her eyes were wide, imagining hundreds of potential EMOTE members meeting beneath a bright yellow tent under the Florida sun.

  “You could visit me,” I suggested.

  “It’s so difficult for me to get away,” Lark said. “EMOTE is so focused in on me as a leader. And if you leave, I’ll have to help train a new therapist here.”

  “But you could get away for a couple of days, couldn’t you?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Lark agreed. “A few days.”

  “Thank you all,” I said to the board of directors, who had begun to relax the moment they heard me whisper the word Florida. “But I’m afraid that I have to resign.”

  Later, as I was sitting in the parlor, wondering what I would do if I didn’t get the job in Florida, the telephone rang. It was Carter, calling from a Holiday Inn in New Jersey.

  “How was the demonstration?” I asked, glad to turn my attention to some fate other than my own.

  “Ten thousand people in the snow in New Jersey,” Carter said. “I would say that was pretty good.”

  “I would say so,” I agreed.

  “But the real news,” he went on, “is about Finn’s trial.”

  I felt weak in the knees. “Yes?”

  “The welder here, the guy who broke both his legs …”

  “What about him?”

  “I went to see him to make certain that he could raise bail, but he didn’t need any help from Soft Skies. Because he’s not even being charged,” Carter said. “There’s not one criminal complaint out against him. The D.A. here a
nd the electric company both agree that the explosion was an accident. He’s a free man. Of course, he won’t be walking for quite a while—but he’s free.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I breathed.

  “Yes and no,” Carter said. “It might have been better in the long run if he had been tried. The more accidents that are brought into the public eye, the more the danger will be seen.”

  “Still,” I said.

  “Still,” Carter agreed, “it helps Finn’s case.”

  What, I wondered, would Finn do if he, too, were a free man? Would he ride out of town on the next train, or would he walk right back to the life he had once led, slipping into his work clothes again and into another job he hated.

  “I’ll be back tonight,” Carter told me. “I’m taking the next bus out of here. The welder from New Jersey has already left.”

  “Left?” I said, wondering where a man with two broken legs would go.

  “Reno LeKnight’s already picked him up. I’m certain that welder will be driven right to Fishers Cove; he’ll be the first witness to testify when court reconvenes tomorrow. I would bet all I own on that.”

  Carter’s bus didn’t arrive in Fishers Cove until after two in the morning; I waited in the parking lot of the bus station with the car heater turned on high. From the minute I had hung up the phone I knew I would not sleep, and insomnia was easier to face in a bus station than at home in a quiet bed. When I had driven Carter home with me to Minnie’s, and made up the couch with pillows and sheets, I sat in the easy chair and watched him sink into the bed I had made.

  “Exhausted,” Carter said. “The bus ride.”

  I didn’t mind that Carter fell asleep almost immediately; his soft breathing made me feel less alone, and when he turned in his sleep, my own sleeplessness was easier to take. I was still sitting in the easy chair watching Carter sleep when, hours later, at sunrise, my aunt came into the parlor, looked at me with raised eyebrows, and then stood over the couch.

  “Which one is this?” she whispered.

  “Carter,” I said.

  “Very nice,” Minnie said. “He sleeps with his boots on.”

  “He was exhausted, he just came back from New Jersey because Finn’s trial is resuming.”

  Minnie crossed her arms. “You don’t look good,” she told me. “You look tired.”

  Minnie was right; when Carter and I walked to the courthouse, I wanted to lean against a lamppost and rest. The courtroom itself was stuffy and hot; I leaned my head on Carter’s shoulder and closed my eyes. But when the court was called to order there was so much excitement in the room that I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat. Reno LeKnight walked in smiling like a cat; the district attorney eyed the defense bench uneasily. And while everyone carefully watched Reno LeKnight, who was dressed that day in a blue velvet suit, the doors behind us opened; a wheelchair rolled down the aisle.

  “It’s him,” Carter whispered. “The welder from New Jersey.”

  Reno LeKnight turned and pointed dramatically to the welder in the wheelchair. “Will Harris,” Reno LeKnight cried. “Our next witness.”

  Will Harris wheeled himself up to the witness stand. Both of his legs were in heavy white casts, and several of his front teeth were missing, knocked out by the impact of his fall from the scaffolding. Reno LeKnight bent down and helped Harris from his chair, dragging the welder from New Jersey up to the stand like an offering. When Harris had been sworn and had stated his address and occupation, the welder looked at the defense table and nodded gravely to Finn.

  Harris was questioned for over an hour; after that time, everyone in the courtroom knew how easy it was to reach for the wrong valve when a man was working twenty feet off the ground, when his eyes teared and he was surrounded by a haze of burning metal. Harris was astonished when the valve he installed shot out as soon as steam was let into the pipes by the testing crew. Harris had never expected to fly off the ladder and land twenty feet down, flat on his back on the cold hard cement. Even the judge and the district attorney winced in sympathy when Harris explained how he had felt when he flew off the scaffolding.

  “I felt like I was looking God right in the face,” the welder said. “I felt like my time had most definitely come.”

  “In summation,” Reno LeKnight asked when it was clear to everyone how similar the welder’s experience was to Finn’s, “what would you say, based on your expertise in welding and your personal experience of twenty years, was the primary factor which led to the tragedy of the Elizabeth explosion?”

  Will Harris chewed his lip. Then he looked Reno LeKnight in the eye. “Human error.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Fucking human error is what blew up that plant,” the welder announced as he tapped the cast on his left leg.

  The judge raised both his arms in the air, he pleaded for the wisdom of Moses or Job; but because he had neither, he called a conference, in his chambers, with the district attorney and Reno LeKnight.

  “What do you think?” I asked Carter when we had gone into the corridor during the recess.

  “I think the case will be dismissed,” Carter answered. “Unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately for your cause,” I said.

  “My cause?” Carter sighed. “Jesus. Did you ever think that Finn himself might be better off if he had a cause? He might fight harder to survive if he were fighting for something more important than himself.”

  “Oh, Carter,” I said, “I don’t want to argue with you anymore.”

  “As soon as the trial is over I’m leaving to work out of the New Hampshire office. I’ve asked Finn to come with me, I’ve offered him a job.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  “But you said it was over between you. Don’t forget I’ll have to pay Finn’s salary out of my own pocket.”

  “You can afford it.”

  “Don’t be angry,” Carter said. “Try to understand, Soft Skies may be what Finn’s been searching for all of his life.”

  When we went back into the courtroom, I still could not believe that a political organization was what Finn had been seeking for so long. I was convinced that what he had been looking for, what had been missing from his life, could be found within, planted in his memory like a row of perfect roses.

  Reno was the first to come out of the conference. He ran to whisper in his client’s ear.

  As Carter had expected, the judge announced that the state thought it best to drop the charges against Michael Finn because of the related circumstances in the New Jersey case. Both the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney had decided that the case could be taken no further.

  “We apologize to everyone whose time was wasted by this trial,” the judge said. “And I would like to thank you all”—he nodded to Michael Finn—“for your patience and your time.”

  Carter and I stayed in our seats as the courtroom cleared; the crowd left quickly, having witnessed a trial that never should have taken place. No one ran to embrace Michael Finn, although both the district attorney and the judge walked over to congratulate Reno LeKnight. By the time Carter and I walked up to the bench, the courtroom was as deserted as the harbor at dawn; the only sound was the soft whirring of the radiators and the shuffling of paper as Reno LeKnight packed up his briefcase.

  “It’s all over,” Reno said as he clicked his briefcase shut. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” he said to Finn. “Because now you are a free man.”

  I watched for the beating of Finn’s heart beneath the linen shirt, the borrowed blue suit. Even when Carter went up and embraced Finn as if they had been brothers, Finn’s breath came in short, shallow gulps, not at all the crazy sighs of a free man.

  When Reno invited Carter and me to join in a celebration at the Modern Times, I thought first of saying no. And although I tried to shake off any hopes for a reunion, the hope was still there, floating just below the courthouse ceiling which had been carved out of mahogany in the time when whaling boats still set out from the harbor, and women sel
ling scallops and clams called out as they walked down Main Street.

  When the four of us walked on to celebrate Finn’s victory, Finn hung back; he walked carefully, as if he was afraid that if he went too fast he would slip. All of us were quiet as we walked, no one’s feet lifted off the pavement in a soft and desperate dance of victory, no backs were slapped, no lips touched. Fishers Cove had never seemed quite so lonely. It was as deserted as it must have been years before, when ships still sailed, and a man like Finn was likely to be on board, perhaps tasting salt on his lips for the first time, a sailor who left the protection of the harbor to know he was free the moment he saw what constellations rose above the waves.

  TWO

  WE CELEBRATED WITH GIN and whiskey—except Finn, who wouldn’t touch his drink. He had barely said a word, but Reno LeKnight was ready to talk for all of us.

  “Tomorrow I leave for Westchester,” the attorney told us. “Two kidnappers. A fabulous case. Not that you weren’t interesting,” he said to Finn, “but these two guys are guilty as sin.”

  “I was guilty,” Finn said.

  “Yes, but no one believed you were,” LeKnight said. “There’s no doubt when it comes to these kidnappers. The victim was found in the trunk of their car. With you, there was always some doubt, whether or not you were guilty was all up to what was inside your head when the valve was installed.”

  “Sorry,” Finn said.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Reno said. “We won, didn’t we?”

  After Reno had paid our bill, he turned to Carter. “I think you got your money’s worth.”

  “Money’s worth,” Carter muttered after the attorney had gone. “The second unit is being rebuilt, so what did I get? I’ll be here until the day all of Angel Landing is closed down.”