Angelique Rising (25 page)

*****

              "Yes, Wyatt, the work is proceeding splendidly. Mr. Johnson has paid our overdue bills and we are well on our way back to self-sufficiency thanks to you and Angelique." Mother Superior Rosemond glanced to the table and wondered if she really should leave. It probably was the only way. "I will give you both some privacy," she said exiting the room, the same room in the convent Wyatt had had his first meeting with her in.

             
"Thank you for coming, Wyatt. Please --can you tell me how Angelique is?" Father Wadzniak, seated across from Wyatt at the table, asked.

             
"I am not here to discuss my wife
with you. I am here because you said it was the only way you would give me the Church's archived material I want," Wyatt responded irritated that the priest had called him by his first name.

             
Father Wadzniak was a squat muscular man with strong white teeth, blotchy skin and bland red rimmed eyes. His voice was thick, caramel, making no concessions for his past or his actions indeed almost defiantly pompous. He was a man who firmly believed he had the answers who never gave off the impression there was any possibility otherwise.

             
"True. But what harm would it do to humor an old priest?" he asked dryly.

             
"When it comes to
harming
Angelique, you're the one who would know."

             
"I have paid my penance, Wyatt."

             
"You locked a child in a root cellar. A
child!
If it were up to me you would be in prison to this day
Father."

             
"Do not impugn my motives Wyatt, at the time I thought I was saving her but that is not something you could understand. Just tell me. Is she well? I have not seen her in years, not since the court hearing where she got that abominable order. Stay away from her! And leave her to whatever would come her way. That's what they made me do. But there has not been a day that I have not worried about her. Indeed, giving you these archives could lead to my defrocking if Rome so had a mind. Yet for her I will do it. So please --is she all right?"

             
Wyatt was flabbergasted. He was not seeing regret or worry or concern --he was seeing love! The priest
loved
Angelique though Wyatt could not discern the nature of the love, prurient or beneficent.

             
"She is well and happy," Wyatt said thinking
mostly because I haven't had to spank her
for anything again
, "and I would like to keep it that way. Now are you giving me those records or not?"

             
"Here," Father Wadzniak said handing Wyatt a thick envelope, "but they are written by religious scholars so I doubt you will comprehend much of it." He made his action sound magnanimous.

             
That's what he wants
Wyatt thought in sufferance,
he wants to advise me concerning Angelique, worm his way back into her life through me.

             
"If you have something to say helpful to Angelique's wellbeing, say it."

             
"I would like to see her again."

             
"Not a chance," Wyatt said standing up.

             
"All right, all right. Not see her. Would you give her a letter for me?"

             
"No."

             
"A message?"

             
"What message?"

             
"That she can always come to us. To
me.
We will welcome her," he said, his tone neither veneration nor acrimony.

             
"That would be quite a feather in your cap, wouldn't it? The answer is no, I will not even mention to her that I have seen you and if you try to contact her you will pay heavily. Goodbye." Wyatt turned and left, praying that what he held in his hand would hold the answer for keeping his earthbound angel as he had described her --well and happy though he would settle for alive and safe.

             
It took Wyatt and Johnson all the rest of the morning at company headquarters to read through the archives, to research and decipher the meaning.

             
"This is what I get out of it," Wyatt finally said to Johnson who was still reading, looking surly. "Seven recorded cases. I don't think that one in Milan was legit so I discount that one. Four, the presumed angel was killed," he tried to keep his voice from cracking, "in two the angel apparently survived. Wouldn't you say that's the size of it?"

             
"Yes," Johnson answered. "Though it makes no sense. In those four the Protector
killed
to protect the angel and yet--"

             
"Yes, I noticed that. There were no mentions of any killing in the two cases of survival. Of course that doesn't mean anything, it could just be coincidence. Why are you looking like that?"

             
"Something I was told once in Catechism class, I didn't pay much attention at the time. It was something about the battle between good and evil, that to win, good couldn't
become
evil. Killing --even to protect the angel-- that would be evil, wouldn't it? The Protectors who didn't kill, who were successful, they--"

             
A tone sounded. Wyatt pushed a button on his desk.

             
"Mrs. Cochran and Mr. Cochran are here for your lunch date sir," a voice said.

             
"I'll be right out."

             
Wyatt turned to Johnson.

             
"Whatever it takes, we keep her
safe
.
"

             
"Whether she likes it or not?"

             
"Whatever it takes
. I want her happy but first I want her
alive."
He opened his office door and greeted Angelique and George.

             
"So... lunch. Where to?"

             
"I know a place but I gotta stop back at the floor for a moment, one of the guys is having a meltdown," George said. "The guy from Stanford."

             
"
Gas Wind
himself, eh? Why is it always the guy from Stanford?"

             
"It's not. Last time it was the guy from Harvard. Before that, the guy from Princeton. It's never the guy from Bebop U. They're
tough." They boarded the elevator and George pushed a button.

             
"Why's he having a meltdown?" Angelique asked.

             
"We're wrestling with a problem that's stumped us now for months so we brought in this math whiz and his theorem is about to crash and burn and he is... what's the polite word?"

             
"Flummoxed," Wyatt said as the elevator door opened and George led them down a long carpeted hallway into a large room filled with computers, tables, papers, and large sheets of plate glass standing like sentries, all covered in written mathematical formulas.

             
"Yeah, I was gonna say
shit-faced-pissed
,
"
George said.

             
A man with a gray face and a sparse whatever-was-he-thinking comb over dressed all in polyester (even his pink polka dot bow tie) was standing before one of the glass panels, marker in hand. He had a narrow torso perched precariously on two short thin legs, sharp features, and quite an irascible look on his face. He turned to them, his eyes immediately snapping on Angelique.

             
"I thought my work was in a
restricted
area," he carped looking at the rich man's eye candy.

             
"My
wife
is an owner, Mr. Smythe," Wyatt shot back, in no mood for
Gas Wind's
crankiness. Angelique's eyes jerked up. She was?

             
Gas Wind, or rather Mr. Smythe, returned to his mathematics; he was not a man who could handle adversity. And unfortunately for him his theorem had become not just adversarial but downright hostile. He changed tack.

             
"I think we'll need to bring in a third layer here," he said pointing to some numbers scribbled on the glass panel no doubt from the bright yellow marker held in his hand.

             
"You think that might solve it?" George asked.

             
"Possibly, we'll just have to--"

             
"It won't," Angelique said staring at the theorem. "It'll just kerbolix it up worse." All eyes turned to her.

             
She stared back at them. "Well it will," she said.

             
"And
how
,
"
Gas Wind said sounding proud and preachy not to mention pigheaded, "would
you
know?"

             
Uh oh, Wyatt thought as he spotted the surprised and confused look on George's face as he stared at Angelique. One of her little
talents
was obviously about to emerge.
Lord give me strength.

             
"Your theorem's
crapola
.
"

             
Gas Wind went apoplectic. "Here," he said thrusting the marker into Angelique's hand, "you try." He stepped back sneering.

             
And she did. As she wrote the math on the glass panel and prattled on, Wyatt caught words like "gradient theorem" and "holomorphic antiderivative" and "curve integral." George's eyes got big and round as she spoke and wrote and Gas Wind's expression changed from trying not to appear too interested to trying to look like he knew what she was talking about.

             
"--so you see when it's applied practically, you'd lose a teensy bit of speed, but you'd more than make up for that with the power so--"

             
George turned and stared at Wyatt in abject shock, obviously he had been unable to keep up with her. Wyatt simply shrugged his shoulders.

             
"See?" she said when she finished and turned to them, like she was expecting a word of praise that she'd correctly finished a crossword puzzle when what she'd actually done in two minutes was to solve a problem George's crack math team hadn't been able to solve in six months.

             
Gas Wind managed to rip his eyes from her work and look at her, desperately trying to appear intelligent.

             
"My dear," he said now urgently eager to prove his good manners, "where were you trained?"

             
Here it comes
Wyatt thought.

             
"I read a lot."

             
As Wyatt ushered her away he knew he'd be spending the rest of the afternoon fielding excited phone calls from George all in the nature of
what on earth?!
And the answer,
Yup, she's on Earth now
wasn't exactly one he could give.

             
Get used to it
he told himself.
'Cause there's probably more where that came from.

             
As he drove her to a restaurant she couldn't figure out how to change the channel on the car radio.

Chapter Ten

             
"Maureen, this is quite the little trap you've set for Angelique," Malcolm smiled thinking
but incomparable to mine.

             
Malcolm and Maureen were having one last meeting in his office at the Performance Center before the night's big movie premier.

             
"Trap? Why do you say that, Malcolm?" Maureen asked with all the sham innocence she could concoct.

             
Malcolm threw his head back and laughed at the particularly stupid expression she was attempting.

             
"Tinka told you he was her former dance partner here, right? And out of all the movie premiers you could have angled for it's just coincidence you chose
his?"

             
"This is for charity, Malcolm, it's a very big movie and he's the star. The premier and after-party will be well-attended, it will raise a lot of money for--"

             
"So if it's that big how did you get it on such short notice? Our charity movie premiers are usually booked months in advance. You must have pulled some real strings."